I’m making FLY for all the Black Boys who got their wings too soon and for all the boys who need to see themselves reaching higher. If you want to help this story take flight, follow our Kickstarter ! 🪽💫💖
A coming of age story about Black kids who finally have power to fight back against systems designed against them.
I explained the concept of "blorbo from my shows" to my 71 year old immigrant grandfather because I referenced it in passing and I thought nothing of it, until today when he said "I think I'll watch peaky blinders tonight and see my blorbo from my shows" referring, of course, to Cillian Murphy playing Tommy Shelby
English isn't his first language so he's not super in touch with modern slang, so I've been accidentally teaching him to talk like a tumblr user. His favorite thing to say lately is "me when I'm a little hater" when he's like talking shit about the neighbor's son
I explained the “x before gta6” meme to my immigrant father and he, in turn, explained to me how back in his day in Romania, they had the same type of joke, except instead of it being gta6, it was about the imminent death of a singer named Gică Petrescu, who everyone was continuously shocked by because he refused to die. Every time a momentous event happened people would say, in essence: “This happened and Gică Petrescu hasn’t even died yet?!?”
So. He understood the gta6 meme immediately because they apparently had the same thing in Romania when he was young, except way, way more morbid
the online identity and gimmick-ifying of autism is so odd. I'm diagnosed with autism and yet I barely identify with any stuff I see about it anymore. It feels like autism is being rebranded as the Silly Guy Disorder that gives you smart and beautiful hyperspecific interests. it's not that I mind silly jokes or being lighthearted about being autistic- but when the entire social movement is based around marketing us this way, I just can't help but feel isolated from it. it feels like I'm not the right kind of autistic. I'm not marketable and digestible to common audiences, and therefore I am discarded by the movement in the name of progress and acceptance. it feels foul.
FLY is a story about a boy who gets a second chance. Help his story take flight June 9th 11am EST on Kickstarter. Thank you for being the wind beneath my wings I hope this story lifts the world to a brighter place.
A coming of age story about Black kids who finally have power to fight back against systems designed against them.
reading a good interesting book after a horrible reading slump and suddenly you can feel the sun shining again and the sky is more beautiful than ever and birds are all singing songs to you
I had the idea of Duke not quite feeling connected to the Bats as siblings. Friends, yes. Family, sort of. But brothers, brother and sister? Yeah, he's not really there yet.
That is until he and Damian are out on patrol and they save a bunch of kids. There's a kid that reminds him a little of Dick, a big brother type, looking after his younger siblings and Duke's not sure why but he says it to Damian. Damian agrees, yes the kid is acting very much like mother hen Dick, a little Jason-y in his teasing and very Tim-like with the high-handedness. Duke chuckles and he says he would have hated being a big brother and that he "always wanted a little brother or sister." And Damian just stiffens next to him, and looks at him so hurt, so upset that Duke thinks the kid is after getting shot.
"Am I not a sufficiently adequate little brother, Duke?"
And Duke's entire body takes a screenshot. Because he suddenly realises that yes, these Bats are his siblings. Duke, Tim and Jason are very much like older brothers. They act as mentors, tormentors, they would fight for him. Cass acts like an older sister, she's fiercely protective but not above fighting with him. And Damian? Damian is a little brother. His little brother. Damian gets on his nerves, is in his space but Damian looks to him, admires him and sometimes Duke has seen Damian copying his style or taking note of how he does things. That's his little brother.
Duke just pushes his shoulder against Damian, rolling his eyes. "I meant before, Demon."
characters roy harper, wally west here, hal jordan here, kon-el kent here, john constantine here
content gn! reader, 'babe'/'baby' used, trauma recovery, childhood trauma, hurt/comfort, child exposure to violence/crime, scarecrow/fear gas mention, hostage situation mention, brief refs to roy's addiction/recovery
masterlist
author's note just noting here that for some of these characters i am not the most well versed with their lore/stories/etc. so please forgive any creative liberties taken! (also note they may come across as ooc)
word count 2.6k
roy harper
Roy thinks he has a pretty solid tolerance for “weird life stories.” He’s been an addict. He’s been a hero. He’s been a sidekick. He’s been abandoned, judged, used, underestimated, and dragged through the emotional wood chipper enough times that he generally assumes nothing can truly shock him anymore.
Then he dates someone from Gotham. And you humble him immediately.
The first time it happens, it’s so casual he genuinely thinks he misheard you.
You’re both making dinner. Roy is barefoot in your kitchen, sleeves pushed up, complaining dramatically about how your knives are “criminally dull” and how this is “how people lose fingers, babe.” You’re stirring sauce at the stove, completely relaxed.
The news is playing quietly in the background. Some anchor says something about Arkham security upgrades.
You snort.
Roy looks over. “What?”
“Nothing. Just funny they’re pretending Arkham security upgrades ever work.”
Roy laughs, because yeah, okay, fair.
Then you add, “My school had to evacuate once because Scarecrow escaped and they thought he was hiding in the boiler room.”
Roy stops chopping onions. He turns his head very slowly. “Your school had to do what?”
You don’t even look up. “Evacuate.”
“Because Scarecrow was in the boiler room?”
“They thought he was. It ended up being two henchmen and a janitor having a nervous breakdown.”
Roy sets the knife down. Very carefully. “Babe.”
“Hmm?”
“Why did you say that like you were telling me your school ran out of printer paper?”
You blink at him. “It wasn’t that bad.”
Roy’s expression does this complicated thing—half disbelief, half grief, half “I am going to fistfight an entire city.”
Yes, that is three halves. Roy is emotionally bad at math in the moment.
“Not that bad,” he repeats.
You shrug. “We got out early.”
“Oh, cool, yeah, silver lining. Early dismissal because of domestic terrorism.”
And you laugh, because to you it is kind of funny.
Roy does not laugh.
That’s when you realise he’s actually shaken.
Not angry at you. Never at you. But there’s something raw in his face, something unsettled and protective and deeply sad.
Because Roy understands laughing at pain. He’s practically fluent in it. He knows exactly what it looks like when someone wraps barbed wire in a joke and calls it a personality.
And, suddenly, he sees it in you.
After that, the floodgates open accidentally.
Not because you sit him down and decide to tell him everything.
No, it’s worse.
You keep dropping the most horrifying Gotham anecdotes in the middle of completely normal conversations.
Roy will say, “I hated cafeteria food as a kid.”
And you’ll go, “Same. Ours got shut down once because the lunch lady was using expired meat from a Falcone front.”
Roy stares. You continue eating cereal.
Or he’ll complain about traffic.
You’ll say, “At least your bus route wasn’t rerouted because Killer Croc was in the sewers again.”
Roy slowly lowers his coffee cup. “Again?”
You tilt your head. “Yeah?”
“Define again.”
“Like… more than once?”
Roy leans back in his chair, staring at the ceiling like he’s asking every god, ghost, and Green Lantern battery in the universe for patience.
“Baby, I need you to understand that sewers are not supposed to have recurring boss fights.”
The worst one, though, is when he realises you don’t categorise these things as trauma.
To you, trauma is something dramatic. Something cinematic. Something with rain and screaming and blood on white tile.
Gotham taught you that anything you survived quietly didn’t count.
So when you mention being held hostage during a bank robbery at twelve, you say it like this: “Oh, yeah, that bank used to have really good lollipops. Shame about the hostage thing.”
Roy goes utterly still.
You look up from your phone. “What?”
“You were twelve?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“It was before high school.”
Roy rubs both hands over his face. “Okay. Okay, I’m gonna need a second.”
You immediately get defensive, because that’s another thing Gotham gave you: the instinct to make your pain smaller before anyone else can decide it’s inconvenient.
“It’s not a big deal. Nobody died.”
Roy looks at you then, really looks at you, and his voice gets quiet.
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
And that lands harder than you expect.
Because Roy isn’t saying it like a slogan. He isn’t trying to therapy-speak you into a breakthrough. He just sounds… certain.
Like this is a fact. Like gravity. Like sunrise. Like you were a kid, and it should not have happened.
Roy starts noticing things after that.
The way you always choose the seat facing the door. The way your whole body goes tense when someone laughs too loudly behind you. The way you know how to identify exits in every building before you even know where the bathrooms are.
The way you never fully relax during city-wide celebrations, parades, festivals, or anything involving balloons, confetti, clowns, riddles, masks, green smoke, purple suits, question marks, blackouts, or “surprise entertainment.”
Roy notices how you freeze when someone says, “Don’t worry, it’s safe.”
Because in Gotham, that sentence usually meant it was about to get very much not safe.
He doesn’t call you out in front of people.
Roy has been pitied before. Handled. Judged. Watched like he was one bad day from shattering.
He refuses to do that to you.
Instead, he adapts.
You go to a restaurant, and he automatically gives you the chair with the better view. You enter a crowded room, and his hand brushes yours, just enough to remind you he’s there. There’s a sudden loud noise, and he doesn’t say, “You okay?” in that big, obvious way that makes everyone look.
He just bumps your shoulder and murmurs, “With me?”
And you can nod or squeeze his hand or make a joke.
He lets you choose.
Roy is big on choice. He knows what it feels like when life takes too many of them away.
The first time you have a nightmare around him, you expect him to panic.
He doesn’t.
You jolt awake, breath caught in your throat, hand already reaching for something that isn’t there. A weapon. A flashlight. A lock. Proof that you are not back in Gotham.
Roy wakes instantly.
“Hey,” he says softly. “Hey, it’s me.”
You’re embarrassed before you’re even fully conscious.
“Sorry,” you mutter.
Roy’s face crumples a little. “Don’t apologise.”
“I woke you up.”
“You’re allowed to wake me up.”
That shuts you up.
He doesn’t grab you right away. He doesn’t cage you in affection, even though every protective instinct in him is screaming to hold you.
He asks, “Can I touch you?”
And when you nod, he pulls you in slowly, one arm around your back, one hand resting between your shoulder blades.
Grounding. Warm. Present.
Not trapping you.
You mutter into his shirt, “It was stupid.”
Roy presses his cheek to your hair. “Was it Gotham stupid or regular stupid?”
Despite yourself, you laugh.
He smiles faintly. “There you are.”
He never forces you to talk about it, but if you do, he listens.
Roy is a good listener when it matters. He’ll joke through his own pain until the room catches fire, sure, but with yours? He becomes steady in a way that surprises even him.
You tell him about your old apartment building. The one with three locks and bars on the windows.
You tell him about the sirens. About learning which streets not to walk down. About the way adults used to say, “That’s Gotham,” as if that explained everything. About how moving away felt less like freedom and more like waiting for the city to realise you’d escaped.
Roy doesn’t interrupt.
He holds your hand and traces his thumb over your knuckles.
Finally, he says, “I hate that you had to become tough that young.”
You don’t know what to do with that.
So you shrug.
Roy catches it. He always catches it now.
“That shrug,” he says gently, “is gonna kill me one day.”
“What shrug?”
“The ‘I’m pretending this didn’t hurt because I don’t know what happens if I admit it did’ shrug.”
You stare at him.
He gives you a crooked smile.
“Yeah. I’ve got one too.”
That’s part of why it works with Roy.
He doesn’t stand outside your pain looking in. He sits down beside it, battered and familiar, like, Yeah, this neighbourhood sucks. I know a shortcut out, though.
He tells you pieces of his own story, too.
Not all at once. Not like a trade. Not “you showed me yours, so here’s mine.”
But slowly. Honestly. He tells you about addiction. About loneliness. About making mistakes people never let him forget. About the kind of shame that follows you like a shadow with teeth.
And you realise Roy isn’t shocked because he thinks you’re broken. He’s shocked because he knows broken systems love to make survivors think they’re the problem.
That makes you feel safer than you expected.
Roy becomes incredibly determined to give you normal experiences.
Not in a cheesy “let’s heal your inner child with Pinterest activities” way.
Okay. Maybe a little.
But he makes it fun.
He starts a mental list called Things Gotham Probably Ruined For My Partner But I’m Built Different And Also Very Handsome.
You do not know the official title. You only know that Roy suddenly starts planning oddly specific dates.
A picnic in a park where nothing explodes. A carnival with no villain attacks, where he wins you a stuffed animal and then acts like he personally conquered Olympus. A museum date where the only crime is the gift shop pricing. A quiet movie night where the villain on-screen laughs maniacally and Roy immediately turns to you and says, “Too Gotham?”
Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t.
Sometimes you surprise yourself.
Sometimes you have to leave early.
Roy never makes you feel bad about it.
He just says, “Cool, new plan,” and pivots like it costs him nothing.
You leave a crowded street fair once because a performer’s laugh hits too close to old memories. You’re shaking, furious with yourself, already apologising.
Roy walks you three blocks away, buys you fries from a tiny corner place, and sits with you on a curb under a streetlamp.
You say, “I ruined the date.”
Roy looks genuinely offended. “Excuse me, these are elite fries.”
“Roy.”
“You think I share elite fries with just anyone?”
You huff a laugh.
He nudges your knee with his. “You didn’t ruin anything. We changed locations. Very mysterious. Very sexy. Honestly, we’re thriving.”
That’s Roy’s gift. He doesn’t deny the hurt. He just refuses to let it be the only thing in the room.
He gives you laughter without using it to erase what happened.
There’s one night where it really hits him, though.
You’re both half-asleep, tangled together, and you mumble something about how quiet his place is.
Roy smiles sleepily. “Good quiet or weird quiet?”
“Good,” you say. “I used to not like quiet. In Gotham, quiet usually meant something was wrong.”
Roy’s eyes open.
You’re too tired to notice.
You keep going, voice soft and distant. “Sirens were better. At least then you knew where the danger was.”
Roy doesn’t sleep for a while after that. He just holds you and stares into the dark, feeling something ache in his chest.
Because he’s loved you for your sharpness. Your humour. Your eerie calm under pressure. Your ability to pack for emergencies like a doomsday prepper with a cute jacket.
But now he understands those things differently.
They aren’t quirks.
They’re armour.
And he loves you enough to be angry that you ever needed it.
Eventually, you notice.
“Roy?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re thinking too loud.”
He lets out a soft laugh. “Sorry.”
“You’re doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“Where you get sad about me.”
That one hurts.
Roy shifts so he can see your face.
“I’m not sad about you,” he says. “I’m sad for what happened to you. That’s different.”
You’re quiet.
Then, barely: “I don’t want you to think I’m messed up.”
Roy’s expression softens so completely it almost undoes you.
“Baby,” he says, “I’m a recovering addict with abandonment issues and a bow. I would be the last person on earth with room to judge.”
You snort.
He kisses your forehead.
“And for the record? I don’t think you’re messed up. I think you survived a city that asks way too much of kids. I think you’re funny and stubborn and terrifyingly good in a crisis. I think you deserve mornings where nothing bad happens.”
Him burning toast and cursing like the toaster personally betrayed him. You wearing his shirt while he makes breakfast badly but confidently.
He dances around the kitchen with you just because there’s music playing and because no one is chasing you and because the door is locked and because the world, for once, has the decency to stay gentle.
And yeah, sometimes the past still shows up.
Sometimes you flinch. Sometimes you joke too fast. Sometimes you say something horrifying and Roy has to take a lap around the room.
Like when you casually mention, “My childhood dentist was arrested for working with Black Mask.”
Roy, from across the room: “Your dentist?”
“He had good magazines.”
“Why is that your takeaway?”
“Highlights were solid.”
“Babe.”
“What?”
“Gotham owes you financial compensation.”
Roy doesn’t try to rescue you from your past. He knows better. The past is not a burning building. You can’t kick down the door and carry someone out bridal-style while orchestral music plays.
Healing is messier. Less cinematic. More like sitting on the kitchen floor at 2 a.m. eating cereal because sleep didn’t work.
More like him saying, “Tell me one thing you can see.”
More like you whispering, “You.”
More like Roy smiling softly and saying, “Good. I’m here.”
He’s patient when you struggle with safety. He’s patient when peace feels suspicious. He’s patient when you don’t know how to be loved without bracing for impact.
But he’s not passive.
Roy Harper loves actively. Loudly when you need it. Quietly when you can’t handle loud. He becomes the person who reminds you that survival was impressive, but it was never supposed to be your whole identity.
You are allowed to be more than what Gotham did to you. You are allowed to be silly. Soft. Needy. Annoying. Joyful. Bored. You are allowed to have problems like “Roy forgot to buy oat milk” instead of “the city may be under siege again.”
And Roy? Roy is honoured to witness every ordinary version of you.
The first time you say, “I feel safe here,” he nearly loses it.
He plays it cool, because he knows making a huge deal might scare the words back into your mouth.
So he just squeezes your hand and says, “Good.”
But later, when you’re asleep, he looks at you like you hung the moon with trembling hands.
Stephanie Brown met you when you threw a glitter smoke bomb at her face.
Not a good glitter smoke bomb. Not even a medium glitter smoke bomb.
A thrift-store Christmas ornament, a cracked Easter egg capsule, two packets of purple glitter, and what smelled suspiciously like expired party fog juice all duct-taped together with the kind of determination usually reserved for villains, toddlers, and Batfamily members with unresolved parental issues.
It bounced off the wall beside her head, split open, and filled the alley with a dramatic purple puff.
Steph froze.
The alley sparkled. Her cape sparkled. Her hair sparkled. Her eyelashes sparkled.
Somewhere above, from the rooftop, Cass made a very small sound that might have been a laugh.
Steph pointed upward without looking. “Not. One. Word.”
Then the dumpster lid slammed open and you launched yourself out like a furious raccoon in a homemade cape.
You were small. Ten, maybe eleven. Wearing black leggings, combat boots too big for you, a hoodie with the sleeves cut unevenly, and a mask that looked like it had been made from craft foam, elastic, and vengeance.
There was a yellow question mark painted badly on your chest.
No. Not yellow.
Gold glitter paint.
Steph’s stomach dropped so hard it nearly left her body.
“Oh,” she said.
You held up a plastic baton wrapped in duct tape. “Back off, Spoiler!”
The voice was high. Shaky. Trying very hard not to be.
Steph stared. Then looked at the glitter in the air. Then back at you.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “First of all, rude.”
You blinked.
“Second, if you’re gonna glitter-bomb someone, commit to a delivery system with range. That thing had the aerodynamics of a sad potato.”
Your eyes narrowed behind the mask. “It worked.”
“I am mildly shinier, yes.”
“You’re distracted.”
“I’m always distracted. That’s part of my charm.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
That was the sentence.
The one that made Steph’s whole chest tighten.
Because no kid in Gotham said I know what I’m doing unless they absolutely, aggressively did not.
She lifted both hands. “Okay. What are you doing?”
You straightened like you had been waiting for someone to ask.
“I’m stopping the Riddler knockoff trying to rob the East End charity vault.”
Steph blinked.
“Sorry. The what?”
“My dad.”
Ah. There it was.
Of course.
Gotham had themes. Gotham was a lazy writer. Gotham saw one purple-clad girl with a criminal father and apparently said, “Lets tell this story again.”
Steph looked at the question mark on your chest again. “Your dad is stealing from the East End Children’s Fund?”
You nodded, jaw clenched. “Technically laundering through it first. Then stealing.”
“Oh, gross.”
“He calls himself the Quizmaster.”
Steph stared at you.
Behind her, Cass landed silently from the rooftop.
Steph did not turn around. “Cass, please tell me I hallucinated that because of craft glitter inhalation.”
Cass shook her head.
You lifted your baton higher. “I have evidence.”
Steph looked back at you.
The defiance in your stance was familiar. Too familiar. Knees locked. Shoulders too tight. Chin up like daring the world to swing first.
A kid who had learned shame early and decided anger fit better.
A kid with a criminal parent and a costume made from scraps.
A kid trying to spoil someone’s plans because if you did not, then maybe nobody would.
Steph suddenly wanted to laugh. She also wanted to sit down on the disgusting alley pavement and cry for about nine years.
Instead, she said, “Okay, tiny glitter menace. Show me.”
Your grip tightened. “You believe me?”
Steph’s heart cracked.
Not visibly. She was a professional.
Mostly.
“I didn’t say that.”
Your face closed.
“I said show me,” Steph continued. “Because if you’ve got evidence, I’ll look. If your dad is using a children’s fund as his personal piggy bank, I’ll help stop him. And if you’re making this up, I’ll still buy you fries because you clearly need supervision and possibly better adhesive.”
You stared at her for a long second.
Then you said, “I have a flash drive.”
Steph smiled.
“Of course you do.”
Your real name did not come out until later.
At first you called yourself “The Spoiler.”
Which was extremely rude.
Steph told you this. Repeatedly.
“You cannot be The Spoiler,” she said, walking beside you down the alley while Cass trailed behind like a very judgmental shadow. “I’m Spoiler.”
“You’re just Spoiler. I’m The Spoiler.”
“That is legally and emotionally worse.”
“You don’t own the word.”
“I own the brand.”
“You didn’t trademark it.”
“You are ten.”
“Eleven.”
“You have glitter on your nose and a baton made of plumbing pipe.”
“It’s reinforced.”
“With what? Hopes and tetanus?”
You glared.
Cass reached out and tapped your baton once.
The duct tape peeled slightly.
You looked betrayed.
Steph pointed. “See? Expert testimony.”
“It’s a prototype.”
“It’s a lawsuit.”
“I’m not scared of lawsuits.”
“You should be. Gotham lawyers are scarier than half the rogues.”
You huffed and kept walking.
Steph let herself study you from the corner of her eye.
Your costume was homemade. Badly, but not lazily. The stitching on the cape was uneven but reinforced. Your mask had extra padding at the temples. Your boots were too big, but you had stuffed the toes with fabric so they would not slip. You had made mistakes, but they were smart mistakes.
That made it worse.
Stupid kids could be redirected.
Smart kids needed strategy, snacks, and emotional blackmail.
They ended up in an abandoned laundromat where you had apparently set up what you called “HQ.”
Steph called it “a fire hazard with ambition.”
The walls were plastered with photos, receipts, printed emails, hand-drawn maps, and strings in four different colors.
One section was labeled DAD’S STUPID CRIME BOARD
Underneath, in smaller handwriting:
DO NOT TOUCH UNLESS YOU ARE ME OR COOL
Steph looked at it.
“Do I count as cool?”
You hesitated.
Cass tilted her head.
You sighed. “Temporarily.”
“Nice.”
Your evidence was not bad.
Actually, it was pretty good.
Quizmaster—real name Martin Vale, former game show host, current con artist, failed escape room entrepreneur, and somehow still your father—had been using puzzle-themed charity events to move money between shell nonprofits, then planning to rob the Children’s Fund vault during a staged “riddle emergency.”
The plan was theatrical. Messy.
Deeply embarrassing.
Steph hated him on principle.
Then you showed her the video.
Your father stood in a storage room beside two henchmen wearing question-mark jackets that looked stolen from a rejected theme restaurant. He was grinning too wide, waving a cane tipped with a glowing green bulb.
“By tomorrow night,” he said, “Gotham’s little brats will learn the first rule of trivia: winners take all.”
Steph’s face went still.
Beside her, Cass’ shoulders lowered by one devastating centimeter.
You watched them both, hungry for the reaction and terrified of it.
“He’s stealing money from kids who need school supplies,” you said, voice tight. “He says it’s funny. He says rich donors deserve to be embarrassed. But the money won’t hurt them. It’ll hurt the kids.”
Steph looked at you. “You’re right.”
You blinked. “I am?”
“Yeah. He’s being a selfish dirtbag in a tacky jacket.”
Your mouth opened slightly.
You recovered fast.
“So you’ll help me take him down.”
“Yes.”
Your whole face lit.
Steph held up one finger. “But.”
The light died instantly.
“No.”
“You don’t even know the but.”
“It’s always a bad but.”
“That’s fair, but still.”
You crossed your arms.
Steph crouched so she was closer to your height. Not looming. Not using the Bat-shadow thing Bruce did when he forgot he was six feet of trauma in a cape.
“I will help stop him,” she said. “You are not coming into the field.”
Your face hardened. “Yes, I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
“It’s my dad.”
“Exactly.”
“That means I should be there!”
“That means you are compromised.”
You looked offended. “I’m not compromised.”
“You threw a craft-store glitter bomb at me.”
“And I looked amazing doing it.”
“You looked like a haunted Etsy listing.”
Your jaw clenched. “He’s my problem.”
Steph’s voice softened.
“No,” she said. “He’s your father. That does not make him your problem.”
You flinched like she had thrown something sharper than words.
For a second, the laundromat hummed around them. Broken machines. Dust. The faraway drip of a pipe.
You looked down.
“You don’t get it.”
Steph almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because of course. Of course you would say that. Of course every furious little version of yourself thought their wound was totally original.
“I get more than you think,” Steph said.
You looked up, suspicious.
“My dad was a criminal too.”
That stopped you.
She did not usually lead with Arthur Brown. She preferred not to give that man narrative importance. He already had enough unearned confidence for three mediocre men and a broken escape room franchise.
But your face shifted. Just a little.
“My dad called himself Cluemaster,” Steph said. “Which, yes, is as cringe as it sounds.”
Your eyebrows lifted.
“He wore orange. Like a traffic cone with delusions.”
Despite yourself, your mouth twitched.
Steph took the win.
“I put on a costume because of him,” she continued. “I wanted to ruin his plans. Prove I wasn’t like him. Prove someone could stop him.”
“Did you?”
“Sometimes.”
You leaned forward.
Steph’s smile faded.
“And sometimes I got hurt because I thought his crimes were mine to fix.”
Your face closed again. “It’s different.”
“Yeah,” Steph said. “Because you’re you. And I was me. And every kid thinks that means the pattern doesn’t count.”
You looked away.
Cass moved silently to the evidence wall and pointed at a photo of the charity vault.
Steph followed her gaze.
“Yes,” she said. “We’re handling that.”
You whipped around. “We?”
“Me and Orphan.”
“And me.”
“No.”
“The evidence is mine!”
“Yes. And you did good work.”
Your face faltered.
Steph meant it.
“You did,” she said again. “This is solid. You noticed things adults missed. You cared about kids he was hurting. That matters.”
Your hands curled into fists.
“Then why won’t you let me help?”
“Because helping does not always mean standing where the punches land.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You get to wear a cape.”
Steph looked at your glitter-painted question mark.
“So do you, apparently.”
You flushed.
Then scowled.
“I’m going.”
“No.”
“You can’t stop me.”
Cass, from the wall, gave you one calm look.
You swallowed.
Steph pointed at her. “She can.”
Cass nodded.
“Traitor,” you muttered.
Steph stood. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You are going to give us copies of the evidence. We are going to stop your dad. You are going to stay somewhere safe, eat actual food, and not get murdered by henchmen named Chad.”
“One’s named Brent.”
“Oh, even worse.”
You glared.
Steph softened again.
“I am taking you seriously,” she said. “That’s why I’m saying no.”
Your eyes flashed wet before you killed it.
“Adults say no when they don’t want to deal with me.”
“I’m saying no because I know exactly what it costs when nobody does.”
You looked at her for a long time.
Then you grabbed the flash drive from the table and slapped it into her palm.
“Fine.”
Steph closed her hand around it.
“But if you mess this up,” you said, “I’m blaming your whole brand.”
“Understandable.”
“And I’m keeping the name.”
“You are absolutely not keeping the name.”
“I’m The Spoiler.”
“I will sue a child.”
Cass signed something.
Steph looked at her, offended. “I would not lose.”
You watched them argue, confusion softening your anger before you could stop it.
For the first time that night, you looked your age.
Steph wished that did not hurt so much.
You followed them anyway.
Obviously.
Steph had expected it.
What she had not expected was that you would sneak into the charity gala disguised as part of the children’s choir.
“You cannot sing,” she hissed into the comm after spotting you through the ballroom window.
You, wearing a choir robe over your homemade costume, smiled brightly from the risers and whispered into the stolen earpiece, “You don’t know that.”
“I know vibes.”
“My vibes are musical.”
“Your vibes are felony.”
Cass, perched across the rooftop, signed, Stubborn.
Steph muttered, “That’s not helpful.”
Barbara’s voice came through comms, amused and sympathetic in the most unhelpful way. “Little on the nose, isn’t it?”
“No one asked you, Oracle.”
“Tiny child with a purple hoodie, crime board and father issues? Sure. Completely unrelated.”
Steph crouched behind the skylight and watched you clap politely while your father took the stage below.
Martin Vale looked exactly like a man who had been told once in 2007 that he had “stage presence” and made it everyone else’s problem forever.
Purple suit. Green gloves. Question-mark cane. A smile like a used car commercial committing tax fraud.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” he boomed into the microphone. “Tonight, we solve the greatest riddle of all: who truly deserves Gotham’s generosity?”
Steph made a face behind her mask.
“Boo,” she whispered.
Below, you stood very still. Too still.
The act began fast.
Smoke machines. Locked doors. Henchmen entering through service corridors. The vault’s digital system triggered by a fake emergency puzzle projected across the screens.
Honestly, the plan had flair.
Steph hated that.
Cass moved first, taking down the east hall crew before they reached the security office. Steph dropped through the skylight during the second verse of the choir’s panicked attempt to continue singing.
She landed on a banquet table.
Cupcakes exploded.
“Hi,” she said. “Quick note: stealing from children is tacky.”
Martin Vale spun toward her, delighted.
“Spoiler!” he cried. “A surprise guest!”
“Wish I could say the same, Quizmaster, but your entire personality is foreshadowing.”
His smile twitched.
Good.
Henchmen rushed her.
Steph moved through them with a familiar rhythm. Duck. Strike. Sweep. Elbow. Zip-tie. Quip. Repeat.
She kept one eye on you.
You had disappeared from the risers.
Of course you had.
“Oracle,” Steph snapped. “Where’s the kid?”
“Moving toward the west service corridor.”
“Of course they are.” She dodged a punch and kicked a henchman into the dessert cart. “Cass?”
“On it,” Barbara said.
But you were fast. Small, furious, and powered by the terrifying confidence of a child with a backpack full of homemade gadgets.
By the time Steph reached the west service corridor, you were already there, standing between your father and the vault access panel.
Your glitter cape hung crookedly from beneath the choir robe.
Martin Vale stared at you.
For one awful second, his performance dropped.
Then he smiled.
Not kindly.
Possessively.
“Well,” he said. “There’s my little wildcard.”
Steph’s blood went cold.
You lifted your chin. “I’m not yours.”
His smile sharpened. “Oh, don’t be dramatic. You always did love making a scene.”
Steph saw it hit.
Not like fear.
Like old shame.
Your shoulders curled in by half an inch.
Martin stepped forward. “Is this what you’ve been doing? Running around in a silly little costume? Playing hero?”
You clenched your fists. “At least I’m not robbing school supplies.”
He laughed.
Actually laughed.
“Sweetheart, those charities barely miss what men like me take. Gotham runs on theft. I’m just honest enough to wear a theme.”
“You’re not honest,” you snapped. “You’re pathetic.”
His eyes flashed.
There. The real man under the showman.
Steph moved closer.
Martin saw her and lifted the cane. The glowing tip hummed.
“Ah-ah. Family discussion.”
Steph’s voice went flat. “Yeah, no. I’ve been in those. They suck.”
He ignored her, eyes on you.
“You think she cares?” Martin asked. “Spoiler? The Bats? They’ll pat you on the head, tell you you’re special, and toss you aside when you become inconvenient. At least I know what you are.”
You looked sick.
Steph stepped between you and him.
“She’s a kid.”
Martin’s gaze slid to her. “A kid in a costume.”
“Yeah,” Steph said. “And whose fault is that?”
His smile faltered.
Behind her, you whispered, “Move.”
“Nope.”
“He’s mine.”
Steph did not look back.
“No,” she said. “He’s the adult who failed you.”
The corridor went silent except for the hum of the cane.
Your breath hitched.
Martin scoffed. “How touching.”
Steph smiled.
It was not nice.
“Yeah. I have layers.”
Then Cass dropped from the ceiling behind him.
One silent strike. One precise twist.
The cane clattered to the floor.
Martin Vale hit the ground with a deeply unimpressive yelp.
Steph looked down.
“Riddle me this,” she said. “How many zip ties does it take to ruin a loser’s evening?”
You stared.
Even Cass looked mildly disappointed.
Steph sighed. “Fine. Not my best.”
Your father groaned.
You took one step forward.
Steph turned.
Your face was pale. Furious. Cracking at the edges.
“I wanted to do it,” you said.
“I know.”
“I wanted him to see me.”
“He did.”
“No.” Your voice broke. “I wanted him to see that I stopped him.”
Steph crouched in front of you, ignoring the chaos down the hall, the sirens outside, the ache in her knuckles.
“I know,” she said again.
Your eyes filled. “I hate him.”
“You’re allowed.”
“He makes everything a joke. Even me.”
Steph’s throat tightened. “You’re not a joke.”
Your mouth twisted. “He thinks I am.”
“Then he’s bad at punchlines.”
It was a terrible joke.
A necessary one.
Your laugh came out broken and wet.
Then you cried.
Angrily. Embarrassed. Trying to stop so hard it made it worse.
Steph opened her arms.
You did not move at first.
Then you threw yourself into her so suddenly she nearly fell backward.
She held on.
Above your head, Cass zip-tied your father with slightly more force than necessary.
Steph pretended not to notice.
After the gala, everyone had opinions.
Bruce had the “concerned mentor” face. Dick had the “soft older brother” face. Tim had the “I have already made three spreadsheets” face. Jason had the “I can scare the dad in prison if needed” face. Damian had the “why was the child allowed access to glitter explosives” face.
Cass had the only useful face, which said simply: scared kid, help them.
Steph sat at the Batcomputer, glitter still in her hair, and listened to them talk about you like you were a case.
Not cruelly. Never cruelly.
But still.
Where should you go? Was your other parent safe? Could extended family be trusted? Was there enough evidence to keep Martin Vale contained? Would you need witness protection? Therapy? School placement? Security? Did you present an identity risk? A vigilante risk?
You sat in the medbay, pretending not to listen.
Steph knew you were listening.
She had taught herself that same trick. Make yourself small. Make yourself useful. Make yourself a problem they solve instead of a person they might reject.
Finally, Steph stood. “Stop.”
Bruce turned. “Stephanie—”
“No. Not Bat-meeting this without them.”
Tim blinked. “They’re a minor.”
“Yeah, and minors can hear when adults decide their entire life from ten feet away.”
Jason leaned back, nodding once. “She’s got a point.”
Bruce’s jaw tightened, then loosened.
“Bring them in,” he said.
Steph walked to the medbay.
You were sitting on the cot, legs swinging, glitter mask in your lap.
“You heard?”
You shrugged. “Walls are thin.”
“They’re reinforced steel.”
“Voices echo.”
“Sure.”
You looked down at the mask. “Are you sending me away?”
Steph’s heart cracked. “No.”
“Are they?”
“No one is deciding anything without you.”
You looked suspicious. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Even Batman?”
“Especially Batman. He’s had enough unsupervised brooding power.”
A tiny smile.
Steph held out her hand.
You took it after a pause.
In the main Cave, you stood in front of the Bats like a kid in a principal’s office from hell.
Bruce softened his voice. “We want to make sure you’re safe.”
You nodded once. Stiff. Defensive.
Tim pulled up a chair.
Not for himself.
For you.
Smart boy.
You sat.
Steph leaned against the console beside you.
“The immediate issue,” Bruce said, “is guardianship.”
“My mom’s gone,” you said.
Everyone went quiet.
“She left two years ago,” you continued, voice flat. “Dad said she got tired of me asking questions. I don’t know if that’s true.”
Steph’s hand tightened around the edge of the console.
Bruce’s expression went carefully neutral.
“We can try to find her.”
You looked down. “I don’t know if I want that.”
“That’s okay,” Dick said softly.
You glanced at him like you did not believe him.
Bruce continued, “Until we know more, we need somewhere safe for you to stay. A foster placement with additional security. Or a Wayne Foundation safe home. There are options.”
Your fingers curled around the mask. “Not juvie?”
Jason made an ugly sound.
Bruce looked pained. “No. You are not going to juvenile detention.”
“I broke into places.”
“So have half the people in this room,” Steph said.
Bruce gave her a look.
She shrugged. “Am I wrong?”
“You threw illegal smoke bombs,” Damian said.
You glared at him.
“They were not smoke bombs. They were glitter concealment devices.”
Damian stared.
“Brown,” he said, “this is your fault.”
Steph placed a hand over her heart. “Thank you.”
“It was not praise.”
Cass moved closer and signed something.
Steph translated, softer, “She says you were brave.”
Your expression changed.
You looked down fast.
“I was stupid.”
Steph crouched beside your chair. “Both can happen.”
You snorted despite yourself.
Then you whispered, “I don’t know what happens now.”
Steph knew that feeling.
After Cluemaster arrests. After fights. After being Spoiler got too big for her body. After adults looked at her and saw liability, mistake, cautionary tale.
What happens after you prove the parent is the villain? What happens when anger does not have anywhere obvious to go?
“You don’t have to know tonight,” Steph said.
You looked at her. “I don’t?”
“Nope. Tonight you eat something, shower, sleep somewhere with locked doors and no evil dads. Tomorrow we start figuring stuff out.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“It won’t be.”
That surprised you.
Steph held your gaze.
“It’s going to suck sometimes. People will ask questions. Your dad’s trial will be messy. You’ll miss things you don’t want to miss. You’ll be mad. You’ll probably want to put on your costume and break twelve laws.”
“Only twelve?”
“Low estimate.”
Your mouth twitched.
Steph continued, “But you won’t be alone in it. And nobody gets to call you a mistake.”
Your eyes went shiny.
Bruce watched you two, silent and sad.
Maybe he understood. Maybe all of them did, in their own disaster-flavoured ways.
You looked at the mask in your lap. “Can I keep it?”
Steph inhaled.
There were a lot of answers.
No, because it represented danger.
Yes, because taking it might feel like taking your voice.
Maybe, because adults loved maybe when they were scared of being wrong.
She chose carefully.
“You can keep it,” she said. “But you don’t wear it in the field.”
Your jaw set. “Why?”
The question was sharp.
But underneath it was something else.
Testing.
Would Steph explain? Would she pull rank? Would she become another adult saying because I said so and expecting obedience to fill in the wound?
Steph sat on the floor in front of you.
“Because tonight, you almost got hit by an electrified cane in a service hallway.”
“It wasn’t that close.”
“It was extremely close.”
“I had a plan.”
“Your plan was ‘be mad and improvise.’ Respect, but no.”
Jason muttered, “That’s most of our plans.”
Bruce sighed.
Steph ignored them.
“You’re smart,” she said. “You’re brave. You care about people. Those are good things. But your dad knows where to hurt you. Not just physically. In your head. He got one sentence in and you froze.”
Your face flushed. “That’s not fair.”
“No,” Steph said gently. “It’s not. That’s exactly why I’m saying it. He installed buttons in you. He knows how to press them. That is not your fault, but it is real.”
You swallowed hard. “If I train—”
“You can learn how to fight. You can learn self-defence. You can learn how to escape, how to call for help, how to collect evidence legally enough that Tim doesn’t start twitching.”
Tim lifted one finger. “I appreciate that.”
“You can even learn how to make gadgets that don’t explode glitter into my pores.”
You looked almost offended. “They worked.”
“My pores disagree.”
“Your pores are weak.”
“I’ll survive.” Then Steph’s voice softened. “But you are not responsible for fixing your parent.”
The Cave went silent.
Your face crumpled so fast it looked painful.
Steph continued, because sometimes kindness was a door and sometimes it was a crowbar.
“You are not responsible for stopping every crime he commits. You are not responsible for making him better. You are not responsible for proving you’re different from him. You already are.”
A tear slipped down your cheek.
You wiped it away angrily.
“He’s my dad.”
“I know.”
“I hate him.”
“I know.”
“I love him too,” you whispered, like it was the worst confession in the world.
Steph felt that one in her bones.
“Yeah,” she said. “That part sucks.”
You looked at her, shocked by the bluntness.
Steph shrugged sadly.
“It does. It’s messy and unfair and people act like if someone hurts you, love just shuts off like a light. It doesn’t always. Sometimes you love them and hate them and miss them and want them in jail all at the same time.”
Your breath shook.
Steph held out a hand, palm up. “You don’t have to solve that tonight either.”
You stared at her hand.
Then took it.
The safe home had yellow curtains.
You hated them.
Steph knew because you announced it immediately.
“These curtains are a crime.”
The Wayne Foundation social worker, a patient woman named Mel, blinked.
Steph nodded solemnly. “Fashion felony.”
“They look like mustard got scared,” you said.
Mel pressed her lips together, clearly trying not to laugh.
Steph turned to her. “Can we change the curtains?”
Mel smiled. “We can change the curtains.”
You looked startled. “What, just because I said?”
“It’s your room,” Mel said.
Your face did something small and wounded.
Steph pretended to inspect the bookshelf.
The safe home was not a mansion. Good. It was a townhouse in a quiet part of Burnley, with security upgrades hidden behind normal-looking doors. Mel lived on-site with two other kids in temporary care, both of whom immediately challenged you to Mario Kart and called your glitter cape “kind of sick.”
You pretended not to care.
Then beat them ruthlessly.
Steph stayed for dinner.
Pasta. Garlic bread. Salad you ignored with heroic commitment.
Afterwards, she walked you upstairs.
Your room was small but warm. Bed. Desk. Lamp. Blank wall waiting for posters or crime boards or both.
Your backpack sat on the chair. The glitter mask lay on top.
You picked it up.
Steph leaned against the doorframe. “You thinking about running?”
You froze.
Then scowled. “No.”
“Okay.”
“You believe me?”
“No.”
Your mouth fell open.
Steph smiled. “I respect you too much to pretend you’re not considering at least three escape routes.”
You looked almost pleased before you remembered to be annoyed. “I could leave.”
“You could.”
“You wouldn’t stop me?”
“I’d follow you.”
“That’s stopping me with extra steps.”
“Yep.”
You sat on the bed.
The mattress creaked.
“What are the rules?” you asked.
Steph’s heart twisted.
The question meant different things from different kids. From you, it meant: where are the walls, and do they move? What gets punished? What gets taken away? What must I become to stay?
Steph came inside and sat on the floor, back against the wall.
“Okay,” she said. “Rules.”
You straightened.
“No going after your dad alone.”
Your face closed.
Steph held up a hand. “I will explain every rule. That one exists because he has henchmen, weapons, and emotional access to your brain. You deserve backup.”
You said nothing.
“No fieldwork.”
“Steph—”
“No fieldwork,” she repeated. “Because you are eleven, not trained, and traumatised. That doesn’t mean useless. It means not disposable.”
Your mouth tightened, but you listened.
“No breaking into secure buildings.”
You looked away.
“Because prison food is bad and cameras are real.”
“You break into places.”
“I am a cautionary tale with nice hair.”
That got the smallest snort.
“No homemade explosives.”
“They’re not explosives.”
“Anything that produces smoke, sparks, flame, shrapnel, foam, acid, glitter clouds, or emotional distress requires adult supervision.”
“That’s so broad.”
“I have met you.”
You crossed your arms.
Steph counted on her fingers. “Eat actual meals. Attend school or tutoring. Therapy is not optional, but you can switch therapists if the first one sucks. You get to say no to hugs. You do not get to say no to medical care if you are bleeding. If adults make decisions about you, you get told what’s happening in words that make sense. If you don’t understand, you ask. If someone says ‘because I said so,’ you may call me and I will personally appear like the purple goblin of accountability.”
You stared. “That’s… a lot.”
“Yeah.”
“What happens if I break a rule?”
“Depends which one.”
You looked wary.
Steph kept her voice steady.
“If you sneak out to go after your dad, we talk about why, we make the safety plan better, and you lose unsupervised rooftop privileges you definitely do not officially have.”
You blinked.
“No one hits you. No one locks you up. No one tells you you’re bad because you messed up.”
Your eyes dropped. “What if I mess up a lot?”
Steph shrugged. “Then we get snacks and make a spreadsheet.”
“That sounds like Tim.”
“Fine. We get snacks and make a sticker chart.”
“That sounds like you.”
“Exactly.”
You looked at the mask in your hands.
“Can I still be The Spoiler?”
“No.”
Your head snapped up. “But—”
“You can be something. Not that.”
“Why?”
Steph leaned forward.
“Because I don’t want you defining yourself by your dad’s crimes. I did that. It felt powerful at first. Like stealing the story back. And maybe I needed it then. But you get more options than I thought I had.”
You looked down at the glitter question mark. “What if I want to spoil things?”
Steph smiled gently. “Then we find healthier things to spoil.”
“Like?”
“Corrupt plans. Bad systems. Tim’s coffee order. Damian’s ego. The patriarchy.”
You considered this. “The patriarchy sounds big.”
“We start small. Local misogynists. Build up.”
Your mouth twitched. “Can I pick a new name?”
“Eventually. Not tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Because tonight you’d pick something like Vengeance Sparkle.”
You gasped. “I would not.”
“You absolutely would.”
“Maybe Glitter Doom.”
“See?”
You threw a pillow at her.
Steph let it hit her face.
Dramatic sacrifice. Very brave.
Training began the next week.
Not field training. Not vigilante training.
Steph called it “How Not To Die While Being Stubborn 101.”
You called it “coward class.”
Steph brought snacks anyway. So many snacks.
Granola bars. Fruit gummies. Cheese crackers. Juice boxes. Little sandwiches cut into triangles because Cass once said triangle food tasted better and nobody in the family had recovered.
The first lessons were boring on purpose.
How to fall safely. How to run without twisting your ankle. How to yell from your diaphragm. How to recognise exits. How to call emergency contacts.
How to tell the difference between collecting evidence and contaminating a crime scene.
You hated that one.
“Evidence wants to be free,” you argued.
“Evidence wants chain of custody.”
“Oppressive.”
“Legally necessary.”
You glared. “You sound like Batman.”
Steph gasped. “Take that back.”
“No.”
“I am wounded.”
“You’re annoying.”
“I contain multitudes.”
You were good.
Too good at some things. Bad at others.
You could pick a cheap lock in under twenty seconds, but you forgot to drink water unless reminded. You could track your dad’s known associates across three online aliases, but you froze when an adult man raised his voice. You could build a tripwire alarm from fishing line and bells, but you did not know how to ask Mel for new socks.
Steph noticed all of it.
And she explained.
Every time.
“We’re practicing asking for stuff because you live here. You’re allowed to need things.”
“I don’t need socks.”
“Your socks have holes.”
“Ventilation.”
“No.”
“We’re practicing breathing because panic makes your brain dumb.”
“My brain is not dumb.”
“Everyone’s brain gets dumb when oxygen decides to leave the party.”
“We’re practicing not insulting yourself because that’s your dad’s voice wearing your mouth like a cheap costume.”
That one made you go silent.
Steph waited.
Then pushed a packet of fruit gummies toward you.
You took them.
Progress came sideways.
You stopped wearing the mask inside.
You started calling Mel when you were going to be late instead of vanishing and reappearing like a dramatic raccoon.
You wrote three potential names in a notebook, crossed them all out, then refused to let Steph see.
You began helping one of the younger kids at the safe home with math while pretending you were not being nice.
“You have a problem,” Steph told you.
You looked up sharply. “What problem?”
“You’re helpful.”
“Gross.”
“Tragic.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“My silence costs one gummy pack.”
You paid.
Your father sent a letter from Blackgate.
Steph wanted to burn it.
Mel wanted to discuss it with your therapist first. Bruce wanted to have it screened for codes, toxins, subliminal manipulation, paper cuts, and emotional warfare. Tim did the code screening.
Steph sat on the floor across from you with a bowl of popcorn, because some moments needed salt and moral support.
“You don’t have to read it,” she said.
You traced your finger over your name on the envelope. “He wrote my name.”
“Yeah.”
“He spelled it right.”
“Low bar.”
You huffed, but your eyes stayed fixed on the paper. “What if he says sorry?”
Steph did not answer too fast.
“Then you get to decide how that feels.”
“What if he says it’s my fault?”
“Then he’s lying.”
“What if he says he loves me?”
Steph’s chest ached. “Then that can be true and still not make him safe.”
You looked at her.
That was the hard one. The one adults liked to pretend was simple.
Bad people could love badly. Harmfully. Selfishly. Sometimes sincerely. It did not transform the harm into care.
You swallowed. “Will you read it first?”
“Yeah.”
She held out her hand.
You gave her the envelope.
The letter was exactly what Steph expected.
Half apology. Half manipulation. Three jokes that were not funny. One coded reference to “family loyalty.” A dramatic line about how “every great performer needs an assistant.” A claim that you had “always been special” and that he could help you “make something of yourself.”
Steph’s jaw tightened.
You watched her face.
“It’s bad?” you asked.
“It’s complicated bad.
“Read it.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
“Then we wait.”
You stared. “You can do that?”
“Yep.”
“But it’s there.”
“Still allowed to wait.”
“What if waiting makes it worse?”
“What if reading it before you’re ready makes it worse?”
You scowled. “I hate when you’re right.”
“Me too. It’s new and unsettling.”
You leaned back against the couch.
After a moment, you said, “Can you summarise?”
Steph nodded. “He says he’s sorry in a way that makes it about him. He says he loves you in a way that asks for something back. He says you’re special in a way that sounds like he wants to use you.”
Your face went pale.
“And,” Steph added quickly, “none of that means you have to stop loving him on command.”
Your eyes filled.
“I hate him,” you whispered.
“I know.”
“I miss him.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know.”
You curled inward.
Steph moved beside you, slow enough for you to reject it.
You leaned into her shoulder.
Not all the way.
Enough.
Cass placed a blanket over both of you.
No one commented when you cried.
Jason did threaten the letter, but quietly, in the kitchen, where you could not hear.
Mostly.
Your new name came in summer.
Not during a dramatic rooftop scene. Not during a fight.
During craft night at the safe home, because apparently healing had a sense of humour.
You were repainting your old mask.
The question mark was gone. In its place, you had painted a bright jagged shape like a comic-book burst, purple edged with gold.
Steph sat beside you, making friendship bracelets with one of the younger kids and somehow getting tangled in three colors of thread.
“What’s that?” she asked.
You did not look up. “A warning label.”
“For what?”
“For me.”
Steph paused.
You glanced at her and rolled your eyes. “Not like that.”
“Use your words, gremlin.”
You set the brush down. “It means I ruin bad plans. But not because of Dad. Because I want to. And not by being The Spoiler. Because that’s yours.”
Steph’s heart did something embarrassingly gooey. “Okay.”
You lifted the mask.
“I was thinking… Decoy.”
Steph blinked. “Decoy?”
You nodded, suddenly nervous. “Because people underestimate decoys. They think it’s fake, or disposable, or a distraction. But a good decoy changes where everyone looks. It can save people.”
Steph stared at you.
Then smiled. Slow and proud.
“That’s a really good name.”
Your shoulders dropped in relief. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not just saying that?”
“Kid, I would absolutely tell you if your name sucked.”
“True.”
“It’s kind of my brand.”
You smiled down at the mask.
Then, quieter, “I’m not going to wear it outside.”
Steph’s breath caught. “No?”
“Not yet.”
She nodded, careful. “Okay.”
“I still want to help.”
“I know.”
“But maybe I can help with the youth centre fundraiser first. Mel said they need someone to make posters.”
Steph grinned. “Are the posters going to include glitter?”
You looked offended. “Obviously.”
“Then Gotham is saved.”
You bumped her shoulder with yours.
A small thing. A normal thing.
The kind of thing that meant more than grand speeches ever could.
Months later, your father’s trial began.
It was ugly.
Not because the evidence was weak. It was not. You had done good work, and Oracle had made it airtight.
It was ugly because Martin Vale performed for the courtroom like the world still owed him a stage.
He smiled at cameras. Made puns. Winked at reporters. Tried to catch your eye.
You sat between Mel and Steph in the back row, wearing normal clothes and sneakers with purple laces.
No mask. No cape.
Your hands shook anyway.
Steph leaned close. “You want to leave?”
You shook your head.
“You sure?”
“No.”
“Valid.”
You stayed through the first hour.
Then your father looked back and said, just loud enough to carry, “There’s my little assistant.”
You froze.
Steph felt it happen.
The old button. The installed shame.
Before she could speak, you stood.
The courtroom turned.
Martin smiled.
You did not.
“I’m not your assistant,” you said.
Your voice shook.
But it carried.
“I’m not your clue. I’m not your punchline. I’m not your anything.”
The judge called for order.
Your father’s smile slipped.
You turned and walked out.
Steph followed.
In the hallway, you bent over, hands on your knees, breathing hard.
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Steph crouched beside you. “Why?”
“I interrupted court.”
“Iconic.”
“Steph.”
“What? I’m serious. Great projection. Strong exit. Nine out of ten. Lost a point because you scared the bailiff.”
You laughed once, breathless and wet.
Then you covered your face.
“I thought it would feel better.”
“Yeah.”
“It didn’t.”
“No.”
You slid down the wall and sat on the floor.
Steph sat beside you, because courtroom floors were gross but solidarity was important.
After a minute, you said, “I still want him to be sorry.”
“I know.”
“He won’t be.”
“Probably not the way you deserve.”
“That’s unfair.”
“Yeah.”
You leaned your head back against the wall.
“I didn’t fix him.”
Steph looked at you. “No.”
“I didn’t stop wanting to.”
“That takes time.”
“Do you still?”
Steph knew what you were asking.
Cluemaster. Dad. Arthur Brown. The man whose shadow she had spent years spoiling, outrunning, reclaiming.
“Sometimes,” she said honestly. “Not like before. But sometimes some tiny stupid part of me still wants him to wake up and be the dad he should’ve been.”
You looked at her. “What do you do?”
Steph shrugged, eyes stinging. “I go home to people who already love me right.”
Your face crumpled.
Then you leaned into her.
This time, not halfway.
Steph wrapped an arm around your shoulders.
“You did good today,” she said.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You left when it hurt too much. That’s something.”
“That’s running away.”
“That’s choosing yourself.”
You were quiet.
Then, muffled against her side, “Can we get fries?”
Steph smiled. “Absolutely.”
“With milkshakes?”
“Obviously.”
“And can we not tell Batman I yelled in court?”
“Oh, he already knows.”
You groaned.
“But,” Steph said, “I will tell him it was punk rock.”
You sniffed. “Was it?”
“So punk rock.”
By fall, you had become a fixture.
Not a sidekick. Not a Bat.
Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Steph did not pretend that question was settled forever. Gotham had a way of calling to angry kids with good hearts, and she respected you too much to think she could choose your whole future. But she could hold the door shut while you were still bleeding. She could make sure that if you ever picked up a mask again, it would not be because your father left you no other language.
For now, you were a kid with a room with non-mustard curtains.
You had therapy on Tuesdays. Self-defense on Thursdays. Craft night on Fridays.
You had a backpack full of schoolbooks, three emergency snack stashes, a glitter budget that Bruce regretted approving, and a notebook labeled: PLANS I AM NOT ALLOWED TO DO YET
Steph did not ask to see it.
That was growth on both sides.
You helped Steph design flyers for a community safety workshop. You argued with Tim about font choices. You called Damian “emotionally beige” and had to hide behind Cass for twenty minutes. You taught Duke’s youth centre kids how to make non-explosive glitter lanterns. You helped Jason repaint a donated bike and told him his helmet looked like a stop sign with trauma.
Jason loved you immediately.
Denied it, obviously.
One evening, you and Steph sat on a rooftop overlooking the East End. Not patrol. Just watching the city breathe, wrapped in hoodies, eating convenience-store cupcakes with purple frosting.
You had earned rooftop privileges.
Supervised. Boringly legal.
Mostly.
Below, Gotham flickered and shouted and refused to behave. Same as always.
You swung your legs over the edge.
“Do you think I’d be good at it?” you asked.
Steph did not pretend not to understand. “Being a vigilante?”
You nodded.
She considered.
“Yes.”
You looked at her.
Steph licked frosting from her thumb.
“You’d be clever. Annoying. Hard to predict. You’d probably build gadgets that make Bruce question his life choices.”
You smiled faintly. “Then why won’t you train me for real?”
“I am training you for real.”
“You know what I mean.”
Steph sighed.
There was no mystery in her answer. No brooding silhouette. No dramatic cape flap.
Just truth.
“Because I want you to have a life before you decide whether to risk it.”
Your smile faded.
She continued, “I became Spoiler because I was angry at my dad. And because I wanted to matter. And because I wanted someone to take me seriously. I don’t regret all of it. But I wish someone had told me I mattered before I put on the mask.”
You looked down at your cupcake.
Steph nudged her shoulder against yours.
“You matter in sweatpants. You matter doing homework. You matter crying in hallways and making bad glitter devices and yelling at your dad in court. You matter when you’re not useful. You matter when you’re difficult. You matter when you’re just some kid who wants fries.”
Your eyes shone. “That’s a lot of mattering.”
“Yeah, babe. You’re extremely matterful.”
“That’s not a word.”
“I’m a vigilante. I do crime and grammar.”
You laughed.
The sound floated over the rooftop, bright and brief and real.
Steph held onto it.
Not too tightly.
Kids were not evidence. Not case files. Not second chances you could squeeze until they became proof you had healed.
But maybe sometimes the universe handed you a glitter-painted mirror and dared you to do better.
You leaned your head against her shoulder.
“Steph?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for taking me seriously.”
Her throat tightened. “Always.”
“Even when I’m wrong?”
“Especially then.”
“Even when I’m annoying?”
“I trained with Batman. My tolerance is legendary.”
“Even when I want to do stupid stuff?”
Steph looked out at the city. “Then I explain why it’s stupid, help you make a safer plan, and feed you before you start monologuing.”
You nodded solemnly. “That seems fair.”
“It is. I’m very wise.”
“You got glitter in your hair again.”
“I’m also very sparkly.”
You picked a fleck of purple glitter from your sleeve and flicked it into the wind.
For once, you did not look like you were trying to become a symbol.
You looked like a kid on a rooftop with frosting on your mouth, safe enough to be sarcastic, soft enough to lean, angry enough to survive, loved enough to stop mistaking survival for duty.
Steph wrapped her arm around you and squeezed once.
Below, Gotham kept making bad choices.
Above it, you stayed right where you were.
Not The Spoiler. Not your father’s assistant. Not anyone’s mistake.
request batfam who meet kids that remind them of their past selves | split up as i ran out of blocks :/
characters bruce wayne here, dick grayson here, jason todd here, tim drake here, damian wayne here, duke thomas here, stephanie brown here, cassandra cain here
content batfam x platonic! child reader, gender neutral! reader, orphan!reader
masterlist
duke thomas, 3.8k
child endangerment, child experimentation, unethical human experimentation, metahuman exploitation, parental disappearance, institutionalisation, joker toxin aftermath, trauma from body/power changes, implied medical abuse, non-graphic fight scenes, emotional neglect by systems/adults, grief, missing parent, illness/mental health effects from toxin exposure, no graphic injury
Duke found you in the basement of an abandoned community clinic, glowing like a broken sunrise.
Not metaphorically. Literally. Light leaked out of your skin in thin, trembling lines—gold through the cracks of your clenched fists, white at your throat, amber beneath your eyes. It pulsed with your breathing. Too fast. Too shallow. Every inhale flickered against the walls. Every exhale made the shadows jump back like they were afraid of you.
You were wedged behind a rusted exam table, knees pulled tight to your chest, wearing a school uniform under a jacket three sizes too big. Ten, maybe eleven. Too small to look that terrified of your own hands.
Duke stopped at the bottom of the stairs. He did not move closer. He knew it mattered because the first thing scared kids learned was distance. Who took it. Who gave it. Who ignored it.
“Hey,” he said, voice low. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
Your head snapped up. The light in your eyes flared so bright the room vanished.
Duke lifted a hand to shield his face, but he did not step back.
The blast never came. Instead, the glow collapsed inward, and you made a small, strangled sound like you had swallowed a scream.
“Don’t,” you whispered.
Duke lowered his hand. “Okay,” he said.
You blinked at him. “Okay?”
“Yeah. Don’t. I can do don’t.”
Your face twisted in confusion, like nobody had ever accepted a boundary on the first try. Classic Gotham. Absolute trash-fire city.
Duke crouched where he was, keeping himself at the foot of the stairs, keeping you with all the exits. You watched every movement.
Good. He liked you already.
“My name’s Duke,” he said. “Some people call me Signal.”
Your eyes widened.
There it was. Recognition. Not celebrity recognition. Not the breathless way civilians sometimes said hero names.
Recognition like you had seen a lighthouse while drowning.
“You’re like me,” you said.
His powers stirred beneath his skin, light sensing light, a hum in his bones. You were not exactly like him. Your abilities were rawer, hotter, less filtered. Less sight and more energy. Less perception and more eruption.
But close enough. Close enough to hurt.
“Yeah,” he said. “A little.”
Your hands clenched around your knees. Light seeped between your fingers. “I didn’t mean to do it.”
“I know.”
“You don’t.”
“I know what it’s like when your body starts doing things nobody explained.”
You stared at him. Around you, the basement showed signs of panic. Burn marks scored the floor. A metal cabinet had melted along one side. A pile of medical files lay scattered near the door, most stamped with black ink and government-coded nonsense.
Duke had seen the reports. Missing kids from the Narrows and Burnley. Parents “transferred” to psychiatric holds after Joker toxin exposure. Strange light anomalies near an old city-funded wellness initiative. A private contractor claiming it was “youth resilience research.”
Resilience. Gotham loved using pretty words for ugly things.
Your parents were on the missing list. So were you. And now there were people in gray tactical gear sweeping the neighbourhood, looking for an “asset with photonic instability.”
Duke hated that word.
Asset. Like children became equipment if their pain produced useful data.
He shifted slightly. You tensed.
“Still staying here,” he said quickly. “Not moving closer.”
Your jaw worked. “They said I hurt people.”
“Did you?”
Your face went blank. Not innocent. Not guilty.
Traumatised.
“I don’t know.”
Duke nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“That’s bad.”
“Yeah. Not knowing is scary.”
You looked down at your hands. “They put my mom somewhere. After the gas. She kept laughing. Then crying. Then laughing again. They said they could help. They took us to the clinic.”
Duke’s throat tightened. His own parents flashed through his mind—not missing now, not gone forever, but changed once. Jokerised. Stolen from themselves. The terror of seeing the people who loved you become unreachable behind someone else’s cruelty.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
You flinched. “Don’t.”
He paused. “Don’t what?”
“Say sorry like that. Adults say sorry before they leave.”
Duke absorbed that. Then nodded. “Okay. I won’t say it like that.”
“You just did.”
“Yeah. I’m workshopping.”
Despite everything, your mouth twitched. Tiny. There and gone.
The light around your shoulders dimmed by one degree.
Duke counted it as a win.
You refused to leave with him. Reasonable. Duke respected it. Also deeply inconvenient, because men with guns were three blocks away and closing.
“I’m not going back,” you said.
“Not asking you to.”
“I’m not going with them.”
“Definitely not asking that.”
“I’m not going to Batman.”
Duke paused. Interesting.
“Why not?”
Your eyes narrowed. “Everyone says Batman takes kids.”
Duke sighed. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay. That’s fair.”
“I’m not being a weapon.”
“No.”
“I heard them. They said people like me could power things. Or fight things. Or be studied.” Your breathing hitched. Light crawled up your arms.
Duke felt the air warm.
He kept his voice steady. “You’re not a battery. You’re not a bomb. You’re not a case file.”
You looked at him like you wanted to believe it so badly you hated him for saying it. “Then what am I?”
The question was not dramatic. It was exhausted.
Duke looked at you—small, glowing, hunted—and thought of himself standing in Gotham after the Joker had rearranged his life. Thought of the We Are Robin movement. Thought of kids wearing symbols because the adults had failed to build enough doors out.
He thought of power arriving wrapped in grief. He thought of how lonely it was to become strange in a city already determined to eat you.
“You’re a kid,” he said.
Your face fell, like he had failed a test.
“That’s nothing.”
“No,” Duke said. “That’s the whole thing.”
A sound came from upstairs. Boots.
Your light flared.
Duke’s head turned slightly. Three heartbeats. Maybe four. Tactical spacing. Too heavy for cops. Too organised for street thugs.
The people hunting you had arrived.
You scrambled backward, panic finally breaking through your eerie calm.
“No, no, no—”
Duke stood.
Your eyes locked onto him.
He saw the plea before you said it. Don’t let them take me.
Duke smiled, but not at you. At the stairs.
“Stay behind the table,” he said. “Close your eyes if it gets bright.”
“I make things bright.”
“Yeah,” Duke said, light blooming over his suit. “Me too.”
They came down armed. They left unconscious, zip-tied, and deeply reconsidering their career paths.
Duke did not hit harder than necessary. He did not perform. Did not make the room into a battlefield where you would have to watch another adult prove power by violence.
He moved like daylight through dirty glass. Quick. Clean. Controlled. A flash to blind. A strike to disarm. A trip. A cuff. A warning.
One man got close enough to raise a device toward you, some kind of containment collar glowing blue-white.
Your light spiked.
Duke was there first. He crushed the device in one hand.
“Nope,” he said.
The man blinked up at him from the floor.
Duke leaned down, voice pleasant. “Try that again and I’m calling Red Hood.”
The man went pale.
Effective.
When it was over, you were still behind the table, eyes squeezed shut, hands over your ears.
Duke approached only halfway. “You can open your eyes.”
You did.
The basement was dark again except for him.
Except for you.
Your gaze moved across the unconscious men, then to Duke.
“You didn’t kill them.”
“No.”
“You could’ve.”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I didn’t need to.”
You stared like that idea had never occurred to you.
Power that did not consume everything available. Power that chose.
The light at your fingertips softened.
Duke did not take you to the Cave. He took you to Leslie Thompkins first. Then to a Wayne Foundation safe apartment above a youth centre in the Narrows, because he knew Gotham kids trusted buildings with basketball courts and bad vending machines more than mansions full of gargoyles.
Batman objected for about four seconds.
Then Duke said, “No Cave.”
Bruce looked at him. Duke looked back.
“No Cave,” he repeated. “Not yet. Maybe not ever. They’re already scared of becoming an asset. I’m not proving them right by putting them next to a giant computer and a weapons rack.”
Bruce’s face did that thing where it went still because he was being emotionally audited.
Then he nodded. “Okay.”
Gotham miracle. Somebody call the papers.
You spent the first night in the safe apartment with every light on. Duke stayed in the hallway outside the bedroom because you had not wanted anyone inside, but you had also asked, so quietly he almost missed it, whether he would still be there if something happened.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll be here.”
“All night?”
“All night.”
“You have other things.”
“Gotham can survive eight hours of me sitting on ugly carpet.”
“The carpet is ugly.”
“Right? Thank you. Nobody else appreciates my interior design critiques.”
You stared at him from the doorway. Then, very carefully, you said, “If I glow, don’t come in.”
Duke nodded. “If you glow, I’ll ask first.”
You looked down. “What if I can’t answer?”
“Then I’ll talk. You can knock once for yes, twice for no.”
“What if I break something?”
“Then we clean it up.”
“What if I hurt you?”
Duke’s heart gave a slow, painful twist.
“Then we get help,” he said. “And I still don’t leave.”
You looked at him for a long time.
Then shut the door.
At 2:43 a.m., light spilled under it.
Duke sat up.
A soft, terrified whine came from inside.
He knocked once on the doorframe. “Hey. It’s Duke. You with me?”
No answer.
The light brightened.
He kept his voice calm. “You’re in the safe apartment. Ugly carpet. Bad vending machines downstairs. You told me the orange soda tastes like battery acid.”
One knock. Yes.
“Good. Can I come in?”
A pause.
Two knocks. No.
“Okay. I’ll stay out here.”
The light pulsed.
He leaned back against the wall. “You know, when my powers started getting weird, I thought I was losing it. Gotham had already taken so much that I thought, yeah, sure, why not my body too?”
Silence.
Then one knock. Listening.
Duke smiled faintly. “I had people help me. Not perfectly. Nobody does this perfectly. But enough. And the thing that helped most wasn’t training. It was knowing I wasn’t the only person in the world who had to figure out how to be changed.”
The light under the door dimmed slightly.
“You’re not alone,” Duke said.
One knock.
Then, after a long minute, another.
No. He understood. Not yet. Not alone was too big to believe in one night.
“That’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got time.”
He stayed until morning.
When you finally opened the door, your eyes were red, your hair was a mess, and your hands were no longer glowing.
Duke held up a paper bag. “Breakfast?”
You eyed it. “What is it?”
“Bagels.”
“Are they poisoned?”
“No.”
“Would you tell me if they were?”
“Feels like bad strategy if I poisoned them.”
You took the bag.
Then paused.
“Thank you.”
Duke grinned. “Anytime, Glowstick.”
You stared at him. “I hate that.”
“Good. We’ll workshop that too.”
Your powers did not behave. That was the polite way of saying it.
Less polite: they were a whole haunted fireworks factory.
Sometimes your hands glowed when you were scared. Sometimes when you were angry. Sometimes when you laughed and immediately looked horrified, which made Duke furious at every adult who had taught you joy was unsafe.
Once, during lunch at the youth centre, someone dropped a tray behind you.
Every bulb in the room exploded.
Nobody got hurt. You still hid in the supply closet for two hours.
Duke sat outside the door with a deck of cards.
“I’m not coming out,” you said.
“Okay.”
“You should be mad.”
“I’m annoyed about the light bulbs.”
A pause.
“How many?”
“Seventeen.”
Another pause.
“That’s a lot.”
“Honestly impressive.”
“It’s not funny.”
“No,” Duke said. “But it’s also not the end of the world.”
“I ruined lunch.”
“You made lunch dramatic.”
“I scared everyone.”
“Yeah. For a minute.”
Your voice got smaller. “They’ll hate me.”
Duke leaned his head back against the door. On the other side, he could hear you breathing too fast.
“Gotham kids know scary,” he said. “They also know accidents.”
“I’m dangerous.”
“Sometimes.”
The silence sharpened.
He continued before you could spiral. “So am I. So is electricity. So is fire. So is a kitchen knife. Dangerous doesn’t mean evil. It means we learn safety.”
“You sound like a pamphlet.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“Jason says that.”
“Jason steals my best lines.”
The tiniest laugh escaped you.
Duke smiled at the ugly hallway wall. “There you are.”
“I’m still not coming out.”
“Cool. Want to play cards under the door?”
“That’s stupid.”
“You in?”
A card slid under the door five seconds later.
You played badly. Duke accused you of cheating anyway.
By the time you came out, the youth centre kids had taped construction-paper stars over the broken light fixtures and named the event “The Great Lunch Supernova.”
You stared at the decorations. Then at Duke.
“They’re not scared?”
“Maybe a little,” he said honestly. “But they’re also kids. Exploding lights are kind of cool when nobody gets hurt.”
A boy from the basketball court waved at you. “Yo, Supernova! You playing Uno later?”
You looked like someone had handed you a foreign passport.
Duke nudged you gently with his elbow.
“Community,” he said. “Very weird. Highly recommended.”
You wanted to be his sidekick by the third week.
Duke had been expecting it. Still hated it.
You cornered him on the roof of the youth centre after a training session that was not combat, because Duke was not Batman and had no interest in speed-running child endangerment.
Training meant breathing exercises. Light control. How to dim without suppressing. How to brighten without panicking. How to identify sensory overload. How to say stop before your body said explosion.
You hated half of it. You were good at all of it.
“I picked a name,” you said.
Duke looked up from where he was adjusting a solar charger. “For what?”
You stood straighter.
He knew that posture. He already hated where this was going.
“For when I patrol with you.”
“No.”
You blinked. “You didn’t hear the name.”
“Still no.”
“It’s Beacon.”
“That’s a good name.”
Your face lit up.
“No.”
The light went out.
“That’s unfair.”
“Probably.”
“You patrol.”
“Yes.”
“You have powers.”
“Yes.”
“You said I need to learn control.”
“Yes.”
“How am I supposed to learn if you won’t let me help?”
Duke set down the charger carefully. “Helping and patrolling are not the same thing.”
“They are for you.”
“No, they aren’t.”
You scoffed. “You’re Signal.”
“And Duke.”
“That’s not—”
“It is the point,” he said.
You stopped.
His voice stayed even, but something in it made you listen. “I was a Gotham kid before I was a hero. I was part of a movement before I had a suit. I helped people before I knew what my eyes could do.”
“You were Robin.”
“We Are Robin wasn’t Batman’s Robin.”
“But you fought.”
“Yeah,” Duke said. “And some of us got hurt.”
You looked away. “I can handle it.”
“I believe you.”
That startled you.
Duke stepped closer, stopping with space still between them. “I’m not saying no because I think you’re weak. I’m saying no because people already tried to turn you into something useful before they let you be a person.”
Your jaw tightened. “I want to be useful.”
“I know.”
“I want to make them pay.”
“I know.”
“I want them to be scared of me.”
“I know that too.”
Your hands brightened. Duke let his own light rise, not to challenge yours, but to meet it.
Soft gold. Steady.
“You don’t have to earn your place in the world by saving it,” he said.
Your face cracked. Just a little.
“I don’t know what else I’m for.”
There it was. The wound.
Not powers. Not fear.
Purpose.
Duke remembered that feeling. The awful open space after tragedy where a kid started looking for a job title because “child” did not feel like enough to survive on.
He crouched slightly, bringing himself closer to your height.
“You’re for being alive,” he said. “For bagels. For bad Uno. For learning what music you like. For being mad. For missing your parents. For finding them, if we can. For deciding what you want when nobody is chasing you.”
You swallowed hard.
“And if I still want Beacon later?”
“Then later we talk.”
“When?”
“When you know the difference between choosing the work and needing the work to choose you.”
You frowned. “That’s annoyingly wise.”
“I practiced in the mirror.”
“That’s embarrassing.”
“Deeply.”
Your hands dimmed.
After a long moment, you said, “Can I still use the name?”
Duke smiled. “For robotics club? Dodgeball? Your Uno villain persona? Absolutely.”
“You’re mocking me.”
“A little.”
You kicked his shoe.
He allowed it.
They found one of your parents in the fifth week.
Your father. Alive. Institutionalised under a false name in a private facility outside Bristol County, still recovering from long-term Joker toxin exposure and whatever experimental treatment the contractor had layered on top of it.
Your mother remained missing.
There were no pretty ways to say that.
Duke did not let Bruce tell you alone. He sat beside you in the youth centre office while Leslie explained what they knew. Your face went pale. Your hands began to glow under the table.
Duke did not grab them.
He placed his own hands palm-up on the table instead.
An invitation.
After a moment, you put your glowing fingers against his.
Warm. Trembling. Too bright.
He held steady.
“He’s alive?” you whispered.
“Yes,” Leslie said gently. “He’s receiving care now. Real care.”
“Does he remember me?”
Leslie’s face softened. “We don’t know yet.”
Your light flickered violently.
Duke squeezed your fingers once.
Not restraint.
Reminder.
You breathed.
In. Out. Again.
The windows rattled, but did not break.
You looked at Duke, shocked. “I didn’t—”
“I know,” he said, smiling.
“I stopped.”
“You did.”
“I wanted to explode.”
“Very normal response, honestly.”
Leslie gave him a look.
“What? It is.”
You laughed through the tears gathering in your eyes.
Then you cried.
Duke stayed.
That was the whole trick, really.
Staying.
The first time you visited your father, you wore your least favourite hoodie because you said it made you look “less emotionally available.”
Duke respected the strategy.
Your father was thin. Tired. His smile trembled when he saw you, like memory was a fragile signal trying to come through static.
He knew your name. That was enough to make you cry before you reached the chair.
Duke waited outside the room because you asked him to.
After twenty minutes, the lights in the hallway flickered.
He stood.
Then paused.
The flicker steadied.
No explosion. No alarms. Just light, trembling and held.
When you came out, your face was blotchy and exhausted.
“He remembered my birthday,” you said.
Duke nodded. “That’s good.”
“He doesn’t know where Mom is.”
“I’m sorry.”
This time, you did not flinch.
You leaned into his side instead. Just for a second.
“Can we get bagels?”
“Absolutely.”
“And orange soda?”
“You said it tastes like battery acid.”
“I’m emotionally compromised.”
“That does change the beverage matrix.”
You huffed.
Almost a laugh.
Good enough.
Months passed.
Not cleanly. Not like healing in inspirational posters, all sunrise and violins.
Some days you shattered every bulb in the training room. Some days you sat in darkness because light felt too loud. Some days you wanted Beacon so badly you would not speak to Duke. Some days you spent hours helping younger kids at the youth centre build solar-powered lanterns out of recycled jars, then pretended it was stupid when they called them “mini Signals.”
You became part of the place before you noticed.
That was Duke’s favourite part.
The aunties downstairs saved you food. The basketball kids taught you trash talk. A retired electrician named Mr. Hayes helped you build safe circuits and told you power was only useful when grounded.
You liked that. Grounded.
Duke liked it too.
Eventually, Batman took down the contractor network. Oracle found the money trail. Red Hood found the men who thought hiding offshore would help. Spoiler leaked enough sanitised evidence to make the public furious. Signal found the other kids.
Not all. Enough to keep looking.
You helped too.
Not on patrol. Not in a suit. You designed lanterns for the safehouse rooms because some of the kids were afraid of the dark and others were afraid of bright hospital lights. Your lanterns could dim by touch, warm or cool, soft enough not to hurt.
You called the project Beacon.
Duke pretended not to get emotional.
Badly.
“You’re making the face,” you said.
“What face?”
“The proud adult face. It’s weird.”
“I’m not an adult.”
“You pay taxes.”
“Low blow.”
“You cried when Mr. Hayes said my wiring improved.”
“Dust.”
“In a workshop.”
“Workshop dust.”
You smiled, and light warmed beneath your skin.
Not panic light. Not weapon light.
You light.
That evening, on the youth centre roof, you stood beside Duke and looked over Gotham. The city below glittered in broken lines, windows and headlights and distant sirens, all of it messy and wounded and still somehow alive.
“I still want to help,” you said.
“I know.”
“But not because I have to.”
Duke looked at you.
You were taller than when he found you. Still a kid. Still carrying too much. But steadier now. Less like a flare about to burn itself out. More like a lamp in a window.
“Yeah?” he asked.
You nodded.
“I think Beacon can be more than a sidekick.”
Duke smiled slowly. “Go on.”
“It could be a program. For kids like me. Powers, no powers, whatever. People who don’t want the Cave. People who need somewhere before things get worse.”
Duke’s chest warmed. “A community network.”
“With lanterns,” you added. “And snacks.”
“Critical infrastructure.”
“And no ugly carpet.”
“Ambitious but necessary.”
You leaned your arms on the roof ledge. “I don’t want to be your sidekick.”
Duke looked away before you could see what that did to him. “No?”
“No offense.”
“Devastating, but I’ll recover.”
“I want to be me.”
The words landed softer than sunlight.
Duke nodded. “That’s better.”
You glanced at him. “You knew I’d get there?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
He laughed.
“No,” he said. “I hoped.”
Below, someone shouted from the basketball court. Music drifted up from an open window. The city kept breathing.
You held out your hand.
A small orb of light appeared above your palm, warm and steady.
No flicker. No fear.
Duke let his own light answer it.
For a moment, the roof glowed gold.
Not like a weapon charging. Not like an emergency.
Like dawn taking its time.
You looked at the light, then at him.
“Bagels?”
Duke grinned. “Obviously.”
Together, you went downstairs—Signal and not-sidekick, mentor and menace, two Gotham kids remade by grief but not owned by it.
Outside, the city waited.
Inside, the youth centre lights stayed on.
cassandra cain, 3.6k
child abuse, child trafficking/underground fighting implications, child raised as a weapon, assassin training, captivity/cages implied, dehumanisation, forced violence, child endangerment, nonverbal/selective mutism, trauma responses, panic attack/flashback, fear of touch, body autonomy issues, punishment-based conditioning, expectation of punishment, dissociation/emotional shutdown, blood/old injury references, weapons/knives, attempted stabbing during panic response, non-graphic violence, injured adult/pressure-point incapacitation, medical examination anxiety, recovery from abuse, therapy implied, emotional hurt/comfort, protective mentor dynamic, no graphic injury.
Cass found you in the basement beneath a club that pretended not to have one.
Upstairs, music shook the floor hard enough to make dust fall from the pipes. People laughed. Glasses clinked. Gotham wore perfume and money and forgot, as it always did, that there were cages under its feet.
Downstairs, the walls were concrete. The lights were too bright. The air smelled like sweat, bleach, old blood, and fear.
Cass moved through the dark between the bulbs like a shadow remembering how to be human. Two men were already unconscious behind her. A third had dropped his knife after she broke his wrist. Not badly. Not permanently. Just enough.
Enough was important. Enough was a lesson she was still learning.
She found the children in the back room.
Four of them.
Three huddled together behind a stack of crates, shaking so hard their shoulders knocked. The fourth stood in front.
You.
Small. Seven, maybe eight. Bare feet planted on cold concrete. Hands loose at your sides. Chin lowered. Eyes fixed not on Cass’s face, but on her hips, her shoulders, the bend of her knees.
Reading her.
Not like a child.
Like a fighter.
No. Like someone trained to survive fighters.
Cass stopped immediately.
You stopped breathing.
She saw it. The tiny lock of your ribs. The way your fingers twitched toward a blade that was not there. The micro-shift of weight to the back foot, ready to run or strike or die. Your eyes were dark and flat in the way children’s eyes became when adults had taken too much from them and called the emptiness discipline.
Cass knew that look. She had worn it.
She lowered her hands slowly.
Not surrender.
Promise.
You watched.
She did not speak at first. Words were often too slow. Too clumsy. People used them to hide. Bodies told the truth faster.
Cass softened her shoulders. Turned one foot outward, leaving herself open. Made herself smaller without crouching. Crouching could mean attack. Crouching could mean grab.
You tracked every movement.
Good. You were still alive because you noticed.
Bad. You had needed to.
Behind you, one of the other children whimpered.
Your head turned half an inch toward the sound. Not enough to look away from Cass.
Protective. Terrified.
Cass felt something inside her ache.
She pointed at herself.
“Cass.”
Your eyes narrowed.
No answer.
That was okay.
She pointed toward the stairs. Then to the children. Then made the sign for safe.
You stared at her hands.
Something flickered in your face.
Recognition, maybe. Not of sign language exactly. Of gesture. Meaning without sound.
Cass repeated it.
Safe.
Your mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Your throat moved like words had been buried there and did not know the way up.
Cass nodded once.
No words needed.
Then a man groaned behind her.
Barely conscious. Stupid enough to move.
You moved faster.
Cass saw the panic hit your body before your face changed. The jerk of your shoulders. The widening of your eyes. The old command written under your skin: threat, eliminate, survive.
You darted past her.
Small body. Perfect angle. Bare heel sliding against concrete. You grabbed the fallen knife from the floor and drove it down toward the man’s throat.
Cass caught your wrist.
Not hard.
Fast.
Your whole body shattered.
Not physically.
Worse.
You twisted, silent and wild, turning the blade toward her with terrible precision. Cass disarmed you in one motion and let the knife clatter across the floor.
Then you froze.
Your wrist still in her hand.
Your eyes went huge.
Not angry. Not scared.
Resigned.
You dropped to your knees.
Cass let go instantly.
Too late.
You stayed there anyway. Head bowed. Hands flat on your thighs. Waiting.
Cass stared at you.
The room disappeared for one heartbeat.
She was not in a basement. She was small again, standing before David Cain with blood on her hands, watching his face for correction. Waiting to know if she had been good. Waiting to know what good meant.
Her body remembered before her mind did.
Punishment. Training.
Again.
Cass swallowed.
Then she sat down on the floor in front of you.
Your head twitched.
Confusion.
She crossed her legs slowly. Placed both hands on her own knees. Open palms. Empty.
You did not lift your head.
Cass waited.
The man behind her groaned again. She turned just enough to tap a pressure point near his shoulder. He went still.
Not dead.
Asleep.
You flinched at the precision.
Cass looked back at you.
“No,” she said softly.
The word scraped. Her voice was not used to carrying so much.
You did not move.
She touched her own chest.
Then pointed to you.
“No hurt.”
Your fingers twitched.
You expected pain. Expected correction. Expected her to grab your chin, strike your hands, demand you do it again properly.
Cass shook her head. “No.”
A pause.
Then, slower, with all the gentleness she had learned from people who refused to let her disappear into what made her:
“We learn.”
Your head lifted a fraction.
Cass held still.
You stared at her.
She saw the question in every line of you.
That is all?
Cass nodded.
That is all.
You followed her out.
Not close. Not touching. A shadow with bare feet and no voice.
The other children ran to the paramedics. Cried. Clung. Answered questions in broken pieces. You stood behind Cass, half-hidden by her cape, watching every adult hand, every sudden motion, every exit.
A medic approached with a blanket.
You went rigid.
Cass stepped sideways between you and the blanket.
The medic froze. “I’m just trying to—”
Cass looked at her.
The medic stopped talking.
Good.
Cass took the blanket herself. Held it out in both hands.
You stared.
She did not move closer.
Your eyes flicked from the blanket to her face. Then to her shoulders. Her hands. Her feet.
Reading. Checking for the lie.
Cass made herself true.
Finally, you reached out and took the blanket with two fingers.
You did not wrap it around yourself.
You held it like evidence.
That was okay too.
Batman arrived with Gordon five minutes later.
You saw Batman and vanished behind Cass so fast the blanket dropped.
Bruce stopped immediately.
To his credit, he did not come closer.
His eyes moved from you to Cass.
Cass shook her head once.
No. Not yet.
Bruce listened.
That still surprised her sometimes.
The police asked questions. The paramedics asked more. Social services arrived with clipboards and soft voices and hands that moved too fast.
You did not answer anyone.
When one officer stepped too near, you bared your teeth.
Not metaphorically.
Jason would have loved you.
Cass did not smile.
She stepped between you and the officer.
“Space,” she said.
The officer looked confused.
Bruce’s voice came from behind them, low and dangerous. “Give them space.”
The officer did.
You looked up at Cass.
Not gratitude. Not trust.
But the first thread of something.
You followed her to the car.
Bruce drove. Cass sat in the back beside you, leaving the middle seat empty.
You did not buckle your seatbelt.
Cass buckled hers.
Slowly.
You watched.
She pointed to yours.
You stared at the belt like it was a restraint.
Cass understood.
She unbuckled herself. Buckled again. Tapped the latch. Released it. Buckled it again.
Can open. Can close.
Your fingers touched the belt. Stopped.
Cass looked away, giving privacy.
After a long minute, the buckle clicked.
Bruce’s eyes met hers in the rearview mirror.
Cass looked out the window.
Do not make it big.
Some victories were too fragile for applause.
The Manor was too much.
Cass saw it the second you entered.
Too many ceilings. Too much space. Too many objects that looked breakable and expensive. Too many people trying not to stare.
Dick smiled too softly. Jason looked angry in the way he got when he wanted to adopt something and pretend he did not.
Tim already had a tablet full of information.
Damian stood stiffly with Titus at his side, eyes fixed on your stance with painful recognition.
Steph held snacks.
Smart.
Duke stood near the doorway, not blocking it.
Smarter.
You saw all of them. All of them saw you seeing.
Your body moved closer to Cass by half an inch.
She felt it like a shout.
Steph stepped forward, then stopped when Cass raised one hand.
“Snack?” Steph asked, holding up a packet of crackers.
You stared.
Steph placed the packet on the table and stepped back.
“Cool. That’s there. No pressure.”
You did not move.
Jason muttered, “Kid probably needs real food.”
You flinched at his voice.
Jason immediately looked like someone had kicked him in the ribs.
Cass touched two fingers to her own throat.
Quiet.
Jason nodded, jaw tight.
Bruce crouched near the hall entrance, still far away.
“You’re safe here,” he said.
Your face did nothing. Your body said: No place is safe. People say safe before cages close.
Cass walked to the table, picked up the crackers, opened them, ate one.
You watched.
She placed the packet back down.
Then walked away.
A moment later, you took one cracker.
Not eating.
Testing.
Then another.
Steph looked at the ceiling like she was physically holding in tears.
Cass approved.
You did not sleep that night.
Neither did Cass.
You sat in the corner of the guest room, back to both walls, blanket folded beside you, not on you. The bed remained untouched.
Cass sat on the floor outside the open door.
Not inside.
The hallway light stayed dim.
At 3:12 a.m., you stood.
Cass opened her eyes.
You froze.
She pointed down the hall.
Bathroom. Kitchen. Door.
Your choice.
You hesitated, then pointed toward the kitchen.
Cass nodded.
You walked behind her, silent as a ghost.
In the kitchen, Alfred’s space glowed under warm lights. Cass took bread, peanut butter, jam. Made one sandwich. Cut it in half.
She placed both halves on separate plates.
Sat on one side of the island.
Ate hers.
You stood for a long time.
Then climbed onto the stool farthest from her and ate yours in four careful bites.
Too fast. Hungry. Trained not to show it.
Cass did not comment.
After, you touched the plate. Looked at her. Question in your shoulders.
More?
Cass made another sandwich.
This time, you ate slower.
Progress.
You did not speak for two weeks. Not with words.
Cass did not mind.
The others learned.
Slowly.
Dick learned that jokes were okay if he aimed them at himself, not you. Jason learned to announce himself before entering rooms. Tim learned to write questions down and let you point. Damian learned that Titus could approach when people could not.
Steph learned that colourful stickers worked better than “feelings charts,” because feelings charts made you look like you wanted to fight God. Duke learned light dimmed around you when you were calm, because you liked not being watched too closely.
Bruce learned to knock.
Cass learned you liked bananas, hated oatmeal, counted exits, and slept better when Titus lay outside your door.
You followed her everywhere. Not always close. Sometimes from across the room. Sometimes three steps behind. Sometimes appearing in doorways like a tiny haunted assassin.
Jason called you “Cass’s duckling” once.
You looked at him.
Cass looked at him.
He raised both hands. “Never again.”
Good.
Cass became your bridge because she did not demand a toll.
When Leslie came to examine you, Cass went first. Sat on the bed. Let Leslie listen to her heartbeat. Opened her mouth. Held out her hands.
Then Leslie asked you, “Can I check?”
You looked at Cass.
Cass signed: Your body. Your yes. Your no.
You stared at her hands.
Cass repeated it.
Your body.
Your yes.
Your no.
Something moved across your face, fast and painful.
You shook your head.
Leslie nodded immediately. “Okay. Not today.”
You stared at her too.
No punishment. No disappointment. No grabbing.
Later, alone with Cass in the sunroom, you touched your own wrist where Leslie had wanted to check your pulse.
Then pointed at Cass.
Question.
Cass held out her hand, palm up.
Waited.
You looked at it for almost a minute.
Then placed two fingers against her wrist.
Pulse.
Cass stayed still.
You felt the heartbeat.
Then pressed your own wrist.
Your eyes widened faintly.
Same.
Cass nodded.
Same.
Not weapon.
Body.
Person.
The panic response happened in the training room.
It was not supposed to be training.
Cass had been clear.
No fighting. Movement only. Dance, almost. Balance. Breath. How to feel the floor. How to turn without preparing to strike. How to lift an arm because it wanted to rise, not because someone was incoming.
You were bad at it.
You hated being bad at it.
Cass understood.
She turned on soft music. Something slow, piano and strings. No sharp beats.
You watched her move.
Not combat. Not kata.
Dance.
Cass had learned, over years, that her body could be more than a weapon. It could carry music. Joy. Grief. It could choose beauty and not die from it.
She wanted that for you.
You copied stiffly.
Arm up. Turn. Step. Breathe.
Your jaw clenched.
Cass shook her head gently.
Not perfect.
Again.
You tried again.
Better.
Then Damian entered.
He did nothing wrong. That was the awful part.
He walked in quietly, saw you, and stopped. But the door clicked behind him. The sound was small, metallic.
Lock.
Your body heard cage.
You spun.
Damian lifted his hands, but he was too late.
You moved faster than thought.
A strike to his ribs. A hook behind the knee. A small body using leverage with terrifying efficiency. Damian let himself fall to avoid hurting you. You grabbed a practice blade from the rack and went for his throat.
Cass caught you from behind.
This time, she had to hold.
Not tight enough to hurt. Tight enough to stop.
You thrashed once, silent and frantic.
Then awareness returned.
Your whole body went cold.
You dropped the practice blade.
Cass let go immediately.
Damian stayed on the floor, breathing hard but uninjured. His eyes were wide, not with fear. Recognition.
You stared at him. Then at Cass. Then at your own hands.
You tapped your own chest with shaking fingers, then pointed at Damian.
Hurt.
Damian answered before Cass could.
“No.”
You pointed again, harder.
Hurt.
Damian understood.
“I am not hurt,” he said. “And if I were, it would still not mean you deserve harm.”
Your eyes filled with tears.
You looked horrified.
Cass touched her own cheek beneath one eye.
Tears.
Okay.
You shook your head violently.
Cass nodded.
Okay.
Your hands moved clumsily. Not real signs yet. Half gesture, half instinct.
Bad.
Me.
Bad.
Cass leaned forward.
Not touching.
“No,” she said.
Then, clearer:
“We learn.”
The first sob came out of you like something breaking through a locked door.
Cass opened her arms.
You stared through tears.
She waited.
Your body.
Your yes.
Your no.
You crawled into her lap with a sound so small Damian looked away.
Cass held you carefully. Not trapping. Not tightening when you shook. Just there. Warm. Real. Steady.
Damian sat beside them in silence until your breathing slowed.
Then he said, solemnly, “The door has offended me. I will remove the click.”
Cass looked at him.
He looked back.
“I can.”
You made a wet, startled sound.
Almost a laugh.
Damian’s mouth softened.
“See?” he said. “We learn. Doors suffer consequences.”
Cass smiled.
Just a little.
Your first word came because of Bat-Cow.
This surprised no one and delighted everyone except Damian, who pretended he had predicted it.
You liked the animals. Animals spoke body first. They did not lie about wanting closeness or space. Titus leaned. Alfred the cat ignored. Ace followed. Bat-Cow simply existed, large and calm and unbothered by trauma, weather, or billionaires.
You stood by the fence often, watching her chew.
Cass stood beside you.
One warm afternoon, Bat-Cow ambled over and pressed her enormous head against the railing.
You lifted one hand.
Stopped.
Looked at Cass.
Cass signed: Ask her.
You frowned.
Cass pointed to Bat-Cow.
You held your hand out. Bat-Cow sniffed it, then pushed her nose into your palm.
Permission granted.
Your shoulders loosened.
You stroked the soft white patch on her forehead.
For almost ten minutes, there was only sun, grass, quiet breathing.
Then you whispered, “Soft.”
Cass went still.
She did not gasp.
Did not call the others. Did not make the moment too large to survive.
She only nodded.
“Yes,” Cass said.
You looked at her, startled by your own voice.
Then back at Bat-Cow.
“Soft,” you said again.
Cass smiled. “Yes.”
That night, Bruce found Cass in the kitchen, crying silently into a glass of water.
He did not ask the wrong question.
He only stood beside her and said, “Good?”
Cass nodded. “Good.”
He placed a hand on her shoulder.
Slow. Asking.
She leaned into it.
Only a little.
Enough.
Months passed.
You began to speak sometimes.
Single words first.
Soft. No. Food. Titus. Cass.
No became Cass’s favourite.
You used it cautiously at first, like testing a blade edge.
No to oatmeal. No to a hug from Dick. No to the blue shirt Steph offered because the tag scratched. No to training room music when it sounded too much like the club upstairs.
Every no was honoured.
Every time, your body looked surprised.
Less surprised each week.
You learned signs faster than words.
Your hands became a bridge.
Hungry. Tired. Scared. Stop. Again.
Cass watched you tell Bruce stop once when he asked too many questions.
Bruce stopped mid-sentence.
You stared at him for a full five seconds.
Then signed again, smaller:
Thank you.
Bruce looked like he needed to go stand in the rain about it.
Cass understood.
The sidekick question came from the others, not you.
Not directly.
You were skilled. Everyone knew it. The family had seen the footage from the basement. Seen the training room incident. Seen the way your eyes tracked movement before sound.
A child made useful before human.
Exactly like Cass.
One night, Tim asked carefully, “What if they want to help someday?”
Cass looked at him.
He raised both hands. “Someday. Not now.”
“Not now,” Cass said.
Jason leaned against the Cave railing. “Nobody’s arguing now.”
Damian muttered, “Good. I would win.”
Steph threw a protein bar at him.
Cass looked toward the training mats where you sat with Titus, brushing his fur with intense concentration.
“Maybe never,” she said.
The room quieted.
Dick nodded slowly. “Maybe never.”
Cass appreciated that he understood.
You were not a future costume waiting to happen. You were not a mission seed. You were not proof that pain could become poetry if branded correctly.
You were a child who had only just learned the word soft.
That was enough.
Later, you found Cass on the balcony.
You moved silently, but she heard you anyway.
You stood beside her, not touching.
For a while, Gotham breathed below them.
Then you signed:
Me. Fight?
Cass looked at you.
Your face was serious. Not eager. Not hungry for revenge. Just asking. Testing the shape of the future.
Cass signed back slowly, Your choice. Later.
You watched her hands.
Then signed, Now?
Cass shook her head.
No.
You looked down at the city.
Hurt?
Cass understood the question.
Because I hurt people?
She turned toward you.
No.
Then she touched two fingers to your chest, stopping before contact.
You leaned forward, allowing it.
Child.
She signed.
Heal. Learn. Live.
Your eyes shone.
You signed with trembling hands:
Useful?
Cass’s throat tightened.
She shook her head.
Not need.
You stared.
She signed again.
You do not need useful.
You are you.
The words landed slowly.
Like rain on dry earth.
You looked away fast.
Then, after a long moment, leaned your shoulder against her arm.
Cass stayed still.
Below, Gotham glittered mean and beautiful.
Above, you breathed.
Not a weapon. Not a shadow. Not a mistake made by cruel hands.
Just a child learning ownership of breath, body, no, yes, soft.
Cass looked out over the city and thought of all the years she had believed her body belonged to violence because violence had taught it language first.
Then she looked at you.
You were watching a moth circle the balcony light.
Your hand lifted slightly, following its path.
Not to catch.
Just to see.
Cass smiled.
She could teach you that. Seeing without hunting. Moving without striking. Living without earning the right.
Inside, Titus barked once, demanding attention from absolutely no one in particular.
You looked toward the door.
“Food?” you asked softly.
Cass nodded. “Yes.”
You took one step.
Then stopped and held out your hand.
Not because you needed help walking.
Because you wanted to choose contact.
Cass took it.
Together, you went inside, toward warmth, toward noise, toward dinner you did not have to earn.
Behind them, the balcony door stayed open for a moment longer.
request batfam who meet kids that remind them of their past selves | split up as i ran out of blocks :/
characters bruce wayne here, dick grayson here, jason todd here, tim drake here, damian wayne here, duke thomas here, stephanie brown here, cassandra cain here
content batfam x platonic! child reader, gender neutral! reader, orphan!reader
masterlist
damian wayne, 7k
child abuse, cult upbringing, assassin training, child soldier, dehumanisation, emotional abuse, conditioning, obedience trauma, child endangerment, implied violence against children, discussion of being ordered to kill another child, references to dead/missing children, blood/injury mention, knives, threats of violence, attempted kidnapping/recapture, nightmares, identity loss/name loss, grief, dissociation/emotional shutdown, food permission issues, touch permission/boundary issues, recovery from abuse, therapy implied, emotional hurt/comfort, protective pseudo-sibling/pseudo-parent dynamic, no graphic violence
Damian found you in the greenhouse with a knife in your hand.
Not a large knife. Not one of his.
A small gardening blade, its wooden handle worn smooth by Alfred’s hands long before Damian had inherited the greenhouse as one of the few places in the Manor that still knew how to be quiet without feeling dead.
You stood between the tomato vines and the lemon tree, barefoot on the tile, rainwater dripping from the hem of your black tunic. You were small. Seven, perhaps eight. Too thin. Too still. Your hair had been cut with practical cruelty, short enough to deny anyone the advantage of grabbing it. Your posture was perfect.
That was the first thing Damian noticed.
Not the blade. Not the blood on your sleeve.
The posture. Feet balanced. Knees soft. Shoulders relaxed. Chin lowered just enough to protect the throat. Eyes fixed not on his face, but on his center of mass.
Someone had taught you to expect attack before greeting.
Damian went very still.
The greenhouse hummed around you, warm and green and alive. Rain tapped against the glass ceiling. Titus, who had been dozing near the potting bench, lifted his massive head and gave one deep warning bark.
You did not flinch.
That was the second thing Damian noticed.
Children flinched. Civilians flinched. Even trained fighters reacted, if only in the eyes.
You simply adjusted your grip on the gardening knife.
Damian recognised that too.
Not fearlessness.
Conditioning.
His voice, when he spoke, came out colder than he intended. “You are trespassing.”
Your gaze flicked once to the door behind him. Once to the windows. Once to Titus. Calculating.
Then you dropped to one knee.
Damian’s breath caught.
The movement was so familiar that for half a second he was not twenty-three years old standing in Wayne Manor. He was a child again in Nanda Parbat, spine straight, head bowed, waiting to be corrected.
“Forgive me,” you said.
Your voice was flat. Formal. Too controlled to belong to someone missing their front baby tooth.
“I entered seeking shelter. I did not know this territory was claimed.”
Territory. Claimed.
Damian’s hand curled at his side.
“Stand,” he ordered.
You did.
Immediately.
Too immediately.
Titus growled, low and uncertain.
Damian lifted two fingers. “Stay.”
The dog obeyed, though his eyes remained fixed on you.
You looked at Titus for the first time with something almost like curiousity.
Then you looked back at Damian.
“If the animal is yours,” you said, “I will not harm it unless commanded or attacked.”
Damian felt cold spread through his chest. “The animal has a name.”
A small pause.
“What is its designation?”
“His name,” Damian said, sharper now, “is Titus.”
You absorbed this as if names were tactical data.
“Titus,” you repeated.
The dog’s ears twitched.
Damian studied you. League-adjacent, certainly. Not League proper. The stance was close, but not exact. Your tunic bore no mark he recognised, but the stitching at the collar resembled a mountain sect Talia had once dismissed as “fanatics who mistook deprivation for devotion.”
A splinter group. A cult with assassins’ manners and zealots’ discipline.
His stomach turned.
“Who sent you?” Damian asked.
“No one.”
“Lies are inefficient.”
“I was not sent.”
“Then why are you here?”
A beat.
“I ran.”
That word did not belong in your controlled little voice.
Damian heard it anyway. Behind the cold. Behind the training. Behind the impossible posture.
A child. Running.
He stepped forward.
You raised the knife.
Titus surged to his feet.
Damian held up a hand.
You were not holding the blade correctly for intimidation. You were holding it correctly for use.
Seven years old. Maybe eight. Barefoot in his greenhouse, prepared to die over a gardening knife.
Damian hated you instantly.
Not you.
The mirror. The brutal little echo of himself standing in front of him with rain in your hair and obedience carved into your bones.
“Put it down,” he said.
Your face remained blank. “Will I be punished?”
The question struck him harder than any blow.
Damian’s first instinct was anger. Not at you. Never at you. At the world. At his mother. At his grandfather. At every master who had ever praised a child for silence and called it strength.
“No,” he said.
You did not move.
“Put it down,” Damian repeated, forcing his voice lower. “You will not be punished.”
Still, you hesitated.
Not because you did not understand. Because you did not believe him.
Damian crouched slowly and placed his own dagger on the tile between you.
Your eyes sharpened.
“A trade,” he said.
“You would disarm yourself?”
“In my own home? Hardly.”
That confused you.
Good. Confusion was better than terror. Confusion meant the old rules were failing.
He nudged the dagger away with two fingers.
“Put down the gardening blade. I will not approach.”
For a long moment, rain was the only sound.
Then you lowered the knife and placed it on the tile with reverence, as if surrendering a sacred object.
Damian wanted to be sick.
Titus padded forward, slow and cautious.
You froze.
The dog sniffed your sleeve, then your bare foot, then huffed warmly against your hand.
You looked down at him. Your entire body remained still, but your eyes changed.
A fraction.
“Does he bite?” you asked.
“Only people I dislike.”
You looked up at Damian. “Do you dislike me?”
The honest answer was complicated.
He disliked the way you stood like a weapon waiting to be assigned a target. He disliked the hollowness beneath your calm. He disliked that when you asked about punishment, some buried part of him had already known the shape of your fear.
“No,” Damian said.
Titus licked your hand.
Your eyes widened like the dog had performed magic.
Damian watched your fingers twitch, uncertain what to do with gentleness.
Then, slowly, you touched the top of Titus’s head.
The dog’s tail wagged once.
You looked startled.
Damian he took out his phone.
“Father,” he said when Bruce answered. “There is a child in the greenhouse.”
A pause.
Bruce’s voice changed immediately. “Injured?”
“Yes. Not severely.”
“Dangerous?”
Damian looked at you, small and bloody and patting Titus with the stiff uncertainty of someone handling a foreign weapon.
“Yes,” he said.
Then, after a breath, “But not in the way you mean.”
Everyone expected Damian to be good at it.
That was the absurd part.
Because you were League-adjacent. Because you spoke the language of obedience and violence. Because you knew how to hold a blade and how to disappear in a room. Because you stood at attention when Bruce entered and went still when Jason raised his voice and watched Cass with wary recognition.
They assumed Damian would know what to do.
This was stupid. Damian had survived his childhood. That did not mean he understood how to heal from it.
He knew how to teach you four methods of escaping a wrist hold. He knew how to correct your stance. He knew which poisons your splinter sect likely used, which prayers they forced into children’s mouths, which pressure points they prized, which punishments they called refinement.
He did not know how to ask if you wanted toast.
The first morning, you sat at the breakfast table with your spine straight and your hands folded in your lap.
A plate sat untouched in front of you.
Eggs. Fruit. Toast. Tea that was mostly milk because Dick had claimed “kid tea” needed “training wheels.”
You stared at it.
Damian watched from across the table, arms folded.
Bruce watched Damian watching you. Jason watched Bruce watching Damian watching you.
Stephanie, with the blatant self-preservation instincts of a lemming in a cape, whispered, “This is like a trauma terrarium.”
Damian realised too late how sharp his voice had been.
Your fork hovered above the eggs. Your eyes lowered.
“Forgive me,” you said. “I misunderstood.”
Jason’s expression changed. He looked like he wanted to break something.
Bruce leaned forward. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
You did not look at him.
Damian pushed his chair back, stood, and walked out.
He made it as far as the hall before Dick caught him.
“Dami.”
“Do not.”
Dick stopped a few feet away. That, at least, he had learned over the years. Damian did not always want to be touched when he was unravelling. Sometimes proximity was already an act of trust.
“You okay?”
Damian laughed once. It sounded ugly. “No.”
Dick nodded. “They’re scared.”
“I know that.”
“They remind you of—”
“If you say me, Grayson, I will put you through a wall.”
Dick’s mouth closed.
Damian stared at the portrait-lined hallway. At Wayne ancestors who had done nothing to deserve watching this family become a shelter for traumatised strays.
“They ask permission to eat,” he said.
His voice came out quiet.
Dick’s face softened.
Damian hated that too.
“I know.”
“They sleep sitting against the wall. They catalogued the exits in every room before drinking water. They called Titus an animal and asked whether they were permitted to use his name.”
Dick swallowed. “They’re a kid.”
Damian turned on him. “They are a weapon.”
Dick did not flinch.
“No,” he said. “They were made into one.”
Damian’s anger died so abruptly it left him empty.
That was the truth, wasn’t it? The difference people had once tried to teach him.
Not what you are. What was done to you.
Damian looked away.
“I do not know how to be gentle with them.”
Dick’s smile was sad.
“Yeah,” he said. “None of us did at first.”
“I was not asking for comfort.”
“I know. That’s why I gave you honesty.”
Damian exhaled through his nose.
From the dining room, Titus barked once.
Then you spoke, quiet but clear.
“May I feed him a piece of toast?”
There was a pause.
Then Bruce said, very carefully, “You may ask Damian.”
Damian closed his eyes.
Dick’s eyebrows lifted.
“Go on,” Dick murmured. “Your emotional support dog is calling.”
“He is not my emotional support dog.”
“Sure.”
Damian returned to the dining room.
You were still sitting straight-backed, toast untouched in your hand. Titus sat beside your chair, tail sweeping hopefully across the floor.
You looked at Damian. “May I?”
Damian stopped beside you.
His first instinct was to say yes.
His second was to say, “You do not need permission.”
But you did.
Not because you should. Because no one had ever taught you what to do without it.
So he said, “Yes. But only a small piece. Too much bread is not good for him.”
You tore off a precise corner and offered it to Titus on your palm.
Titus took it with extreme gentleness.
Your eyes widened again.
Damian sat beside you, rather than across.
“You may eat your own toast now,” he said.
You blinked.
“Unless you dislike toast.”
You stared at him as if he had asked whether you disliked gravity. “I do not know.”
There it was again. Another tiny wound.
Damian picked up his own toast and took a bite, mostly to avoid showing his face.
“Then find out.”
You watched him.
Then took the smallest bite possible. Chewed. Considered.
“It is acceptable,” you said.
Stephanie whispered, “Rave review.”
Jason kicked her under the table.
You ate half the slice.
Damian pretended not to notice that it felt like victory.
You had been raised by the Order of the Black Gate.
Tim found the name in a classified file three hours after Bruce brought you inside.
League splinter faction. Founded by ex-initiates and zealots who believed Ra’s al Ghul had grown too sentimental. They trained children from infancy and called it purification. They stripped names, restricted touch, punished softness, rewarded silence, and sent their best pupils into political assassinations before puberty.
Damian read the file once.
Then again.
Then he went to the training room and destroyed three practice dummies so thoroughly that Jason came downstairs, looked at the wreckage, and said, “Mood.”
Damian did not laugh.
“They had thirty-two children,” Tim said from the doorway, laptop open in his hands. His face was pale in the glow of the screen. “We’ve confirmed eight dead, twelve recovered in raids over the past decade, six unaccounted for. The rest may still be active.”
Damian’s fists tightened.
Bruce stood in the corner, silent and grave.
“You ran from them,” Damian said to you later.
You were in the sunroom with Titus, sitting on the floor because chairs still seemed to bother you. Titus had his head in your lap. You had one hand resting on his ear, stiff but less uncertain now.
“Yes,” you said.
“Why?”
You did not answer immediately.
Damian did not rush you. He had learned, with animals, that fear did not move faster because one commanded it to.
Finally, you said, “I failed.”
His stomach twisted. “At what?”
“A test.”
“What test?”
“I was ordered to kill another student.”
Damian’s blood went cold.
You continued, voice empty. “She was six. She had a fever. Her hands shook. She would not have survived the winter training.”
Damian remained very still.
“I had the blade,” you said. “The instructor said mercy was weakness. Hesitation was treason. Obedience was survival.”
Titus whined softly.
“I did not do it.”
Damian sat on the floor across from you.
Not too close.
“Good.”
Your head snapped up.
The word had struck you like a thrown stone.
“She was weak,” you said, like reciting scripture.
“She was a child.”
“We were told weakness infects the blade.”
“You were told lies.”
Your breathing changed.
Barely.
“I was punished.”
Damian’s fingers pressed into his palms.
You looked down at Titus.
“Then she was gone. I do not know if they killed her.”
“We will find out,” Damian said.
Your gaze returned to him. “Why?”
“Because she mattered.”
Confusion. Not disbelief exactly. A mind trying to fit an impossible shape into an old cage.
“She failed,” you said.
Damian leaned forward slightly. “So did I.”
You blinked.
He had not meant to say it.
But the words were there now.
“I failed many tests,” Damian said. “Not in skill. In obedience. In cruelty. In becoming what they intended.”
Your eyes fixed on him, hungry despite the blankness.
Damian chose each word carefully.
“I was told love was weakness. I was told mercy was hesitation. I was told my worth existed only in victory. I believed much of it.”
“What changed?”
He thought of Dick’s hand offered without fear. Of Alfred’s tea. Of Bruce refusing to strike back even when Damian had begged for the certainty of punishment. Of Titus, small and ridiculous as a puppy, licking blood from Damian’s knuckles after he had punched a wall instead of admitting he was lonely.
“People were inconveniently persistent,” Damian said.
You did not smile.
But Titus licked your wrist, and you looked down at him with something like wonder.
“I am defective,” you said.
Damian’s voice sharpened. “No.”
You flinched.
He forced himself to soften.
“No,” he repeated. “You are not defective.”
“I disobeyed.”
“Good.”
“I ran.”
“Better.”
“I was afraid.”
Damian held your gaze.
“So was I.”
That, finally, changed your face.
Not much.
But enough.
The others expected him to train you.
No one said it outright at first. They circled the subject like vultures in kevlar.
You were already skilled. Dangerous. Disciplined. More controlled than most adults in the Cave. It would be easy, almost natural, for Damian to take over your instruction. To refine what the cult had begun. To make the sharp thing sharper, but point it toward justice instead of obedience.
That was the temptation.
Not because Damian wanted a protégé.
Because fixing technique was easier than healing a child.
Your foot placement was wrong in the third form. Your shoulder locked before throwing. You overcorrected after feints. Your left side guarded ribs but left the jaw exposed. These were solvable problems.
Nightmares were not.
The way you asked permission before sitting was not. The way you went rigid when someone raised a hand too quickly was not. The way you treated kindness as a tactic was not.
Combat was simple. Care was a foreign country, and Damian had only recently learned the language without spitting blood on the syllables.
Still, you watched him during training sessions.
Not formal ones. He refused those.
But the Cave was the Cave, and the family used it. One evening, he sparred with Cass while you sat beside Titus on the mats, hands folded, eyes tracking every movement.
Too focused. Too hungry.
When he finished, you stood.
“Will you instruct me?”
“No.”
Everyone froze.
Jason, who had been wrapping his knuckles nearby, looked up. Dick’s expression went careful. Bruce, at the computer, did not turn around, which meant he was listening very hard.
You bowed your head. “I have displeased you.”
Damian’s throat tightened. “No.”
“Then I do not understand.”
“You do not need to understand everything immediately.”
That sounded like something Bruce would say. Horrifying.
You lifted your chin. “I require correction. My forms are undisciplined.”
“They are adequate.”
Your eyes flashed.
Ah. There you were.
The first spark of pride he had seen in you.
“Adequate is failure,” you said.
“Adequate is adequate.”
“That is absurd.”
“Many truths are.”
You looked frustrated now. Good. Frustration was alive. Frustration belonged to children denied something, not weapons awaiting orders.
“I can be useful,” you said.
The Cave went painfully silent.
Damian felt every eye on him.
Useful.
He hated that word. He had once built an altar to it.
“No,” he said.
Your jaw tightened. “I can fight.”
“I know.”
“I can obey.”
“I know.”
“I can improve.”
“I know.”
“Then why won’t you train me?”
Damian stepped closer.
You did not step back.
He lowered himself to one knee so you did not have to look up at him like he was an instructor looming over punishment.
“Because they made me a blade,” Damian said, voice low and shaking despite his efforts. “I will not sharpen another.”
No one moved.
You stared at him.
The words settled over the Cave like dust after an explosion.
Your expression twisted—not into tears, not yet, but into something confused and wounded.
“If I am not sharp,” you whispered, “what am I?”
Damian’s chest hurt.
He looked toward Bruce without meaning to. His father’s face was open in a way it rarely was in the Cave.
Grief. Pride. Regret.
Damian looked back at you. “You are a child.”
Your mouth pressed into a hard line. “That is nothing.”
“No,” Damian said. “That is everything.”
You shook your head once. “I do not know how to be that.”
“I know.”
“What if I am bad at it?”
“You will be.”
You blinked.
Dick made a tiny sound that might have been a laugh or a sob.
Damian continued, “You will be loud at incorrect times. You will ask alarming questions. You will dislike foods before trying them. You will misunderstand games. You will become attached to animals and deny it. You will be terrible at being a child because no one allowed you to practice.”
Your face was unreadable.
“But you will practice now,” he said.
“With you?”
The question was too small.
Damian felt something inside him surrender.
“Yes,” he said. “With me.”
You looked down. “What are the rules?”
Of course.
Always rules first.
Damian considered this. “No killing.”
“That is obvious.”
“You would be surprised.”
Jason snorted.
Damian ignored him.
“No training without supervision.”
You looked ready to object.
“No patrol.”
Your head snapped up.
“Ever?”
“Now.”
“That is not precise.”
“It is precise enough.”
“You dislike imprecision.”
“Do not weaponise my personality against me.”
Tim whispered, “Oh, that’s rich.”
Damian shot him a look.
Then back to you.
“You will eat when hungry. Sleep when tired. Ask when confused. Refuse touch when unwanted. Speak your name when asked by those who have earned it.”
You absorbed each rule like doctrine.
Then asked, “What happens if I fail?”
Damian’s voice went quiet. “Then we try again.”
Your mouth parted.
No one in the Cave spoke.
Titus padded over and leaned against your side, nearly knocking you off balance.
You placed a hand on his head automatically.
Damian stood. “Training begins tomorrow.”
Your eyes sharpened. “In combat?”
“In gardening.”
Your face went blank.
Jason burst out laughing.
Damian ignored him with holy discipline.
“Gardening,” you repeated.
“Yes.”
“I know nothing of gardening.”
“Precisely. You will not be able to be perfect at it.”
You looked horrified.
Damian almost smiled.
Almost.
You were terrible at gardening. Truly atrocious.
You approached seedlings like hostile intelligence assets. You overwatered basil. You planted carrots too close together because “formation discipline increases survival.” You glared at worms as if they were enemy infiltrators. You asked whether weeds should be “removed permanently,” which caused Dick to walk into a wall trying not to laugh.
Damian, to his own horror, found it charming.
“No,” he said, for the third time that morning. “The mint does not require a perimeter defense.”
“You said it spreads aggressively.”
“It is a plant.”
“Aggression must be contained.”
“You sound like Father discussing Jason.”
From the patio, Jason yelled, “Heard that!”
You looked toward him. “Should I apologise?”
“No.”
“Would that be weakness?”
“No. It would be unnecessary.”
You considered this with grave seriousness. Then turned back to the mint.
Gardening taught what combat could not.
Patience without ambush. Care without reward. Failure without punishment.
You planted things that did not grow. You planted things that grew crooked. You forgot the names of flowers and became quietly furious when Damian remembered them all.
“You speak many languages,” he said one afternoon as you knelt beside a tray of seedlings.
“Yes.”
“For missions?”
“Yes.”
Damian handed you a small marker labelled in Arabic. “Then learn this one for the lavender.”
You stared. “That is inefficient.”
“It is beautiful.”
“Beauty is not necessary.”
“Says who?”
You frowned.
He waited.
No answer came that belonged to you. Only ghosts.
Damian tapped the plant marker.
“Lavender. English. Arabic. French. Japanese. Spanish. Not because you need them for targets. Because things may have many names and remain themselves.”
You looked at the seedlings. “What is my name?”
Damian went very still.
You had told them what the Order called you. It was not a name. It was a designation. A syllable-number combination that made Jason so angry he had to leave the room.
Your birth name had not yet been found.
Tim was searching. Bruce was searching. Oracle was searching. Half the Justice League could probably have been searching if Damian had allowed Clark to involve himself, which he had not.
“We do not know yet,” Damian said carefully.
You nodded as if this confirmed something.
Damian hated that nod.
“But we will,” he said.
“And if you do not?”
“Then you may choose one.”
Your eyes snapped to his. “Choose?”
“Yes.”
“Names are given.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes they are reclaimed. Sometimes they are built.”
You looked down at the lavender. “What did you build?”
The question was soft enough to be accidental.
Damian thought of Robin. Of Wayne. Of al Ghul. Of Son. Of Demon. Of every title that had been placed on him like armor or chains.
“Damian,” he said.
“That was given.”
“Yes. But I had to decide what it meant.”
You touched the lavender leaf with one careful finger.
“What does it mean?”
Damian’s throat tightened.
He looked across the garden where Titus chased Ace with undignified joy, where Bat-Cow grazed peacefully near the fence, where the Manor rose behind them not like a fortress, but like a house stubbornly trying to become a home.
“I am still deciding,” he said.
You nodded.
This time, it felt less like obedience.
You bonded with Bat-Cow before anyone understood it was happening.
Titus was obvious. Titus loved with the blunt force of a battering ram. He followed you from room to room, shoved his head under your hand, and once physically blocked Bruce from approaching too quickly when you had gone silent after a nightmare.
Bruce had looked at the dog, then at Damian.
Damian had said, “He has excellent judgment.”
Bruce had not argued.
But Bat-Cow was different. She was patient.
Huge. Gentle. Unbothered by the human tendency toward melodrama. She did not demand. She did not startle. She simply existed in the field, warm and breathing, chewing grass while the world failed to end.
You began standing near the fence.
Then sitting. Then reading in the grass while Bat-Cow grazed nearby.
One evening, Damian found you leaning against her side, one hand resting on her neck, eyes half-closed.
He stopped at the gate.
You opened your eyes immediately.
“Do not move,” he said.
You went rigid.
He winced.
“Not as an order. I mean—you are comfortable.”
This seemed to confuse you more. “I am not asleep.”
“I did not say you were.”
“I was only resting my eyes.”
Damian blinked.
That was a Drake sentence.
Deeply concerning.
He entered the field and sat a few feet away.
Bat-Cow glanced at him, decided he had no snacks, and returned to grazing.
After a while, you said, “She is not afraid of anything.”
“She is afraid of thunderstorms.”
You looked shocked. “She is large.”
“Size does not prevent fear.”
You absorbed that. “Does she fight?”
“No.”
“Then how does she survive?”
Damian looked at the cow.
Then at you.
“She is protected.”
You were quiet for a very long time. “By you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she is family.”
Your fingers curled in Bat-Cow’s fur. “Can something be family if it is not useful?”
Damian closed his eyes briefly.
There were days he wanted to resurrect every instructor who had harmed you just to bury them properly afterward.
“Yes,” he said.
You leaned more fully against Bat-Cow.
“Good,” you whispered.
He did not ask what you meant.
He knew.
Softness did not arrive like sunrise.
It came like a stray cat.
Suspicious. Unannounced. Likely to bite if approached incorrectly.
You began asking questions.
Not mission questions.
Worse.
Normal ones.
“What is a cartoon?”
Damian froze.
Dick, across the room, gasped like he had been waiting his entire life for this.
“No,” Damian said immediately.
Dick pointed at him. “You don’t even know what I’m going to suggest.”
“Scooby Do is forbidden.”
“You’re no fun.”
“It is propaganda.”
“It is comedy.”
“It is slander.”
You looked between them. “Is a cartoon a weapon?”
Jason lost it.
Damian chose nature documentaries for your first exposure to television. This was deemed “on brand” by Stephanie, who was no longer permitted in the media room unsupervised.
You watched a documentary about migratory birds with intense focus.
At the end, you said, “They leave and return.”
“Yes,” Damian said.
“By choice?”
“Yes.”
You nodded.
Then asked to watch another.
That became routine.
Gardening in the morning. School lessons with Tim or Duke. Therapy, which you called “verbal interrogation” until Leslie gently informed you that interrogations did not usually include colouring pencils. Animal care with Damian. Documentaries at night.
Sometimes art.
That was Damian’s doing.
He gave you charcoal first.
You held it like a blade. He corrected your grip without touching you.
“Like this.”
You stared at his hand. “Why?”
“You cannot draw with a fist.”
“I can.”
“Badly.”
That earned him a glare.
The first thing you drew was Titus.
Not well. His head was too large, his legs too short, and his expression somehow judgmental.
Damian framed it.
You were appalled.
“It is inaccurate.”
“It is expressive.”
“It is bad.”
“You are beginning.”
“Beginning is failure.”
“Beginning is beginning.”
You scowled.
He hung it in his room.
You pretended not to care.
Then you began drawing more.
Animals first. Titus. Bat-Cow. Ace. Alfred the cat. A robin on the garden wall. Then plants. Lavender. Mint. A tomato vine with “aggressive tendencies” written beneath it.
Then, one day, you drew Damian.
He found the sketch tucked into a gardening book.
It was rough. Too angular. His eyes were too severe.
Accurate, then.
But beside him, you had drawn Titus leaning against his leg.
At the bottom, in careful handwriting, you had written:
Damian. Not instructor. Safe.
He sat on the floor of his room for twenty minutes and did not move.
When Jason found him, he took one look at the paper and immediately backed away.
“Nope,” Jason said. “I’m not emotionally prepared for whatever face you’re making.”
“Leave.”
“Gladly.”
“Do not tell anyone.”
Jason paused.
Then, more gently, “Wouldn’t dream of it, kid.”
Damian did not correct him.
The Order came for you in the third month.
Men who made children into weapons did not tolerate escape. Not because they loved what they lost, but because possession disguised itself as principle.
They came at night, through the south woods, dressed in black and arrogance.
They expected a frightened child.
They found the Batfamily.
It was not a long fight.
Damian reached their leader first.
The man recognised him.
That was his mistake.
“Blood of the Demon,” the man said, smiling through a split lip. “You understand what the child is.”
Damian’s sword hovered near the man’s throat.
Behind him, Cass moved like silence through bone. Jason reloaded with unnecessary menace. Bruce stood between the intruders and the house. Dick’s escrima sticks sparked blue in the rain.
At the manor window, you stood with Titus pressed against your side and Duke beside you like daylight given human form.
Damian did not look back.
“No,” he said. “I understand what was done to them.”
The man laughed. “A blade does not become a flower because it is placed in a garden.”
Damian’s eyes went cold. “They made me a blade too.”
The man’s smile widened. “And yet here you are. Still sharp.”
Damian stepped closer.
For one second, every old lesson lifted its head.
End the threat. Make an example. Prove what you are.
Then he heard Titus bark from the window. One loud, furious sound.
Damian breathed.
“I am sharp,” he said. “But I choose where to point.”
He struck the man unconscious with the hilt of his sword.
When the fight was over, Bruce came to stand beside him.
“You okay?”
Damian looked toward the window.
You were still there, small and pale and unblinking.
“No,” he said.
Bruce nodded. “Will be?”
Damian hated how much gentler his father had become with questions.
“I am still deciding,” he said.
Bruce’s mouth softened. “Okay.”
Inside, you did not ask if you were being sent back.
That almost made it worse.
You simply stood in the hall as the family returned, wrapped in a blanket you did not seem to notice, and waited.
Damian approached slowly.
“They will not take you,” he said.
Your face remained blank. “They attempted.”
“They failed.”
“They may try again.”
“They may.”
You looked up at him. “If I had been armed—”
“No.”
“I could have helped.”
“No.”
“I know their methods.”
“So do I.”
“I am not helpless.”
“I know.”
Your voice rose, not much, but enough to crack. “Then why must I stand behind glass while others fight for me?”
Damian felt every eye in the hall turn toward them. He did not care.
“Because you are not a tribute owed to violence,” he said.
You flinched as if the words struck.
He lowered his voice.
“You were not rescued so you could return to the battlefield in different colours.”
Your throat bobbed.
“I was afraid,” you whispered.
Damian stepped closer. “I know.”
“I hated it.”
“I know.”
“I wanted a weapon.”
“I know.”
“What do I do instead?”
There was the question.
Not what order should I follow. Not how do I win. What do I do with fear if I cannot turn it into blood?
Damian, who had spent years answering that badly, looked down at you and chose the truth.
“You hold Titus,” he said. “You breathe. You tell someone. You remember that fear is not failure.”
Your eyes filled with tears.
You seemed horrified by them.
Damian opened his arms. Awkwardly. Like someone holding a fragile device with no instructions.
You stared at him.
Then stepped forward and pressed your face into his shirt.
You did not sob. Not at first.
You stood there, rigid, shaking silently while his arms closed around you with extreme care.
Then the sound came.
Small. Broken. Childlike.
The hall went very quiet.
Damian held you.
He looked over your head at his family, daring any of them to react incorrectly.
No one did.
Even Jason turned away, wiping at his face like the ceiling had attacked him.
The first time you laughed, Damian threatened three people in under ten seconds.
It happened because of Titus. Naturally.
Damian had been teaching you how to brush him properly, which was less a lesson and more an exercise in managing one hundred pounds of dramatic dog. Titus flopped onto his back in the grass, legs in the air, tongue lolling.
You stared down at him. “He has surrendered.”
“He wants belly scratches.”
“Is that not surrender?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
You crouched cautiously and touched his stomach.
Titus made a ridiculous groaning noise of bliss.
You froze.
Then it happened.
A laugh.
Small, startled, bright.
Gone almost immediately, like a bird darting from one branch to another.
But real.
Damian’s entire body locked.
From the patio, Dick gasped.
Stephanie whispered, “Oh my God.”
Jason said, “Don’t make it weird.”
Damian turned with lethal slowness. “All of you will be silent.”
“We didn’t say anything,” Dick said, eyes suspiciously wet.
“You breathed emotionally.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“It will be.”
You looked up at him, confused. “Did I do something wrong?”
Damian turned back so fast he nearly tripped over Titus.
“No.”
“Then why are they strange?”
“They are always strange.”
“Should they be corrected?”
Jason made a choking sound.
Damian pointed at him without looking. “Todd.”
Jason raised both hands.
You looked between them.
Then your mouth twitched.
Not a full laugh this time.
But close.
Damian would have fought gods for that almost.
Instead, he handed you the brush.
“Continue,” he said.
You brushed Titus with grave concentration.
Titus wagged his tail like a metronome of joy.
Your name was found in winter.
Not the Order’s designation.
Yours.
A birth record from a village long forgotten. Parents dead in a raid linked to the Order. No living relatives found. A name given before anyone had tried to turn you into silence.
Tim brought the file to the garden room, where you were painting lavender badly and Damian was pretending not to hover.
You read the name once.
Then again.
Your hand trembled.
Damian watched you carefully.
“You do not have to use it,” he said.
You looked at him. “It is mine?”
“Yes.”
“Before?”
“Yes.”
You looked back at the paper. The name sat there, small and enormous.
A life before knives. A self before orders.
“Say it,” you whispered.
Damian did. Carefully. Correctly. Like it mattered.
Because it did.
Your face crumpled.
Not in fear.
In grief.
Damian moved to kneel in front of you.
You held the file against your chest.
“I had a name,” you said.
“Yes.”
“They took it.”
“Yes.”
“Can I have it back?”
The question nearly undid him.
Damian placed one hand over his heart, an old gesture from a language both of you knew and were trying to survive.
“Yes,” he said. “If you choose it.”
You cried then.
Openly. Messily.
Like a child.
Damian held you while you shook, while Titus pressed against both of you, while Tim stood in the doorway pretending he had allergies and failing with disgraceful lack of subtlety.
Later, you asked to write the name yourself.
Damian gave you his best ink pen.
You wrote it on paper. Then on a plant marker. Then, with solemn dignity, on Titus’s collar tag beneath his own name, because you claimed he was “the first to accept your presence.”
Damian did not argue.
Titus wore it proudly.
Months became a year.
You grew. Not much, but enough that your clothes had to be replaced, and Jason complained loudly about “kids having subscription-based skeletons.”
You went to school part-time, then more. You learned multiplication and modern history and that cartoons were not weapons, though Damian still maintained some were crimes. You discovered you liked mangoes, hated oatmeal, enjoyed astronomy, and had a deeply concerning talent for chess.
You still had nightmares. You still went silent sometimes. You still asked permission when startled.
But less.
You began saying no.
The first time, it was to Dick offering a hug.
“No,” you said, then froze in horror.
Dick smiled like you had handed him the moon.
“Okay. Fist bump?”
A pause.
“Acceptable.”
Damian watched from across the room and pretended not to feel his chest split open with pride.
You said no to food you disliked. No to rooms that felt too small. No to discussing the Order when you were tired. No to Bruce’s suggestion that you try lacrosse, which Damian considered evidence of excellent judgment.
One afternoon, in the garden, you said no to Damian.
He was correcting your Arabic pronunciation on a flower name.
You frowned and said, “No. I like how I say it.”
Damian blinked.
You went still.
He looked at you for a long second.
Then nodded.
“Very well.”
Your shoulders lowered.
You returned to painting the plant pot.
Damian looked away so you would not see his expression.
Pride was a strange thing.
It hurt more than he expected.
The Robin suit came up only once.
You were older by then. Still a child, but less newly rescued, less hollow around the eyes. You had begun asking about the family’s work with the detached curiousity of someone who understood boundaries but liked testing the fence for structural integrity.
Damian found you in the Cave, standing before the Robin memorial case.
His old colours. Others’ colours too.
A legacy made of flight, grief, defiance, and children who should have been sleeping instead of bleeding.
“You should not be down here alone,” he said.
You did not startle. That was progress of a different kind.
“I know.”
He came to stand beside you.
You looked at the suit. “Were you happy?”
Damian inhaled slowly. “As Robin?”
“Yes.”
“At times.”
“Were you safe?”
“No.”
You nodded. “Did it help you?”
He considered lying.
Then chose not to.
“Yes.”
“Did it hurt you?”
“Yes.”
You looked up at him. “Would you have stopped, if someone told you no?”
Damian almost smiled. “No.”
“Then why do you tell me no?”
“Because you are not me.”
Your gaze returned to the suit.
For a long time, the Cave hummed around them.
Then you said, “I used to want it.”
His chest tightened. “The suit?”
“The meaning.”
Damian understood.
Of course he did.
Robin meant belonging, once. Robin meant proof that the darkness had chosen you and you had survived it. Robin meant you were not just a victim of violence, but someone who could answer it.
“I thought if I became that, I would be clean,” you said.
Damian turned toward you. “Clean?”
You touched your own wrist. “Not Order. Not weapon. Something else.”
Damian’s voice softened. “You are already something else.”
“I know that now.”
The words moved through him like sunlight through glass.
You looked up. “I do not want to be Robin.”
Damian’s breath left him.
You tilted your head. “You look strange.”
“I do not.”
“You do. Your eyes are wet.”
“Allergies.”
“You told Tim that excuse was dishonourable.”
“It is different when I use it.”
“That seems hypocritical.”
“You are becoming very bold.”
You smiled.
A real one. Small but certain.
Damian looked at you in front of the Robin suit and felt the old world loosen its grip on both of you.
“They made me a blade,” you said quietly.
He went still.
“But you did not sharpen me.”
“No,” Damian said.
“You planted me.”
The words struck so deeply he could not answer.
You seemed embarrassed immediately.
“That was metaphorical.”
“I understood.”
“Do not tell Grayson. He will cry.”
“He cries when commercials contain elderly dogs.”
“Jason too.”
“Jason will deny it.”
“Tim will document it.”
“Stephanie will make shirts.”
“Cassandra will know already.”
You both stood in solemn silence, contemplating the horror of family.
Then you slipped your hand into his.
It was not the desperate grip of the child in the greenhouse.
Not obedience. Not fear.
Choice.
Damian closed his fingers around yours.
Together, you left the Cave.
Above, the Manor was loud.
Jason was arguing with Duke about takeout. Stephanie was laughing. Dick was singing badly on purpose. Bruce was pretending not to enjoy any of it. Titus barked when he heard your footsteps, and you quickened yours despite pretending you did not.
At the top of the stairs, you paused.
“Damian?”
“Yes?”
“Tomorrow, may we plant more lavender?”
He looked at you.
At the child who had once asked permission to eat.
At the child who now asked for tomorrow like it belonged to them.
“Yes,” he said.
Then, because he could, because tenderness no longer felt like defeat, he added, “And after, we can watch the bird documentary you like.”
Your face lit for half a second before you controlled it.
Not fast enough.
Damian saw.
He would keep seeing. That was the point.
You walked into the noise of the family ahead of him, Titus crashing into you with joyful abandon, Bat-Cow lowing from outside as if offended she had not been included.
You laughed. Openly this time.
No one commented.
They had learned.
Damian stood at the threshold and watched you vanish into warmth.
Not a Robin. Not a soldier. Not an heir to anyone’s war.
A child with dirt beneath your fingernails, lavender on your sleeve, a dog at your side, and a name you had chosen to keep.
A child alive in a house that had once trained weapons and now, impossibly, grew gardens.
Damian Wayne, son of the Bat, grandson of the Demon, once a blade himself, followed you inside and shut the door gently behind him.
request batfam who meet kids that remind them of their past selves | part 2 here as i ran out of blocks :/
characters bruce wayne here, dick grayson here, jason todd here, tim drake here, damian wayne here, duke thomas here, stephanie brown here, cassandra cain here
content batfam x platonic! child reader, gender neutral! reader, orphan!reader
Tim found you in the WayneTech server room at 3:17 in the morning. Not near the server room. Not trying to access the server room.
Inside the server room.
You were sitting cross-legged on the floor between two humming data towers, a laptop balanced on your knees, a half-eaten protein bar beside you, three camera lenses spread out like surgical tools, and a WayneTech security badge clipped crookedly to your hoodie.
The badge had Tim’s face on it. Badly printed. Pixelated, slightly stretched, and laminated with what appeared to be packing tape.
For three full seconds, Tim just stared. Then he said, “That is not regulation.”
You looked up.
You did not scream. That was the first problem. Children caught breaking into restricted corporate infrastructure at three in the morning were supposed to scream. Or panic. Or run. At minimum, they were supposed to look guilty.
You only blinked at him with dry, tired eyes and said, “Your badge photo is outdated.”
Tim’s brain made a quiet dial-up noise. He knew you. Not well. Not in any way that should have involved felony-grade trespassing. But he knew you in the way wealthy Gotham families knew each other’s children: through galas, fundraisers, charity brunches, and adult conversations that treated children as furniture with report cards.
Your parents were friends with his parents. Or had been. 'Friends' in the Drake family sense, which meant mutual investments, holiday cards, and the occasional dinner where everyone pretended emotional intimacy was a tax bracket.
Tim remembered you smaller, maybe seven, standing silently beside your mother at a Wayne Foundation auction while adults discussed art you were not allowed to touch. You had been wearing formal shoes that looked uncomfortable and holding a book upside down because, he realised now, you had probably been watching people instead of reading.
Now you were ten, maybe eleven, too pale under fluorescent lights, hair messy from hours of focused neglect, eyes bright with the particular fever of someone who had confused exhaustion with enlightenment.
Tim knew that fever. He had practically majored in it.
“Why,” Tim said carefully, “are you in my server room?”
You frowned. “Technically, it belongs to WayneTech.”
“I’m CEO.”
“Interim CEO.”
Tim stared at you. You stared back. Somewhere behind him, a server fan whirred louder, like even the machine was stressed.
“Okay,” Tim said. “We’re going to start over.”
“Good. You started badly.”
“Wow.”
“You asked the wrong question.”
“What should I have asked?”
“How I got in.”
Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. It was too early for this. Or too late. Both.
“How did you get in?”
You looked pleased. “Your night security shift rotates every forty-two minutes, but the east service corridor camera has a four-second lag when it switches to infrared. The elevator requires a badge, but the stairwell only requires a badge above floor twelve. The badge scanner accepts static credentials from older contractor cards because someone forgot to update the firmware after the south wing renovation. Also, your janitorial staff props the freight door open for smoke breaks.”
Tim went very still. “That’s concerning.”
“I know. I wrote it down.”
“Of course you did.”
“I can send you the report.”
“You made a report?”
You turned your laptop toward him. Tim saw folders. So many folders.
WayneTech Security Vulnerabilities. Gotham Patrol Movement Analysis. Signal Daylight Route Probability. Red Hood Non-Lethal Incident Patterns. Nightwing Blüdhaven Cross-Reference. Robin Height Discrepancy, Current. Batman Identity Confidence: 94.7%.
Tim’s blood went cold.
Not because you were wrong. Because you were right. Mostly. The Batman folder had Bruce’s name underlined twice. The Red Robin folder had his. The Nightwing folder had Dick’s, with a sticky note attached to the screen that read: Acrobatics + smile + butt = obvious.
Tim closed his eyes. Dick would never recover if he saw that.
You tilted your head. “You look upset.”
“Upset is one word.”
“Impressed?”
“Horrified.”
Your mouth flattened. That was interesting.
Not offended. Disappointed. Like you had expected praise and received a weather report.
Tim crouched slowly, keeping his hands visible. “Have you eaten today?”
Your expression went blank in the way very smart children went blank when adults asked the question they had been avoiding. “I had a protein bar.”
“That one?”
You glanced at the half-eaten bar beside you. “Yes.”
“That’s not today. That’s right now.”
“Time is a construct.”
“Food is not.”
“I was busy.”
Tim felt something inside him twist sharply. There it was. Not the server breach. Not the identity files. Not the forged badge.
That. The casual dismissal of your own body as if it was a badly performing accessory. He sounded like that at thirteen. At seventeen. Last week.
Tim stood. “Pack up.”
Your eyes narrowed. “No.”
“No?”
“I’m not done.”
“You are very done.”
“I haven’t shown you the best part.”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
You spun the laptop back around and clicked into another folder. “I have a theory about the Batmobile tyre tread distribution that proves—”
“Nope.”
Tim shut your laptop. You gasped like he had slapped a manuscript out of your hands. “That was unsaved!”
“Was it?”
“No.”
“Then we’re fine.”
You clutched the laptop to your chest. “You can’t just dismiss my research.”
Tim looked at the fake badge. The camera lenses. The dark circles beneath your eyes. The tremor in your hands from caffeine or hunger or both.
“I’m not dismissing your research,” he said. “I’m removing a sleep-deprived child from a server room before they get arrested, electrocuted, or adopted by the wrong billionaire.”
You squinted at him. “Is the wrong billionaire Bruce Wayne?”
Tim sighed. “You’re terrifying.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“I disagree.”
You refused the car. That lasted until Tim pointed out it was raining and you were wearing canvas shoes with a hole near the toe. Then you refused the front seat. That lasted until Tim told you the back doors had child locks and watched your whole face go mutinous.
“Relax,” he said. “I’m kidding.”
“That wasn’t funny.”
“It was a little funny.”
“It was authoritarian.”
“You broke into my workplace.”
“For science.”
“For vigilantism-adjacent stalking.”
You looked out the window. “I prefer independent investigation.”
“I prefer not calling CPS at four in the morning, but we all make sacrifices.”
Your head snapped toward him. For the first time that night, you looked genuinely scared. Tim’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. There it was again. The trapdoor beneath the brilliance.
“Hey,” he said, voice softening. “I’m not calling anyone tonight. I’m taking you home, making sure you get inside safely, and then we are going to have a longer conversation when you’ve slept.”
“I’m not tired.”
“You have blinked once in four minutes.”
“That’s genetic.”
“No, that’s alarming.”
You crossed your arms.
The city moved past in wet neon streaks. Gotham at night looked like someone had spilt ink over a jewellery box. Beautiful, if you ignored the teeth.
Tim glanced at you. “You know who I am.”
“You’re Timothy Drake-Wayne.”
“Try again.”
Your mouth pressed into a thin line. “Red Robin.”
Hearing it from you made something inside him recoil. Not because it was dangerous, though it was. Not because it was impressive, though annoyingly, it was that too. Because you said it like an answer on a test. Not like a secret that could get people killed.
“How long?” he asked.
“Which identity?”
“Mine.”
“Eight months.”
Tim’s soul left his body, saw the traffic, and decided not to return. “Eight months?”
“Batman took longer. He has better misdirection.”
“I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.”
“Nightwing was easiest.”
“Naturally.”
“Red Hood was hardest.”
“Do not tell him that. He’ll make it weird.”
“He already is weird.”
Tim made a small, helpless sound. “Why?” he asked.
You blinked. “Because the data was there.”
“No. Why look?”
You turned back to the window. For a while, he thought you would not answer.
Then you said, “I saw you at the museum gala last year.”
Tim remembered that gala vaguely. Bad champagne. A Riddler threat. Bruce pretending not to limp. Damian insulting a senator’s son in Arabic.
“You left through the east hallway at 9:42,” you continued. “Red Robin appeared six blocks away at 9:51. Your tie was gone when you came back.”
Tim said nothing.
“At first I thought it was a coincidence. Then I checked more events.”
“Of course you did.”
“Then I noticed Dick Grayson always leaves before Nightwing sightings in Gotham.”
“Dick has never once been subtle in his life.”
“And Bruce Wayne’s public injuries match Batman’s reported injuries with a delay pattern.”
Tim exhaled.
You finally looked at him. “No one else noticed.”
Tim knew what you meant.
Not “no one else solved it.”
No one else noticed you noticing.
Your parents had not. Your teachers had not. The other adults at those events had not. You had found the biggest secret in Gotham because you were a lonely kid with a camera, a calendar, and no bedtime anyone enforced.
Tim knew that shape of loneliness so intimately it made him nauseous.
“It felt good,” you admitted.
“What did?”
“Knowing something true.”
That hit a little too hard.
Tim drove in silence for the rest of the block.
Your house was huge. Not Wayne huge, but Gotham old-money huge. Stone steps. Iron gate. Windows glowing with security lights instead of warmth.
No one was waiting up. No one called when you opened the door. No one seemed to know you had been gone.
Tim stood on the porch beside you, rain dripping from his hair, anger starting low in his chest.
“You have a key?” he asked.
You gave him a look. “Obviously.”
“Do your parents know you were out?”
“They’re in Geneva.”
Tim went still. “For how long?”
“Three weeks.”
“Who’s staying with you?”
You shrugged. “The housekeeper comes during the day. Sometimes.”
“You’re alone?”
“I’m capable.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
You looked tired suddenly. Younger. “I like being alone.”
Tim heard himself in the lie.
No, worse. He heard what he used to say before anyone asked enough times to make the answer change.
“You shouldn’t be alone for three weeks,” he said.
“I’m not a baby.”
“You’re ten.”
“Eleven.”
“When?”
“Two months.”
“Then you’re ten.”
“You’re pedantic.”
“You’re unsupervised.”
“You’re deflecting.”
Tim stared.
God, this was what he sounded like.
No wonder everyone had headaches.
You shifted the laptop bag higher on your shoulder. “Are you going to tell them?”
“Your parents?”
You flinched, barely.
Tim saw it anyway.
There was history there. Not violence, he thought. Not the kind that left bruises.
Neglect had its own fingerprints. The blank dinner table. The quiet house. The child who learned schedules because no one gave them one. The kid who became brilliant because brilliance was a room with a lock.
“Not tonight,” Tim said.
You relaxed by one millimetre.
“But I’m not ignoring this.”
Your face closed. “Of course.”
“That is not a threat.”
“Adults always say that before doing threatening things.”
Tim opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
Fair.
He took out his phone. “Here.”
You eyed it. “What?”
“My number.”
“I already have it.”
Tim looked at the sky. “Why did I ask?”
“Also your burner number.”
“Please stop helping.”
“And your Red Robin emergency channel.”
Tim turned to you slowly.
You looked almost smug. Exhausted, too pale, alone in a mansion with a fake badge in your pocket and Gotham’s vigilante identities in your laptop.
But smug.
Tim pointed at you. “We are going to discuss boundaries.”
“Sounds fake.”
“Tomorrow. After food and sleep.”
“I have school.”
“Do you go?”
You hesitated.
Tim’s jaw tightened.
“Tomorrow,” he repeated.
You unlocked the door.
Before slipping inside, you looked back.
“You’re not mad?”
Tim considered lying.
“I am extremely mad.”
Your face flickered.
“Not because you figured it out,” he said. “Because you could have gotten hurt.”
Your brows pulled together like that did not compute.
Then you said, “I don’t get hurt.”
Tim felt very old. “That’s not how bodies work.”
You looked at him for a moment longer.
Then you vanished inside and closed the door.
Tim stood on the porch until he saw a light turn on upstairs.
Then he called Bruce.
Bruce answered on the second ring, voice rough with sleep or Batman. “Tim?”
“I found a tiny me,” Tim said.
Silence.
Then Bruce said, “Explain.”
“They broke into WayneTech, identified most of us, haven’t eaten since yesterday, are alone in their house for three weeks, and corrected my corporate title.”
Another silence.
Then Bruce sighed.
“Oh.”
“Don’t ‘oh’ me. This is bad.”
“I wasn’t disagreeing.”
“They’re ten.”
“Eleven soon?”
Tim froze.
“Bruce.”
“I’ve had this conversation before.”
“No,” Tim said, starting toward his car. “That is exactly what I’m afraid of.”
Everyone reacted wrong.
Universally. Spectacularly.
Dick looked at your files and said, “Aw.”
Tim stared at him. “Aw?”
“They made a corkboard.”
“That is not adorable. That is a cry for help with pushpins.”
Dick zoomed in on one of your photos. “They got my good side.”
“They labelled you ‘Acrobatics + smile + butt = obvious.’”
Dick paused.
Then grinned. “They’re not wrong.”
Jason laughed so hard he nearly choked. “Tiny Tim’s got teeth.”
“Stop calling them Tiny Tim.”
“That kid is literally you but funnier.”
“I was funny.”
The room went silent.
Steph patted his shoulder. “Sure, babe.”
Cass, who had been quietly scrolling through the files, looked up and signed, Lonely.
That cut through the teasing.
Tim’s irritation drained into something colder.
“Yes,” he said. “Very.”
Damian glanced at the screen with narrowed eyes. “Their methods are undisciplined.”
“They’re ten.”
“I was competent at ten.”
“You were raised by assassins.”
“And?”
Duke leaned back in his chair. “So what’s the plan?”
“Plan?” Tim echoed.
Bruce watched him carefully from across the Cave.
That look made Tim want to climb the nearest wall.
“Yes,” Duke said. “Because you’ve got the face.”
“What face?”
“The I’m-about-to-overcorrect-because-this-is-personal face.”
“I do not have a face.”
“You have many faces,” Damian said. “Most are irritating.”
Tim ignored him.
Bruce folded his hands. “What do you want to do?”
Tim looked at the files again.
The photos were good. Too good. Taken from rooftops, gala balconies, through reflections in glass. You had tracked patrol routes, injury patterns, absence windows, public schedules. You had done what Tim had done.
You had found Batman.
Not because someone trained you.
Because no one stopped you.
Tim remembered being thirteen, standing in Wayne Manor with evidence and desperation, telling Dick Grayson that Batman needed a Robin. He remembered thinking he was being rational. Necessary. Brave.
Now, looking at your work, all he could think was: Why did no one take my camera away and make me sleep?
“I don’t want them anywhere near the field,” Tim said.
Jason snorted. “Good luck.”
Tim’s head snapped up.
Jason raised his hands. “Not saying you’re wrong. Saying kids like that don’t stop because you say no. They just get better at hiding.”
“I know.”
He did.
That was the problem. He knew exactly how you would lie. How you would reroute. How you would use adult underestimation like a skeleton key. How you would call self-destruction research and malnutrition focus.
He knew because all his coping mechanisms had apparently unionised and become a child.
Bruce’s voice was quiet. “Tim.”
Tim did not look at him.
“I’m not giving them Robin,” he said.
No one spoke.
“Or Red Robin. Or Oracle-lite. Or whatever name they come up with after three sleepless nights and a thesaurus. I’m not validating this just because it’s impressive.”
“It is impressive,” Dick said softly.
“I know,” Tim snapped.
Then he stopped. Breathed.
“I know,” he said again, quieter. “That’s what makes it dangerous.”
Cass nodded once.
Bruce’s expression shifted. Something like regret. Something like recognition.
Tim looked at him then. Really looked.
“Is this what I looked like?” he asked.
Bruce did not answer quickly enough.
Tim laughed once, hollow. “Great.”
“You were older.”
“Not by enough.”
“You had support.”
“Eventually.”
Bruce absorbed that.
Tim did not regret Robin. Not exactly. His life was a series of impossible equations that still somehow balanced. Robin had saved him. Given him family. Purpose. A place to put all the watching, all the wanting, all the fear that no one was steering the ship.
But he had also been a child who believed his value came from being useful.
And now there was you.
Hungry. Brilliant. Alone. Waiting for someone to say your skills made the rest acceptable.
Tim would not be that someone.
He arrived at your house the next afternoon with groceries, three folders, and a level of determination usually reserved for dismantling criminal networks.
You opened the door, took one look at him, and said, “No.”
“Hello to you too.”
“I’m busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Homework.”
Tim looked at you. You looked back.
He lifted one eyebrow.
You scowled. “Fine. Not homework.”
“I brought food.”
“I have food.”
“You have condiments and coffee creamer.”
“That’s food-adjacent.”
“I’m staging an intervention.”
“Do I get a lawyer?”
“You get a sandwich.”
You considered this. “What kind?”
“Turkey.”
“Cheese?”
“Yes.”
“Chips?”
“Yes.”
“Dessert?”
“Apple.”
“That’s not dessert. That’s produce propaganda.”
Tim sighed and lifted a small bakery box.
Your eyes locked onto it.
“Brownies,” he said.
You stepped aside. “Temporarily.”
“Of course.”
The inside of your house was museum-quiet. Polished floors. Art on the walls. No clutter except yours, which had colonised the dining room table with maps, printed photos, string, sticky notes, and a corkboard so intense it looked one lightning strike away from sentience.
Tim stopped in front of it.
There he was.
There they all were.
Batman. Nightwing. Red Hood. Red Robin. Robin. Spoiler. Orphan. Signal.
Public appearances connected to patrol sightings. Injury correlations. Height estimates. Voice analysis notes. You had even included a section titled Possible Emotional Motives, which was both wildly invasive and, in several places, offensively accurate.
Under Tim’s photo, you had written: compulsion toward usefulness; high caffeine dependency; likely abandonment issues; sleep deficit compromises judgment.
Tim stared.
You followed his gaze.
Then winced. “That one’s old.”
“It was printed yesterday.”
“Old emotionally.”
He turned to you.
You had the decency to look slightly guilty.
“Sandwich first,” he said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re shaking.”
“That’s caffeine.”
Caffeine at ten-years-old? What the hell.
“That’s not better.”
You sat at the kitchen island with the resentful stiffness of a prisoner of war.
Tim put the sandwich in front of you.
You stared at it like it might ask you for vulnerability.
“I’m not helpless,” you said.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You brought food.”
“Because you keep not eating it.”
“I forget.”
“I know.”
“I’m working.”
“I know.”
“You do it too.”
Tim went still.
You looked up at him, sharp and challenging.
“You skip meals. You drink too much coffee. You stay up for days. You get focused and everyone calls you dedicated.”
“People also call me a disaster.”
“Still. You get to be useful.”
There it was. The raw nerve beneath everything.
Tim sat across from you.
For once, he chose not to deflect.
“You’re right,” he said.
You blinked.
“I do those things. And people have enabled it because my work helps them. Because sometimes the case gets solved. Because sometimes the city gets saved. Because I’m good at turning self-neglect into results.”
Your face shifted, confusion breaking through the defensiveness.
Tim leaned forward. “That doesn’t make it healthy. It just means I got rewarded for being unwell.”
You looked down at the sandwich. “I’m not unwell.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You implied it.”
“I’m saying the way you’re living is not sustainable.”
“I’m fine.”
“Fine is not a lifestyle.”
“It’s worked so far.”
“So has duct tape in airplane repairs, probably. Doesn’t mean I’m boarding.”
Your mouth twitched.
You crushed it immediately.
Tim pushed the plate a little closer.
“Eat half.”
“Bossy.”
“Observant.”
“I could expose all of you.”
Tim’s expression did not change.
That surprised you.
“I know,” he said.
“And?”
“And if you wanted to, you would have already.”
Your eyes narrowed. “Maybe I’m waiting.”
“You’re not.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know patterns.”
That made you freeze.
Tim softened.
“You didn’t do this because you wanted to hurt us,” he said. “You did it because solving the mystery made you feel less alone.”
Your face went very still.
Too still.
Tim recognised that too. The moment someone gets too close to the actual wound.
He did not push.
Instead, he opened one of the folders he had brought and slid it across the counter.
You looked suspiciously at it. “What’s that?”
“Options.”
“Legal options?”
“Healthy options.”
“Gross.”
“Yes, growth is humiliating. Open it.”
You did.
Inside was a list.
Robotics clubs. Academic competitions. A photography workshop. A cryptography puzzle league. A youth engineering program sponsored by WayneTech. A weekend detective game run by the library. Chess club. Science camp. A list of therapists who specialised in gifted children, anxiety, and neglect, though that page was tucked behind the others.
You stared.
Then your face hardened.
“I don’t need enrichment.”
“I know.”
“I’m not a bored rich kid.”
“I know.”
“Then why—”
“Because your brain needs somewhere to go that isn’t my secret identity.”
You shut the folder. “I can help.”
“You can help by being ten.”
“Eleven in two months.”
“By being ten and eleven in two months.”
“That’s not helping.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it isn’t! You all go out every night and risk your lives and I figured it out, okay? I figured it out by myself. That means I’m good enough.”
Tim’s chest hurt.
“No,” he said quietly. “It means you’re brilliant.”
You stopped.
His voice stayed gentle.
“You are brilliant. Your pattern work is excellent. Your photography is sharp. Your deductions are annoying because they’re mostly right. Your security report is better than some consultants we’ve paid actual money for.”
Despite yourself, you looked pleased.
Then Tim said, “And none of that means you should be a vigilante.”
Your face slammed shut.
“You’re just scared I’ll be better than you.”
Tim laughed.
Not mockingly. Just surprised.
“You might be.”
You blinked.
“That’s not the point either,” he said.
“Then what is?”
“The point is you deserve to become brilliant without bleeding for it.”
You looked away first.
Tim let the silence breathe.
Then he nudged the sandwich again.
This time, you ate.
Only a few bites at first. Then half. Then the whole thing, while pretending it was under protest.
Tim pretended to believe you.
The first week was war. Tiny, bureaucratic, emotionally constipated war.
You ignored Tim’s texts. So he texted your housekeeper and learned you had eaten cereal for dinner three nights in a row.
You blocked him. He emailed.
You filtered his emails. He sent a physical letter by courier that read: Drink water.
You taped it to the corkboard under a new section titled Red Robin Harassment Evidence.
He took a photo.
You threatened legal action.
He asked if that meant you had done your civics homework.
You called him a tyrant.
He replied, A hydrated tyrant. Drink water.
At the Manor, everyone found this hilarious.
Tim did not.
Mostly.
Steph was the worst.
“You’re parenting yourself,” she said one night, watching him assemble a care package with granola bars, electrolyte packets, and a beginner lockpicking set he removed after reconsidering morality.
“I’m not parenting.”
“You made a snack schedule.”
“It’s a cognitive performance support plan.”
“That is the most Tim Drake sentence ever committed to air.”
Dick peered into the bag. “Are those stickers?”
“They’re reward markers.”
“Stickers.”
“Fine. They’re stickers.”
Jason walked by, glanced in, and said, “Tiny Tim’s gonna eat you alive.”
“Stop calling them that.”
“Make me.”
Cass picked up one of the folders and looked at Tim.
You sleep? she signed.
Tim blinked. “What?”
She pointed at the care package. Then at him. You too.
“I sleep.”
Everyone in the room looked at him.
Tim scowled. “I sleep enough.”
“No, you don’t,” Duke said.
“I’m being cyberbullied in my own home.”
Bruce, who had been quietly reading in the corner, said, “They have a point.”
Tim betrayed himself by yawning.
The room erupted.
“Absolutely not,” he said.
Dick grinned. “Bedtime, Red Robin.”
“I’m an adult.”
“You’re acting weirdly like the sleep-deprived child you’re trying to help.”
That shut him up.
Tim looked at the care package. At the meal plan. At the reminder app he had programmed for you and then ignored when it pinged on his own phone.
Ah.
Horrible.
Personal growth had taken hold of him.
“Fine,” he said.
Jason cupped a hand around his ear. “What was that?”
“I hate you all.”
“Sounds like ‘fine.’”
Tim slept six hours that night out of spite.
Then texted you: I slept. Your turn.
You replied three hours later: Proof?
He sent a screenshot from his sleep tracker.
You sent back: Weak REM cycle. Embarrassing.
Tim smiled at his phone before he could stop himself.
Then immediately became concerned about that.
The second week, you broke into his apartment.
Tim came home from patrol to find you sitting at his kitchen table with your laptop, three empty juice boxes, and a notebook full of case theories.
He stopped in the doorway.
You looked up.
“Before you yell—”
“How did you get in?”
“You left your balcony access vulnerable.”
“I live on the twenty-third floor.”
“Yes.”
Tim stared.
You pointed at the notebook. “I found a connection between the Narrows robberies and the—”
“No.”
“You didn’t even look.”
“I don’t need to.”
“It’s good.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“So you admit—”
Tim took your laptop.
You shot to your feet. “Hey!”
“No casework.”
“You can’t just—”
“You broke into my apartment.”
“You break into places!”
“Yes,” Tim said. “And as someone with extensive experience, I can confirm it is bad.”
“That’s hypocrisy.”
“That is mentorship.”
“You’re not my mentor!”
“Correct. Mentors encourage career development. I am actively discouraging this.”
You looked like you wanted to bite him.
Tim set the laptop on the counter behind him.
“You climbed twenty-three floors?”
“Not all of them.”
“That answer concerns me more.”
“I used the fire escape for nineteen.”
Tim closed his eyes.
When he opened them, you had your arms crossed, chin up, ready for the fight.
But he saw the details.
The tremor in your legs. The redness around your eyes. The way your backpack was overstuffed, not with gear, but clothes.
Tim’s anger shifted.
“Why are you here?”
“To show you the case.”
“No.”
Your jaw tightened.
“Why are you here?” he asked again.
You looked away.
“Parents came home.”
Tim went still.
“They noticed your laptop missing?”
A hollow laugh. “No.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“No.”
He believed that.
Mostly.
“Did they yell?”
“No.”
“What then?”
You stared at his wall, blinking too fast.
“They didn’t notice me.”
Oh.
Tim had no clever response to that.
No strategy. No plan.
You swallowed. “They came home early. I was in the library. They talked to the housekeeper about dinner. Then they left again for some private event. My mom said she thought I was still at school.”
It was nearly midnight.
Tim’s hands curled slowly at his sides. “She thought you were at school at midnight?”
“She wasn’t listening.”
Your voice was flat.
That made it worse.
“I waited,” you said. “To see if they’d come say hi.”
Tim was very careful with his face. “How long?”
You shrugged. “Six hours.”
The apartment went silent.
You laughed suddenly, too bright. “Anyway, I solved your Narrows thing.”
Tim crossed the room and sat across from you.
You tensed.
He did not reach for you.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
You looked offended. “Why? You didn’t do it.”
“No. But I know what that feels like.”
Your eyes darted to his.
Tim held your gaze.
“My parents travelled a lot. I used to tell myself I liked the independence.”
“Did you?”
“Sometimes.”
“And the rest?”
Tim smiled without humour. “I built a personality out of being okay alone.”
You looked down. “I am okay alone.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I know you can survive it,” Tim said. “That’s not the same as being okay.”
Your face crumpled for half a second.
Then you recovered.
Almost.
“I hate when you do that.”
“Do what?”
“Say things that sound like they’re about me but are actually about you.”
Tim huffed softly. “Yeah. I hate it too.”
That startled a laugh out of you.
Small. Real. Gone quickly.
Tim stood. “Guest room.”
“I’m not staying.”
“You climbed nineteen floors with a backpack because your parents forgot you existed. You’re staying.”
“You can’t make me.”
“No,” Tim said. “But I can make pancakes.”
You narrowed your eyes. “At midnight?”
“I’m not bound by breakfast law.”
“What kind?”
“Chocolate chip.”
You hesitated.
Tim added, “And I’ll look at the Narrows theory tomorrow after you sleep.”
Your eyes lit up. “Really?”
“After sleep.”
“How much sleep?”
“Eight hours.”
“That’s excessive.”
“That’s recommended.”
“By cowards.”
“By doctors.”
“Same thing.”
Tim pointed down the hall. “Bed.”
“You’re bossy.”
“Yes.”
“Controlling.”
“Hydrated too.”
You glared.
But you stayed.
The Narrows theory was good. That was the annoying part.
Not fully correct, but good. You had found a pattern in delivery schedules and power outages that even Tim had missed. It led to a warehouse, which led to stolen medical equipment, which led to a crew using ambulance routes as cover.
You were unbearable about it.
“I helped,” you said for the twelfth time.
“You identified a logistics anomaly.”
“That means I helped.”
“It means you contributed.”
“That means I helped.”
Tim sighed. “Yes. You helped.”
You beamed for exactly half a second before smothering it under smugness.
“Great. So when do I get comms access?”
“No.”
“You said I helped!”
“You helped once, under supervision, after sleeping and eating pancakes.”
“That’s specific.”
“It is the only acceptable framework.”
You groaned. “You’re wasting my talent.”
“I’m redirecting your talent.”
“To robotics club.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to build little cars with children named Brayden.”
“You haven’t met Brayden.”
“I’ve met his type.”
Tim looked at you over his coffee. “The youth engineering program builds rescue drones.”
You made a face. “My coping mechanism is not a personality, blah blah.”
Tim froze.
You looked up.
“What?”
“Say that again.”
“I said blah blah?”
“Before that.”
You shifted. “My coping mechanism isn’t a personality.”
Tim stared.
You rolled your eyes. “You say it with your face all the time.”
“I do not.”
“You absolutely do.”
Tim sat back.
Huh. He probably did.
“I’m not trying to take away the thing that makes you feel special,” he said after a moment.
You went quiet.
“I’m trying to make sure it’s not the only thing you have.”
You traced the edge of your plate with one finger. “What if it is?”
“It’s not.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” Tim said. “You like photography.”
“That’s part of the research.”
“You like astronomy.”
“That’s surveillance of space.”
“You like brownies.”
“That’s not a hobby.”
“It could be. Baking is chemistry.”
You eyed him. “Manipulative.”
“Correct.”
You looked away, but your mouth twitched.
Tim took the win.
Your parents agreed to “temporary educational guardianship” with terrifying ease.
Tim expected a fight. He brought Bruce. He brought lawyers. He brought documentation, school attendance records, evidence of prolonged absences, notes from the housekeeper, and a speech he had rewritten nine times.
Your parents looked embarrassed for twelve minutes, defensive for five, then relieved.
Relieved. Like you were an inconvenient subscription they had forgotten how to cancel.
Tim kept his expression neutral because Bruce’s hand landed on his shoulder under the conference table.
A warning. A comfort.
Both.
The arrangement was legal. Clean. Quiet. You would remain under your parents’ financial support, but Tim would oversee your schooling, medical care, and day-to-day supervision with the help of approved guardianship staff, Wayne legal, and Leslie’s network.
You did not speak during the meeting.
Not once.
Afterwards, in the hallway, you stared at the floor.
Tim crouched beside you.
“Hey.”
“I’m not surprised,” you said.
“I know.”
“I don’t care.”
“I know.”
Your eyes shone. “I hate them.”
“You’re allowed.”
“I hate that they said yes so fast.”
Tim’s throat tightened. “I know.”
You looked at him then, furious and devastated. “Don’t say you know if you don’t.”
Tim accepted that.
“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t know exactly.”
That seemed to make you angrier for half a second.
Then smaller.
“They didn’t even ask if I wanted to go.”
Tim’s voice softened. “Do you?”
You looked startled. “What?”
“Do you want to go with me?”
Your brows pulled together.
“It’s already decided.”
“No,” Tim said. “The legal options are decided. You are not luggage.”
Your face did something dangerous then.
Something almost hopeful.
“What if I say no?”
“Then we figure out another safe option.”
“You’d still help?”
“Yes.”
“Even if I’m difficult?”
Tim smiled faintly. “Especially then.”
You wiped your eyes angrily with your sleeve.
“I want to go,” you muttered.
“Okay.”
“But not because I need you.”
“Obviously.”
“And not because I can’t handle myself.”
“Of course.”
“And I’m bringing my corkboard.”
Tim sighed. “We’re renegotiating the corkboard.”
“No.”
“Some of those photos are deeply illegal.”
“You’re dramatic.”
“You have a zoomed-in picture of Bruce’s jawline labelled ‘Batman evidence.’”
“It is evidence.”
“It is cursed.”
You almost smiled.
Tim stood and offered his hand.
After a long, suspicious pause, you took it.
Life with Tim was not peaceful.
It was structured.
You claimed this was worse.
There were meal reminders. School hours. Therapy twice a week. Robotics club on Thursdays. Photography on Saturdays. Supervised “case logic exercises” that were really detective puzzles Tim wrote himself so you would stop trying to hack GCPD.
There was a bedtime.
You reacted to bedtime like Tim had proposed treason.
“I’m not five.”
“No, because five-year-olds sleep.”
“I work better at night.”
“You spiral better at night.”
“That’s rude.”
“That’s data.”
You glared. “I hate data now.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No, I don’t.”
He gave you a room in his apartment first, then a room at the Manor because Dick insisted “shared custody of the tiny genius gremlin” was good for family bonding.
Your Manor room had a desk, a camera shelf, blackout curtains, and absolutely no secret access to the Cave.
For four days.
Then you found the old dumbwaiter route.
Tim was both furious and impressed.
Mostly furious.
“Boundaries,” he said.
“Architectural boundaries are suggestions.”
“Emotional boundaries are not.”
You paused.
He saw that land. Slowly, awkwardly, things became less warlike.
You started eating breakfast without being hunted down.
You fell asleep on the Manor library couch and did not wake up panicked when someone covered you with a blanket.
You joined robotics club and came home complaining about Brayden, who was apparently “a mediocre tyrant with weak soldering technique.”
Two weeks later, you and Brayden won a regional design challenge.
Tim did not say anything. He just placed the ribbon on the fridge.
You stared at it for a long time.
Then stuck a photo beside it.
Not a Bat photo.
A drone prototype. A rescue drone, blue and silver, ugly in the way first designs often were, but yours.
Tim found you looking at it later.
“It’s not as important,” you said.
“As what?”
You waved vaguely toward the hidden direction of the Cave.
Tim leaned against the counter. “It helped locate a simulated earthquake victim twelve minutes faster than the control model.”
“That was fake.”
“The design isn’t.”
You looked at the photo. “I could make it better.”
“Yeah,” Tim said. “You could.”
Your expression softened.
Then you glanced at him.
“You look tired.”
Tim blinked. “I’m fine.”
You gave him a look of such perfect, unimpressed scepticism that it felt like being judged by his own reflection.
“Fine is not a lifestyle,” you said.
Tim opened his mouth.
Closed it.
“That was cruel.”
“That was data.”
From the doorway, Alfred the cat meowed as if in agreement.
You picked up your mug of hot chocolate. “Go to sleep.”
“I have work.”
“So do I. Apparently, that doesn’t matter.”
Tim narrowed his eyes.
You stared back.
Then he laughed.
It startled both of you.
After a second, you smiled.
Tiny. Triumphant.
Tim went to sleep.
Mostly because you stood in his doorway until he did.
The final Robin question came six months after the server room.
By then, you had gained weight. Not much, but enough that your cheeks looked less hollow. Your sleep was still questionable, but no longer a cryptid event. Your room was still full of notes, but half of them were about drone flight stability, camera composition, cryptography puzzles, and whether Brayden was sabotaging the team project or merely incompetent.
You were still brilliant.
Still too independent. Still occasionally unbearable.
But you laughed more.
That mattered.
You found Tim on the roof of Wayne Manor one evening, because apparently, roof access was a genetic curse in this family.
He was sitting near the edge, not suited up, just watching the sun sink behind Gotham.
You climbed out the window and sat beside him.
“Don’t start,” you said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking about roof safety.”
“I am always thinking about roof safety.”
“Nerd.”
“Yes.”
For a while, you sat together in the orange-blue quiet.
Then you said, “I still want to help.”
Tim had known this was coming.
He nodded. “I know.”
“I’m not asking because I’m lonely.”
He looked at you.
You continued quickly, “Or because I want my parents to notice. Or because I want to prove I’m useful. Or because I think being tired makes me interesting.”
Tim’s mouth twitched. “That last one took me personally several years.”
“I’m advanced.”
“You’re a nightmare.”
“Your nightmare.”
The words landed softly.
You both pretended they did not.
Then you asked, “Are you going to say no forever?”
Tim looked out over Gotham. The city glittered like a circuit board with a soul problem.
“No,” he said carefully. “I’m not going to decide forever for you.”
Your eyes widened.
“But,” he said, and held up a finger when you immediately inhaled, “I am saying no now.”
You deflated. “Tim.”
“No patrol. No suit. No comms during active operations. No fieldwork.”
“I could—”
“I know you could.”
That stopped you.
Tim turned toward you fully. “You could help. You could probably help a lot. That’s not the question.”
“What is?”
“Whether helping us is worth hurting you.”
You looked away. “I’m not fragile.”
“I know.”
“I hate when people act like I am.”
“I’m not saying fragile. I’m saying valuable.”
Your face did that thing again. Like tenderness was a foreign language and you were translating under pressure.
Tim continued, “You don’t have to earn your place here. Not with deductions. Not with casework. Not with perfect grades or useful theories or being the smartest person in the room.”
“I usually am.”
“Yes, and you’re insufferable about it.”
You shrugged, but your eyes were bright.
Tim softened. “I’m saying no because someone should have said it to me sometimes. Not always. Not forever. But sometimes. Someone should have noticed when I was tired and handed me dinner instead of another case file.”
You were quiet.
“Do you wish they had?” you asked.
Tim thought about Robin. About Bruce. About the years that made and unmade him.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I love who I became. I also wonder who I could’ve been if I’d believed I mattered before I was useful.”
You looked at your hands.
Tim’s voice went gentle. “I want you to find out.”
The wind moved softly between the two of you.
Then you leaned sideways until your shoulder touched his.
Not a hug. Not quite.
But Tim understood.
“You’re still giving me puzzles?” you muttered.
“Obviously.”
“And robotics?”
“Yes.”
“And photography?”
“Yes.”
“And self-defence?”
“Supervised. Reasonable. Boringly legal.”
“And if I find a vulnerability in your security?”
“You report it.”
“And get paid?”
Tim smiled. “Consultant rates.”
You perked up. “Real money?”
“Real money.”
“Can I put it in my college fund?”
Tim’s chest warmed. “You have a college fund.”
“I have two. I found the second one.”
“Of course you did.”
“You named it Emergency Education Backup, which is weak.”
“I was tired.”
“You should sleep more.”
“So should you.”
You sighed. “Growth is humiliating.”
“Deeply.”
The sun slipped lower. Below them, the Manor lights began to glow one by one.
Not a command centre. Not a museum.
A home, trying very hard to become one for everyone inside it.
You rested your head against Tim’s arm for half a second before pulling away like it had been an accident.
He did not comment.
Instead, he said, “Dinner?”
“What kind?”
“Alfred made pasta.”
“Real pasta or rich-people pasta?”
“Define rich-people pasta.”
“Too many leaves. Not enough cheese.”
“Real pasta, then.”
You stood. “Good. I haven’t eaten since lunch.”
Tim looked at you.
You blinked.
“What?”
“You noticed.”
Your face flushed. “Shut up.”
“No, that’s progress.”
“I’ll climb down the wall.”
“You will use the stairs.”
“You’re not my dad.”
Tim paused.
You froze.
It was the first time either of you had brushed close to the shape of it.
Not father, maybe. Not brother exactly. Not mentor, because he had rejected that title with legal precision.
Something else.
Someone who noticed. Someone who stayed. Someone who knew when you were tired.
Tim rescued you both from the moment with the sacred art of deflection.
“No,” he said. “I’m your sleep-deprived cautionary tale.”
You considered that.
Then nodded. “Accurate.”
“Rude.”
“Data.”
He followed you back through the window, then made you use the actual staircase just to prove a point.
At dinner, you sat between Cass and Duke, arguing about drone ethics with Damian while Steph tried to steal garlic bread off your plate. Bruce watched from the head of the table with the look he got when the family was being loud and alive and just chaotic enough to hurt.
Tim ate too.
Not because someone reminded him.
Because he remembered.
Later, when you fell asleep over a puzzle book in the library, Tim took the pencil from your hand and draped a blanket over your shoulders.
Your notebook lay open beside you.
At the top of the page, in your cramped handwriting, you had written:
Things I know are true:
Batman is Bruce Wayne.
Nightwing is obvious.
Red Robin worries too much.
Eating helps thinking. Annoying but verified.
I can be useful tomorrow.
I am allowed to sleep tonight.
Tim stared at the list until the words blurred.
Then he closed the notebook.
For once, he did not take a photo. Did not document. Did not archive the evidence.
Some things were not case files. Some things were just small miracles in pencil.
He turned off the lamp and sat in the quiet for a while, listening to the Manor breathe around them.
You were not Robin. You were not his replacement. You were not proof that suffering made people special.
You were a child with a brain like lightning, a history full of locked rooms, and a future Tim intended to guard like a secret worth keeping.
And maybe, somewhere in the strange work of teaching you to eat and sleep and let yourself be young, Tim was learning too.
Not all at once. Not perfectly.
But enough. Enough to set his phone down when the reminder pinged.
Enough to stand, stretch, and walk toward the kitchen for water. Enough to pause at the doorway and look back at you, sleeping under a blanket, safe and stubborn and not alone.
“Goodnight, tiny menace,” he whispered.
You muttered something in your sleep that sounded suspiciously like “consultant rates.”
request batfam who meet kids that remind them of their past selves | part 1 here as i ran out of blocks :/
characters bruce wayne here, dick grayson here, jason todd, tim drake here, damian wayne here, duke thomas here, stephanie brown here, cassandra cain here
content batfam x platonic! child reader, gender neutral! reader, orphan!reader
masterlist
jason todd, 6.7k
child neglect, poverty, homelessness/unsafe housing, child endangerment, child involved in gang activity, exploitation of a minor, implied gang violence, threats of violence, injury to a child (its a split lip), dental injury, medical/dental neglect, childhood trauma, references to jason’s death, references to past child vigilantism, discussions of revenge, mild language, emotional hurt/comfort, protective pseudo-parent dynamic, no explicit abuse shown but implied systemic neglect
Jason caught you stealing the tyres off his bike at two in the morning.
Not trying to steal. Not thinking about stealing.
Actively stealing.
You had one wheel halfway off, a wrench clutched in your hand like a weapon, your hoodie pulled up over your head, and the fierce, feral focus of someone who had not eaten enough to be patient.
For a second, Jason just stood there in the mouth of the alley and watched.
It was not even a bad job. That was the first annoying part.
You had picked the back tyre first, probably because it was less visible from the street. You had jammed a chunk of brick under the frame to keep the bike balanced. You had chosen a narrow alley off Park Row where the streetlight flickered just enough to make cameras unreliable.
Smart.
Stupid. But smart.
The second annoying part was that you were tiny.
Not toddler tiny. Not harmless tiny. Gotham did not make harmless children. But young. Ten, maybe eleven if the city had sharpened you early, which it clearly had.
Skinny wrists. Split knuckles. Shoes held together with duct tape. The kind of hoodie that used to belong to someone bigger, older, maybe gone.
Jason felt something ugly and familiar crawl up the back of his throat.
He stepped forward.
“You know,” he said, “most people start with a hello.”
You shot up so fast you hit your head on the seat. “Shit!”
“Language,” Jason said automatically, then hated himself for it immediately.
You spun around, wrench raised.
Jason looked at it. Looked at you. Looked back at the wrench.
“Really?”
Your eyes narrowed. “Come closer and find out.”
Jason’s mouth twitched despite himself. “Kid, that’s my bike.”
You glanced at the tyre, then back at him. “Don’t see your name on it.”
“It’s literally custom.”
“That’s not a name.”
“It has guns hidden in it.”
You froze.
Jason grinned. “Relax. Not in the tyre.”
Your grip on the wrench tightened. “You a cop?”
That killed the smile.
“No.”
“Then why do you care?”
“Because you’re stealing from me.”
“Yeah, and?”
“And I’m emotionally attached to my tyres.”
You stared at him like he was the weirdest problem your night had coughed up.
Jason should have grabbed the wrench, scared you off, fixed his bike, and moved on.
That would have been normal. Reasonable. Healthy, even.
Instead, he looked at the hollow beneath your cheekbones, the bruise yellowing along your jaw, the way you kept your body between him and the alley exit like you were ready to bolt but too proud to admit it.
He saw a kid with grease on their hands and hunger in their eyes. He saw himself, twelve years old and all ribs and bad decisions, jacking tyres off the Batmobile because poverty made every dangerous thing look like an opportunity.
He hated it. He hated you a little for being there.
He hated Gotham more.
“Where were you gonna sell it?” he asked.
“None of your business.”
“Pawn place on Ninth gives trash rates.”
Your expression flickered.
Jason leaned against the brick wall. “Don’t go to Mikey’s either. He’ll trade you half cash, half store credit, and the store credit’s only good for expired chips and illegal fireworks.”
Your eyes sharpened. “You know places?”
“I know a lot of places.”
“You a thief?”
“Retired.”
“That means yes.”
Jason shrugged. “That means evolved.”
You snorted before you could stop yourself. Then you looked furious that he had made you do it.
Jason pointed at the wrench. “Put that down.”
“No.”
“Put it down, and I’ll buy you food.”
Your face closed instantly.
There it was. The door slam.
Adults only offered things when they wanted something. A meal was never a meal. A ride was never a ride. A kind voice was a hook hidden in bread.
Jason knew that look too well.
“Forget it,” you snapped. “I’m not stupid.”
“Didn’t say you were.”
“I don’t go nowhere with strangers.”
“Good.”
That made you pause.
Jason nodded once. “Seriously. Good instinct. Keep that.”
You lowered the wrench half an inch. “Then what’s the catch?”
“No catch.”
“Bullshit.”
“Yeah, probably,” Jason said. “But not from me.”
You stared.
He sighed and pulled out his phone. You tensed immediately.
“I’m ordering,” he said, turning the screen so you could see. “Diner on the corner. You walk in by yourself. Sit wherever you want. I pay over the phone. You eat. I stay out here and mourn my bike’s emotional trauma.”
Your suspicion did not lessen, but hunger moved behind your eyes like a live thing. “What kind of food?”
Jason did not smile. “Whatever you want.”
Your throat bobbed. “Burger?”
“Yeah.”
“Fries?”
“Obviously.”
“Milkshake?”
“Don’t push it.”
You raised the wrench again.
Jason sighed. “Fine. Milkshake.”
“Two burgers.”
“Now you’re negotiating?”
“You said whatever I want.”
“You’re a menace.”
“You’re the idiot offering.”
Jason looked at you for a long second.
Then he said, quieter, “Yeah. I am.”
You did not tell him your name that night.
You ate like someone had taught you food could disappear if you did not move fast enough.
Jason watched from across the street, helmet tucked under one arm, pretending he was not watching. You sat with your back to the wall and your eyes on every entrance. You wrapped the second burger in napkins and shoved it into your hoodie pocket.
Not greedy.
Saving it.
That made something in his chest twist mean.
When you came out, you wiped your mouth with your sleeve and tossed him a look. “Your tyre’s fine.”
“You only got halfway through.”
“I could’ve finished.”
“Sure.”
“I could’ve.”
“Sure.”
You glared. “Thanks for the food or whatever.”
“Or whatever,” Jason said.
Then you vanished into Crime Alley.
He let you.
Then he followed you.
Not close. Not in a way you would notice. Probably.
You moved like a kid who had mapped danger by necessity. Avoided the dealers on the corner. Cut through the laundromat because the owner looked the other way. Slipped behind a boarded-up bakery, through a busted fence, into a building that should have been condemned ten years ago.
Jason stood outside in the cold and stared up at the broken windows.
Of course. Of course you lived in a death trap with no heat, exposed wiring and a stairwell that probably had tetanus as a resident.
Of course you were his problem now.
“No,” Jason said aloud to himself.
A rat scurried by.
Jason pointed at it. “Don’t look at me like that.”
The rat, wisely, did not respond.
“I’m not doing this,” Jason said.
The building creaked.
Jason looked at the third-floor window where a faint light flickered.
He thought of Catherine coughing in a narrow apartment. Willis gone. Hunger like a second heartbeat. Bruce’s cape filled his vision for the first time, huge and impossible, after Jason had tried to steal the tyres off a car that turned out to belong to a myth.
He thought of how it felt to be caught and not hit. To be fed and not charged for it. To be given a bed and not told he owed his soul for the mattress.
Then he thought of the Robin suit. The crowbar. The grave.
Jason turned away.
“Nope,” he muttered. “Not a chance.”
By morning, he had researched the building ownership, the landlord’s criminal history, three active warrants tied to the local gang using the basement, and your name.
By noon, he had bought groceries.
By one, he was standing outside your building with two bags in his hands, hating every choice that had brought him there.
You found him before he knocked.
You dropped from the fire escape behind him like a feral raccoon in sneakers.
Jason did not jump. Much.
“Jesus—”
“Language,” you said.
Jason slowly turned.
You were smirking.
Little punk.
He held up the bags. “You stole my wrench.”
“You gave it to me.”
“I did not.”
“You didn’t take it back. Gotham rules.”
“That is not a real legal system.”
“Works better than the real one.”
Jason hated that he agreed.
Your gaze dropped to the bags. The smirk vanished.
“What’s that?”
“Groceries.”
“For who?”
“You.”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what’s in them.”
“Don’t care.”
“There’s cereal.”
Your eyes betrayed you for half a second.
Jason lifted a brow. “Chocolate kind.”
“I said no.”
“Also bread. Peanut butter. Apples. Soup cans. Stuff that doesn’t need much cooking.”
“I’m not taking charity.”
“Good. Then consider it payment for not stealing my tyre.”
“You already paid me.”
“That was hush money.”
“For what?”
“For the emotional damage of seeing someone disrespect my bike.”
You did not laugh this time. Your shoulders hunched up around your ears, hard and defensive.
“I don’t need help.”
“Never said you did.”
“You think I’m some sad little street kid?”
Jason’s temper sparked.
Because yes.
Because no.
Because he hated that phrase, hated the pity baked into it, hated how often people looked at poor kids like they were tragedies instead of people surviving adults’ failures.
“I think you’re a kid,” he said.
Your face twisted. “Same thing around here.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It is if you’re dumb enough to act like one.”
Jason went still.
There were things Gotham taught children that no one ever untaught them.
He crouched and set the bags on the ground between you.
“I’m leaving these here,” he said. “You can take them. You can throw them at my head. You can sell the peanut butter for all I care.”
Your eyes flicked over his face, hunting for the trap.
Jason stood.
“But don’t let pride starve you,” he said. “It’s a stupid way to die.”
Something crossed your face.
Not softness. Recognition, maybe.
Then you grabbed one bag and threw it at his chest.
He caught it.
“Keep your apples,” you snapped.
Then you snatched the other bag and bolted inside.
Jason looked down at the apples in the bag against his chest.
“Progress,” he told the rat watching from the gutter.
You were working for the East End Kings.
Not officially. Not initiated. Not old enough for them to trust with anything serious.
But enough. Running messages. Watching corners. Carrying burner phones. Sometimes moving small packages you probably knew better than to open.
Jason found out and saw red so fast his vision blurred.
The Kings were not major players. That almost made it worse. Small-time gangs were messier. Less discipline. More idiots with guns and something to prove. They used kids because kids were cheap, fast, and legally inconvenient to prosecute.
He found you three nights later on a corner in the rain, hood up, pretending not to shiver while a guy named Lenny handed you a folded envelope.
Jason waited until Lenny was alone.
Then Red Hood dropped him into a dumpster.
Gently.
For Jason.
Lenny groaned, nose bleeding. “What the hell, man?”
Red Hood crouched in front of him.
“The kid,” he said.
Lenny went pale. “I don’t know what—”
Jason grabbed the front of his jacket.
“The kid.”
“Just a runner! Just a runner, man. We don’t make ’em do anything.”
Jason’s grip tightened. “That supposed to make me feel better?”
“They need cash! We give ’em work!”
Jason slammed him back against the dumpster hard enough to rattle the lid. “You go near them again, you’re gonna need a straw to eat soup.”
Lenny nodded frantically.
“Great talk.”
Jason let him drop.
Then he turned and found you standing at the alley entrance, face white with rage.
Ah. Shit.
“You had no right,” you said.
Jason straightened. “You’re welcome.”
“I didn’t ask you!”
“Kids don’t usually ask to be exploited.”
“I was handling it!”
“You were carrying drops for morons with guns!”
“I need the money!”
Jason stepped forward. “There are other ways.”
You laughed at him.
It was not a child’s laugh. It was sharp and ugly and exhausted.
“Spoken like someone who’s got a fridge.”
Jason froze.
You saw the hit land and pressed forward because Gotham kids learned to bite when they smelled weakness.
“You think I’m doing this for fun? You think I like those guys? They pay cash. Nobody else does. Nobody hires kids. Nobody cares if we eat. So unless you’ve got a magic job tree under that stupid helmet—”
“Who is we?”
You stopped.
Jason’s voice was quieter now. “Who are you feeding?”
Your jaw clenched. “No one.”
“Kid.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Who?”
You looked away, throat working.
For a second, he thought you would run.
Then you said, “Mara.”
Jason blinked. “Mara?”
“She lives downstairs. Old lady. Not like old-old. Just regular old. Her son used to bring groceries, but he got locked up. She’s got bad knees and she forgets stuff sometimes. If she doesn’t eat, she gets dizzy.”
Jason’s chest went tight.
“And Niko,” you added, almost unwillingly. “He’s six. His mom works nights when she can. Sometimes she’s gone two days. He cries if he’s hungry.”
Jason looked at you.
Not a thief. Not a runner. Not a problem.
A child standing between other vulnerable people and the city’s teeth, because no adult had stepped in fast enough.
Of course you had not left.
Of course you had refused the apples.
You were not trying to save yourself.
Jason wanted to punch every wall in Gotham.
Instead, he took off his helmet.
Your eyes widened despite yourself.
He clipped it under one arm.
“My name’s Jason,” he said.
“I know.”
Of course you did.
Jason sighed. “Yeah, okay. Creepy, but fair.”
“You’re Red Hood.”
“Allegedly.”
“You threatened Lenny.”
“Definitely.”
“I needed that money.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Jason’s face hardened, but not at you.
“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
Something in his voice made you go quiet.
He crouched so you were closer to eye level, even though he knew you hated when adults did that. “I grew up three blocks from here. I stole tyres off a car once because I was hungry and thought I could sell them.”
You stared. “What happened?”
“The car belonged to Batman.”
For the first time since he’d met you, your face went completely blank with shock.
Then you said, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Jason barked out a laugh. “Yeah. Wasn’t my finest hour.”
“Did he beat you up?”
“No.”
“Arrest you?”
“No.”
“What’d he do?”
Jason looked down the alley. Rain slid along the red curve of his helmet.
“He took me home,” he said.
You absorbed that silently.
Then, defensively, “Good for you.”
Jason looked back at you. “I’m not taking you anywhere you don’t agree to go.”
Your eyes narrowed.
“But I am going to make sure Mara and Niko have food. And you are going to stop working for the Kings.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“They’ll come after me.”
“They won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
Jason smiled. This one had teeth.
“They will.”
You stared at him for a long second.
Then you said, “You’re scary.”
“Yeah.”
“Not to me,” you added quickly.
Jason’s expression softened before he could stop it.
“No,” he said. “Not to you.”
Jason did not drag you out of Crime Alley.
He wanted to. God, he wanted to. He wanted to pick you up by the back of your oversized hoodie like an angry alley cat and deposit you somewhere with central heating, clean sheets, and zero gang members per square foot.
But he knew what it was to have your whole world dismissed as a bad place someone better could remove you from.
Crime Alley was dangerous.
It was also yours.
Mara downstairs, who called you “sunshine” even though you scowled every time. Niko from 2B, who followed you around with a stuffed dinosaur and absolute trust. Mrs. Alvarez at the laundromat, who let kids warm up by the dryers if they helped sweep. The bodega owner who pretended not to see you pocket bruised fruit and then started leaving it in a bag by the door after Jason had a quiet word and paid him double.
You had roots there. Twisted ones, maybe.
But roots.
So Jason started there.
He fixed Mara’s heater first. Badly. Then he called someone who knew how to fix heaters properly and stood there glaring until the job was done.
He stocked Niko’s apartment with groceries and told his mother, who looked ready to cry from exhaustion, that it was from a “community fund.” Then he actually created a community fund because Roy told him fraud was bad and paperwork was, unfortunately, a thing.
He got the building inspected. Then repaired. Then quietly bought by a shell company that definitely did not trace back to Jason Todd unless someone was Tim Drake, in which case all bets were off.
He showed up with groceries every Wednesday and claimed it was because he “overbought.”
“You overbought kid cereal, baby carrots, and arthritis cream?” you asked, unimpressed.
“I’m complex.”
“You’re lying.”
“You’re short.”
“That’s not a comeback.”
“It’s an observation.”
“You’re bad at this.”
“At what?”
You gestured vaguely at him. “Being normal.”
Jason scoffed. Then went home and googled normal things guardians say to children.
The results were terrible. One article suggested “active listening.”
Jason closed the laptop.
Absolutely not.
The pseudo-dad thing happened slowly. Like mould. Or ivy.
Or a knife wound you did not notice until there was blood everywhere.
First, you started texting him.
Mostly insults.
you left soup cans. mara hates tomato. amateur hour.
Jason replied, Tell Mara I accept constructive criticism but not slander.
Then, niko has a fever. what do i do
Jason was halfway out the window before he finished reading.
He arrived with medicine, a thermometer, electrolyte drinks, and Leslie Thompkins on video call. You stood in the corner biting your thumbnail while Niko slept.
“He’s gonna be okay?” you asked.
“Yeah,” Jason said. “Fever’s not too high.”
“You know?”
“I know.”
“You sure?”
Jason softened. “I’m sure.”
You nodded too fast.
Then, very quietly, “Okay.”
After that, you started texting before emergencies.
what’s a normal temp
how long does milk last if fridge broke
do teeth grow back if adult ones fall out
That one made Jason call immediately.
“Whose tooth?”
“Mine.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Kid.”
“I bit someone.”
Jason closed his eyes. “Why?”
“They deserved it.”
“Not the question.”
“He tried taking Niko’s backpack.”
Jason pinched the bridge of his nose. “Is the tooth loose or out?”
“Loose.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No.”
A pause.
“Yes.”
“Stay there.”
“You’re not my dad.”
Jason was already grabbing his jacket. “Never said I was.”
“You act like it.”
He froze.
The line went quiet.
Then you added, suspicious and small, “That’s weird, right?”
Jason swallowed.
“Yeah,” he said. “Probably.”
“Oh.”
“But I’m still taking you to a dentist.”
“I don’t have dentist money.”
“I have dramatic overreaction money.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It is now.”
The dentist said you had two cavities, one loose tooth from impact, and the kind of dental history that made Jason want to set something on fire.
You sat rigid in the chair, refusing to admit you were scared.
Jason sat beside you and let you squeeze two of his fingers until his knuckles popped.
Afterwards, you were silent in the passenger seat of his car, a bag of dental supplies in your lap.
Finally, you muttered, “Thanks.”
Jason looked straight ahead. “No problem.”
“I still think you’re bossy.”
“You bit a guy.”
“He started it.”
“You’re gonna put that on your college applications?”
“What’s college?”
Jason nearly drove into a lamppost.
That night, he opened a savings account.
Then another one.
Then he called Tim.
“I need a fake scholarship fund.”
Tim did not even sound surprised. “For your tyre thief?”
Jason scowled. “Don’t call them that.”
“Oh my God,” Tim said. “You imprinted.”
“I did not imprint.”
“You’re doing paperwork.”
“I hate you.”
“You’re nesting.”
Jason hung up.
Then texted him the information he needed.
The Robin question came on a bad night.
Of course it did. Bad nights were when old ghosts got chatty.
You had been jumped by two older kids from the Kings who were angry their easy runner had been taken off the board. They had not gotten far. Jason found them first.
He did not kill them.
He wanted credit for that.
He did, however, scare them so badly that one of them cried.
When he found you afterwards, you were sitting behind the laundromat with a split lip and murder in your eyes.
Jason crouched in front of you. “Let me see.”
“I’m fine.”
“Didn’t ask.”
You slapped his hand away. “I said I’m fine!”
Jason sat back.
You were shaking.
Not from fear.
From humiliation. From helplessness. From the brutal math of being small in a city that worshipped power.
“I want you to teach me,” you said.
Jason’s whole body went still. “I already am.”
“Not that self-defense crap.”
His jaw tightened. “Careful.”
“I want the real stuff.”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was gonna say.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t!”
“You want me to train you like Robin.”
The name cracked across the alley.
You went quiet.
Jason felt sick.
There it was. The shadow he had been outrunning since the night he met you.
You wiped blood from your lip with your sleeve. “You were Robin.”
“Yeah.”
“So?”
“So no.”
“Batman trained you.”
“That’s not the winning argument you think it is.”
“You got out.”
Jason laughed once, sharp and humourless. “I died.”
You flinched.
He regretted it instantly.
But the truth sat between you now, ugly and necessary.
Rain dripped from the laundromat awning. Neon buzzed overhead. Somewhere down the street, a siren wailed and faded.
You stared at him.
“I know,” you whispered.
Jason looked away.
Of course you did. Gotham kids collected horror stories like other kids collected trading cards.
You took a shaky breath. “But you came back.”
“Not all of me.”
Your anger faltered.
Jason leaned against the brick wall and slid down until he was sitting on the dirty ground beside you.
He did not care about his jacket.
“I’m gonna tell you something,” he said. “And you’re not gonna like it.”
“I never like what you say.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
You hugged your knees.
Jason stared at the opposite wall.
“When I was a kid, being Robin felt like power. Like finally, finally, I wasn’t the smallest thing in the room. I could hit back. I could help people. I could stand next to Batman and matter.”
You were listening now. Really listening.
“And I loved it,” Jason said, voice rough. “That’s the part nobody wants to talk about. I loved being Robin.”
Your eyes flicked to him.
“It wasn’t all bad. It wasn’t. I had magic in my hands. I had a cape. I had people looking at me like I was worth something.” His throat tightened. “But I was still a kid. And kids shouldn’t have to bleed to prove they matter.”
You looked down. “I already bleed.”
“I know.”
“So teach me to make it count.”
Jason turned toward you.
That one hurt.
That one hit bone.
He reached out, slowly, and touched your shoulder. You did not pull away.
“You don’t have to make pain useful for it to be real,” he said.
Your face twisted. “If I’m not useful, what am I?”
Jason’s heart broke with a sound only he could hear. “You’re a kid.”
You scoffed, but it came out wet. “I’m serious.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It should be.”
“But it’s not.”
Jason closed his eyes.
“No,” he admitted. “Gotham makes damn sure it’s not.”
You were crying now, furious about it, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on your face.
“I hate being scared,” you said. “I hate not having money. I hate that people can just take stuff. Food, heat, whatever. I hate that they look at me and know I can’t do anything.”
Jason’s hand curled into a fist against his thigh. “I know.”
“I want them to be scared of me.”
“I know.”
“You are.”
Jason looked at you.
“You’re Red Hood. People run when they see you.”
“Yeah.”
“I want that.”
“No,” Jason said. “You want to be safe. Those feel the same when you’ve never had safe.”
That shut you up.
He let the words sit. Then he said, “I’m not making you Robin. I’m not making you Hood Junior. I’m not putting a gun in your hand or a mask on your face and calling it healing.”
“I wouldn’t use a gun.”
“Not the point.”
“I could help.”
“You already do.”
You scowled. “Not like that.”
Jason bumped your shoulder lightly with his.
“You kept Mara alive. You looked after Niko. You survived this place with duct-tape shoes and a stolen wrench. Don’t tell me you don’t know how to help.”
Your mouth trembled.
He continued, softer, “But you’re not responsible for saving everyone. Not Mara. Not Niko. Not Crime Alley. Not me.”
Your eyes snapped up.
“Especially not me,” he added.
You looked away fast.
Jason sighed.
“I’ll teach you how to fight enough to get away,” he said. “I’ll teach you how to break holds. How to scream so people hear you. How to use your size. How to patch a cut, spot a bad deal, read a lease, cook something besides canned noodles.”
“That’s not fighting.”
“That’s surviving.”
“I want more.”
“I know.”
“Will you ever teach me more?”
Jason hated that question.
He hated that he could not honestly say never.
Because you were Gotham. Because danger would find you even if he wrapped the whole city in Kevlar. Because one day you would be older, and you might still want to help, and Jason knew better than anyone that locking a kid away from choice was just another kind of cage.
So he said, “When you can tell the difference between wanting justice and wanting revenge, we’ll talk.”
You stared at the ground. “How will I know?”
Jason’s voice dropped. “You’ll stop hoping it hurts.”
You were silent for a long time.
Then you leaned sideways until your shoulder rested against his arm.
It was not a hug.
Jason understood. He sat there with you behind the laundromat while the rain turned the alley silver and cold.
Eventually, you said, “Your bike still has ugly tires.”
Jason looked at the sky. “I am trying to have a profound parenting moment here.”
“You’re not my parent.”
“Thank God. You’re expensive.”
You sniffed.
Then, very quietly, “But you kinda are.”
Jason did not move.
His heart did something stupid and painful.
“Yeah?” he asked, too carefully.
You shrugged, still not looking at him. “Pseudo.”
He huffed. “Pseudo, huh?”
“Means fake.”
“I know what pseudo means.”
“Wasn’t sure.”
“You’re bleeding on my jacket.”
“You sat next to me.”
“Terrible choice.”
“You make a lot of those.”
Jason smiled despite himself.
“Yeah,” he said. “This one’s not so bad.”
The first time you slept at Jason’s apartment, it was because the building heat went out again.
Technically, it had been fixed.
The pipes disagreed.
Jason found you, Niko, and Mara bundled in three coats each, with the oven open for warmth.
He almost had a stroke.
“Nope,” he said.
Mara blinked at him. “Good evening to you, too, dear.”
“Nope. Everyone up. We’re leaving.”
You bristled immediately. “We’re not—”
“The oven is open.”
“It’s fine.”
“That is carbon monoxide poisoning with extra steps.”
“You’re dramatic.”
“I have died before. I get to be dramatic.”
Mara lifted a hand. “He does have a point, sunshine.”
Betrayal flashed across your face. “Mara.”
“He brought groceries last week with those nice pears.”
“That’s not relevant!”
Jason packed bags while you complained. Niko cheered because Jason had a TV and cereal. Mara took one look at Jason’s panicked attempt to make the apartment “presentable” and patted his cheek.
“You’re a good boy,” she said.
Jason nearly dropped a blanket.
You laughed for six straight minutes.
His apartment was not built for guests, much less an elderly woman, a six-year-old, and a sharp-mouthed preteen with trauma and burglary skills.
By midnight, Niko was asleep on the couch. Mara had taken Jason’s bed despite protesting exactly once. You had claimed the floor near the window.
Jason stared at you from the kitchen. “No.”
You lifted your head from your bundled hoodie. “What?”
“You’re not sleeping on the floor.”
“I sleep on floors all the time.”
“That’s not the compelling argument you think it is.”
“I’m fine.”
Jason pointed down the hall. “Guest room.”
“You don’t have a guest room.”
“I have a room with boxes in it.”
“So a box room.”
“Now it has a mattress.”
“Since when?”
Since he had ordered one three weeks ago and told himself it was “for emergencies.”
“Since shut up.”
Your eyes narrowed. “You planned this.”
“I planned nothing.”
“You bought a kid mattress.”
“It’s a regular mattress.”
“It has dinosaur sheets.”
Jason paused.
Niko, asleep on the couch, murmured something about stegosauruses.
Jason lowered his voice. “Those are for Niko.”
“You bought dinosaur sheets for Niko.”
“He likes dinosaurs.”
You stared at him. He stared back.
Your expression did something complicated.
Too soft. Too young.
Jason looked away first.
“There are extra blankets,” he muttered.
You stood slowly, gathering your hoodie around yourself like armour.
In the hallway, you stopped.
“Jason?”
“Yeah?”
“If I sleep in there, you won’t lock the door?”
His chest caved.
“No,” he said, voice steady by force. “I won’t lock the door.”
“And I can leave if I want?”
“Yeah.”
“And you won’t be mad?”
“No.”
You nodded.
Then disappeared into the room.
Jason stood in the kitchen for a long time, gripping the counter.
Later, around three in the morning, he woke to the soft pad of feet.
You stood in his doorway, pale and furious with yourself.
“Bad dream?” he asked.
“No.”
“Okay.”
A pause.
“Yes.”
Jason sat up slowly on the couch where he had exiled himself.
“You want water?”
You shook your head.
“You want me to check the locks?”
Another shake.
“You want to sit?”
You hesitated. Then nodded.
He made room.
You sat at the far end of the couch, knees tucked up, not touching him.
After a while, you whispered, “I dreamed I stole your tyre and you left.”
Jason swallowed. “Kid.”
“I know it’s stupid.”
“It’s not.”
“I don’t care if you leave.”
“Liar.”
You glared at him in the dark.
Jason smiled faintly.
“I’m not leaving because of a tyre,” he said.
“What about because I’m annoying?”
“I know Dick Grayson. My standards are warped.”
“What about because I’m too much?”
There it was. The real nightmare.
Jason’s voice went quiet.
“I know too much,” he said. “I know heavy. I know sharp edges. I know nightmares and bad choices and punching first because asking for help feels like handing someone a knife.”
Your eyes shone.
“You’re not too much,” Jason said. “You’re just a kid who’s had to carry too much.”
You looked down fast. “I don’t know how to stop.”
“I know.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Then we put some of it down one piece at a time.”
“We?”
Jason blinked.
Then, because the truth had already made a mess of him, he said, “Yeah. We.”
You leaned against him five minutes later. Very lightly. Like you were giving him plausible deniability.
Jason did not move.
Pseudo-dad, apparently.
Fine.
He could be pseudo.
You got clean shoes in March.
You hated them.
“They’re too white,” you complained, standing in Jason’s kitchen with one foot lifted like a cat forced into socks.
“They’re shoes.”
“They look rich.”
“They look like they don’t leak.”
“They squeak.”
“They’re new.”
“They’re embarrassing.”
“So was watching you duct-tape the old ones to your feet.”
“That was engineering.”
“That was a cry for help.”
You glared.
Jason crossed his arms.
You crossed yours.
Behind him, Roy—who had made the fatal mistake of stopping by during the shoe war—leaned against the counter eating cereal from the box.
“You two know you’re making the exact same face, right?”
“Shut up,” you and Jason said together.
Roy grinned. “Adorable.”
Jason threw a dish towel at him.
The shoes stayed.
So did the dentist appointments. The school enrollment. The tutoring. The fridge stocked with snacks you pretended not to like and ate anyway. The little basket by the door with your name on it, filled with gloves, keys, a phone charger, and increasingly weird rocks Niko gave you “for protection.”
You still lived in Crime Alley most days, because Jason had promised not to rip your life away.
But you also had a bed at his place.
A toothbrush. A drawer.
Then two drawers.
Then one day Jason opened the hall closet and found your hoodie hanging beside his jacket.
He stared at it for a full minute.
“Don’t make it weird,” you said from behind him.
Jason closed the closet. “I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
“Go do your homework.”
“Pseudo-parent behaviour.”
“Pseudo-grounded behaviour.”
“You can’t ground me.”
“Try me.”
You did your homework.
Badly. With dramatic suffering.
Jason helped, which mostly meant both of you learned fractions through mutual resentment.
One evening, while you were hunched over math problems at his kitchen table, you said, “Did Batman make you do homework?”
Jason nearly choked on his coffee. “What?”
“When you were Robin.”
Jason leaned back. “Alfred did.”
“Who’s Alfred?”
Jason went still.
Then he smiled, but it hurt.
“The best man I ever knew.”
You studied him, sensing the grief without poking it too hard. “What’d he do?”
“Fed me. Yelled at me politely. Patched me up. Made me go to school. Taught me manners.”
You squinted. “Didn’t work.”
Jason snorted. “Yeah, he’d agree.”
You tapped your pencil against the paper. “Was he like your dad?”
Jason thought about it.
“No,” he said. “He was Alfred.”
You nodded like that made perfect sense.
Then you said, “Are you like that?”
Jason’s throat tightened.
“Like Alfred?”
“No. Like…” You waved your pencil vaguely. “Whatever you are.”
Jason looked at you sitting at his table in your not-leaking shoes, with a smear of peanut butter on your sleeve and a math worksheet you had called “government propaganda.”
He thought about fathers. Willis, who had left bruises and absences. Bruce, who had given him a home and a cape and grief complicated enough to need its own filing system. Alfred, who had loved like soup, structure, and sharp British disapproval.
Jason did not know how to be any of those things.
Maybe that was good. Maybe you did not need a repeat.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly.
You nodded again. “Okay.”
“That’s it?”
“You’re here,” you said, like it was obvious. “That counts.”
Jason had to look away.
“Math,” he ordered.
“You’re crying.”
“I’m allergic to fractions.”
“Liar.”
“Brat.”
“Pseudo-brat.”
Jason laughed, rough and startled.
You grinned.
There it was.
Not healing like a miracle. Not safety like a switch flipped on.
But something.
A fridge with food in it. Shoes that did not leak. A kid at a kitchen table, alive and complaining.
A man who had been Robin refusing to make another one out of hunger and rage.
Months later, you found the helmet.
Not the one he wore most nights. An older one. Cracked along the side. Retired after a bullet had kissed it too close.
Jason found you sitting on the floor of the safe room, holding it in your lap.
For a second, all the air left him.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” he said.
“You should get better locks.”
“I have military-grade locks.”
“Yeah. You should get better ones.”
He stepped inside slowly.
You ran your fingers over the red surface. “Is this what made people scared of you?”
Jason leaned against the wall. “No.”
You looked up. “Then what?”
“The choices I made wearing it.”
Your expression turned thoughtful.
Not hungry, exactly.
But curious in a way that made his stomach knot.
“It feels powerful.”
“Yeah.”
“Robin felt powerful too?”
Jason closed his eyes briefly. “Yeah.”
“Do you miss it?”
The answer should have been no.
Simple. Clean. Responsible.
But Jason had promised himself he would not build your life on lies.
“Sometimes,” he said.
You looked surprised. “Really?”
“Flying across rooftops? Helping people? Being part of something bigger? Yeah. I miss parts of it.”
“But not all.”
“No.”
“Because you died.”
“Because I was a kid,” Jason said. “And I didn’t know I deserved to be safe before I deserved to be useful.”
You looked down at the helmet. “I want to help people.”
“I know.”
“Not because of revenge.”
Jason said nothing.
“Okay, maybe a little because of revenge.”
“There it is.”
“But not only a little.”
He sat on the floor across from you.
The safe room lights hummed softly.
“You help people now,” he said.
You rolled your eyes. “If you say Mara and Niko—”
“Mara and Niko.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“It counts more than punching idiots in masks, actually.”
“You punch idiots in masks.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“You contain hypocrisy.”
Jason pointed at you. “Vocabulary. Nice.”
You tried not to look pleased.
He reached out, palm up.
After a moment, you handed him the helmet.
He set it between you.
“This isn’t the only way to be strong.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
You were quiet.
Then, “I’m trying to.”
Jason nodded. “That’s enough for today.”
You stared at the helmet. “Will you ever let me wear one?”
Jason’s heart did that old, painful twist.
“When you’re older,” he said, “if you still want this, we’ll talk. Not because you’re hungry. Not because you’re scared. Not because you think being feared is the same as being free.”
You looked at him. “When, then?”
“When you’ve got a life you’d be choosing it from. Not a life you’re trying to escape.”
Your eyes went shiny, and you immediately looked furious about it. “Gross.”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “Feelings are a biohazard.”
You shoved his shoulder.
He shoved yours back, gently.
You smiled.
Not sharp. Not fake.
Just a little.
Jason thought of Batman catching him with a tyre iron. Thought of the Manor. The Cave. The suit. The grave.
He thought of all the roads pain had opened and all the doors it had closed.
Then he looked at you.
You were not Robin. You were not Hood. You were not a weapon Gotham got to forge because the city was too cheap to feed its children.
You were a kid who needed dental checkups and homework help and shoes and cereal and someone who would show up every Wednesday with groceries like clockwork.
You were a kid who had called him pseudo-dad and then pretended you hadn’t.
You were a kid who deserved to grow up before deciding whether to become a symbol.
Jason picked up the helmet and stood.
“Come on,” he said.
“Where?”
“Dinner.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Your stomach growled loudly enough to snitch.
Jason raised an eyebrow.
You glared at your own abdomen. “Traitor.”
“Pizza?”
“With garlic knots?”
“Obviously.”
“And soda?”
“Don’t push it.”
“Two sodas.”
“You’re a criminal.”
“You raised me.”
Jason stopped in the doorway.
You froze too, realising what you had said.
The safe room went very quiet.
Your face flushed. “I mean—”
Jason saved you because sometimes mercy looked like pretending not to notice.
“Yeah,” he said, voice rough. “And clearly I’m doing a terrible job.”
You stared at him for a second.
Then your mouth twitched.
“The worst.”
“Disaster.”
“Tragic, really.”
“Get your shoes.”
“The ugly white ones?”
“The clean ones.”
“Same thing.”
You walked past him, shoulders brushing his side.
Not a hug. Not exactly.
But close enough.
Jason watched you head toward the hall, complaining under your breath, alive and warm and safe for tonight.
For tonight, that was the mission.
Not vengeance. Not fear. Not a child in a cape.
A child with pizza grease on their fingers and homework waiting on the kitchen table.
A child who had tried to steal his tyres and somehow made off with his whole damn heart instead.
Jason followed you out, locking the safe room behind him.
request batfam who meet kids that remind them of their past selves | split up as i ran out of blocks :/
characters bruce wayne, dick grayson jason todd here, tim drake here, damian wayne here, duke thomas here, stephanie brown here, cassandra cain here
content batfam x platonic! child reader, gender neutral! reader, orphan!reader
masterlist
bruce wayne, 4k
violence, murder, blood, grief, past child trauma, childhood trauma, parents dying in front of you, grief/mourning, hurt/comfort
Bruce heard the shots before anyone screamed. That was always how it happened in memory. First, the crack of gunfire, sharp enough to split the world in half. Then the pearls. Then the scream.
Then the silence that followed, deep and endless as a grave.
But tonight there were no pearls scattering across wet pavement. No white-gloved hand reaching for him. No father falling first, then mother. No boy in a black coat too small for the cold. There was only Gotham’s autumn rain, a charity fundraiser spilling golden light from the mouth of the old Harrington Theatre, and two bodies in the alley behind it.
Two wealthy bodies. Two famous bodies. Two bodies Bruce had shaken hands with less than twenty minutes ago. And you. Eight years old, maybe nine, sitting in a puddle in your formal clothes with blood on your hands, your sleeves, your cheek. Not your blood. That was obvious from the way you sat too still, like your body had forgotten it was allowed to move.
You did not cry.
That was what broke him first.
Children were supposed to cry. Dick had cried in furious bursts, angry at the world for continuing to turn. Jason had spat curses through tears he pretended weren’t there. Tim had gone quiet in the way neglected children learned to go quiet, as if grief were another room where nobody would come looking. Damian had not cried because he had been taught not to, because blades did not weep, because sons of assassins were not permitted the mercy of softness.
Bruce had not cried either. Not until later. Not until years later, really.
He stepped into the alley and felt time fold around him like a cape. Commissioner Gordon was already there, older now than he’d been the night Bruce had lost everything, but wearing the same expression. The one adults wore around newly orphaned children. The one that said there were no words large enough for the wound.
“Bruce,” Gordon said quietly, because here, tonight, Bruce Wayne had arrived before Batman could.
Bruce barely heard him.
Your eyes had found his. You looked at him like you recognised him. Not his face. Not the billionaire. Not the man on magazine covers or charity posters or Wayne Foundation donation plaques.
You recognised the shape of the hole in him.
Bruce crouched slowly, careful not to startle you. Rain darkened his tuxedo. Blood seeped in thin red rivers between the cracks in the pavement. The alley smelled of cordite, expensive perfume, wet brick, and the cruel metallic truth of death.
“Hey,” he said, voice low. “My name is Bruce.”
You stared.
Behind him, cameras flashed at the alley mouth before Gordon barked at the officers to push the reporters back. The light hit your eyes in bursts.
Bruce shifted slightly, placing himself between you and the world.
“You’re safe right now,” he said.
Your fingers twitched around the cuff of your jacket. Blood had dried beneath your nails. He knew that detail. Hated that he knew it. The way blood dried. The way it clung. The way soap never seemed like enough afterwards.
“Can you tell me your name?” he asked.
You opened your mouth. Nothing came out.
“That’s okay,” Bruce said immediately. “You don’t have to talk.”
Your gaze flickered past him to the bodies.
Bruce moved before you could look too long. He took off his jacket and wrapped it around your shoulders, not touching you more than necessary. The fabric swallowed you almost entirely.
“I’m going to stay with you,” he said. “Until someone you trust comes.”
Your eyes returned to him.
There it was. The terrible question. The one he had asked the universe that night and never gotten an answer to.
What happens now?
Bruce swallowed around the blade in his throat.
This time, he thought, with a suddenness that almost brought him to his knees.
This time, someone answers.
Your family had a house that did not feel like a home. Bruce learned that within the first week. It was large, old, and cold in the way Gotham mansions often were, built by dead men for future dead men, all marble staircases and oil portraits and rooms no one used except to impress guests. Your parents had been loved by the city in the vague, distant way rich people were loved when they donated enough money to hospitals. But inside the house, everything was curated. Everything breakable. Everything too quiet.
There were staff members who cared, but none who could keep you. An aunt in Metropolis who cried on the phone but said she had three children already. A grandfather in poor health. Legal teams. Trust managers. People in dark suits discussing guardianship while you sat on a couch with your knees pulled to your chest and did not speak.
Bruce watched the whole machinery begin.
He knew this machine. It had swallowed him once. The lawyers would handle the estate. The police would handle the case. The press would turn your grief into headlines. Gotham would send flowers. Adults would say words like “resilient” and “brave” because those were easier than saying destroyed.
And you would be left in the centre of it all, small and silent, learning that grief made other people uncomfortable.
So Bruce did what no one had done for him.
He interrupted.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Not with the force of Batman entering a room. Bruce Wayne simply sat down across from your temporary guardian, the family attorney, and the Wayne Foundation’s child advocacy director, and said, “No.”
The attorney blinked. “Mr Wayne?”
“No decisions are made around them without a child trauma specialist present. No press access. No public funeral shots. No estate matters discussed in rooms where they can hear. No moving them out of Gotham unless they choose it later. No boarding school.”
“That may not be your decision.”
Bruce’s face went very still.
“It will be,” he said.
By the end of the month, the court approved a guardian: Dr. Mara Ellison, a retired pediatric trauma psychiatrist who had worked with Wayne Foundation programs for years and had the rare ability to look Bruce Wayne in the eye and tell him when he was projecting.
Especially then.
“You cannot adopt every child who reminds you of yourself,” she told him after the hearing.
Bruce looked through the observation window where you sat with a therapy dog named Scout, your small hand resting cautiously on the golden retriever’s head.
“No,” he said. “But I can make sure this one isn’t abandoned to grief.”
Mara studied him for a moment. “And what about your grief?”
Bruce did not answer.
Scout licked your hand. For the first time since the alley, your mouth moved into something almost like a smile.
Bruce held onto that tiny expression like it was a rope over an abyss.
He did not bring you to the Cave. That was the first rule he made for himself. No Cave. No suits. No cases spread across tables. No overheard conversations about suspects and ballistics. No shadowy training rooms where children learned to make their bodies into apologies.
The Manor, though—eventually, carefully—became familiar.
Mara remained your guardian. Bruce insisted on it, even when the papers whispered about why Gotham’s favourite orphan billionaire had not simply taken in another child. He visited. He funded security upgrades at Mara’s townhouse. He took you to appointments when she allowed it. He made sure the investigation happened far away from you.
But he also invited you for Sunday dinners.
Dick showed up first, because of course he did. He crouched to Scout’s level before he crouched to yours.
“Hey, buddy,” Dick said, ruffling the dog’s ears. “You protecting them?”
Scout wagged his tail.
You watched Dick with solemn suspicion.
Dick looked up at you and smiled gently. Not the performance smile. Not the Nightwing grin. The old one. The circus one. The one that knew how to make scared children believe the trapeze would catch them.
“Dogs are better at security than Bruce,” Dick said. “Don’t tell him I said that.”
“I heard that,” Bruce called from the kitchen.
“Good,” Dick said.
You did not laugh. But you blinked. Which, in that first season, was close enough.
Jason came next, announced by the sound of a motorcycle and a muttered argument with the front gate intercom. He was awkward around you in a way he rarely was around anyone. He stood too far away, hands shoved into his jacket pockets, eyes flicking over your posture, your exits, the untouched food on your plate.
Then he looked at Bruce.
“Kid eating?” Jason asked quietly.
“Sometimes,” Bruce said.
Jason disappeared into the kitchen and came back with toast cut into triangles and soup in a mug instead of a bowl.
“Easier,” he said, setting it near you without expectation. “Bowls feel like a whole thing sometimes.”
You stared at the mug. Then, slowly, you picked it up.
Jason looked away before anyone could accuse him of having feelings.
Tim brought books. Not grief books. Not therapy books. Puzzle books, astronomy books, a field guide to Gotham gargoyles that may or may not have been self-published under a fake name. Steph brought stickers and immediately put one on Bruce’s cufflink. Duke brought a small lantern that projected constellations across the ceiling. Cass brought silence. She sat beside you on the floor one afternoon while Scout slept between you. No questions. No careful adult voice. No pressure. Just presence.
After nearly an hour, you leaned against her shoulder. Bruce saw it from the doorway and had to walk away.
The Manor had once turned children into soldiers. Now, slowly, stubbornly, it became something else for you. A place where no one asked you to be inspiring. A place where nightmares did not make you inconvenient. A place where dinner could be reheated three times because no one yelled if you were too sad to eat at six.
A place where grief was allowed to sit at the table without becoming the head of it.
The trial took eleven months. The man who killed your parents had not been a random mugger, though Gotham had tried very hard to make him one. He had been hired by a business rival, paid to make it look like street crime, like Gotham being Gotham, like tragedy could be dismissed if it happened in an alley.
Bruce found out before the police did. Batman found the proof.
Bruce made sure the police received it in a way that would hold up in court. That restraint nearly killed him.
There were nights he stood over the man responsible and saw Joe Chill’s face, saw every monster who had ever turned a child into an aftermath, and felt the old religion rise in him.
Punishment. Vengeance. The mission.
Then he would see you in the alley again, wearing his jacket, not crying. And he would stop.
Not because the man deserved mercy. Because you deserved a world where justice did not require Bruce to become another crime scene.
When the verdict came in, you sat between Mara and Bruce, your hands folded tightly in your lap.
Guilty.
The courtroom exhaled. Reporters scribbled. The man shouted something about corruption, about lies, about Wayne money.
You flinched.
Bruce’s hand opened on the bench between you, palm up, not touching. After a moment, your small fingers slid into his.
You still did not cry, but your grip was shaking. Bruce held on.
Outside, cameras waited like vultures dressed as flashbulbs.
Bruce turned to Gordon. “Back entrance?”
“Already cleared,” Gordon said.
You looked up at Bruce. “Do I have to say something?”
Your voice was rough from disuse. Small. Real. Bruce felt something inside him fracture and heal in the same breath.
“No,” he said. “You don’t owe the city your pain.”
You started talking more after that. Not all at once. Not like a miracle. Grief did not work like a door swinging open. It worked like winter thawing from the edges inward.
You asked small questions first. Why did the Manor have so many clocks? Did Scout like the rain? Why did Jason always pretend he wasn’t staying for dinner and then stay for dinner? Why did Damian’s dog look like he judged people’s tax returns?
Bruce answered all of them seriously. Even the last one. “Because Titus has very high standards.”
You considered this. “So does Damian.”
“Yes.”
“Did he learn it from the dog?”
Bruce paused.
From across the room, Damian looked up sharply. “I heard that.”
You hid behind Scout’s ears.
You were not laughing, exactly. But you were close.
And Bruce, who had once built an entire life out of almost, treasured close.
Then came the question he had been dreading.
It happened in the library on a rainy evening, almost exactly a year after the alley. You were sitting near the fireplace with Scout sprawled across your feet. Bruce sat nearby, pretending to read case files he had disguised inside a boring economics report.
You had been quiet for twenty minutes. Then you said, “Are you going to teach me how to fight?”
Bruce’s hands went still.
There it was. The fork in the road. The old story waiting with its mouth open.
He looked at you. You were taller than you had been that night, but still small. Still too young for the weight in your eyes. Your grief had changed shape over the year, but it had not vanished. It lived in you now like a second shadow.
Bruce could teach you. That was the terrifying part. He could teach you how to block a strike, disarm a gunman, escape restraints, vanish into a crowd. He could make you sharp enough that no alley ever swallowed you again. He could give you armour, a name, a symbol. He could turn your pain into purpose and tell himself it was better than letting it rot.
He had done it before. Again and again. Sometimes it had saved them. Sometimes it had hurt them.
Usually both.
“Why do you want to learn?” Bruce asked.
You looked down at Scout. Your fingers twisted in his fur. “So it doesn’t happen again.”
Bruce closed his eyes. For one second, he was eight years old again, kneeling in blood, making a promise to the dark.
Then he opened them. “What happened to your parents was not your fault.”
“I know.”
But you said it too quickly.
Bruce leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“No,” he said softly. “Knowing it in your head is not the same as believing it in your bones.”
Your jaw tightened. “If I knew how to fight—”
“You still would have been a child in an alley with a man who had a gun.”
Your eyes flashed. Anger, finally. Hot and alive. “So I should just be helpless?”
“No.”
“Then teach me.”
Bruce heard the echo of himself in you so loudly it almost drowned out the rain.
I won’t let this happen again. I’ll become something they fear. I’ll make sure no one else feels this.
A noble thought. A poisoned seed.
Bruce stood and crossed the room slowly. He did not tower over you. He sat on the floor instead, close but not crowding, his back against the armchair. Scout lifted his head, decided Bruce was not a threat, and went back to sleep.
“I can teach you some things,” Bruce said. You went very still. “I can teach you how to get out of danger. How to call for help. How to notice exits. How to trust your instincts. How to fall without breaking your wrist. How to breathe when your body thinks it’s back in that alley.”
Your face shifted, hope and suspicion warring.
“But I am not going to teach you how to become like me.”
You stared at him. “Why?”
Because he had been waiting his whole life for someone to ask that before the mask became permanent. Because he had loved his children, every one of them, and still sometimes wondered what might have happened if he had loved them without a cape between his hands. Because revenge was a language that became harder to stop speaking the longer you practiced.
Because he looked at you and saw not a soldier, not a partner, not a future Robin.
A child. A child. A child.
Bruce’s throat tightened.
“Because I know what happens when pain becomes the only thing holding you up,” he said. “It feels like strength at first. It feels like control. But it takes more than it gives.”
You looked away. “I don’t want to be scared forever.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to miss them forever.”
Bruce’s voice broke very quietly. “I know.”
You wiped at your face angrily, startled by your own tears. “I hate him,” you whispered. “I hate him so much.”
Bruce nodded. “You’re allowed.”
Your eyes snapped to him, shocked.
“You are,” he said. “You’re allowed to be angry. You’re allowed to hate what he did. You’re allowed to have days where forgiveness feels like a language from another planet. But you are not allowed to let him decide who you become.”
The fire cracked softly.
You cried then. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just a small, wounded sound that seemed dragged from somewhere deep inside your ribs.
Bruce did not reach for you. He waited.
After a moment, you moved first, leaning into him with the exhausted trust of a child who had been holding up the sky for too long.
Bruce wrapped an arm around you. Carefully. Gently. Like you were not a symbol. Like you were not a second chance.
Like you were simply someone small and hurting who deserved to be held.
“I miss them,” you sobbed.
“I know.”
“It hurts.”
“I know.”
“Does it stop?”
Bruce looked into the fire. He could have lied. Adults did that often with children. Wrapped cruelty in sugar and called it comfort.
Instead, he said, “It changes.”
Your fingers clutched his sleeve.
“One day, it won’t be the only thing you feel. You’ll remember them, and it will hurt, but it will also be warm. You’ll laugh at something they used to say. You’ll hear a song they liked. You’ll dream about them and wake up sad, but glad you saw them.”
You sniffed. “Do you dream about yours?”
Bruce closed his eyes. “Yes.”
“Are you sad when you wake up?”
“Yes.”
“Are you glad?”
Bruce thought of his mother’s hands. His father’s voice. The way they existed now not only in the alley, but in every life saved by the foundation, every child fed, every clinic built, every hand reaching for another before the fall became fatal.
“Yes,” he said. “I am.”
You cried until you fell asleep against him.
You learned to fight, in pieces.
Not as Robin. Never as Robin. Bruce made that clear to everyone, including himself.
You learned self-defence in bright rooms with padded floors and windows. You learned from Cass how to listen to your body before fear became panic. You learned from Dick how to fall and roll and get back up laughing. You learned from Jason how to break a grip and shout from your diaphragm. You learned from Tim how to use a phone tracker, a panic button, and common sense, “which is tragically uncommon,” according to him. You learned from Duke how to walk through Gotham in daylight and know which streets belonged to community instead of fear. You learned from Steph that pepper spray was not a personality but could be an accessory.
From Damian, you learned how to feed a dog properly and how to sketch birds. That, more than anything, told Bruce he had made the right choice.
You still had nightmares. Some anniversaries were bad. Some alleys made you freeze. Some fundraisers were impossible.
But you also went to school. You made a friend who liked dinosaurs. You adopted Scout officially and made Bruce sign the paperwork as a witness. You spilled hot chocolate on a Persian rug and looked terrified until Jason said, “Honestly, improvement,” and blamed Tim.
You grew. Not out of grief. Around it. Like a tree swallowing a fence, making the wound part of the shape but not the whole of it.
One spring afternoon, nearly two years after the alley, Bruce found you in the garden behind the Manor. You were throwing a tennis ball for Scout, who had no interest in returning it and every interest in making Bruce retrieve it himself.
“You know,” you said, watching the dog flop triumphantly in the grass, “I used to think I wanted to be like you.”
Bruce’s chest tightened. “And now?”
You considered this with all the seriousness of someone still small enough to believe questions deserved honest answers. “I think I want to be like me.”
The words hit him harder than any bullet ever had. Bruce looked away toward the trees, blinking once.
A small hand slipped into his.
“Is that okay?” you asked.
Bruce smiled, and it hurt, but gently. “Yes,” he said. “That’s the whole point.”
That night, after you and Scout had gone home with Mara, Bruce went down to the Cave. The suits stood in their glass cases.
Batman. Robin. Nightwing. Red Hood. Red Robin. Spoiler. Orphan. Signal. A family of symbols. A history of children who had survived by becoming brighter than the darkness that tried to eat them.
Bruce stood before the Robin suit for a long time.
He did not regret his children. He would never regret them. But grief, he was learning, was not made holy by being useful. Pain did not need a mission to matter. A child did not need a mask to be brave.
Behind him, Damian’s voice cut through the silence. “You did not make them Robin.”
Bruce did not turn. “No.”
“Good.”
That did make Bruce turn. Damian stood at the base of the stairs, arms folded, expression severe in the way he used when emotion was too near the surface.
“They are too much like you,” Damian said.
Bruce absorbed that. “Yes.”
“They would go too far.”
“... Maybe.”
Damian looked at the suits. His gaze lingered on Robin’s colours. “Or they would not go far enough to save themselves.”
Bruce felt that one settle deep.
Damian walked closer, stopping beside him. “You chose correctly,” he said, as if granting a battlefield commendation.
Bruce huffed softly. “High praise.”
“Do not make it strange.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
They stood together in the Cave, father and son, both shaped by old violences, both still learning the difference between legacy and repetition.
After a while, Bruce said, “When I was their age, I thought I wanted justice.”
Damian glanced at him. Bruce looked at the Robin suit. Then past it. Toward the stairs. Toward the house above. Toward warmth.
“I think I wanted someone to stop me from disappearing.”
Damian was quiet for a long moment. Then, with careful awkwardness, he reached out and touched Bruce’s sleeve. Not quite holding on. Close enough.
Above them, the Manor breathed softly. Not a monument. Not a mausoleum.
A home.
And for the first time in a long time, Bruce looked at the shadows he had built his life inside and thought—not of vengeance, not of duty, not of the endless hunger of the mission—
But of a child in a garden saying, I want to be like me.
He thought of an alley where the story had changed. He thought of a life saved not by a cape, but by a hand held open.
And Bruce Wayne, who had once made grief into a god, bowed his head in the dark and let the old religion loosen its grip.
dick grayson, 4.3k
past child trauma, childhood trauma, grief/mourning, hurt/comfort, found family, acrobat! reader, murder investigation, past character death, implied murder, blood, therapy, nightmares, survivor’s guilt
Dick Grayson knew the sound of a crowd going silent. Not quiet. Quiet was what happened before a performance, when hundreds of people held their breath beneath canvas and lights, waiting for someone to fly.
Silent was what happened after the fall. Silent was the gasp swallowed whole. The applause dying mid-birth. The music stumbling, then stopping, as if even the instruments knew something sacred had broken. Silent was a net hanging useless beneath empty air. Silent was sawdust turning dark under blood.
Dick had been eight years old the first time he learned that kind of silence.
He was older now. Taller. Stronger. Nightwing. A hero with a city of his own and scars he had taught to smile around.
But when the performers screamed inside the travelling circus tent on the edge of Blüdhaven, Dick was eight again. For half a second, he smelled popcorn and greasepaint. Rope fibre. Sweat. Rain against canvas. The old animal warmth of a circus at night.
Then he smelled fear.
He was already moving before anyone called for help.
The circus had been small, not Haly’s, but close enough to hurt. A family-run show trying to survive in a world that had traded wonder for screens. Bright hand-painted signs. Threadbare costumes patched with love. A trapeze rig, old but polished. The kind of place where everyone knew everyone, where children learned to walk by balancing on low beams, where dinner came out of one huge pot and family was less about blood than who caught you when you missed. He had come as Dick Grayson, not Nightwing, because the circus owner had asked for charity help with permits and safety inspections. Because Dick still had a soft spot the size of a collapsed star for travelling performers.
Because some part of him still walked toward circus lights like they were home.
He found you beneath the rigging. Eight years old, maybe nine. Small, glittering, furious. Your costume was blue and silver, sequins catching the emergency lights. One sleeve had torn. Your hands were chalk-white. Your face was wet, but not from crying. Someone else’s blood streaked along your jaw where you must have touched your cheek without realising.
Your parents lay covered nearby.
The official story, forming already in the mouths of people who did not understand circus equipment, was an accident. A tragic fall. Old rigging. Bad luck.
Dick looked up once. He saw the cut line. Clean. Deliberate.
His stomach dropped through the floor of his body.
You saw him see it, and your eyes snapped to his.
And there it was. Recognition. Not of who he was. Not Nightwing. Not the first Robin. Not Bruce Wayne’s eldest, smiling through galas with practised ease.
You recognised another child of the air who had watched gravity become a murderer.
Dick crouched slowly.
“Hey,” he said, voice soft, steady, ruined around the edges. “I’m Dick.”
Your chin lifted. “I know.”
Of course you did. Circus kids knew circus legends. The Flying Graysons had become half-ghost, half-myth in that world. A cautionary tale told while checking knots. A prayer hidden in chalk dust.
Dick swallowed. “What’s your name?”
You told him. Your voice did not shake. That was the worst part.
Behind him, police pushed through panicking performers. Someone sobbed into their hands. Someone else kept saying, “No, no, no,” like repetition could stitch the world back together.
You looked past Dick toward the covered shapes. Then back up at the rigging. Not crying. Calculating.
Dick knew that look too. It was the look of a child choosing anger because grief was too large to hold.
“Did you see what happened?” he asked carefully.
Your mouth twisted. “The line snapped.”
Dick said nothing.
You leaned forward, eyes burning. “Lines don’t snap like that.”
There it was. Bright kid. Sharp kid. Dangerous kid.
Dick’s heart cracked open.
“No,” he said quietly. “They don’t.”
Your shoulders trembled once.
Then you smiled. It was awful. Too wide. Too charming. Too practised. A performer’s smile slapped over a wound.
“Well,” you said, voice bright as broken glass, “guess the encore’s cancelled.”
Dick almost flinched. Because he understood that too. The joke before the scream. The bow before the collapse.
He sat down beside you in the sawdust, ignoring the blood on his trousers, the cops staring, the circus folk whispering his name.
You looked suspicious. “What are you doing?”
“Sitting.”
“Why?”
“Because standing felt rude.”
Your smile twitched, more real and more painful. “That’s dumb.”
“Yeah,” Dick said. “I’ve been told.”
For a while, neither of you said anything.
Above you, the trapeze swung gently in the disturbed air. A cradle with no one left to catch.
You disappeared from the hospital the next morning. Dick should have expected it. Honestly, that was on him.
He had spent half the night talking to social workers, police, and the surviving circus staff. There was an aunt in Keystone who had never met you. A godfather who toured in Europe. No immediate guardian. No easy answer. Children like you fell through cracks because adults built systems and then acted surprised when grief learned parkour.
Still, when Dick arrived at the pediatric wing with a stuffed elephant, a bag of decent pastries, and a speech about how he was not trying to replace anyone, your bed was empty.
The nurse was frantic. Dick was not. He looked at the window. Open by three inches.
He sighed.
“Yep,” he muttered. “That tracks.”
He found you forty minutes later on the roof of the hospital, still in borrowed clothes, hospital bracelet on your wrist, feet bare against the ledge. You were not going to jump. You were looking toward the circus grounds.
“You know,” he said from the roof access door, “most people wait at least twenty-four hours before giving their assigned adults a heart attack.”
You did not turn. “I don’t have assigned adults.”
“That is becoming very clear.”
“I’m not going back inside.”
“Okay.”
That made you look at him.
Dick raised both hands. “I’m not carrying you.”
“I’d bite.”
“I assumed.”
You turned back toward the skyline. “They’re going to say it was an accident.”
“No,” Dick said.
You went still.
He joined you near the ledge, keeping enough distance not to crowd you.
“No,” he repeated. “They’re not.”
Your face changed so fast it hurt. Hope, fear, fury, all tangled. “You saw it.”
“I saw enough.”
“Then you know someone killed them.”
“Yes.”
The word fell between you like a thrown knife.
Your breathing hitched. Just once. Then the smile came back. “Cool. Great. Love that. Super fun plot twist.”
Dick closed his eyes for half a second.
He wanted to call Bruce. That was his first instinct, because some instincts were carved into bone. Bruce would know what to do. Bruce would have already pulled security footage, tracked payments, cross-referenced suspects, found the killer’s dentist, and emotionally repressed three separate breakdowns.
But Dick looked at you—small, barefoot, shaking so hard you were pretending you weren’t—and realised something terrible.
Bruce would know what to do because Bruce had done it before. With Dick. With Jason. With Tim. With all of them, one way or another. A child runs toward danger. An adult hands them a mask and calls it purpose.
Dick loved Bruce. Dick loved Robin. Dick also knew love did not make every choice harmless.
“You need to come inside,” he said.
Your jaw set. “I need to find who did it.”
“You need shoes.”
“I can find them without shoes.”
“That is both impressive and not the point.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
You finally turned fully toward him. “You don’t get it.”
The words hit him harder than they should have.
Dick crouched so he was closer to your height.
“My parents died during a trapeze act when I was eight,” he said softly. “The line was cut. I watched them fall.”
Your face went blank. Not empty; overloaded.
Dick continued, gentle but honest. “I know the smell of sawdust after blood hits it. I know what applause sounds like when it turns into screaming. I know what it feels like when everyone looks at you like you’re already a ghost.”
Your eyes filled. You blinked hard until they didn’t.
“So help me,” you whispered.
There it was. The same plea he had carried into Wayne Manor. Give me something to do with this pain. Give me a direction. Give me a weapon. Make the hurting useful.
Dick’s throat tightened. “I will help you,” he said.
Your eyes sharpened.
“But not like that.”
The hope vanished.
“You’re just like the rest of them.”
“No.”
“You think I’m too little.”
“I think you’re a kid.”
“Same thing.”
“No,” Dick said, and his voice broke just enough that you noticed. “It’s not.”
You looked away first.
Dick sat beside you on the roof until the wind made you shiver. Then he offered you the elephant.
You stared at it. “What is that?”
“Emotional support elephant.”
“That’s humiliating.”
“He’s been through a lot.”
“You bought that from the gift shop.”
“He contains multitudes.”
A pause. Then, reluctantly, you took it.
You did not hug it. But you held on. Dick pretended not to notice.
The first time you snuck out to investigate, Dick found you outside the circus grounds with a flashlight, a stolen police report, and a granola bar you had clearly taken from his kitchen.
“I don’t know whether to be proud or furious,” he said from the shadows.
You yelped, spun, and threw the flashlight at his head.
He caught it.
“Furious,” he decided. “Definitely furious.”
“You scared me!”
“You broke into my apartment!”
“You gave me a key!”
“For emergencies!”
“This is an emergency!”
“It is eleven-thirty at night!”
“Murder doesn’t have business hours!”
Dick pinched the bridge of his nose. You had been staying with him temporarily for three weeks. Temporarily had become a word everyone used while avoiding the obvious. The circus community wanted you safe. Social services wanted stability. The aunt in Keystone had admitted, kindly and tearfully, that she did not know how to raise a grieving circus child who could climb refrigerator shelves like a spider monkey.
And Dick… Dick had started buying the cereal you liked. So, yeah. Temporarily was synonymous with getting attached.
“You are not investigating your parents’ murder,” Dick said.
“I already am.”
“You’re eight.”
“Nine next month.”
“Deeply irrelevant.”
“You were eight.”
The words landed exactly where you aimed them.
Dick went quiet. You knew you had hurt him. He saw it flicker across your face, quick and ashamed, before anger covered it.
“That was different,” he said.
“Why?”
Because Bruce had let him. Because Bruce had trained him. Because Robin had saved him. Because Robin had also taught him to bleed before he learned to heal. Because being useful had felt better than being helpless.
Because some nights, he still did not know whether Robin had been the hand pulling him from the ledge or the ledge itself.
Dick exhaled. “Because I didn’t have someone who knew better yet.”
Your expression cracked. Just a little. Then you shoved the police report at his chest. “I found something.”
Dick did not take it.
You scowled. “At least look.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because if I look, I’m telling you this is okay.”
“You’re scared.”
“Yes.”
That stopped you.
Dick stepped closer. “I am terrified.”
“Of me getting hurt?”
“Of you becoming me.”
Your mouth opened. Nothing came out.
The circus lights behind you were dark now, the tent sealed off by police tape. Without music, without voices, it looked less like a place of wonder and more like a sleeping animal with its heart removed.
Dick softened. “I know you want to run at this,” he said. “I know standing still feels impossible.”
Your hands curled into fists.
“I keep seeing it,” you whispered.
“I know.”
“If I stop moving, I hear them hit the ground.”
Dick’s chest caved inward. For a second, he was under canvas again. Bruce’s hand on his shoulder. Cameras flashing. Zucco somewhere in the city, breathing air he did not deserve.
Dick crouched in front of you. “Then we don’t stop moving,” he said. “But we move somewhere safe.”
Your eyes narrowed. “That sounds like therapy.”
“It is absolutely therapy.”
“I hate therapy.”
“You’ve gone twice.”
“I hated both.”
“That’s your right.”
“Can I fire you?”
“No.”
“You’re annoying.”
“I’m told that’s part of my charm.”
“You’re not charming.”
“Now you’re just lying.”
You almost smiled. Almost. Dick took that almost and tucked it carefully away.
The second time you snuck out, you made it six blocks before Nightwing dropped upside down in front of you.
To your credit, you did not scream.
You punched him in the nose.
Also, to your credit, it was a pretty good punch.
“Ow,” Dick said, flipping down to land in front of you. “Okay. Respectfully? Rude.”
You stared. Then your eyes widened. Then narrowed.
“You.”
Nightwing tilted his head. “Me.”
“You’re Dick.”
There was no point denying it. You had the same look Tim used to get when all the puzzle pieces clicked together and the universe lost a fight.
Dick sighed. “Yeah.”
You looked furious. Not betrayed.
Worse. Hopeful.
“You can teach me.”
“No.”
“You’re Nightwing!”
“Still no.”
“You were Robin!”
“Extremely still no.”
“You don’t get to have done this and then tell me I can’t!”
The alley around you was narrow and damp, lit by a flickering sign from a closed liquor store. Gotham-adjacent enough to have bad ideas. Blüdhaven enough to execute them worse.
Dick felt the old argument rising between them like a ghost. Every Robin had made it. Every Batkid had, in some form, demanded the right to turn pain into armour.
You were no different. That was the problem.
“I can teach you how to be safe,” Dick said.
“I don’t want safe!”
“I know.”
“I want him caught!”
“I know.”
“I want to be there!”
“I know!”
His voice cracked across the alley.
You froze.
Dick breathed in. Then out. When he spoke again, he was quieter.
“I know,” he said. “I wanted to be there too.”
Your anger faltered.
“When they caught the man who killed my parents, I wanted to see him afraid. I wanted him to know my name. I wanted…” Dick looked away. “I wanted it to fix something.”
“Did it?” The question was barely a whisper.
Dick thought about Tony Zucco. About years of nightmares. About revenge deferred and justice delivered, and the way neither had resurrected the dead.
“No,” he said. “Not the way I thought it would.”
You looked so young then. You were young. That kept hitting him like a cymbal crash.
“So what am I supposed to do?” you asked. “Just sit there?”
“No.” Dick swallowed. “You get to live.”
Your face twisted. “That’s stupid.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It feels stupid at first.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know.”
Your chin trembled. “If I live, they’re still gone.”
Dick’s heart broke clean in half.
He knelt in the dirty alley, Nightwing suit and all, and held out a hand. “If you live,” he said, “they’re loved by someone still here.”
You stared at his hand for a long time.
Then you took it. Not because you were fixed. Not because grief had loosened its teeth.
Because you were tired. Because you were nine. Because underneath all that fury, you still wanted someone to carry the part of the sky that had fallen.
Dick walked you home. You did not let go of his hand until you reached the apartment.
After that, things changed. Not quickly. Not neatly. Life was not a training montage, no matter how much you complained that it should be.
Dick made rules. You hated all of them.
No sneaking out. No climbing fire escapes without supervision. No stealing case files. No hacking his phone. No using circus contortion skills to hide in cabinets and eavesdrop on Batfamily calls.
“That one feels targeted,” you said.
“It is extremely targeted.”
“You’re stifling my creativity.”
“I am preserving my blood pressure.”
“Old man behaviour.”
“I’m twenty-something.”
“That’s basically fossil adjacent.”
Jason laughed so hard he had to leave the room.
The Batfamily took to you with varying degrees of subtlety. Bruce looked at you like you were a math problem written in his own childhood blood. He was careful, so careful it almost hurt to watch. He offered resources, legal help, the Manor, anything Dick asked for, but never pushed.
Jason taught you how to make grilled cheese “properly,” which apparently meant with enough butter to make Alfred haunt the kitchen in protest. Tim recognised the early signs of obsessive case spiralling and started giving you puzzle boxes instead.
“Solving things is allowed,” he told you. “Self-destructing is cancelled.”
Steph brought glitter gel pens and taught you how to make threatening notes look festive. Cass sat with you during nightmares, quiet as moonlight. Damian challenged you to a balance contest, lost when you cheated, and respected you forever after.
And Dick? Dick tried to become the adult he had needed. It was harder than patrol. Patrol had rules. Gravity had rules. Combat had rules.
Grief had none.
Some mornings you were bright, chattering through breakfast, making jokes so fast he could barely keep up. Some evenings you went silent at the smell of popcorn. Sometimes you slept in a nest of blankets on the floor because beds felt too much like hospital rooms. Sometimes you asked about your parents in tiny, careful pieces.
“Did you know my mom could do a one-handed catch?”
“I heard.”
“She said I’d be better than her.”
“She sounds smart.”
“My dad used to pretend he dropped things so I could catch them.”
Dick smiled softly. “Classic circus dad behaviour.”
You smiled back. Then cried into your cereal.
Dick learned not to panic when you cried.
That was new for him.
He sat with you. He passed tissues. He let the grief move through without trying to turn it into action.
That was the hardest part. Doing nothing.
No, not nothing. Staying.
Staying was a skill Bruce had struggled with back then. Bruce had given him purpose, yes. A home. A cape. A mission. But comfort? Softness? Permission to be only a child? Those had come later. Unevenly. Through Alfred. Through time. Through Dick learning to ask for what Bruce did not know how to give.
Dick wanted you to have it now. Before the mask. Before the vow. Before grief became a god.
They caught the killer in winter.
Not because of you. That was important. Dick made sure it was not because of you. Nightwing found the evidence with help from Oracle. A former rigger, paid by a man who wanted the circus land cleared for development. It was ugly. Small. Human in the worst way. Your parents had died because someone rich wanted dirt under the tent.
When Dick told you, you went very still.
“Can I see him?”
“No.”
You did not argue. That scared Dick more than if you had. You sat on the couch, knees pulled to your chest, staring at nothing.
“Is he scared?” you asked.
Dick thought of the man cuffed to a hospital bed after trying to run from Nightwing across icy rooftops. “Yes.”
“Good.”
Dick sat beside you.
You looked at him. “Is that bad?”
“No.”
“Would Bruce say it’s bad?”
“Bruce says a lot of things.”
That got a tiny snort. Dick smiled faintly, then sobered.
“Feelings aren’t crimes,” he said. “What we do with them matters.”
“I want him to hurt.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Dick inhaled slowly. Honesty. Always honesty. “Yes.”
Your eyes flicked to his. “Then why don’t you?”
Because he had nearly become that answer once. Because he had learned the difference between justice and feeding the wound. Because there was a child on his couch who needed proof that rage could pass through the body without taking the wheel.
“Because hurting him won’t bring them back,” Dick said. “And it won’t give you back what he took.”
Your mouth trembled. “What will?”
He wished there were a better answer.
“Nothing,” he said softly.
You broke then. Not like glass.
Like a storm. You screamed into a pillow until your voice cracked. You threw the stuffed elephant against the wall and then sobbed harder because you thought you had hurt its feelings. You kicked the couch. You called the killer every terrible word your circus upbringing and Jason’s influence had taught you.
Dick stayed.
When you finally collapsed, exhausted, he pulled you carefully against him.
“I hate this,” you whispered.
“Me too.”
“I hate that you know.”
Dick pressed his cheek to your hair. “Me too.”
“I don’t want to be Robin.”
The words were so quiet he almost missed them.
Dick closed his eyes. There it was. The choice, finally named.
“I know,” he said.
“But I don’t want to be helpless.”
“You won’t be.”
“You’ll teach me?”
“Yes.”
You lifted your head. Dick brushed tears from your cheek with his thumb.
“I’ll teach you trapeze again when you’re ready,” he said. “I’ll teach you how to fall safely. How to defend yourself. How to read a room. How to ask for help before you’re bleeding on a rooftop.”
Your mouth twitched. “Specific.”
“I have experience.”
“But not Robin.”
“No.”
“Ever?”
Dick hesitated. He could have said never. He wanted to.
But he remembered being young and furious and needing choices more than cages. So he said, “Not now. Not because you’re grieving. Not because you think it’ll make the pain useful. Someday, when you’re older, if you still want to help people, we’ll talk about what that means.”
You studied him. “So you’re not saying no forever.”
“I’m saying you get to be a kid first.”
Your face crumpled again, but differently this time. Like relief hurt too.
“What if I don’t know how?”
Dick smiled sadly. “Then we learn.”
Spring came. The circus did not reopen. Not that one.
But another troupe came through Blüdhaven, and Dick took you on a warm Saturday evening when the sky was pink and gold and soft around the edges.
You were quiet in the passenger seat.
“You sure?” he asked.
“No,” you said. “But I want to go.”
Inside the tent, you held his hand so tightly his fingers went numb.
The smell hit first. Sawdust. Sugar. Rope. Heat.
Your breathing turned shallow.
Dick leaned down. “We can leave.”
You shook your head.
The trapeze act began halfway through.
You did not look away. When the flyers launched themselves into the air, your whole body tensed. Dick felt it, the flinch before every catch, the held breath before every swing.
Then one performer missed. The net caught them safely.
The audience gasped. Then laughed with relief.
The flyer bounced, waved dramatically, and climbed back up.
You stared. Dick watched your face. Something inside you shifted. Small. Not healing exactly. Not yet. But a door opening in a house that had been locked too long.
“They fell,” you whispered.
“They got caught,” Dick said.
Your eyes shone.
The act continued. And when it ended, applause rose around you, loud and bright and living.
For a second, you looked like you might run.
Then you stood. Dick stood with you.
You clapped. Your hands shook. But you clapped until the performers bowed. Until the tent filled with noise. Until applause became applause again.
Later, in the parking lot, you leaned against Dick’s side. “I think I want to fly again someday.”
Dick’s throat tightened. “Yeah?”
“Not now.”
“Okay.”
“And not because of them.”
He looked down at you. You were staring at the tent, its lights glowing against the evening.
“Because of me,” you said.
Dick smiled, and this time it did not feel like a mask. “That sounds like a pretty good reason.”
You slipped your hand into his. “Can we get funnel cake?”
“Absolutely.”
“With extra sugar?”
“Obviously.”
“Can we not tell Bruce?”
“Bold of you to assume Bruce doesn’t already know.”
You considered this. “Can we not tell Damian? He’ll say sugar is a weakness.”
“Damian once ate six cookies and threatened me with a spoon when I noticed.”
Your laugh came out sudden and startled. Real.
Dick stopped walking for half a second.
You looked back. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said quickly.
But it was not nothing. It was the sound of a child surviving. Not by becoming a symbol. Not by chasing a killer across rooftops. Not by turning grief into a costume and calling it destiny.
Just surviving. Laughing in a parking lot with powdered sugar waiting, and someone beside you who knew the shape of the fall.
Months later, you would begin lessons again. Low rigging first. Safety lines. Mats. Dick beneath you with arms crossed, pretending not to hover and failing spectacularly.
You would fall. You would get caught. You would climb again. And years from now, maybe, you would ask about masks and missions and the kind of help that happened in the dark.
Maybe Dick would say yes. Maybe he would say no. Maybe by then, you would know yourself well enough to choose without grief choosing for you.
But that night, beneath the fading circus lights, you were not Robin. You were not a weapon. You were not an echo.
You were a child with sticky fingers, tired eyes, and a future that had not been handed over to tragedy.
Dick looked at you and finally understood something Bruce had tried, clumsily and imperfectly, to teach him.
You could run beside a child without leading them into war. You could catch them without teaching them to fall forever. You could honour the dead without letting death write the rest of the story.
So when you tugged his hand and said, “Come on, Dick, the funnel cake line is getting long,” he followed.
Not as Batman. Not as Bruce. Not even as Nightwing.
Just Dick Grayson, once a boy under the big top, now an adult choosing, with every careful step, to become softer than what saved him.
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