thepurplespirit | lana, she/they, 22, bi, libra, mostly dc but some select multifandom, infj-t, coffee addict, probably writing instead of sleeping
requests open
fandoms dc/dcu, marvel, stranger things, avatar: the last airbender, more likely to come!
readers gender neutral unless specified!
marvel masterlist | dc masterlist | ao3 | recs
warning!! not your thing, don’t interact! block me! most of my works are pg13/gen, and those that are 18+ will say so and cut off before anything 18+ happens
characters roy harper, wally west here, hal jordan here, kon-el kent here, john constantine here
content gn! reader, 'babe'/'baby' used, trauma recovery, childhood trauma, hurt/comfort, child exposure to violence/crime, scarecrow/fear gas mention, hostage situation mention, brief refs to roy's addiction/recovery
masterlist
author's note just noting here that for some of these characters i am not the most well versed with their lore/stories/etc. so please forgive any creative liberties taken! (also note they may come across as ooc)
word count 2.6k
roy harper
Roy thinks he has a pretty solid tolerance for “weird life stories.” He’s been an addict. He’s been a hero. He’s been a sidekick. He’s been abandoned, judged, used, underestimated, and dragged through the emotional wood chipper enough times that he generally assumes nothing can truly shock him anymore.
Then he dates someone from Gotham. And you humble him immediately.
The first time it happens, it’s so casual he genuinely thinks he misheard you.
You’re both making dinner. Roy is barefoot in your kitchen, sleeves pushed up, complaining dramatically about how your knives are “criminally dull” and how this is “how people lose fingers, babe.” You’re stirring sauce at the stove, completely relaxed.
The news is playing quietly in the background. Some anchor says something about Arkham security upgrades.
You snort.
Roy looks over. “What?”
“Nothing. Just funny they’re pretending Arkham security upgrades ever work.”
Roy laughs, because yeah, okay, fair.
Then you add, “My school had to evacuate once because Scarecrow escaped and they thought he was hiding in the boiler room.”
Roy stops chopping onions. He turns his head very slowly. “Your school had to do what?”
You don’t even look up. “Evacuate.”
“Because Scarecrow was in the boiler room?”
“They thought he was. It ended up being two henchmen and a janitor having a nervous breakdown.”
Roy sets the knife down. Very carefully. “Babe.”
“Hmm?”
“Why did you say that like you were telling me your school ran out of printer paper?”
You blink at him. “It wasn’t that bad.”
Roy’s expression does this complicated thing—half disbelief, half grief, half “I am going to fistfight an entire city.”
Yes, that is three halves. Roy is emotionally bad at math in the moment.
“Not that bad,” he repeats.
You shrug. “We got out early.”
“Oh, cool, yeah, silver lining. Early dismissal because of domestic terrorism.”
And you laugh, because to you it is kind of funny.
Roy does not laugh.
That’s when you realise he’s actually shaken.
Not angry at you. Never at you. But there’s something raw in his face, something unsettled and protective and deeply sad.
Because Roy understands laughing at pain. He’s practically fluent in it. He knows exactly what it looks like when someone wraps barbed wire in a joke and calls it a personality.
And, suddenly, he sees it in you.
After that, the floodgates open accidentally.
Not because you sit him down and decide to tell him everything.
No, it’s worse.
You keep dropping the most horrifying Gotham anecdotes in the middle of completely normal conversations.
Roy will say, “I hated cafeteria food as a kid.”
And you’ll go, “Same. Ours got shut down once because the lunch lady was using expired meat from a Falcone front.”
Roy stares. You continue eating cereal.
Or he’ll complain about traffic.
You’ll say, “At least your bus route wasn’t rerouted because Killer Croc was in the sewers again.”
Roy slowly lowers his coffee cup. “Again?”
You tilt your head. “Yeah?”
“Define again.”
“Like… more than once?”
Roy leans back in his chair, staring at the ceiling like he’s asking every god, ghost, and Green Lantern battery in the universe for patience.
“Baby, I need you to understand that sewers are not supposed to have recurring boss fights.”
The worst one, though, is when he realises you don’t categorise these things as trauma.
To you, trauma is something dramatic. Something cinematic. Something with rain and screaming and blood on white tile.
Gotham taught you that anything you survived quietly didn’t count.
So when you mention being held hostage during a bank robbery at twelve, you say it like this: “Oh, yeah, that bank used to have really good lollipops. Shame about the hostage thing.”
Roy goes utterly still.
You look up from your phone. “What?”
“You were twelve?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“It was before high school.”
Roy rubs both hands over his face. “Okay. Okay, I’m gonna need a second.”
You immediately get defensive, because that’s another thing Gotham gave you: the instinct to make your pain smaller before anyone else can decide it’s inconvenient.
“It’s not a big deal. Nobody died.”
Roy looks at you then, really looks at you, and his voice gets quiet.
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
And that lands harder than you expect.
Because Roy isn’t saying it like a slogan. He isn’t trying to therapy-speak you into a breakthrough. He just sounds… certain.
Like this is a fact. Like gravity. Like sunrise. Like you were a kid, and it should not have happened.
Roy starts noticing things after that.
The way you always choose the seat facing the door. The way your whole body goes tense when someone laughs too loudly behind you. The way you know how to identify exits in every building before you even know where the bathrooms are.
The way you never fully relax during city-wide celebrations, parades, festivals, or anything involving balloons, confetti, clowns, riddles, masks, green smoke, purple suits, question marks, blackouts, or “surprise entertainment.”
Roy notices how you freeze when someone says, “Don’t worry, it’s safe.”
Because in Gotham, that sentence usually meant it was about to get very much not safe.
He doesn’t call you out in front of people.
Roy has been pitied before. Handled. Judged. Watched like he was one bad day from shattering.
He refuses to do that to you.
Instead, he adapts.
You go to a restaurant, and he automatically gives you the chair with the better view. You enter a crowded room, and his hand brushes yours, just enough to remind you he’s there. There’s a sudden loud noise, and he doesn’t say, “You okay?” in that big, obvious way that makes everyone look.
He just bumps your shoulder and murmurs, “With me?”
And you can nod or squeeze his hand or make a joke.
He lets you choose.
Roy is big on choice. He knows what it feels like when life takes too many of them away.
The first time you have a nightmare around him, you expect him to panic.
He doesn’t.
You jolt awake, breath caught in your throat, hand already reaching for something that isn’t there. A weapon. A flashlight. A lock. Proof that you are not back in Gotham.
Roy wakes instantly.
“Hey,” he says softly. “Hey, it’s me.”
You’re embarrassed before you’re even fully conscious.
“Sorry,” you mutter.
Roy’s face crumples a little. “Don’t apologise.”
“I woke you up.”
“You’re allowed to wake me up.”
That shuts you up.
He doesn’t grab you right away. He doesn’t cage you in affection, even though every protective instinct in him is screaming to hold you.
He asks, “Can I touch you?”
And when you nod, he pulls you in slowly, one arm around your back, one hand resting between your shoulder blades.
Grounding. Warm. Present.
Not trapping you.
You mutter into his shirt, “It was stupid.”
Roy presses his cheek to your hair. “Was it Gotham stupid or regular stupid?”
Despite yourself, you laugh.
He smiles faintly. “There you are.”
He never forces you to talk about it, but if you do, he listens.
Roy is a good listener when it matters. He’ll joke through his own pain until the room catches fire, sure, but with yours? He becomes steady in a way that surprises even him.
You tell him about your old apartment building. The one with three locks and bars on the windows.
You tell him about the sirens. About learning which streets not to walk down. About the way adults used to say, “That’s Gotham,” as if that explained everything. About how moving away felt less like freedom and more like waiting for the city to realise you’d escaped.
Roy doesn’t interrupt.
He holds your hand and traces his thumb over your knuckles.
Finally, he says, “I hate that you had to become tough that young.”
You don’t know what to do with that.
So you shrug.
Roy catches it. He always catches it now.
“That shrug,” he says gently, “is gonna kill me one day.”
“What shrug?”
“The ‘I’m pretending this didn’t hurt because I don’t know what happens if I admit it did’ shrug.”
You stare at him.
He gives you a crooked smile.
“Yeah. I’ve got one too.”
That’s part of why it works with Roy.
He doesn’t stand outside your pain looking in. He sits down beside it, battered and familiar, like, Yeah, this neighbourhood sucks. I know a shortcut out, though.
He tells you pieces of his own story, too.
Not all at once. Not like a trade. Not “you showed me yours, so here’s mine.”
But slowly. Honestly. He tells you about addiction. About loneliness. About making mistakes people never let him forget. About the kind of shame that follows you like a shadow with teeth.
And you realise Roy isn’t shocked because he thinks you’re broken. He’s shocked because he knows broken systems love to make survivors think they’re the problem.
That makes you feel safer than you expected.
Roy becomes incredibly determined to give you normal experiences.
Not in a cheesy “let’s heal your inner child with Pinterest activities” way.
Okay. Maybe a little.
But he makes it fun.
He starts a mental list called Things Gotham Probably Ruined For My Partner But I’m Built Different And Also Very Handsome.
You do not know the official title. You only know that Roy suddenly starts planning oddly specific dates.
A picnic in a park where nothing explodes. A carnival with no villain attacks, where he wins you a stuffed animal and then acts like he personally conquered Olympus. A museum date where the only crime is the gift shop pricing. A quiet movie night where the villain on-screen laughs maniacally and Roy immediately turns to you and says, “Too Gotham?”
Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t.
Sometimes you surprise yourself.
Sometimes you have to leave early.
Roy never makes you feel bad about it.
He just says, “Cool, new plan,” and pivots like it costs him nothing.
You leave a crowded street fair once because a performer’s laugh hits too close to old memories. You’re shaking, furious with yourself, already apologising.
Roy walks you three blocks away, buys you fries from a tiny corner place, and sits with you on a curb under a streetlamp.
You say, “I ruined the date.”
Roy looks genuinely offended. “Excuse me, these are elite fries.”
“Roy.”
“You think I share elite fries with just anyone?”
You huff a laugh.
He nudges your knee with his. “You didn’t ruin anything. We changed locations. Very mysterious. Very sexy. Honestly, we’re thriving.”
That’s Roy’s gift. He doesn’t deny the hurt. He just refuses to let it be the only thing in the room.
He gives you laughter without using it to erase what happened.
There’s one night where it really hits him, though.
You’re both half-asleep, tangled together, and you mumble something about how quiet his place is.
Roy smiles sleepily. “Good quiet or weird quiet?”
“Good,” you say. “I used to not like quiet. In Gotham, quiet usually meant something was wrong.”
Roy’s eyes open.
You’re too tired to notice.
You keep going, voice soft and distant. “Sirens were better. At least then you knew where the danger was.”
Roy doesn’t sleep for a while after that. He just holds you and stares into the dark, feeling something ache in his chest.
Because he’s loved you for your sharpness. Your humour. Your eerie calm under pressure. Your ability to pack for emergencies like a doomsday prepper with a cute jacket.
But now he understands those things differently.
They aren’t quirks.
They’re armour.
And he loves you enough to be angry that you ever needed it.
Eventually, you notice.
“Roy?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re thinking too loud.”
He lets out a soft laugh. “Sorry.”
“You’re doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“Where you get sad about me.”
That one hurts.
Roy shifts so he can see your face.
“I’m not sad about you,” he says. “I’m sad for what happened to you. That’s different.”
You’re quiet.
Then, barely: “I don’t want you to think I’m messed up.”
Roy’s expression softens so completely it almost undoes you.
“Baby,” he says, “I’m a recovering addict with abandonment issues and a bow. I would be the last person on earth with room to judge.”
You snort.
He kisses your forehead.
“And for the record? I don’t think you’re messed up. I think you survived a city that asks way too much of kids. I think you’re funny and stubborn and terrifyingly good in a crisis. I think you deserve mornings where nothing bad happens.”
Him burning toast and cursing like the toaster personally betrayed him. You wearing his shirt while he makes breakfast badly but confidently.
He dances around the kitchen with you just because there’s music playing and because no one is chasing you and because the door is locked and because the world, for once, has the decency to stay gentle.
And yeah, sometimes the past still shows up.
Sometimes you flinch. Sometimes you joke too fast. Sometimes you say something horrifying and Roy has to take a lap around the room.
Like when you casually mention, “My childhood dentist was arrested for working with Black Mask.”
Roy, from across the room: “Your dentist?”
“He had good magazines.”
“Why is that your takeaway?”
“Highlights were solid.”
“Babe.”
“What?”
“Gotham owes you financial compensation.”
Roy doesn’t try to rescue you from your past. He knows better. The past is not a burning building. You can’t kick down the door and carry someone out bridal-style while orchestral music plays.
Healing is messier. Less cinematic. More like sitting on the kitchen floor at 2 a.m. eating cereal because sleep didn’t work.
More like him saying, “Tell me one thing you can see.”
More like you whispering, “You.”
More like Roy smiling softly and saying, “Good. I’m here.”
He’s patient when you struggle with safety. He’s patient when peace feels suspicious. He’s patient when you don’t know how to be loved without bracing for impact.
But he’s not passive.
Roy Harper loves actively. Loudly when you need it. Quietly when you can’t handle loud. He becomes the person who reminds you that survival was impressive, but it was never supposed to be your whole identity.
You are allowed to be more than what Gotham did to you. You are allowed to be silly. Soft. Needy. Annoying. Joyful. Bored. You are allowed to have problems like “Roy forgot to buy oat milk” instead of “the city may be under siege again.”
And Roy? Roy is honoured to witness every ordinary version of you.
The first time you say, “I feel safe here,” he nearly loses it.
He plays it cool, because he knows making a huge deal might scare the words back into your mouth.
So he just squeezes your hand and says, “Good.”
But later, when you’re asleep, he looks at you like you hung the moon with trembling hands.
Could we get the batboys and girls with their superfam counterparts mentioned [so Kara for dick, bizarro for jason, kon for tim, jon for damian, not sure who fits best for the two girls? I wanna say Kara again, but im not 100% sure] and a transmale reader wonder boy [aka wonder womans protégé]!
I imagine they'd been raised as a regular amazonian at first, but once coming out as a boy at a young age, he was still raised much the same—but he was also taught much like how the heroes of old were. I very much imagine them having Odysseus and Penelope vibes with the boys, or Orpheus and Eurydice, Hades and Persephone, Apollon and Hyacinthus, etc. He is very much a romantic at heart, he wholeheartedly believes if you couldn't wait twenty years to be back with someone you loved without cheating, then you don't deserve to call yourself their husband, or a man at all.
Very much "the new big three" vibes for all of them! If you don't wanna write the superfamily counterparts thats a-okay, just mentioning them since i believe they'd act as a trio!
all have been posted! these were so fun to write thank you for your request :)
starstruck (dick grayson & kara zor-el & wonderboy! reader)
the boy who came back wrong (jason todd & bizarro & wonder boy! reader)
the loom and the lightning (tim drake & kon-el kent & wonder boy! reader)
pomegranate son (damian wayne & jon kent & wonder boy! reader)
daybreak and the dragon (duke thomas & kenan kong & wonder boy! reader)
fire thieves (stephanie brown & linda denvers & wonder boy! reader)
Cassandra Cain did not speak when she first saw the temple.
She did not need to. Her body said enough.
One foot shifted half an inch back. Her shoulders lowered. Her hand hovered near her belt, not reaching for a weapon yet, but remembering that weapons existed. Her eyes swept the white marble pillars, the cracked bronze doors, the black ivy climbing the old stone in veins.
Threat, her body said. Trap, her body added. Beautiful, too, though Cass did not move in a way that said it.
You knew because you had learned her language by now. Not fluently. No one read Cassandra Cain fluently unless she let them, and even then, she was a language written partly in absence. But you had learned the shape of her silences. The tilt of her head when she was curious. The stillness when she was afraid. The softness in her hands when she wanted to comfort someone and did not know whether touch would be welcome.
Beside you, Thara Ak-Var stared at the temple with the expression of someone trying very hard not to look impressed.
She failed. Kryptonian discipline could do many things. It could turn grief into posture, fear into command, duty into flame. It could not stop the old Themysciran ruin from looking like a place where gods had once come to argue.
The temple stood at the edge of Robinson Park, which was already Gotham’s way of proving nature could develop a grudge. Trees twisted overhead, bare branches cutting the grey afternoon sky into shards. Rain had fallen earlier, leaving the path slick and dark. Mist curled around the marble steps.
The doors were engraved with three symbols.
A bat. A flamebird. An eagle.
Thara’s eyes narrowed. “That is not encouraging.”
Cass looked at you.
You sighed. “No. It is not.”
Batman had sent Cass because three Gotham disappearances had led here, each victim last seen near the park after reporting dreams of masked women and burning birds.
Superman had contacted Thara because the energy coming from the ruin had pinged Kryptonian mythological frequencies, which was not a phrase anyone enjoyed hearing before breakfast.
And you?
You had been sent because Diana had recognised the temple from a fragment of an old Amazonian scroll. Not a temple to the Olympians exactly, but to the idea of trial. A place where warriors once came to prove they were more than the hands that trained them. You were there because Diana had looked at you with the soft, steady pride that always made your chest ache and said, “This trial concerns weapons, vows, and names. You will understand all three.”
No pressure. Very casual. Extremely normal mentor behaviour.
Thara stepped closer to the door and ran her fingers over the flamebird carving.
“It recognises us,” she said.
Cass signed, Bad.
You nodded. “Likely.”
Thara glanced at Cass’ hands, then at you. “What did she say?”
“Bad.”
Thara’s mouth twitched. “Efficient.”
Cass looked at Thara, then signed again.
You smiled faintly. “She says you talk too much.”
Thara blinked.
Cass’ face did not move.
You pressed your lips together.
Thara looked between you both. “She did not say that.”
Cass’ eyes warmed almost imperceptibly.
“She implied it,” you said.
“I did not realise implication was part of translation.”
“With Cass, implication is most of the sentence.”
Cass nodded once.
Thara folded her arms. “I am surrounded by insubordination.”
“You are standing with a Bat, an Amazon, and yourself,” you said. “That was inevitable.”
The temple doors opened.
No sound. No warning. Just bronze parting inward, revealing darkness lit by a single line of fire running along the floor.
Cass stopped smiling with her eyes. Thara’s posture sharpened. Your lasso warmed at your hip.
The fireline led into the temple like a thread.
Ariadne, you thought.
There was always a thread in the stories. A thread through the labyrinth. A thread on Penelope’s loom. A thread spun by the Fates and cut when even heroes had to fall.
You wondered what kind this one would be.
Cass stepped forward first. Thara followed, flame flickering faintly around her hands. You entered last, and the doors closed behind you.
Inside, the temple was larger than it should have been. Ancient magic loved doing that. Making small doors open into impossible spaces. Making rooms remember they had once been myths.
The chamber beyond the doors was circular, ringed with statues of warriors. Some wore Amazonian armour. Some wore Greek helmets. Some wore Kryptonian battle dress. Some wore masks that looked uncomfortably like Gotham.
At the centre of the room stood a bronze bowl filled with white fire.
Above it, words burned in the air.
WHAT IS A WEAPON WHEN IT IS NO LONGER HELD?
Cass went very still.
Thara read the words, face tightening.
You felt them settle behind your ribs.
A voice moved through the chamber. Not loud. Not quite female, not quite male.
Old as a blade. Warm as a hearth. Cold as judgment.
BODY. FLAME. VOW. ENTER.
The floor cracked.
You reached for Cass. Thara reached for you. Cass reached for both of you faster than either of you moved.
For one breath, your hands touched.
Then the temple split you apart.
Cass fell into silence.
Not darkness. Silence.
That was worse.
She landed in a training room she knew too well.
Bare floor. Blank walls. No windows. No softness. Nothing unnecessary. Nothing kind.
David Cain stood across from her.
Not real. Her body knew that before her mind finished deciding. His weight was wrong. Breath wrong. Stillness too perfect. He was a memory wearing a shape.
But her muscles remembered anyway.
Her hands curled.
Cain looked at her like she was a blade he had forged and found chipped.
“You were made for this,” he said.
Cass did not answer.
He smiled faintly. “Your body knows even when you pretend your heart matters.”
The room filled with echoes.
Punch. Block. Fall. Rise.
A child’s feet sliding across the floor. A hand correcting her elbow.
A voice saying again.
Again.
Again.
No books. No lullabies. No mother tongue except violence.
Cain stepped forward.
“You were perfect before they taught you mercy.”
Cass’ jaw tightened.
He attacked.
She moved. Not thinking. Not planning. Her body answered because her body had been taught to answer before anyone taught her she was allowed not to.
Block. Turn. Strike.
She pulled the blow before it landed.
Cain’s false mouth curved.
“There,” he said. “Weakness.”
Cass struck again.
He vanished and reappeared behind her.
She twisted away too late. Pain flashed across her ribs. Not deep. Enough.
The room whispered.
Weapon. Weapon. Weapon.
Cass breathed once.
In. Out.
Her body spoke fear, anger, refusal.
The room read none of it. It only read the hands. The feet. The violence.
Cain circled her.
“You can dress it in a bat. You can hide it behind family. But a body trained for killing remains a weapon.”
Cass’ eyes burned.
She signed one word. Small. Fierce.
No.
Cain tilted his head. “Words now? How disappointing.”
He attacked again.
This time, Cass did not block.
She stepped aside.
He passed her.
She touched his wrist, turned his force away, and did not strike.
Cain hissed.
The room flickered.
Cass understood then.
Not fully. Not in words. Cass did not always need words for understanding.
The trial wanted her to fight the accusation.
But fighting it like a weapon would feed it.
So she stopped.
Cain lunged.
Cass moved like water.
Not blade. Not fist.
Water.
She turned every attack aside. Guided every strike into empty air. Danced around him until the room itself seemed to lean toward her, confused.
Cain’s face twisted. “Fight.”
Cass shook her head.
“Fight.”
Again, no.
He snarled, “You are what I made you.”
A golden line cut through the room.
Your lasso snapped around Cain’s arm.
Cass turned sharply. You stood in a tear of light at the edge of the training room, one boot planted over the threshold, sword in your other hand, face pale with effort.
“Incorrect,” you said.
Cain tried to pull away. The lasso burned brighter.
Cass’ eyes widened.
You looked at her, and your expression softened immediately.
Not pity. Never pity.
Recognition.
“She is not what you made,” you said. “She is what survived you.”
Cain’s face darkened.
Cass stared at you.
The lasso hummed with truth.
You stepped fully into the room. “Hephaestus forged weapons. Athena raised warriors. Artemis hunted without apology. But none of them mistook the hand for the will.”
Cass watched your mouth form the words. Watched your shoulders, your eyes, the tension in your grip.
You were angry. For her.
The realisation landed strangely in her chest. Warm. Painful.
Cain spat, “Her body speaks violence.”
“Yes,” you said. “Because violence was the only language you gave her.”
Cass’ hands trembled.
You turned toward her. “But she learned more.”
Cass swallowed.
You lowered your voice.
“You taught her bodies could be read. She learned they could be understood. You taught her hands could kill. She learned they could hold.”
Cass looked down at her hands.
Small hands once. Bloodied hands once. Hands that had broken bones. Hands that had pulled children out of collapsing buildings. Hands that had signed names. Hands that had touched Steph’s shoulder, Barbara’s wrist, Bruce’s cape. Hands that had learned softness like a second language.
Cain lunged at you.
Cass moved.
Not to strike. To stand between.
Cain stopped short, as if hitting an invisible wall.
Cass looked at him.
Then she signed, slowly, so even the room could understand.
My body is mine.
The false Cain cracked like old paint.
She signed again.
Not yours.
The training room shattered.
Cass stumbled forward into the central chamber and nearly fell.
Thara caught her.
Cass stiffened, then relaxed when she realised whose hands held her.
Thara did not ask if she was all right.
Smart. Cass would not have answered honestly yet.
Instead, Thara said, “You returned.”
Cass looked up at her.
Thara’s expression was serious. Almost reverent.
Cass nodded once.
Then the white fire in the bronze bowl roared upward.
Thara vanished.
Thara Ak-Var landed on burning stone.
She knew fire. Kryptonians of old had many myths about flame. Rao’s light. Flamebird’s wings. The cleansing fire of rebirth. The fire that warmed the home and the fire that swallowed cities. The fire of prophecy, which was simply another word for a command wearing jewellery.
She had served Kandor. She had served duty. She had served the story of Flamebird until sometimes she could no longer tell where Thara ended and sacred fire began.
The trial knew that too.
It built her a sky of red. Krypton’s sky, not as it had been in memory, but as it existed in myth: enormous, burning, absolute. Beneath it, a temple of crystal rose around her, every wall reflecting the crest of Flamebird in gold and scarlet.
At the altar stood a figure made of living fire.
Wings spread. Face hidden. Holy and terrible.
Thara knew what it was supposed to be.
The Flamebird. Her symbol. Her burden. Her self, if she believed the cruellest parts of every prophecy ever spoken over her.
The fire-being lifted its head.
“Thara Ak-Var,” it said.
She straightened. “I know a false god when I see one.”
The fire laughed. “Do you? You have worn divinity eagerly enough.”
Thara’s hands lit with flame. “I served.”
“You burned.”
The temple walls filled with images.
Thara fighting. Thara sacrificing. Thara wrapped in flame until her own face vanished behind the symbol.
Thara as warrior. Thara as guardian. Thara as myth.
Never just Thara.
The fire-being descended from the altar. “You were chosen.”
Thara’s jaw tightened.
That was the wound. Chosen sounded beautiful to those who had never been crushed beneath it. Chosen by myth. Chosen by need. Chosen by a role already burning before she ever stepped into it.
The fire-being extended one blazing hand. “A holy flame does not ask whether it wishes to burn.”
Thara’s own flames flickered. “I am not unwilling.”
“Duty has trained you to call willingness what obedience made familiar.”
Thara struck.
Fire met fire.
The chamber exploded in red and gold.
She fought like a soldier. Like a priestess. Like a girl who had once believed purpose could save her from doubt if she held it tightly enough.
The Flamebird matched every blow.
Of course it did. It wore her devotion like armour.
“You are flame,” it said.
Thara gritted her teeth. “Yes.”
“You are duty.”
“Yes.”
“You are sacrifice.”
Her breath hitched.
The fire-being smiled without a mouth. “Say it.”
Thara’s hands shook.
The temple walls pressed closer.
“Say what you are.”
She knew the answer it wanted.
Weapon.
Not like Cain had called Cass a weapon. Not cold. Not brutal.
Holy. A sacred weapon. A blessed blade. A flame meant to spend itself for others.
Was that better? Or only prettier?
The fire-being reached for her chest. “Say it.”
A shadow moved at the edge of the fire.
Cass stepped through.
Silent. Singed at the edge of her cape. Bruised. Breathing hard.
But there.
Thara stared. “You should not be here.”
Cass tilted her head.
Her body said, Neither should you.
Thara almost smiled.
The fire-being turned. “Body without voice. Weapon without language.”
Cass’ eyes went flat.
Thara’s flame surged. “Do not speak to her.”
The fire-being smiled wider. “There. Duty. Protection. Fire given purpose.”
Cass looked at Thara.
Then she signed.
Thara did not understand the words. But she understood the body.
Stop.
The gesture was clean. Firm. Merciful.
Thara froze.
Cass stepped between Thara and the Flamebird, exactly as she had once stepped between you and Cain. Not because Thara needed rescuing. Because standing alone against your own myth was a cruelty friends did not permit.
Then you arrived.
Gold cut through red.
You stepped out of a seam of light, lasso wrapped around your forearm, breathing hard.
“Thara,” you said.
The sound of her name in your voice was almost worse than the trial.
It made her feel seen.
Not as Flamebird. Not as symbol.
As herself.
The fire-being hissed. “The chosen flame must burn.”
You looked at it, eyes bright with anger.
“Hestia is flame,” you said. “She does not devour herself to prove it.”
Thara blinked.
You stepped closer. “In my home, fire is sacred. Not because it destroys. Because it gathers. It warms. It marks the hearth, the place people return to when war is done.”
The fire-being recoiled slightly.
You looked at Thara.
“You were taught that sacred fire must consume,” you said. “But perhaps sacred fire is meant to endure.”
Thara’s throat tightened.
Cass reached for her hand.
Thara looked down at Cass’ fingers touching hers.
Gentle. Asking.
Thara let Cass hold on.
“You do not have to disappear inside the vow,” you said. “A vow that requires your annihilation is not devotion. It is hunger.”
The Flamebird screamed.
The temple shook.
Thara looked at the fire-being, and for the first time, she saw it clearly.
Not Flamebird. Not god.
Fear. Her fear that without duty she was nothing. Without flame she was ordinary. Without sacrifice she would not deserve to be remembered.
Thara closed her hand around Cass’. Then she lifted her other hand and let the flame there shrink.
A small fire in her palm. Steady. Warm.
Hearthfire.
“I am Thara Ak-Var,” she said. The red sky cracked. “I have carried Flamebird. I have served duty. I have burned and survived burning.”
The fire-being writhed.
Thara’s voice softened. “But I am not holy because I can be spent.”
Cass squeezed her hand once.
Thara looked at you.
Your smile was small and fierce.
“I am holy,” Thara said, “because I choose what I warm.”
The false Flamebird shattered into sparks.
The burning temple became smoke.
The three of you fell back into the central chamber together.
This time, you were the one who hit the floor the hardest. Your knees struck marble. Pain shot up your legs. The lasso went slack in your hand.
Cass was beside you instantly. Thara knelt on your other side.
“I am fine,” you said automatically.
Cass gave you a look.
No, it said.
Thara’s mouth pressed into a line. “That was unconvincing.”
You tried to smile. “I was saving effort.”
The bronze bowl at the centre of the chamber dimmed. Then the white fire turned gold.
Your stomach dropped.
Of course. Body. Flame. Vow.
Cass had faced the body. Thara had faced the flame. Now came the vow.
The chamber changed slowly. That made it worse.
Stone softened into sunlight. Marble became white sand. The air filled with salt and olive blossoms. The statues turned into cypress trees. Beyond them, the sea stretched wine-dark and endless beneath a sky heavy with stars.
Themyscira.
Not real. You knew that immediately. Real Themyscira smelled warmer. Lived louder. Had laughter from training yards and waves striking cliffs and the distant ring of steel. This island was too still. Too perfect. A memory polished until it became accusation.
Cass helped you stand. Thara remained close.
On the sand ahead stood Diana.
False, of course. Still, your chest ached.
She wore armour bright as morning. Her hair moved in wind that did not touch the rest of the world. The lasso at her hip shone with terrible truth.
Behind her stood Amazons in rows.
Your sisters.m Your teachers. Your first home.
The false Diana looked at you with sorrow.
Not anger. Sorrow was worse.
“My child,” she said.
You stiffened.
Not son. Not brother. Not Wonder Boy.
Child. A safe word. A kind word. A word that avoided choosing.
Cass shifted beside you. Thara’s eyes narrowed.
The false Diana stepped closer. “You have fought well.”
Your throat tightened.
“Do not,” you said.
The false Diana paused.
Your voice shook. “Do not make kindness into a knife.”
The Amazons behind her whispered.
The words moved like wind through grass.
Daughter. Sister. Princess. Exception. Wonder Woman’s boy. The first son. The strange one. The loved one. The difficult one.
Your breath caught.
There it was. The room inside the wound.
Not hatred. Not rejection. That would have been simpler.
This was love with a question mark hidden under it.
The false Diana’s face softened.
“The island changed for you,” she said. “Do you never wonder what it cost?”
You closed your eyes.
Cass’ hand found your wrist. Thara stood straighter beside you. You wanted to tell them you were fine. Wanted to laugh, maybe. Say something poetic enough to make the hurt seem ceremonial instead of raw.
But the trial had dragged Cass into the room where her body had been turned into language without mercy. It had dragged Thara into the fire where duty tried to eat her whole.
You could not answer their honesty with a mask.
“Yes,” you whispered.
The false Diana watched.
You opened your eyes. “Yes, I wonder.”
The island around you darkened.
“I wonder if every new word they made for me had to be carved out of an old one. I wonder if my sisters stumbled over brother because I asked too much. I wonder if being loved as a son meant making my home less certain of itself.”
Cass’ grip tightened.
Thara said quietly, “Certainty is overrated.”
You almost laughed.
The false Diana’s eyes gleamed. “You were raised by women. Trained by women. Loved by women. The symbol you wear gave girls power for generations.”
“I know,” you said.
“And yet you claim it as a man.”
The words hit.
You lifted your chin, but your voice was small when it came.“I do.”
The Amazons whispered louder.
Contradiction. Miracle. Exception. Son. Daughter. Boy. Not boy enough. Not Amazon enough. Not man enough. Not woman at all.
Your knees threatened to buckle.
Cass stepped in front of you. Small. Silent. Absolute. She faced the false Diana like she had faced Cain, body quiet with refusal.
She signed something. You were too shaken to understand.
Then she turned and repeated it slower.
You are you.
Three words.
Thara moved to your other side.
“I was taught sacred roles must remain pure,” she said. “Untouched by doubt. Untouched by change.” Her mouth twisted. “It made beautiful cages.”
The false Diana looked at her. “This does not concern you.”
Thara’s eyes flashed. “He stood in my fire.”
Cass nodded once. Her body said, He stood in my silence.
Your chest cracked open.
Thara looked at you. “You told me a vow that requires annihilation is hunger.”
You swallowed. “Yes.”
“Then listen to your own wisdom, Wonder Boy.” Her voice softened. “A legacy that required you to vanish would not be worthy of you.”
The false Diana flickered.
Cass touched the eagle on your chest. Then she touched your heart.
You understood.
The symbol. The self.
Both. Not one swallowing the other.
Your eyes burned.
You looked at the false Diana.
The island waited. The stars waited. All your old fears stood in the shape of home and asked whether you belonged.
You thought of Artemis, who moved through forests without asking permission from kings. Athena, born armoured and impossible. Hestia, who chose the hearth over a throne and was no less divine. Hyacinthus, remembered in flowers after blood. Orpheus, who sang because love was worth entering the dark. Odysseus, who crossed seas for twenty years because home was not a place you deserved only when the road was easy. Penelope, who waited not passively but with cunning hands, weaving and unweaving a future no man could steal from her.
Love, you had always believed, was not proven by ease.
Love was return. Love was recognition. Love was looking at someone changed by war, death, transition, grief, fire, silence, and saying: yes. You. Still you.
You placed your hand over Cass’. Then reached for Thara’s.
Both let you.
You faced the false Diana.
“I was raised by women,” you said. “Yes.”
The sand beneath your feet warmed.
“I was trained by Amazons. I was loved by sisters. I was shaped by queens and warriors and girls who learned to make paradise from exile.”
The false Diana watched, expression unreadable.
“I do not claim the eagle despite them,” you said. “I claim it because of them.”
The whispering stopped.
Your voice grew steadier. “I am not a theft from womanhood. I am not an insult to the daughters who saw Diana and knew power could look like them. I am one of the children who saw her and learned truth must be spoken even when the world has no grammar for it yet.”
Gold light rose beneath the sand.
Cass’ eyes softened. Thara’s hand tightened around yours.
“I am a son of Themyscira,” you said. “Not an exception to its truth. Proof of it.”
The false Diana cracked like sunlight through marble.
You stepped forward. “My manhood is not a wound in Amazon history. It is a new verse.”
The Amazons behind her dissolved into light.
The false Diana smiled once.
This time, it almost looked real.
Then she vanished.
The temple returned. White fire in the bronze bowl rose high, then folded inward on itself until it became a small flame no larger than your palm.
A hearthfire.
The voice spoke one final time.
BODY CHOOSES MERCY. FLAME CHOOSES WARMTH. VOW CHOOSES TRUTH.
The temple doors opened.
Grey Gotham daylight spilled in.
For a long moment, none of you moved.
Then Stephanie Brown’s voice echoed faintly from outside, carried through comms. “Hey, emotionally compromised myth squad? You alive in there, or do I have to come in and fight architecture?”
Cass blinked. Thara stared. You started laughing.
It came out shaky and exhausted and maybe a little too close to tears.
Cass smiled. A real smile. Tiny. There and gone like a match flame cupped from wind.
Thara looked at both of you and, after a second, allowed herself one soft, tired laugh.
You answered the comm. “We are alive.”
Steph said, “Great. Any chance the haunted temple has snacks?”
Thara murmured, “Your Gotham allies are strange.”
Cass signed, Yes.
You translated, “Cass agrees.”
Thara nodded. “Wise.”
You started toward the doors, then stumbled.
Cass caught your hand. Thara caught your elbow.
“I can walk,” you said.
Cass looked at you. Thara arched a brow.
You sighed. “Fine. I can walk with assistance.”
Cass nodded, satisfied.
The three of you stepped out of the temple together.
The ruin behind you was already fading, marble turning translucent in the weak light. Soon it would vanish completely, leaving only wet grass, broken stone, and maybe one more story Gotham would pretend not to believe.
Steph waited near the path with Red Robin at her side, both of them visibly prepared to make jokes and ask worried questions in equal measure.
But before you reached them, Cass stopped.
You and Thara stopped too.
Cass looked at you first. Then Thara. She lifted her hands.
Slowly, carefully, she signed, Not weapon. Not only.
She touched her own chest. Me.
Then she touched Thara’s hand. Warm. Not burn.
Thara’s face went very still.
Cass touched your eagle. Son. Truth.
Your throat tightened.
She looked between you both, then signed one final word. Stay.
Thara inhaled softly.
You closed your eyes for one second.
Stay.
Not as command. Not as cage.
As invitation. As vow. As the opposite of every story where the beloved turned back too late, where the warrior burned alone, where the body was used and never held.
You opened your eyes.
“I can wait twenty years for someone I love,” you said softly. “I can certainly stay.”
Cass’ face warmed.
Thara looked away, but not before you saw the emotion in her eyes.
“Twenty years?” she asked, voice rough.
You smiled faintly. “Odysseus and Penelope.”
Steph, from several yards away, yelled, “Are we trauma-bonding or doing Greek lit? Because I can only pretend to understand one of those!”
Cass’ shoulders shook silently.
Thara looked bewildered.
You laughed again, and this time it felt easier.
The temple vanished behind you.
Gotham remained ahead. Grey, damp, difficult, alive.
Cass walked on your left, silent hands no longer empty. Thara walked on your right, fire banked warm beneath her skin.
And you walked between them, son of an island that had learned how to widen, wearing the eagle not as borrowed armour but as a vow still being written.
content stephanie brown & linda denvers & wonder boy! reader, male! reader, ftm! reader, brief dysphoria / being misread, misgendering-adjacent language, discussion of being treated as temporary/as a replacement, magical emotional manipulation, minor injury/blood, brief combat, hurt/comfort, magical trials, greek mythology references, prometheus references, psyche seferences, ariadne references
masterlist
word count 5.9k
Stephanie Brown knew a thing or two about being temporary.
Temporary Robin. Temporary Batgirl, according to people who thought the cape came with a comment section. Temporary ally. Temporary problem.
Temporary girl in purple who kept showing up no matter how many times the universe tried to close the door in her face.
She had built a whole heroic identity out of being told no.
No, Spoiler was not serious. No, Stephanie Brown was not trained enough. No, she was not Robin material. No, she was not supposed to wear the bat. No, she was not supposed to come back.
And every time, Steph had smiled sweetly, put on a mask, and made it everyone else’s problem.
Which was why, when the haunted archive under Gotham University tried to erase her name from existence, her first response was mostly irritation.
“Oh, that is so rude,” she said.
The book floating in front of her did not respond.
It was enormous, bound in black leather and gold thread, hovering above a marble pedestal in the centre of a library that had absolutely not been beneath Gotham University ten minutes ago. The room stretched too far in every direction, shelf after shelf rising into darkness, stacked with books whose spines whispered when you looked away.
The ceiling looked like a night sky.
Not painted. Not open.
A sky made of ink and old paper, with stars that resembled punctuation marks.
You stood beside her, sword drawn, bronze bracers catching the eerie library-light. Your red cloak was torn from the earlier fight with the paper-hounds, and a shallow cut ran across your cheek.
On Steph’s other side, Linda Danvers hovered half an inch off the floor, fists glowing faintly with white-gold energy.
She stared at the book like it had personally insulted her and also maybe her entire bloodline.
Which, considering the evening so far, it probably had.
The three of you had come here because students had been disappearing from campus records.
Not physically, at first. That was the weird part.
Their dorm assignments vanished. Their class registrations disappeared. Their names fell out of group chats, yearbooks, transcripts. Friends remembered faces but not names. Professors remembered grading papers written by “someone.” Parents called the school asking why their child no longer existed in the system.
Then the students themselves began to fade.
Batman traced the disturbance to Gotham University’s old humanities building. Zatanna identified the magic as narrative-based. Diana recognised the gold-thread binding from an ancient Amazonian warning text about “archives that hunger.”
And because apparently the universe had a deeply petty sense of symbolism, the mission had landed with you, Stephanie Brown, and Linda Danvers.
Spoiler. Supergirl. Wonder Boy.
Three people who had all, at some point, been treated like footnotes in someone else’s legend.
The book opened itself. Pages flipped rapidly, faster and faster, until they stopped on a spread written in dark red ink.
Steph squinted. “Is that blood?”
“Probably,” Linda said.
Steph made a face. “Ew. People with cursed books are always doing too much.”
You stepped closer, lasso humming at your hip. “Careful.”
“Wow,” Steph said, voice bright and brittle. “It went straight for the personal folder.”
Linda’s eyes narrowed. “Close the book.”
“I agree,” you said.
You moved first.
Your lasso flashed gold, arcing toward the book.
The second it touched the pages, the archive screamed.
Not like a person.
Like paper tearing forever.
Shelves slammed shut. Books flew from the walls like startled birds. The floor cracked into glowing lines of text, and the room split into three corridors.
One purple. One red and blue. One gold.
Steph looked at them. “Okay, so I’m guessing we don’t get to pick the fun hallway.”
“No,” you said.
Linda exhaled. “It wants us separated.”
“Then we do not separate.”
The archive laughed. The sound came from every book at once.
ALL NAMES STAND ALONE IN THE END.
The floor vanished beneath your feet.
Steph fell through purple light.
The last thing she heard before the library swallowed her was you shouting her name.
That helped. A little.
Then she hit the ground hard enough to knock the air out of her lungs.
Steph rolled on instinct, came up on one knee, and immediately hated everything.
She was in the Batcave.
Not the real Batcave. The real Batcave smelled like damp stone, expensive tech, Alfred’s judgment, and at least one teenager making bad decisions in Kevlar.
This version was colder. Cleaner. Crueler. The glass cases stood in a long row. Old suits. Old mantles. Robin. Batgirl. Spoiler. Every costume she had ever worn displayed like evidence in a trial she had not been invited to attend.
Her Spoiler suit was first. Purple, bright, defiant, homemade in all the ways that mattered.
A plaque beneath it read: FAILED VIGILANTE.
Steph’s jaw tightened.
“Okay,” she said aloud. “Mean.”
The Robin suit came next.
Her Robin suit. Short-lived. Complicated. Still hers, no matter how many people tried to discuss it like a clerical error.
The plaque read: TEMPORARY ROBIN.
Steph swallowed.
Batgirl was next. Black. Purple. Yellow. A symbol she had worn with trembling pride and enormous attitude.
The plaque read: REPLACEMENT.
She stared at that one for a long time.
The cave lights flickered.
A voice came from behind her.
“You were never meant to keep any of them.”
Steph turned.
Batman stood in the shadows.
Not Bruce. Not really. The outline was right. The cowl. The cape. The white eyes. But there was nothing human in him. No exhaustion. No grief. No ridiculous inability to communicate like a normal person despite caring painfully much.
This Batman was only judgment.
Steph stood, brushing dust from her knees.
“You know,” she said, “if my subconscious is going to manifest Batman, it could at least manifest one who brought snacks.”
The false Batman did not react.
“You were a spoiler,” he said. “A warning sign. A mistake in another man’s plan.”
Steph’s hands curled.
“You were Robin because you forced yourself into the role.”
“You were Batgirl because the city was desperate.”
“You were always an interruption.”
“Always temporary.”
“Always almost.”
Steph smiled. It felt like broken glass.
“Okay,” she said. “First of all, rude. Second of all, ‘almost’ is kind of my brand. Third—”
The floor beneath her shifted.
Her mouth snapped shut.
The cases changed. Now each one held a different version of Batgirl.
Barbara. Cass. Herself.
The false Batman turned toward the line of suits.
“Barbara was legacy,” he said. “Cassandra was purpose. You were noise.”
That one hit. Steph hated that it hit. She loved Babs. She loved Cass. Loved them in complicated, sharp-edged, fiercely loyal ways. Their existence did not make hers smaller.
She knew that.
She knew that.
But knowing something was not the same as never aching.
The false Batman stepped closer. “You wore symbols others defined better.”
Steph’s throat tightened.
“No,” she said.
But the word was quieter than she wanted.
The cave darkened. The cases rose higher, towering over her.
Spoiler. Robin. Batgirl.
Failed. Temporary. Replacement.
Steph backed up one step. Then another.
Her heel hit the edge of a platform.
The false Batman’s shadow stretched toward her.
“Remove the costume,” he said. “Let the story correct itself.”
Something gold flashed through the dark.
A lasso wrapped around Steph’s wrist.
Her head snapped toward it.
The golden rope stretched into a crack in the air. On the other side, she saw you, blurred by magic, standing in a corridor of gold light, one hand gripping the lasso like a lifeline.
“Stephanie!” you shouted.
The false Batman turned sharply.
The cave shook. Steph’s breath caught.
You looked furious.
Not battle-furious. Worse. Protective. Ancient. Like some Themysciran statue had come to life specifically to fistfight narrative invalidation.
“Do not listen to it,” you said.
Steph laughed, and it came out embarrassingly close to a sob. “I usually don’t listen to Batman anyway.”
“That is because you are wise.”
“Debatable.”
The false Batman’s voice boomed through the cave. “She was not chosen.”
You stepped through the tear in the air.
The lasso glowed around Steph’s wrist, connecting you both.
“No,” you said.
The word rang bright.
Steph stared at you.
You stood between her and the false Batman, sword drawn, cape torn, cheek bleeding, looking every inch the kind of hero people wrote songs about.
And then you said, “She chose herself.”
Steph’s heart did something deeply inconvenient.
The false Batman loomed. “Choice is not legitimacy.”
You laughed once. “That is exactly what someone terrified of free will would say.”
Steph blinked.
Then, despite everything, she whispered, “Drag him.”
You did not look back, but she heard the smile in your voice. “Gladly.”
The false Batman raised a hand. The cases shattered. Glass flew outward, but each shard stopped midair, reflecting a different memory.
Steph being told to go home. Steph being fired. Steph being underestimated. Steph reaching for a mantle and feeling it pulled away.
Steph dying. Steph coming back.
Steph breathing.
Steph surviving.
Steph surviving.
Steph surviving.
The false Batman spoke again. “She was temporary.”
The lasso tightened around Steph’s wrist.
You looked back at her. Your expression softened.
“She was recurrent,” you said.
Steph’s breath hitched.
You turned fully toward her now, ignoring the monster in the cape.
“Do you know what that means?” you asked.
Steph tried for a joke. “That I’m a rash?”
“Stephanie.”
She swallowed.
Your voice softened. “Temporary means ending. Recurrent means returning.”
Oh.
Oh, that was mean. That was so mean in the exact way kindness could be mean when it got under all the armour.
Steph looked away.
You stepped closer.
“Spoiler returned,” you said. “Robin ended, but you did not. Batgirl was worn by others before and after you, but when you wore it, the symbol did not become less. It became more.”
The false Batman hissed.
You ignored him.
“You were not noise,” you said. “You were warning. You were refusal. You were the girl at the locked door, saying, I know I was not invited. I am coming in anyway.”
Steph’s eyes burned.
The lasso glowed warmer around her wrist.
“And perhaps,” you continued, voice gaining power, “perhaps that is why this place fears you.”
The false Batman stepped back.
Steph blinked at him.
The cases flickered.
“Fears me?” she repeated.
You smiled then. Small. Sharp. “Of course. Archives hate revisions.”
Steph barked a laugh.
The false Batman shuddered like the sound hurt him.
Steph straightened. Her chest still ached. The words still stung. Failed, temporary, replacement. She would probably hear them again in other voices. In comment sections. In mission reports. In the ugly little room in her head that never learned to shut up.
But you were right. She had returned. Again and again and again. And if the archive hated revisions, Stephanie Brown was about to become a whole new edition.
She grinned at the false Batman. “Hey, Bats.”
He stilled.
Steph lifted her chin. “I was Spoiler because I ruined my dad’s plans.”
The cave trembled.
“I was Robin because I put on the cape and did the work.”
The Robin case cracked.
“I was Batgirl because I earned the symbol one bruise, one joke, one very questionable rooftop landing at a time.”
The Batgirl case shattered into purple light.
Steph stepped forward.
“And I’m Stephanie Brown,” she said, “because nobody gets to edit me out.”
The false Batman split down the centre like torn paper.
Purple light burst through the cave. For one second, Steph saw all her suits not as accusations but as proof.
Then the false cave collapsed.
She stumbled forward. You caught her.
The real archive corridor snapped back into place around you both. Purple light faded into gold. The lasso slid from her wrist.
Steph immediately wiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand. “If you tell anyone I got emotional over metaphor Batman, I’ll deny it.”
You smiled gently. “I would never betray you.”
“Good.”
“Though I may tell Cassandra.”
“Cruel. Evil. Amazonian menace.”
Your smile widened.
Then the corridor shook.
A scream echoed from somewhere beyond the shelves.
Linda.
Steph straightened. You did too.
No more jokes.
The two of you ran.
Linda Danvers had been called many things.
Girl. Angel. Monster. Supergirl.
Not Kara. Not enough. Too much.
She had learned that names could be gifts, but they could also be knives people handed you by the blade and then acted surprised when you bled.
The archive knew that. Of course it did. It had built her a cathedral out of mirrors.
Every wall reflected her differently.
Linda as a teenage girl with frightened eyes. Linda with Matrix’s face. Linda wearing the Supergirl crest. Linda with wings of flame.
Linda falling. Linda glowing. Linda erased.
Above the mirrored altar, in letters of burning white, were the words:
WHO ARE YOU WHEN THE SYMBOL LEAVES?
Linda hovered in the centre of the cathedral, fists clenched, trying not to look at any reflection for too long.
The problem with mirrors was that sometimes all of them were true.
“Supergirl,” one reflection whispered.
“Linda,” said another.
“Matrix.”
“Earth-born angel.”
“Impostor.”
“Replacement.”
“Not the real one.”
Linda’s eyes flashed.
“Shut up,” she said.
The mirrors smiled.
Every version of her smiled differently. One wore Kara’s crest like a crown she had stolen. One had no face. One had wings made of paper.
The reflections spoke together.
“You carried a name that belonged to someone else.”
Linda breathed through her nose.
“You were never the first.”
“Never the last.”
“Never the one people meant.”
“When they say Supergirl, they do not see you.”
The worst part was not that it was a lie. The worst part was that it was almost true.
Linda loved Kara. That made it harder. It was easier to resent someone who had wronged you. Harder to ache beneath the shadow of someone good. Kara deserved the symbol. Kara deserved the love. Kara deserved to be remembered as Supergirl in every bright, clean, iconic way.
And Linda? Linda was complicated. Her story was messier. Stranger. Harder to summarise on a lunchbox.
Merged lives. Lost selves. Redemption arcs with jagged teeth. Power that had felt holy and horrifying depending on the day.
She had been Supergirl. She knew that.
Most days.
The mirror directly in front of her changed.
Now it showed Kara. Blonde. Bright. Powerful. Beloved.
The reflection tilted its head.
“You wore my name,” it said.
Linda’s stomach twisted. “You’re not Kara.”
“No,” the reflection said. “But everyone wishes I were.”
Linda dropped to the floor.
The cathedral bells rang. There had not been bells before.
The reflections stepped out of the mirrors.
Versions of Linda surrounded her in a circle: every identity she had worn, every self she had shed, every name that had fit until it didn’t.
Supergirl stepped forward.
“Give it back,” she said.
Linda’s jaw clenched. “No.”
“You do not need it anymore.”
“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t mine.”
“Was it?”
The question echoed.
Linda’s breath caught.
Was it? The crest had been hers. The battles had been hers. The mistakes, the sacrifices, the impossible days where she got up anyway—that was hers. But symbols were cruel sometimes. They outlived the people inside them. They moved on. They got reassigned. They became cleaner in memory than they ever were in use.
Maybe that was good. Maybe it was unbearable.
The cathedral doors burst open.
Gold and purple light flooded the aisle.
Linda turned. Steph stood in the doorway with a batarang in one hand and mascara slightly smudged in a way she would absolutely deny later. You stood beside her, sword drawn, lasso glowing.
“Oh,” Steph said, taking in the army of Lindas. “Creepy identity crisis cathedral. Been there.”
Linda tried to smile. It didn’t work.
The Supergirl reflection turned toward you. “This is not your story.”
You walked forward anyway.
“No,” you said. “But she is my friend.”
Linda’s throat tightened.
Steph spun the batarang in her fingers. “And I’m nosy.”
The reflection’s eyes burned white.
“Linda Danvers wore what was not hers.”
Steph made an offended sound. “Okay, hypocritical book church, we are not doing this.”
The reflections whispered.
“Not the first.”
“Not the real one.”
“Temporary.”
“Replacement.”
Steph flinched at that last word.
You noticed. Linda noticed.
Then you stepped between them and the reflections.
Your shoulders were squared, but your voice was soft when you spoke. “Do you know the myth of Psyche?”
Steph whispered, “Is now the time?”
“Yes,” you said.
Linda stared at you, half-laughing despite herself.
You continued, because apparently nothing—not haunted books, not identity cathedrals, not emotional devastation—could stop an Amazon boy from weaponising a mythological reference when he sensed an opening.
“Psyche was so beautiful that people compared her to Aphrodite,” you said. “Then she was punished for being mistaken for a goddess. She was given impossible tasks. Sorted seeds. Fetched golden wool. Crossed into the Underworld.”
The reflections stilled.
Your lasso pulsed.
“Everyone remembers Psyche as beloved of Eros,” you said. “But before that, she was a girl made to suffer because others could not decide whether she was mortal, divine, threat, or a prize.”
Linda’s breathing slowed.
You looked at her.
“She became immortal not because she was born flawless,” you said. “But because she endured every trial meant to prove she was unworthy.”
Steph’s eyes shone.
Linda looked away.
The Supergirl reflection sneered. “Pretty story.”
“True one,” you said.
Linda swallowed. “You don’t get it.”
Your expression shifted.
Not hurt.
Attention.
Linda hated that. Hated how careful you were with other people’s pain. Hated how easy it made it to tell the truth.
“I don’t always know which parts of me are mine,” she said.
The mirrors trembled.
Steph lowered her batarang.
Linda wrapped her arms around herself. “There were times I felt like a person. Times I felt like a vessel. Times I felt like a symbol wearing a girl-shaped body. And everyone wants a clean version. Kara is clean. Clark is clean. Even when they’re messy, the story knows where to put them.” Her voice cracked. “I don’t know where to put me.”
The cathedral went silent.
That was when Steph moved.
Not fast. Not dramatic. She just walked over and stood beside Linda.
“Yeah,” Steph said quietly. “That part sucks.”
Linda gave her a wet, startled laugh. “That’s your wisdom?”
“I mean, I could say something poetic, but that’s his thing.” Steph nodded toward you. “I mostly do spite and emotional honesty with questionable timing.”
You smiled faintly.
Steph looked at Linda.
“I know it’s not the same,” she said. “But I know what it’s like when people treat your time in a symbol like it only counts if it was permanent.”
Linda looked at her.
Steph shrugged, but her voice was soft.
“Like if someone else wore it before you and someone else wears it after you, then you were just… filler.” Her mouth twisted. “A weird little transition issue. A temporary patch in the canon.”
Linda whispered, “Yeah.”
Steph’s smile was small and sad.
“But we were there,” she said. “We did the work. We saved people. We messed up. We got back up. That counts.”
The reflections dimmed.
Linda stared at Steph like she had handed her a rope over a cliff.
You stepped closer.
“And you,” you said, “are not made less real because your story is difficult to summarise.”
Linda’s eyes filled.
The Supergirl reflection hissed, “She carried a borrowed name.”
You looked at it sharply. “All names are borrowed until someone lives in them.”
The cathedral shook.
Steph pointed at the reflection. “Yeah. Put that in your haunted bibliography.”
Linda laughed, and it came out broken but real.
You turned back to her.
“I know what it is to wear a symbol people think they understand before they understand you,” you said.
Linda’s gaze softened.
Your hand moved to the eagle on your chest.
“When people see this, they expect womanhood to follow. Diana. The Amazons. Sisters. Daughters. Princesses. A mythology built around women’s strength.” Your voice wavered. “And I love that. I love them. I love the women who raised me. But sometimes people look at me and try to make me fit the version of the symbol they already know.”
Steph looked at you.
The cathedral light reflected in her eyes.
You swallowed.
“It is hard,” you admitted, “to be loved by a legacy and still feel like you have to explain why you belong to it.”
Linda’s face crumpled.
Steph’s hand found yours.
She did not make a joke. That was how you knew she was taking it very seriously.
Linda reached for your other hand.
For a moment, the three of you stood in the centre of the mirror cathedral, hand in hand beneath the judgment of every name that had ever tried to become a cage.
The Supergirl reflection took one step back.
Linda looked at it.
Then she looked at all the other versions of herself.
“I was Supergirl,” she said.
The mirrors cracked.
“I was Linda.”
More cracks.
“I was changed. I was merged. I was lost. I was found. I was holy and messy and angry and scared and brave.”
The cathedral bells rang again, but this time the sound was distant.
Linda lifted her chin.
“You don’t get to make me choose one version so the archive can shelve me correctly.”
Light burst from her hands.
The mirrors shattered.
Not violently.
Joyfully. Like a thousand windows opening at once. The reflections dissolved into white-gold sparks, swirling around Linda before sinking into her skin.
The cathedral vanished. The three of you stood back in the main archive. The black book hovered above its pedestal, pages thrashing wildly.
Steph squinted. “Did the cursed book just call us unstable canon?”
Linda wiped at her eyes. “I think so.”
Steph cracked her knuckles. “That is the nerdiest insult I’ve ever received.”
You stepped forward, lasso in hand.
The archive shelves leaned inward. Thousands of books opened. Names poured from their pages.
Student names. Hero names. Forgotten names. Misfiled names. Names crossed out. Names rewritten. Names smudged until only the first letter remained.
The missing students appeared between the shelves, pale and translucent, reaching silently toward the book.
Linda’s expression hardened. “That’s enough.”
The book’s pages flipped faster.
ALL STORIES REQUIRE ORDER. ALL SYMBOLS REQUIRE SUCCESSION. ALL NAMES REQUIRE AUTHORITY.
Steph raised her batarang. “Counterpoint: no.”
She threw.
The batarang struck the pedestal, cracking the marble.
Linda blasted the shelves behind the book with white-gold light, freeing several ghostly names from the pages. You cast the lasso around the book itself and pulled.
The archive screamed again.
This time, the sound had fear in it.
The book yanked back, dragging you forward. Your boots skidded across the floor.
Steph grabbed your waist from behind.
“Linda!” she shouted.
Linda flew upward and slammed both hands onto the book’s cover.
The magic surged.
All three of you were pulled into the pages. For one impossible second, you saw every story the archive had tried to control.
Students erased because they were inconvenient to old magic. Heroes renamed by people who loved categories more than truth.
Girls called replacements. Boys called contradictions. Children called mistakes.
People turned into footnotes because the page had no room for them.
Rage filled you.
Not wild.
Clear.
The kind Diana had taught you to honour.
You wrapped both hands around the lasso and spoke in a voice that filled the archive.
“No story belongs to the shelf more than the soul inside it.”
Gold light erupted from the rope.
Steph shouted, “Names are not yours to keep!”
Purple light flared from her batarang, catching the cracked pedestal.
Linda’s eyes blazed white. “And symbols are not yours to police.”
The book split open.
Pages flew everywhere.
The archive collapsed into a storm of paper and light.
Names poured free. The missing students became solid all at once, gasping, crying, collapsing into each other’s arms.
The library shrank violently around you.
Shelves folded inward. Stars fell from the ink ceiling like punctuation marks shaken loose from the sky.
You grabbed Steph’s hand. Steph grabbed Linda’s.
Linda grabbed two unconscious students by the backs of their jackets.
“Exit?” Steph shouted.
The room tilted.
You looked around, lasso humming, searching for truth beneath the chaos.
There. A door made of ordinary wood. Ugly. Modern. Gotham University-issued. A little scratched. Probably smelled like dust and bad coffee on the other side.
“Left!” you shouted.
Linda flew. Steph ran. You pulled the lasso around three more students and dragged them with you as the archive screamed one final time.
The three of you burst through the door and landed in a heap in the basement of the humanities building.
Real basement. Real concrete. Real flickering fluorescent lights. Real smell of mildew and old textbooks.
Steph lay on her back, staring at the ceiling.
“Okay,” she said. “I officially hate libraries.”
You groaned from somewhere beneath Linda’s cape. “You do not mean that.”
“I mean haunted libraries.”
“Reasonable.”
Linda sat up slowly, hair a mess, eyes still glowing faintly. “Everyone alive?”
From around the basement, students groaned, cried, and answered in various levels of panic.
Steph lifted one thumb. “Alive. Emotionally attacked. Personally offended.”
You pushed yourself upright and immediately regretted it.
Your ribs ached. Your cheek stung. Your throat felt raw from speaking truth at a cursed book, which was apparently a physical activity.
Linda noticed. “You’re hurt.”
“So are you,” you said.
Steph sat up. “So am I, by the way. Since we’re doing the team injury roll call.”
Linda looked at her. “You have a paper cut.”
“It’s from a cursed book. That’s basically a stab wound.”
You smiled despite yourself.
The basement door opened above the stairs. Campus security shouted something.
Steph looked at you both. “So, we staying to explain the ancient sentient archive situation or…?”
Linda’s expression went dry. “Absolutely not.”
“Great consensus.”
The three of you helped the students up, got them moving toward the stairs, and gave the security guards just enough information to make them extremely confused but functional.
By the time the police and emergency services arrived, the three of you were on the roof of the humanities building, sitting under a cloudy Gotham sky.
Nobody spoke for a while.
Steph had her knees drawn up, chin resting on them. Linda sat beside her, cape wrapped around her shoulders. You leaned against a gargoyle that looked deeply displeased with all of you.
Finally, Steph said, “So that was a lot.”
Linda laughed softly. “Yeah.”
“You ever notice how magic never attacks you with, like, mildly inconvenient insecurities?” Steph asked. “It’s always the big emotional thesis stuff. Very rude. Where’s the curse that makes me worry about my parking tickets?”
You looked at her. “Do you have parking tickets?”
“That is between me and the city of Gotham.”
Linda smiled. Then the smile faded.
“I didn’t know you felt that way,” she said to Steph.
Steph looked over.
Linda’s voice was careful. “About Batgirl. Robin. Being temporary.”
Steph shrugged too quickly. “It’s fine.”
You said her name.
She groaned. “Do not emotionally perceive me. I’m fragile.”
“You are not fragile,” you said.
“I am a delicate flower.”
Linda raised an eyebrow. “You kicked a paper monster in the throat.”
“It deserved it.”
You smiled, then softened. “Stephanie.”
She sighed, long and theatrical, but her shoulders drooped.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s stupid.”
“It is not,” Linda said.
Steph picked at a loose thread on her glove.
“I know I matter. Like, logically. I know Spoiler matters. I know being Robin mattered even if it was a hot mess, and I know Batgirl mattered. I know Babs and Cass love me. I know.” She swallowed. “But sometimes it feels like other people get to be chapters and I get to be a weird sticky note.”
Linda’s face softened.
You shifted closer.
Steph kept looking at her glove.
“I’m not the first anything. I’m not the best anything. I’m not the chosen anything. I’m just stubborn.”
“That is not just,” you said.
Steph’s mouth trembled.
She looked at you.
You held her gaze.
“Stubbornness is sacred.”
A laugh burst out of her, wet and surprised. “That is such a Wonder Boy thing to say.”
“It is true.”
Linda nodded. “It is.”
Steph looked between you both, eyes bright.
“Rude,” she whispered. “Supportive and rude.”
Linda reached over and bumped her shoulder against Steph’s.
Steph leaned back.
Just a little.
Then Linda said, “I get it.”
Steph’s expression gentled.
Linda looked out over Gotham.
“I know I was Supergirl,” she said. “I know that. But sometimes talking about it feels like showing people a photograph from a dream. Like I have proof, but not the kind they want.”
Her cape shifted in the wind.
“And there’s always someone else who fits the name better in people’s heads.”
You listened.
The city below murmured: traffic, sirens, distant laughter, a dog barking at absolutely nothing.
Linda’s voice lowered.
“I used to think that meant I had to either cling to it or let it go completely. Like if I wasn’t Supergirl forever, then maybe I never really was.”
Steph reached for her hand.
Linda let her take it.
You thought of all the names you had held like hot coals.
The name you had been given before you had language for why it hurt.
The name you chose.
Wonder Boy.
Son.
Brother.
Amazon.
Words that did not always sit easily together in other people’s mouths, but lived fiercely in yours.
“I think,” you said, “some names are not houses.”
They both looked at you.
You searched for the right shape of the truth.
“They are roads,” you said. “We walk them. They change us. We leave footprints. Then perhaps we continue elsewhere.” You looked at Linda. “Leaving does not mean you were never there.”
Linda’s eyes shone.
Steph was quiet for a moment.
Then she said, “You really do talk like a museum plaque.”
You sighed.
Linda laughed.
Steph grinned, but it softened.
“A good museum plaque,” she added.
“High praise,” Linda said.
“The highest.”
You bowed your head slightly. “I am honoured.”
Steph bumped your knee with hers.
“And you?” she asked.
You looked at her.
She gave you a pointed look.
“Yeah, don’t think we forgot the evil book made you talk about Symbol Feelings too.”
Linda nodded. “You don’t have to, but…”
You exhaled.
The rooftop wind was cold against the cut on your cheek.
Below, Gotham did what Gotham always did: survived itself loudly.
“I feel like a road too sometimes,” you admitted. “Not a house.”
Steph and Linda listened.
“I know who I am,” you said. “I am not confused about that. But knowing does not stop the world from being clumsy with me.” Your hand rested over the eagle on your chest. “Wonder Woman’s legacy is so tied to womanhood. To Amazons, sisters, daughters, queens. And I love that. I would never diminish it.”
Your voice thinned.
“But I am not a woman. I was never going to become one correctly, because I was never one at all.”
Steph’s fingers curled around Linda’s.
You looked down at the rooftop gravel.
“Diana made room for me. Themyscira made room for me. That is a gift I can never repay.” You swallowed. “But sometimes I wonder if I am a room added onto a house everyone else already understood. Loved, yes. Wanted, yes. But still an addition.”
Linda’s face changed.
Steph whispered, “Oh.”
You laughed quietly. “That sounds self-pitying.”
“No,” Steph said immediately. “It sounds… yeah. It sounds like the thing.”
You looked at her.
She shrugged, helpless but sincere.
“The thing where people love you but the story still doesn’t know where to put you.”
Your breath caught.
Linda reached over with her free hand and took yours.
“You are not an addition,” she said.
You looked at her.
Her voice was steady.
“You are proof the house was alive enough to grow.”
That one hurt.
Beautifully.
Steph nodded fiercely. “Yeah. Also, for the record, anyone who has a problem with Wonder Boy can fight me in a Denny’s parking lot.”
You blinked.
Linda nodded solemnly. “I’d pay to see that.”
You laughed, wiping at your eyes before tears could fully betray you.
Steph pointed. “No crying. If you cry, I cry, and then Linda cries, and then this gargoyle judges us.”
“The gargoyle already judges us,” Linda said.
You looked at the stone creature. “It is Gotham. Of course it does.”
Steph leaned into your side.
Linda leaned into your other.
For a while, the three of you sat that way beneath the grey sky, shoulder to shoulder, a small line of warmth on the cold roof.
A spoiler.
A supergirl.
A wonder boy.
Three names the archive had tried to file as temporary, borrowed, unstable.
But you were still here.
There was something holy in that.
Not clean. Not easy. Not carved in marble.
More like graffiti on a locked door.
Messy.
Bright.
Undeniable.
Eventually, Steph said, “So. Fire thieves.”
Linda tilted her head. “What?”
Steph gestured between the three of you. “That’s us.”
You smiled slowly. “Prometheus?”
“Yeah. We stole fire from the narrative gods or whatever.” Steph waved a hand. “Very mythic. Very hot. Extremely brandable.”
Linda laughed. “You want team branding after a cursed archive almost ate our identities?”
“I cope through aesthetics.”
You nodded. “Valid.”
Steph beamed. “See? Wonder Boy gets it.”
Linda looked at you, amused. “Do you?”
“I was raised around ceremonial armour and symbolic weapons,” you said. “I deeply understand coping through aesthetics.”
Steph snapped her fingers. “Exactly.”
Linda shook her head, but she was smiling.
The clouds broke slightly above Gotham.
A thin line of sunlight touched the roof, catching on Linda’s cape, Steph’s blonde hair, your bronze bracers.
For one brief second, all three of you looked gilded.
Not by permission.
Not by inheritance.
By survival.
Steph stood first and offered both hands down.
“All right, fire thieves. Let’s go get waffles.”
Linda blinked. “Waffles?”
“Yes. Identity crises require carbs.”
You took her hand. “That is medically sound.”
“It is emotionally sound,” Steph said. “Which is basically the same but with syrup.”
Linda accepted Steph’s other hand and stood.
The three of you moved toward the fire escape together.
Before descending, you looked back at the rooftop, at the gargoyle, at the city, at the thin sunlight stubbornly refusing to vanish.
You thought of Prometheus stealing flame.
Ariadne holding thread. Psyche sorting impossible seeds. Every myth where someone was tested not because they were weak, but because the world could not understand what they might become.
Steph bumped your shoulder. “You good?”
You looked at her, then at Linda.
No, you thought. Not always. Maybe not even most days.
But clearer. Held. Named correctly by people who knew what it cost to keep a name.
You smiled. “I am hungry.”
Steph grinned. “That’s the spirit.”
Linda laughed and stepped off the roof, floating gently down toward the alley.
Steph followed the fire escape.
You swung after them on a line of gold.
Behind you, Gotham University’s haunted archive was gone. Or defeated. Or sulking. Whatever cursed books did after getting roasted by three emotionally compromised legacy heroes with excellent outfits.
author's note when researching supers to do this request i came across kenan kong and decided to pair him with duke and reader! i felt like he mirrors duke in a way that felt interesting bc of being outsiders. duke isnt just another robin, he didn’t enter the natfam through the classic route of being Batman’s sidekick first, and kenan isn’t clark, kon or jon, he is new superman which is a loaded title; he’s connected to the superman legacy but not nested inside it. anyways hope yall enjoy
Gotham looked different in daylight.
That was the first thing Kenan said, standing on the roof of the GCPD building with his arms crossed, his red cape snapping behind him in the wind like he was personally offended by the skyline.
Duke Thomas looked over at him.
Kenan squinted at the city, unimpressed. “I thought it would be less… damp.”
“It is less damp,” Duke said.
“This is less?”
“This is basically tropical.”
You stood between them, one hand resting on the bronze rail, cape draped over one shoulder. Gotham’s morning light spilled over the rooftops in thin, reluctant streaks, turning gargoyles into long shadows and windows into dull gold. The city looked like it had survived the night out of spite.
You had never loved Gotham exactly. But you respected it.
Some cities greeted the sun. Gotham interrogated it.
Kenan glanced at Duke. “No offence, but your city looks like it smokes three packs a day and lies about it.”
Duke’s mouth twitched. “That’s weirdly accurate.”
“Thank you. I’m very observant.”
“You asked if gargoyles were native to Gotham.”
“They might be. This city has vibes.”
You laughed softly.
Kenan pointed at you. “See? Wonder Boy agrees with me.”
“I agree, Gotham has vibes,” you said. “I do not agree gargoyles are native fauna.”
“Coward.”
Duke shook his head. “You’ve been here ten minutes.”
“And already I understand everything.”
“You got lost in the lobby.”
“Architectural ambush.”
Duke’s smile widened.
That smile was quieter than Dick’s, less weaponised than Tim’s, less reluctant than Damian’s. Duke smiled like sunlight finding its way through boarded-up windows: not flashy, not naïve, just stubbornly present.
It suited him. The Signal.
Not Robin. Not Batboy. Not another shadow in Gotham’s long, grief-soaked lineage.
Daylight.
That was why Diana had sent you. The Justice League had picked up a strange energy signature beneath Gotham’s old Robinson Park station: part metahuman light distortion, part Kryptonian-adjacent energy, part ancient magic that made your lasso hum like a warning bell. Batman was off-world. Superman was handling something with the League. Wonder Woman had narrowed her eyes at the report, then looked at you.
“You will go,” she had said. “Not alone.”
So now you stood with Duke Thomas and Kenan Kong beneath Gotham’s reluctant morning, three legacies that did not fit neatly into the boxes other people kept trying to hand you.
Duke was watching the city. Kenan was watching Duke watching the city. You were watching both of them and trying not to smile.
“You always patrol during the day?” Kenan asked.
Duke leaned his forearms against the rail. “Mostly.”
“Is that, like, your thing?”
“My thing?”
“You know.” Kenan gestured vaguely at Duke’s yellow-and-black suit. “Batman has night. Superman has sky. Wonder Woman has truth. I’ve got…” He puffed out his chest. “Iconic dragon energy.”
Duke raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”
“Obviously.”
“I thought your thing was being New Super-Man.”
Kenan winced.
It was quick. Almost nothing.
But you saw it.
Duke saw it too.
Kenan covered the moment with a grin so bright it could have powered a small city. “Yeah, well, that too. But dragon energy sounds cooler.”
“It sounds like a cologne sold at an airport,” Duke said.
You made a noise that was extremely undignified for a son of Themyscira.
Kenan gasped. “Betrayal. From both fronts. This is how empires fall.”
“Most empires fall from arrogance,” you said.
“That’s what I said.”
“No, it is not.”
“But spiritually.”
Duke laughed under his breath, then looked back toward the city. The smile faded from his face by degrees.
The morning wind shifted.
Below you, sirens moved through distant streets. Not urgent yet. Just Gotham breathing through its teeth.
Then the signal came. A pulse of gold-black light erupted from somewhere beneath Old Gotham, visible for only half a second between buildings before vanishing.
Duke straightened immediately.
Kenan lifted off the roof an inch. “That looked bad.”
Your lasso warmed at your hip.
“It felt worse,” you said.
Duke’s eyes narrowed behind his visor. “Robinson Park station.”
“Convenient,” Kenan said. “That’s the creepy abandoned subway, right?”
Duke looked at him.
Kenan shrugged. “What? I read the mission brief.”
“You read the mission brief?”
“Skimmed.”
“There it is.”
You stepped onto the ledge, cape catching in the wind.
“Bickering while moving,” you said.
Kenan grinned. “I like him.”
Duke’s smile returned, faint and sharp. “Give it time.”
Then Duke dropped off the roof.
Not like Dick, all impossible grace and circus-born ease. Not like Damian, a blade choosing gravity as an accomplice.
Duke moved like he knew exactly where the light would be before he reached it. His grapnel fired, catching a building across the street, and his body swung into the morning with clean, precise confidence.
Kenan shot into the air after him, red cape flashing.
You followed with the lasso, gold arcing through Gotham’s pale sunlight like a thread pulled through shadow.
For one bright second, the three of you cut across the city together.
A signal. A shield. An eagle.
Not the old three.
Something newer. Something stranger. Something still deciding what it wanted to become.
The entrance to Robinson Park station had been sealed for years.
Today, the seal was gone.
Not broken. Gone. The metal gate had been peeled open from the inside, edges curled outward like petals. Below it, stairs descended into darkness. Yellow police tape fluttered uselessly across the entrance.
Duke crouched at the top step, gloved fingers brushing the ground.
“People were here,” he said. “Maybe six. Heavy boots. Not civilians.”
Kenan hovered behind him. “Mercs?”
“Probably.”
You drew your sword slowly.
The bronze blade caught the weak daylight and reflected it down the stairs.
“And magic,” you said.
Duke glanced up. “You can tell?”
“The hair on the back of my neck is trying to leave my body.”
Kenan grimaced. “Hate when that happens.”
Duke’s visor flickered. “I’m seeing light distortion. Like the tunnel is bending photons inward.”
“Is that bad?” Kenan asked.
“Yes.”
“Cool. Hate that too.”
You stepped beside Duke. “It may not behave like a normal tunnel.”
Duke looked at the darkness below. “Gotham tunnels never do.”
Kenan landed behind you both. “Okay. So what’s the plan?”
Duke and you both looked at him.
Kenan frowned. “What?”
“You are asking for a plan?” Duke said.
“I can ask for plans.”
“You can?”
“Wow. The disrespect is immediate.”
You smiled faintly. “The plan is simple. We enter. We identify the source. We retrieve or destroy it. We avoid being separated.”
The darkness below pulsed once.
A low hum rose from underground.
Not mechanical. Not alive.
Both.
Duke’s expression tightened. “That’s new.”
“Still simple?” Kenan asked.
“No,” you said. “But that was a beautiful dream while it lasted.”
The three of you descended.
The air grew colder with every step.
Gotham’s sunlight disappeared behind you, swallowed by concrete and rust and old tile. The station smelled like wet stone, dust, and something metallic beneath it. Old advertisements peeled from the walls. Graffiti climbed the pillars. Train tracks stretched into black tunnels on either side of the abandoned platform.
In the centre of the station stood a door that had not been there before.
It was made of bronze.
The surface was etched with a maze. At the maze’s centre, someone had carved three symbols.
A bat. A shield. An eagle.
Kenan leaned closer. “Okay, that feels personal.”
Duke’s jaw tightened. “I’m getting tired of people putting bats on things and making it my problem.”
“You are Gotham’s daylight hero,” you said. “Apparently, even ancient magic respects branding.”
Duke gave you a look. “You’re enjoying this too much.”
“I enjoy symbolism.”
“You enjoy weaponising symbolism.”
“I was raised correctly.”
Kenan snapped his fingers. “That’s what I’ve been saying.”
Duke reached toward the door.
You caught his wrist.
He stilled.
You stared at the maze etched into the bronze. The lines moved when you weren’t looking straight at them. Not much. Just enough to suggest the door was thinking.
“This is old,” you said.
“How old?” Duke asked.
“Older than Gotham.”
Kenan looked around the ruined station. “So, like, last Thursday?”
You ignored him with dignity.
“The pattern resembles the Cretan labyrinth,” you said. “But altered. Modernised. Someone has grafted old magic onto Gotham infrastructure.”
Duke looked at the door. “A maze under the city.”
“Very Theseus,” Kenan said.
You blinked at him.
He looked offended. “What? I know things.”
Duke raised an eyebrow.
Kenan crossed his arms. “I had a mythology phase.”
“You had a mythology phase?”
“Briefly.”
“How briefly?”
“Two videos and half a podcast.”
“Iconic scholarship,” you said.
“Thank you.”
The bronze door opened.
No creak. No grind. Just a silent inward swing, revealing a tunnel of gold-lit darkness.
Duke’s visor dimmed. Kenan stopped smiling. You felt the lasso at your hip pull gently forward, as if recognising a cousin.
“Stay close,” you said.
Duke nodded.
Kenan rolled his shoulders. “I’m always close. I’m emotionally available and visually striking.”
Duke muttered, “That sounds rehearsed.”
“Because it’s true.”
You stepped through the door first.
The tunnel swallowed you whole.
The first sign that the labyrinth was alive came when the entrance disappeared behind you. The second came when the walls began whispering.
Not words at first. Just voices. A murmur of old crowds, news anchors, police radios, frightened civilians, teachers calling attendance, reporters asking questions they thought were harmless.
Then the voices sharpened.
“Isn’t Signal basically Robin?”
Duke stopped.
The tunnel stretched ahead, lit by narrow strips of gold embedded in the walls. The floor was old subway concrete, cracked and wet. But the walls were bronze now, etched with maze lines that shifted like veins.
Kenan looked at Duke. “You okay?”
Duke’s face had gone still.
The voice came again, different this time.
“Batman finally got himself a daytime sidekick?”
Duke’s hand curled.
Another voice. Laughing.
“Not even a real Bat. What’s his thing again? Light?”
Kenan’s expression darkened. “Who said that?”
“No one,” Duke said.
His voice was flat. Too flat.
You stepped closer.
The walls whispered louder.
“Should’ve been Robin.”
“Didn’t even get chosen for the main legacy.”
“Batman’s diversity hire.”
“Meta in a bat costume.”
“Signal? What does that even mean?”
“Gotham belongs to the night.”
Duke’s jaw tightened.
Light gathered faintly around his hands.
Not bright. Not uncontrolled.
But sharp.
You said his name.
He blinked. The walls stilled.
Duke exhaled through his nose. “I’m fine.”
Kenan scoffed. “Bro, we are in a trauma maze. Nobody is fine.”
Duke glanced at him. “Trauma maze?”
“That’s clearly what this is.”
“He is not wrong,” you said.
“I hate that,” Duke said.
“So do I,” Kenan replied. “But I’m coping through branding.”
You smiled despite yourself.
Duke did not. His gaze stayed fixed on the wall.
“The voices are bait,” he said.
“Yes,” you said. “But bait works because it resembles food.”
Duke looked at you.
You touched the maze-carved wall lightly.
“It is using things already in you.”
For a moment, the tunnel was quiet except for dripping water.
Then Duke said, “I know I’m not Robin.”
The words landed heavy.
Kenan’s teasing vanished.
Duke kept looking ahead. “I never wanted to be Robin. Not really. Robin was… I mean, Robin was important. Is important. But that wasn’t my path.” His mouth twisted slightly. “Doesn’t stop people from acting like I failed at something I wasn’t trying to be.”
The gold lines in the wall pulsed.
Duke’s shadow stretched long behind him.
“I’m not Batman’s son,” he continued. “Not like Damian. Not like the others. I’m not part of the original myth. I came in through a different door, during a different kind of crisis, with powers nobody in that family knew what to do with.”
You watched him.
Duke Thomas, standing underground in a city that kept trying to drag all its heroes into darkness.
“But Gotham has enough people in the night,” he said, softer. “Somebody had to stay in the morning.”
The tunnel went silent.
Kenan stared.
You felt something in your chest warm.
“There,” you said.
Duke turned to you.
“That is the thread.”
His brow furrowed. “The thread?”
You reached for the lasso at your hip. It glowed softly, gold in the dim tunnel.
“In the labyrinth, Theseus survived because Ariadne gave him a thread. Not a sword. Not a prophecy. A way back.” You looked at Duke. “You are not a failed shadow. You are the way back to daylight.”
Duke’s expression shifted.
Barely. But enough.
Kenan’s voice was quieter than usual. “That’s actually kind of sick.”
Duke swallowed. “I don’t always feel like that.”
“Of course not,” you said. “Truth does not require constant confidence. Only return.”
The gold lines along the wall brightened.
A doorway opened to your left.
Duke stared at it. “Well. That was weirdly responsive.”
“The maze likes emotional breakthroughs,” Kenan said. “Awful feature.”
You smiled. “Come.”
The three of you passed through the doorway.
The next chamber was enormous. Or it looked enormous. It was hard to tell in magic spaces. The ceiling disappeared into darkness. Pillars rose around you, each one carved with mirrored shields. At the centre of the chamber stood a statue of Superman.
No. Not Superman.
New Super-Man.
Kenan.
But wrong. Too tall. Too perfect. Jaw lifted. Cape immaculate. The “S” crest on his chest bright enough to hurt. The statue’s eyes were blank, staring toward a future that did not seem to include the actual boy standing in front of it.
Kenan stopped dead.
Duke looked at the statue, then at him. “Subtle.”
Kenan laughed. It sounded fake even before it finished.
“Well,” he said. “At least the maze has taste.”
The statue moved. Stone cracked from its shoulders as it stepped down from the pedestal, cape flowing though there was no wind. Its eyes lit red.
Duke lifted his hands. “Kenan?”
“I know,” Kenan said. “Evil statue me. Very rude. Honestly, face is off.”
The statue spoke in Kenan’s voice, stripped of humour.
“New Super-Man,” it said. “New. Smaller. Later. Lesser.”
Kenan’s grin vanished.
The statue’s head tilted. “Borrowed symbol. Borrowed powers. Borrowed name.”
Duke stepped forward, but you held out an arm.
Kenan was staring at the statue like he had expected this and still hated it.
The statue continued.
“You are not Clark Kent.”
“You are not Superman.”
“You are not even Superboy.”
“You are imitation wearing arrogance as armour.”
The chamber trembled.
Kenan’s fists clenched. Red energy flared faintly around him.
“Okay,” he said. “First of all, rude. Second, I look amazing in this suit.”
The statue advanced. “You were chosen because you were useful.”
Kenan flinched.
There. The arrow beneath the joke.
Duke saw it too.
The statue lifted one stone hand. “You were given power by an experiment. A project. A state-sanctioned symbol. You became a hero because others decided what you could represent.”
Kenan’s face went pale.
“That’s not—” He stopped.
The statue smiled.
You hated that smile. It belonged to every cruel thing that had ever learned how to use a person’s doubt against them.
Kenan backed up one step.
“I became better,” he said, too fast. “I know that. I was a jerk, then I wasn’t. Character development. Very popular.”
The statue kept walking.
“Clark inspires.”
“Kon survives.”
“Jon inherits.”
“What do you do?”
Kenan’s breathing changed. The red aura around him flickered.
Duke moved beside him. “Hey.”
Kenan shook his head. “I’m good.”
“You’re not.”
“Wow, everyone keeps saying that to me. Very rude team dynamic.”
The statue raised both hands.
The mirrored pillars lit up. In every shield, Kenan’s reflection appeared, but each one warped differently. Kenan as a weapon. Kenan as a propaganda poster. Kenan as a failure. Kenan as a joke. Kenan standing behind Superman, smaller and dimmer and replaceable.
You saw his throat move.
“I didn’t ask for the symbol,” he said.
The chamber quieted.
Duke looked at him.
Kenan stared at the reflections.
“I didn’t grow up dreaming about it like people think. I wasn’t some sweet farm kid who wanted to save the world.” His laugh broke. “I was arrogant. Angry. Selfish. I got power and thought it made me important.”
The statue lowered its face toward him. “And now?”
Kenan’s eyes burned. “Now I’m trying.”
The words echoed.
Small. Huge.
Duke stepped closer.
“That matters,” he said.
The statue turned toward him. “Does it?”
Duke did not flinch. “Yeah. It does.”
Kenan looked at him.
Duke’s voice stayed steady.
“You think I don’t know what it’s like to come into a symbol after the world already decided what it means?” Duke said. “People see a bat on me and expect Batman. Or Robin. Or some version of Gotham they already understand. They don’t see me first.”
Kenan’s expression shifted.
Duke looked up at the statue.“But you don’t have to be Clark to make the crest mean something true. You just have to be someone who chooses what to do with it now.”
The statue flickered.
Kenan swallowed.
You stepped to his other side.
“In Themyscira,” you said, “we tell stories of heroes who were not born noble.”
Kenan gave a weak laugh. “That your way of calling me a disaster?”
“Yes,” you said.
His laugh became real for half a second.
Then you softened. “But also beloved.”
The statue froze.
Kenan looked at you.
“You think heroism begins cleanly,” you said. “Chosen child. Noble heart. Perfect beginning. But many heroes begin as exiles, cowards, fools, liars, monsters in someone else’s telling.”
Duke glanced at you.
You held Kenan’s gaze.
“What matters is not whether your first chapter was worthy,” you said. “What matters is who you become when the story gives you a second one.”
Kenan’s eyes shone.
The mirrored pillars dimmed. The statue cracked down the centre.
Kenan stared at it, then looked at his own hands.
“I’m not Superman,” he said.
“No,” Duke said.
The crack widened.
Kenan lifted his chin. “I’m Kong Kenan.”
The statue shattered.
Stone fragments rained down but vanished before touching the ground, dissolving into sparks of red and gold.
Kenan stood in the middle of them, breathing hard.
No one moved for a moment.
Then he said, “Okay, that was emotionally violent.”
Duke exhaled a laugh.
You smiled. “You did well.”
Kenan pointed at you. “Do not say that in the museum plaque voice. I will cry and sue you.”
Duke’s lips twitched. “Can you sue someone for emotional support?”
“I can try. I know people.”
“You do not know lawyers.”
“I know a guy who knows a guy who pretended to be a lawyer once.”
You raised a hand. “Please never say that near Batman.”
Kenan grinned, but it faded quickly.
He looked at Duke.
“Thanks,” he said.
Duke shrugged, suddenly awkward. “Yeah. Of course.”
“No, I mean it.” Kenan rubbed the back of his neck. “The whole ‘you don’t have to be Clark’ thing. That was…”
“True,” Duke said.
Kenan blinked.
Duke looked away first.
The chamber wall opened behind the broken pedestal, revealing another corridor.
The labyrinth was quieter now. But not finished.
You felt it waiting.
The next corridor was narrow. Too narrow for comfort. The walls pressed close, bronze shifting back into old subway tile. The gold lines of the maze ran under your boots now, branching in every direction.
Duke led.
Not because anyone said he should.
He just did.
His light powers flickered through the tunnel, catching edges and angles invisible to you and Kenan. Every so often, he stopped, turned his head slightly, then chose a path.
Kenan watched him with open curiosity.
“You can see the maze,” he said.
“Parts of it,” Duke replied.
“How?”
“Light tells stories.”
Kenan blinked. “That is either extremely cool or extremely fake.”
Duke smiled faintly. “Both.”
You followed close behind, hand on your lasso. The golden rope pulled gently toward the path Duke chose each time.
Ariadne’s thread and Gotham’s daylight. You liked that.
Then the corridor opened into the third chamber.
You knew before you stepped inside that it was for you.
The room was shaped like a circular amphitheatre. Marble seats rose on all sides. At the centre stood three statues.
Diana. Hippolyta. You.
Not as you were. As the world so often tried to imagine you.
Your statue wore a flowing gown instead of armour. Long hair spilled over its shoulders. Its face was delicate and wrong. The eagle symbol rested on its chest like a decoration rather than a vow.
A little Amazon princess.
You stopped breathing.
Duke and Kenan went still on either side of you.
The chamber brightened.
Whispers rose from the amphitheatre.
“Daughter of Themyscira.”
“Amazon maiden.”
“Wonder Woman’s girl.”
“What does it mean to be a son of an island of women?”
“Exception.”
“Contradiction.”
“Translation error.”
“Not what was intended.”
Your hands curled slowly at your sides.
Kenan’s voice was low. “I hate this room.”
Duke’s hand lit faintly. “Yeah.”
The statue of you turned its head.
Stone eyes opened.
“Do you?” it asked in your voice.
Your stomach dropped.
It stepped down from its pedestal, gown trailing across the marble floor like water.
“You carry the eagle,” it said. “But everyone knows what they are looking for when they see it.”
You felt Duke shift beside you.
Kenan muttered, “Say the word and I punch your evil statue.”
A hysterical laugh almost escaped you.
Almost.
The statue approached.
“You were loved,” it said.
That hurt worse than cruelty.
Because you had been. You had been loved fiercely. Awkwardly sometimes, imperfectly sometimes, but loved. Diana had never hesitated. Hippolyta had adjusted the law. The Amazons had changed old language, old rites, old expectations so you could stand among them as yourself.
And still.
And still.
The statue smiled softly. “Why, then, do you ache?”
Your throat tightened.
Duke looked at you. “You don’t have to answer it.”
“Yes,” you said. “I do.”
The chamber listened.
You stared at the false version of yourself. The gown. The hair. The softness made wrong not because softness was shameful, but because it had been forced onto you like a costume. A symbol someone else could understand.
“I ache,” you said slowly, “because love does not always erase loneliness.”
The statue flickered.
Duke’s expression changed. Kenan went quiet.
You stepped forward.
“I was not cast out,” you said. “I was not denied. My home changed for me. Diana found old stories for me. Hippolyta named me son before the council. My sisters learned to call me brother when the word was still new in their mouths.”
Your voice roughened.
“And some days, that makes me feel blessed beyond measure.”
The statue tilted its head.
“And other days?” it asked.
You swallowed. “Other days I feel like a beautiful exception.”
The amphitheatre whispered the phrase back.
Beautiful exception.
Beautiful exception.
Beautiful exception.
Duke’s light flared in anger. Kenan’s hands sparked red.
You held up one hand.
Not yet.
“I know what Wonder Woman means,” you said. “I know what the Amazons mean. I know why little girls look at Diana and see proof that power can belong to them. I would never take that from them.”
The statue’s face softened with false pity. “But you are not one of them.”
The words struck.
You closed your eyes.
For a second, you were young again, standing in front of a polished bronze mirror, hair hacked short, chest aching from the shape of yourself, trying to understand why being loved as someone else felt like starving at a feast.
Then Duke spoke. “He doesn’t have to be.”
Your eyes opened.
Duke stepped forward, light gathering around his hands.
“He doesn’t have to be a girl to belong to a legacy that raised him,” Duke said. “That’s not how legacy works.”
The statue turned toward him. “And you would know?”
Duke’s face hardened.
“Yeah,” he said. “I would.”
Kenan stepped up on your other side.
“Also,” he said, “any room that thinks ‘beautiful exception’ is an insult has failed the vibe check at a historic level.”
You let out a broken laugh.
Kenan looked pleased. “I stand by it.”
The statue’s eyes narrowed.
Duke looked at you, voice softening. “You told me I’m not a failed shadow. So listen when I say this: you’re not a failed daughter.”
Your breath caught.
Kenan nodded. “You’re not Wonder Woman Lite. You’re not a translation error. You’re Wonder Boy.”
The lasso at your hip pulsed.
The statue flickered again.
Duke stepped closer, not touching, but near enough that you could feel the warmth of his light.
“You made space for yourself in a story people thought was finished,” he said. “That’s not a contradiction. That’s dawn.”
Your eyes burned.
Kenan’s grin softened into something real.
“And for the record,” he said, “as someone with intense borrowed-symbol issues, you wear yours better than almost anyone.”
You looked at him.
He shrugged, suddenly shy. “What? It’s true.”
The false statue of you cracked along the chest.
You turned back toward it.
It watched you now without smiling.
“Name yourself,” it said.
The command echoed through the amphitheatre.
You inhaled. You had done this before, in different ways.
In front of Diana. In front of Amazons. In front of reporters.
In front of mirrors.
Coming out was not one moment. It was a thousand doors. A thousand rooms. A thousand times choosing truth even when your voice shook.
You placed your hand over the eagle on your chest.
“I am not the daughter Themyscira expected,” you said.
The chamber trembled.
“I am the son it chose to love.”
Duke’s light steadied. Kenan’s cape rustled in the still air.
You took one step toward the statue. “I am not proof that the old stories failed. I am proof they were never finished.”
The statue cracked further.
“My name is mine,” you said. “My body is mine. My symbol is mine. I carry the women who raised me not as a costume, but as a foundation.”
Gold light spilled from the cracks.
“And if the world does not know what to call a Wonder Boy yet,” you said, “then it can learn.”
The statue shattered.
Not into dust.
Into thread. Gold thread unspooled from the broken stone, winding through the air in loops and spirals before settling around your wrist like a bracelet of light.
The amphitheatre vanished.
The three of you stood once more in an old subway tunnel.
But now the golden thread stretched from your wrist into the darkness ahead.
Kenan stared. “Okay. That was extremely cool.”
Duke nodded slowly. “Ariadne’s thread.”
You lifted your wrist.
The thread glowed warmly.
“Apparently.”
Kenan leaned closer. “Can I touch it?”
“No,” you and Duke said at the same time.
Kenan held up both hands. “Wow. United front. Love the teamwork. Hate the oppression.”
You smiled, wiping quickly at your eyes before either of them could comment.
Neither did. You loved them a little for that.
The golden thread led deeper into the labyrinth. The tunnels shifted around you now, but the thread stayed steady. Duke walked beside it, reading light and shadow. Kenan floated low behind, unusually quiet.
After several minutes, he said, “So this Theseus guy.”
You glanced over. “Yes?”
“He got out because Ariadne gave him thread.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to Ariadne?”
You grimaced.
Duke looked at you. “That bad?”
“She was abandoned on an island.”
Kenan stopped floating. “Excuse me?”
“It depends on the version.”
“Did Theseus abandon the girl who helped him survive the murder maze?”
“Yes.”
Kenan looked personally offended. “What the—Are you serious?”
Duke nodded. “Yeah, no. That’s messed up.”
You smiled despite yourself. “Dionysus finds her afterwards, in many versions. He marries her. Places her crown among the stars.”
Kenan pointed at Duke. “See, that’s the move. Someone gets abandoned after helping with the maze, you give them stars.”
Duke deadpanned, “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You should. Gotham could use more stars.”
Duke’s expression softened.
He looked ahead.
“Yeah,” he said. “It could.”
The thread tightened.
You all stopped.
Ahead, the tunnel opened into the heart of the labyrinth.
It was not a room.
It was a city. Or the idea of one.
Gotham’s skyline rose underground, impossible and miniature, buildings made of bronze and black glass. Streets twisted in maze patterns. Tiny lights flickered in windows. At the centre stood a tower made from fused symbols: bat, shield, eagle, dragon, sunburst, every legacy piled on top of itself until none of them were clear anymore.
And coiled around the tower was the Minotaur.
Not the ancient beast.
A Gotham version. Its body was made of shadow and rusted train metal, horns of broken bronze, eyes burning gold. A massive engine heart pulsed inside its chest, powered by the stolen magic that had created the labyrinth.
Duke stared at it. “That’s new.”
Kenan flexed his hands. “Can we punch this part?”
You drew your sword. “Yes.”
Kenan grinned. “Finally.”
The Minotaur roared. The underground city shook.
Duke moved first, throwing light across the bronze streets, revealing paths where there had been walls. Kenan launched upward, slamming into the beast’s shoulder hard enough to shatter part of its rusted hide. You ran along the thread, lasso in one hand, sword in the other, following the route as the maze rearranged beneath your feet.
The Minotaur swung one massive arm.
Kenan caught the blow and skidded backwards through a row of miniature buildings.
“Okay,” he shouted, “that cow hits like capitalism!”
Duke vaulted over a shifting wall. “Focus!”
“I am focused!”
“You are making jokes!”
“That’s how I focus!”
The beast turned toward Duke. Its eyes flared.
The maze around him folded inward, walls rising, streets narrowing, shadows swallowing the light.
Duke stopped. For one awful second, the city tried to bury him in darkness.
Not physically.
Worse. Symbolically.
Gotham’s night rose around him, whispering again.
Not enough. Not Bat enough. Not chosen. Not shadow. Not son. Not Robin. Not legacy.
Duke’s light flickered.
You shouted his name.
He looked up.
You could not reach him. The maze had cut between you.
Kenan could. He flew through the bronze wall like a meteor, smashing a path open with both fists.
“Hey!” he shouted at the darkness around Duke. “Back off, haunted architecture!”
Duke sucked in a breath.
Light erupted from him.
Not harsh. Not blinding.
Dawn. Warm gold spilled across the miniature streets, burning back the shadow.
The Minotaur screamed.
Duke lifted his chin.
“I’m not supposed to be Batman,” he said.
His light brightened.
“I’m not supposed to be Robin.”
The maze trembled.
“I’m the Signal.”
The dawn-light burst outward, illuminating the path straight to the beast’s engine heart.
You ran.
The thread on your wrist burned gold.
Kenan met you halfway, landing beside you with a crack in the bronze road.
“Plan?” he asked.
You pointed your sword at the glowing engine. “Duke reveals the path. You crack the armour. I pull the heart free.”
Kenan grinned. “See? Plans. Growth.”
Duke’s voice came through comms. “You have eight seconds before the maze shifts again.”
“That is not many seconds,” Kenan said.
“Then move.”
Kenan moved.
He flew straight into the Minotaur’s chest, red energy flaring around him, shoulder-first into shadow-metal armour. The impact shook the entire underground city. Cracks raced across the beast’s torso.
You leapt. Duke’s light caught you midair, bending off mirrored walls, showing you the only angle that mattered.
Your lasso flew.
Gold wrapped around the engine heart.
The Minotaur roared. The tower of symbols began to collapse.
Duke shouted, “Pull!”
You planted your feet against the beast’s chest, every muscle screaming.
The heart resisted.
Old magic. Gotham shadow. Stolen symbols. Every inherited burden twisted into one ugly machine.
Kenan slammed into the crack again. Duke poured daylight into the wound. You pulled.
The heart tore free.
The Minotaur shattered.
The underground city exploded into gold thread.
For a moment, you were weightless.
Then the three of you hit the floor of Robinson Park station in a heap.
Kenan landed first. Duke landed on him. You landed on Duke.
Everyone groaned.
Kenan’s voice came muffled from underneath both of you. “I am heroically crushed.”
Duke lifted his head. “You’re fine.”
“My bones disagree.”
“You have enhanced durability.”
“My feelings don’t.”
You pushed yourself up on one elbow. “Is everyone alive?”
Kenan raised one thumb. “Regrettably.”
Duke rolled off him and sat up, breathing hard. His visor was cracked. Blood ran from a small cut near his temple. His suit glowed faintly with leftover dawn-light.
“You’re bleeding,” you said.
He touched the cut. “So are you.”
You blinked and realised your forearm was scraped open from wrist to elbow.
Kenan sat up, alarm replacing theatrics. “Wait, both of you are bleeding? Rude. I leave you alone for five seconds.”
“You were under us,” Duke said.
“Emotionally absent, then.”
Despite yourself, you laughed.
The bronze door was gone. The station was only a station again: cracked tile, rusted tracks, daylight spilling weakly from the stairwell above. The labyrinth had vanished, leaving behind a single piece of golden thread wrapped around your wrist.
It faded as you watched.
Not gone.
Absorbed. Remembered.
Duke leaned back against a pillar.
Kenan sat beside him.
You settled across from them, suddenly exhausted down to your bones.
For a few minutes, none of you spoke.
Then Kenan said, “So. Trauma maze.”
Duke closed his eyes. “Yep.”
“Not a fan.”
“Nope.”
You rested your head against the pillar behind you. “Labyrinths are rarely pleasant.”
Kenan looked at you. “Theseus was still trash.”
“He was complicated.”
“He abandoned the thread girl.”
“Yes.”
“Trash.”
Duke nodded. “I’m with him.”
You sighed. “Fine. Trash.”
Kenan looked victorious.
Then he grew quiet.
The morning light from the stairs stretched across the platform, touching Duke’s boots first.
Kenan watched it.
“You really mean it?” he asked Duke.
Duke opened one eye. “Mean what?”
“That you’re not trying to be Batman.”
Duke was silent for a moment.
Then he said, “Yeah.”
Kenan leaned back on his hands. “That’s brave.”
Duke looked at him, surprised.
Kenan shrugged, suddenly awkward. “What? It is. People think being brave is wearing the big symbol. But sometimes it’s looking at the big symbol and going, nah, I’m doing something else.”
Duke huffed softly. “That is the most Kenan way anyone has ever complimented me.”
“You’re welcome.”
Duke’s smile faded into something thoughtful.
“You meant it too?” he asked.
Kenan did not pretend not to understand.
He looked down at the crest on his chest.
“That I’m Kenan Kong?” His mouth twisted. “Trying to.”
Duke nodded.
Kenan picked at a crack in the platform.
“It’s weird,” he said. “People hear New Super-Man, and they immediately compare. Clark. Kon. Jon. Whoever. Like I entered a contest I didn’t know I signed up for, and keep losing categories that were invented before I got there.”
You listened quietly.
Kenan’s voice softened.
“And yeah, I was arrogant. I am arrogant.”
Duke raised an eyebrow.
Kenan pointed at him. “No commentary from the daylight section.”
Duke held up both hands.
Kenan sighed.
“But sometimes it feels like if I’m not loud about being myself, the symbol eats me.”
Duke’s face changed. You looked down at your bracers.
“If I’m not loud, people call me the wrong thing,” you said quietly.
Both of them looked at you.
You traced the edge of your wrist where the golden thread had faded.
“If Duke is not clear, people fold him into Batman’s shadow. If you are not loud, people fold you into Superman’s.” You swallowed. “If I am not precise, people fold me back into womanhood because it makes the story simpler.”
Kenan’s expression softened.
Duke looked at you with quiet understanding.
“The maze knew that,” you said. “It did not create the wound. It only found where to press.”
Duke nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
Kenan was silent for once.
Then he leaned forward and held out his hand.
You looked at it. “What are you doing?”
“Group hand thing.”
Duke stared at him. “Group hand thing?”
“Yes. Like a team. Don’t make it weird.”
“You made it weird immediately.”
“I made it iconic.”
You smiled.
After a moment, you placed your hand over Kenan’s.
Duke looked deeply sceptical.
Kenan stared at him. “Come on, daylight.”
Duke rolled his eyes but put his hand on top.
The three of you sat there on the filthy floor of an abandoned Gotham subway station, hands stacked together like children making a playground vow.
It should have felt silly. It did feel silly.
It also felt sacred.
Kenan looked at your hands. “Okay. What are we saying?”
Duke blinked. “You started this and don’t know?”
“I’m an ideas guy.”
“You’re a chaos guy.”
“Same department.”
You considered.
Then you said, “No borrowed shadows.”
Duke’s hand tightened.
Kenan’s eyes lifted to yours.
“No borrowed shadows,” he repeated.
Duke nodded once. “No borrowed suns.”
You smiled.
Kenan looked at you.
You looked down at the eagle on your chest.
“No borrowed names,” you said.
For a moment, the station seemed to hold the words.
Then Kenan ruined it beautifully by whispering, “We are so cool.”
Duke groaned. “And there it goes.”
You laughed.
The sound echoed down the empty tunnels, bright and alive.
Eventually, the three of you climbed the stairs back into Gotham’s daylight.
The city was louder now. Traffic snarled. Someone shouted at someone else from a food cart. A pigeon landed on a gargoyle as if it owned the building. Sunlight dripped down between the towers, thin but real.
Kenan breathed in. “Still damp.”
Duke looked at him. “Still tropical.”
“Lies.”
“Gotham lies. You adapt.”
You stepped onto the sidewalk, turning your face toward the pale sun.
The symbol on your chest felt heavy.
But not wrong.
Duke stood beside you, visor cracked, blood drying near his temple, daylight catching on the yellow of his suit.
Kenan hovered a few inches above the ground, cape moving behind him, the crest on his chest no less borrowed and no less his.
You thought of Theseus and Ariadne. The maze. The thread. The abandonment. The crown placed among stars.
Maybe the old story had been told wrong too many times.
Maybe the thread girl did not need a god to make her immortal. Maybe she had always been the reason anyone survived.
Duke glanced at you. “You good?”
You smiled faintly. “Clearer.”
He nodded like he understood the difference between fine and clearer.
Kenan looked between you both. “I’m starving.”
Duke stared. “We just fought a magic Minotaur.”
You considered. “I could eat.”
Duke sighed. “There’s a diner three blocks over.”
Kenan landed fully. “Does it have good food?”
“It has Gotham food.”
“That sounds threatening.”
“It is.”
You started walking.
The other two fell into step with you.
Not ahead. Not behind.
Beside.
The city moved around you, grim and loud and stubborn. Morning settled over Gotham like a dare. Somewhere beneath your feet, the labyrinth was gone, or sleeping, or waiting for some other generation to come looking for the centre.
But for now, you had escaped.
Not because one of you was chosen. Not because the symbols fit perfectly.
Because Duke had made daylight where the city expected shadow.
Because Kenan had named himself under a borrowed crest and made it answer.
Because you had carried a thread through a story that once had no place for a son like you.
The old Trinity had their myths.
Batman in the dark. Superman in the sky. Wonder Woman before the gods.
But you were not them.
You were the signal lit at morning. The dragon wearing the sun as a challenge. The son of truth with gold thread around his wrist.
The new big three, maybe.
Or maybe just three young heroes walking toward breakfast after surviving a haunted emotional murder maze.
content damian wayne & jon kent & wonder boy! reader, ftm! reader, m! reader, legacy, identity insecurity, brief dysphoria, emotional vulnerability, blood/injury, magical trial, references to damian’s league upbringing, pressure of being superman’s son, hurt/comfort, magical trial, blood/minor injury, cursed water, brief peril, references to damian being raised as a weapon, pressure of being batman’s son, pressure of being superman’s son, emotional distress
masterlist
word count 6.5k
author's note guys i actually love fics with like being trapped by mystical forces and being forced to confront your worst fears/insecurities. does this trope have a specific name??? also this fic made me incredibly sad as i was writing jon's part ;(
Damian Wayne did not believe in fate.
He believed in training. He believed in preparation, discipline, precision, surveillance, sharpened steel, escape routes, and the obvious fact that most people used the word fate when they meant poor planning.
The gods, in his opinion, were simply powerful beings with a branding problem.
You had told him this was a blasphemous thing to say on Themysciran soil.
He had looked you dead in the eye and said, “Good.”
Jon had choked on his water.
That had been three hours ago, before the temple door sealed behind you, before Jon’s powers flickered like a dying candle, before the marble floor split open beneath your feet and dropped all three of you into a cavern that should not have existed under the island.
Now Damian was standing in knee-deep black water, sword drawn, cloak soaked at the hem, glaring at a wall of ancient Greek script as if he could intimidate it into being less inconvenient.
Jon hovered half an inch above the water, then dropped into it with a splash.
He winced. “Okay. Flight’s still being weird.”
“Stop attempting it,” Damian snapped. “You are wasting energy.”
Jon wrung water out of his sleeve. “Good to know nearly dying didn’t improve your bedside manner.”
“We are not nearly dying.”
“You say that every time we are absolutely nearly dying.”
“I say it because panic is inefficient.”
“You also say it when you’re panicking.”
Damian’s head turned slowly.
Jon smiled with the brave idiocy of a boy who had known Damian Wayne long enough to understand danger and loved him enough to ignore it.
You stood between them, because that had become your job somewhere along the way.
Not officially. Officially, the three of you were equals: Robin, Superboy, Wonder Boy. The next generation of the old alliance. Bat, Super, Wonder. Shadow, sun, truth.
Unofficially, Damian and Jon could turn a tactical disagreement into a philosophical blood feud before most people finished blinking, and you had been raised among immortal warrior women with centuries-long grudges over poetry competitions. You knew how to stand in the middle of a storm and look unimpressed.
“Both of you,” you said, “save your breath.”
Damian’s gaze cut to you. “I have breath to spare.”
“Yes,” you said. “And you use it tragically.”
Jon grinned.
Damian looked betrayed. “You are taking his side?”
“I am taking the side of my sanity.”
“That is not a side. That is a doomed cause.”
“You would know.”
Jon made a tiny noise.
Damian’s eyes narrowed.
You raised one hand before he could start. “We are beneath a sealed Themysciran temple, standing in water that smells like old magic, surrounded by writing older than most mortal kingdoms. We can resume bickering once we are no longer inside what appears to be an underworld trial.”
Jon looked down at the black water.
It reflected nothing. Not your faces. Not the pale stone ceiling. Not the gold at your wrists or the red on your cloak.
Just darkness.
“Underworld trial,” Jon repeated. “That’s fun. That’s a fun thing to say.”
“It is not the literal Underworld,” Damian said. “The geography is impossible.”
You looked at him. He looked back.
“Fine,” he said. “The geography is more impossible than usual.”
The cavern stretched ahead in a long corridor of white stone veined with gold and red. Pomegranate trees grew from cracks in the walls, their roots sinking into the black water, their branches heavy with fruit the colour of fresh blood. The air smelled sweet and metallic.
At the far end of the corridor stood an archway.
Above it, carved into the stone, were three symbols.
A bat. A shield. An eagle.
Jon stared. “Okay, that feels targeted.”
“Most divine architecture is,” you said.
Damian glanced at you. “This is not divine.”
The pomegranate nearest him split open on the branch.
Its seeds glowed like rubies.
A voice moved through the cavern.
Not loud. Not soft.
Everywhere.
THREE HEIRS ENTER. THREE TRUTHS RETURN.
Jon went very still. Damian raised his sword.
You felt the words settle over your skin like cold rain.
Heirs.
You hated that word sometimes.
It was a beautiful word in stories. Heavy with lineage. Crowns. Blood. Oaths. The passing of torches from one hand to another.
In real life, it had teeth.
Damian heard heir and felt a chain. Jon heard heir and felt a mountain. You heard heir and wondered whether you had inherited something or interrupted it.
The voice came again.
BLOOD. SUN. TRUTH.
Damian’s jaw tightened.
Jon’s eyes flicked toward you, worried.
You forced yourself to breathe steadily.
“This is a test,” you said.
“Obviously,” Damian replied.
Jon swallowed. “Can we fail?”
The water rippled.
None of you moved.
Then, from somewhere in the dark ahead, a child laughed.
Damian’s whole body went rigid.
Not normal alertness. Not mission readiness.
Recognition.
You saw it in the way his sword dipped half an inch before snapping back up. In the sudden tension at the corner of his mouth. In the way his eyes sharpened into something too young and too old at once.
“Damian?” Jon asked.
Damian did not answer.
A shape stepped into view beneath the archway.
A boy.
Small. Barefoot. Blood on his white training tunic. A wooden practice sword clutched in one hand. His hair was dark, his green eyes bright and cold and far too familiar.
Damian at ten.
Jon breathed, “Oh.”
The child smiled. It was not a child’s smile.
“You are slow,” the vision said.
Damian’s face emptied. That frightened you more than anger would have.
“You are not real,” he said.
The child tilted his head. “Real enough to wound you.”
Damian stepped forward.
You caught his wrist.
His pulse hammered under your fingers.
He looked at your hand, then at your face, and for one instant, you saw the boy under the blade. Not the heir to Batman. Not the grandson of the Demon. Not Robin. Just Damian, furious that anyone had found the scar before he could hide it.
“Do not,” you said quietly.
His eyes flashed. “Release me.”
“No.”
Jon stepped to Damian’s other side. “D, it’s bait.”
“I know that.”
“Then don’t bite.”
“I said I know.”
The child in the archway laughed again.
“Still hiding behind them?” he asked in Damian’s voice. “How disappointing.”
Damian’s wrist flexed under your grip.
“You were trained better than this,” the child continued. “Mother expected more. Grandfather expected more. Even Father expected—”
Damian moved.
Fast.
Too fast.
He tore free from your hand and lunged.
The black water erupted. Roots surged up from beneath the surface, coiling around Damian’s legs, yanking him forward. Jon shouted and grabbed him around the waist. You threw your lasso without thinking, gold cutting through dark, wrapping around Damian’s wrist just as the roots tried to drag him under.
For a second, all three of you strained against the pull.
Damian snarled, slashing at the roots with his sword.
“Stop fighting the water!” you shouted.
“Absurd instruction!”
“It is feeding on resistance!”
Jon tightened his grip, boots skidding beneath the water. “Then what do we do?”
The child smiled.
THE BLOOD HEIR KNOWS ONLY THE BLADE.
Damian froze.
The roots tightened.
You saw pain flash across his face, quickly buried.
Something hot rose in you.
“No,” you said.
The cavern stilled.
Jon looked at you. Damian did too.
You stepped forward, lasso wrapped around one arm, water dragging at your legs.
“No,” you repeated, louder. “That is not truth. That is accusation.”
The air hummed.
The child’s eyes turned toward you.
“You speak for him?” it asked.
“I stand with him.”
Damian’s face shifted.
Just slightly.
The child smiled wider. “Because he cannot stand alone?”
Your grip tightened on the lasso. “Because he has had to for too long.”
The words landed.
Damian stopped struggling.
The roots loosened by a fraction.
You moved closer, never looking away from the apparition.
“You call him blood as if blood is destiny,” you said. “As if a boy must become whatever cruelty shaped him first. But blood is not command. Blood is memory.”
The cavern trembled.
Jon’s arms were still locked around Damian, holding him upright, holding him back.
You looked at Damian then.
His eyes were bright with fury. Or pain. Or both.
“You are not your grandfather’s blade,” you said.
Damian’s mouth parted.
“You are not your mother’s ambition. You are not your father’s fear.” Your voice softened. “You are not even your own worst lesson.”
The roots loosened more.
The child’s expression twisted.
Damian looked like he wanted to run you through and cling to you at the same time.
“You were trained to be a weapon,” you said. “But weapons do not choose mercy. You do.”
Jon’s breath caught.
Damian looked away sharply.
Too late.
You had seen it. The wound beneath the pride. The terrible, secret hope that maybe he was more than the thing that had been sharpened.
The child hissed, “Mercy is weakness.”
Damian’s head snapped back toward it.
“No,” he said.
His voice shook.
Only once.
Then it steadied.
“No,” he repeated. “Mercy is difficult.”
The water went still. The roots slipped from his legs and sank beneath the surface.
Jon did not let go immediately. Damian did not tell him to.
The child faded, leaving only the archway and the pomegranate trees and the echo of a laugh that no longer sounded powerful.
For a while, no one spoke.
Then Damian said, very quietly, “You may release me now.”
Jon’s arms loosened.
“Right,” he said. “Sorry.”
Damian stepped away, adjusting his wet cloak with exaggerated dignity. His face was composed again, but you could see the faint tremor in the hand holding his sword.
You moved toward him.
He stiffened.
So you stopped.
There were ways to approach a wounded animal. There were ways to approach a prince. Damian was both, though he would have removed your spleen for saying so.
“Are you hurt?” you asked.
“No.”
“Damian.”
His jaw tightened. “Not significantly.”
Jon looked down. “Your ankle.”
Damian glared. “Kent.”
“Your ankle is bleeding.”
“I am aware.”
“Then why did you say no?”
“Because it is not significant.”
You knelt in the water.
Damian stepped back. “Unnecessary.”
“Bleeding into potentially cursed underworld water is generally considered inadvisable.”
Jon nodded. “That sounds medically accurate.”
“You are not a doctor,” Damian said.
“No, but I grew up with Ma. ‘Don’t bleed in mystery water’ feels like something she’d support.”
Damian looked long-suffering, which was how he looked when he was losing and knew it.
You wrapped a hand around his boot carefully and lifted his ankle just enough to inspect the cut. It was shallow but messy, sliced open by one of the roots. You tore a strip from the inner lining of your cloak and tied it around the wound.
Damian watched you.
You felt his stare like the tip of a knife.
“What?” you asked without looking up.
“You are overly familiar.”
“You are bleeding.”
“That does not answer the charge.”
You tied the bandage snugly. “I am familiar because I care whether you bleed to death in theatrical locations.”
Jon made a strangled sound, somewhere between laugh and cough.
Damian’s ears went pink.
You decided, mercifully, not to comment.
Then Damian said, “I was not going to be dragged under.”
You finished the knot. “I know.”
His eyes narrowed. “You intervened as if I was.”
“I intervened because you should not have to prove you can survive alone while we are standing beside you.”
Damian went silent.
Jon’s expression softened.
You stood, water dripping from your cloak.
Damian looked away first.
The three of you continued through the archway.
Beyond it, the corridor widened into a chamber filled with hanging stars.
Not real stars. Small orbs of white fire suspended from the ceiling on golden threads. They swayed gently though there was no wind, casting fractured light across the water.
Jon stopped.
His face changed.
You and Damian noticed at the same time.
“Jon?” you asked.
He did not answer.
The stars brightened.
Then the chamber became a Kansas field.
Not fully. The black water remained underfoot, and the pomegranate roots still twisted along the walls, but suddenly there was tall grass around you, silver under moonlight. A farmhouse stood in the distance, windows glowing warm gold. The air smelled like soil and summer rain.
Jon’s breathing changed.
Damian stepped closer to him.
A voice called from the field.
“Jonathan?”
Jon flinched.
Clark Kent stood beneath the moon.
Not Superman. Not exactly. He wore the suit, yes, but the cape hung still behind him, and the shield on his chest seemed brighter than anything else in the world.
Beside him stood Lois Lane, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
Jon’s face went pale.
“This is not real,” Damian said immediately.
Jon swallowed. “I know.”
But knowing was not the same as not hurting.
The false Clark looked at him with terrible gentleness.
“Son,” he said. “You have to be better than this.”
Jon’s hands curled.
The false Lois sighed. “You carry so much power, Jon. You cannot afford mistakes.”
“That’s not my mom,” Jon whispered.
“No,” you said.
But the words had already entered him. You saw them burrow under his skin.
Jon Kent, who smiled like sunrise and cracked jokes when rooms got tense. Jon Kent, who could lift tractors before he understood taxes. Jon Kent, who had grown up with love so strong that people assumed pressure could not wound him.
The false Clark stepped closer.
“You have my name,” he said. “My symbol. My powers.”
Jon backed up half a step.
Damian moved with him, shoulder nearly touching his.
“Enough,” Damian said.
The false Clark ignored him.
“You must be kind,” he told Jon. “You must be strong. You must never frighten them. You must never fail in public. You must never lose control. If you break something, they will remember you are not human. If you hesitate, they will remember you are not Superman.”
Jon’s eyes shone.
Your chest ached.
The false Lois looked almost sad.
“And if you are hurt,” she said, “smile anyway. People need hope more than they need your honesty.”
Jon’s face crumpled.
Just a little.
But enough.
Damian’s sword was in his hand before you could blink. “This illusion is defective.”
He advanced.
The field darkened.
The hanging stars snapped their threads. One by one, they dropped from the ceiling and struck the water like meteors, bursting into white flame around you. Steam rose. Jon staggered, his powers flickering wildly. His eyes flashed red, then dimmed.
“Damian, wait!” you shouted.
Too late.
A ring of fire closed around Jon.
Damian swore and lunged toward him, but the flames rose higher.
You grabbed his arm. “Stop.”
“Kent is trapped.”
“Yes. And the trial is using your fear to intensify his.”
Damian’s face was terrifying.
You had seen him angry before. You had seen him cold. You had seen him strike with perfect violence and ruthless intent.
This was different. This was panic dressed as command.
“Then tell me how to break it,” he snapped.
Jon stood inside the fire, breathing hard, staring at the false versions of his parents.
“I don’t want it,” he said.
His voice was small.
The false Clark tilted his head. “What?”
Jon’s fists clenched.
“I don’t want to be Superman.”
The fire roared.
Damian went still.
You did too.
Jon looked horrified by his own confession, like the words had escaped before he could drag them back behind his teeth.
“I don’t mean—” He shook his head. “I love my dad. I love what he does. I love helping people. But everyone looks at me like I’m supposed to become him, and I can’t. I can’t be that good all the time. I can’t be that calm. I can’t be that safe.”
The false Lois watched him without mercy.
Jon’s voice broke.
“Sometimes I get angry. Sometimes I want to hit harder than I should. Sometimes I’m scared I’ll break someone just because I forgot how strong I am.” He pressed both hands over the shield on his chest. “And sometimes I hate this because everyone loves it before they know me.”
The fire dimmed.
Only slightly.
You felt Damian trembling under your hand.
He was staring at Jon like the world had shifted beneath him.
Because Jon was the sun.
That was the lie, wasn’t it?
Jon was warmth. Jon was laughter. Jon was the farm boy who believed in people until they believed in themselves. Jon was supposed to be easy to love because he made loving look easy.
But even the sun was fire. Even hope could burn its bearer alive.
You released Damian’s arm and stepped toward the flames.
They licked at your boots but did not burn.
Truth magic recognised truth magic.
“Jon,” you said.
He turned toward you, eyes wet.
“I don’t know how to be him,” he whispered.
“You are not meant to be him.”
The false Clark’s gaze sharpened.
You ignored it.
“You are not Clark’s second draft,” you said. “You are not Metropolis’s spare sun. You are Jonathan Kent.”
Jon laughed once, broken. “That’s the problem.”
“No,” Damian said.
His voice cut through the fire.
Jon looked at him.
Damian stood stiffly at the edge of the flames, jaw clenched, sword lowered at his side.
“That is the point,” Damian said.
Jon blinked.
Damian looked deeply uncomfortable, which meant what he was about to say mattered.
“I did not befriend you because you were Superman’s son,” he said. “In fact, that was initially a mark against you.”
Jon let out a watery laugh.
Damian’s mouth twitched, then flattened again.
“You were loud,” he continued. “Naive. Reckless. Untrained in basic stealth. Excessively optimistic.”
“Is this comfort?” Jon asked.
“Yes,” Damian snapped. Then, quieter: “I did not care for the symbol. I cared that you stayed.”
The fire lowered.
Jon’s face went still.
Damian looked away, but he kept speaking.
“You stayed when I insulted you. You stayed when I attempted to drive you off. You stayed when I was cruel because I believed cruelty would prove I did not need anyone.” His throat moved. “You saw me as a person before I had decided whether I wanted to be one.”
The false Clark flickered.
Jon stared at Damian like he had forgotten how to breathe.
Damian’s voice dropped.
“You are not valuable because you may one day become Superman. You are valuable because you are irritatingly, relentlessly yourself.”
You felt something in your chest unfold.
Jon took one step forward.
The fire parted around him.
He crossed the circle and stopped in front of Damian.
“You think I’m valuable?” he asked softly.
Damian’s ears turned red again. “I literally just said so.”
“Yeah, but you said it in Damian.”
“There is no other way I can say it.”
Jon smiled. It trembled.
Then he hugged Damian.
Damian went completely rigid. His sword arm lifted out to the side like a cat avoiding bathwater.
You pressed your lips together.
“Do not laugh,” Damian said over Jon’s shoulder.
“I would never,” you lied.
Jon held him tighter.
After a moment, Damian’s free hand settled, awkward and careful, against Jon’s back.
The false Clark and Lois dissolved into pale light. The field vanished. The chamber returned: black water, pomegranate trees, hanging golden threads with no stars left attached.
Jon pulled back, wiping at his face with his sleeve.
“Okay,” he said. “That was awful.”
“Agreed,” Damian said.
“You hugged back.”
“I prevented you from falling.”
“I was standing.”
“You are emotionally unstable.”
“So are you.”
“I am emotionally disciplined.”
You looked at him. Jon looked at him.
Damian scowled. “Do not start.”
You smiled faintly.
But your smile did not last.
Because the water had begun to move again.
This time, it moved toward you.
Not ripples. Not waves.
Hands.
Dark, liquid hands rising from the surface, reaching, reaching, reaching.
The cavern voice returned.
TRUTH HEIR. NAME YOURSELF.
Your breath stopped.
Damian and Jon turned toward you.
The hands rose higher.
They did not grab you.
Not yet.
They waited.
That was worse.
You felt the weight of the eagle on your chest. The gold bracers. The red cloak. The Themysciran blade at your hip. The armour Diana had watched being fitted to your body with pride so fierce it had nearly broken you.
Wonder Boy. Son of Themyscira. Truth heir.
Some days, those words made you feel like you could split the sky. Some days, they felt like borrowed armour.
The water around your legs turned cold.
Jon stepped toward you. “Hey. We’re here.”
Damian’s eyes sharpened. “What does it want?”
You knew. Of course you knew.
The trial had taken Damian’s bloodline and turned it into a blade. It had taken Jon’s legacy and turned it into a sun too bright to survive.
Now it would take your truth.
The black water lifted, smooth as glass, and became Themyscira.
Not the island as it was. The island as fear remembered it.
The training yard beneath a violet dawn. Stone columns. Olive trees. Bronze shields. Amazons standing in rows, silent and watching.
You saw yourself as a child in the centre.
Small. Barefoot. Hair cropped badly because you had cut it yourself with a ceremonial knife and cried afterwards because it still had not made your reflection feel right.
Diana knelt before the child version of you.
The real memory had been warm.
This one was not.
In the vision, Diana’s face was shadowed.
“A son?” someone whispered.
Another voice: “Themyscira has no sons.”
Another: “Then what is he?”
Your throat closed.
Jon moved closer. “That’s not real.”
“No,” you said.
But it had roots in something real.
Not rejection. Not hatred. You had been loved.
That was what made guilt such a clever knife.
The vision shifted.
You stood older now, perhaps twelve, holding a spear too long for your arms. An Amazon instructor circled you.
“You must understand,” she said, not cruelly, never cruelly, “you are unprecedented.”
Unprecedented.
The word had followed you for years.
Like a laurel. Like a leash.
The vision shifted again.
A reporter outside a museum smiling too brightly. “Wonder Woman’s little Amazon princess.”
Your stomach twisted.
Jon made a soft, angry sound.
Damian’s voice went cold. “Who said that?”
You almost smiled.
Almost.
The water rose to your waist.
The voice spoke again.
WHAT IS A SON OF AN ISLAND OF DAUGHTERS?
The Amazons in the vision stared.
The child-you stared too.
Waiting. Begging the future to know the answer.
You tried to speak.
Nothing came out.
The water climbed higher.
Jon’s hand found yours beneath the surface.
Warm. Strong.
“I’ve got you,” he said.
Damian stepped to your other side.
He did not touch you immediately. He looked at your face first, asking in his sharp, silent way.
You nodded.
His hand closed around your wrist like a vow.
Not soft. Not gentle exactly.
Certain.
The water stopped rising.
You dragged in a breath.
The vision-Diana stood in front of you now. But her eyes were not Diana’s. They were blank marble.
“You wear my symbol,” she said. “But does it fit?”
That one hurt. More than you expected.
Your fingers tightened around Jon’s hand. Damian’s grip tightened around your wrist.
The false Diana stepped closer.
“You were raised among women. Trained by women. Loved by women. Every story that made you was shaped by daughters, sisters, queens, mothers.” Her voice softened with awful precision. “Did becoming a son mean leaving them behind?”
“No,” Jon said immediately.
But the trial was not asking him.
It was asking you.
Your chest burned.
You thought of Diana kneeling before you when you were young, her hands open, her eyes full of fierce tenderness.
Then we will learn what kind of son an Amazon may raise.
You thought of Hippolyta placing a bronze training sword in your hands and saying, A child of Themyscira does not become less ours by telling the truth. You thought of the old rites Diana had found for you. Heroes of old. Beloved boys. Exiles, princes, warriors, poets. Achilles raging at the shore. Patroclus wearing borrowed armour out of love. Orpheus singing open the dark. Hyacinthus blooming red beneath Apollo’s grief. Odysseus returning home in rags and still being known.
Stories where manhood was not domination. Stories where love made and unmade kingdoms.
“I don’t know,” you whispered.
Jon turned toward you. “You don’t have to—”
“Yes,” you said, voice breaking. “I do.”
The water trembled.
The false Diana watched.
Your lungs hurt.
“I don’t know if it fits every day,” you said.
The admission felt like cutting yourself open in front of them.
Damian went very still.
Jon’s eyes softened.
You stared at the symbol on your chest.
“Some days I look at it and feel proud enough to glow. Some days I feel like everyone is being kind while secretly making room for a contradiction.” Your laugh was small and wounded. “The first son of Themyscira. Diana’s boy. Wonder Boy. It sounds beautiful until I am alone and wonder if I am an exception people praise so they do not have to admit I am lonely.”
Jon’s hand squeezed yours.
You kept going.
Because truth demanded its due.
“I was not raised to be what I am. Not at first. I was raised in songs meant for daughters, trained in traditions made by women who built paradise after men hurt them. And I love that. I love them. I love everything that made me.” Your voice shook. “But sometimes I am afraid my becoming made their story harder.”
The false Diana lifted her chin.
The Amazons whispered.
Damian spoke. “No.”
You looked at him.
His face was pale with controlled fury.
“No,” he repeated. “That is an accusation wearing your voice.”
You stared.
He looked almost angry at you for believing it.
“You told me blood is not command,” Damian said. “Then tradition is not a cage.”
The water dropped by an inch.
Jon nodded, stepping closer. “You didn’t make Themyscira harder. You made it bigger.”
Your throat tightened.
Jon’s eyes shone, but his voice stayed steady.
“You think being a son means you took something from its daughters,” he said. “But maybe it means everything they built was strong enough to hold more than anyone expected.”
The water dropped again.
Damian’s thumb pressed against your wrist, grounding you.
“You did not betray womanhood,” he said, stumbling slightly over the softness of the words but forcing them out anyway. “You were not deserting a battlefield. You were identifying the correct one.”
Jon blinked at him.
You did too.
Damian’s face flushed. “What?”
“That was…” Jon started.
“Do not.”
“Really good.”
“I said do not.”
You laughed. It broke out of you, half-sob and half-sunrise.
The false Diana flickered.
The water dropped to your knees.
The trial waited.
You understood then.
Your friends could stand with you. They could name the lie. They could hand you the thread.
But you had to weave.
You released Jon’s hand. Damian’s grip lingered for half a second before letting go.
You stepped forward.
The black water stilled around your legs.
The false Diana watched you. The Amazons watched you. The child-you watched you.
You placed one hand over the eagle on your chest.
“I am a son of Themyscira,” you said.
The cavern trembled.
You lifted your chin. “I was raised by women who survived. By warriors who turned pain into law and exile into sanctuary. I do not stand apart from that. I stand because of it.”
The false Diana’s expression cracked.
You kept going.
“I am not proof that Themyscira failed to remain unchanged. I am proof that truth was always its highest law.”
Jon smiled, bright and trembling.
Damian watched you like he was witnessing a blade being forged.
“I am not daughter, maiden, princess, or mistake,” you said. “I am not a contradiction for loving the hands that raised me. I am their son. Their student. Their brother-in-arms. Their heir.”
Gold light began to rise through the water.
Your bracers warmed. The lasso at your hip hummed.
“And if the world has no place for that yet,” you said, voice ringing through the chamber, “then I will make one.”
The vision shattered.
Not violently.
Beautifully.
The false Amazons dissolved into petals. The training yard became light. The child version of you smiled once before vanishing, and you felt something inside you reach backwards across time to take his hand.
The black water turned clear.
The pomegranate trees bloomed white.
For a moment, the cavern was full of spring.
Then the voice spoke one final time.
THREE HEIRS ENTERED. THREE CHOICES RETURN.
The archway at the far end opened.
Beyond it, stairs led upward.
Real sunlight spilled down them.
Jon exhaled shakily. “I love stairs. I’ve never loved stairs before, but I love these stairs.”
Damian sheathed his sword. “Focus.”
“I am focused. On stairs.”
You tried to take a step and nearly fell.
Both of them caught you.
Jon at your shoulder. Damian at your elbow.
“Whoa,” Jon said. “Easy.”
“I am fine,” you said automatically.
Damian gave you a look of pure disgust. “Do not start adopting my flaws. You lack the training.”
Despite everything, you smiled. “Your concern is moving.”
“My concern is practical. Carrying you would slow us down.”
Jon looked at him. “You would absolutely carry him.”
Damian looked offended. “That is irrelevant.”
“You already thought about the best way to do it.”
“Obviously. That is called preparedness.”
You leaned slightly against Jon, suddenly too tired to pretend. “I can walk.”
Damian’s expression softened by one impossible fraction. “We know.”
Jon smiled. “We’re still helping.”
So they did.
The three of you climbed the stairs together: Robin, Superboy, Wonder Boy. Blood, sun, truth. Three heirs who had entered a trial and come out less like inheritors and more like boys who had chosen, again and again, not to become what fear demanded.
At the top of the stairs, the temple opened into dusk.
The real Themyscira spread before you. Olive trees silver in the evening light. White cliffs dropping into a wine-dark sea. Training yards ringing faintly with distant laughter and steel. The sky blushed pink and gold, soft as a blessing.
Jon breathed in. “Oh wow.”
Damian looked around, still alert. “We emerged approximately forty meters east of the original entrance.”
“You are allergic to wonder,” Jon said.
“I am allergic to imprecision.”
You stepped out from between them, letting the island air fill your lungs.
Home.
Still complicated. Still yours.
For a while, none of you spoke.
Then Damian said, “The trial was wrong.”
You looked at him.
He was facing the sea, not you.
Classic Damian. Emotional honesty delivered indirectly, like contraband.
“About which part?” you asked.
His jaw flexed.
“That you are a contradiction.”
Your chest tightened.
Jon smiled softly, looking down at his boots.
Damian continued, each word careful. “You are… irritatingly consistent.”
A laugh escaped you. “Thank you?”
“He means you’re you everywhere,” Jon translated. “On missions. In temples. When calling us out. When bleeding. When making myth references nobody asked for.”
“I ask for them,” you said.
“No, you inflict them.”
Damian nodded. “A rare moment of Kentian accuracy.”
Jon grinned. “Kentian?”
“Do not make me regret the phrasing.”
You looked between them, warmth spreading through the ache.
Damian glanced at you, then away.
“What I mean,” he said, quieter, “is that the symbol fits because you refuse to let it remain too small.”
Oh.
You swallowed.
Jon’s smile faded into something tender.
“Damian,” you said softly.
He stiffened. “Do not make this sentimental.”
“We are far past that.”
“We are not.”
“You hugged Jon in the underworld.”
“I stabilised him.”
Jon’s grin returned. “With your arms.”
Damian pointed at him. “You are on thin ice.”
“We were in water, actually.”
“You nearly cried in fire.”
“I did cry in fire.”
“Worse.”
You laughed, and the sound carried into the evening.
A group of Amazons training in the distance turned toward you. One raised a hand in greeting. You lifted yours back.
Jon watched the exchange.
“Does it feel different?” he asked.
You looked at him.
“After saying it like that?” he clarified.
You considered lying.
Not because you wanted to hide from them, but because vulnerability was exhausting. Even truth needed rest.
But Jon had stood in fire and admitted he did not want to be Superman.
Damian had faced the child trained to kill tenderness and chosen mercy.
You could be brave too.
“A little,” you said. “Not fixed. But… clearer.”
Jon nodded. “Clearer is good.”
“Yes.”
Damian looked at the sea. “Clarity is preferable to comfort.”
Jon sighed. “Buddy.”
“What?”
“Sometimes comfort is allowed.”
Damian scoffed.
You tilted your head. “Do you object to comfort philosophically or only when it is offered to you?”
Damian’s eyes narrowed. “You are both insufferable.”
Jon beamed. “We’re helping.”
“You are conspiring.”
“Also helping.”
You looked down at Damian’s bandaged ankle. “Speaking of help, that needs to be cleaned properly.”
“It is fine.”
“Damian.”
He glared.
You crossed your arms.
Jon crossed his arms too, purely for moral support.
Damian looked between you and realised, with visible irritation, that he was outnumbered.
“Fine,” he snapped. “But if anyone tells Pennyworth I sustained an injury due to magical shrubbery, I will deny it.”
Jon’s face lit up. “Magical shrubbery.”
“No.”
“Too late.”
“I will end you.”
“You’ll have to catch me.”
“You currently have unreliable flight.”
Jon paused. “That is hurtful and tactically accurate.”
You shook your head and started toward the infirmary path.
They followed. Of course they followed.
The path wound along the cliffside, past cypress trees and marble statues older than the languages most people spoke. The sea below moved dark and endless, gold from the sunset scattered across its surface like coins for the dead.
You thought of the trial.
Blood. Sun. Truth.
You thought of Damian saying mercy is difficult. Jon saying he did not want to be Superman. Your own voice saying, I am their son.
The words still frightened you.
But they also stood.
Like pillars. Like proof.
Halfway down the path, Jon fell into step beside you. Damian walked on your other side, slower than usual because of his ankle, though he would never admit it.
Jon looked thoughtful.
“You know,” he said, “earlier, when you said you’d make a place if the world didn’t have one?”
“Yes?”
“That felt very New Big Three.”
Damian made a sound of disdain. “That phrase remains ridiculous.”
“You like it.”
“I do not.”
“You like being included in it.”
“I tolerate the strategic implications.”
You smiled. “That means yes.”
“It means no.”
Jon leaned closer to you and stage-whispered, “It means yes in Damian.”
“I am standing right here.”
“We know,” Jon said cheerfully.
Damian muttered something in Arabic that you suspected was unflattering.
The infirmary came into view, white stone glowing in the evening light. Before you reached it, Damian stopped.
You and Jon turned.
He looked deeply uncomfortable.
Then he said, “Kent.”
Jon blinked. “Yeah?”
Damian stared at the ground for a moment, visibly wrestling his own pride into submission.
“You are not your father,” he said.
Jon’s smile faded.
Damian forced himself to look up. “And I am not saying that as an insult.”
Jon’s throat moved. “I know.”
“You are less controlled,” Damian said. “More impulsive. You ask too many questions. You show too much of what you feel on your face. You have abysmal instincts regarding secret identities in public spaces.”
Jon huffed a wet laugh. “Still comfort?”
“Yes,” Damian said, annoyed. “Obviously.”
You kept very still.
Damian’s voice softened, barely.
“But you are also more willing to believe people can become better before they have given you evidence. That is foolish.” A pause. “And occasionally necessary.”
Jon’s eyes shone.
Damian looked away. “You should not become Superman. The position is occupied.”
Jon laughed for real then.
Then he stepped forward and hugged Damian again.
This time, Damian sighed but did not freeze.
His hand lifted after only a second and gripped the back of Jon’s shirt.
Progress.
You smiled down at the path.
Then Jon reached out blindly and grabbed your wrist, tugging you into the hug too.
“Oh,” you said.
Damian made a protesting sound. “Kent.”
“Nope,” Jon said, voice thick. “Group hug. You’re both trapped.”
“This is undignified.”
“Yes.”
“We are in public.”
“Good thing you’re emotionally disciplined.”
You laughed into Jon’s shoulder.
Damian’s glare could have cut glass, but he did not let go.
For a moment, held between them, you felt the strange shape of the three of you.
Damian, who had been given bloodline like a sentence and was learning to make it a choice. Jon, who had been born under the brightest symbol on Earth, was learning that hope did not mean never hurting. You, who had been raised by an island of women and had become its son without leaving them behind.
Not perfect. Not finished.
But real.
When the hug finally broke, Damian immediately stepped back and adjusted his tunic.
“I expect this never to be discussed again.”
Jon wiped his face. “Absolutely. We’ll only bring it up constantly.”
“You will regret that.”
“Probably.”
You smiled. “We should get your ankle treated before you attempt murder.”
“Finally,” Damian said. “A sensible suggestion.”
The infirmary lights were warm.
One of the Amazon healers greeted you by name, then looked at Damian’s ankle, Jon’s singed sleeve, your exhausted posture, and sighed like every healer in every culture across every realm had sighed at reckless young heroes.
“Sit,” she ordered.
All three of you obeyed.
Damian looked furious about it. Jon looked relieved. You looked out the window toward the sea.
The first stars had appeared over Themyscira.
Old stars. Sharp stars. The kind that looked hammered into place by gods with steady hands.
You wondered, suddenly, whether they had always known you would stand beneath them as a boy. Whether the island had been waiting not with certainty, but with possibility. Whether belonging was not a doorway you passed through once, but a vow you kept building around yourself, stone by stone, name by name, hand by hand.
Damian sat rigidly while the healer cleaned his ankle. Jon pretended not to watch, then watched anyway. You leaned back against the wall, tired down to the bone.
After a while, Damian glanced at you.
“What?” you asked.
“You are smiling.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. It is concerning.”
Jon leaned around the healer. “I think he’s happy.”
Damian frowned. “After all that?”
You looked at them both.
The sun boy and the blood heir. Your impossible friends. Your fellow heirs. Your new myth, still being written in wet ink and stubborn choices.
“Yes,” you said.
Jon smiled.
Damian looked away, but the corner of his mouth softened.
Outside, the sea kept moving. Inside, the three of you sat close enough for your shoulders to touch.
And above you, the stars burned on: ancient, watchful, and for once, not distant at all.
content tim drake & kon-el & wonder boy! reader, ftm! reader, identity insecurity, clone trauma, legacy angst, brief mentions of dysphoria/being misnamed, emotional vulnerability, panic spirals, hurt/comfort, clone trauma, identity insecurity, emotional vulnerability, feelings of not beloning, discussion of being created as a weapon, references to cadmus/lab creation, brief mention of dysphoria/being misnamed, self worth issues, found family
word count 4.7k
The first time Kon said, “None of us were chosen,” he said it like a joke.
That was how you knew it wasn’t one.
The three of you were sitting on the roof of Titans Tower at two in the morning, which was apparently when all emotionally constipated young heroes were legally required to gather. The city below glittered against the bay, all soft lights and black water, and the sky above was cloudless enough that you could see the stars.
Not Themyscira stars. Those looked older. Sharper. Like they had been hammered into the dark by gods who knew exactly where they wanted them.
These stars looked distant. Maybe that was why Tim kept staring at them.
He sat on the ledge with one knee drawn up, cape pooled around him like spilt ink, domino mask pushed into his hair. He had not slept in thirty-one hours. You knew because you had counted the coffee cups, the slight tremor in his left hand, and the increasingly unhinged speed with which he had started solving encrypted files.
Kon floated upside down beside the ledge, arms crossed over his chest, leather jacket hanging toward the rooftop like gravity was a suggestion he had personally declined.
You sat between them, bracers resting on your knees, red cloak wrapped around your shoulders against the wind.
None of you had meant to end up here.
The night had started with a League ceremony in Metropolis. A legacy event, they had called it. Something bright and official, with speeches about the next generation and the future of heroism. Bruce had stood beside Clark and Diana beneath enormous banners marked with the symbols of the Trinity.
The bat. The shield. The eagle.
The old three.
Then, one by one, the younger heroes had been called forward.
Damian, son of Batman. Jon, son of Superman. Cassie, chosen of Wonder Woman.
You had smiled when they called your name, too.
Wonder Boy. Diana’s protégé. Son of Themyscira. Amazon-trained hero of the new age.
The applause had been loud. The cameras had been louder.
You had stood tall because Diana was watching, pride warm in her eyes. You had stood tall because every trans boy watching deserved to see someone like you unashamed beneath gold lights. You had stood tall because that was what sons of Themyscira did, even when the armour felt heavy.
Then the host had turned to Tim.
“And of course, Robin—one of Batman’s finest choices.”
Tim’s smile had not moved.
But his eyes had. A tiny flicker. Almost nothing. A thread pulled tight.
You had noticed. So had Kon.
Because immediately after, when the host had introduced him as “Superboy, the legacy Superman inspired,” Kon had laughed under his breath and muttered, “That’s one way to say lab-grown weapon.”
No one on stage had heard.
You had. Tim had.
Later, after the ceremony and the handshakes and the photographs, a Cadmus-linked alert had pulled the three of you into a fast, ugly mission involving stolen genetic records, three armoured mercs, and one underground server room full of files no one should ever have written down.
You had won.
Technically.
The stolen data had been recovered. The mercs were unconscious. No civilians had died.
But now Kon was holding a cracked data drive in one hand, spinning it between his fingers like he wanted to crush it and could not decide whether doing so would make anything better.
Tim had gone quiet.
You hated when Tim went quiet.
Kon joked when he was hurt. Jason raged. Damian sharpened himself into a blade.
Tim vanished inward. He turned himself into a locked room and called it strategy.
Kon spun the drive again.
“Funny, right?” he said.
Neither you nor Tim answered.
Kon looked between you both and gave a crooked grin. “Come on. It’s funny. Legacy night. Big shiny speeches. ‘The future of heroism.’ And then boom, Cadmus files reminding me I was grown in a tube to kill Superman.”
The wind moved through the silence.
Tim looked down at the city.
You looked at Kon. He was still floating upside down, still grinning, still pretending the words had not landed in his own chest like shrapnel.
“Kon,” you said.
“Don’t do the voice.”
“What voice?”
“The sad Amazon poetry voice.”
Tim’s mouth twitched faintly.
You lifted your chin. “I have many voices.”
“You have two. Battle speech and emotionally devastating museum plaque.”
“That is inaccurate.”
“It really isn’t,” Tim murmured.
You pointed at him. “You are sleep-deprived and therefore treacherous.”
“Still correct.”
Kon snorted, but the sound broke at the edges.
Then he stopped floating. He lowered himself onto the roof and sat with his back against an HVAC unit. For once, he looked smaller than the symbol on his chest.
That symbol. The red and yellow shield. A family crest from a world he had never known. A legacy he had been made to corrupt before he ever had a chance to choose it.
Kon stared at the data drive.
“Project Match had three primary outcome branches,” he said, voice too casual. “Replacement. Weapon. Failsafe. Guess which one was considered most viable?”
Tim’s jaw tightened.
You felt something old and hot unfurl beneath your ribs.
Kon looked up, smiling again. “Trick question. All three were terrible.”
Tim slid off the ledge and came closer, boots silent against the rooftop. “Those files were written before you were you.”
Kon barked a laugh. “Were they?”
“Yes.”
“Pretty sure I was still me. Just smaller. Slimier. More bald.”
“Kon.”
“What? I’m allowed to make clone jokes. It’s my trauma. I’m taking it for a walk.”
You watched Tim’s hands curl at his sides. He wanted to fix this. You could see it in the taut line of his shoulders. Tim Drake looked at pain and immediately tried to identify the mechanism, the weak point, the way to disarm it before it detonated.
But Kon was not a bomb. And Tim was not as unaffected as he wanted to be.
You shifted, cloak sliding from one shoulder.
“At the ceremony,” you said, “when they called Robin one of Batman’s finest choices.”
Tim went very still.
Kon’s gaze snapped to him.
Tim’s face closed. “That was nothing.”
“No,” you said gently. “It was not.”
“It was inaccurate phrasing from a civilian host.”
“Tim.”
His mouth pressed thin.
There he was: the locked room, the barred door, the boy inside with a case file in his hands and grief under his tongue.
Kon turned the drive over in his fingers, frowning now. “What does that mean?”
Tim looked away. “It means nothing.”
“Tim,” Kon said, softer this time.
Tim sighed, and it sounded exhausted enough to belong to someone twice his age.
“Bruce didn’t choose me,” he said.
The words were flat. Clinical. Like if he made them plain enough, they would not bleed.
You stayed quiet. Kon did too.
Tim folded his arms, gaze fixed somewhere beyond the roof.
“I figured out who Batman and Nightwing were. I knew Bruce needed Robin. I knew Batman needed Robin.” His mouth twisted faintly. “So I showed up. I made the argument. I inserted myself into the equation until they accepted the solution.”
Kon stared at him.
“You make it sound like a hostile takeover,” he said.
Tim’s expression did not change. “It kind of was.”
“Dude.”
Tim’s laugh was tiny and humourless. “Dick was chosen. Jason was chosen. Damian was blood. Even Steph was recruited eventually, in her own way. But me?” He shrugged. “I knocked on the door and refused to leave.”
Your heart hurt.
Not loudly. Not violently.
Just a deep, quiet ache. Like a thread pulling through cloth.
“You became Robin because you saw what no one else saw,” you said.
Tim gave you a look. “That’s the charitable version.”
“It is the true version.”
“It’s the myth version.”
You sat up straighter.
“The myth version is often the true one,” you said, mildly offended.
Kon groaned. “Here comes Odysseus.”
“Odysseus was not chosen by the sea to return home,” you said. “He returned anyway.”
Tim blinked.
Kon tilted his head. “Okay, okay.”
You looked at Tim fully.
“Penelope was not chosen by circumstance to survive twenty years of uncertainty,” you said. “She wove and unwove the future with her own hands. She made waiting into strategy. She made loyalty into resistance.”
Tim’s face did something complicated.
You softened your voice.
“You say you were not chosen as if that makes your place less sacred. But Tim, you saw an empty mantle and understood it as a wound. You stepped into it not because someone crowned you, but because you knew someone had to keep Batman human.”
Tim looked down.
His lashes shadowed his cheeks. The wind caught his cape, pulling it behind him like a dark wing.
“I manipulated my way into a family,” he said.
“No,” you said. “You recognised one before it recognised you.”
Kon went silent.
Tim’s throat moved.
You knew that one had gone deep.
Good. Some truths deserved to be arrows.
Kon leaned back against the HVAC unit and stared at the sky. “That’s the thing, though, right? You both had a before.”
You looked at him.
He kept staring upward.
“Tim had a life before Robin. You had Themyscira before Wonder Boy. I woke up already wearing someone else’s symbol.” He tapped the crest on his shirt. “I didn’t even get to be a person before I was a project.”
The drive cracked slightly in his grip.
Tim reached out instinctively. “Kon—”
“I’m fine.”
The crack widened.
“You are not,” you said.
Kon laughed. “Yeah, well. None of us are. That’s kind of the brand.”
You stood.
He watched you approach with wary eyes, like he expected comfort to arrive wearing pity’s face.
You stopped in front of him and held out your hand.
“Give me the drive.”
Kon’s eyebrows lifted. “You gonna dramatically throw it into the sea?”
“I am considering it.”
“Hot.”
Tim made a strangled noise.
You ignored him.
Kon looked at the drive for a long moment. Then he handed it to you.
It was warm from his hand and cracked down the centre, but not destroyed.
You held it carefully.
“This contains the words of men who believed creation gave them ownership,” you said. “They were wrong.”
Kon’s jaw flexed.
“They made your body,” you continued. “They did not make your heart.”
Kon’s eyes flashed, blue and wounded.
“They made a weapon,” he said.
“No,” you said. “They attempted to.”
The wind moved between you.
“You became a boy.”
Kon looked away sharply.
For all his noise, all his grinning, all his reckless charm, there were some words Kon could not take without flinching.
Boy was one of them.
Not weapon. Not clone. Not Superman’s copy. Not Cadmus property. Not failed experiment.
Boy. Just boy.
Tim stepped closer, slow, as if approaching a spooked animal.
“You’re not what they wrote down,” he said.
Kon swallowed. “You don’t know that.”
“I do,” Tim said.
Kon’s laugh came out brittle. “Because you’re the world’s creepiest detective?”
“Because weapons don’t worry about being weapons.”
That shut him up.
Tim’s voice stayed quiet.
“You care. You choose. You mess up and try again. You protect people you could easily ignore. You get scared of becoming what they wanted.” His eyes lifted to Kon’s. “That fear is proof you’re not theirs.”
Kon’s face went painfully open.
For a second, the bravado vanished completely. He looked exactly like what he was: young, powerful, terrified, alive.
You wondered if this was what the gods saw when heroes knelt before them. Not glory. Not prophecy. Just boys with trembling hands asking whether they were allowed to become more than the story that hurt them.
Kon looked at Tim. Then at you.
“Okay,” he said hoarsely. “Cool. Great. So we’re doing emotional homicide tonight.”
Tim’s mouth curved faintly. “You started it.”
“I made one joke.”
“It was a very load-bearing joke.”
You nodded. “Structurally unsound.”
Kon dragged both hands down his face. “I hate both of you.”
“No, you don’t,” Tim said.
Kon glared at him. “Detective voice is banned during feelings hours.”
Tim blinked. “Feelings hours?”
“Yeah, apparently we have those now. Awful development. Zero stars.”
Despite everything, you laughed.
Kon looked pleased for half a second, then seemed to remember he was trying to be wounded and aloof.
Tim watched him like he was something fragile pretending to be indestructible.
Then Kon’s gaze shifted to you. “What about you?”
You stilled.
Tim noticed immediately. “Kon.”
“No, I mean—” Kon sat forward, elbows on his knees. His voice softened. “You keep doing that thing.”
“What thing?” you asked.
“Saying the exact sentence someone needs and then pretending you’re not bleeding too.”
Oh. That.
Tim looked at you now.
You suddenly wished you had kept your cloak wrapped tighter.
The armour felt too bright beneath the rooftop lights. Bronze and red and blue. Diana’s colours. Themyscira’s craft. A symbol made to declare truth to the world.
Some nights, it felt like home. Some nights, it felt like an argument you had to win before you were allowed to breathe.
You looked down at the cracked drive in your hand.
“Mine is different,” you said.
Kon’s expression gentled. “Didn’t say it wasn’t.”
Tim stepped closer, not touching. Waiting. Always waiting, when it mattered.
You exhaled.
“Themyscira did not choose sons,” you said.
The words were simple.
Still, they changed the air.
Kon’s face went still. Tim’s eyes softened with immediate understanding.
You continued before you could lose your nerve.
“When I was young, before I had the words, everyone thought they knew what I would become. A daughter of the island. A warrior woman. Another girl raised beneath Artemis’ moon and Athena’s gaze.” Your thumb brushed over the drive’s cracked edge. “They loved me. That made it harder.”
Kon whispered, “Yeah.”
You looked at him.
“Yeah,” he repeated. “Being hurt by people who don’t hate you is… complicated.”
You nodded once.
“I came out as a boy very young,” you said. “Diana believed me before I believed I had the right to ask. She knelt in front of me and called me brave. Hippolyta called council. The island debated tradition for three days.”
Tim’s brow furrowed.
Kon looked like he wanted to punch an island, which was logistically difficult but emotionally touching.
“Not whether I was telling the truth,” you said quickly. “Diana would not permit that. They debated what it meant for Themyscira to raise a son.”
You smiled faintly, though it hurt.
“Some called me impossible. Some called me omen. Some called me exception. Diana called me by my name.”
Tim’s hands curled.
Kon’s jaw tightened.
“And afterwards?” Tim asked.
“Afterwards, they trained me,” you said. “Not as a daughter. Not exactly as the others had been trained. Diana found old rites. Heroic rites. Stories of warriors and princes and beloved boys turned into flowers. Achilles. Hyacinthus. Ganymede. Orpheus. Odysseus, always Odysseus.” Your smile softened. “She gave me a lineage where the island had no script.”
Kon’s voice was quiet. “That sounds beautiful.”
“It was.”
The honesty surprised even you.
Then you added, “And lonely.”
Tim’s expression changed.
There it was. The wound beneath the gold.
“I was loved,” you said. “I was supported. But support is not the same as belonging without explanation. Every honour felt like it came with a footnote. First son of Themyscira. Diana’s boy. The Amazon prince, when reporters want to be poetic and wrong.”
Your mouth twisted. “Sometimes I feel less chosen than translated.”
Kon whispered, “Oh.”
Tim said nothing. He did not have to.
You looked at the skyline, because looking at them was becoming too difficult.
“At the ceremony tonight, everyone clapped when they said Wonder Boy. And I was proud. I am proud.” Your voice roughened. “But part of me wondered if the symbol fit because I had earned it, or because Diana had fought hard enough to make room for me inside it.”
Tim stepped closer. “Those aren’t separate things.”
You looked at him.
His eyes were dark and intent.
“Diana made room,” he said. “You filled it. That’s not pity. That’s legacy.”
Kon nodded fiercely. “Yeah. You didn’t get handed a costume because someone wanted diversity points in the Greek mythology cinematic universe.”
Despite yourself, you huffed a laugh.
Kon pointed at you. “You laughed. I’m right.”
“You were almost eloquent.”
“I contain depths.”
“You contain Doritos and unresolved issues.”
“Also depths.”
Tim’s mouth twitched.
The three of you stood in the quiet after the joke, the kind that did not erase the pain but made room around it.
Then Tim said, “Maybe none of us were chosen.”
Kon looked at him.
You did too.
Tim’s gaze settled somewhere between you both.
“Not cleanly,” he said. “Not the way people write it in speeches. Kon wasn’t chosen by Clark. He was created by people who wanted control. I wasn’t chosen by Bruce. I forced the issue because Batman was going to destroy himself. You weren’t chosen by Themyscira’s tradition. You had to become a new answer.”
The wind lifted his cape.
“But we’re still here.”
Kon stared at him. “That was suspiciously optimistic.”
“I’m tired. It weakens my cynicism.”
“Sleep more. This is unsettling.”
You smiled.
Tim’s voice lowered. “Being chosen is not the only way to belong.”
The words struck through you.
Kon looked down.
You looked at the cracked drive in your hand.
Not chosen.
Made. Insistent. Translated.
Still here.
A project who became a person. A detective who became Robin. A son who made Themyscira widen.
You thought of Penelope at her loom. Everyone remembered the waiting. Fewer remembered the work. The daily act of making and unmaking the world so there would still be a home when love returned.
“Perhaps,” you said slowly, “we are the loom.”
Kon squinted. “Is that good?”
Tim looked interested despite himself. “Explain.”
“Of course you want the metaphor footnotes.”
“I want accuracy.”
“You want control.”
“Also accuracy.”
You smiled faintly.
“The chosen inherit a finished tapestry,” you said. “The symbol is handed to them already woven. But we—” You looked at Kon, then Tim. “We were given thread. Or stole it. Or woke up tangled in it. We had to make the pattern ourselves.”
Kon’s expression softened. Tim looked like he might carry that sentence around for years and pretend he had not.
You held up the cracked drive.
“They wrote one pattern for you,” you told Kon. “You unravelled it.” You turned to Tim. “Batman had no space for another Robin,” you said. “You wove yourself into the story anyway.”
Then, quieter, you looked down at your own armour.
“Themyscira had no word for a son,” you said. “So Diana and I made one.”
Kon stood.
For once, there was no joke on his face.
He crossed the space between you and took the drive from your hand. He looked at it for a long moment. Then he closed his fist.
This time, he crushed it completely.
The sound was small. Final.
“Okay,” he said.
Tim raised an eyebrow. “Okay?”
Kon looked at you both. “We make our own pattern.”
Your heart warmed.
Then Kon added, “But mine has lightning.”
Tim sighed. “Of course it does.”
“And sunglasses.”
“Naturally.”
“And maybe a leather jacket.”
“You are describing yourself.”
“Exactly. Great pattern.”
You laughed, and this time it did not hurt.
Kon grinned at you, bright and crooked.
Then his grin faltered.
“Can I—” He stopped.
You waited.
Tim waited too.
Kon looked between you both, suddenly shy in a way that seemed almost impossible on his face.
“Can I hug you guys, or are we doing the emotionally repressed thing?”
Tim blinked.
You smiled. “I would like that.”
Kon looked at Tim.
Tim gave a tiny shrug, trying for casual and failing spectacularly. “Sure.”
Kon moved fast enough that Tim made a startled sound, pulling both of you into a hug with tactile-telekinetic warmth wrapped around it. It felt like being held by a thunderstorm that had learned gentleness by hand.
Tim stiffened at first.
Then, slowly, he relaxed. Not fully. Tim never relaxed fully. But enough that his shoulder pressed into yours, his forehead briefly dipping against Kon’s collarbone.
You closed your eyes.
Kon held tight.
For a moment, none of you had to be symbols.
Not Robin. Not Superboy. Not Wonder Boy.
Just three unchosen boys on a rooftop, held together by stubbornness, grief, and the strange grace of being seen.
Then Kon murmured, “This is nice.”
Tim said, muffled, “You’re floating.”
You opened your eyes.
The roof was several feet below you.
“Kon.”
“What? I got emotional.”
“You levitated us,” Tim said.
“Yeah. That happens.”
You looked down. “Please do not drop us.”
Kon gasped. “I would never.”
Tim’s eyes narrowed. “You dropped Bart last week.”
“That was recreational.”
You laughed so hard Kon nearly did drop you.
He lowered you all back to the roof, still grinning. Tim immediately stepped back and straightened his cape as if he had not just been hugged into emotional stability. You pretended not to notice.
Because you were kind. And because Tim had blackmail files on everyone.
The rooftop door opened behind you.
Cassie stepped out, wearing pyjamas, a hoodie, and the expression of someone who had been woken by the psychic disturbance of three boys having feelings without supervision.
She looked at the crushed drive in Kon’s hand. Then at Tim’s mussed hair. Then at your suspiciously bright eyes.
“Did I miss a crisis?” she asked.
Kon opened his mouth.
Tim said, “No.”
You said, “Yes.”
Kon said, “Feelings hours.”
Cassie stared.
Then she turned around. “Absolutely not. I’m getting snacks.”
The door shut.
Kon nodded solemnly. “Good leader.”
Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. “We are never calling it feelings hours again.”
“It’s already branded,” Kon said. “Too late.”
You clasped your hands behind your back. “I support the title.”
“Of course you do,” Tim said. “You support anything that makes emotional repression sound ceremonial.”
“As it should be.”
Kon snapped his fingers. “We need a candle.”
“No,” Tim said.
“A tapestry?”
“No.”
“A loom?”
“Absolutely not.”
You leaned toward Kon. “I know where to get a loom.”
Tim looked betrayed. “Do not encourage him.”
Kon’s grin returned full force, and something inside you eased at the sight of it.
Not healed. Not completely.
But lighter.
The rooftop door opened again, and Cassie returned with a bag of chips, three protein bars, and a carton of orange juice. She tossed one bar at Tim, who caught it on reflex.
“Eat before you pass out and make Batman my problem,” she said.
Tim frowned. “I don’t pass out.”
Kon looked at you. “He passes out.”
You nodded gravely. “Heroically.”
“Once,” Tim said.
“Twice,” Cassie corrected.
Tim looked personally offended. “Why are we litigating this?”
“Because you’re eating the protein bar,” Cassie said.
He did.
You sat back down near the ledge, and the others settled around you. Cassie stayed only long enough to determine no one was actively bleeding, then retreated with the wisdom of someone who understood that some conversations belonged to the people wounded by them.
The night softened.
Kon floated on his back again, but lower this time, close enough that his shoulder brushed your knee.
Tim sat beside you, eating in small, distracted bites, eyes still turned toward the stars.
After a while, he said, “Do you really believe that?”
You glanced at him. “Which part?”
“That belonging can be made.”
Kon tilted his head, listening.
You considered the question carefully.
The old heroic stories did not always have kind answers. Heroes were exiled. Cursed. Transformed. Betrayed. The gods were rarely gentle, and fate often seemed less like destiny than a knife with excellent aim.
But still.
Odysseus returned. Penelope wove. Orpheus sang. Persephone made a throne in the dark. Hyacinthus became a flower, and every spring the world remembered his name.
“Yes,” you said. “I believe belonging can be made.”
Tim’s gaze stayed on the sky. “You make it sound simple.”
“No,” you said. “I make it sound possible.”
Kon’s voice was soft. “Big difference.”
“Yes.”
Tim looked down at his half-eaten protein bar, then at Kon, then at you.
“I don’t always feel like Robin belongs to me,” he admitted.
The confession was quiet enough that the wind almost stole it.
You and Kon both went still.
Tim swallowed.
“Even now. After everything. Sometimes I still feel like I’m wearing a grief that belonged to someone else first. Like I got in because I was useful. Because I was persistent. Because I solved the case.” His fingers tightened around the wrapper. “Not because anyone wanted me there.”
Kon landed on his feet.
“Tim,” he said.
Tim smiled faintly. “I know. It’s not rational.”
“Didn’t say that.”
Tim looked at him.
Kon’s face was unusually serious.
“I was useful before I was loved, too,” Kon said. “That doesn’t mean the love isn’t real now.”
Tim’s expression cracked.
Just slightly.
Enough.
You reached over and touched Tim’s wrist, light enough that he could pull away.
He didn’t.
“Some doors open because we are invited,” you said. “Some because we knock. Some because we break them down. The room does not become less ours because we had to fight to enter.”
Tim looked at your hand on his wrist.
Then he turned his palm upward.
You slid your fingers into his.
Kon looked at your joined hands, then deliberately placed his hand over both of yours.
“Pile of unchosen losers,” he said, voice thick.
Tim huffed. “Inspirational.”
“Thank you.”
“Not a compliment.”
“I’m taking it as one.”
You squeezed their hands.
“No,” you said. “Not losers.”
Kon looked at you.
Tim did too.
You smiled. “Founders.”
The word settled between you.
Kon blinked. “That’s… actually way cooler.”
Tim’s mouth curved. “The new big three?”
You felt something spark in your chest.
Not pride exactly. Something steadier.
“The new big three,” you agreed.
Kon grinned. “Do we get a logo?”
Tim immediately said, “No.”
Kon ignored him. “I’m thinking lightning, bird, eagle.”
“Robin, not bird.”
“Robins are birds, Rob.”
“You know what I mean.”
You pretended to think. “A loom in the background.”
Tim groaned. “You are both impossible.”
Kon squeezed his hand. “Yeah, but you chose us.”
Tim went still.
You looked at Kon. Kon looked back, surprised by his own words.
Then he shrugged, softer than before.
“Right?” he said. “Maybe nobody chose us at the start. But we can choose each other now.”
The city hummed below. The stars watched above.
Tim looked at your hands, all three tangled together.
Then, very quietly, he said, “Yeah.”
It was not dramatic.
No thunder. No divine omen. No golden light breaking through the clouds.
Just one tired boy choosing not to pull away. Another boy made from stolen science choosing to be gentle. And you, son of an island that had no place for you until love carved one, holding both of them beneath a sky full of distant fire.
You thought of Penelope’s loom again. The work of it. The patience. The refusal to let anyone else decide the ending.
Perhaps none of you had been chosen. Perhaps that was the wrong question.
The loom did not ask permission from the thread. It made meaning anyway.
Kon tilted his head back and looked at the stars. “For the record, if either of you gets trapped across the ocean for twenty years, I’m not waiting.”
You sighed.
Tim raised an eyebrow. “No?”
“No,” Kon said. “I’m flying over there and getting you.”
You stared at him.
Kon looked at you, suddenly defensive. “What?”
“That,” you said, deeply moved and deeply annoyed, “is acceptable.”
Tim’s lips twitched. “High praise.”
Kon grinned. “See? I’m basically Odysseus with better hair.”
“You are absolutely not.”
“Lightning Odysseus.”
“No.”
“With sunglasses.”
“Still no.”
You leaned back on your hands and looked at both of them: Tim with shadows under his eyes and loyalty written into his bones; Kon with impossible power and a heart he kept pretending was not breakable.
Your boys, though you did not say it.
Not yet.
Some vows needed time. Some tapestries took years.
But you could wait. You had been raised on stories of men who crossed seas, women who unravelled kingdoms, lovers who sang open the gates of death.
the boy who came back wrong - jason todd & bizarro
content jason todd & bizarro & ftm! reader, wonder boy! reader, amazon! reader, resurrection trauma, clone/lab trauma, panic, brief violence, dysphoria-adjacent “wrong body/wrong creation” themes, hurt/comfort, clone/lab trauma, medical experimentation imagery, panic attack/trauma response, references to jason's death & lazarus pit trauma, brief violence, blood/injury, dehumanisation, misgendering-adjacent language / identity invalidation themes, emotional vulnerability, brief dysphoria, implied past abuse/captivity, accidentally implied jason x reader (i can't help myself)
masterlist
word count 5.7k
Jason Todd hated laboratories.
He hated the smell first. Antiseptic. Metal. Burnt wiring. Cold air scrubbed clean of anything human. It was the kind of place that pretended cruelty could be made sterile if the floors were white enough.
He hated the lights second. Too bright. Too clinical. Too much like waking up under fluorescence with his body screaming and his mind full of green.
And he hated the glass most of all. Glass walls. Glass tanks. Glass observation rooms where men with clean hands looked at suffering and wrote notes.
Jason stood in the ruined hallway of the LexCorp blacksite with his helmet tucked under one arm, blood drying at the corner of his mouth, and tried very hard not to put a bullet through every reflective surface in sight.
Beside him, Bizarro had gone silent.
That was worse. Bizarro was not quiet by nature. He muttered. He hummed. He talked to himself, to walls, to stray cats, to enemies he was actively punching through concrete. Silence sat wrong on him, like armour made for someone else.
You noticed before Jason did.
Of course you did. Wonder Boy, Diana’s protégé, son of Themyscira, pain in Jason’s entire ass.
You had come with them because the Justice League had found traces of stolen Themysciran bronze in the facility’s shipping records. Diana had been off-world. Superman had been dealing with something in Coast City. Batman had said, in that infuriatingly grave voice, that Jason knew blacksites better than most.
Jason had told him to choke on a batarang. Then he had gone anyway.
And somehow, you had ended up here too, bronze bracers gleaming beneath shattered emergency lights, red cape torn at one edge, lasso humming softly at your hip like it knew this place was built from lies.
“You are breathing too fast,” you said.
Jason scoffed. “Didn’t know Amazons came with medical degrees.”
“They come with eyes.”
“Congrats. Use ’em on the clone tanks.”
“I am,” you said quietly. “I was speaking to both of you.”
Jason looked at Bizarro. The big guy stood in front of one of the tanks, shoulders hunched, hands curled into trembling fists. Inside the glass floated something half-formed and awful: pale tissue, failed muscle, a face that had never become a face. A discarded attempt at life.
Bizarro stared at it like it was a mirror.
Jason’s stomach dropped.
“Hey,” Jason said, voice rougher than he meant it to be. “Big guy.”
Bizarro did not answer.
The emergency lights flickered red. Somewhere deeper in the facility, alarms wailed and died, wailed and died. The team they had taken down—mercenaries with LexCorp gear and enough illegal tech to make half the League grind their teeth—were unconscious or zip-tied three floors above.
The fight was over.
That was always when the real damage started.
You stepped closer, but not too close.
Jason noticed that too. You never crowded. Not unless someone needed your body between them and a threat. You moved like a warrior from some old carving, all discipline and grace, but you had a strange gentleness with wounded things.
Jason hated that he had noticed.
Bizarro lifted one hand and pressed it to the glass.
“Me am not that,” he said.
His voice was small.
Jason’s hand tightened around his helmet.
“No,” you said immediately. “You are not.”
Bizarro’s eyes shone red. Not heat vision. Not yet. Just feeling, too large for the body trying to hold it.
“Men in white coats say Bizarro am mistake.” His palm squeaked faintly against the glass. “Say not person. Say failed Superman. Say thing.”
Jason nearly snapped at you. Nearly shoved you off. Nearly bared his teeth because touch was bad in places like this. Touch meant restraints. Touch meant scalpels. Touch meant someone else deciding what his body was for.
But your hand was warm. Steady. Not holding him back like a leash. Holding him like an anchor.
“Do not let their language become yours,” you said.
Jason laughed once, sharp and ugly. “You quoting your princess handbook at me now?”
You flinched.
It was tiny. Almost nothing.
Jason saw it anyway.
Your face closed for half a second before you smoothed it out, chin lifting with that Amazonian dignity you wore like polished armour.
Not princess.
Shit.
Jason knew that. He knew that. He knew what reporters called you, knew the way your jaw tightened when people tried to turn Wonder Woman’s protégé into something easier for them to swallow. Girl. Maiden. Princess. Amazon daughter.
Never son. Never boy. Never man.
His anger stumbled, tripped over shame, and landed hard. “I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” you said.
But you pulled your hand back.
Jason hated himself a little more.
Bizarro turned from the tank, distressed by the shift in the room even if he did not understand it all. “Red Him am mad at Wonder Boy?”
“No,” Jason said at once.
You looked at him.
His throat worked.
“No,” he repeated, quieter. “I’m mad at this place.”
Bizarro looked around at the shattered glass, the surgical tables, the drained tanks, the diagrams pinned to illuminated boards. Kryptonian DNA. Human trials. Cadmus-derived sequencing. Failed stabilization.
“Place am bad,” Bizarro said.
“Yeah,” Jason said. “Place am real bad.”
You moved past them both and stopped in front of the central observation window. Beyond it was a room with three reinforced chairs. Restraints. Needles. A helmet lined with wires.
Jason’s pulse spiked.
He knew, in the clean logical part of his brain, that he had never been in this room. He knew the Joker’s warehouse had not looked like this. He knew the Lazarus Pit had not smelled like this.
Trauma did not care about architecture.
His chest tightened.
Green flashed behind his eyes.
Not real. Not there. Not now.
His fingers twitched toward his gun.
Then your voice cut through the rising static.
“In Themyscira,” you said, “we are taught that the dead are sacred.”
Jason froze.
Bizarro blinked.
You did not turn around. Your reflection hovered faintly in the observation glass: bronze, red, gold, shadowed eyes. A boy raised on an island that did not know what to do with sons until you made yourself impossible to ignore.
“The dead are washed,” you continued. “Named. Honoured. The body is not treated as shameful because it has suffered. The spirit is not called broken because it has crossed a threshold the living fear.”
Jason’s mouth went dry.
You turned then.
Your gaze found Jason first.
“Men are arrogant,” you said. “They call return unnatural because they cannot command it. They call survival monstrous because it did not ask their permission.”
Bizarro’s breath hitched.
Jason could not move.
“They said you came back wrong,” you said to him.
Jason’s lips parted.
You stepped closer, slow and careful.
“They lied.”
The words cracked something open in him.
Jason wanted to laugh. Wanted to snarl. Wanted to say, You don’t know that. Wanted to show you every ugly piece of himself and dare you to keep that soft certainty.
Instead, he said, “I crawled out of my own grave.”
Your expression did not change. “I know.”
“I came back wrong.”
“No,” you said. “You came back angry.”
Jason’s jaw clenched.
“You came back wounded,” you continued. “You came back with blood in your mouth and no hand waiting at the edge of the dark. But wrong?” Your voice softened. “No, Jason. Death touched you. Men failed you. Madness followed you home. None of that made you wrong.”
Bizarro made a faint sound.
Jason looked away because he could not look at you anymore. Not with that much truth in your face. Not with his name in your mouth like it was something salvageable.
You turned to Bizarro next.
“And you,” you said.
Bizarro straightened a little, like a child before a teacher.
“You were made in a lab,” you said. “So was every sword worth naming.”
Jason let out a startled, broken breath that might have been a laugh if it had been less close to pain.
Bizarro frowned. “Bizarro am sword?”
“You are more than a sword,” you said. “But being made does not make you false. Creation is not a crime committed by the created.”
Bizarro’s face twisted. “They made Bizarro bad.”
“They made choices,” you said. “You made yourself kind.”
That did it.
Bizarro’s eyes filled.
Jason looked at the ceiling because, frankly, fuck this whole emotionally devastating Greek statue routine you had going on. It was unfair. Deeply rude. Possibly a war crime.
“Kind am…” Bizarro struggled with the word. His hands opened and closed. “Kind am hard.”
“Yes,” you said. “That is why it matters.”
Bizarro stared at you. Then he crossed the space in two huge steps and wrapped you in a hug.
Jason lunged forward instinctively. “Careful—”
“I’m all right,” you wheezed, though your boots had fully left the floor.
Bizarro immediately loosened his grip, horrified. “Bizarro am crushing Wonder Boy?”
“A little,” you said, voice strained. “But with noble intent.”
Jason barked a laugh before he could stop himself.
Bizarro set you down as delicately as if you were made of glass. You adjusted your cape with immense dignity, which would have been more convincing if your ribs had not audibly protested.
Jason smirked. “Noble intent, huh?”
You gave him a look. “Do not start.”
“Oh, I’m starting.”
“I will throw you through the nearest wall.”
“Promises, promises.”
Bizarro looked between you both, relief slowly replacing the misery on his face. “Red Him and Wonder Boy am doing flirting fight?”
Jason choked. You blinked. The silence that followed was so complete even the alarms seemed embarrassed.
“No,” Jason said.
At the same time, you said, “Absolutely not.”
Bizarro nodded with grave wisdom. “Yes. Flirting fight.”
Jason pointed at him. “You’re banned from reading Roy’s texts.”
“Roy say many smart things.”
“Roy says many things. Huge difference.”
You were smiling now. Not fully. Not without the lingering hurt around your eyes. But it was there, softening your face in the red emergency glow.
Jason caught himself looking.
He looked away fast.
Too fast.
Your smile changed.
Great. Fantastic. Perfect. He was going to die again, and this time the cause would be emotional visibility.
A distant crash echoed from below.
The three of you turned.
Jason’s body snapped back into mission mode with almost grateful speed. “Basement level.”
Kara would have heard through the floors. Clark would have scanned the whole building in a breath. Bruce would already have a schematic memorised, because Bruce was clinically incapable of having a normal hobby.
Jason had instinct, trauma, and a gun. Usually enough.
Bizarro’s eyes sharpened. “People?”
You tilted your head, listening. “Not footsteps. Something heavier.”
Another crash. Metal tearing.
Jason shoved his helmet back on. The red lenses lit over his eyes, turning the world into data and threat signatures.
“Containment unit,” he said. “They had something locked up.”
You drew your sword. It caught the emergency light like dawn splitting open.
Jason hated how good that looked.
“Then we free it,” you said.
“Or kill it,” Jason said.
You gave him a sidelong glance.
“What? I said or.”
Bizarro lifted into the air, only a few inches, fists clenched. “Bizarro am help.”
Jason checked his ammo. “Yeah, big guy. We know.”
The basement door had been sealed with three layers of reinforced alloy.
It was now bent outward.
Something inside screamed.
Not human. Not animal. Something between.
Jason felt the sound in his teeth.
You went still beside him.
“That,” you said, voice low, “is pain.”
Jason glanced at you. “You getting that from the scream, or do Amazons have a class?”
“Both.”
“Of course you do.”
Bizarro did not wait. He tore the doors open.
Inside, the basement was less lab and more tomb. The walls were marked with containment sigils Jason did not recognise, half science and half stolen magic. The floor was cracked in a circle around a central platform. Chains ran from the ceiling to the thing crouched there.
At first, Jason thought it was another clone.
Then it lifted its head. It had no face. Not really. Just a shifting impression of one, like someone had tried to sculpt grief out of smoke and failed. Its body flickered between forms—Kryptonian muscle, human bone, something green and slick beneath the skin. A failed experiment stitched from stolen DNA, Lazarus residue, and whatever Themysciran relic they had dragged into this hellhole.
The bronze fragment pulsed at the centre of its chest.
Your breath caught.
“That is from the Shrine of Asklepios,” you said.
Jason raised his gun. “Can we remove it without getting murdered?”
The creature screamed again.
The sound punched through the room.
Jason staggered.
For half a second, he was not in the basement.
He was fifteen. He was bleeding. He was dying.
He was back. He was always back.
The crowbar came down. His knees hit the floor.
Someone was shouting his name.
No.
Not shouting.
Saying.
“Jason.”
Warm hands on his face.
Not restraints.
Hands.
“Jason, look at me.”
He dragged in a breath that felt full of broken glass.
Red lenses. Static. Blood rushing in his ears.
The helmet was gone. When had the helmet come off?
Your face swam into focus above him. Eyes dark with worry. A smear of blood on your temple. Your bracers scratched. Your hands steady against his jaw.
“Stay here,” you said. “Do you hear me? Stay in the room with me.”
Jason tried to speak.
Nothing came out.
Behind you, Bizarro fought the creature, taking blow after blow without striking back hard enough to kill it. The room shook. Chains snapped. The bronze fragment flared.
“Jay,” you said, softer.
Nobody called him that.
Not like that. Not in a room like this.
His fingers closed around your wrist.
“You are not in the grave,” you said. “You are not in the warehouse. You are not in the Pit.”
Jason’s breath shuddered.
“You are in a very ugly basement,” you continued, voice calm despite the chaos, “with me, Bizarro, and one deeply unfortunate abomination.”
A laugh tore out of him.
It hurt.
Good. Pain was present. Pain was now.
“There you are,” you whispered.
Jason hated the tenderness in your voice. Hated needing it. Hated that his hand was still wrapped around your wrist like you were the only solid thing left in the world.
The creature slammed Bizarro into the wall.
Bizarro groaned but did not fall.
“Bizarro no hurt you!” he shouted at the creature. “Bizarro know hurting!”
The thing shrieked.
You turned.
The bronze in its chest pulsed again.
Jason saw the pattern before he fully steadied. “It’s cycling pain responses. That relic’s keeping it alive and hurting it.”
“Can you shoot it free?”
“Maybe.” He swallowed, forcing his hands to stop shaking. “Bad angle.”
“I can get you one.”
“No.”
You looked back at him.
Jason knew that look. Heroes got it right before doing something stupid and noble enough to make everyone else’s blood pressure a group project.
“No,” he repeated. “Don’t you dare.”
Your mouth curved slightly. “You are not in command of me.”
“I am absolutely in command of people not impaling themselves on science zombies.”
“An oddly specific command.”
“I contain multitudes. Stay down.”
You stood.
Jason cursed.
You moved before he could stop you, sprinting across the cracked floor toward Bizarro and the creature. Your lasso flashed gold in your hand, not thrown around the creature’s throat or limbs, but around the bronze shard itself.
The second the rope touched it, the room filled with light.
The creature screamed.
You screamed too.
Jason’s blood went cold.
Bizarro shouted your name.
The lasso went taut. Truth against stolen healing. Divine craft against corrupted science. The fragment burned green-gold in the creature’s chest, and you planted your feet, muscles shaking as you pulled.
Jason saw your face twist.
Not just pain.
Recognition.
The lasso connected truth. Forced it. Revealed it.
Whatever grief was inside that creature, you were feeling echoes of it.
Jason surged to his feet.
“Bizarro!” he shouted.
Bizarro understood. He wrapped both arms around the creature from behind, pinning it as gently as he could while it thrashed hard enough to crack the floor. “Bizarro am sorry,” he kept saying. “Bizarro am sorry, hurting one.”
Jason lifted his gun.
His hands shook once.
Then steadied.
You met his eyes across the room.
There was trust in your face.
Stupid. Reckless. Impossible trust.
Jason fired.
The bullet struck the base of the bronze shard.
Your lasso yanked. Bizarro held.
The shard tore free.
For one second, the creature’s body arched in total silence.
Then it collapsed.
The smoke-like flesh dissolved. The stolen forms flickered and vanished. What remained on the platform was small. Almost human. Almost nothing. A body that had never been allowed to become itself.
Bizarro knelt beside it.
Jason lowered his gun.
You stumbled.
He caught you before you hit the ground.
It was reflex. Instinct. Definitely not tenderness. Absolutely not.
Your weight dropped against his chest, and Jason’s arm went around your waist.
“You,” he said, voice furious because fear had nowhere else to go, “are a complete idiot.”
You blinked up at him, dazed. “You made the shot.”
“Not the point.”
“It was a very good shot.”
“Still not the point.”
Your smile was faint. “You are welcome.”
Jason stared at you. There was blood running from your nose. Your face was too pale. Your hand clutched the lasso like it was the only thing keeping you upright.
Something inside him snarled.
Not Pit rage. Not exactly.
Protection, maybe. Worse, probably.
Bizarro looked up from the platform. His eyes were wet again.
“Small hurting one am gone,” he said.
You gently pulled away from Jason, though he did not let go until he was sure your knees would hold.
You crossed to Bizarro’s side.
Jason followed, because apparently that was what he did now. Followed reckless myth boys into emotional minefields.
The body on the platform was fading, not violently, but softly, like mist under morning light. Without the shard, there was nothing sustaining it. Nothing torturing it either.
You knelt.
Bizarro looked devastated. “We am too late.”
You reached out, hovering your hand above the fading form without touching.
“No,” you said. “We ended the pain.”
Bizarro’s lip trembled. “That am not enough.”
“No,” you agreed. “But sometimes it is what mercy can reach.”
Jason closed his eyes. He wished that sentence did not feel aimed at him.
For a while, the three of you stayed there until the last traces of the creature disappeared. No dramatic burst of light. No final words. No cinematic peace. Just absence.
Then you bowed your head.
Jason shifted, uncomfortable. “What are you doing?”
“A prayer.”
“To who?”
“Whoever will listen.”
Bizarro immediately bowed his head too, squeezing his eyes shut with intense concentration.
Jason did not pray.
Not anymore. Maybe not ever. But he stood still while you murmured words in Greek, low and musical, the language filling the ruined basement like oil poured over troubled water. He did not understand most of it. But he recognised names.
Hermes. Hades. Persephone.
Guides and thresholds. Roads beneath roads. Return, rest, remembrance.
When you finished, the silence felt less empty.
Bizarro opened his eyes. “Small hurting one am find home?”
“I hope so,” you said.
Jason looked at the scorch mark left behind. “Some things don’t get home.”
You turned to him.
He regretted speaking immediately.
Your expression was too knowing.
“Orpheus thought that too,” you said.
Jason groaned. “Here we go.”
You ignored him, because of course you did. “He went into the underworld for the one he loved. He sang so beautifully that even Hades listened. But on the path back, he looked behind him too soon and lost Eurydice again.”
“Yeah, I know the story. Depressing. Bad road trip.”
“Most people think the lesson is that he should not have looked back,” you said.
“Pretty sure that was the explicit instruction.”
You looked at him.
“I think the lesson is that love followed as far as it could,” you said. “And grief has spent centuries blaming him for being afraid.”
Jason had no answer.
Bizarro frowned. “Looking back am bad?”
“No,” you said. “Looking back is human.”
Jason’s chest tightened.
You looked at Bizarro, then at him.
“Both of you were made to feel like someone looked back and regretted you.”
The words landed with surgical precision.
Bizarro stared at the floor. Jason’s jaw worked. You stood between them in the broken basement, pale and bleeding and stubborn as a vow.
“But I do not regret you,” you said.
Jason’s eyes snapped to yours.
You seemed embarrassed by your own honesty but kept going anyway. Brave little idiot.
“I am glad you came back,” you told Jason.
His breath caught.
“And I am glad you were made,” you told Bizarro.
Bizarro made a broken sound and covered his face with one hand.
Jason wanted to run. He wanted to make a joke sharp enough to cut the moment apart. Wanted to say something cruel before softness got its hands around his throat. Wanted to remind you that he was not some mythic dead boy wandering beneath pomegranate trees. He was a crime lord with blood on his boots and a body count that could make saints weep.
But you already knew.
That was the problem.
You saw him anyway.
Bizarro reached for you first.
This time, he was careful when he hugged you.
Jason watched your arms go around Bizarro’s massive shoulders, watched you whisper something too quiet to hear. Bizarro nodded against you like a child being promised the monsters were gone, even though all three of you knew monsters were never gone.
Then Bizarro turned his head.
“Red Him need hug too.”
Jason took a step back. “Red Him absolutely does not.”
You looked over Bizarro’s shoulder. Your eyes were soft.
Jason pointed at you. “Don’t.”
“I said nothing.”
“You’re thinking loudly.”
“I was raised among philosophers.”
“Yeah, well, philosophise quieter.”
Bizarro released you and opened one arm toward Jason.
Jason stared. “No.”
Bizarro waited. You waited. The basement dripped somewhere in the distance.
Jason sighed with his entire damaged soul. “This is emotional extortion.”
“Yes,” you said.
“Amazon-sanctioned?”
“Obviously.”
Jason muttered several words Diana would not approve of and stepped into Bizarro’s hug.
Bizarro wrapped him up with one arm, then pulled you in with the other.
Jason went rigid. For exactly three seconds.
Then your shoulder pressed against his. Your cape brushed his arm. Bizarro’s enormous hand settled between Jason’s shoulder blades with impossible care.
And Jason—
Jason did not relax. That would be insane.
But something in him unclenched.
A fraction. Enough.
“Bizarro am not mistake,” Bizarro said, voice muffled.
“No,” you said.
“Wonder Boy am not wrong boy.”
Jason felt you go still.
Bizarro squeezed both of you gently. “People say wrong words. Bizarro hate. Wonder Boy am boy. Good boy. Strong boy. Friend boy.”
Your breath hitched.
Jason looked down at you.
Your face had crumpled.
Not fully. You were fighting it. Chin trembling, mouth pressed tight, eyes shining with the desperate fury of someone trying not to cry in a basement full of monsters because the monster had been kinder than the world.
Jason’s heart did something stupid.
Something dangerous. Something alive.
“Yeah,” he said, voice low. “He is.”
You looked at him.
Jason swallowed.
“He’s Wonder Boy,” he said. “Anyone’s got a problem with that, they can take it up with me.”
Your laugh came out broken. “That is your solution to everything.”
“Not true.”
“It is very true.”
“Sometimes they can take it up with Bizarro.”
Bizarro nodded solemnly. “Bizarro am excellent customer service.”
That startled a real laugh out of you.
Jason grinned despite himself.
The three of you stayed tangled together for another few seconds before Jason’s pride began filing formal complaints.
“All right,” he muttered. “Group hug’s over. Nobody tell Roy.”
“Roy already know,” Bizarro said.
Jason froze. “What does that mean?”
“Bizarro send picture.”
“You what?”
You looked horrified and delighted. “When?”
Bizarro proudly held up a cracked phone.
On the screen was a blurry, low-angle photo of Jason trapped in the hug, looking furious, while you looked emotional and Bizarro looked like he had won a Nobel Prize in friendship.
Jason stared.
Then he took a slow breath.
“Bizarro.”
“Red Him am welcome.”
“I’m going to throw that phone into the sun.”
“Kara am catch it.”
You lost it then, laughing so hard you had to brace a hand against Jason’s arm.
Jason told himself he only let you because you were injured.
Obviously. No other reason.
By the time you made it back to the roof, dawn was bruising the edge of the city.
Metropolis looked different at sunrise. Softer. Less smug. The glass towers caught the light and scattered it until the whole skyline seemed briefly made of gold.
Bizarro sat on the ledge with his feet dangling over the street, watching the sun come up like it was personally doing him a favour.
Jason leaned against a broken ventilation unit, arms crossed, helmet beside him.
You stood near the edge, lasso coiled at your hip, cape moving in the wind.
Your nose had stopped bleeding. Mostly.
Jason was trying very hard not to stare at the blood still drying above your lip.
He failed.
“You need medical,” he said.
You glanced back. “So do you.”
“I’m allergic.”
“To medical care?”
“To being perceived by Alfred.”
“Coward.”
“Strategically cautious.”
“Coward.”
Bizarro raised a hand. “Bizarro am also coward of Alfred.”
Jason pointed at him. “See? Survival instinct.”
You smiled, but it faded as you looked out over the sunrise.
Jason recognised the shift.
The mission was done. The banter had burned off. Now came the quiet. The part where the things said underground followed everyone back into the light.
He hated that part.
He joined you anyway.
For a while, neither of you spoke.
Then you said, “I meant what I said.”
Jason looked at the city. “You said a lot.”
“That I am glad you came back.”
His throat tightened. “Don’t.”
“I am not asking you to answer.”
“Good.”
“I am only saying it again because men like you tend to believe a truth only counts if it hurts.”
Jason’s mouth twisted. “Men like me?”
“Dead boys. Soldiers. Sons of fathers who loved badly. Men who think tenderness is a trap because it has teeth.”
Jason stared at you. You stared back.
There was no pity in your face.
That was what made it unbearable. Pity, Jason could handle. Pity was easy to spit at. Fear was easier. Disgust, easiest of all.
But reverence?
No. Absolutely not.
“You always talk like that?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Exhausting.”
“I have been told it is part of my charm.”
“By who?”
“Dick.”
“Doesn’t count. He thinks glitter has tactical value.”
“It does.”
Jason snorted.
Then the silence returned. Softer this time.
You looked down at your hands. “When I came out, some of the Amazons did not know what to call me.”
Jason’s head turned. You kept your gaze on the sunrise.
“They were not cruel. Not most of them. But confusion can cut even when no one sharpens it.” Your thumb brushed over the edge of your bracer. “I spent years feeling like I had become a question my home had not prepared to answer.”
Jason said nothing. He knew better than to interrupt a wound while it was deciding whether to open.
“Diana never hesitated,” you said. “She called me her brother-in-arms before anyone else called me son. She trained me with the heroes’ rites. Old forms. Old oaths. Stories the island had kept but never expected to use for someone like me.”
“Someone like you,” Jason repeated.
Your mouth curved sadly. “Yes.”
He hated that phrase. Someone like you.
People only said it when they were trying to turn a person into a category from a distance safe enough not to feel responsible.
You looked at him then.
“I know it is not the same,” you said. “What happened to you. What happened to Bizarro. What happened to me. They are not the same wound.”
“No,” Jason said.
“But there is a room they all lead to.”
The sunrise caught in your eyes.
“The room where the world says, You are not what we ordered.”
Jason’s chest went tight.
Below, the city woke. Cars. Voices. Sirens in the distance. Life, indifferent and miraculous.
“I hate that room,” Jason said.
“So do I.”
Bizarro’s voice came from behind you both. “Bizarro smash room?”
Jason huffed. “Yeah, buddy. We smash the room.”
You smiled faintly. “And then?”
Jason looked at you.
It was a real question.
Not tactical. Not rhetorical.
What came after breaking the place that named you wrong?
Jason did not know.
He was good at destruction. Good at vengeance. Good at walking into the underworld with guns loaded and coming out covered in someone else’s blood.
He was less good afterwards.
Bizarro slid off the ledge and joined you both. “Then build better room.”
You looked up at him, expression soft.
Jason blinked.
Bizarro seemed almost embarrassed by his own wisdom. “Room with snacks.”
You laughed. “Naturally.”
“And chairs not with straps.”
Jason’s humour faded.
You reached out and touched Bizarro’s wrist.
“Yes,” you said. “No straps.”
Bizarro nodded firmly. “And signs. Signs say Red Him am not wrong. Wonder Boy am boy. Bizarro am person.”
Jason’s eyes burned.
He looked away fast.
You did not.
“Good signs,” you said, voice thick.
“Best signs,” Bizarro agreed.
Jason cleared his throat. “Spelt correctly?”
Bizarro considered. “Maybe.”
“Good enough.”
The sun climbed higher.
For a moment, standing between the two of them, you thought of all the myths you had been raised on.
Orpheus singing beneath the earth. Persephone eating seeds and making a kingdom out of captivity. Hyacinthus blooming from blood. Odysseus coming home in rags and being known by the scar.
So many stories about return. So many stories about transformation. So many stories people misunderstood because they thought tragedy meant failure.
But maybe tragedy was only the place where the song broke.
Not where it ended.
You looked at Jason Todd, who had crawled from his grave and still stood between the living and the cruel. You looked at Bizarro, made by violent hands, choosing gentleness anyway.
Underworld boys, you thought.
Not monsters. Not mistakes.
Sacred. Changed. Still here.
Jason caught you looking. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Yes.”
“You gonna explain?”
“No.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re thinking myth stuff again.”
“Possibly.”
“Is it insulting?”
“No.”
“Then it’s probably worse.”
You smiled. “I was thinking that people fear what returns from the underworld because it proves the door opens both ways.”
Jason went very still.
Bizarro frowned thoughtfully. “Door am rude.”
Jason laughed under his breath, but his eyes stayed on you.
“And you?” he asked.
You blinked. “Me?”
“What are you proving?”
The question struck more gently than you expected.
You looked down at the eagle on your chest. The symbol still felt heavy some days. Still complicated. Still made by a legacy the world insisted on calling womanhood, even when you stood beneath it as a son.
But here, with them, it did not feel like an ill-fitting inheritance.
It felt like a torch.
“I suppose,” you said slowly, “I am proving that a son can be raised by Amazons and still carry their truth.”
Jason’s expression shifted.
Bizarro smiled. “Wonder Boy am good proof.”
Your throat tightened.
Jason looked at your chest, then at your face. “Yeah,” he said. “He is.”
You breathed out.
The sunrise warmed your armour.
Behind you, the blacksite smoked. Ahead of you, the city glittered.
Jason picked up his helmet and tucked it under his arm. “Come on. We need to clear out before the capes with better PR show up.”
“You are a cape with terrible PR,” you said.
“I worked hard for that.”
Bizarro looked proud. “Red Him am famous.”
“Infamous.”
“Best famous.”
Jason sighed. “Sure, big guy.”
You started toward the fire escape.
Jason fell into step beside you. Bizarro floated above, humming tunelessly to himself.
After a few steps, Jason nudged your shoulder with his.
Not hard. Not careless.
A small touch. Deliberate.
“You scared me down there,” he said gruffly.
You glanced at him. “You were scared?”
“No.”
“Jason.”
He scowled. “Fine. Maybe. A normal amount.”
“Of course.”
“Don’t do that again.”
“Risk myself to save someone?”
“Bleed out of your face while making eye contact like a tragic statue.”
Your laugh startled a flock of pigeons from the next rooftop.
Jason’s mouth twitched.
“I will try,” you said.
“Try harder.”
You looked at him, soft again in that dangerous way.
“I will,” you said. “But only if you try to believe me.”
Jason’s steps slowed. “About what?”
“You know what.”
He did. Of course he did.
That he was not wrong. That coming back had not made him unworthy. That anger was not the same as monstrosity. That someone could look at the grave dirt under his fingernails and still be glad he had climbed.
Jason looked away.
The old reflex rose: deflect, deny, disappear.
But Bizarro drifted above you both, humming. You walked at Jason’s side, not pushing, not demanding. The morning opened gold across the city like some ridiculous blessing none of them had asked for.
Jason exhaled.
“I’ll try,” he said.
The words were rough. Barely there.
But you heard them.
Your smile was small and devastating.
“Good.”
Jason rolled his eyes. “Don’t look so pleased.”
“I am extremely pleased.”
“Tone it down.”
“No.”
“Figures.”
Bizarro swooped lower. “Red Him and Wonder Boy am flirting fight again.”
Jason did not choke this time. Progress, maybe.
You grinned. “Perhaps.”
Jason stared at you. Bizarro gasped.
You walked ahead, cape snapping behind you, looking far too pleased with yourself.
Jason stood frozen for half a second before catching up.
“Perhaps?” he demanded.
You did not look back. “Keep up, Red Him.”
Bizarro laughed, loud and bright enough to shake birds from every rooftop on the block.
Jason muttered curses under his breath, but he followed.
Of course he followed.
The underworld had doors. So did morning.
And for the first time in a long time, Jason wondered if return did not always have to mean crawling out alone.
content dick grayson & kara zor-el & trans male! wonder boy! reader, amazon! reader, dysphoria, misgendering, emotional vulnerability, reader gets misgendered, brief mention of violence/combat, hurt/comfort, brief mention of kara's trauma & krypton's destruction, brief mention of dick's grief over his parents, greek mythology references
masterlist
wordcount 3.3k
The first time someone called you Wonder Woman’s “little Amazon princess” on live television, you smiled so hard your jaw hurt.
It happened outside a museum in Metropolis, beneath banners of gold and white, where reporters gathered like birds around carrion and microphones bloomed under your chin. You had just helped stop three armed thieves from stealing an artefact collection Diana had personally loaned from Themyscira—bronze spearheads, ritual masks, fragments of ancient shields polished until they shone like captured sunlight.
You had fought well. Better than well. You had taken a bullet on your bracer, thrown a man twice your size through a marble column, and caught a falling security guard before his skull could split against the floor. You had moved like you were taught. Feet light. Shoulders square. Chin lifted. A son of Themyscira, Diana called you. A wonder in your own right.
And then a reporter shoved a microphone toward you and said, brightly, “How does it feel being Wonder Woman’s newest little Amazon princess?”
The world narrowed.
Not dramatically. No thunder. No cracking sky. Just the sudden, awful sensation of your skin becoming a costume someone else had zipped you into.
Beside you, Dick Grayson’s smile faltered. On your other side, Kara Zor-El went very still.
You had trained for pain. For insult. For blood. For the hot blur of combat and the cold ache after. You had not trained for a question asked sweetly, by someone who thought she was complimenting you.
So you smiled.
Because Diana had taught you diplomacy. Because Hippolyta had taught you dignity. Because the Amazons had raised you to stand tall even when the world tried to make you kneel.
“It feels,” you said, voice smooth as polished marble, “like an honour to represent Themyscira.”
Dick’s hand brushed yours. Not enough for the cameras to catch. Just enough for you to know he had noticed.
Kara stepped forward, eyes bright in that dangerous way Kryptonian eyes got when they were one bad decision away from glowing.
“He’s Wonder Boy,” she said, voice gentle enough that the correction landed like silk over steel. “And he saved six people today.”
The reporter blinked. “Of course, I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” Kara said.
Somehow that made it worse.
You kept smiling until the interview ended. You kept smiling through the photos. Through the congratulations. Through the mayor shaking your hand and calling you “a credit to Diana’s legacy,” which was better, closer, but still made something twist beneath your ribs.
You kept smiling until the three of you reached the rooftop two blocks away, where the city noise softened into wind and sirens and the low electric hum of Metropolis pretending it was not afraid of anything.
Then your smile fell off your face like a dropped shield.
Dick noticed first. Of course he did. He had the kind of attention that felt like sleight of hand: casual, bright, impossible to catch until he was already holding the truth between two fingers.
“Hey,” he said softly. “You with us?”
You looked out over the city. Metropolis glittered below, all glass towers and impossible optimism. It was nothing like Gotham, which crouched under its own sorrow and dared the world to flinch. Metropolis reached upward. Gotham curled inward. Themyscira stood apart from both, ringed by sea and myth, older than either city could imagine.
You belonged to none of them. That was the thought that came, ugly and sudden. You belonged nowhere completely.
“I hate when they do that,” you said.
Your voice did not break. You wished it had. A broken voice would have felt honest. Instead, it came out calm. Trained. Royal, almost. Like you were giving a speech instead of bleeding quietly in your own chest.
Kara’s expression softened.
Dick did not move closer. Not yet. He was good at that too—waiting for permission without making it feel like waiting.
“When they call you the wrong thing?” he asked.
You huffed a humourless laugh. “When they call me the thing they think I should be.”
The wind tugged at your cape. It had been designed in Themysciran red, shorter than Diana’s, pinned at one shoulder with a clasp shaped like an eagle. The armour beneath was bronze and blue and gold, fitted to your body by hands that had known you since childhood.
It was yours. You knew it was yours.
Most days.
Some days, you looked at the symbol on your chest and felt like you were borrowing a language that had no word for you.
“I know what Wonder Woman means to people,” you said. “I know what the Amazons mean. I know what it means to see her and think—there. There is a woman who can lift a tank and tell the truth to gods. There is a woman who does not apologise for power.”
Kara leaned against the ledge beside you. Her shoulder nearly touched yours.
You stared down at the traffic, at the tiny rivers of headlights moving through the streets.
“I loved that too,” you admitted. “Before I had words for myself, I loved it. I loved being raised among them. I loved the training yards at dawn. I loved the old songs. I loved watching Diana spar like the whole island was holding its breath. I loved thinking strength could look like that.”
Dick’s voice was quiet. “But?”
“But then I became myself.”
The words landed between you.
Not became, not exactly. You had always been yourself. But there had been a time when the truth had been buried under other people’s names for it. Girl. Daughter. Maiden. Princess. Future sister. Future warrior woman.
You had peeled each word away with shaking hands until only one remained.
Boy. Son. Man, someday. Maybe. If you were brave enough to grow into it.
You swallowed. “And suddenly, everything that had made me feel powerful started feeling like it belonged to someone else.”
Kara’s face changed. It was subtle, but you saw it. A flinch hidden under compassion.
“I get that,” she said.
You looked at her. She gave a small, crooked smile. Not Supergirl’s smile. Kara’s. Younger, sadder, sharper at the edges.
“The symbol,” she said, touching the crest on her chest. “Sometimes it feels like home. Sometimes it feels like a tombstone.”
Dick exhaled.
Kara looked away, out toward the burning city lights. “People see it and think hope. They see Superman. They see my cousin. They see this perfect idea of Krypton that never really existed. But I see…” She paused. “I see my parents. My city. The sky turning red. I see everything I was supposed to protect and couldn’t.”
Your chest ached.
Kara Zor-El, last daughter of a dead world, wearing her family’s crest like a sunrise.
You had always thought she looked invincible. That was the trick of symbols, maybe. From far away, they gleamed. Up close, they had weight.
Dick moved then, sitting on the rooftop ledge with one knee drawn up, balance effortless. The wind teased his hair across his forehead. In the museum lights, he had been all charm: Nightwing, the first Robin, Gotham’s golden boy, the one who could smile reporters into forgetting they were afraid.
Now he looked tired.
“The bat never fit me,” he said.
That surprised you.
Dick glanced at you, mouth quirking. “What? You thought I came out of the womb doing flips in kevlar?”
“A little,” you said.
Kara snorted.
Dick pressed a hand dramatically to his heart. “Wounded by my own mythology.”
Despite yourself, you smiled.
There he was. The performance. The dazzle. The easy little bow with grief tucked behind his teeth.
But then his smile faded.
“I loved being Robin,” he said. “I did. It gave me somewhere to put all the rage. All the grief. Bruce gave me a mission when I thought my whole life had ended. But the bat was his. The cave was his. The silence was his. And for a while, I thought loving him meant becoming another shadow.”
You listened.
It was strange, hearing Dick talk like this. He was so often motion. Laughter. Gravity-defiance with a pulse. But here, under the Metropolis moon, he sounded like a boy who had once stood in a cave too large for him and mistaken obedience for belonging.
“So you became Nightwing,” Kara said softly.
Dick nodded. “Eventually. But even that took time. I had to figure out what parts of the legacy were mine and what parts were just… hand-me-down grief.”
Hand-me-down grief.
The phrase slid into you like a blade finding the gap beneath armour.
You looked down at your chest again. The eagle. The gold. The proof of Diana’s faith in you.
“I do not want to sound ungrateful,” you said.
Dick’s gaze softened. “You don’t.”
“Themyscira accepted me,” you said. “Not all at once. Not perfectly. Some of the elders looked at me like I was a riddle they had not been warned they would have to solve. But Diana never hesitated. She called me a son before I was brave enough to say the word without whispering.”
Kara’s hand found yours.
Warm. Strong. Careful.
You stared at your joined hands.
“She told me the island had raised warriors, queens, hunters, philosophers, poets. She said it could raise a boy.” Your mouth trembled. “She said perhaps it was time it did.”
Dick’s eyes shone.
You looked away before that could undo you.
“But every time I stand beside her, people look for the girl version of me. The version they understand. The version that makes sense beside Wonder Woman.” You took a breath. “Sometimes I feel like the symbol only fits if I make myself smaller. Softer in the wrong ways. Easier to translate.”
Kara squeezed your hand. Dick stood from the ledge and came closer, slow enough that you could step back if you wanted.
You didn’t.
“You know what I see?” he asked.
You gave him a tired look. “If you say ‘a hero,’ I’m throwing you off this roof.”
“I was going to say a terrifyingly judgmental Amazon who once told me my flirting lacked moral architecture.”
Kara burst out laughing.
You closed your eyes. “It did.”
“I have been haunted by that sentence for weeks.”
“As you should be.”
Dick grinned, but it softened quickly. “I see someone who’s carrying a legacy most people don’t even know how to name yet. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It means the world’s behind.”
The world’s behind.
A laugh escaped you, small and wet. “That is a very Nightwing way to make alienation sound like a scheduling issue.”
“I contain multitudes.”
“You contain glitter and trauma.”
“Also multitudes.”
Kara shook her head, smiling. Then she turned to you fully.
“When I first came to Earth,” she said, “I hated how people talked about me. Like I was Superman’s cousin first and myself second. Like my whole life was an explanation attached to his. I still hate it sometimes.”
Her thumb moved over your knuckles.
“But Clark didn’t steal the symbol from me. People just didn’t know how to see us both under it yet.”
You looked at her.
“And Diana doesn’t make you less Wonder Boy,” Kara said. “She makes room for you to be him. Everyone else will catch up or get out of the way.”
“Preferably get out of the way,” Dick added. “Kara’s reporter-handling voice is terrifying.”
“It is not.”
“It absolutely is. I saw a man reconsider his bloodline.”
Kara looked pleased. “Good.”
You laughed then.
Not enough to fix it. Not enough to make the ache vanish. But enough to loosen something.
Dick reached for your other hand.
You let him take it.
There, on a Metropolis rooftop, held between the last daughter of Krypton and the first son of Themyscira’s new age, with Gotham’s bright shadow watching you like you were something worth waiting beside, you finally let your shoulders drop.
“I want it to fit,” you confessed.
Dick’s hand tightened around yours.
“I want to wear the eagle and not feel like I am trespassing. I want to be Wonder Boy and not feel like an asterisk. I want little boys like me to see me and not have to translate themselves in their own heads.”
Your voice cracked at last.
Good. There it was.
The honest wound.
“I want to be a son of Themyscira,” you said, “without feeling like I betrayed its daughters.”
Kara inhaled sharply.
Dick’s face changed with something almost fierce.
“You didn’t betray anyone,” he said.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know enough.” His voice was steady. “You didn’t leave womanhood like a battlefield deserter. You were never there as yourself. You survived being misnamed long enough to come home to yourself. That’s not betrayal.”
The words hit too deep.
You stared at him. Dick looked almost surprised by his own certainty, like the truth had passed through him before he could dress it up in charm.
Kara’s eyes were bright again, but not with anger this time.
“You are not less Amazon because you are a man,” she said. “You are proof they were strong enough to love beyond tradition.”
Something inside you gave.
Not broke.
Opened.
You lowered your head, and Kara pulled you into her arms.
You went.
For one suspended second, you were aware of everything: the smell of wind and dust and Kara’s shampoo, the press of her cape against your cheek, Dick’s hand warm between your shoulder blades, the city below moving on without knowing that your world had tilted slightly toward healing.
Then you let yourself breathe.
Kara held you like she understood what it meant to be mistaken for a symbol when you were really a survivor wearing one.
Dick stayed close like he understood that sometimes family was not the people who gave you a name, but the ones who learned how to say it correctly.
After a while, you muttered, “If anyone tells Diana I cried, I will deny it.”
Dick hummed. “I’m pretty sure Diana would just ask why we didn’t cry with you.”
Kara nodded solemnly. “She would be disappointed in us.”
“That is worse.”
“Deeply,” Dick agreed.
You pulled back, wiping your face with the heel of your hand. “The two of you are terrible comforters.”
“False,” Dick said. “We are emotionally available and visually stunning.”
Kara tilted her head. “He’s half right.”
You looked between them and, despite the rawness in your throat, smiled. “Which half?”
Kara’s mouth twitched. “He is visually stunning.”
Dick gasped. “Betrayal. On my rooftop? In this economy?”
You laughed again, and this time it felt like sunlight touching water.
For a while, none of you moved.
Then, softly, Dick said, “You know, for what it’s worth… I think the symbol fits you better because you had to fight for it.”
You looked at him. His expression was open in a way that made him look younger. Not childish. Just unguarded. Like the boy who had once worn pixie boots and grief and called it justice was still somewhere inside him, waiting to be told he had done enough.
“You too,” you said.
Dick blinked.
You turned your hand, catching his fingers before he could retreat into a joke.
“The blue bird,” you said. “Nightwing. It fits because you chose it. Not because it was easy. Not because it solved everything. Because you refused to become another man’s shadow.”
Dick went very still.
Kara watched quietly.
“You were not made to be Batman’s echo,” you said. “You were made to be the first song after mourning.”
Dick’s mouth parted slightly.
For once, he seemed to have no clever answer.
Good. You had learned from Diana that truth, when thrown well, could be more precise than any spear.
“You call me dramatic,” you added softly, “but you named yourself after a Kryptonian legend and then made it about freedom. That is the most romantic thing I have ever heard.”
Dick’s ears went red.
Kara’s grin turned wicked. “Oh, he’s blushing.”
“I am not.”
“You are,” you said, delighted despite yourself. “Apollo preserve us. Gotham’s golden boy can be flustered.”
Dick pointed at you. “You weaponise poetry.”
“I was raised correctly.”
Kara laughed, but there was something fragile in her smile now. You saw it because you were looking. Really looking.
The crest on her chest gleamed in the rooftop lights.
You remembered her words.
Sometimes it feels like home. Sometimes it feels like a tombstone.
Carefully, you released Dick’s hand and turned to her.
“And you,” you said.
Kara’s smile faded.
Dick glanced at you, then at her.
You touched the edge of her crest, not pressing, just asking.
She nodded once.
So you laid your palm over the House of El.
“This is not only grief,” you said.
Kara’s throat moved.
“I know it feels that way,” you continued. “I know you carry a dead world where others see hope. But Kara, you are not a monument to Krypton’s ending.”
Her eyes shimmered.
“You are its return,” you said. “Not as it was. Not untouched. Not unbroken. But alive. Speaking. Laughing. Eating terrible Earth food with people who love you.”
Dick whispered, “Hey, potstickers are not terrible.”
Kara let out a shaky laugh. You smiled faintly, then grew serious again.
“You are not the last daughter of anything,” you said. “You are the first hymn after silence.”
Kara covered your hand with hers.
For a moment, the only sound was the city and the wind.
Then she leaned forward, resting her forehead against yours.
Kryptonians ran warm. You had noticed before, in battle, in passing, in the casual brush of her shoulder against yours. But this close, Kara felt like standing near sunlight with a pulse.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
You closed your eyes. “Always.”
Dick’s hand settled lightly at your back again, anchoring without holding you down.
That was the thing about them, you thought.
Dick, who had turned mourning into motion. Kara, who had turned extinction into hope. And you, who were still trying to turn truth into a shape the world could recognise.
Perhaps that was why Diana had smiled when Clark suggested the three of you train together. Perhaps she had seen it before you did: not a replacement Trinity, not a neat inheritance, but a beginning.
A bird. A star. An eagle.
Not Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman.
Not yet legends. Not old gods. Just three young heroes on a rooftop, learning that symbols were not cages unless you let the world lock them from the outside.
Below, sirens wailed.
Dick sighed. “That sounds like our cue.”
Kara lifted her head, eyes clearing. “Bank robbery?”
You tilted your head, listening. “No. Two streets over. Elevated rail malfunction.”
Dick was already smiling, mask sliding back into place—but not all the way. Not with you. Not with Kara.
“Race you?” he asked.
Kara arched a brow. “You cannot fly.”
“I have style.”
“You have sticks.”
“Iconic sticks.”
You stepped toward the ledge, cape snapping behind you.
The ache was still there. It would be there again tomorrow, probably. The next interview. The next mistaken title. The next stranger trying to squeeze you into a story too small to hold you.
But Kara’s words stayed in your chest.
The world’s behind.
And Dick’s.
You survived being misnamed long enough to come home to yourself.
You looked at them both, your heart stupidly full.
“If either of you falls,” you said, “I am not looking back like Orpheus. I am coming down after you.”
Dick’s smile softened into something dangerously tender. Kara’s eyes shone.
“Very romantic,” Dick said.
“Very impractical,” Kara added.
You grinned and stepped backward off the roof. “Then keep up.”
For one breath, there was only falling.
Then the lasso at your hip sang gold through the night, catching a flagpole, swinging you out over the bright Metropolis street.
Behind you, Kara launched herself into the sky like a comet.
Dick followed in a graceful arc of blue and black, laughing as he fell toward the city like gravity was merely an old friend he enjoyed teasing.
And for once, the symbol on your chest did not feel borrowed.
I want to request but I also have no idea how specific of a request you will write 😭😭😭😭 I also want you to have your break LMAO. Love your work!!!
you can request as specific as you like! honestly i prefer specific requests 😭 i like it better when someone requests a specific character fic rather than mulitple, and it helps more plot-wise too! i will be back maybe tomorrow or the next day so you can send it in and i'll work on it :)
