Summary: You didn’t know how you fell in here, nor did you know how to escape...The only thing you could do was follow that girl right next to you, who looked even more vulnerable than you did.But you know what they say; in the Backrooms, you shouldn't trust anyone.Not even yourself.
Pairing: Original Female Character x Reader
Warnins: This story contains/may contain dark themes such as blood, self-harm, mental illness, self-doubt, suicide, murder, mentions (or brief descriptions) of sexual assault/harassment, manipulation, monsters, violence, mentions of depression, platonic relationships, a gender-neutral reader, panic attacks, and secrets.
Status: Ongoing 🪷
ʚBatfamily + Arcaneɞ
[Last Bullet, Last Breath]
Summary: Gotham is dangerous, corrupt, and survival here is a brutal challenge. No one knows this better than those from Gotham's forgotten corners. To survive, you either have to be filthy rich or a master of the art of survival.
But there is a place even more dangerous than Gotham, a place where living is nearly impossible:
Zaun.
A place where Gotham citizens would never dare to set foot.
This is a realm with no hospitals, no mercy, and where only criminals can survive. A horrific world where people give up their own organs just to endure the toxic air, where addicts who can't breathe without Shimmer rule the streets, and where the only source of hope is tied to a mob boss like Silco...
Zaun is the only place where even Batman cannot step; the only domain that vigilantes cannot save. Its people are so consumed by rage and hatred that if someone from Gotham steps inside, their survival is nothing short of a miracle.
It is the place that the so-called heroes left to die.
Who else but the people of Zaun could endure breathing its toxic air?
Children are left orphaned at a very young age here; everyone knows that the people of Zaun are born into abandonment. There is no place to accept them.
Zaun is the place where a maniac like Jinx took root. The very place that gave birth to the name that even Batman and his family fear...
And Y/N came from the exact heart of it. Someone who opened their eyes to that brutality, someone who lost everything in life...
The one who will bring about the end of the Batfamily.
Pairing: Platonic Yandere Batfam x Isha!Reader x Platonic Yandere Jinx
Warnings: Death, violence, blood, neglect, alcohol, Zaun-specific concepts, Jinx, psychological disorders, yandere behaviors, obsession, kidnapping, jealousy, angst, and many more.
Status: Ongoing 🔫💙
ʚ𝐒𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐞ɞ
[Lifeless Eyes]
Summary: Moving to Nockfell was supposed to be just another temporary stop, but those ice-blue eyes made you want to stay forever.
Pairing: Sal Fisher x GN!Reader
Warnings: Mild anxiety, mentions of parental neglect.
Status: Ongoing ⭐
🩷 𝑶𝒏𝒆-𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒕𝒔
ʚ𝐅𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐍𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐭 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐲’𝐬 ɞ
[Are You Mean Enough?]
Summary: A fleeting moment with the man behind the mask.
Status: Finished 🦊
ʚBatfamɞ
[I’m in too]
Summary: You were someone who wasn't really cared for by your family. You didn't know the exact reason why, but you assumed they found you strange. I mean, at least you weren't one of them.
They knew nothing about you... They didn't know what you loved, whether you had a partner, what you hated, or that you were gay.
Considering even your school bullies knew, you found this rather odd.
They didn't notice you.
Rather, they didn't notice you until you came home covered in bruises and wounds.
Warnings: GN!reader, English is not my first language, homophobia (not by the Batfamily), violence, bullying, self-hatred, suicidal ideation, developing yandere themes at the end.
Pairing: Platonic Yandere Batfam x Neglected GN!Reader
Summary: You were someone who wasn't really cared for by your family. You didn't know the exact reason why, but you assumed they found you strange. I mean, at least you weren't one of them.
They knew nothing about you... They didn't know what you loved, whether you had a partner, what you hated, or that you were gay.
Considering even your school bullies knew, you found this rather odd.
They didn't notice you.
Rather, they didn't notice you until you came home covered in bruises and wounds.
A/N: Haii!! I wanted to write this specifically for June. This is my very first Pride month as openly gay, so this Pride is extra special to me. Unfortunately, my own family is homophobic, so I really needed the existence of a non-homophobic family... It is mentioned that the reader is gay, but you can choose whatever your own orientation or gender is 🩷
Happy reading!
Warnings: GN!reader, English is not my first language, homophobia (not by the Batfamily), violence, bullying, self-hatred, suicidal ideation, developing yandere themes at the end.
You were never cared for by your family. You took this as normal; your mother was Talia and your father was Bruce, after all. Both were busy people.
But you knew your father was closer to the others, and this saddened you a little. Your only difference from them was that you didn't like to fight —you fought very well, but you chose not to—. You were the kinder, more compromising one. If someone hit you, you wouldn’t make a deal out of it.
Damian hated you for this.
He couldn't stand you letting yourself get walked all over, and it infuriated him. His sarcastic remarks stopped after a while; he no longer cared about you. He didn’t see you.
Sometimes you thought you were a ghost.If only your bullies felt the same way...
Now was not the time to whine; you had to pretend to Alfred that you were fine. Never mind not being fine, you didn't want to upset the only human being who worried about you.
“Will you be alright, sir?”
You nodded your head and smiled. You had a very bright smile; your friends back in middle school used to say so.
Things changed when they found out you were gay.
As you walked toward the school —you walked because you liked walking, and you didn't want to be in the same space as Damian— you tried to overcome the dizziness brought on by insomnia. You had been suffering from sleep issues for a while, and there was no one to help you. You slept through classes, and when you got home, you studied until night fell —meaning, until you passed out—. Because too little sleep wasn't enough for you, your body felt as if it had been thrown down a cliff. The violence from your bullies wasn't helping at all, either.
You hated school, you hated living, and you hated yourself. Maybe if you were normal, maybe if you weren't a 'faggot,' you would have a better life. They would truly love you.
You were holding yourself back with all your might so as not to cry out of anger. There was a never-ending rage inside you, and it wouldn't pass until you died.
You had thought about killing yourself; you had even tried. But that was selfish; if you committed suicide, your family's reputation would be ruined.
"TALIA AL GHUL AND BRUCE WAYNE'S DAUGHTER/SON Y/N AL GHUL WAYNE COMMITTED SUICIDE!"
You figured the headlines of the news pages would look like this, so you gave up. Though that was just an excuse; a part of you still held onto a sliver of hope about living. I suppose you were going to keep on living until you truly broke.
Or someone was going to kill you, you didn't know.
When you arrived in front of the school, it was hard to ignore the nauseating feeling; you hated this school. While you wanted to go to a quieter school, you had been forced to attend the school where status was everything, the same one Damian went to.
You were getting bullied because of Damian.
He might not have been bullying you directly, but he had ensured that you got bullied. He had spread rumors about you, turning even your friends against you.
He had done these things just for fun, and he had ruined your life.
You wanted to kill that little bastard.
Never mind him being your own brother, and never mind that your family would take his side and probably put you through terrible things.
Even Jason would take his side.
Why?
Simple; you were strange, you were an anomaly. They, too, thought there was something weird about you.
Damian found you weak, Dick didn't know how to talk to you, Jason saw you as a spoiled brat, Tim had forgotten your very existence, Cass and Steph were indifferent to you, and Duke, though he had spoken to you a few times, now settled for just a wave. You didn't even see your father.
Was there any need to count your mother?
You needed to wait until you came of age and run away. Unfortunately, that was still a year away.
As you stepped into the school, you tried not to draw attention to yourself. The moment you were spotted by your bullies, Nick and Martin, it would all be over.
Pulling your hood over your head, you walked quickly toward your classroom as you drifted into thought. You shouldn't have done that; at any moment someone could fling you to the ground, but your mind didn't seem to care.
You remembered the early days of being bullied. You and Damian had just arrived here, and as anyone could tell, the popular one was Damian. Even though he didn't want it. He had an unfair charm.
You were his sibling too, but they didn't look at you with admiration; they only saw you as an opportunity.
But still, you had friends back then.
During that period, you were just beginning to discover that you were gay. You had developed feelings for someone of your own gender, and it had made you very excited. You thought this was normal, that you weren't an anomaly, but the world didn't think so.
You wrote love letters to them over and over; your room was your secret fortress. No one would enter there. You were sure they didn't even know it existed.
Damian noticed.
He didn't know what was so important in your room. You never left it except for school, and you didn't let anyone in there either —not that anyone wanted to enter anyway—. A sense of curiosity consumed him.
He decided to enter your room at a time when you weren't there. He was aware that he shouldn't do it, but he didn't care.
You were his sibling; he had the right to do anything.
He was shocked when he stepped into your room.
There was an LGBT flag on the wall against which your bed rested. It was large and beautiful.
He hadn't expected this. He truly hadn't.
How could he not know this? He should have known.
And your room was so different.
A rage welled up inside him, and he couldn't understand why. Perhaps guilt, perhaps regret. But that didn't stop him from projecting his anger onto you. He attacked you, insulted you, and ruined your reputation at school. He had done all of this purely out of rage.
He was angry because you hadn't told him, he was angry because he knew nothing about you, and he was angry because you were weak.
No, not a physical weakness.
A mental weakness.
You were easy to break, easy to make cry, and he hated that.
And yet, he kept breaking you.
Because above all, humans want to crush the one who is weak.
He told your friends that you were gay, caused the person you loved to look at you with disgust, and it spread progressively throughout the school. At first, it was just a few words. Then came the physical violence, and you were even subjected to harassment. Fortunately, you weren't raped.
The physical violence never lessened; it increased and continued. People made a routine out of taking their anger out on you. You wouldn't make a sound, you wouldn't oppose them; you were just a gay faggot, and they made sure you realized it.
Damian didn't look at you; he didn't see what you were put through.
You hated him; you wanted to kill him.
Every time you cried, the bullies mocked you even more. You were their jester, and you endured everything.
How you wished you could beat them up...But of course, you couldn't; everyone would blame you. Why would they listen to a faggot when they had the word of a normal kid?
As you walked through the hallways, someone grabbed you by the collar, pulled, and threw you to the ground. Even though you were used to this, it still hurt.
Nick was standing right over you, foaming with rage. Martin, beside him, was smirking. You had never seen him this angry, and it terrified you.
“I must say, I'm surprised you had the nerve to talk behind my back.”
Nick's voice, both angry and mocking, echoed in your ears. Everyone was looking at you; they weren't going to help. When did they ever?Someone had made up another lie about you. You couldn't understand why Nick was this angry; maybe he was already pissed off and someone had pushed his buttons...
You were ruined.
As insults flew through the air, you took deep breaths. You tried not to panic, tried to bring the situation under control. It was working.
But an unexpected move was made.
For the first time, you were hit in the face.
Usually, they would hit the stomach area more, but they wouldn't hit your face; just in case someone from your family caused trouble.
Your head spun from the successive punches landing on your face, while Martin kicked you in the stomach at the same time. Your face was covered in blood and it hurt immensely. You let out screams of agony; the people around you did nothing.
Just as Nick was about to throw another punch, someone caught his arm. You couldn't see who it was, and your body could no longer take it. You lost consciousness.
Damian's rage had frozen everyone solid.
The fury and fire in his green eyes were so intense that Nick was trembling with fear, unable to speak.
Damian had never protected his sibling, had never helped them.
Because he wanted them to grow stronger; he believed they needed to stand up to them on their own.
But this went too far.
He might look like he hated you, but deep down, he valued you. You were his own blood, his sibling.
Now, he couldn't tolerate someone causing you this much harm.
If you were awake right now, you would think he was a hypocrite.
He decided to deal with Nick and Martin later, and moved toward you to pick you up in his arms. The only thing that mattered right now was for you to regain consciousness.
As he carried you, he swore to himself that he would make it up to you.
You had to forgive him, you would forgive him. Right...?
The living room was quiet. Too quiet. A silence that should not have been, one that carried pain.
Even Dick wasn't speaking; his blue eyes were fixed solely on his hands, and a gloom had fallen over him.
Everyone was there. Even Jason had come.
You were sleeping in your room.
Damian was looking at the floor with his arms crossed, not speaking, the weight of guilt pressing down on his shoulders.
Jason could barely stand still; the rage welled up inside him wanted to burn and tear everything apart, to break those pieces of filth. And himself, too.
He always thought he stood by the oppressed; he was against you being excluded and despised by society just because you were different. But he had failed you...
If he hadn't run away from you and had spoken with you, he would have known about this. If he had opened up to you, you would have opened up to him too; you wouldn't be going through all this, and you would be reading books with him.
He knew you liked to read books; he had seen you in the library many times, but he hadn't dared to approach you.
Bruce knew he was a failure of a father; he had never looked after his children properly. He hadn't wanted to neglect you, but he did. Even if he found excuses, it wouldn't change that. He had distanced himself from you because he didn't know what to talk to you about.
You were just an ordinary person. Even if people didn't think so, you were normal.
You weren't strong like Damian, and you had never aimed to be Robin or any other vigilante. He loved you, but he couldn't spend time with you.
And now he realized his mistake.
He would be a better father, he would protect you and value you.
Dick was always the one who fixed things, kept the family together, and tried to help everyone. He truly did it from the heart.
Then why had he ignored you? Why hadn't he listened to you even once and learned what had happened to you?
He had no answers to these. He acted foolishly and ignored you. He had time to spare for Damian, but none for you. Wasn't this complete hypocrisy?
He would treat you now the way he treated his other siblings, he would even spoil you more. He would fix his mistake, truly.
Tim was smart; it wouldn't take him long to understand what was going on. Or so he thought. He couldn't believe he had been blind enough not to see what was happening to you. Rather, he hadn't wanted to see.
He had ignored you because you hadn't caught his interest. He found nothing to talk about with you and didn't deem it worth talking. He had no excuse, he was aware of it.
Being queer himself made him feel especially guilty. He knew how judgmental people could be, and you might be hating yourself and your identity because of it.
But he promised you, this would change. He would teach you how to code, play video games with you, or do whatever you wanted to do.
After ruining your bullies' lives, of course. He already knew the others would break their bones, but that wasn't enough; even if the wounds healed, they should be left in a state where they couldn't show their faces in public.
He would make amends, he absolutely would.
Steph was always the cheerful one, it was her job to make the environment fun, but right now she was just silent. She deeply regretted ignoring you. From now on, she would spend more time with you and show you that she loved you.
Cass was afraid. Not of you, of herself. She worried she would scare you. Even though she didn't want to see you as fragile, she felt that way deep down, which was why she hadn't approached you. She was aware this was a mistake. But she would fix it; she would become your shadow from now on.
She would protect you from everyone.
Duke didn't know what to do. He had just joined this family, and you were very introverted. That's why he settled for just a wave; he thought you were happy that way. Now he realized he was wrong, and he would no longer settle for just a wave; he would spend time with you.
Words were not enough to describe Alfred's sorrow. He was devastated. How had he failed to notice? He had understood that something was wrong, but he hadn't known you were being bullied just because you were gay. And this both angered and disappointed him.
When you opened your eyes, the ceiling of your room greeted you. The surroundings were bright; it felt as if you had been sleeping for a very long time. Remembering what had happened, you tried to sit up, but the pain in your body did not allow it.
As your eyes drifted around, you noticed someone...
Damian.He was holding your hand with one of his, and his head rested on your bed. His eyes were closed. As you tried to pull your hand away, he suddenly opened his eyes and gripped it tighter. His green eyes scanned your injured and bandaged face; he was looking at you with an unreadable expression, and it frightened you.
Noticing it now, they were all there. With you waking up, they had fixed their attention on you.
Damian did something you never expected and hugged you. His arms wrapped around you so tightly you thought you would suffocate.
“What are you do—”
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it won't happen again... I promise. No matter what, I will protect you.”
You flinched at Damian's sudden outburst. You couldn't believe your ears and swallowed nervously. What was happening?
“You don't need to worry anymore.”
Dick whispered as he stroked your head, and Jason nodded in agreement. Because he still felt guilty, he couldn't bring himself to approach you.
Tim was looking at you intently, studying you. There was kindness and understanding in his eyes.
Cass had sat on your bed and was holding one of your hands; her silent presence was supportive.
Steph, on the other hand, was looking at you with a smile, occasionally poking your cheek to remind you she was here.
Duke was eager to tell you his plans, but that could wait for later.
Bruce appeared, and he was looking at you with such an intense gaze it made you want to hide. His deep voice echoed through the room, and when Damian let go, he hugged you. He had trapped you within his muscular arms. Your head was against his shoulder.
“No one will be able to harm you or touch you; those who dare to attempt it will face the consequences. I promise.”
With murmurs echoing in the room, everyone approved.
No matter what, they would protect you, and they wouldn't hesitate to lock you in a golden cage for it.
You didn't know if this was good or bad, but the fatigue of years had settled upon you, leaving you unable to think about these things. As tears flowed from your eyes, you sobbed; for the first time, you felt seen, and you wept there for hours.
They all hugged you and did not leave you alone. You had never felt this peaceful while falling asleep.
They saw you, they heard you, and they cared about you.
That was the only thing that mattered.If this was a dream, you wished never to wake up.
Now you existed, now you could accept yourself, and you no longer had to be invisible.
Though it hurt that these things had to happen to you just for them to see you, you put that aside for later.
Right now, they were here and they loved you.You wouldn't think about what comes next for now. You would leave taking revenge for later, too. Right now, the only thing you wanted was peace, and you had found it.
Happy pride month! This pride consider helping out a disabled nonbinary lesbian PoC artist from not dying of liver failure
So sorry, I haven't been online due to my health getting worse and being too tired to really be online, but this is still very urgent... As of may 15 2026 I got results for my blood and liver, and it's not good; my liver is failing and I also can't take prescribed medication due to this as well which I need as I am suffering from feet problems that make walking difficult...
I do take commissions, but due to my deteriorating health, they will take a LONG time (like over 3 months ;.;) and I am so sorry about this... I also have designs for sale on toyhouse if that's more your thing too!
Again I am so sorry for this but the hepatologist is around 2000$ and I am disabled, can't get a job, is currently living with my abusive father and have no friends or family to help me out.. I am currently on a waitlist to go on benefits and I am not sure if they will accept me; I also pay for my therapy cat's expenses as she most likely has blood cancer (low white blood cells) but we currently needed to make one last test and blood transfusion to check and if she does she has to see urgent care..
Please I am begging and I am so sorry again... Thank you all for reading and reblog if you can! Thank you.
Here's my recommendations for this year! Pick them up at your local bookstore or public library!
Forgive-Me-Not - Mari Costa
Aisling is many things to many people: princess, heir to the throne, teenage daughter of two loving parents… She’s also about to learn a lot more about herself: changeling. Fey creature. Hunted. Feared. Loved?
Forgive-Me-Not is the name given to the true princess — the lost teenage biological daughter to the king and queen, who’s grown up in the chaotic and untrustworthy realm of Faerie. When Forgive-Me-Not breaks into Aisling’s room the night before their 18 th birthday looking for revenge, the two embark on a long and arduous journey. And what starts as a confrontational and adversarial pairing grows into a bond of mutual understanding, friendship, and maybe something more…
The Pale Queen: A Graphic Novel - Ethan M. Aldridge
Agatha has always dreamed of the stars. But when a chance encounter introduces her to the Lady of the Hills, Agatha is shocked to learn that a secret magical world lays hidden in the mist-shrouded land next to her village. She finds herself quickly captivated by the Lady, but is the Lady who she appears to be?
As Agatha forms a new friendship with a girl in town, she learns that the Lady is far older and more powerful than she could've guessed and that her plans aren't as innocent as they appear. Will Agatha be able to protect the people she loves from the Lady's sinister agenda?
Just Between Us: A Graphic Novel - Adeline Kon
Lydia Chen knows how good she is on the ice. Technically perfect, she’s been the one to beat since her debut years ago.
Except now, something is missing in her performances—a spark that’s been gone for a while. Between the constant training, appealing to sponsors to fund her, and the pressure to perform, Lydia’s passion for skating has disappeared.
When her rival Elaine Yee starts training at the same rink, Lydia’s struck by the emotion in Elaine’s routines and unwillingly finds herself getting closer to her as they compete for a spot in the Olympics.
As the tension between them comes to a head, Lydia’s about to find out how a competitor can become an ally and figure out how to feel alive on the ice again.
I Wanna Be Your Girl, Vol. 1 - Umi Takase (4 Volumes)
Hime and Akira have been friends since they were little kids. At age 12, Akira reveals to Hime that Akira is actually a girl at heart. She begins to dress like a girl and is bullied and harassed at school. Hime will not stand for it, and begins to dress as a boy in support of the friend she loves. Of course, this means their troubles at school are only just beginning.
Steam - Shaenon K. Garrity & Emily Holden (Illustrator)
Ruby is a genius humanoid who was grown in a secret lab at the local university, created to solve science’s greatest problems. But Ruby suspects she can’t fulfill her function while trapped inside, so she breaks out.
Now living among humans, Ruby attempts to lie low and fit in as a barista at the university coffeehouse, Inkcap. Working there gives her plenty of opportunity to figure out what problems people need solving. And as far as she can tell, most humans’ biggest problem is struggling to find happiness. And what makes them happy? Love! So, Ruby uses her superpowered brain to play cupid.
As Ruby sets to work pairing up the staff and regulars at Inkcap, she feels more and more human she’s got a community now, maybe even a crush. But the lab believes she’s dangerous, and it wants her back. When pursuing her own happiness leads Ruby straight into a trap, she’ll need her new motley crew of coffeehouse friends to save her from the scientist who only want to use her.
Red and the Wolves: A Graphic Novel - Cherry Zong
Red, a fiercely loyal hunter, has dedicated her life to protecting her witch Grand Mother. Monsters have been roaming the forest that they call home, bringing forth a mysterious illness that has devastated the land and chased every living soul away. Until Red stumbles upon an injured wolf-girl named Sil.
Red is cautiously optimistic to befriend someone new, but the more their relationship deepens, the more she begins to uncover the sinister truths behind everything she’s ever known.
Red must make the difficult decision of who to defend, before catastrophe consumes them all. This graphic novel that's an apocalyptic fantasy meets queer love story turns the classic Little Red Riding Hood fairytale on its head.
Rebis - Irene Marchesini & Carlotta Dicataldo
Born with paper-white skin, Martino is an outcast. To the villagers, albinism is more than a curiosity―it’s a curse. Bullied and shunned, Martino seeks refuge in the deep woods―and finds it in Viviana. Powerful and beautiful, Viviana belongs to a sisterhood of outcast women. Martino is welcomed into the fold and, drawing on the magic of the forest, is reborn.
In Rebis, Italian duo Irene Marchesini and Carlotta Dicataldo deliver a medieval fantasy steeped in mystery―a haunting and hopeful tale of transformation and found family.
I Shall Never Fall in Love - Hari Conner
George has major problems: They’ve just inherited the failing family estate, and the feelings for their best friend, Eleanor, have become more complicated than ever. Not to mention, if anyone found out they were secretly dressing in men’s clothes, George is sure it would be ruination for the family name.
Eleanor has always wanted to do everything "right," including falling in love—but she’s never met a boy she was interested in. She’d much rather spend time with her best friend, George, and beloved cousin Charlotte. However, when a new suitor comes to town, she finds her closest friendships threatened, forcing her to rethink what "right" means and confront feelings she never knew she had.
Inspired by Jane Austen and queer history, I Shall Never Fall in Love shines a light on what it means to be true to yourself and rewrites the rules for what makes a happily ever after.
It’s interesting that scientists have documented homosexual behaviours in over 1500 species. But only one species has documented homophobia. So what really is unnatural? Something that can be found in 1500 species or something cruel and hateful that’s been found in one.
And that my friends is why Pride Month is still so important. Yes, it is about celebration. It is about joy, love, community, and being visible without apology. But it is also about walking for those who cannot. Speaking for those who have been silenced, and standing for those who still live in countries where being LGBTQIA+ is criminalised, punished, or treated as something shameful.
Pride is a reminder to every government, every lawmaker, and every person who still believes otherwise: all love is beautiful, all identities deserve dignity, and every LGBTQIA+ person has the right to exist freely.
Platonic Yandere Batfam x Isha!Reader x Platonic Yandere Jinx
Chapter 1
Tw: Death, violence, blood, neglect, alcohol, Zaun-specific concepts, Jinx, psychological disorders, yandere behaviors, obsession, kidnapping, jealousy, angst, and many more.
a/n: English is not my native language, so there might be some mistakes. Please be kind 🩷
Your comments, kudos/likes, and reblogs/shares mean the world to me!
Jinx isn't in this chapter, but she will definitely appear in future updates.
For more context/information, feel free to check out the prologue.
First - Next
Panting heavily, you tried your best not to drop the scraps of food in your hands as you ran through the filthy, sinister streets. You needed to make it back to your home —it looked more like a squalid dumpster than a home, but you ignored that— before anything happened to you. You didn’t want anyone stealing the food you had barely managed to find. Finding food in Zaun was incredibly difficult —free food, to be precise— and people wouldn't hesitate to kill for it.
Your hood was about to slip off your head. Without slowing down for a second, you rounded a corner and hurried toward your small, crumbling shelter. Taking a deep breath, you checked your surroundings carefully before stepping inside.
You placed the food on the table and scanned the room for your mother. You couldn't speak; you could only make faint whimpers and hums, so you couldn't call out to her. Just as you stepped forward to look for her, your foot caught on something and you fell. Your breath hitched when your eyes landed on the object on the floor—or rather, the body.It was a horrific, utterly nightmare-inducing sight.
Your mother...
Your eyes widened, and your heart pounded so violently against your ribs that you felt it might burst out of your chest. Your mother, your everything, was lying on the ground; her chest wasn't rising or falling, and her skin was even paler than usual. Yet, she had been alive before you left the house.
Why, why, why?
With tears streaming down your face, you tried to lift her body, but it was too heavy—far too much for your small frame to handle. You sobbed and whimpered, striking her chest to make her wake up. Your useless, pitiful attempts were not enough to bring her back to life.
Your only hope for survival, your entire world, had been ripped away from you. You wished you had died instead of her. This was so unfair; you couldn't survive without your mother, but it felt as if life was mocking you, forcing you into this despair.
Your mother had been sick; it was impossible not to be sick down here. She hadn’t been born in this place, and she had endured the harsh air of Zaun for far too long. Eventually, her fragile body couldn't carry the burden anymore, and she lost her life in sheer agony.
You couldn't stop the tears pouring from your eyes; you wrapped your arms around yourself, desperately wishing this was all just a nightmare. But deep down, you knew this was reality.
Your mother's father was originally from Zaun and had lived here, but when your mother was born, he managed to settle her in Gotham. It had been brutal; the people of Zaun were looked down upon and despised, but he had succeeded. Your mother grew up in Gotham. It stayed that way until she gave birth to you—right up until the moment your grandfather got entangled with the mafia.
They came after you; they wanted both your mother and you. They murdered your grandfather because he refused to hand you over. No one knew what they would do to your mother and you, but it was certain that it wouldn't be anything good. Because of this, you were forced to flee to Zaun. Just thinking about your mother’s sheer helplessness at that moment made you sick to your stomach.
She wasn't accustomed to this place; her body couldn't withstand it, but she had no choice.
You never knew who your father was, and you never wanted to know. Your mother was more than enough for you; she was such an incredible person that despite all the hardships, she gave you the world. She made sure you never felt the need for a father.
She would go hungry just to feed you, staying awake for days on end. She even resorted to selling her own body just to protect you and find a little bit of food. She had no other choice; no one would hire her otherwise because she was deemed too weak, and they thought she wouldn't survive.
You never once judged her, and you were never disgusted by her. You never allowed anyone to say a bad word about her. Anyone who dared to talk down to her was quickly outsmarted by your sharp intellect. Being this intelligent at such a young age was truly extraordinary. Your mother was your most precious treasure. Her existence alone was enough; she was the only protector you had.
You would have done absolutely anything for her, because she would have done the exact same for you.
And now, you had lost her.Holding your mother’s cold hand, you remained seated on the floor. You wanted to die. You wanted to be with your mother and escape from all of this. You fell asleep curled up against her. You didn't want to leave her side. How could you possibly leave her? Your sole anchor was gone, and she was never coming back. If your voice could actually make a sound, you would have let out a scream that would deafen the world.
But you couldn't speak; you had been exposed to the toxic air and chemical waste of Zaun for far too long, and your vocal cords had been permanently ruined. Your mother had been your voice. She understood you, she never judged you, and she guided you. Her sweet daughter’s silence was never an obstacle to her; she was always there, and she was going to keep you safe no matter what. When you lost her, you lost your voice entirely.
Your mother was so beautiful. She looked like an angel, and she used to look at you as if you were the only sun in the universe. No matter what happened, she always smiled at you. You were her sun, and she was your angel. Your angel’s wings were broken now, and you were no longer shining. It hurt far more than it should have. Without your mother, you were a nobody.
When you opened your eyes, a piercing chill enveloped your body. The frame you were leaning against and the hand you were holding were so ice-cold that a small whimper escaped your lips. You couldn't stop your eyes from filling with tears; reality stung so deeply. Holding your mother’s hand, you continued to sit on the freezing concrete. You would stay here for as long as you could, just to prevent the rats from attacking your mother's body.
Sniffling, you wondered if your mother would still be alive if you had lived in a place with proper doctors. If there was an afterlife and your mother had gone there, all you could do was wish for her to be peaceful and happy.
Days blurred together, the food ran out, and a gnawing hunger began to burn in your stomach. You didn't want to leave your mother's side; you wanted to stay with her forever, but enduring the starvation was becoming harder with each passing day. Yet, you didn't want to die; your mother wouldn't want that. When she was alive, her sole purpose was ensuring your survival, and she told you that constantly. You had to fulfill her final wish; if you died, you would make all her sacrifices worthless, and you could never let that happen.
You hugged her one last time and kissed her. As your tears fell upon her face, you whispered a silent goodbye. Standing up, you covered her entire body with the blanket you had laid over her. Wiping away your tears, you stepped out of the shelter. You would have loved to dig a grave for her, but you weren't strong enough to break the earth, and even if you were, you couldn't carry her body. Perhaps in the future, you could make a symbolic grave for her, but for now, you had no choice but to leave your mother’s lifeless body there. No matter how much agony it caused you, you were forced to do it.
Wandering through the filthy, repulsive streets of Zaun, you ignored the cold biting at your exposed skin. This was the only outfit you owned; you didn't have the money to buy anything else, and you hadn't wanted to burden your mother while she was alive
.As your eyes scanned the area, you spotted a food stall; the items on display made your mouth water. Even though resorting to theft made you uncomfortable, you had no other choice. You were starving. Using your small height to your advantage, you crept toward the stall and looked around. Thievery was common around here, and since everyone was strictly minding their own business, no one paid any attention to you.
The man running the stall had his back turned, so he didn't see your hand reaching out for the food. You grabbed it and immediately bolted. You ignored the angry shouts echoing behind you. They couldn't possibly care this much about a single piece of food, right? Surely, they wouldn't chase you for long.
Turning a corner, you realized no one was following you. Quickening your pace, you moved further away, slumped in a corner, and began to eat. At least your stomach would be full today.
Or so you thought...
Before you could even finish half of the food, a body was violently thrown right next to you, causing you to jump in startle. The food in your lap slipped from your hands, falling into the dirt and turning to waste.
Can I really not even enjoy a single meal?
Clenching your teeth, you raised your head and noticed a few large, heavily built men approaching you. Their eyes were fixed on the body writhing in pain beside you, but it wouldn't take long for them to notice you too. You wanted to curse your miserable luck. As you slowly tried to back away, one of the men’s eyes—or rather, his eye, since he was missing the other one—locked onto you, and a repulsive growl escaped his throat. Your breath hitched in pure terror as he signaled to the others.
"Look at that, we found a brat that’ll fetch a good price, huh?"
His disgusting, gruff voice made you flinch in fear. Without waiting another second, you scrambled to your feet and began to run. You knew exactly what they meant; they were going to sell you to organ traffickers or child groomers. Wiping away the tears that threatened to fall from your eyes, you ran at top speed. They were right behind you. You were terrified, absolutely terrified. These vile bastards were aiming to make your already miserable life even worse.
"We're gonna catch you eventually, turning!"
His shout echoed through the streets, but the other people around did nothing but watch. Your heart was beating so fast you feared it might tear through your ribs.
In your frantic sprint, you hadn't even realized you had crossed the borders of Zaun and set foot into Gotham. You used to live on the very edge of Zaun; living any deeper was too harsh, and your mother couldn't have handled it. Usually, you were the one who went deeper to explore, lying to your mother about it. If she had found out, she would have been sick with worry.
You had never been to Gotham before; there was something about that place that deeply irritated you. You were filled with absolute rage toward them; they dumped all their waste into Zaun, causing its air to become utterly toxic. Those hypocritical bastards thought they could look down on you as if they were superior. Moreover, they were the ones responsible for your inability to speak. No matter how much you hated it, you belonged to Zaun, and you couldn't tear yourself away from it. The only place you hated more than Zaun was Gotham.
As you kept running, you finally burst onto a main avenue, managing to leave those men behind. Still, you couldn't stop; if there was one thing you knew better than anything, it was that these opportunistic parasites never gave up.
As you glanced back, you crashed hard into a solid frame and tumbled to the ground. You couldn't stop a sharp, involuntary gasp from escaping your throat. Your terror-filled eyes widened as they traveled up to the man's face.
Mop of orange hair and piercing eyes were locked onto you; he looked incredibly exhausted. As you scanned him further, the sight of the gun resting at his waist made your skin crawl. You tried to scramble up and run away, but the man gripped you firmly and turned you back to face him. You thrashed and struck his arms to make him let go, but he held his grip.
"Hey, hey, stop! I'm not going to hurt you!"
Panting heavily, tears streamed down your face. His large hand held your shoulder firmly.
"I'm a police officer. I won't harm you, so just calm down. What happened to you?"
A police officer? There were no police officers in Zaun.
Am I in Gotham?
The realization caused you to panic even more. Yet, you felt you had no choice but to trust him, and you began to explain everything using sign language. There was really nothing else you could do anyway. Your mother had barely managed to learn sign language and had taught it to you; that was how the two of you communicated.
The man nodded, not needing to say anything more. He lifted you into his arms and began carrying you toward the police station. You couldn't entirely process what was happening—well, you understood, but you were too terrified to analyze it, despite being a highly intelligent child. What was going to happen to you? Was he going to kill you? You didn't know if you could trust the police; you had never seen an officer in your entire life.
The man introduced himself, telling you his name was Jim Gordon. Realizing you were shivering, he draped his jacket over you and carefully analyzed your every movement with gentle eyes. The kind personality hidden beneath his intimidating appearance made you feel safe.
Once you arrived at the police station, he asked you questions, and you did your best to answer using sign language. When he learned you were from Zaun, he didn't judge you at all; meanwhile, you noticed the other officers glaring at you with disgust and judgment. But Commissioner Gordon didn't do that; his polite demeanor toward you never wavered.
They took some DNA samples from you; even though you were frightened, you allowed it, comforted by the supportive look from the man who found you. They told you they were going to find your father.
Father? That word felt entirely foreign to you. You couldn't ask them to bring your mother back, because they couldn't do that.
You were still wrapped in Commissioner Gordon's jacket; even though they tried to offer you something else, you gripped the jacket tightly and refused to let go. His scent lingering on it comforted you, calming your nerves. You leaned your head against Commissioner Gordon's shoulder, your tiny hand holding onto his large one, refusing to let him leave.
When you woke up, your head was resting against the stiff fabric of a couch. The orange-haired man was nowhere to be seen, and panic instantly surged through you. Sitting up abruptly, you looked around and spotted Commissioner Gordon talking to a tall man. That man's eyes suddenly locked onto your own.
His blue eyes were terrifying; the absolute lack of expression on his face made your skin crawl. His tall stature and the muscles visible beneath his tailored suit presented an entirely different level of intimidation. He could easily kill you with a single hand. The way he looked at you wasn't how one looks at a human being; he looked at you as if you were a "problem" that needed to be solved.
Gordon turned toward you, offering a small smile, and approached you with the man trailing closely behind. He gestured toward the stranger:
"This man is your father, Bruce Wayne."
Bruce Wayne... My father?
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I know this concept has been done a lot but let me just throw my idea to the pile. This is dark, not the darkest but it's not light so please know your limits before reading it. And as always, enjoy the show!
Also, even if it's technically a reader insert, Batsib is you but I don't really like writing in that perspective (Like: you did this and someone told you that), and I want to make Batsib as neutral as possible, they are still queer in some way. Happy pride!
Batsib who is the only one in the family who doesn't fight crime like the others. They just exist in the manor, completely self sufficient for the whole time they were under Bruce's wing. they were adopted in their older teens so they had a personality formed and didn't need them as much as if they were younger
Around the manor, they are known as the person who one could go cry to. Had a difficult patrol? Batsib would be there to clean the wound. Civilian life was pissing you off? Batsib was there as a shoulder to cry on.
Even for the ones older than them, like Bruce or Dick, would lean on them for some sort of emotional support, even if it wasn't so obvious
But no one knew anything about them
Bruce: "Have you been thinking about college? I was told of some that have good psychology courses"
Batsib: "But I don't want to go to psychology. I told you the course I want to :("
Bruce didn't thought much about that conversation, he must have mixed his children's courses.
But in the end that's all the family saw them as: Emotional support. the shoulder to cry on. No one ever worried about their own mental health
That was until one afternoon where no one saw Batsib for hours.
Cass was the first to get agitated, she had seen how different Batsib was acting for the last few days so she was the first to raise the family's attention.
Cass: "Batsib has been weird lately."
Tim: "Now that you mention it, they should have been back hours ago"
Batsib was a person of schedules and routine. They'd always warn the family if the littlest thing changed in their day and they were going to be out. So everyone freaked out a little bit
Dick: "Call them then! What if they got hurt?!"
Duke: "On it!"
Damian: "I'm sure our sibling is capable of defending themself. You're all overreacting"
Despite his words, Damian was worried, everyone was.
They still cared for Batsib even if they knew nothing about their life.
Duke: "Hey guys… Remember the Pride parade that took place a few days ago?… Batsib was spotted there, like, flag in the cheek and all"
Duke turned his phone to the others and open the article that popped right as he opened his phone
"The newest Wayne is spotted at pride parade with XXX flag painted on the cheek and the internet has a lot to say about it"
They sure did. The comments were wild, ruthless.
And to. make matters worst, no one in that room knew about it! Batsib never told them a word about it.
Tim: "I can't believe we didn't know this! How could they have never told me this, I would've helped"
Damian: "Would you? No one here talks to them if we don't have something to get in return"
The room fell silence for a few seconds. Called out by an 11 years old.
Cass: "If they didn't felt safe enough to tell us this… How would they react to these comments?"
No one had the answer. No one knew Batsib well enough to predict their reaction.
And when the Batcomputer started to beep, everyone knew deep inside of them that it is bad
Batsib's smartwatch, who was modified to periodically sent their location, heart beat and other metrics to the cave for their safety, warned of them leaving the perimeters of Gotham.
All of the bats felt their heart sink. There was nothing worth going outside of Gotham… and the little red point on the map that was the Batsib was slowly approaching a cliff
Bruce never suited up faster. He just found out he failed yet another one of his children, he's not going to lose another one of his children again too
Every bat followed right behind until they reached the cliffs behind Gotham
And there Batsib was, drunkenly crying right on the edge of their death
The Bats stopped, everyone of them unsure how to proceed next. How could they? If they had protected Batsib better, this wouldn't have happened .
If only they had given their own shoulder for the teen to cry on, they would've known about their queerness, alcohol problems and suicide ideas. But they didn't.
That would change.
Even if it meant locking them up in the manor to protect them for paparazzi. Or taking their phone away so they can't read any more mean, rude, or cruel comments
From now one they will be the ones taking care of Batsib's emotions and make sure this situation never happens again.
But for now, Bruce carries his black out drunk teen back to their bed with his other children following right behind
Damian: "Will they be alright, father?"
Bruce: "They will. They have to"
Dick: "I can't believe we messed up so badly"
Duke: "How could we miss behavior like this? Did we really pay so little attention to them?"
Tim: "This will never happen again"
Cass holds Batsib's hand, unwilling to let go or leave the room
The family dreaded to call Jason to tell him what had happened. The man was already protective of Batsib as it was. After this? No one even wanted to imagine the rage he was about to go through
Hope you enjoyed it, I'm not really that used to make fanfics or anything that isn't with my own characters so I'm still getting used to the fear of writing someone super out of character.
Platonic Yandere Batfam x Isha!Reader x Platonic Yandere Jinx
Chapter 1
Tw: Death, violence, blood, neglect, alcohol, Zaun-specific concepts, Jinx, psychological disorders, yandere behaviors, obsession, kidnapping, jealousy, angst, and many more.
a/n: English is not my native language, so there might be some mistakes. Please be kind 🩷
Your comments, kudos/likes, and reblogs/shares mean the world to me!
Jinx isn't in this chapter, but she will definitely appear in future updates.
For more context/information, feel free to check out the prologue.
First - Next
Panting heavily, you tried your best not to drop the scraps of food in your hands as you ran through the filthy, sinister streets. You needed to make it back to your home —it looked more like a squalid dumpster than a home, but you ignored that— before anything happened to you. You didn’t want anyone stealing the food you had barely managed to find. Finding food in Zaun was incredibly difficult —free food, to be precise— and people wouldn't hesitate to kill for it.
Your hood was about to slip off your head. Without slowing down for a second, you rounded a corner and hurried toward your small, crumbling shelter. Taking a deep breath, you checked your surroundings carefully before stepping inside.
You placed the food on the table and scanned the room for your mother. You couldn't speak; you could only make faint whimpers and hums, so you couldn't call out to her. Just as you stepped forward to look for her, your foot caught on something and you fell. Your breath hitched when your eyes landed on the object on the floor—or rather, the body.It was a horrific, utterly nightmare-inducing sight.
Your mother...
Your eyes widened, and your heart pounded so violently against your ribs that you felt it might burst out of your chest. Your mother, your everything, was lying on the ground; her chest wasn't rising or falling, and her skin was even paler than usual. Yet, she had been alive before you left the house.
Why, why, why?
With tears streaming down your face, you tried to lift her body, but it was too heavy—far too much for your small frame to handle. You sobbed and whimpered, striking her chest to make her wake up. Your useless, pitiful attempts were not enough to bring her back to life.
Your only hope for survival, your entire world, had been ripped away from you. You wished you had died instead of her. This was so unfair; you couldn't survive without your mother, but it felt as if life was mocking you, forcing you into this despair.
Your mother had been sick; it was impossible not to be sick down here. She hadn’t been born in this place, and she had endured the harsh air of Zaun for far too long. Eventually, her fragile body couldn't carry the burden anymore, and she lost her life in sheer agony.
You couldn't stop the tears pouring from your eyes; you wrapped your arms around yourself, desperately wishing this was all just a nightmare. But deep down, you knew this was reality.
Your mother's father was originally from Zaun and had lived here, but when your mother was born, he managed to settle her in Gotham. It had been brutal; the people of Zaun were looked down upon and despised, but he had succeeded. Your mother grew up in Gotham. It stayed that way until she gave birth to you—right up until the moment your grandfather got entangled with the mafia.
They came after you; they wanted both your mother and you. They murdered your grandfather because he refused to hand you over. No one knew what they would do to your mother and you, but it was certain that it wouldn't be anything good. Because of this, you were forced to flee to Zaun. Just thinking about your mother’s sheer helplessness at that moment made you sick to your stomach.
She wasn't accustomed to this place; her body couldn't withstand it, but she had no choice.
You never knew who your father was, and you never wanted to know. Your mother was more than enough for you; she was such an incredible person that despite all the hardships, she gave you the world. She made sure you never felt the need for a father.
She would go hungry just to feed you, staying awake for days on end. She even resorted to selling her own body just to protect you and find a little bit of food. She had no other choice; no one would hire her otherwise because she was deemed too weak, and they thought she wouldn't survive.
You never once judged her, and you were never disgusted by her. You never allowed anyone to say a bad word about her. Anyone who dared to talk down to her was quickly outsmarted by your sharp intellect. Being this intelligent at such a young age was truly extraordinary. Your mother was your most precious treasure. Her existence alone was enough; she was the only protector you had.
You would have done absolutely anything for her, because she would have done the exact same for you.
And now, you had lost her.Holding your mother’s cold hand, you remained seated on the floor. You wanted to die. You wanted to be with your mother and escape from all of this. You fell asleep curled up against her. You didn't want to leave her side. How could you possibly leave her? Your sole anchor was gone, and she was never coming back. If your voice could actually make a sound, you would have let out a scream that would deafen the world.
But you couldn't speak; you had been exposed to the toxic air and chemical waste of Zaun for far too long, and your vocal cords had been permanently ruined. Your mother had been your voice. She understood you, she never judged you, and she guided you. Her sweet daughter’s silence was never an obstacle to her; she was always there, and she was going to keep you safe no matter what. When you lost her, you lost your voice entirely.
Your mother was so beautiful. She looked like an angel, and she used to look at you as if you were the only sun in the universe. No matter what happened, she always smiled at you. You were her sun, and she was your angel. Your angel’s wings were broken now, and you were no longer shining. It hurt far more than it should have. Without your mother, you were a nobody.
When you opened your eyes, a piercing chill enveloped your body. The frame you were leaning against and the hand you were holding were so ice-cold that a small whimper escaped your lips. You couldn't stop your eyes from filling with tears; reality stung so deeply. Holding your mother’s hand, you continued to sit on the freezing concrete. You would stay here for as long as you could, just to prevent the rats from attacking your mother's body.
Sniffling, you wondered if your mother would still be alive if you had lived in a place with proper doctors. If there was an afterlife and your mother had gone there, all you could do was wish for her to be peaceful and happy.
Days blurred together, the food ran out, and a gnawing hunger began to burn in your stomach. You didn't want to leave your mother's side; you wanted to stay with her forever, but enduring the starvation was becoming harder with each passing day. Yet, you didn't want to die; your mother wouldn't want that. When she was alive, her sole purpose was ensuring your survival, and she told you that constantly. You had to fulfill her final wish; if you died, you would make all her sacrifices worthless, and you could never let that happen.
You hugged her one last time and kissed her. As your tears fell upon her face, you whispered a silent goodbye. Standing up, you covered her entire body with the blanket you had laid over her. Wiping away your tears, you stepped out of the shelter. You would have loved to dig a grave for her, but you weren't strong enough to break the earth, and even if you were, you couldn't carry her body. Perhaps in the future, you could make a symbolic grave for her, but for now, you had no choice but to leave your mother’s lifeless body there. No matter how much agony it caused you, you were forced to do it.
Wandering through the filthy, repulsive streets of Zaun, you ignored the cold biting at your exposed skin. This was the only outfit you owned; you didn't have the money to buy anything else, and you hadn't wanted to burden your mother while she was alive
.As your eyes scanned the area, you spotted a food stall; the items on display made your mouth water. Even though resorting to theft made you uncomfortable, you had no other choice. You were starving. Using your small height to your advantage, you crept toward the stall and looked around. Thievery was common around here, and since everyone was strictly minding their own business, no one paid any attention to you.
The man running the stall had his back turned, so he didn't see your hand reaching out for the food. You grabbed it and immediately bolted. You ignored the angry shouts echoing behind you. They couldn't possibly care this much about a single piece of food, right? Surely, they wouldn't chase you for long.
Turning a corner, you realized no one was following you. Quickening your pace, you moved further away, slumped in a corner, and began to eat. At least your stomach would be full today.
Or so you thought...
Before you could even finish half of the food, a body was violently thrown right next to you, causing you to jump in startle. The food in your lap slipped from your hands, falling into the dirt and turning to waste.
Can I really not even enjoy a single meal?
Clenching your teeth, you raised your head and noticed a few large, heavily built men approaching you. Their eyes were fixed on the body writhing in pain beside you, but it wouldn't take long for them to notice you too. You wanted to curse your miserable luck. As you slowly tried to back away, one of the men’s eyes—or rather, his eye, since he was missing the other one—locked onto you, and a repulsive growl escaped his throat. Your breath hitched in pure terror as he signaled to the others.
"Look at that, we found a brat that’ll fetch a good price, huh?"
His disgusting, gruff voice made you flinch in fear. Without waiting another second, you scrambled to your feet and began to run. You knew exactly what they meant; they were going to sell you to organ traffickers or child groomers. Wiping away the tears that threatened to fall from your eyes, you ran at top speed. They were right behind you. You were terrified, absolutely terrified. These vile bastards were aiming to make your already miserable life even worse.
"We're gonna catch you eventually, turning!"
His shout echoed through the streets, but the other people around did nothing but watch. Your heart was beating so fast you feared it might tear through your ribs.
In your frantic sprint, you hadn't even realized you had crossed the borders of Zaun and set foot into Gotham. You used to live on the very edge of Zaun; living any deeper was too harsh, and your mother couldn't have handled it. Usually, you were the one who went deeper to explore, lying to your mother about it. If she had found out, she would have been sick with worry.
You had never been to Gotham before; there was something about that place that deeply irritated you. You were filled with absolute rage toward them; they dumped all their waste into Zaun, causing its air to become utterly toxic. Those hypocritical bastards thought they could look down on you as if they were superior. Moreover, they were the ones responsible for your inability to speak. No matter how much you hated it, you belonged to Zaun, and you couldn't tear yourself away from it. The only place you hated more than Zaun was Gotham.
As you kept running, you finally burst onto a main avenue, managing to leave those men behind. Still, you couldn't stop; if there was one thing you knew better than anything, it was that these opportunistic parasites never gave up.
As you glanced back, you crashed hard into a solid frame and tumbled to the ground. You couldn't stop a sharp, involuntary gasp from escaping your throat. Your terror-filled eyes widened as they traveled up to the man's face.
Mop of orange hair and piercing eyes were locked onto you; he looked incredibly exhausted. As you scanned him further, the sight of the gun resting at his waist made your skin crawl. You tried to scramble up and run away, but the man gripped you firmly and turned you back to face him. You thrashed and struck his arms to make him let go, but he held his grip.
"Hey, hey, stop! I'm not going to hurt you!"
Panting heavily, tears streamed down your face. His large hand held your shoulder firmly.
"I'm a police officer. I won't harm you, so just calm down. What happened to you?"
A police officer? There were no police officers in Zaun.
Am I in Gotham?
The realization caused you to panic even more. Yet, you felt you had no choice but to trust him, and you began to explain everything using sign language. There was really nothing else you could do anyway. Your mother had barely managed to learn sign language and had taught it to you; that was how the two of you communicated.
The man nodded, not needing to say anything more. He lifted you into his arms and began carrying you toward the police station. You couldn't entirely process what was happening—well, you understood, but you were too terrified to analyze it, despite being a highly intelligent child. What was going to happen to you? Was he going to kill you? You didn't know if you could trust the police; you had never seen an officer in your entire life.
The man introduced himself, telling you his name was Jim Gordon. Realizing you were shivering, he draped his jacket over you and carefully analyzed your every movement with gentle eyes. The kind personality hidden beneath his intimidating appearance made you feel safe.
Once you arrived at the police station, he asked you questions, and you did your best to answer using sign language. When he learned you were from Zaun, he didn't judge you at all; meanwhile, you noticed the other officers glaring at you with disgust and judgment. But Commissioner Gordon didn't do that; his polite demeanor toward you never wavered.
They took some DNA samples from you; even though you were frightened, you allowed it, comforted by the supportive look from the man who found you. They told you they were going to find your father.
Father? That word felt entirely foreign to you. You couldn't ask them to bring your mother back, because they couldn't do that.
You were still wrapped in Commissioner Gordon's jacket; even though they tried to offer you something else, you gripped the jacket tightly and refused to let go. His scent lingering on it comforted you, calming your nerves. You leaned your head against Commissioner Gordon's shoulder, your tiny hand holding onto his large one, refusing to let him leave.
When you woke up, your head was resting against the stiff fabric of a couch. The orange-haired man was nowhere to be seen, and panic instantly surged through you. Sitting up abruptly, you looked around and spotted Commissioner Gordon talking to a tall man. That man's eyes suddenly locked onto your own.
His blue eyes were terrifying; the absolute lack of expression on his face made your skin crawl. His tall stature and the muscles visible beneath his tailored suit presented an entirely different level of intimidation. He could easily kill you with a single hand. The way he looked at you wasn't how one looks at a human being; he looked at you as if you were a "problem" that needed to be solved.
Gordon turned toward you, offering a small smile, and approached you with the man trailing closely behind. He gestured toward the stranger:
"This man is your father, Bruce Wayne."
Bruce Wayne... My father?
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Dick’s fingers curled weakly against the concrete. His lungs burned. Every breath felt like dragging broken glass across his chest.
Tim was saying something.
Jason too.
Their voices sounded distant. Muffled. Lost somewhere behind the frantic pounding of blood in his ears.
All that Dick could think about was the water.
His head twisted despite the protests of his body. Searching.
The river remained empty.
No flash of violet. No glimpse of scales. No glowing eyes staring back from beneath the surface.
Nothing.
It should have relieved him.
Instead, an unfamiliar disappointment settled heavily in his chest.
“Dick.” Tim grabbed his shoulder so hard that the older boy nearly pushed him away on instinct.
His voice finally cutting through the fog. “You with us?”
Dick blinked slowly.
The bridge came back into focus.
Jason crouched beside him.
Tim looked pale. Worried.
The water continued rushing beneath them.
The creature was gone.
And for some reason, Dick couldn’t stop looking for it.
Sleep never came.
The manor had long since fallen silent. Every light extinguished. Every hallway empty.
Grandfather clocks echoed softly through the estate, their distant chimes marking the slow crawl of the night.
Dick remained awake through all of them.
Flat on his back. Then on his side. Then sprawled across tangled sheets that had long since surrendered to his restlessness.
The pillows were a disaster. One trapped beneath his chest, the other abandoned somewhere on the floor after another frustrated turn.
Still awake. Still thinking.
Moonlight poured through the towering windows of his room, washing everything in silver.
The pale glow traced every line of his body with merciless precision.
Dick Grayson had always been unfairly beautiful.
Not handsome. Not merely attractive. Beautiful.
The kind of beauty that stole attention without trying. The kind that lingered in people's minds long after he'd left the room.
Years of training had sculpted him into something that seemed almost impossible. Lean muscle flowed beneath smooth skin, every movement graceful even in exhaustion. His shoulders were broad without heaviness. His waist tapered naturally. Every line of him seemed designed for motion, for flight, for impossible leaps through Gotham's skyline.
Even injured, he looked like something carved rather than born.
Moonlight caught along the elegant curve of his throat. The sharp line of his jaw. The faint hollow beneath it.
His dark hair was still damp from his shower, falling in soft, unruly curls across his forehead. Strands brushed against lashes so ridiculously long they looked almost unfair on him.
The same lashes countless Gotham socialites had spent years shamelessly swooning over.
Not that Dick ever noticed.
Or cared.
The same bright blue eyes that somehow managed to look warm even when he was exhausted.
Right now those eyes stared endlessly toward the ceiling.
Restless. Haunted. Beautiful and completely miserable.
A sigh escaped him. His hand dragged down his face before disappearing beneath the hem of his shirt.
His fingers settled over the place where the wound should have been.
The knife.
The blood.
The agony.
The sensation of his life slipping through his fingers.
He remembered all of it.
Yet when his fingertips brushed over the skin there was nothing but smooth flesh.
Faintly pink and freshly healed. It should have been impossible.
Dick frowned, lifting the shirt higher. Moonlight slid across his chest as he examined the spot again.
Nothing.
No stitches. No scar. No explanation. Just skin. As if the injury belonged to another life. As though the injury had happened weeks ago instead of mere hours.
Down in the cave, Tim was still running tests.
Still analysing whatever strange substance had been packed into the wound.
Dick barely cared.
Because every time he closed his eyes, he saw you.
Not the wound. Not the blood. You.
A flash of violet beneath black water. Bioluminescent markings glowing softly through the darkness.
Wide, terrified eyes.
Not frightened of him. Frightened for him.
The memory settled deep inside his chest and stayed there. Warm. Frustratingly persistent.
Dick groaned and rolled onto his side, pulling the nearest pillow against him.
His fingers tightened unconsciously around the fabric. As though he could somehow hold onto a memory. Hold onto you.
"This is ridiculous," he muttered.
The room remained silent.
You were a stranger. A mystery. Something that shouldn't even exist.
Yet somehow every thought circled back to you.
To webbed fingers gripping his shoulders. To your voice. To the panic in your eyes when you thought he wasn't breathing.
To the way you'd looked at him.
Outside, Gotham glittered beneath the night sky. Far beyond the city. Far beyond Wayne Manor. Beneath miles of cold, dark water.. You existed.
And somewhere between his racing thoughts and another sleepless hour, Dick found himself wishing he could see you again.
It wasn't just plain curiosity anymore. And judging by the fact sleep still refused to come,
You weren't leaving his thoughts anytime soon.
The cave was quiet save for the endless hum of machinery.
Tim hadn’t moved from his chair in hours.
Several monitors illuminated his face in varying shades of blue and white. Empty coffee cups occupied every available inch of desk space, abandoned as quickly as they had been consumed.
Hours in front of the computer had left shadows beneath his eyes, dark against the sharp planes of his face. Exhaustion lingered there, but it hadn't dulled the intensity in his gaze. If anything, it made it sharper.
Normally Bruce would’ve ordered him upstairs hours ago.
Tonight he didn’t.
Because Bruce himself hadn’t left either.
The bridge footage continued to play across the largest monitor.
Again.
And again.
And again.
The grainy recording showed little more than dark water and fractured moonlight. Occasionally a flash of movement appeared beneath the river’s surface before disappearing entirely.
Nothing that could be useful.
Nothing that should have warranted this much attention.
Yet neither of them looked away.
“It doesn’t make sense.” Tim’s voice broke the silence.
His fingers moved across the keyboard again. Reaching for it, he pushed his sleeves farther up his forearms without seeming to notice. The motion tightened the muscles beneath pale skin, subtle veins tracing along his wrists before disappearing beneath the rolled fabric.
Bruce glanced toward him.
The younger vigilante was frowning at a collection of scans displayed across three separate screens.
Chemical analyses.
Biological breakdowns.
Tissue comparisons.
Every test they possessed had been run against the strange substance recovered from Dick’s injury.
Every single one had failed to identify it.
“It accelerated tissue regeneration,” Tim continued, scrolling through another report. “Not theoretically. Not potentially. It actually did.”
Bruce’s gaze shifted toward the medical file currently displayed beside it.
Nightwing.
Severe abdominal trauma. Expected recovery time: weeks.
Physical recovery time: hours.
His jaw tightened. Because Tim was right. It didn’t make sense. Nothing about this situation made sense. The creature itself was impossible enough. The healing compound only complicated matters further.
Bruce folded his arms across his chest. “Gotham Harbor is monitored.”
Tim laughed once. A short, humourless sound. He leaned back, rubbing a hand across his face before immediately returning to the screens. Even exhausted, there was an almost relentless focus to him, dark eyes fixed on the data as if he could force the answers to reveal themselves through sheer determination.
“Extensively.”
Wayne Enterprises monitored shipping lanes. The city monitored cargo routes. The Batcomputer monitored everything else.
Thermal scans.
Sonar systems.
Surveillance satellites.
Motion tracking.
Bruce had spent decades building a network capable of observing every inch of Gotham.
Yet somehow an entirely unknown species had existed beneath their feet without detection. The fact irritated him more than he cared to admit.
Tim opened another file.
Then another.
Then another.
Old newspaper archives replaced scientific reports.
A single image remained frozen on the central monitor.
A blurry frame extracted from the bridge footage.
The quality was poor. Far too poor to identify any meaningful details.
Yet two things remained visible.
A faint bioluminescent glow, and a pair of eyes staring upward from the darkness.
Tim’s fingers paused over the keyboard. “You think it’s alone?”
Bruce’s eyes lingered on the image.
The question itself was interesting.
Not what are they.
Not where did they come from.
Are they alone.
As though Tim had already accepted your existence.
Bruce considered the question carefully.
A species required a population. A population required territory. Food. Shelter. Infrastructure.
The implications only multiplied from there.
His gaze settled once more on the river maps scattered across adjacent monitors.
For the first time since the encounter, he found himself wondering something beyond the mystery.
Not what you were.
But how long you had survived there.
Hidden beneath polluted waters, surrounded by criminal activity, entirely unseen.
His expression darkened.
If the creature that saved Dick had truly been living in Gotham all this time, then one fact remained unavoidable.
Something had been sharing his city for years.
And nobody had been protecting it.
Jason’s apartment was dark, which wasn’t unusual.
Most nights he preferred it that way.
The city lights filtering through the windows provided more than enough illumination, casting long shadows across the sparse living room and the collection of weapons currently spread across the coffee table.
His helmet sat abandoned beside the couch. His jacket draped over the armrest.
Yet neither had been touched in nearly forty minutes.
Jason remained seated.
His broad frame sank into the old leather cushions as one hand rolled a strip of torn fabric between rough fingers.
Nightwing’s suit.
Or what remained of it.
The material had been shredded where Tim had grabbed him. A desperate attempt to stop Dick from falling.
Jason turned the fabric over again.
The motion was absentminded. Distracted.
A sliver of city light spilled through the apartment window, catching against the sharp angle of his jaw. It traced the faint white streak near his temple before disappearing into shadow again.
Normally he would’ve been asleep hours ago.
Or out on patrol.
Or finding literally anything productive to do.
Instead he found himself staring at a ruined piece of spandex.
Thinking.
The bridge replayed itself endlessly behind his eyes.
Dick falling.
Tim screaming.
The water below.
And then you.
Jason’s jaw tightened.
Whatever the hell he’d seen.
That’s what kept bothering him.
Not that a creature existed. Not even that it had saved Dick. It was the way it had looked at them.
The memory remained frustratingly clear. Those eyes emerging from the darkness, aert and curious.
Not the eyes of an animal nor predator, but a person.
The realisation unsettled him.
Because people were complicated.
People lied.
People hid things.
People got hurt.
Jason tossed the fabric onto the table. His hand dragged across his face.
He should’ve left it alone. Should’ve gone to sleep. Should’ve trusted Bruce and Tim to spend the next month drowning in reports and surveillance footage.
Instead he found himself standing.
The decision made before he’d consciously reached it.
A low curse left him. “.. Goddammit.”
An hour later, Red Hood stood overlooking Gotham Harbor.
The city stretched endlessly behind him.
Neon lights reflected across black water.
The cold wind rolled off the river, tugging at the edges of his jacket.
Jason barely noticed. His attention fixed on the water below.
Feeling vaguely ridiculous.
The logical part of his brain knew this was stupid. You could’ve been anywhere.
Miles away by now.
Hidden beneath countless waterways connected to Gotham.
The chances of simply stumbling across you again were practically nonexistent.
Yet here he stood anyway.
His gloved hands rested against the railing.
The position drew his shoulders forward slightly, leather pulling taut across his back. Beneath the jacket, muscle shifted with easy, practiced strength. The kind earned through years of violence, survival, and relentless training.
The movement pulled at the fabric stretched across his shoulders.
Built less like an acrobat and more like a wrecking ball.
Years ago, Dick had been trained to fly.
Jason had been trained to survive.
He wasn't built for Dick's effortless grace.
Where Nightwing moved like a blade through the air, Jason was something heavier. Broader. A force rather than a flourish.
The difference showed.
In the width of his shoulders. The powerful line of his chest. The scars hidden beneath armor and clothing. The hands that looked just as comfortable wrapped around a motorcycle throttle as they did a weapon.
Even standing still, there was something restless about him.
Like violence lived just beneath the surface.
His dark hair stirred in the wind. Moonlight caught briefly on the exposed edge of his jaw before slipping lower, illuminating eyes that remained fixed on the water.
Far more observant than most people gave him credit for.
Searching.
The same way Dick had searched from the bridge.
Though Jason would deny the comparison if anyone pointed it out.
Minutes passed. Then more.
Nothing.
Only the river moving steadily beneath him.
The sound of distant traffic.
The occasional cry of gulls somewhere overhead.
Jason exhaled sharply through his nose.
This was stupid. Absolutely stupid.
He was standing alone on a dock in the middle of the night because he couldn’t stop thinking about a pair of eyes.
A pair of eyes attached to a creature he technically wasn’t even sure existed.
Yet even as the thought crossed his mind, his gaze drifted back toward the water.
Toward the place where he’d last seen you.
The moon reflected across the surface in fractured pieces.
Silver dancing across black.
For a moment, just a tiny moment, Jason thought he saw something move.
His body reacted instantly.
Straightening. Every muscle tensing. His heartbeat kicked once against his ribs.
The disturbance vanished almost immediately.
Nothing more than a ripple.
Yet Jason remained frozen.
And for the first time since leaving the bridge, a faint smirk tugged at one corner of his mouth.
Because whether you were real or not, whether he’d imagined the whole damn thing or not, he knew one thing. He wasn’t done looking.
Not yet.
Not until he got a look at you properly.
Damian had endured exactly thirty two hours of this nonsense.
Nearly two days of Grayson staring into space.
Nearly two days of Drake monopolising the Batcomputer.
Nearly two days of Father and Drake discussing an unidentified aquatic creature as though Gotham hadn’t presented far stranger problems before.
Frankly, he was tired of hearing about it.
The manor was unusually quiet as he made his way downstairs.
Early morning sunlight filtered through the enormous windows lining the eastern hallways, painting pale gold across polished floors.
Most of the household remained asleep.
Damian preferred it that way. Silence was far more tolerable than conversation. Especially when the conversation inevitably circled back to the same topic.
The creature.
The creature.
The bloody creature.
As though the entire family had collectively lost their minds.
A faint scowl settled across his features.
He pushed open the door leading into the cave. Immediately he was greeted by the glow of computer screens.
Drake remained exactly where Damian had left him hours ago.
Predictable.
The older boy was slumped over the keyboard, several empty coffee cups scattered around him like casualties of war.
Father sat nearby reviewing reports.
Neither acknowledged Damian’s arrival. That alone was enough to pique his curiosity.
Damian approached silently. His gaze drifted toward the largest monitor.
The bridge footage.
Again.
Still the same recording.
For a brief moment, all he saw was darkness. Black water. Static.
Then movement.
A faint glow emerged beneath the surface.
The footage blurred. Pixelated. Distorted. Yet even through the poor quality, he could make out the shape.
Long.
Graceful.
Powerful.
The tail appeared first. Then a shoulder.
Then the footage froze.
Damian frowned.
Drake had paused the recording.
“Continue.”
Tim glanced up, dark circles worse than before lingered beneath his eyes.
“You interested now?”
“No.” A lie.
Tim smirked.
Which immediately irritated him.
The recording resumed.
Only a few frames passed before the image sharpened slightly. Not enough for identification. Not enough for certainty.
But enough.
Enough for Damian to see the eyes.
His expression stilled.
The cave seemed unusually quiet.
For a moment, he forgot about Drake entirely. Forgot about the reports. Forgot about Grayson.
The image remained frozen. The creature stared upward from beneath dark water.
His fingers tightened slightly at his sides. “That is the frame you’ve been studying?”
Drake nodded.
Damian didn’t respond.
He found himself stepping closer instead.
The image quality was terrible. Objectively terrible. Yet his gaze remained fixed on the screen. Studying every visible detail.
The shape of the face. The faint bioluminescence. Both the familiar and unfamiliar anatomy.
Something ancient stirred in the back of his memory.
The sort of stories that the League would’ve dismissed as myths, yet here it was.
Documented.
Real.
Damian’s expression darkened.
Fools.
Every one of them.
Allowing themselves to become distracted by a mystery. Becoming emotionally invested before they possessed all the facts.
It was sloppy.
Irrational.
Unworthy of them.
His gaze returned to the screen.
… Curious.
The thought surfaced before he could stop it. Damian immediately scowled. Then looked at the image again. Just once more. Only to verify a detail he’d missed.
Nothing more.
Yet several minutes later he was still standing there.
Studying the creature hidden beneath Gotham’s waters.
Unaware that he had become exactly like the rest of them.
Platonic Yandere Batfamily x Isha! Reader x Platonic Yandere Jinx
Prolog
Gotham is dangerous, corrupt, and survival here is a brutal challenge. No one knows this better than those from Gotham's forgotten corners. To survive, you either have to be filthy rich or a master of the art of survival.
But there is a place even more dangerous than Gotham, a place where living is nearly impossible:
Zaun.
A place where Gotham citizens would never dare to set foot.
This is a realm with no hospitals, no mercy, and where only criminals can survive. A horrific world where people give up their own organs just to endure the toxic air, where addicts who can't breathe without Shimmer rule the streets, and where the only source of hope is tied to a mob boss like Silco...
Zaun is the only place where even Batman cannot step; the only domain that vigilantes cannot save. Its people are so consumed by rage and hatred that if someone from Gotham steps inside, their survival is nothing short of a miracle.
It is the place that the so-called heroes left to die.
Who else but the people of Zaun could endure breathing its toxic air?
Children are left orphaned at a very young age here; everyone knows that the people of Zaun are born into abandonment. There is no place to accept them.
Zaun is the place where a maniac like Jinx took root. The very place that gave birth to the name that even Batman and his family fear...
And Y/N came from the exact heart of it. Someone who opened their eyes to that brutality, someone who lost everything in life...
The one who will bring about the end of the Batfamily.
Trigger Warnings
Death, violence, blood, neglect, alcohol, Zaun-specific concepts, Jinx, psychological disorders, yandere behaviors, obsession, kidnapping, jealousy, angst, and many more.
A/N
This is my story, and it will be shaped entirely by my own imagination. So, I don't care if characters are out-of-character (OOC) or if things seem illogical.
English is not my native language, so there might be mistakes. I'm sorry about that! I am trying to improve my writing; it’s not perfect, but I am writing this for fun.
Comments, reblogs, and feedback make me incredibly happy 🩷
The Arcane and DC universes will be merged. The only difference is that Piltover does not exist, and characters specific to Piltover (Jayce, Viktor, Caitlyn, etc.) are not in this story.
When you meet Jinx, she will call you "Isha" because that name holds a very deep meaning. The name Isha signifies Ruling Goddess, Ruler, Protector/One who protects, divine power, life/existence, and woman. Jinx will address you by this name because, in Arcane, Isha protects her and sacrifices herself for her. Also, because of this name, I will write the reader as female, but you can imagine yourself as male, gender-neutral, or whatever you prefer. Although I usually write gender-neutral readers, I will make the reader female this time to align with Isha's concept.
This is a strictly platonic relationship. There is no romance, and absolutely no pedophilia.As I mentioned, English is not my first language, so errors may occur. Please let me know if you spot any, and please be kind 🩷
Read chapter one here first. Warnings: Yandere Themes, Batfamily x reader, Superfamily x reader, Death, Dark fic → read at your own discretion. Chapter Two.
The hallway felt wrong.
Too bright. Too loud. Every sound bounced around your skull like a ricochet. Lockers slamming, distant chatter, shoes squeaking against polished tiles. Your pulse drowned most of it out anyway, roaring violently in your ears as you stumbled after Mr Cameron into the corridor.
The classroom door shut behind you with a soft click. A mercy.
“Easy,” the teacher said carefully, voice lower now, gentler than before. “Just breathe for a second, alright?”
Breathe.
Right.
Your lungs seized painfully as if they had forgotten how. You made it three more shaky steps before your knees finally gave out beside the bag racks lining the wall. The impact jarred through your body, but you barely felt it. Your hands clutched at your chest instead, fingers digging into fabric as if you could physically hold your heart together.
This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. You stared at the floor, breaths coming sharp and uneven.
Six years. Six whole fucking years.
You had died. You remembered it.
You remembered the loud bang. The bullets impact. The impossible pain splitting through your heart. The suffocating weight in your chest as everything faded into darkness.
You remembered dying.
So why were you here? Why did your body feel eighteen again? Why did your hands look smaller? Why did the air smell like cheap school disinfectant instead of rain and blood?
A trembling sound escaped your throat before you could stop it.
Mr Cameron crouched down a few feet away, keeping enough distance not to crowd you. You noticed that immediately. Instinctively. Like he was trying not to scare you.
“We don’t have to go back inside yet,” he said quietly. You looked up too fast and regretted it instantly. Because he looked young. Not young compared to how you remembered him, but young compared to reality.
Mr Cameron had been nearing retirement when you last- No.
Your stomach twisted violently.
He should’ve had grey hair. Wrinkles. That tired expression he always wore after years of grading papers.
Instead, he looked barely forty. Clean-cut. Sharp-eyed. Concern written plainly across his face as he watched you try not to fall apart on the hallway floor.
“You’re really him,” you whispered hoarsely.
His brows furrowed slightly. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re actually him,” you repeated, more to yourself than him. “Holy shit…” Your vision blurred.
“Okay,” he said slowly, carefully, like every word needed to be handled with caution. “I’m gonna take you down to the nurse, alright? You look like you’re about two seconds from passing out.” The concern in his voice almost made your chest hurt worse.
You couldn’t stop staring at him. At the lines that weren’t on his face. At the dark hair with only a little sprout of grey starting behind his ear. At the fact his wedding ring was missing because he hadn’t even met his wife yet.
Your stomach churned violently.
“Hey.” His tone softened further when you didn’t answer. “Can you stand?”
You blinked hard, forcing yourself back into the present. “…Yeah,” you managed weakly. You couldn’t tell if it was true. Still, you let him help you up.
His hand hovered near your arm rather than grabbing it outright, like he was afraid sudden contact would spook you. The tiny consideration dug under your ribs unexpectedly deep.
You followed beside him in a haze.
Students moved around you in blurs of uniforms and backpacks, conversations echoing down the corridor in warped fragments. Every now and then someone glanced your way before quickly looking elsewhere. You wondered vaguely what you looked like right now.
Probably insane.
Your legs carried you on autopilot while your mind spiralled somewhere far away, trapped between memories of dying and the impossible reality of polished school floors beneath your worn down shoes.
Mr Cameron said something to you halfway there.
You nodded without processing the words.
The nurse’s office door opened with a soft creak. Warm lighting spilled across the room, gentler than the harsh fluorescents outside. A small fan hummed quietly from the corner beside neatly stacked folders and medical supplies.
“You can sit there for me, sweetheart,” the nurse said immediately, concern flashing across her face the second she saw you.
You obeyed automatically.
Mr Cameron lingered near the doorway.
“They nearly collapsed outside class,” he explained quietly. “Caused quite a ruckus, had to leave the TA in charge.”
The nurse nodded once, already moving around the office gathering things. “Probably a panic attack,” she murmured. “I’ll handle it from here.”
Panic attack.
If only it were that simple. Your eyes drifted absently around the room while they spoke.
Posters about exam stress, a faded CPR chart, a school banner pinned crookedly near the filing cabinet, a half-heartedly made anti-bullying poster.
You wondered if this was hell.
Not fire-and-brimstone hell. Not demons with pitchforks and eternal screaming. Something worse. Something tailored specifically for you.
A punishment built out of teenage angst and overdue assignments. Out of uncomfortable plastic chairs and group projects with people who never did their share of the work. A cruel, cosmic joke where some higher being looked at your deepest fears and decided high school deserved a second round.
Maybe that was the point. Maybe dying hadn’t been enough. Maybe this was some sick afterlife where you were forced to relive adolescence forever. Endless exams you hadn’t studied for, teachers disappointed in you, the suffocating pressure of trying to figure out a future you already knew would never happen.
Or maybe this was your brain breaking apart in its final moments.
That felt possible too.
Maybe your body was still lying somewhere cold and ruined while your mind desperately stitched together familiar places to soften the terror of dying. One last comforting hallucination before everything finally shut off for good.
Except there was nothing comforting about this.
Your chest still hurt. Your memories still felt sharp enough to cut through you. You remembered blood. You remembered fear.
You remembered your grandma.
The thought slammed into you so suddenly your stomach twisted.
No.
No, you didnt want to think about her. Not yet.
You couldn’t imagine her all alone in that house. Couldn’t imagine the police knocking on her door, interrupting her while she was singing along to some old country song while she cleaned or making burnt sugar cookies for the end of the week when you were supposed to come over.
Your fingers curled tightly against your knees instead. Willing the thoughts of her all by herself out of your head.
Maybe you were in a coma.
Maybe six years hadn’t passed at all, maybe your brain had invented them entirely. Maybe none of it happened.
Maybe you’d never grown older. Never watched everything spiral so violently out of control.
Maybe your mind had simply created an entire lifetime out of a few dying seconds.
The idea should’ve comforted you. Instead, it made you feel sick. Because it had felt real. Too real.
You remembered the weight of hands grabbing your wrists. The sound of voices desperately calling out your name like something precious. The look in the vigilantes eyes right before-
Your breath caught violently. Stop!
You squeezed your eyes shut hard enough to hurt. The room hummed softly around you. The fan. Papers shuffling. Distant footsteps beyond the office walls.
Real.
It all felt horribly, unbearably real.
Your gaze drifted again, unfocused, until it snagged on the navy-and-gold banner pinned near the filing cabinet.
METROPOLIS HIGH.
Your brows furrowed immediately.
Metropolis? Not Gotham.
A sharp pulse throbbed behind your eyes. “… Wait,” you muttered faintly.
The nurse glanced over while scribbling something onto a clipboard. “Hm?”
You stared at the sign. “Why does it say Metropolis High?”
She blinked once like the question made no sense at all. “…Because that’s the school you attend, honey.”
“No, I-”
Your words caught against each other. Because that wasn’t right. Was it?
You stared harder at the banner like the letters would rearrange themselves if you looked long enough.
The nurse gave you a sympathetic look instead, already moving toward a cabinet near the back wall.
“You’re overwhelmed right now,” she said gently. “Just sit tight for me, alright? I need to grab some paperwork.”
Paperwork. Of course, even hell had paperwork.
The office door clicked shut behind her, leaving you alone in the softly humming room.
Silence rushed in immediately. Your breathing sounded too loud.
Slowly, uncertainly, you lifted one trembling hand in front of your face. You squeezed your fingers together. The sensation grounded and terrifying all at once.
Warm skin, pressure, movement. Real.
Your pulse jumped harder.
You pressed your thumb harshly into the web of skin between your thumb and pointer until pain bloomed under the skin.
Still real. Still here.
A shaky breath left you. “What the fuck…”
Time lost meaning somewhere around the fifty-minute mark.
The nurse came and went in intervals, checking your pulse, making you drink water, asking questions you barely processed long enough to answer. You nodded when expected to nod. Spoke when silence stretched too long. The rest of the time you sat there staring at the crooked Metropolis High banner pinned beside the filing cabinet like the words might rearrange themselves if you looked long enough.
They never did.
The clock above the door ticked forward relentlessly.
Eventually, the nurse stepped back into the office with a gentler expression than before.
“Well,” she said, setting her clipboard down, “your friend’s here to pick you up.”
Your brows furrowed immediately. “My… what?”
Before she could answer, the office door opened. And your stomach dropped straight through the floor.
Tim Drake stepped inside.
You knew that face.
Everyone knew that face.
One of Bruce Wayne’s sons. You’d seen him on magazine covers before, standing beside billion-dollar donations and carefully rehearsed interviews. Always neat in that rich-kid way.
Except this version of him looked younger. Eighteen. Maybe nineteen.
And the second his eyes landed on you, his entire expression shifted. Relief.
Sharp, immediate, real.
“There you are,” he breathed, like he’d been genuinely worried.
Your pulse spiked violently.
Tim crossed the room without hesitation, stopping beside your chair. Expensive cologne lingered faintly beneath the smell of antiseptic and printer paper. His tie hung loose around his collar like he’d rushed over here faster than he should’ve.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he said quietly. Not formal. Not distant.
Familiar.
His hand lifted instinctively toward your face before stopping halfway. You noticed the hesitation immediately. The restraint. Like he wanted to touch you and was actively stopping himself from doing it in front of the nurse.
“You almost collapsed?” His eyes searched your face rapidly. “What happened?”
You stared at him blankly.
Because Tim Drake was not your friend.
A Wayne should not have been standing in your school nurse’s office looking at you like this.
The nurse gave a sympathetic hum from behind her desk. “I think they just overwhelmed themselves. Panic attack, most likely.”
Tim’s expression tightened instantly. His attention snapped back to you so fast it almost felt physical. “You’re still not sleeping properly, are you?” he said softly.
The question landed with terrifying familiarity. Not the kind people asked out of politeness. The kind asked by someone who already knew the answer.
You opened your mouth, but nothing came out. Something about that seemed to concern him even more.
Your skin prickled. Everything about this felt wrong.
Not because he was acting friendly. Because he was acting close. Years-of-history close.
The kind of closeness built from late-night phone calls and inside jokes and habitual concern. Like this wasn’t unusual for him. Like worrying about you had become second nature a long time ago.
And somehow the worst part was that nobody else seemed to find it strange.
Tim studied you for another second before exhaling quietly through his nose. A flicker of something you couldn’t place crossed his face then. Easy amusement slipping through the concern. It transformed him strangely. Made him look less like a carefully polished Wayne and more like an actual teenager.
Then his eyes landed back on you. The amusement softened immediately.
“C’mon,” he said gently. “Let’s get out of here.”
Let’s.
Not I’ll take you home.
Not your ride is here.
Let’s.
Like wherever you went next was automatic. Shared.
The nurse handed over a folded slip of paper. “A slip to leave early. Try to get some rest, we don’t want this happening again.”
Tim accepted it for you with a quick nod.
Then, before you could fully process what was happening, he reached down and grabbed your bag from beside the chair. Effortless. Like he’d done it a hundred times before.
You stared at him again. He noticed.
“Don’t start,” he said immediately, already heading for the door. “Last time you carried this thing I had to sit through you whining about sore shoulders. I don’t have all night.”
Last time.
You followed him out hesitantly.
The hallway outside had mostly emptied by now. Afternoon sunlight spilled through the tall windows lining the corridor, painting long golden streaks across polished floors.
Students still lingering around glanced over as you passed. Not at you. At Tim.
Whispers started almost instantly.
Of course they did. He was.. well, him.
You caught fragments as you walked.
“..is that Tim Drake?” “Thought he graduated…”
Tim either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He walked beside you with easy confidence, your bag slung over one shoulder while occasionally glancing your way like he was checking you were still there.
It should’ve felt comforting. Instead it made your skin feel too tight.
Outside, the warm Metropolis air hit your face immediately. The parking lot shimmered faintly beneath the afternoon sun, rows of expensive cars scattered between students gathering near the gates.
Tim headed toward a sleek black car parked near the curb. Of course he drove something expensive.
He clicked the unlock button casually before opening the passenger door for you without a second thought.
The motion was so smooth. So instinctive. Like habit.
You stopped beside the car instead of getting in.
Tim looked at you over the roof, brows lifting slightly. “…You good?”
You stared at him carefully. At the loosened tie. At the concern still lingering behind his eyes. At the way he stood close enough to block half the parking lot from view without seeming to realise he was doing it.
Then quietly, cautiously, you asked: “Why are you acting like we know each other?”
…
For a second, Tim just stared at you.
Still.
The sounds of the parking lot seemed to dull around you. Distant conversations, car doors slamming, someone laughing near the front gates. All of it faded beneath the sudden tightness pulling across his expression.
“…What?” he said finally.
Your pulse hammered harder. “You keep talking to me like we’re friends,” you said carefully, watching him closely. “Like we’ve known each other forever.”
The words felt surreal coming out of your mouth. Because this was the CEO of Wayne Enterprises. Someone you’d only ever seen through screens and newspaper headlines.
Tim blinked once.
Then twice.
And something about his face changed. Just enough for unease to settle deep.
The concern softened into something sharper. More focused. Like his brain had immediately locked onto a problem and started dissecting it from every angle.
“You hit your head?” he asked quietly.
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
His jaw tightened slightly. Not angry, thinking.
You suddenly got the horrible impression that Tim Drake thought very fast.
His eyes searched your face with frightening intensity, tracking every tiny reaction you made like he was trying to solve you.
Then, unexpectedly, he huffed out a short breath through his nose.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “That’s… not funny.”
You frowned immediately. “I’m not joking.”
“I know your sense of humour is terrible, but fake-amnesia terrible feels excessive even for you.” The ease of the response sent ice down your spine.
He sounded so certain.
Certain enough that he wasn’t even considering another explanation.
You stared at him. Tim stared back.
Then the amusement faded from his face completely.
“…Wait,” he said. For the first time since he’d arrived, genuine uncertainty slipped through his expression.
“You’re serious.” It wasn’t a question.
Your silence answered for you.
Something tense settled into the space between you. Tim looked at you for another long second before glancing away sharply, gaze flicking toward the school entrance like he was reorganising his thoughts in real time.
When he looked back, his expression had smoothed out again. Controlled too quickly.
“You know who I am though,” he said carefully.
“…Tim Drake.”
“And?”
You swallowed. “One of Bruce Wayne’s sons.”
A strange look crossed his face. Not surprise. Something quieter. More dangerous.
Like hearing you describe him that way physically bothered him.
“And that’s it?” he asked.
You nodded slowly. The parking lot suddenly felt very warm.
Tim went silent. Completely silent. His fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around the strap of your school bag.
Then he smiled. Small, Careful. Wrong.
“Well,” he said lightly, “that’s mildly concerning.”
The understatement hit so strangely you almost laughed.
Instead you watched him step closer. Not enough to alarm anyone watching. But enough to make your heartbeat spike anyway.
“Okay,” Tim said calmly, like he was talking someone down from a ledge. “We’re gonna try this again.”
His eyes locked onto yours. “We’ve been best friends since fifth grade,” he said. “You practically lived at my place last year because your apartment had mold issues. You hate mushrooms, Kon’s music, and that one physics teacher with the cheese breath.”
Your stomach twisted violently. Because none of that sounded familiar.
But he said it with the effortless confidence of someone reciting facts. Not lies.
“You throw your textbooks at me when I talk too loud when you’re trying to study,” he continued. “You cried for hours when your grandma’s dog died. You steal fries off my plate every time we go out to eat anywhere.”
Each sentence landed heavier than the last. History. Details. Memories you didn’t have.
Tim watched your face carefully the entire time.
And when nothing clicked, when recognition never came, something unreadable darkened behind his eyes for just a fraction of a second. Gone so fast you almost imagined it.
Then he smiled again. Gentle. Controlled.
“Still nothing?” he asked softly.
You swallowed hard. “…No.” The word came out quieter than you intended.
Tim’s smile didn’t fall. But something about it changed, subtly. Like he was forcing it to stay there.
For a few long seconds neither of you spoke. Wind stirred through the parking lot, warm against your skin, carrying distant traffic and scattered conversation from students near the gates.
Tim looked at you like he was trying to fit puzzle pieces together in real time.
Then he sighed softly through his nose and opened the passenger door wider.
“Okay,” he said lightly. Too lightly. “You’re either having a psychotic break or you finally snapped after calc homework.”
You blinked at him.
He tilted his head slightly. “Personally, I’m blaming calculus. It’s evil.” The joke landed strangely after everything else. Like he was trying very hard to keep things normal.
Your throat tightened unexpectedly at the effort.
Tim gave the car door a small tap with his knuckles. “Get in before someone from school takes a picture of us standing out here.”
Your feet didn’t move.
Tim seemed to notice your hesitation easing by half an inch because he stepped back from the door immediately, giving you more space. Another tiny act of restraint.
“You can sit there and stare at me suspiciously the whole drive if it helps,” he offered dryly. “You already do that normally anyway.”
That word again.
Like there was an entire relationship happening around you that only he could remember.
Slowly, you got into the car. The interior smelled faintly like coffee and expensive leather. Clean, organised, lived-in in a way that somehow made this feel worse instead of better.
Tim shut the door gently behind you before circling around to the driver’s side.
The second he got in, his attention flicked toward you automatically. Checking. Assessing.
His fingers tightened briefly against the steering wheel. Then relaxed.
“You hungry?” he asked casually as he started the car. The normalcy of the question almost made your head hurt.
“What?”
“You haven’t eaten since breakfast.” He pulled out of the parking spot smoothly. “Probably contributing to the almost-passing-out thing.”
You stared at him. “How do you know when I ate?”
Tim glanced at you briefly. Then, somehow, he looked confused by the question.
“Because I was there.” The response came instantly, like it was obvious.
Your pulse stumbled.
“I dropped you off this morning,” he continued, eyes back on the road. “You complained about being tired and stole half my coffee.”
Silence filled the car. Tim tapped his thumb once against the steering wheel before speaking again, quieter this time.
“..You really don’t remember me?” There was something careful hidden underneath the question.
You looked out the window instead of answering.
Metropolis blurred past outside the glass in streaks of sunlight and towering buildings. Everything looked too clean compared to Gotham. Too bright. Too alive.
Wrong. Everything felt so wrong.
The buildings outside stretched high into the sky in gleaming sheets of glass and steel, sunlight reflecting off them hard enough to hurt your eyes. People crowded sidewalks carrying shopping bags and coffee cups, laughing too loudly, moving too casually.
No one looked afraid. No one looked over their shoulder. There were no flickering police lights reflecting off wet pavement. No grime clinging to alleyways. No looming sense that something terrible was waiting around the next corner.
Metropolis felt clean in the same way hospitals felt clean. Artificial.
“…I lived in Gotham,” you said suddenly.
Tim’s hands stilled for half a second against the wheel. Small. Almost invisible.
“You do live in Gotham,” he corrected lightly. “Technically.”
You turned toward him sharply. “What does that mean?”
“It means your apartment’s in Gotham.” His tone stayed easy, conversational. “You go to school in Metropolis because your grandma transferred here after she moved.”
Your stomach dropped. “Grammy moved?”
“About two years ago.”
Two years. The number hit like whiplash. Because that meant this version of your life had an entire history you knew nothing about.
Tim glanced at you briefly before looking back at the road.
“You begged her not to,” he added. “Said Gotham had better takeout.”
You stared at him. The casual certainty in his voice made it hard to breathe sometimes. Like these memories genuinely belonged to him.
Your fingers curled tighter in your lap. “My grandma…” Your throat tightened around the words. “She’s alive?” The question came out smaller than intended.
Tim’s expression changed instantly. Concern threading beneath the surface again.
“Yeah,” he said carefully. “Of course she is.”
Relief hit so hard it almost hurt.
You turned away immediately, pressing your fist lightly against your mouth as your eyes burned unexpectedly.
She was alive.
You didn’t realise how hard you were breathing until Tim quietly reached over and lowered the music volume that you hadn’t even noticed was playing.
Giving you silence instead.
That silence stretched on for a good twenty minutes.
Tim drove one-handed now, the other resting loosely near the gearshift, fingers tapping occasionally against the console like his brain was running faster than the rest of him.
Every now and then you caught him glancing over. Like he still hadn’t decided how seriously to take this.
“…So,” he said eventually, voice deliberately lighter, “if you’re committing to the amnesia bit, can you at least forget the pic of me on your phone?”
You blinked at him, brows furrowing in confusion. “What?”
“The one you threaten to show Damian every time I annoy you.”
There was the faintest hint of amusement in his voice now. Careful amusement. Testing.
Watching to see if anything landed. When you just stared at him blankly again, the corner of his mouth twitched downward.
“…Right,” he murmured.
For the first time since this started, Tim looked unsettled too. Not outwardly. Most people probably wouldn’t notice it. But you were starting to.
The slight pauses before he spoke now. The way his fingers kept tightening briefly against the steering wheel.
The way his eyes flicked toward you every few seconds like he was making sure you were still there. Like he was afraid to look away too long.
You swallowed hard. “Why are you being so calm?” you asked quietly.
Tim glanced over at you, brows pulling together slightly. “What do you mean?”
“You’re acting like this is normal.”
“I’m not-”
“You are.” Your voice came out tighter than intended. “I just told you I don’t remember you and you’re making jokes.”
Silence settled briefly between you.
Tim looked back at the road.
When he spoke again, his voice was quieter. “If I start freaking out too, you’ll freak out harder.” The honesty of the answer caught you off guard.
He exhaled softly through his nose, gaze fixed ahead. “And honestly?” A faint humourless smile crossed his face.
“You’re already kind of terrifying me right now.”
The further you got from Metropolis, the stranger the world outside became.
You weren’t used to this much open space.
In Gotham, everything felt crowded together. Buildings stacked over buildings. Alleys cutting through cramped streets. Siren's bleeding into traffic noise at all hours of the night.
Out here, the silence felt almost unnerving.
Fields stretched endlessly beyond fences and telephone poles. Farmhouses sat scattered in the distance with wide porches and rusted mailboxes. The sky itself looked bigger somehow. Too open, and far roo bright.
Tim slowed the car as the road narrowed further, tires crunching softly over loose gravel.
Your eyes drifted toward the passing scenery automatically. Cornfields, trees, a weathered wooden fence leaning slightly sideways.
Then finally a small country house came into view. It wasn’t large, just cozy.
White paint slightly faded with age, warm porch lights glowing softly against the coming dusk. Flowerpots crowded the front steps in messy little clusters, and wind chimes stirred gently near the porch roof.
The sight of it hit something deep in your chest unexpectedly hard.
Tim pulled into the gravel driveway slowly before putting the car in park.
For a moment neither of you moved. The engine ticked softly as it cooled.
You stared at the house. Something about it felt familiar in the same way that dreams felt like déjà vu.
Your eyes caught on to small details.
A knitted blanket hanging over the porch swing, crooked little garden beds overflowing with herbs, and a faded ceramic bird sitting near the front steps with one chipped wing.
It was homey.
Tim watched you quietly from the driver’s seat. He tired not to push. Just observing carefully again.
Then, after a second, he glanced toward the neighbouring property.
You followed the movement instinctively.
Another farmhouse stood not too far away across the fields. Larger than your grandma’s place, surrounded by fences and acres of farmland stretching toward the horizon. A red barn sat farther back near a windmill turning lazily in the evening breeze.
The Kent farm.
Something strange twisted low in your stomach. Recognition, almost. Like seeing a place from a dream you couldn’t fully remember.
Tim noticed you staring. “The neighbours are probably all home by now,” he said casually. “So if Jon suddenly appears out of nowhere, don’t be alarmed.”
Your brows furrowed slightly at the name. Was that the one he mentioned earlier?
Tim unbuckled his seatbelt with a soft click before looking back at you.
“You ready?” he asked gently.
The question felt heavier than it should’ve. Because somehow, stepping out of the car felt bigger than just getting out of a vehicle. Like crossing some invisible line you couldn’t uncross afterward.
Still, after a long pause, you nodded.
Tim’s expression softened with relief, stepping out first.
Gravel crunched beneath his shoes as he rounded the front of the car, evening sunlight catching briefly against the lenses of his glasses. The country air felt cooler once you opened the door, carrying the scent of cut grass, soil, and something faintly sweet drifting from the garden beds near the porch.
You stood slowly.
Wind stirred softly through the fields surrounding the property, rustling the cornstalks in long waves. Somewhere farther off, you could hear crickets starting up in the grass.
Tim grabbed your bag from the backseat before shutting the door behind you.
Your eyes drifted back toward the house.
Warm light glowed through the kitchen windows now. You could just barely make out movement inside.
Your chest tightened painfully.
Tim adjusted the strap of your bag over his shoulder before starting toward the porch, slowing after a couple steps when he realised you weren’t beside him yet.
He waited. Not calling for you. Not rushing you. Just waiting quietly at the edge of the driveway.
The restraint felt strangely deliberate now that you were noticing it.
Like he wanted to reach for your hand. Like he wanted to guide you inside himself, but he wasn’t.
Because he knew it would scare you.
Slowly, you followed him.
The wooden porch creaked softly beneath your shoes as you stepped up beside him. Up close, the house looked even more lived-in. Gardening gloves abandoned near the steps. A half-watered tray of plants sitting near the railing. Tiny scratches near the doorframe like a large dog used to jump there repeatedly.
Tim reached for the door, then hesitated. His hand stilled briefly against the handle before he glanced sideways at you. And for the first time since this entire nightmare started, he looked uncertain.
Not about you forgetting him, not about what was happening, about this.
About whatever waited on the other side of the door.
“She doesn’t know about what happened at school yet,” he said quietly.
Your brows pulled together faintly.
“I didn’t wanna freak her out over the phone.”
Before either of you could say anything else, the front door opened. Knob slipping from Tim’s palm.
Your grandmother stood there with a cigarette between two fingers and an expression already bordering on irritation.
“Well?” she said. “You two gonna stand around starin’ at my porch all night or what?” The roughness of her voice hit painfully in your chest.
Tim snorted softly beside you. “Nice to see you too.”
“Don’t get smart with me, city boy.” She pointed the cigarette vaguely toward him before looking at you properly. Her eyes narrowed slightly behind slipping reading glasses. Concern colouring her features. “You look pale.”
“Long day,” Tim answered smoothly before you could.
“Hm.” She sounded more annoyed on your behalf than anything else. “School’s a scam. Get inside.”
She turned and shuffled back into the house without waiting to see if you followed.
Tim opened the screen door for you. Again. Like habit.
You stepped inside slowly.
Warm air wrapped around you immediately. The house smelled like coffee, cigarette smoke, old paperbacks, and something cooking in the kitchen. A small television muttered quietly somewhere deeper inside the house while an ancient ceiling fan clicked overhead in lazy rotations.
The floor creaked beneath your shoes.
Your grandmother disappeared into the kitchen muttering something chiding under her breath.
Tim smiled faintly like he’d heard that speech before.
Of course he had.
He slipped your bag off his shoulder and set it beside the staircase without asking where it belonged.
Another practiced movement. Another stupid thing that he did too naturally.
You noticed his eyes flick briefly across the room afterward.
Checking windows.
Doors.
Exits.
The movement was subtle enough most people probably wouldn’t think twice about it.
You did.
Then a loud knock rattled suddenly against the front screen door.
Your grandmother yelled from the kitchen instantly.
“If that’s one of the Kent boys, tell ‘em I still want my casserole dish back!”
Tim sighed.
And for the first time since meeting him today, genuine exasperation crossed his face.
“…Too late,” he muttered.
Before you could process that response, the screen door swung open.
A dark-haired boy stepped inside with the kind of ease that suggested he’d done it a hundred times before.
He looked to be around fourteen or fifteen.
And the second his eyes landed on you, he lit up. Relief crashed across his face so openly it startled you.
“There you are!” he said immediately.
Then, without hesitation, he crossed the room and wrapped his arms around you.
The contact hit too suddenly for your brain to catch up. He was warm. Solid.
Clingy in the way only kids and younger teenagers could get away with.
Your entire body locked up instantly. The boy either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
“You disappeared before lunch,” he complained into your shoulder like this was a completely normal thing to do. “I texted you like eight times.”
Your pulse stumbled violently.
Because this, whatever this is, was worse somehow.
Tim had been careful. Restrained.
This boy wasn’t restrained at all.
He held onto you with easy familiarity, like touching you came naturally to him. Like he’d done it hundreds of times before and never once considered you might not want him to.
Your gaze darted towards Tim in question.
He was watching the two of you with an unreadable expression.
Not surprised. Something tighter, like he was barely tolerating this.
The boy finally pulled back enough to look at your face properly.
And immediately frowned.
“…Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
You stared at him blankly.
Up close, he looked even younger. Bright blue eyes. Dark hair falling messily across his forehead. Farmboy built despite the baby face he hadn’t fully grown out of yet.
There was something overwhelmingly earnest about him.
Dangerously easy to trust.
“I think they had some kind of panic attack at school,” Tim said before you could answer.
The boy’s entire expression changed instantly.
Concern flooded in so fast it nearly bowled over everything else.
“What?” His attention snapped back to you immediately. “Why didn’t anyone call me?”
The possessiveness in the question caught you off guard. Like he genuinely believed he should’ve been informed immediately.
Tim leaned back lightly against the wall near the staircase, arms crossing loosely over his chest.
“You were in class,” he said flatly.
“I still could’ve left.”
Tim stared at him for a long second, eyes narrowed.
The boy ignored him completely.
His focus stayed entirely on you now, concern written openly across his face in a way Tim never allowed himself.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
The question should’ve felt simple.
He sounded sincere. Not polite or performative. Like he cared too much. You’ve never had anyone fret over you like this.
Before you could answer, your grandmother’s voice echoed from the kitchen. “Jonathan Kent, if you came over here empty-handed again, I’m tellin’ your mother.”
The boy, Jonathan apparently, groaned immediately.
“I brought the dish back last week!”
“You brought back the wrong lid!”
“That sounds fake!”
“It ain’t!”
For some reason, the argument continuing in the background made this all feel even more surreal.
Like you’d stepped into somebody else’s life halfway through. And everybody else already knew the script except you.
It’s only after a long moment of calm that Jon finally looked back at you.
“…You sure you’re okay?” he asked again, quieter this time.
You opened your mouth automatically. “I’m fin-”
“Bullshit,” Tim said flatly from across the room.
You blinked at him.
Jonathan nodded immediately like that was the most obvious thing in the world. “Yeah, you look awful.”
“Thanks,” you muttered reflexively.
“..There it is.” Tim pointed at you lazily. “That’s the first normal thing you’ve said all day.”
The familiarity of the teasing landed strangely in your chest again. You felt.. Comfortable.
Like this was a rhythm you slipped into often.
Jonathan moved closer before you fully noticed, hovering just inside your space with restless concern written all over him.
“You didn’t answer any of my texts,” he said. “I thought maybe you were mad at me again.”
Again.
Tim let out an irritated sigh. “You whine about that every time they don’t answer for twenty minutes.”
“Because last time they ignored me for like six hours!”
“You survived.”
“Barely.”
The response came so dramatically sincere that your grandmother snorted from the kitchen, you could just hear it over the music you were sure she’d been singing to before you arrived.
Then Tim’s eyes landed back on you.
And just like that, the softness disappeared into something quieter. Focused.
You were starting to realise Tim watched people constantly. Especially you. Like every blink and twitch meant something.
“You should come over later,” Jon said suddenly. “Mom made pie.”
Your grandmother yelled again from the kitchen. “Don’t you bribe my grandkid with baked goods!”
“You can’t stop me!”
“You’re lucky I like your mama!”
Jon grinned toward the kitchen before looking back at you again, expression brightening hopefully.
“You’ll come, right?”
Both boys went still waiting for your answer. Each for different reasons.
After everything that had happened today, the warmth of the house and the easy arguing and the smell of food drifting from the kitchen made exhaustion settle heavily into your bones.
You’d already died once. What was the harm in trying to enjoy yourself now?
Slowly, you nodded. “…Sure,”
Jon lit up instantly, delighted. “Oh, thank god,” he blurted. “I thought you were gonna say no.”
You snorted softly before you could stop yourself. The sound surprised all three of you.
Jon’s expression somehow brightened even more.
And Tim went very still.
There was a slight pause in his breathing. His attention snapping fully onto you the second the laugh left your mouth.
Relief flickered across his face so quickly it barely existed.
“C’mon,” Jon said, already moving toward the door again. “Mom’ll be offended if the pie gets cold.”
“Pie doesn’t get cold,” Tim muttered.
“Yes it does.”
“No, it becomes breakfast.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“You eat cold pizza for breakfast.”
“That’s different.”
You watched them bicker as they moved toward the porch. And for one dangerously fragile second, It almost felt normal.
The walk toward the Kent house was quiet.
Not silent. Jonathan still talked, because apparently he never stopped talking, but the energy from earlier had dulled slightly beneath the weight settling in your chest.
“…and then Damian said the cow wasn’t technically missing because he knew where it was,” Jonathan was saying beside you, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket. “Which apparently meant it didn’t count.”
You blinked slowly. “He stole a cow?”
“He was making a point.”
“That doesn’t explain anything.”
“I know.”
Tim walked a few steps behind the two of you. Not far enough to seem strange, still close enough to hear everything.
The gravel path crunched softly beneath your shoes as the farmhouse grew larger ahead, warm yellow light spilling from the windows across the darkening fields.
Jonathan kept glancing toward you while he spoke. Checking your reactions. Like he was trying to pull you back into something.
“…Damian hates everybody,” he continued. “But he only threatens people with gardening tools if he likes them.”
You frowned faintly. “That feels concerning.”
“It is concerning.”
“You let him around livestock?”
“He’s banned from the hen house now.”
The Kent farm stretched larger the closer you got. The smell of earth and cut hay lingered faintly in the air while warm light spilled from the farmhouse windows ahead.
Everything out here felt too peaceful.
Your brain still kept waiting for the catch.
Tim was already looking at you when you turned to him.
Something unreadable sat behind his expression for half a second too long before his phone buzzed sharply through the quiet.
His gaze moved towards it immediately.
You saw the exact moment irritation cut across his face. Cold. Instant.
Jonathan noticed too. His own expression tightened almost automatically.
Tim answered without stopping walking. “What?” No greeting.
Silence stretched.
His jaw flexed once. “I told Alfred I’d be busy.” Another pause. Then his eyes lifted toward you again.
There was something deeply unsettling about the way his attention kept returning to you no matter what else was happening. Like every conversation existed around you instead of separate from you.
Jon slowed slightly beside you.
Tim’s voice flattened further. “No. I’m with them now.”
Your fingers curled slightly at your sides.
A long silence followed. “…Fine.” The word sounded bitten off.
Something unreadable darkened behind his expression. “I’m on my way.”
The call ended.
Jon frowned immediately. “You’re leaving?”
“I have to go back to Gotham.”
“You just got here.”
Tim ignored that entirely. His attention settled on you instead with unnerving intensity.
“I won’t be long,” he said carefully.
You nodded slowly.
Tim hesitated. Like leaving you here physically bothered him.
Nobody spoke for a second. Wind moved softly through the fields around you.
Jon finally broke the silence first. “Bruce?”
Tim looked at him. Just looked. It wasn’t openly hostile, “does it matter?”
Jon held his stare for a second before looking away first with visible annoyance.
Tim slid his phone back into his pocket with controlled precision before looking at you.
Your brows pulled together faintly. “You really have to go now?”
“Yes.” The answer came too fast. Like the decision had already been made the second the phone rang.
Jon shifted beside you immediately. “They can stay with us until-”
“I know.”
Flat.
Jon’s mouth shut.
Something tense settled in the space between them.
You suddenly had the awful feeling this argument had happened before. Repeatedly.
Tim stepped closer then, invading your space.
“You’ll text me when you get home,” it wasn’t phrased like a question.
You blinked once. “…Okay.”
His eyes stayed on your face another second too long. Searching. Like he was trying to decide something.
Then Jon reached over absentmindedly and hooked his fingers loosely around your wrist to tug you forward again, and the shift in Tim was immediate. Tiny, but immediate.
His gaze flicked downward, going very still.
The evening air suddenly felt colder.
Jon noticed. His fingers tightened slightly before letting go entirely.
A warning shot.
Your stomach twisted.
What the hell was wrong with these people?
Tim’s attention returned to you instantly afterward, expression smoothing back into something normal enough to pass.
“If anything feels off,” he said quietly, “call me.”
Something about the way he said it made your skin prickle.
Jon scoffed softly beside you. “You say that like we’re gonna poison them.”
Tim looked at him. A long pause followed.
“..I didn’t say that.” The response was strangely heavy.
Jonathan’s expression darkened immediately. Not playful annoyance anymore. Real irritation.
For one brief second, you caught something ugly underneath his usual warmth. Sharp and adolescent and possessive in a way that reminded you of a dog baring its teeth before you could fully process it.
Then it vanished.
Tim exhaled quietly through his nose before looking back at you again.
And there it was. That restraint.
Like he wanted to say more. Wanted to do more. But was actively stopping himself.
“Get back to the apartment safe. I’ll pick you up in the morning,” he said finally. He wasn’t asking. He was deciding for you.
Then, after the smallest hesitation, “…Don’t stay up too late.” The softness of it felt weird. It sounded genuine.
Tim held your gaze one second longer, his hands lifting as if to wrap around you, only to fall short. Just giving your shoulders a squeeze. Then he stepped back toward the driveway.
Jon immediately moved closer the second space opened beside you.
You let him drag you along, not noticing how Tim stopped halfway back toward the car and looked directly at Jon. No expression at all.
Jon stared back.
And then he left.
You’d made it all the way to the entrance of the house. The headlights disappeared slowly down the gravel road beyond the fields.
Jon waited until the car was fully gone before speaking.
“…They hate leaving you here.” The words slipped out under his breath. Not meant for you.
Your brows furrowed immediately. “What?”
Jon blinked like he hadn’t realised he’d said it aloud.
Then he smiled too quickly. “Nothing.”
But his eyes drifted toward the road Tim had vanished down.
The screen door creaked loudly as the younger boy pulled it open. Warmth spilled over you immediately. Not just heat, life.
The house smelled like garlic, black pepper, fresh bread, and something sweet baking somewhere deeper in the kitchen. Pots clinked softly against the stovetop while an old radio hummed low enough to blend into the background.
For one disorienting second, the normalcy of it all made you still, letting out a deep breath.
Jon kicked his shoes off carelessly by the door. “Ma?” He called, already reaching back for you without looking. His fingers closed loosely around your wrist, guiding you over the doorway before letting go again like it was unconscious. “We’re back.”
“Wash your hands before you touch anything,” a voice called immediately from the kitchen.
Lois stood near the stove with one sleeve rolled to her elbow, wooden spoon in hand while something simmered steadily in a large pot. Reading glasses sat low on her nose as she glanced between the stove and a tablet propped beside the counter.
She glanced up briefly at the sound of your footsteps. Then froze. Though it only lasted a fraction of a second.
The spoon in her hand stilled. Her eyes flicked rapidly over your face, shoulders, posture. Assessing.
Relief followed so quickly afterward it almost looked painful.
“There you are,” The words left her mouth before she seemed to think about them.
Lois crossed the room without hesitation and pulled you into a hug before you could properly react. Warm arms. Firm enough that it startled you.
You froze.
Lois seemed to realise it a second later and loosened immediately. “Sorry,” she said softly, though she still kept one hand against your arm when she pulled back. “Long day?”
You stared at her for half a second too long before answering. “…Something like that.” Who the hell was this woman?
Jon disappeared toward the sink without another word, leaving you standing awkwardly near the doorway while Lois watched you with an intensity disguised as casual concern.
“You look exhausted,” she said. The words were gentle. Her eyes weren’t.
You suddenly understood where Jonathan got it from.
Clark leaned against the kitchen table nearby, broad shoulders slightly hunched as he read through a stack of papers spread beneath one large hand.
Something unreadable crossed his face before his expression softened almost instantly into something warmer. Safer.
And suddenly the room felt smaller.
You knew who he was immediately. Everybody knew Clark Kent’s face. Pulitzer-winning journalist. Metropolis golden boy. Too kind-looking to be real.
Except this version of him didn’t look like the carefully edited photographs from newspapers.
He looked bigger somehow. Not taller. Just… solid.
Grounded in a way that made the kitchen itself feel built around him.
And the second his eyes landed on you, his entire attention sharpened completely. That horrible, focused attentiveness you were beginning to recognise in people around you.
Jon was back at your side by then, nudging his elbow against yours.
When Lois noticed him she pointed toward the table. “Sit.”
Something about her tone made all three of you obey automatically.
Jon dropped into the chair beside yours while you sat more cautiously across from Clark.
The second you did, his attention flicked briefly toward the way your fingers hovered unconsciously near your chest before returning to your face.
Lois returned to the stove, though her attention kept drifting back toward you every few seconds.
“Well,” she said brightly, “good news is I made enough food to feed an army because apparently living with boys means groceries evaporate overnight.”
Jon snorted beside you. “That’s because Kon eats like he’s preparing for winter.”
A second later the said boy appeared in the kitchen holding a bag of chips under one arm.
Conner leaned against the doorway easily. “You guys took forever.”
Jon pointed immediately. “See? He’s already eating.”
“I’m growing.”
“You’re twenty.”
“And thriving.”
Lois sighed like this was a conversation she’d heard a hundred times before. “Hands. Sink. Now.”
Conner grinned lazily before finally pushing off the doorway.
As he passed behind your chair, his fingers dragged briefly across the top of your shoulder in an absentminded greeting. Casual.
“You’re wiped,” he said as he moved toward the sink. “What happened to you?”
“..Long day,” you answered finally.
“Hm.” Conner washed his hands quickly. “You look awful,” he said bluntly.
Jon made a noise of protest. “Kon.”
“What? They do.” Conner reached down without hesitation and squeezed the back of your neck once, casual and familiar. “You sleep at all?”
The touch settled something restless in your chest before you could question why.
You exhaled quietly, not sure how to respond. “Not really.”
“Yeah, figured.”
He moved around the table and dropped into the chair beside you heavily enough to rattle it. Close enough that your elbows brushed immediately.
Nobody in the room seemed to think anything of it.
Clark folded the papers in front of him neatly before setting them aside. “Rough day at school?”
The question sounded normal. Everything here sounded normal.
You nodded anyway. “Something like that.”
Clark nodded once like that explained more than you intended it to.
Lois finally slid a mug in front of you, steam curling softly into the kitchen light. “Tea,” she said. “You look like you need it.”
“Ma thinks tea fixes everything,” Jon muttered.
“It does,” Lois replied immediately.
Conner reached over without asking and stole a piece of cut meat from the chopping board beside the stove.
Lois smacked the back of his hand with the towel.
“Ow.”
“You have your own plate.”
“I like yours better.”
The conversation moved around you easily after that. Natural. Loud in the quiet way families were loud.
At least.. the way that the ones you’ve seen on TV were.
Jon kept leaning against your shoulder whenever he talked. Conner sprawled sideways in his chair close enough that his knee bumped yours every few minutes beneath the table. Lois drifted constantly around the kitchen while Clark stayed seated across from you, listening more than speaking.
And through all of it, you kept catching them looking at you. Not staring. Just… checking. Like they were making sure you were still there.
Your fingers tightened slightly around the mug.
Clark noticed immediately. “You alright?” he asked gently.
Four heads turned toward you at once.
The attention hit like pressure. “Yeah,” you answered too quickly.
Nobody called you out on it.
Jon’s arm slid across the back of your chair as he leaned closer. “You’re doing that weird thing again.”
You looked at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means your face does this thing.” He gestured vaguely toward you with his free hand.
“My face does not do a thing.”
“It does.”
Conner nodded seriously beside you. “Yeah, you get this little line right here.” He reached over like he intended to touch between your brows.
You jerked back automatically before he could. The movement froze the table for half a second.
Conner stopped immediately.
“Sorry,” he said, and for the first time since walking in, his voice lost some of its easy warmth. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
The apology came too fast. Too careful.
Like your reaction mattered far more than it should have.
Jon’s posture shifted beside you almost instantly. Subtle tension settling into his shoulders.
Clark was watching you closely now too.
They were watching you the way someone watches a door they’re waiting to lock.
The silence stretched after your reaction to Conner reaching toward you.
Too long.
Jon leaned closer beside you, arm hooked loosely over the back of your chair again. “You’ve been weird all day..”
“I haven’t.” The defense came too quickly, even though some part of you knew he was right. Whoever you’d been to them before today wouldn’t have sat this stiffly at the table. Wouldn’t have flinched away from casual touches like they were something dangerous.
“You have,” Conner said easily from beside you. “You’re quieter.”
“You guys are just intense.” The second the words left your mouth, the room went still.
Not everything. The radio still hummed softly behind Lois. Something simmered steadily on the stove. A fork clinked lightly against ceramic.
But them. They froze. Like you’d said something hurtful without intending to.
Clark’s expression softened almost immediately afterward, though something unreadable lingered underneath it now. “Intense?”
You gave a small shrug, trying to laugh it off. “I don’t know. You all keep staring at me.”
“We’re listening to you,” Lois corrected gently.
“No,” you said slowly. “It’s more like…” You hesitated. “Checking.”
Nobody answered.
Jon’s fingers tapped once against your shoulder absentmindedly. “You notice everything.”
The comment should’ve sounded teasing. Instead it sounded observational.
Conner leaned sideways in his chair, openly studying you now. “You didn’t used to.”
Your head turned toward him immediately. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Another pause. Tiny. Wrong.
Then Lois spoke smoothly over it. “It means you’ve seemed stressed lately.”
Your eyes narrowed slightly.
Clark folded his hands together on the table. Calm. Steady. “School been difficult?”
“Not really.”
Again, silence.
Like they were all choosing their words carefully around you.
Conner looked almost irritated suddenly. Not at you. At the conversation itself.
Clark glanced briefly toward him before looking back at you. “…We’re worried.”
You blinked in surprise. “About what?”
Nobody answered fast enough.
Your chair scraped softly against the floor as you shifted backward slightly. “You’re overreacting.”
“No,” Lois said gently.
The word settled heavily into the room.
Clark reached across the table then, large hand closing carefully around yours before you could think to pull away. Warm. Steady. Terrifyingly comforting.
“You matter to this family,” he said quietly.
Your stomach dropped at the wording.
Wrong. So fucking wrong. This entire thing felt wrong. You didn’t belong here. Not really.
These people were warm in a way that hurt to look at too long. Easy with each other. Familiar. Loving. The kind of family people envied quietly from a distance.
And you-
You were just someone they’d decided to pull into it.
The worst part was the awful little ache in your chest that wanted to let them.
You let out a slow breath and carefully slipped your hand from Clark’s grasp before pushing your chair back farther. “I think I should go home.”
“No.” The response came instantly.
All four of them at once.
The force of it made your pulse jump.
Lois removed her reading glasses slowly, violet eyes settling fully onto you now. “It’s late,” she said softly. “Far too late for me to let you drive all the way back to that little apartment alone.”
“It’s barely evening.” But the protest sounded weak even to your own ears.
Because part of you truthfully didn’t want to leave.
This house felt warm in a way that every place you’ve ever lived never had. Loud and alive and full in a way that made something lonely in your chest ache every time Jon laughed or Lois nudged Clark with her elbow or Conner leaned against you like being close was the most natural thing in the world.
You wanted it.
You just didn’t understand why they wanted you.
“You can stay here,” Conner said casually, though his attention sharpened immediately when you stood fully. “You stay over all the time anyway.”
“That doesn’t mean I want to tonight.” Another weak lie.
Jon stood too. Immediate. Close enough that your pulse jumped again. “You’re upset.” His face fell almost instantly, expression softening with something dangerously genuine.
“Hey.”
God. Why did he have to look at you like that?
Like your discomfort physically hurt him.
Clark stepped closer more slowly, grounding the room around him without even trying. “Nobody’s trying to scare you.”
“…Then why does this feel so weird?”
Silence.
Jon looked down briefly before meeting your eyes again. Because unlike the others, he looked tired of pretending.
“You wanna know the truth?” he asked quietly.
Something in your chest tightened. Nobody stopped him.
Lois watched carefully from the counter.
Conner leaned back against the table beside you, arms folding loosely across his chest.
Clark stayed still. Waiting.
Jon stepped closer. “You pull away,” he said softly. “Every time people get too attached to you, you try to run away.”
Your throat tightened.
“And we know we’re a lot,” Lois admitted gently behind him.
“We tried giving you space,” Conner added. “Didn’t really work out for us.”
The honesty behind his words felt miserable.
Jon’s gaze flicked briefly toward your hands, toward the way your fingers tightened around the edge of the chair.
Then back to your face. “You make this place feel…” He stopped, jaw tightening slightly before trying again. “Right.”
The room suddenly felt smaller. Warmer. Dangerously warm.
Clark’s voice came quieter than before. “And when you leave, everybody notices.”
Nobody laughed. Nobody acted embarrassed.
Conner looked completely serious. Lois too. Jon looked at you like this was the simplest truth in the world.
You were sure that if you looked at them for a moment longer your eyes would well with tears.
Because somewhere beneath the unease and the wrongness and the intensity of all of this, you understood exactly what they meant.
And it scared you.
Conner reached for your hand carefully this time. Slow enough for you to pull away.
You didn’t.
Relief crossed his face so quickly it almost looked painful.
His fingers tightened around yours. Certain.
“You don’t have to leave tonight,” he murmured again.
The house had gone quiet around you again. Waiting.
Like they already knew your answer.
And.. maybe you weren’t sure if they were wrong.
We’re all collectively going to pretend that Jon was never aged up. (For the plot)
Reblogs help more people find the story, comments help me survive writing it. → They’re the only way for me to know whether to continue writing this series or not.
ch.7 pt 2: again &. again (platonic! yandere batfam x neglected! gn reader)
directory: read under the end for an author's note.
tw: heavy depictions of self harm, suicide, and depression.
now playing: hate yourself by tv girl.
when alfred had finally arrived back at the batcave with a full tray of hot teas and coffees in one hand, as promised, the atmosphere was almost exactly as he predicted.
tense.
heavy.
but alarmingly quiet at the same time.
like a single drop of a pin would be enough to shatter the glass-like silence blanketing the entire cave.
no one had said a word when the ding of the elevator had sounded, but the eyes all pointed at him were enough to tell a story. like they'd all been awaiting his arrival, a hungry pack of wolves desperate and in need of answers from the only man with answers to their questions about you.
just who you are. where you are. and why — despite never truly knowing you — do you matter so much to them?
answers enough to satiate that clawing grip of insanity, guilt, and collective desire to impulsively take you back from where you're hiding and find the answers through you instead.
alfred doesn't feel a sliver of goosebumps from the heavy stare of dick near the panel of computers, wrecked with swarming emotions, he tears his attention off the heavy clacking of barbara's keyboard searching for any clues about your whereabouts, he strides, slow, steady, and calm, towards tim who had been scrolling through his phone in a shared effort to stalk through your information, with duke watching over his screen from behind. he sighs when he finds stephanie, accompanied by cassandra patting her back and whispering assurances, leaning her body against a crate of artillery to find balance after another wave of nausea had overtaken her.
the butler walks forward, closer and closer to the section of computer screens, and he places the tray down with no haste. barbara pauses, hesitates — likely riddled with doubts if she even deserves to be given a chance to unwind when time was ticking in search of you — but still, she wheels herself closer, taking a cup of coffee for herself, thanking alfred with a hesitant quirk of her lips, then returns back to her place.
typing once more. quicker, like the guilt had settled into her thoughts right after.
beside him was bruce, who maintained his neutral, frowning expression. for a moment, memories of your own expressions emerged into his mind. of the day he first saw you, stone faced and neutral like your father. unresponsive, silent, and dangerously close to disappearing into the shadows, if not for your labored breathing; just like your father.
you two were always the like the sides of a coin.
he turns to see the culprit's eyes glued to the screen filled with tabs of barbara's online searches, unblinking, as if the goal of finding you would solve anything other than the questions about your location—
as if stalking you would be enough to compensate for the years he wasted turning his back on you, never knowing a single thing about who you are as a person. what your goals were. your aspirations. everything.
deep down, alfred knew how bruce had been the most troubled. had been riddled the most with guilt and regret. he knew bruce would stop at nothing until he'd done enough to earn an ounce of your forgiveness. he'd move the world, fight wars he knew would be impossible to win, twist every fabric of reality if he could, to undo the years of aching silence he'd unknowingly forced upon your life and be the father he was meant to be for you.
he knew, but doesn't speak up, only closing his wrinkled eyes and shaking his head after staring up at the man, your father's, face: glowering, solid, and lit up by the reflection of the screen. most likely thinking of all the ways to make it up to you, apologize, before he could even see you in person.
he was not surprised by anyone.
alfred doesn't even flinch from when behind him, damian's sword cluttered to the floor, its sharp clang! echoing across the room like church bells singing its last song.
the bats above have flapped their wings in sudden, waking alarm. the same way the pages of your heaviest, most tattered sketchbook flattered across the cave's floor, revealing, to the eyes of many who can see the papers closest to them—
photographs, diagrams, illustrations, layouts, even notes about their vigilante identity.
displayed to them like artworks you'd find in museums. intricate pieces of evidences, headlines, even fucking graphs that gathered data comparing the frequency and correlation of their public sightings and presence along the manor. drawings of their hero costumes, old and new, from when dick was a young robin, to even the updated suits right after tim took charge of the mantle.
dick, who had been silent throughout the ordeal after jason had ended the call, was too shaky and afraid of what knowledge the entries hold. yet he had gathered all the willpower and courage to grasp the collection of paper that had landed right near his foot. his fingers rub along the frayed edges, but even with its age can he read the blurred ink lines running meticulously across the pages.
(yet his panicked eyes also run over the splotches of dried blood carelessly painting the papers. it wasn't just a tiny amount too. it was everywhere. like paint thrown across a canvas, it's smeared over some texts, blotched the sides and the bottom and— why was there blood? why was there so much? whose blood was it? the questions flood endlessly in his brain, and he's afraid even the answers would devastate him to the point of no return if he ever discovered it was yours.)
despite his disbelief, he skims over some paragraphs, takes in every bitter word, every spiteful phrase that had filled every blood-stained page.
the first thought that came to dick's mind was... well, it was impressive. any child of bruce, adopted or not, was destined for great things. yet even outside of bruce, dick knew his baby bird was always capable. but he never knew the extent of how great those things were.
it was another failure on his part.
it was another failure as your eldest brother.
he never really knew you, had only seen a part of you in his memories, but never the true you—
before he even discovered countless of your sketchbooks, journals, even the medals alfred had forgotten to store away, all hidden within your room; to dick, you were just the kid with shining, bright eyes in the face of your mother's tragedies. hopeful, naive, one of the youths dick had promised to protect as long as he lived. but he never had put an effort to know about your hobbies, your interests, your goals or your true thoughts.
not until now...
where even then he's hesitant to know, in fear that your hope for him had rotten and all that remained was rightful hatred.
so much so that when he flipped the paper to its back, his worst nightmares had begun to fester into reality.
he feels as if his heart had begun traversing its way up his throat, ceased, and then refused to move.
"journal entry #15: dick grayson and nightwing." it starts, followed with printed pictures of him swinging around the city, captured by cameras on standby. colored illustrations of his suits had a timeline plastered to its bottom, ranging from him as robin, to his transitions as nightwing.
you long knew about his identity of nightwing; your entries dated from nearly six years ago, when you were about to hit your thirteenth birthday mark—
then he vaguely recalls back-reading through one of your messages, and remembers your invitation to have him come to your small celebration.
"my bday's coming soon!" his phone screen had never looked so blurry until the time he'd scroll through the far dates of your texts, noticing how by every new message, your enthusiasm slowly dwindled. yet your first ones were once so full of life — and he realized he should've never dismissed your message as just some trick towards him; maybe then things would've been different. maybe you would be here, with him, laughing and painting the manor with your shining presence — he never realized you'd even went through great effort to ask for his number through alfred.
"you don't have to buy me a gift or anything, your presence is enough of one already!" you invited him alone. it should've done a great deal of pride to him, and yet all he ever did was make mistake after mistake, restricting your phone number to limit the spam.
you also said you planned cupcakes instead of a cake, said it was too much for you to finish. it was unusual at first— but then, sitting in your creaking room with the humid air of your tiny room clogging his brain, it took a little thinking to realize you'd been celebrating all your birthdays alone.
when your mother had died, when jason had already been dead, everyone, even alfred, was too wrapped up mourning and grieving. dick had spiraled enough with every argument towards bruce, then tim came into the fray— without your mother, it had just been you and alfred. you were never close to tim.
you've been reaching milestones alone.
another failure as your older brother.
he wants to vomit, crumple on the floor and dry heave— he wants to die thinking some more.
you were so desperate to even have one guest to your birthday party. was it even a party in the first place?
you were so fucking desperate you'd even told dick you'll do whatever flavor of frosting he'd prefer. you never thought of yourself at that moment, you only thought about dick coming to your celebration, of anyone coming.
then all of a sudden, dick realized that during the date of your birthday, he had actually been in the manor.
and worse? he'd spent it with alfred by his side the entire time.
he spent your birthday with alfred.
fuck...!
he could've spent it with you!
it was only after the late hours of the night did the butler dismiss himself with a worried furrow of his brows, seeming more insistent in leaving early rather than staying with the athlete. dick before didn't understand why for the first time in a while, alfred had other matters to attend to when tim was at a sleepover and bruce was in the middle of press conference. dinner would come later that night, dick was about to ask alfred why if he hadn't left his side already.
at that, he shrugged his shoulders, returning to his room, opting to sleep the night instead and waking up at midnight where he'd follow up with bruce over patrols, see if they could talk things out.
he should've known.
alfred's hasty footsteps echoing across the hallways should've been a sign of suspicion, but dick had been far too consumed with other worries. about his team, about his argument with bruce, about bludhaven and everything else weighing his mind.
worries that he shouldn't have to prioritize when he'd done nothing that day except converse with alfred, ranting to the manor's butler about mundane things to distract himself with that clawing feeling that something felt wrong amidst the silence—
because then he wouldn't have to imagine his baby bird, standing there all alone in the kitchen, ingredients at stand by, looking around to find every hallway, with no one coming to their little celebration.
how many times has that happened?
how many times have you been left to your own device, hopelessly waiting for a miracle?
how many birthdays of yours had he rejected without knowing, in favor of prioritizing something else, someone else?
how many birthdays, milestones, celebrations did you have while the entire family spent nights separate from each other— or spending with each other, whilst without you, instead?
dick completely understands if you've fucking despised every bit of him after always ditching your invitations—
because now, you've written your personal notes about him beside all the drawings. even a single skim of the paragraphs of text was enough for dick to know this was written not out of awe. the more he reads under his breath, the faster the pace in his heavy heart quickens.
"dick is- is nightwing." he stutters, ignoring the squeak of barbara's wheelchair nearing him, too engrossed to even notice her grabbing some of the pages from his hands.
he continues to read, as if under an unwilling trance, mind fogged with every word that shifts into vivid imaginations of your self writing these entries in your too-small bedroom.
"it's- it's obvious from the way they share the same acrobatic moves that... that he does in secret in rooms where he thinks i'm not looking.
his eyes flip to another carelessly erased line, making out every letter through blurry eyes — a reflection to what you truly think, but still ashamed to admit — lips quivering as he whispers, "he- he does it in front of everyone but, but me. like he's ashamed of even acting like himself, like i'm undeserving of even seeing a part of him natural to others—
"no, little bird. you were never..." he disrupts through his narration, tries not to tear the paper out, which kept revealing every bit of resentment you felt for the athlete from the start. he could feel every venomous word injecting into his veins, he couldn't do anything to stop reading at the same time.
dick wanted to know every emotion you felt, and yet, biting his lips—
"it's me who doesn't deserve you. you shouldn't... shouldn't talk about yourself like this. nobody deserves you..."
it was all he could comment. he wish you could hear these sentiments in person, he wishes you were here just so he could disprove every line, every insult you'd written off as cruel jokes meant to hurt yourself.
cruel jokes that always came with dripping ichor.
no matter how aged and dry the blood may be, he couldn't wash away the scent of it clinging on shriveled paper; another wave of guilt clings to his heavy heart.
yet the truth continues.
"he does these— these flips i see him perform on TV as nightwing, and i remember all the times he'd mindlessly do handstands or jump from the second floor to the next, smiling to anyone who'd see. they don't know how lucky they are, dick was never this way to me...sometimes he'd also do it when i'd sneak into the cave and find him talking with the others...
"every time he does, he's got the same..." charming, was what was supposed to be written next, but you've scribbled over the word, violently, as dick's trembling fingers runs over the back of the paper, feeling the torn page, the heavy handed words engraved in every line; imagining just how much animosity had filled your entire being to the point you'd replace charming with—
"he's got the same... dishonest— the same disgustingly huge smile he always gave me whenever he made excuses that he's busy, that he's got work, hero work — he never says, i pretend to never suspect — to do.
"i- i understand that," he stutters, biting his lips at the sarcasm which bleeds into every word. "you can't stop someone like dick. when he's got his mind set on a goal, not even bruce or damian can talk him out of it. in that order of things, my opinion would never matter, hah. i just was never considered into a goal. so i understand. it's not like i can be mad for any longer when he still smiles at me while making all these excuses and- and sometimes even promises of next time's. at least he doesn't see me as a villain, he doesn't mistreat me or anything. so i can't blame him, he's... still nice.
"but then again, it's also so obvious, of course, that the only difference between me and the people he saves on TV is... is that the smile he shows them... is genuine.
"and the one he shows me is still just the product of an afterthought—"
dick couldn't finish reading the entire entry before slamming the papers down on the panels beside him, quivering hands wracking across his hair and slamming into his face.
his eyes, they fill with salty water faster than he could swallow down the heavy lump residing in his throat.
for a moment, the manor's air stills once more.
his thoughts betray him and fill him with pictures of your younger self, your scarred fingers writing alone in your room— the blood dripping down and on to the paper from the deep cuts etched into your skin, from your swollen fingertips sore from all the words you've etched with faded ballpens. how, despite the pain wracking throughout your very body, you'd continue to write down the feelings too heavy to express, once hopeful eyes slowly dimming until it bursts to flames.
until all you felt was resentment dick deserved to feel from you.
the more he imagines your own pen stabbing every word into paper, the more it starts to feel like every word was a thousand knives stabbing into his very skin. if not for the panels keeping his stability, leaning to his side, he'd collapse.
"no..."
god no.
have you always thought of him this way? was he always like this to you?
he didn't mean to treat you like you were nothing.
he didn't mean for you to portray his tired smiles and his dismissive hands as a sign of disinterest, of falsified emotions, of dick acting like you never mattered when he was just— he was just so oversaturated with the guilt of jason's death, his fights with bruce, his teammates, the teen titans, the loss, the grief. he didn't mean anything—
but that wasn't a fucking excuse.
not when he'd left you waiting for thirteen years, not when he'd treat you like a second option, waved you, told you, "not today!" with a smile betraying his every intention.
he'd never given you a chance, that was an undeniable fact. even when you were always home, even when he found the time to be home for all the others.
he doesn't understand himself, he wanted to so badly—
call you, his baby bird.
he wants to fix things, correct his mistakes, even if it were too late, even if the image of him, once bright and shining, was now tarnished into a stranger you'd despise. dick just wanted to — no matter how much he rubs his eyes with his arms to rid the spilling tears, bites his lips, crumples the fragile paper with shivering fingers to numb his emotions down before the guilt devours him whole — he wants to apologize a thousand times. he wants to take back every wrong action of his and consume you in all his emotions, the good, the bad, the ugly— just so your opinion of him would change.
just so you wouldn't see him as the brother who was never there.
who was always running off to bludhaven to avoid you.
dick wanted to grovel, he wanted to crumple into a ball and remove the aching lump that had resided in his throat ever since he found your room. the tears he thought would never fall from his eyes were already bursting before he could even cease it. and ashamed as he may be from being seen in all his rawest form by the others; the pain, the guilt, the memory of your wide-eyed smile, the sensation of your tiny fingers holding tight against his palm overpowers any embarrassment he thought he'd felt.
god, he misses you.
he wants to see you — the paper has long since been shriveled by his powerful grip, his head buried in his arms, all the tears he'd been holding back came rushing out of him 'til it turned to dry heaves, and alfred's gloved palms patting his back doesn't compensate for anything other than unneeded sympathy. the silence that the others had allotted for your grieving older brother wouldn't change the fact that you're still the missing piece inside the manor. and for the first time in a while, he felt the same shadow that had cloaked his entire being from the moment he'd found out jason died after he'd returned from that space mission, that he was too late to even save the boy; too late to save you from yourself — dick had never despised himself as much as he did now.
he knew he could never be forgiven, he knew that for as long as he lived, he would never live up to the image of him you once held in high regard anymore.
yet as he laments all the moment he could've been your older brother, could've been your family, your hero— he still pictures the quirk in your tired steps, the way your eyes lightened, the way your wide smile revealed your chipped teeth from the very moment he first left you at your room; and it only makes the tears run down faster.
he imagines that little child all alone in the kitchen on the day of their birthday, blowing on the little candle of their cupcake in the dark of the night, making a wish for a better one next year.
have you even received a gift from any of them before?
— god, his eyes clamp down harder, drowning the world in all the darkness — a sight you've probably been accustomed to living here, dick hates thinking about it — he doesn't even want to imagine anymore, biting down at his tense arms, trying to stifle his sobs.
yet no matter how much he tries, he couldn't get rid of the hole that had ripped right into his chest, the ache thumps louder in his heart every time your little smiling face appears in all his thoughts, it was a pain that clawed into emptiness, settled deeply in every scar wracking across his body.
a reminder that even with all his sacrifices, all the battles he fought— he still couldn't save you.
he still couldn't save his baby bird.
if you had wished for a new family in that lonely birthday of yours, he understands you.
if you had wished for one you can actually call your own, for a father who was never absent, for a family who never turned their backs on you, for an older brother to never once break any empty promises; he truly understands.
because dick could be the leader, the dependable older brother, the hope of bludhaven. he could spend his entire life saving others. he can grow, fix his relationship with bruce, with jason, raise damian, become the idol everyone knew and loved and never once doubted.
he can be the change his city needs to be a better place—
but no matter what, at the end of the day—
he'll always hate himself.
the voices within the cave remained silent.
at the same time, no words were needed to be said.
it was difficult to ignore dick's weeping all throughout, his lonesome bawling was the only sound that filled the empty space. the only sound that penetrated the suffocation everyone but alfred felt.
even the bats had stopped their panicked wings from flapping due to the earlier commotion. the stalagmites that once dribbled water had deafened into nothingness. if it was because everyone had succumbed to their own thoughts, or if it was because it seemed the manor had stilled the noise for you— nobody knew the answers.
there was truly nothing filling the air except for dick, and even then his sobs were stifled by his arms.
the clawing silence remained, the volume of dick's sobs had grown softer. he had been mumbling "sorry's" and incoherent apologies all throughout. sometimes there were promises, other times he'd choke on his own tears and beat at his chest, begging for something they couldn't hear.
nobody could easily approach him, let alone ask if he was alright.
the answers were already obvious.
alfred had ceased from any physical comfort he'd offer to the shivering hero, withdrawing his palms and returning to bruce's side. bruce, whose face, once neutral, now softened when he shared a glance with the butler.
like him, he knew his words wouldn't do any help. it might even make things worse—
it might make dick storm off the manor and find you alone.
as much as they felt pity, both alfred and bruce knew dick was too far gone to be even offered anything to make him feel better. any affirmations, small or big, words or not, couldn't soothe the all consuming guilt he'd felt.
all they could do was leave him to his own bubble, ignore the guilt eating at their conscience too. not even a remark was heard from a wide-eyed damian, who had watched his eldest brother the entire time, who felt like part of this was his fault too.
and yet he didn't mean to drop your sketchbook for the entire family to see.
he didn't mean to be a part of the spiral of events leading to dick's breakdown.
it was his sworn duty, an unspoken promise, to keep things of yours all for himself. the entirety of his early training inside the batcave was just a distraction for him to extricate any thoughts he had of you. he'd hidden your sketchbooks in corners of the cave, in cabinets where he's guaranteed nobody, not even tim, would open, let alone access.
then he tried to train with his sword as intended while waiting for the rest to arrive at bruce's announcement.
yet even if his slashes against the training dummies were harsher, even if he had to remind himself that you shouldn't be infecting his thoughts as much as you did for others— like dick, he couldn't erase any memories he had of you. he couldn't erase the gruesome illustrations you drew, your aggressive reaction from the last time you've talked to him, even that one memory you had together that had been pestering him long before you even left the manor...
in the end, he found himself in the middle of the open space, fingers running across the spine of your thickest sketchbook; one figured he hadn't opened before. with papers stuck in between pages, and pages ready to fall off if he even dared open the book.
the one he held was different from the others. it had no front cover title like it typically does. not even a name etched on any side. your other sketchbooks always had old and peeling stickers embedded into its covers. some were nonsensical, others were what he speculated to be your favorite characters from shows he also watched — he never realized just how similar you two were. if it were him in the past, he'd reject the notion, spit on the shoes of anyone who'd dare point it out — you'd use a white acrylic markers on some textured pages, draw stars, zigzags, swirls; anything that gave it personality.
anything that screams the fact it's yours.
but this one was fancier, a more expensive sketchbook. left blank and barren, like you didn't want any trace of it linked back to you.
everything about it was bizarre.
damian knew that although your voice was the one everyone heard the least, the things you owed had marks, titles, names that were unique only to you.
if anyone else had taken your possessions, even if you were a stranger to most, they'd know it'd be yours.
damian knew how desperate you were to be known.
to be seen.
that's why everything of yours had to be yours. it needed to have pieces of you stuck on every corner, it needed to scream you.
the fact that he knew all this, the fact that he knew information, unknown to others, about you at all, despite his inherent refusal to acknowledge your existence within the manor—
he wouldn't explain.
but he knew either way, and that was all that needed to be said.
... hence why it was strange how this sketchbook of yours has no identity traced back to you.
but to damian, it also meant something special. something sacred if you were keen in hiding something. damian believed it's special if only he had the access to whatever knowledge you'd hidden in your sketchbooks—
except when he'd open through the middle pages, he was greeted not by the more intimate journal entries you typically opt to write in blank pages, not by the graphic drawings he'd expected to see— but by an array of faded blueprints of the cave he stands in now, sketchbook spreads of their costumes: front, middle, and back; all drawn so accurately, it sends shivers across damian's spines to imagine just how intimately close you were to the suits to even know the patterns up close.
even speculations about the items they carry inside their utility belts, backed by newspaper clippings that show candid photographs of the vigilantes takings candies, ropes, and of the like out of their belts.
you weren't hiding something from them.
if you did, you'd have taken this sketchbook to your grave, you wouldn't have left it alongside your other belongings, things you thought would carry dust, be discarded by alfred. but you've known more about them far longer than they did you, you've compiled entries about what you've learned, little notes; passive aggressive remarks. you knew about their hero identities—
damian wasn't horrified about you knowing about them, even if your compiled proofs were shoved right in his face, even if he felt the hairs on his body prick up— he'd drawn a sword right to your neck at the first meeting; you were bound to be curious either way. about your half-brother. about the life he had prior to gotham. alfred had given you a quick rundown about the young boy before you'd greet him by the door.
the sweat running down his forehead, his legs feeling like jelly, his pupils dilating wasn't attributed to your discovery of their secret identities.
damian wasn't that afraid of that fact, even if there was a lingering ounce of astonishment.
no.
he was shaken by the thought that you knew so early.
that you were aware of the different life they led outside of yours. that you were almost purposely kept out of the picture and that you knew—
you knew so well that your largest sketchbook yet, and it was by far one of the oldest too, spanning from inexperienced sketches of batman's costume from the very start, to the whiter, more untouched pages by the very back.
— his fingers had not shaken just carrying the sheer, behemoth-like weight of the book, but the weight of your knowledge, the regret that had suddenly invaded all his thoughts; it had him slip both his book and his sword right out of his hold like butter, just right before he could remember to tighten his grip.
the crash was deafening like the wringing in his ears. he'd stick to his spot for a second, frozen in place whilst the others had begun to notice the contents of the paper.
then the rest became a blur to damian, the young boy looking down at his hands, his scarred fingers, his calloused palms. he's sworn to use them for good as robin, as a protector of this city alongside batman.
it wasn't easy.
the change was not sudden for damian. you can't just undo the years of battle and gruesome training he'd went into being an assassin. but there was still an undeniable change. becoming robin by force, being treated like an outsider at first, dealing with judgemental stares, working with his father's disappointment, meeting steph and finally being treated like a kid by her, getting closer to dick— having to prove his way into being a worthy holder of the mantle he had now.
damian asks himself:
was he worthy of redemption after all these years? was he worthy of atonement for all the blood he shed? when even in the path to proving himself— he'd never been good to you?
would forgiveness come naturally after he'd told you you were better off gone in the first place?
he'd taken a step back, sensations unwelcome but not unknown had invaded his every being: the warmth he felt when he first saw you, followed by the burning rage, the unworthiness, the envy.
your once unafraid eyes staring right at him, your welcoming nature, holding that damned tray of sweets staring back at him in mockery, all the traits he saw in himself in you if he wasn't raised to be like who he was—
you knew about their nightly endeavors, you knew of how often you've been left behind and excluded from everything, and yet you remained kind.
kind, but also afraid to take another step in his direction.
you've learned to shake under his gaze, learned to turn the opposite way when you've crossed paths, not only in the manor but in school, in public where anyone could see that these two half-siblings never acted like they were.
you changed your seating arrangement so you'd sit off at the far corner of the already long and winding dining table; only for the distance between you and your family to turn wider; eating with utensils barely clanking the ceramics, turning away from everybody, excusing yourself too early.
sometimes, you wouldn't even come down at all.
you shrink in your position every time he'd enter the library, leave without a word, watch him and dick become closer brothers than you ever had the chance of even spending a second with the eldest.
you both were the outsiders, and yet only one remained the victor.
you'd done everything to avoid more pain into your already miserable life. you'd done nothing wrong and damian had purposely inflicted more and more until your cup of patience was drained and you'd almost exploded at him. if he wanted to prove himself to be the rightful vigilante of the city, then why'd he act like villain to you...?
what was it about you that had him feeling so deliberately jealous?
... before his questions could be answered, he had already been counted into the family.
they were kinder to him now, less cautious—
he'd learn to speak less formally, gained friends at school, joined a football team, earned crushes, got teased; he had been counted in invitations before it was even considered.
he learned that it was alright to not act older than his age. he'd been treated like the boy he is, a young child still cluelessly navigating a world full of mysteries.
life was faring well, as well as it could get in gotham, and yet...
he was constantly reminded of how you were the only one in the family who was the first to treat him with compassion.
you were the one who'd open the door on him first before everybody else, despite alfred's cautious warnings, despite knowing the boy younger than you would be acknowledged far easier than you who had lived in the manor for the entirety of your life.
you were everything damian was not. you were everything damian wished to be.
he'd read your entries, learned about your bitterness, and you never took it out on him despite all your venomous words cutting through paper. you held yourself back from lashing out. you never reciprocated the same damning words he'd spew right at you. never fought back except for the very end; where you'd learn to avoid him if it meant a day of peace.
when he'd learn to miss you after.
where shortly after, the manor had become quieter.
he looks at his palms again.
these were meant to protect, meant to shield his older sibling from harm, to serve common people like you who had no power against the crimes of this city. you were the only non-vigilante in the family, the only person vulnerable enough to walk on the city's streets with the risk of danger with every footstep, and he was your baby brother— but he should've been far beyond that.
he should've been your protector too.
... and yet all these hands had ever done for him was hurt you.
no one else was there to protect you from his harm.
damian doesn't understand why. he remains lost in thought, lost for words.
lost in the regrets that'd pile up in his chest until all he could feel was the same sting, like an open wound poured with alcohol, when you'd glare back at him after another round of verbal assault, when you'd run away from the boy, when he stalked you all the way to your room and found you piercing through fragile, already scarred skin with yet another razor— that he swore he'd thrown out before, that meant you'd went and bought another, unable to live a day without constant physical torment—
your head was tilted down, eyes drawn wide open, blankly gazing at the crimson droplets beading and dripping from your thighs. this had turned into a habit. just another coping mechanism.
this became routine.
numbing down every bitter emotion beating out of your chest by hurting yourself with something worse.
and damian could only watch you fall deeper into a hole he helped dig.
what kind of hero was he if he couldn't even save his older sibling?
he recalls you, peeking through your doors, how you hit back loud sobs, head buried on your quivering, bleeding thighs, still afraid of being heard, blood seeping out of lips from all the times your teeth would pierce through wounds meant to heal, your nail beds had been bitten raw, fingertips stained with red, too, as you run your hands, ripping, tearing at matted hair; even if you were located in the far, abandoned corners of the manor, you'd learn to regulate your sobs in fear of it echoing through the halls.
to him, you were like a wounded animal, a terrified dog who'd learn that noise meant another inflicted bruise, another horrific slash across your body. being heard never meant being seen, being judged for acting the way you do. you'd shrink in the far corners, until you could be mistaken for a faint silhouette, and it was far better than knowing you were only acknowledged, but you were never offered a helping hand.
whilst damian had all the help he could get into becoming better, you'd disappear into the sidelines, only to become worse.
even if damian himself had tried every means of delaying your hurt without you ever knowing, you'd always find another way. you'd always be one step ahead of him, and you'd be back to picking scabs, back to scratching your neck, biting your knuckles, running off to find alfred, to every corner of the room only to find nothing—
because the butler had been busier in the batcave, day by day, caring for damian, losing his attention to you as a consequence.
back then, he found that a bragging right. another reason to shove in your face, another 'why' on why he's better than you. why your presence is a stain against the growing family. because the butler you love, who you thought would always be by your side had began catering and offering his own familial love towards the youngest— the youngest who'd done everything to remind you you were nothing and nobody.
he thought, at the sight of you falling on your knees after hours of searching for alfred through winding hallways, empty rooms, dizzying stairways until you'd land inside the library, begging, whispering under your breath, to any god, to any deity willing to hear you, while tears had begun cascading down your swollen eyes and hollow cheeks— he thought he'd laugh, thought he'd feel relief, like a heavy weight would be lifted from his chest just being witness to you falling into despair at the lack of alfred's presence.
he thought the pathetic sight would only make the pride heighten in his heart.
instead, all that came to him was his limp arms laying still on his sides, not a sound unable to escape his tightening throat. wide, terrified eyes had settled on your heaving body.
crumpling down on the carpeted floors, you were unable to breathe.
unable to release anymore of your pathetic sobs, you'd resort to clawing on furniture, the sharp edges of the coffee table violently hit your sides, you wince, you release a sharp cry, but still, you continue stumbling far deeper into the nook of the library, afraid of being heard.
the sight before him was a wretched show.
'but i've seen people suffer far worse.' his thoughts try to convince him, but his fingers tightly clenching the hems of his shirt tells another story.
'i've beheaded assassins before, i've seen guts mangling out of hanging bodies, stacks of corpses piled on top of another. the stench of rotten decay is as familiar as the polluted air in gotham—'
... and yet you crumbling into a ball in the corner dealt a far worse nausea residing in his thoughts, a lump forming on his chest the same way it always does when he notices another round of makeshift gauzes had been carelessly slapped on your heavily clothed body.
damian was terrified at the way you carelessly threw yourself into more danger.
damian was terrified of what your carelessness might entail.
... your little brother imagines your dangling body suspended in the air, neck embraced by a rope. and nobody would've known you were gone, nobody would've been there by the time the last exhale has escaped your purplish lips.
you'd be dead, and you'd be mourned for far too late.
and suddenly his vision spins, a wave of bile clung stubbornly up his throat.
damian doesn't want to imagine anymore, then he feels a draw, a magnetic pull, like he'd want to come out of his hiding spot, reveal himself to you— not to insult you, shame you for being weak. but your younger brother watching you hide behind bookshelves, gazing blankly, paired with the horrifying imagery of your deceased body—
one he couldn't just erase from his thoughts...
he doesn't like admitting it: but all he wanted to do was to comfort you the same way alfred had always stuck by his side, the same way stephanie had brought him to that bounce house and treated him like a young boy— damian wanted to, he needed to sit by your side. he doesn't want to see you cower in fear anymore, for your pupils to shrink, for your first instinct to turn the other way and away from him.
all he wanted was to lean his head against your shoulders, pretend like he had never once drawn a sword on you, like he had never committed any of his past mistakes— all he wanted to be your younger brother.
maybe it was a way to comfort himself too.
maybe he just doesn't want to be ridden with nightmares of your limp, decaying body for every second he'd shut his eyes.
but he wasn't brave enough, not yet. he regrets not being enough. he regrets simply resorting to watching you over in the shadows instead. watching you curl over, nails blunt from being bitten raw digging deep in your knees. he watches you try your best to steady your lungs, to contain the nasty bile tethering over the edge of your lips. the longer you sat there, accompanied only by the dust motes floating under the dim, warm lights in the library, the more the shame, the regret, the undulating hatred in himself curled bigger and bigger until it became mocking voices, violent imagery of what could, what would happen to you if he doesn't come save you right now.
... yet despite it all, he never once came out of the obscurity of the shadows. he never had with you. he never did until it was too late.
he remained stationary, engulfed in nothing but guilty conscience.
and really, it was ironic: two siblings suspended in the dark night, and yet only one had truly seen the light.
and damian notices, he always notices, no matter how much he pretends to never care,
that the longer you cried all by yourself...
the more it seemed to never end.
reblogs and interactions are encouraged and appreciated.
PLEASE READ: oh my god, i poured all my heart and soul into this, cried a bit bec i was afraid of losing progress again, and then cheered some more when i finished. so i'm begging for comments, interactions, any of ur fave lines please. there's a lot of parallels between dick and the mc. and then between damian and mc too. and u guys don't know it, but your comments and submissions were so much help in making me finish this early 😭🙏 also, thank u guys for ur patience! i appreciate all the kind comments, all the encouraging words in my inbox. honestly, i never expected a&a to be as much of a passion project as it is now. it used to be an outlet for my emotions, and it still is, but i never realized how many people actually loved the reader as much as much. that's it, love y'all !!!
Platonic Yandere! Mer! Batfam x GN! Shipwrecked! Reader
Wordcount: 1.6k
AN: Happy MerMay everyone! I saw a video of the process of a sperm whale birth and was very inspired by the rest of the pod supporting the calf! I took some liberties with sperm whale pod dynamics but like… They’re mers. Creative liberties are how we got here. Also, I finally got myself the BRZRKR themed comic box that I've been eyeing for months!!! I'm super excited to have some good storage for my comics where they won't be exposed to light!!! Not beta read. Good luck again, soldiers.
TW: Yandere and animalistic behaviors, somewhat realism, dehumanization(?), natural disasters, dead squids, eating raw flesh, kinda gross food stuff, mentions of starvation, violence, heavily implied death of humans and a mer (no major characters), mentions of male and female mers but in a nature documentary kind of way, mentions of scars and previous injuries (not reader)
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A tiny boat in a storm wasn’t exactly an ideal situation. Being stuck on a floating case of equipment was even less so. Being circled by a gigantic sperm whale mer while being stuck on a makeshift raft was kind of a worst case scenario. He hadn’t reached out to grab you yet but he kept cooing, rumbling, and clicking at you to try to get you to come closer when he would come up to the side of your raft. You, understandably, scurried to the opposite side and tried your very best to not freak out. His startling blue eyes were constantly on you since he found you and after a full day of being stared at, he finally left, diving down into the depths of the ocean.
He returned to the raft about an hour later with a huge, bloated dead squid that had been half torn to pieces. You watched in horror as he began tearing off chunks and putting them onto the raft. He watched your fast breathing and seemed to think that you needed help to learn how to eat. He tore off another chunk and slowly began biting into it and chewing, making sure that you were watching. After finishing his bite, he offered the chunk of flesh to you, humming softly in encouragement for you to take it. He didn’t seem discouraged when you refused, instead leaving the squid for you to eat and returning to circling around your raft like a shark.
You fell asleep that night to the sound of Bruce calling out for his pod. When you woke up, you were surrounded and being poked and prodded. A whole pod of sperm whale mers, both male and female, were either circling you or halfway on the raft as they touched your legs with a mix of curiosity and pity. You were smaller than even the calf, a male with a curious look in his green eyes. They were all whistling to each other and you didn’t need a degree in marine biology to understand what they were saying. They were talking about the messed up calf that their pod leader had found. The calf hadn’t seemed to learn patience yet as he pulled at you to try to get you into the water. He was quickly scolded by the older mers of the pod and gently pulled away from your raft.
From then on, you always had at least two members of the pod with you at all times. They slept surrounding you and usually spent their time trying to interact with you. When the pod went hunting, some stayed behind. There was the calf, who you called Damian, and then at least one babysitter. Damian couldn't hold his breath long enough to hunt on his own and it seemed that they thought the same of you. This time, the babysitter was the second largest male in the pod. He was covered in significantly more scars than any of the others. He shared the same green eyes as the calf and had a patch of white hair on his hairline. You called him Jason.
You liked Jason well enough. He was always particularly gentle with you. He seemed to like floating alongside the rafts and just watching you. He wasn't pushy or aggressive towards you and instead preferred to just watch you. He occasionally brought you small gifts that he found floating in the water. He usually brought you driftwood but once, he found a rubber ducky and seemed excited to give you something so colorful. You were happy to have something familiar. He would quietly chatter at you in his language as he watched you check over all of the different things that he would bring you.
After a few days adrift at sea, you finally became hungry enough to eat what they offered you. The eye of the dead squid stared up at you as Bruce began ripping apart the tentacles for you to eat. You were half starved when you took a chunk from his hand and took a bite. The chewy and unpleasant texture of the flesh distracted you from the overjoyed chirps and coos as the pods celebrated you eating something that they gave you for the first time. Bruce, in particular, seemed exceptionally pleased with you eating. You managed to eat enough to fill your stomach before falling asleep on the raft, the gentle bobbing motion lulling you to sleep easily.
You woke up to a different babysitter watching over you and Damian. You called him Duke because of how regal he looked when you first saw him. He was much more playful and easygoing than most of the others, even the one that you named Dick after he did a flip onto Bruce while he was busy preparing your food for you. You figured that he had some kind of deep sea fish genes from the way that patterns on his skin would glow at night. It was like having a living night light. You were distracted from watching him swimming with Damian when you noticed an oceanic white tip shark mer swimming towards you. You froze when you saw the large mer approaching, knowing that they had a reputation for eating shipwreck survivors. Duke quickly let out a series of loud, rapid clicks as he moved to intercept the other mer.
The shark mer began circling around the raft at a distance and Duke began matching him, still staying between you and the other mer. Damian seemed very upset as he began making loud clicks downwards towards where the rest of the pod was presumably hunting. The shark mer began curiously approaching the raft and once he was only a yard away, Bruce slammed into him from below and launched him up and out of the water.
There was a frenzy of activity as the pod began chasing the offending mer away from the raft. You felt your face being grabbed and you looked over to see one of the few female mers in the pod, Barbara. She seemed very intelligent but her back had a major scar and she had difficulties swimming quickly, likely due to a boat strike. It made sense why she would be the one to stay behind to watch you. Her green eyes stared into yours as she began petting your head and seemingly trying to comfort you. She continued to gently hold your face as she clicked and whistled at you affectionately, still keeping you from looking at what was happening behind you. When the rest of the pod returned and she let go of your face, you saw the massive amount of blood in the water and the lack of injuries to any of the members of the pod.
You were pampered and cuddled half to death for the rest of the day. They were all covered in water but they were warm so you didn't mind too much. Bruce would cuddle you first, then Dick, then Damian, since he threw a tantrum, then Duke, then Jason. Steph and Cass, two of the other female mers in the pod, snuggled up to you on either side, almost sinking your raft. Tim screeched at them when he realized how panicked you were and took his turn cuddling you early after kicking them off of the raft.
The pod was more protective after that. You were left with a minimum of three babysitters whenever the pod left to hunt. The hunters would bring back more squid for everyone and you would be given your portion by Bruce and whoever was babysitting you. You knew that they thought that you were cute based on the way that they treated you. They loved touching you and snuggling you. They tried to play with you with the “toys” that Jason gave you, though Jason would usually get territorial and try to take the toys back to play with you instead.
Eventually, they seemed to get sick of you avoiding the water. You wouldn't go in to cuddle or play with them like a normal calf. They seemed to think that your swimming was worse than Barbara's, which, while true, was for an entirely different reason than an injury. They would try to coax you in and would get extremely frustrated the more that you refused. It evidently got to a breaking point after three weeks of them caring for you.
You had refused to go into the water again. Bruce huffed and dove down beneath the gentle waves. You thought that was the end of it until you felt a jolt on the raft behind you and turned to see what was going on. You began screaming as Damian slashed and bit at the equipment box. Unsurprisingly, it began to fill with water and sink. You screeched and thrashed as you slipped into the water, doing your very best to swim and stay on the surface so that you could breathe. Bruce quickly scooped you up, keeping you afloat and helping you breathe as you sat on his back. The whole pod came together, clicking affectionately as they all touched you and tried to help you feel more comfortable in the water with them. They wanted you to be with them more fully.
They were all there, supporting the newest, smallest member of the pod. Their precious little calf.
Read the synopsis here first. Warnings: Yandere Themes, Batfamily x reader, Superfamily x reader, Death, Dark fic → read at your own discretion. Chapter One.
Before the incident, you were no one special.
Not in the tragic way people liked to romanticise afterwards, either.
You weren’t secretly important. There was no hidden inheritance waiting for you, no extraordinary talent buried beneath years of hardship, no destiny quietly lingering around the corner.
You were just another person trying to survive Gotham.
One of millions.
Your family sat somewhere awkwardly in the middle class for most of your childhood. Not poor enough for sympathy, but never comfortable enough to stop worrying about money either.
Your mother worked double shifts as a waitress downtown, feet swollen and patience thin by the time she came home each night. Your father worked construction when jobs were available, though half the time he seemed more interested in spending his paychecks into alcohol, cigarettes, and nights out with friends before they ever made it home.
They’d had you young. Too young.
At least, that was the excuse everyone always used.
Your grandmother used to defend them constantly when you were little.
“They’re trying,” she’d sigh whenever your mother forgot to pick you up from school again. “They’re still figuring things out.”
You believed her back then.
Children usually did.
By the time you turned ten, though, you’d started noticing things.
Noticing that your parents always somehow had money for cigarettes, drinks, nights out with friends. But argued whenever school supplies needed replacing. Noticing how your grandmother quietly covered expenses without complaint whenever they “fell short” again.
You noticed how often your father looked annoyed when you interrupted him. How your mother’s smiles became strained whenever conversations lasted too long.
Eventually, you stopped interrupting altogether. It was easier that way.
Your grandmother practically raised you herself after that.
She was the one who picked you up from school. The one who remembered birthdays. The one who stayed awake during fevers while your parents argued somewhere down the hall about money neither of them had.
You learned early on not to ask for much.
Gotham had a way of wearing people down until survival became the only thing they had energy left for.
Your grandmother’s apartment sat above an old laundromat in Crime Alley, though nobody really called it that anymore unless they were tourists, cops, or trying to sound dramatic on the news. To the people actually living there, it was just another neighbourhood trying not to collapse in on itself.
The building always smelled faintly like mildew and detergent. Old wallpaper peeling near the ceiling. Weak heating during winter. Pipes that rattled loudly enough to wake you at night whenever someone used the shower.
Half the lights in the hallway never worked properly. The elevator broke down at least twice a month. Sometimes gunshots echoed somewhere nearby late enough at night that your grandmother would quietly close the curtains without pausing the conversation.
Like it was normal.
Because it was.
Still, it felt more like home than anywhere else ever had.
She liked listening to the city.
You never understood why.
Gotham was loud in all the worst ways.
Sirens screaming through the streets at three in the morning. Arguments through paper-thin apartment walls. Televisions blasting news reports about murders, robberies, masked vigilantes tearing through the city again.
Growing up in Gotham meant learning very quickly which sounds were dangerous and which weren’t. Car backfires. Arguments. Sirens. Police helicopters. Screaming.
Eventually it all blended together into background noise.
As a child, you used to sit cross-legged on the living room floor watching those very news reports while your grandmother muttered complaints from the kitchen.
Batman, Superman, Robin, The Justice League, Arkham breakouts, bank robberies, another chemical attack downtown, another body found in the Narrows.
The city lived in this constant state of barely controlled chaos where people still somehow expected you to show up to work the next morning afterwards. And everyone did. Because what else were they supposed to do?
“Rich people playing dress-up,” she’d scoff. “Always punching symptoms instead of fixing the disease,” she’d mutter while folding laundry.
You remembered laughing at that once.
At the time, you hadn’t understood what she meant. Then getting older and realising she wasn’t entirely wrong.
The heroes never came to your neighbourhood unless something exploded.
By the time you graduated high school, Gotham already felt exhausted into your bones.
You weren’t stupid. Your grades had been decent enough, but decent didn’t really mean much when every college application came attached to tuition you could never afford.
You got rejected from two schools outright.
The third accepted you with costs that may as well have been impossible.
So you did what most people did. You worked.
Then one acceptance attached to tuition costs so absurd you actually laughed reading it.
So that was the end of that.
You got a job two weeks later. Then another after the first store shut down following a robbery that left the owner dead behind the register. Then another after new management fired half the staff to cut costs. Then another after the building literally caught fire during some fight between Batman and Killer Croc three blocks away.
That was Gotham.
Jobs disappeared overnight. Buildings vanished. People vanished. Nobody acted surprised anymore.
By twenty four, your resume looked less like career experience and more like a trail of failed businesses and bad luck.
Convenience stores, warehouses, gas stations, stock work, night shifts, delivery driving, Cash handling, whatever paid enough.
You worked constantly, not because you were ambitious, but because stopping even briefly felt dangerous. Like if you stood still too long, the city would swallow you whole.
Most of your paychecks disappeared into rent, groceries, utilities, and helping your grandmother whenever her medication costs got bad again.
Still, after years of unstable jobs and cramped living conditions, you’d eventually managed to scrape together enough money for your own apartment.
“Apartment” was generous, honestly.
The place sat on the outskirts of Gotham in a building old enough that the pipes screamed whenever someone showered. Water stains spread across the ceiling above your bed in branching patterns, and the radiator worked only when it felt particularly motivated.
The radiator barely worked during winter. The upstairs neighbour screamed at video games until two in the morning almost every night. Water stains spread slowly across the ceiling above your bed no matter how many maintenance requests you filed.
Sometimes the alley outside smelled so bad during summer you had to keep the windows shut entirely.
It was terrible. The apartment was awful.
And you loved it anyway. Because it was yours.
For the first time in your life, you had a space that belonged entirely to you.
That mattered more than you cared to admit.
You still remember standing alone in the empty apartment the first night after moving in, staring at the stained carpet and flickering kitchen light while holding a box of instant noodles under one arm.
You’d actually smiled.
Not because you were happy, exactly. Just… Proud.
Even if it was small. Even if nobody else would’ve cared.
It was the first thing in your life that had belonged entirely to you.
Your life had settled into an endless cycle of exhaustion. The kind that sat permanently behind your eyes no matter how much sleep you got. The kind that made your body feel heavy the second your alarm went off each morning. Or afternoon. Or evening. Your schedule changed too often to keep track anymore.
Between two jobs, days stopped feeling separate from one another entirely.
The warehouse job started early.
Most mornings, when you actually slept at night, began before sunrise. Stumbling half-awake through Gotham’s freezing streets with cheap coffee burning your tongue and yesterday’s exhaustion still clinging stubbornly to your bones.
The warehouse itself sat tucked near the industrial district downtown, surrounded by chain-link fencing and graffiti-covered loading docks. The work was mindless.
Your manager barely remembered employees’ names despite half the staff working there for years.
Nobody really spoke much during shifts either. Everyone just kept their heads down beneath the constant drone of machinery and fluorescent lights overhead. People came and went constantly.
One guy got fired for showing up high. Another stopped appearing altogether after getting mugged outside the bus station. A woman you’d worked beside for almost six months vanished after her apartment building got condemned unexpectedly.
You knew not to get attached to people.
Your second job was worse.
The convenience store sat near one of Gotham’s busiest intersections, right between a liquor store with bars over the windows and a laundromat that always smelled vaguely like bleach and cigarettes.
The place stayed open twenty four hours a day because people apparently never slept.
Not safely, anyway.
You mostly worked evening and overnight shifts there, which meant dealing with every kind of customer imaginable.
Drunk college students stumbling in after midnight. Half-conscious office workers buying energy drinks at two in the morning. People clearly high on something wandering aimlessly through the aisles for hours. Sometimes shoplifters.
Sometimes worse.
People lingering too long near entrances. Bulges beneath jackets that you had to learn the hard way didn’t just mean guns. The twitchy, restless movements of someone looking for an easy target.
Mostly, though, the job was just boring. Painfully boring.
The fluorescent lights buzzed constantly overhead. The slurpee machine broke at least twice a week. One of the refrigerators made an awful rattling noise management refused to fix.
You spent most shifts restocking shelves, cleaning spills, rotating expired food, and pretending not to notice suspicious customers stuffing things into their pockets.
The pay wasn’t enough for the hours. Neither job’s pay was. Still, together they kept your bills barely manageable.
Barely.
That night had started like every other shift.
Your feet already hurt by hour three. By hour six, the ache in your lower back had settled into something dull and constant while the cheap energy drink beside the register slowly went warm. Outside, rain hammered violently against the store windows hard enough to blur the neon signs across the street.
Gotham looked different in heavy rain.
Meaner, somehow.
The streets became slick mirrors of distorted lights and moving shadows while pedestrians hurried past with their heads down like the city itself might reach out and grab them if they slowed too long.
The clock above the cigarette display read 11:52 PM.
Eight more minutes.
Then you could go home, shower, maybe sleep four hours if you were lucky, and drag yourself back to the warehouse by morning.
You were reorganizing one of the drink coolers when the cashier called your name from the front counter.
“Can you grab more cigarettes from the back?”
You shut the refrigerator door with a sigh. “Yeah.”
The storage room behind the counter was cramped and dimly lit, stacked floor-to-ceiling with boxes of inventory management never organized properly. Dust coated nearly every surface despite repeated cleaning attempts, and one of the ceiling lights flickered badly enough that half the room remained trapped in shadow.
You crouched beside one of the shelves, digging through cardboard boxes for cigarette cartons while absently trying to remember whether you’d paid your electricity bill already. Probably.
Hopefully.
Your phone buzzed faintly in your pocket. A reminder alarm. You ignored it.
The sound of laughter drifted faintly from the front of the store. A customer arguing over lottery tickets. The steady hum of refrigerators. Rain slamming against the windows outside.
Normal.
Everything felt painfully normal.
Then the front windows exploded inward.
The crash was deafening.
Glass shattered across the floor in a violent spray as screaming erupted instantly from the front registers.
Your entire body locked up.
For one stunned second, you genuinely thought a car had crashed into the building.
Then the gunshots started.
The sound cracked through the store so violently your ears rang immediately afterward.
Someone screamed. Terrified.
You froze beside the shelves as heavy footsteps stormed through the store outside.
“EVERYBODY ON THE FUCKING GROUND!” Another gunshot. Closer this time.
Your pulse slammed violently against your ribs. Instinct finally kicked in.
You stumbled upright too quickly, nearly knocking over a stack of boxes before rushing toward the storage room doorway. The second you looked out into the store, your stomach dropped.
Six women. Masked. Armed.
One stood near the destroyed front entrance holding an assault rifle while shattered glass glittered across the floor around her boots. Another had vaulted over the counter already, shoving the cashier roughly toward the ground while emptying registers into a duffel bag.
Customers were screaming. Crying. Trying not to move.
One of the women fired another shot directly into the ceiling.
Dust and debris rained downward instantly. “GET DOWN!”
Your knees hit the floor before you consciously decided to move.
Cold tiles dug painfully into your skin through your uniform pants as your hands instinctively lifted slightly away from your body where they could be seen.
Your heart was beating so hard it physically hurt.
Around you, the store dissolved into chaos.
One customer sobbed openly near the candy aisle. Someone else whispered prayers beneath their breath. A display rack had been knocked sideways during the panic, chips and drinks scattered everywhere across the floor.
The women moved through the store quickly. Efficiently. Like they’d done this before. “Phones in the bags.”
“Wallets too.” Another reminded.
“Don’t fucking look at us.”
One customer tried arguing. You didn’t even see which woman hit him. Just the crack of a gunstock against bone and the sudden silence afterward.
Nobody spoke again.
Nobody was stupid enough to play hero.
You kept your eyes lowered toward the floor, breathing shallowly through the overwhelming smell of rainwater, gunpowder, and adrenaline thickening the air around you.
Heavy boots stopped directly in front of you.
Your stomach twisted violently.
“Get up.” A hand grabbed the back of your jacket roughly before you could react.
You stumbled upright immediately, pulse roaring loudly in your ears as cold metal jammed hard against your ribs.
Gun.
The woman shoved you forward toward the counter. “Open the registers.”
Your hands shook immediately.
The other customers and employees remained huddled on the floor behind you while the women barked orders over each other, duffel bags steadily filling with cash, cigarettes, medication, and whatever expensive items they could grab quickly enough.
One woman stood guard near the shattered entrance with her rifle raised casually toward the hostages.
Another paced between aisles like she was waiting for someone to try something stupid.
Rainwater and broken glass covered most of the floor now, crunching loudly beneath boots as the women moved throughout the store.
You swallowed hard, forcing your hands to cooperate as you reached for the register keys.
The gun dug harder into your side. “Hurry the fuck up.”
“I’m trying,” you muttered before you could stop yourself.
The woman immediately grabbed the back of your neck hard enough to make you stumble.
“Don’t get smart.”
Your pulse pounded violently in your throat. “Sorry.”
The register popped open with a sharp ding.
The woman beside you immediately started shoving handfuls of cash into a duffel bag while another forced the cashier toward the second register nearby.
“Him too.”
A different gun pressed against the cashier’s head this time. The poor guy looked barely conscious with fear.
You looked away.
One of them vaulted over the counter while another shouted from somewhere near the aisles. “Safe’s in the back.”
Your stomach dropped instantly. Of course they knew about the safe. Someone had probably tipped them off beforehand.
The woman beside you shoved the barrel against your spine this time. “Move.”
You stumbled forward immediately.
The cashier was dragged alongside you toward the storage room, nearly tripping over shattered glass in the process. Behind you, customers whimpered quietly while another warning shot suddenly echoed through the store ceiling.
Dust rained downward.
Nobody screamed this time.
The fear had settled too deeply for that now.
The storage room suddenly felt even smaller than before.
Claustrophobic.
The flickering overhead light buzzed faintly while the women crowded around the safe bolted into the concrete wall behind stacked inventory boxes.
“Open it.”
Your throat felt dry. “I-I don’t have the code.”
That wasn’t entirely true. Only managers technically had access, but employees were taught the emergency code in case of late-night robberies. Which now felt horribly ironic.
The woman tilted her head slightly. Then cocked the gun.
Your stomach twisted violently.
“Open it.”
Beside you, the cashier looked moments away from passing out entirely.
Your hands fumbled badly against the keypad.
Wrong number.
The woman behind you grabbed your shoulder painfully hard. “Hurry up!”
Your vision blurred slightly. You couldn’t think properly with the gun pressed against your back.
Breathe. Just breathe.
Your fingers shook harder as you entered the code again.
This time the safe clicked open.
The women immediately surged forward.
“Holy shit—”
Stacks of cash disappeared into bags almost instantly while one of the robbers laughed sharply beneath her mask.
Your knees felt weak with adrenaline.
This was bad. This was really bad.
Nobody robbed stores this close to the central city unless they were desperate or stupid.
And desperate people were dangerous.
One of the women suddenly grabbed your arm. Hard. “You’re coming with me.”
Your heart nearly stopped. “What?”
The gun pressed against your temple before you could react. Cold metal against skin. Every muscle in your body locked instantly.
“You heard me.”
The cashier beside you made a weak noise like he wanted to object before another robber snapped toward him immediately. “Eyes down.” He obeyed instantly. So did you.
The woman dragged you back toward the front of the store with the weapon still pressed tightly against your head, using you like a shield while the others continued emptying the safe behind you.
Your breathing had turned shallow. Too fast.
The entire store looked wrecked now. Glass covered the floor. Shelves had been knocked sideways. Products littered nearly every aisle. Somewhere near the entrance, one of the customers was crying quietly into their hands.
The rain outside had worsened, thunder rumbling faintly overhead while police sirens echoed somewhere far enough away to still be useless.
The woman holding you cursed under her breath suddenly.
A pair of headlights swept briefly across the shattered storefront outside. The lights flickered.
One of the robbers near the entrance straightened immediately.
“Did you hear-” The front doors burst inward.
Everything happened at once.
A dark blur slammed violently into the woman near the entrance hard enough to send her crashing into a shelf. Another figure dropped from somewhere above while a third came crashing through the side fire exit almost simultaneously.
Shouting erupted instantly.
The woman holding you jerked the gun harder against your temple. “Fuck! Move.”
You barely managed half a step before the front lights blew out entirely.
The store plunged into darkness.
Somebody screamed.
One of the robbers hit the floor hard enough to crack against the tiles. Another shape moved through the darkness near the entrance, striking fast enough that you only caught flashes of black and blue between the confusion.
The women started shouting. Gunshots erupted instantly. The sound was deafening in the enclosed store.
Your captor spun sharply, dragging you backward against her chest as chaos tore through the aisles around you. Shelves crashed violently somewhere nearby while customers scrambled further beneath counters and displays.
You couldn’t see properly. Only movement. The loud noise. Shouting.
Then the emergency lights kicked in. Dim red lighting flooded the store. And suddenly you could see them.
Nightwing moved first. Fast enough that it barely looked human.
One of the robbers swung toward him with her weapon raised only for him to twist sideways, baton slamming against her wrist before she could fire. The gun skidded across the floor as she crumpled hard against a shelf.
Near the registers, Red Hood ripped another woman’s weapon clean out of her hands before shoving her violently into the counter.
Red Robin was already restraining someone else near the entrance.
Robin was heading directly toward you.
The woman behind you panicked. You felt it immediately in the way her grip tightened painfully against your shoulder. “Don’t fucking move!” The gun pressed harder against your head.
Robin didn’t stop. For one brief second, everything slowed.
You saw the sharp movement of his arm. The glint of metal. The woman beginning to pull the trigger-
Then the blunt edge of Robin’s katana slammed violently against the side of the weapon.
The gunshot rang out anyway.
The sound echoed through the store loud enough to make your ears ring instantly.
The weapon flew from the woman’s hand as Nightwing tackled her to the floor almost immediately afterward.
You stared blankly ahead.
Confused.
Something felt strange.
Warm.
Your knees suddenly gave out beneath you. The floor rushed upward too quickly.
You hit the ground hard, the impact rattling painfully through your body while the world around you blurred strangely out of focus.
Why- Why was it hard to breathe?
Noise swelled around you in distorted waves.
Someone shouting. Boots hitting the floor. A voice yelling your name- or maybe not your name. Maybe you imagined that.
Your chest burned.
Slowly, your trembling hand moved downward.
Warm. Wet.
When you pulled your hand back, your fingers were covered in blood.
For a second, you just stared at it.
Dark red beneath the emergency lights. Too much blood.
Oh.
The realization settled quietly into your mind.
You’d been shot.
You weren’t even sure when it happened.
Pain exploded through your chest a second later.
A broken sound tore from your throat as your body curled instinctively against the floor. Your lungs seized painfully, every breath wet and wrong and burning all the way down.
Fuck.
Your vision blurred instantly.
Movement dropped around you almost immediately.
Four figures.
Nightwing caught your shoulders carefully before your head could hit the tiles again. Red Robin was already pressing gloved hands against your chest wound hard enough to make another scream rip from your throat.
“Easy- easy-”
“There’s too much blood.”
“Call an ambulance now.”
Robin had gone frighteningly still beside you.
Red Hood looked ready to kill someone. Actually kill someone.
You didn’t understand why they looked so panicked. People died in Gotham all the time. They’d all seen worse than this before.
The thought felt distant somehow as warmth spread rapidly beneath your body, soaking through your uniform and pooling across the dirty floor tiles.
Your breathing hitched painfully. Everything sounded underwater now.
Nightwing kept talking to you, voice strained and rough beneath the ringing in your ears, but you couldn’t focus enough to understand the words.
Your eyes drifted sluggishly across the four vigilantes surrounding you.
They looked horrified. Not shocked. Not professionally concerned.
Horrified.
Like this wasn’t supposed to happen. Like you weren’t supposed to happen.
Oh.. You were dying.
The realization should have scared you more. Instead, all you could think was how absurd it felt.
Twenty four years old. Shot in the chest during a robbery at a shitty convenience store five hours before your next shift was supposed to start.
A weak laugh almost escaped before it turned into a wet cough instead. Blood spilled down the corner of your mouth immediately afterward.
Red Robin swore under his breath.
“Stay awake.” Nightwing’s hands tightened slightly where they steadied you. “You’re okay,” he said quickly.
You weren’t sure if he was talking to you or himself.
Your hand twitched weakly toward the wound in your chest. Pain tore through you instantly.
A scream ripped from your throat before your eyes squeezed shut hard enough to hurt.
Shit.
Your chest hurt.
Everything hurt.
And through it all, you couldn’t stop staring at how devastated they looked.
You weren’t special. Just another civilian. No friends. No family nearby. A shitty apartment. An even shittier job. Nothing worth mourning this badly.
The last thing you felt was someone grabbing your hand tightly.
Then everything went black.
Or.. at least it should have.
Gasping violently for air, you lurched upright with a broken choke of sound clawing its way out of your throat.
The chair beneath you screeched loudly against the floor as your entire body jerked forward in panic.
Pain.
You braced for pain.
For the burning agony still carved into your memory so vividly you could practically feel it splitting through your chest all over again. You could still remember the warmth of blood pouring between your fingers. The wet, suffocating feeling in your lungs every time you tried to breathe.
You remembered dying.
Your hands flew frantically to your chest.
Fingers clawed desperately at the fabric covering your skin, shaking so violently you could barely feel what you were touching. You pressed hard against your sternum, searching blindly for the wound.
The bullet hole. The blood. Something. Anything.
But there was nothing.
No shredded convenience store uniform soaked crimson beneath your hands. No sticky warmth coating your skin. No hole torn through your chest.
Nothing.
Your breathing turned sharp and uneven.
“No-” The word escaped instinctively beneath another panicked inhale as your hands pressed harder against yourself like force alone would somehow uncover the injury that had been there.
It had been there.
You remembered it. You remembered collapsing. Remembered Gotham’s vigilantes surrounding you. Remembered choking on blood while your vision darkened at the edges.
You remembered dying.
A shaky breath caught painfully in your throat.
Your pulse hammered so hard it made your head spin. Then slowly-
Slowly,
You realized the floor beneath you wasn’t tile.
There was no smell of smoke. No shattered glass crunching underfoot. No distant police sirens screaming outside.
Instead, fluorescent lights buzzed softly overhead. The air smelled faintly like old textbooks and dry erase markers.
Silence pressed heavily around you.
Wrong. Everything felt wrong.
Your hands finally stilled against your chest as you looked up. Rows of desks. Teenagers. A classroom.
Several students were staring directly at you now, expressions twisted somewhere between concern and confusion. One girl near the windows looked outright alarmed. Somebody else had half-risen from their seat like they didn’t know whether to help or stay back.
Your breathing picked up again immediately.
No.
No, no, no-
This wasn’t possible.
Sunlight streamed warmly through large classroom windows, illuminating dust drifting lazily through the air. Outside, distant voices echoed faintly through hallways. School.
You knew this room.
The realisation crashed into you hard enough to make your stomach twist violently.
Your gaze darted wildly around the classroom.
The faded poetry posters peeling slightly near the ceiling. The cracked corner of the whiteboard. The clock above the doorway that always ran three minutes behind.
Recognition flooded through you so suddenly it almost hurt.
You knew this classroom. You had sat in this room before. Years ago.
Your fingers curled tightly against the edge of the desk beneath you as panic crawled violently up your spine. That wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.
Because you were twenty four. Because six years ago you’d graduated.
Because minutes ago you’d been bleeding out on the floor of a convenience store in Gotham while four vigilantes desperately tried to stop you from dying.
A cold wave of nausea rolled through your stomach.
Slowly, almost fearfully, your eyes lifted toward the front of the classroom.
And locked directly with the stunned stare of your twelfth grade literature teacher.
Hey Yael. I’m back for the kids.
Read chapter two HERE once it’s out. Comments and Reblogs will be deciding this fic’s fate. Whether it’s continued or scrapped is up to the readers.
So either comment or reblog if you’d like this to continue.
Even though I have unfinished series on my account, I want to write a new one and write chapters for all three of them in rotation.I want to write a Platonic Yandere Batfam x Isha!Reader x Platonic Yandere Jinx story. Maybe I can write a Jinx!Reader in the future too, but since Jinx!Reader has already been written before, I wanted to write about my favorite character (Isha). It will be an Arcane x Gotham crossover. So, Zaun and stuff will exist, and Joker won't replace Silco; Silco will actually be there and will have been killed by Jinx. Sevika and Vi will be in it too. Other than that, I don't think there will be any other Arcane characters. I know Gotham is already terrible, but I think Zaun will fit much better. Would you like to read it?
