Yo…this is my first post on tumblr.. but here’s the Damian Wayne and he’s little precious kitty Alfred that I drew today!! 💞😼 ( you have no idea how many times I erased Damian’s face over and over again 💀)
content damian wayne x gn! reader, vigilante! reader, aged up damian, metahuman! reader, angst, slow burn, lonely morally grey reader, memory/identity curse, first kiss, emotional hurt/comfort, identity erasure, loneliness/isolation, abandonment trauma, childhood neglect, violence, murder/lethal vigilantism, blood/injury, emotional distress, fear of being forgotten, emotional vulnerability, abandonment trauma, trauma responses, violence/injury, blood, canon-typical gotham violence, angst with comfort, identity insecurity, fear of being loved then forgotten.
masterlist
wordcount 11.1k
you have lived your whole life being forgotten the second people look away. when you save damian wayne and vanish from his memory, he does the impossible: he starts looking for you anyway. he cannot remember you, but every version of him keeps choosing to find you again.
The first time Damian Wayne met you, you killed three men in front of him.
To be fair, they had been trying to kill him first.
The warehouse was already burning by then, heat crawling up the rusted walls in orange veins, smoke thick enough to make even his lenses stutter. Damian had lost comms seven minutes ago. His left shoulder had been dislocated four minutes ago. His sword had been knocked from his hand ninety seconds ago. And the man in front of him had a gun pressed beneath his jaw.
“Any last words, little bird?”
Damian hated being called little. He hated guns more. He was considering three options, all with a poor probability of success and an irritatingly high probability of dying, when the man holding the gun suddenly stopped smiling.
His eyes went wide.
A blade punched cleanly through his throat.
Damian did not flinch. He did, however, blink.
The body dropped. Behind it stood you.
You were not dressed like one of them. That was the first thing he noticed. No tactical insignia, no gang colours, no theatrics. Just dark clothes, a hood pulled low, a half-mask covering the lower part of your face, and a long knife held loosely in one hand as if violence bored you.
The second thing Damian noticed was that you were looking directly at him. Not at the gunman. Not at the fire.
At him.
“Robin,” you said, dry as dust. “You look terrible.”
Damian’s eyes narrowed behind his domino. “Who are you?”
You tilted your head. “Really? That’s what you’re going with?”
Two more men rushed from behind a stack of crates. You moved before Damian could.
You moved like someone who had stopped caring whether the world saw them coming.
The first man lost his gun hand. The second lost his breath when your knee cracked into his sternum. Damian lunged for his fallen sword, pain detonating white-hot through his shoulder, but by the time his fingers closed around the hilt, both attackers were on the ground.
One dead. One bleeding out.
Damian stared.
You wiped your blade against the dead man’s coat with an expression that suggested the fabric had personally offended you.
“You kill,” Damian said.
“So do they.” You glanced at him. “I’m just better at it.”
“You are not sanctioned.”
A laugh slipped from you, low and sharp. “By who? Your father? Cute.”
Damian stepped toward you. His vision blurred. The smoke, he realised too late. Too much of it. His lungs seized. His injured shoulder throbbed. His balance faltered.
You were in front of him in an instant.
“Don’t be dramatic,” you muttered, catching him before he could hit the concrete.
“I am not—”
“Currently collapsing in a burning warehouse? Yeah. Very dignified.”
Damian tried to shove you away. His arm refused to obey. You looked down at him, and for one impossible second, your sarcasm cracked.
Something ancient and tired moved behind your eyes. “Stay awake, Robin.”
“Who,” Damian forced out, “are you?”
Your grip tightened. “Nobody.”
Then you dragged him out of the fire.
By the time Batman arrived, Damian was alone. Three bodies were inside the warehouse. His sword was at his side. His shoulder had been reset.
And Damian Wayne had absolutely no memory of how he had escaped.
The report was unacceptable. Damian knew it before Bruce said anything.
He stood in the cave with one arm strapped across his chest, jaw clenched, while his father reviewed the footage on the main computer. Or, more accurately, the lack of footage.
“Your body camera cut out at 23:41,” Bruce said.
“The smoke disrupted the lens.”
“The audio went out three seconds later.”
“Interference.”
“And then?”
Damian’s mouth tightened.
And then nothing. He remembered the gun. The heat. The pressure beneath his jaw. The moment he had calculated his odds and found them unpleasant. Then he remembered waking outside beneath the rain, coughing ash onto the pavement while Batman’s cape blocked the streetlights overhead.
Between those moments lay a void.
Damian hated voids.
“I escaped,” he said.
Bruce looked at him. Damian hated that look, too. “Your shoulder had been reset.”
“I am aware.”
“Did you do that yourself?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
Damian’s fingers curled. “I do not know.”
Silence stretched, broken only by the low hum of the cave systems and the faint chittering of bats overhead.
Bruce replayed the broken footage again. Gun beneath Damian’s chin. Smoke. Static. Black.
Damian watched the blank screen with a fury that felt embarrassingly close to fear.
Someone had been there. Someone had touched him. Moved him. Saved him.
And he could not remember.
That was unacceptable.
You watched him from the roof across the street.
He returned to the warehouse the next night. You should have known he would. Robins were like mould: persistent, invasive, and very hard to kill.
This one was different, though. Older than the rumours still liked to call him. Not a boy anymore, though Gotham had a bad habit of keeping its children trapped in headlines. Nineteen, maybe twenty. Tall enough now that the cape sat differently on his shoulders. Sharper through the jaw. Still too proud for his own good.
Still alive because of you.
You hated that part. Saving people was always the beginning of trouble.
He moved through the remains of the warehouse like a ghost with a grudge, scanning scorch marks, blood patterns, boot prints. He crouched near the place where the gunman had died and touched two fingers to the concrete.
You had cleaned your blade before leaving. Burned the fibres. Taken the shell casings. Broken every camera in a four-block radius.
Still, Damian found something. A thread, maybe. A scratch. A breath you had left behind.
His head lifted. You went still.
There it was. That flicker. Not recognition. No one recognised you. Recognition required memory, and memory slipped off you like rain from glass the moment eyes turned away.
But Damian’s gaze sharpened toward your rooftop.
Instinct. Annoying. Impressive.
Loneliness, treacherous little beast that it was, stirred inside your ribs.
“No,” you whispered to yourself.
Below, Damian stood. His hand drifted toward his sword.
You stepped back from the roof’s edge.
For one heartbeat, the moon touched your face.
Damian looked directly at you.
Your stomach dropped. You should have run. Instead, you froze like an idiot.
He fired a grappling line.
“Seriously?” you muttered.
Then you ran.
You were good at vanishing. You had to be. When you were eight years old, your teacher looked away from you during roll call and forgot you were in the classroom. At nine, your neighbour saw you fall from your bike, turned to call for help, and came back wondering why there was blood on the sidewalk.
At eleven, your parents started leaving notes on the fridge. Child. Name unknown. Lives here? And by thirteen, there were no notes. By fourteen, you stopped waiting at dinner tables. By fifteen, you learned that criminals were easier to live around than civilians. Criminals did not ask why you slept in abandoned buildings. They did not remember your face long enough to betray you. And when they hurt people, no one grieved if they disappeared.
By seventeen, you had a knife. By eighteen, you knew how to use it.
Now, you moved through Gotham like a rumour with teeth.
Someone would see you in an alley. Look away. Forget. Someone would hear your voice. Turn their head. Gone. Someone would bleed beneath your blade and die terrified, not because of death, but because in the last second of life, they understood they were being killed by someone the world itself refused to hold.
You had spent years pretending that it did not hurt.
Pretending worked, mostly. Right up until Robin started chasing you. He chased you across three rooftops, over a skybridge, down a fire escape, and through the top floor of an unfinished apartment complex.
He was fast. You were faster. He was trained. You were desperate.
“Stop,” Damian ordered.
You laughed, breathless. “Wow. Has that ever worked for you?”
He threw a birdarang. You ducked. It sliced through your hood, pinning fabric to a wooden beam behind you. You slipped out of it and kept moving.
Damian landed hard in front of you, sword drawn. “Enough.”
You stopped because the blade was pointed at your throat. Also, because, for the first time in years, someone had chased you long enough to get tired. It made something in your chest ache.
Damian’s eyes narrowed. “You were at the warehouse.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
His grip tightened. “Do not lie to me.”
“Fine. I was near the warehouse.”
“You saved me.”
“Technically, gravity did most of the work.”
“You reset my shoulder.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You killed those men.”
“They were going to kill you.”
“That was not your decision to make.”
Your expression flattened. “I forgot. Bats love moral lectures. Very on-brand. Do you practice in mirrors, or does brooding just come naturally?”
His blade did not move. “Who are you?”
You smiled behind your mask. There it was. The question everyone asked once.
Only once.
“Look away,” you said.
Damian did not. “Answer me.”
“Look away.”
“No.”
Your laugh came out softer than you intended. “Smart.”
His eyes flicked, just once, to the shadow behind you. A tactical glance. Less than a second.
It was enough.
His face changed. Not dramatically. Damian Wayne had too much discipline for that. But his brow furrowed. His mouth tightened. The sword at your throat shifted as confusion passed through him. He blinked. Then focused on you again as if seeing you for the first time.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
There it was. The old familiar knife. You should have been used to it. You were used to it.
You were.
“Wow,” you said lightly. “Déjà vu. Embarrassing for you.”
Damian’s eyes darkened. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“You did something.”
“Story of my life.”
He looked away again, scanning the room for traps. When his eyes returned to you, the confusion reset.
His sword lifted. “Identify yourself.”
Something inside you curled up small and cold.
You stepped closer to the blade until the edge kissed the fabric over your throat. “My power,” you said, voice suddenly flat, “is that nobody remembers me.”
Damian stared. “You are a metahuman.”
“Sure.”
“What is the mechanism?”
“Do I look like a scientist?”
“You appear insufferable.”
“Aw. You remembered an opinion for three seconds. Progress.”
His eyes narrowed. You waited.
His gaze flicked down to your hands. Gone. Again. When he looked back up, his expression sharpened with renewed alarm.
You laughed before he could speak. It sounded ugly.
“Don’t worry,” you said. “This is the part where you threaten me, interrogate me, look away, forget what you were asking, and then I leave. Classic. Very popular sequence.”
Damian did not answer. Instead, without looking away from your face, he slowly reached into his utility belt.
You tensed.
He pulled out a marker. Then, with his gaze still locked on yours, he uncapped it with his teeth and wrote on the inside of his left wrist.
You watched despite yourself.
DO NOT LOOK AWAY. PERSON IN FRONT OF YOU EXISTS.
Your mouth went dry.
Damian finished writing. Then, deliberately, he looked at his wrist.
You vanished from his mind. You saw it happen. You always saw it happen. His pupils shifted. His body went rigid. His eyes scanned the words.
DO NOT LOOK AWAY. PERSON IN FRONT OF YOU EXISTS.
Slowly, slowly, he looked up.
He saw you. He did not remember you. But he believed himself.
That was new.
“Explain,” he said.
Your heart, stupid and starved, gave one fragile little kick. You crushed it immediately. “No.”
Damian’s jaw set.
You stepped backwards into shadow. “Don’t follow me.”
“I will.”
“I know.” You sighed. “That was more of a polite suggestion.”
Then you dropped through the unfinished floor before he could stop you.
By the time he reached the lower level, you were gone. But on his wrist, in his own handwriting, proof remained.
PERSON IN FRONT OF YOU EXISTS.
Damian did not sleep. This was not unusual. What was unusual was the wall.
Three nights after the warehouse, Damian’s room contained forty-seven handwritten notes, twelve printed maps, six blood-spatter diagrams, and one sketch of a figure he could not remember drawing. The figure wore a half-mask. The lines were precise, though incomplete around the face. Every time he tried to sketch the eyes from memory, the image dissolved. Not physically. The paper remained.
His mind simply refused to hold the connection. It enraged him.
So he adapted.
At the top of the wall, he wrote: SUBJECT: FORGET-ME-NOT Then, beneath it: Known effects: Memory loss triggered when direct attention breaks. Written records persist. Video uncertain, beed test. Physical evidence persists. Emotional response may persist after memory loss. Subject saves civilians but uses lethal force. Subject saved me. Subject is alone.
Damian stared at the last line for a long time. He did not remember writing it. That bothered him more than the rest.
There were other notes too.
Do not trust first instinct upon seeing Subject. You have met before. Subject uses sarcasm defensively. Irritating. Possibly deliberate. Subject appears resigned when forgotten. Do not forget: forgetting harms them.
The final note was carved harder into the paper than the others. Damian ran a thumb over the indentation. He had no memory of the conversation that caused it.
Still, anger rose in him. Not at you.
At the fact that the world could look at a person and let them disappear.
You should have left Gotham. You knew that. You had left cities for less.
A cop in Blüdhaven once remembered the shape of your hand for nearly four seconds after looking away. You were on a train by morning. A telepath in Metropolis once frowned at you and said, “That’s strange.” You were out of the state within the hour.
Survival was simple: never wait to be wanted. Wanting was a trap.
So, naturally, you stayed.
Because Damian Wayne kept leaving evidence that he was looking for you. A chalk mark on a rooftop you used often. A camera angled toward an alley with a handwritten sign taped above it IF YOU SEE THIS, I AM TRYING TO SPEAK WITH YOU. A packet tucked beneath a gargoyle containing protein bars, medical supplies, burner comms, and a note. I do not know whether you need these. Take them anyway.
You threw the protein bars away. Then retrieved them ten minutes later. You were lonely, not stupid.
The burner comm you kept for three days before turning it on.
Immediately, a message appeared. This is Robin.
You stared at it.
Another message followed. If this device is active, I assume you have it.
Another. I will not ask you to meet in person unless you agree.
Another. I do not remember you. That does not mean you are not real.
Your throat tightened.
You hated him a little for that one.
So you typed, This is extremely dramatic.
The reply came thirty seconds later. You have met my father. I assure you this is restrained.
A laugh escaped before you could stop it. It startled you. The sound felt foreign. Like opening a door in a house you thought had burned down.
You typed, Your handwriting is terrible btw.
My handwriting is exceptional.
Your R looks like a stabbed insect.
A pause. Then, Noted.
The next chalk message you found two nights later had perfect block letters.
Smug little freak.
Damian learned around the shape of you. That was the only way to describe it. He could not remember you directly, but he built scaffolding around the absence.
Notes on his gloves. Voice memos recorded while staring at you, played back after he forgot. Sketches done in real time, each labelled with date, location, and emotional impression.
Subject looked tired tonight. Subject pretended not to care about antiseptic. Lied poorly. Subject dislikes being thanked. Continue thanking them. Subject laughed at 02:13. Remember that this matters.
You found that one in his notebook when you absolutely were not snooping.
“You are snooping,” Damian said.
You snapped the notebook shut. “I am investigating.”
“You are holding my private notes.”
“You left them where anyone could read them.”
“They were in my hand.”
“Skill issue.”
Damian looked unimpressed.
You were perched on the edge of a rooftop HVAC unit, swinging one leg like you had not just been caught reading the closest thing anyone had ever made to a record of you. He stood three feet away, refusing to break eye contact.
He had learned that trick too. It made conversations tense. Intimate. Weird.
“You should not kill,” he said.
You groaned. “We were having such a nice moment.”
“We were not.”
“You were writing about my laugh.”
His ears went faintly pink. Fascinating. “I record relevant behavioural data.”
“My laugh is relevant?”
“It is an indicator of trust.”
“Wow.” You placed a hand over your heart. “Talk dirty to me, Robin.”
His blush deepened. Your smile faded before he could see how much you liked it.
Dangerous. Hope was dangerous.
Damian stepped closer. “You use humour to redirect.”
“You use analysis to avoid feelings.”
“I do not avoid feelings.”
“You dress like a bat-themed traffic warning and punch people at night.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. “That is irrelevant.”
“That is what people say when things are relevant.”
He glared. You smiled. Then his gaze flicked, involuntarily, to the notebook in your hands.
And it happened. His expression emptied of you. Just slightly. Just enough.
He looked back up. His hand went to his sword. “Who are—”
You tossed the notebook at his chest. He caught it.
“Read page twelve,” you said.
Damian looked down.
You watched him reconstruct you from ink. Watched his own words pull him back to the edge of belief. Watched him breathe in slowly.
His eyes returned to yours. Not remembering. Choosing anyway.
“I apologise,” he said.
You flinched. It was small. He noticed.
“Don’t,” you said.
“I forgot.”
“Everyone does.”
“That does not make it acceptable.”
You laughed once, but there was no humour in it. “Careful, Wayne. You keep saying things like that, and I’ll start thinking you mean them.”
“I do.”
That was the problem.
You looked away first. The second you did, you knew he would forget the exact softness that had passed between you.
But you remembered. You always remembered.
Lucky you.
Damian’s family noticed eventually. Of course they did. A Bat could hide a stab wound for six hours, but not a new obsession. The dramatic irony was almost cute.
Tim found the wall first. He stared at the notes. Then at Damian. Then back at the notes.
“Okay,” Tim said. “Not to be rude, but this is either a case board or the beginning of a gothic romance.”
Damian snatched a sketch off the wall. “Leave.”
“Gothic romance. Got it.”
“Drake.”
“Does your mysterious murder cryptid have a name?”
Damian went still. “No.”
Tim’s expression shifted. Gentler. More dangerous. “You don’t know?”
“No one does.”
That shut him up. For almost three seconds, which for Tim Drake was basically a vow of silence. Then Tim stepped closer to the board. “You think there’s a cognitive effect?”
“I know there is.”
“On everyone?”
“Yes.”
“Even you?”
Damian’s jaw tightened. “Especially me.”
Tim read the notes in silence. Then said, “That’s horrifying.”
“Yes.”
“And lonely.”
Damian looked at the sketch in his hand. The eyes were incomplete again. “Yes,” he said.
Later, after Tim left, Damian added another note. Ask Subject what they want. Do not assume rescue equals cure.
He underlined it twice.
“What do you want?” Damian asked.
You stopped sharpening your knife. That question was worse than who are you. At least who are you had an easy answer. Nobody. Nothing. Gone already.
“What?” you said.
Damian sat across from you on the rooftop, knees bent, forearms resting loosely against them. He had taken off the domino. You hated when he did that. It made him look too human. Too young. Too beautiful in a way that was absolutely none of your business.
“What do you want?” he repeated.
“A vacation. Better coffee. The Joker dead. A nap long enough to be classified as a coma.”
“I am serious.”
“That’s tragic.”
“Forget-Me-Not.”
You froze.
He had never called you that out loud before. The name should have sounded clinical. It should have sounded like one more label pinned to the body-shaped hole you left in the world.
But Damian said it like a promise. Quiet. Careful. Yours, almost.
You looked away. The city blurred beneath you. “Don’t call me that.”
“What should I call you?”
You laughed under your breath. “Doesn’t matter. You won’t remember.”
“I will write it down.”
“That isn’t the same.”
“No,” Damian said. “It is not.”
The honesty almost hurt worse than comfort would have. You swallowed.
“My parents had a name for me,” you said. Damian went very still. “I don’t use it anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because they stopped.” You hated the silence that followed. You hated that he did not rush to fill it. You hated that some part of you wanted him to. “I was little,” you continued, because apparently your mouth had decided to betray the whole fortress. “When it started. At first, people just… misplaced me. Teachers skipped over me. Kids forgot games halfway through playing them. My parents thought it was stress. Then a phase. Then a curse. Then…” You smiled thinly. “Then I became a note on the fridge.”
Damian said nothing.
You picked at a loose thread on your sleeve. “One day, I came home and there were no notes. No dinner plate. No bed made up. My room was storage. My mother looked right at me, turned to call my father, and when she turned back, she screamed because there was a stranger in her house.” Your voice did not break. You were proud of that. “She forgot me faster than she could love me.”
Damian’s hands curled.
You looked at him then. Big mistake. His face held rage, but not the kind people usually aimed at you. This was not fear. Not suspicion.
This was fury on your behalf.
Hope sparked again. Tiny. Stupid. Cruel.
You crushed it badly this time. Not enough.
“That’s why you kill,” he said.
You snorted. “No. I kill because some people deserve to stop breathing.”
“Your loneliness informs your methods.”
“Careful. That almost sounded like empathy.”
“It was.”
“Gross.”
Damian’s mouth twitched. There. A near-smile. The kind of thing a person could get addicted to if they were very dumb and had no self-preservation.
You stood too quickly. “I should go.”
Damian stood too. “Stay.”
The word struck between you like a thrown blade.
You stared at him. He looked startled by himself. Then determined, because of course he did. Damian Wayne would fight God before admitting a feeling caught him off guard.
“Stay,” he repeated. “For ten minutes.”
“Why?”
“So I can remember you for ten minutes.”
Your chest hurt. “Damian.”
His name came out before you could stop it.
He inhaled sharply. You had never said it before.
Not Robin. Not Wayne.
Damian. Like he was a person. Like you were a person.
His voice softened. “Please.”
You hated hope. You hated it. You hated how it bloomed anyway.
So you sat back down. For ten minutes, Damian Wayne looked at you and did not forget. For ten minutes, you existed in someone else’s mind.
It was not enough.
It was everything.
The breakthrough came from a mistake. Damian was injured. Not badly, he insisted, which meant badly enough that anyone sane would seek medical attention. You found him in an alley behind the Iceberg Lounge, bleeding from a cut across his ribs and trying to staple himself shut with one hand.
“You look terrible,” you said.
He looked up sharply. For half a second, his face relaxed.
Not recognition. Never recognition. But something close.
“Forget-Me-Not.”
“You remembered?”
“No.” He glanced at the writing on his wrist. “I prepared.”
Of course he did.
You crouched beside him and slapped his hand away. “I can do it.”
“I’ve seen you try to stitch with your off-hand. It was like watching a raccoon defuse a bomb.”
“Your concern is touching.”
“My concern is impatient.”
You cleaned the wound while he stared at you. The eye contact had become easier.
No. That was a lie. It had become more unbearable.
Because Damian watched like attention was devotion. Like looking could be a form of shelter. Like if he just tried hard enough, the universe would be forced to admit you were there.
“You’re going to need stitches,” you said.
“I know.”
“This will hurt.”
“I know.”
“Don’t do that macho thing.”
“I do not do a macho thing.”
“You were raised by Batman and assassins. You absolutely do a macho thing.”
His lips twitched.
You started stitching. His breath hitched once, controlled and sharp.
Without thinking, you placed your free hand over his.
A stupid comfort. A forgettable comfort.
Damian looked down at your joined hands. You felt the moment his memory dropped.
His fingers tensed. You tried to pull away.
He caught your hand.
Not hard. Just enough.
His eyes were still on your hands. He should have forgotten you. He had forgotten you.
But he did not let go.
Slowly, he looked back up. His expression was confused. Then he saw your face. Then the note on his wrist. Then your hand in his. His thumb moved once against your knuckles.
“I forgot,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“But I did not release you.”
You stared at him.
He looked down again, testing. Memory vanished from his face. His hand remained around yours. Up again.
Reconstruction. Understanding.
“Physical contact,” he said.
Your pulse stumbled. “What?”
“Physical contact may preserve some continuity. Not memory, but intent. Somatic anchoring.”
“You are such a nerd.”
“Yes,” Damian said, eyes bright now in a way that made him look younger. “And you are holding my hand.”
You dropped it immediately. He looked smug for exactly one second before wincing because smugness apparently pulled stitches.
“Don’t get excited,” you said. “It was medical.”
“Of course.”
“I would hold anyone’s hand while sewing their ribs shut.”
“Your bedside manner is abysmal.”
“You’re welcome.”
That night, Damian wrote seventeen pages about somatic anchoring. You pretended not to read them.
You read them three times.
After that, things changed. Not fixed. Never fixed. This was not a fairy tale. Gotham ate fairy tales, picked the bones clean, and sold them back as cautionary graffiti.
Damian still forgot you. Every night. Every conversation. Every time his gaze broke, even for a breath too long.
But now he built ways back. A touch to his wrist. A note in his palm. A recording in his own voice, You trust them. Do not reach for your sword. Ask whether they have eaten.
The first time that recording played, you nearly threw his comm off a roof.
“Ask whether I’ve eaten?” you demanded. “What am I, a stray cat?”
Damian looked you up and down.
You hissed, “Don’t.”
“You do frequent rooftops.”
“I will stab you.”
“You also resist care despite needing it.”
“Damian.”
“And you accepted tuna from Brown last week.”
“That was sushi, you rich gremlin.”
He looked pleased. It was awful.
You started staying longer. That was the dangerous part. Five minutes became ten. Ten became an hour. An hour became patrol routes where Damian would glance at you every few seconds, stubborn as sunrise, refusing to let you vanish if he could help it.
Sometimes he failed. A lot of times, he failed. You learned the shape of his forgetting. The slight tightening of his stance. The way his eyes flicked cold before his notes thawed him. The apology he gave every time, even when you told him to stop.
Especially then.
“I apologise.”
“Don’t.”
“I hurt you.”
“You forgot me. That’s different.”
“No,” Damian said once, quiet beneath the rain. “It is not.”
You had no joke for that. So you stood beside him in silence while Gotham glittered wet and cruel below.
Your shoulder brushed his. He did not move away.
Neither did you.
The first time he kissed you, he forgot you halfway through. It was, objectively, a disaster.
You were laughing when it happened, which made it worse.
Damian had been trying to explain a new theory involving tactile recall, mnemonic loops, and Zatanna, because apparently the Bats’ solution to metaphysical trauma was “call a magician and make three spreadsheets.”
“You made a spreadsheet about me?”
“Several.”
“That is either romantic or a federal concern.”
“You are deflecting.”
“You are flirting with data.”
“I am flirting with you.”
You stopped breathing. Damian stopped too. The city wind moved between you.
“Don’t say things you won’t remember,” you whispered.
His expression changed. Softened. “I may not remember saying them,” he said, “but I have written them in twenty-three places. I have recorded them in my own voice. I have told Drake, Cain, and Pennyworth. I have carved reminders into my routines until my life bends around the fact of you.”
Your eyes burned. “Damian.”
“I do not remember you the way I should,” he said. “But I know this: every version of myself that finds the evidence chooses you again.”
Oh. That was unfair.
That was so unfair.
You stepped back, but he caught your hand.
“Do not run.”
“I’m very good at running.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know anything.”
His thumb pressed against your pulse. “I know enough.”
You laughed once, broken and small. “You’re going to look away one day and not look back.”
“No.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” he agreed. “I do not. But I know I have looked back every time so far.”
There was no defence against that. None.
You kissed him first. Because you were tired of being a ghost. Because you wanted one thing before the world took it. Because hope was a cruel little weed growing through concrete, and maybe you were tired of ripping it out.
Damian made a soft sound against your mouth, startled, then certain. His hand rose to your jaw. His other hand stayed locked around yours. For one blazing second, you were held in memory and body both.
Then a siren wailed below. His eyes flicked toward the street.
You felt him forget. His mouth stilled. His hand tensed.
You pulled back before his confusion could finish forming.
Damian blinked at you, alarmed. Then looked at your joined hands. At the note written across his glove. You love them. Breathe. His face went scarlet.
You stared. He stared.
“Oh my god,” you said hoarsely. “You wrote that on your glove?”
Damian cleared his throat. “It seemed practical.”
“You are insane.”
“Likely.”
“You forgot me during our first kiss.”
His eyes widened. Then narrowed at himself, offended. “Unacceptable.”
You laughed. You laughed so hard your eyes spilled over.
Damian looked stricken.
“No,” you said quickly, wiping your face. “No, I’m not— I’m not laughing because it hurt.”
Though it did. Of course it did. Everything did. But not only. Not anymore.
“I’m laughing because you look personally betrayed by your own brain.”
“I am.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“I will do better next time.” Next time. The words landed softly. Carefully. Like a coat around cold shoulders.
“You want a next time?” you asked.
Damian looked at the glove again. Then at you. He did not remember the kiss. But his mouth curved faintly. “I apparently insisted upon it in writing.”
You smiled despite yourself. “Okay, Wayne.”
His hand tightened around yours. “Okay?”
You leaned in until your forehead touched his. “Next time.”
He closed his eyes.
Panic shot through you. But his hand stayed in yours. His forehead stayed against yours. And when he opened his eyes again, the confusion came. Then the note. Then the choice.
Always the choice.
“There you are,” he said softly.
Your breath caught.
He did not remember saying it before. Maybe he never had. Maybe he would say it again.
Maybe that was enough to survive on. For now.
Zatanna could not cure you. Not fully.
You expected that. You told yourself you expected that. Still, when she stood in the cave beneath the cold blue light and said, “I’m sorry,” something in you folded inward.
Damian’s hand found yours immediately. Anchoring. Always anchoring.
Zatanna’s expression was gentle in a way you did not know what to do with. “It isn’t just magic,” she said. “There’s magic in it, yes, but also metahuman biology, trauma response, maybe even a curse that attached itself to your ability when you were young. It’s tangled.”
“Great,” you said. “Love being a group project.”
Tim, from behind three laptops, whispered, “Honestly, same.”
Damian glared at him.
Zatanna continued, “I may be able to help reduce the effect. Create anchors. People who consent to remembering you may be able to retain emotional continuity longer. Names may hold power. Touch helps. Written records help. Repetition helps.”
You swallowed. “But no cure.”
“Not today.”
Not today. It was not a yes. It was not a no.
Hope, again. That annoying little weed.
Damian looked at you. You knew he was waiting for you to break first. To scoff. To run. To turn cold before disappointment could touch you.
Instead, you looked at your hand in his. At the ink on his wrist. At the wall of notes behind him. At the sketch he had redrawn so many times the eyes were finally starting to look like yours.
“I don’t know how to do this,” you admitted. Your voice sounded too small in the cave.
Damian’s thumb moved over your knuckles. “Neither do I.”
“You hate not knowing things.”
“I do.”
“This could take years.”
“Then we will require more notebooks.”
You laughed wetly. He looked proud of himself.
Little menace.
“You’ll forget me,” you said.
His expression sobered. “Yes.”
No pretty lie. No softening the blade. Just truth.
Then he lifted your joined hands. “And I will find you again.”
You closed your eyes. For once, when someone looked away, you did not disappear completely.
Damian forgot. Then read the note. Then remembered enough. His hand stayed around yours.
When you opened your eyes, he was watching you with that familiar, stubborn, impossible focus. Like the universe had made a rule, and Damian Wayne had taken it personally.
“Hello,” he said carefully. Your heart broke. Your heart healed. Both, maybe.
“Hi,” you whispered.
His gaze dropped to the note on his wrist. Then back to you.
A small smile touched his mouth. “There you are.”
And for the first time in a very long time, you believed him.
The first thing Damian remembered was your laugh. Not your face. Not your voice. Not the exact shape of your hand in his.
Just the laugh.
It came to him three days after Zatanna’s visit, in the middle of sparring with Cass. He was blocking a strike to his ribs when the sound flickered through his mind—quiet, sharp, unwilling, like joy had snuck into your chest and gotten caught trying to escape.
Damian froze. Cass’ foot stopped half an inch from his knee. She tilted her head. Damian lowered his sword.
“I remember something,” he said.
Cass blinked once. Then smiled. Small. Knowing.
Damian hated being known by people who could read body language like scripture.
“What?” she asked.
His mouth opened. For one terrifying second, the memory slipped. Not gone. Slipping.
Damian’s hand snapped to his wrist, where his notes were written in dark ink. FORGET-ME-NOT EXISTS. DO NOT TRUST ABSENCE. THEY ARE REAL.
But he did not need them. The sound returned. A laugh on a rooftop. Rain on metal. Your voice saying, You are flirting with data.
His heart struck hard against his ribs.
“Their laugh,” he said, stunned.
Cass lowered her foot fully. Damian stared at nothing.
He remembered. Not because of a note. Not because of a recording. Not because his past self had left breadcrumbs like a man wandering through a cursed forest.
He remembered something of you.
On his own.
You did not believe him. Naturally.
“That’s adorable,” you said flatly. “Have you considered brain damage?”
Damian stood across from you on the roof of Gotham Central Library, arms crossed, jaw set in the particular way that meant he was either offended or about to confess something emotionally devastating with the energy of a murder accusation. Sometimes both.
“I am not concussed.”
“You say that a lot for someone who gets hit in the head professionally.”
“I remember your laugh.”
You looked away. It was instinct by now. A survival reflex. If someone said something kind, you made sure they forgot it before it became real.
Damian’s breath caught. You heard it. That tiny shift.
You closed your eyes. There it was. The moment. The curse. The world’s old cruel joke, winding itself up again.
When you opened your eyes, Damian was staring at you. Still. Focused. Shaken.
“I remember,” he said.
Your chest tightened. “No, you don’t.”
“I do.”
“You read a note.”
“I did not.”
“You listened to a recording.”
“No.”
“You’re guessing.”
“Your laugh is quiet at first,” Damian said, voice low, “as if you resent it for existing. Then it catches. Barely. You look away when it happens, because you do not like being seen wanting to stay.”
The city went silent. Or maybe you did. Your whole body locked around the words.
Damian took one step closer. “You called me a rich gremlin.” Your mouth parted. “And a bat-themed traffic warning.”
“That one was objectively true,” you whispered.
His mouth twitched. “And you told me my handwriting looked like a stabbed insect.”
You stared at him. The wind moved between you, cold and sharp, tugging at his cape and your sleeves. Far below, sirens wailed. Gotham kept being Gotham, rude as ever. But above it, the impossible sat between you like a candle in a ruined church.
“You remember that?” you asked.
“Yes.”
You searched his face for the lie. There wasn’t one. That was the problem with Damian. He could be arrogant, difficult, blunt, dramatic in a way he would deny until the sun died, but he did not give you comfort he could not defend.
Hope stirred. You hated it. You hated how quickly it had learned his name.
“Maybe it’s temporary,” you said.
“It may be.”
“Maybe it won’t last.”
“It may not.”
“Maybe you’ll wake up tomorrow, and it’ll be gone.”
His expression softened. “Then I will begin again tomorrow.”
Your throat burned. “You don’t get tired of that?”
“Yes.”
The honesty hit harder than a pretty answer would have.
Damian stepped closer. “I get furious,” he said. “I get impatient. I get…” His jaw tightened. “Afraid.” You stared. Damian Wayne said the word like it had been dragged out of him by the throat. “But I do not get tired of you.”
Your breath caught. He looked startled by his own words, but he did not take them back. You laughed once, brittle and small. “That’s a terrible line.”
“I was not aware we were exchanging lines.”
“You’re doing a tragic rooftop romance. You should at least be good at it.”
“I will improve.”
“Don’t make that sound like a threat.”
“I make no promises.”
There it was again. The almost-smile. You wanted to touch it. You wanted to run from it. Both urges lived in you at once, twin animals baring teeth.
Instead, you pulled your knees to your chest and sat on the edge of the roof. After a moment, Damian sat beside you.
Not too close. Close enough.
You glanced at him. “Do you remember my face?”
His silence answered before he did. “No,” he said. You nodded like that didn’t hurt. “I remember impressions,” he continued. “Your eyes when you are annoyed. The angle of your head when you are about to insult me. The way your shoulders rise when someone says something kind and you do not know where to put it.”
“Wow. Drag me, why don’t you.”
“I remember the scar on your left thumb.”
Your hand curled instinctively. Damian noticed.
“You told me it was from a knife fight,” he said.
“I lied.”
“I know.” You looked at him sharply. He glanced at your hand, then quickly back to your face, as if afraid to lose you. “You cut yourself opening a can of peaches when you were twelve.”
The world fell out from under you. You had told him that on a bad night. A stupid night. A night where you had been tired and bleeding and too lonely to keep every door locked. You had told him about the abandoned apartment you stayed in that winter, about eating canned fruit with a stolen pocketknife, about slicing your thumb open and crying more because there was no one to hear you than because it hurt.
You had told him. Then he had looked away. And forgotten. You had regretted saying it for weeks.
Damian remembered.
Your hand trembled before you could stop it. He saw. Carefully, slowly, he offered his hand palm-up between you.
Not taking. Asking.
Damn him. Damn him for learning you this gently.
You stared at his hand like it was a trap. Then you placed yours in it.
His fingers closed around yours. The contact steadied something in the air. Or maybe in you.
“I remember that,” Damian said.
You swallowed hard. “How?”
“I do not know yet.”
“Of course you added ‘yet.’”
“I am consistent.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I have been called worse.”
“By me.”
“Mostly, yes.”
A laugh escaped you. Soft. Unwilling.
Damian’s eyes sharpened, not like a hunter this time, but like a boy watching the first star appear in a dark sky.
“There,” he whispered. You went still. “I will remember that one too.”
Your heart hurt so badly you almost hated him for it.
Almost.
The second thing Damian remembered was your voice.
It happened badly. The Narrows were soaked in rain, neon bleeding down dirty windows and alley walls. You had been tracking a weapons shipment tied to Black Mask’s old network. Damian had tracked it too, which meant the two of you ended up on opposite sides of the same warehouse skylight, glaring at each other through wet glass like the world’s least normal meet-cute.
“You followed me,” you said through the comm he had given you.
“I was here first.”
“I was here silently.”
“I was here competently.”
“That’s debatable.”
“You set off the pressure sensor on the south entrance.”
“That sensor was ugly and deserved it.”
Damian sighed. You grinned despite yourself. Then the floor beneath him exploded. The comm cut out. Your body moved before your fear could name itself.
You dropped through the skylight into smoke and gunfire, landing hard on a steel beam. Below, men shouted. Red emergency lights flashed. Damian was on one knee near the centre of the room, one hand braced against the concrete, blood bright against his temple.
For one horrible second, he looked younger. Not Robin. Not Batman’s heir.
Just Damian. Your Damian.
No. Not yours.
You threw three blades in quick succession. Three men dropped.
Damian looked up. His eyes found you.
Relief flickered across his face. Then a flashbang detonated. White swallowed everything. When your vision returned, Damian was standing with his sword drawn and no recognition in his eyes.
Of course. You knew this part. You could survive this part.
Then he pointed the blade at you. “Identify yourself.”
Something inside you snapped.
“Are you kidding me?” you shouted.
He froze. Not because he remembered.
Because your voice did something to him.
You saw it happen. His shoulders shifted. His grip faltered. His eyes widened, not with knowledge, but with impact. Your voice had gotten through before his mind could slam the door.
“Robin!” one of the smugglers barked from behind him.
Damian did not turn. Good. Learning.
The man raised a gun. You shot him in the shoulder.
Damian’s gaze flicked instinctively toward the sound. Lost.
His face emptied. Then his jaw clenched. He looked back at you.
“I know your voice,” he said.
You almost missed your next throw. “What?”
“I know your voice.”
“You don’t know me.”
His eyes narrowed, frustrated. “I know your voice.”
The fight surged around you. This was a terrible place for a revelation.
“Great,” you snapped. “Use that knowledge to duck.”
He ducked. A crowbar swung through the space where his skull had been. Damian moved like water after that, violent and precise. You covered his blind spots. He covered yours. Every time he looked away, his body reset—but not completely. Your voice pulled him back faster each time.
“Left.” He moved left. “Behind you.” He spun. “Duck, pretty bird.”
He ducked, then glared at you mid-fight. “You did not just call me—” He knocked a man unconscious with the hilt of his sword. “You did,” he said.
You shrugged while kicking someone in the knee. “Adrenaline. Don’t read into it.”
“I will read into it extensively.”
“Focus.”
“I am focused.”
“You are flirting while concussed.”
“I am multitasking.”
You laughed. He heard it. And this time, when he looked away, he still smiled.
Only for half a second. Only barely. But you saw it.
And after the last man dropped, Damian stood in the wreckage, rain pouring through the broken skylight, blood sliding down his jaw, and said your name. Not your real name, but the one he had given you.
“Forget-Me-Not.” You froze. His eyes widened. “I remembered.”
You stared at him. “No notes?”
“No notes.”
“No recording?”
“No.”
“No contact?”
“No.”
Your pulse roared in your ears.
Damian lifted a hand to his own mouth, stunned by himself. “I remembered the name.”
You should have made a joke. You always made a joke. Instead you crossed the space between you and grabbed him by the front of his suit. His eyes dropped to your hands.
You knew the risk. His memory flickered. You felt him begin to lose you.
“Damian,” you said.
His gaze snapped back to your face. There. He stayed.
You kissed him. It was not graceful. It was wet from rain and sharp with fear, his mouth startled beneath yours for one breath before he kissed you back with a kind of fierce, trembling focus that made your knees weak. His hands hovered for half a second, like he was afraid touching you wrong would make you vanish. Then one settled at your waist. The other came up to your jaw.
You felt him try not to look away. Felt the concentration in every line of him.
It should have been funny. It was devastating.
You pulled back just enough to breathe. His eyes were still open. Still on you.
“Did you forget?” you whispered.
His fingers tightened. “No.” Your world cracked open. Damian’s voice dropped. “I remember kissing you before.”
You stopped breathing.
His brow furrowed, like the memory was fighting him, like he was dragging it up with both hands from deep water. “Rooftop,” he said. “Siren. I looked away. You laughed at my glove.”
A sound left you. Half laugh. Half sob. “You wrote ‘you love them’ on your glove.”
His face flushed. Even now. Bleeding, soaked, standing over seven unconscious criminals and three dead ones, Damian Wayne blushed because you remembered his dramatic little love note to himself.
“I was being thorough,” he muttered.
“You were being insane.”
“I was being correct.”
You looked at him. He looked back. The rain softened the edges of him. Made him less blade, more boy. Fewer weapons, more want. Your hands were still fisted in his suit.
“You love me?” you asked. The question came out smaller than you meant it to.
Damian’s expression changed. He looked briefly, openly terrified. Then certain. “Yes,” he said.
No hesitation. No escape route. Just yes.
Your eyes stung. “You barely remember me.”
“I remember enough to know what the rest of me keeps choosing.”
“That is the most Damian Wayne answer imaginable.”
“I assume that is favourable.”
“It’s obnoxious.”
“You’re crying.”
“I’m rain-adjacent.”
“It is indoors.”
“There’s a hole in the roof.”
“Because you crashed through it.”
“Romantically.”
His mouth twitched. Then softened. “Beloved,” he said quietly.
You forgot how to be clever. Damian noticed. A dangerous amount of satisfaction entered his face.
“Oh, shut up,” you whispered.
“I said nothing.”
“You looked smug.”
“I am allowed to be pleased when I render you speechless.”
“I’m going to stab you emotionally.”
“You already have.”
And there it was. The ache beneath the banter. The years of loneliness. The curse. The forgetting. The way every soft thing between you had teeth marks in it from trying not to die.
You touched his cheek. His eyes closed for one second. Just one.
When he opened them, panic flashed. Then recognition followed. Slowly. Painfully. But there.
“I remember,” he said, wonder breaking through his voice.
Your thumb brushed his cheekbone. “Damian?”
“I remember.”
His hand covered yours. “I closed my eyes,” he said. “And I remembered.”
You stared at him.
The silence after that was not empty. It was full of every impossible thing neither of you dared to name.
Then Damian leaned forward and kissed you again. This time, he closed his eyes. This time, when he opened them, you were still there.
He became unbearable after that. Scientifically unbearable. You had never seen a man so smug about emotional progress. Damian walked around the Batcave like he had personally defeated the laws of metaphysics through discipline and cheekbones.
“I remembered their voice for fourteen minutes without visual confirmation,” he told Tim.
Tim stared at him over his coffee. “Good morning to you, too.”
“This suggests the effect is weakening.”
“It suggests you’re in love and making it everyone’s problem.”
Damian sniffed. “I am conducting research.”
“You wrote their name in the margin of a case file.”
“That was accidental.”
“You surrounded it with little flowers.”
Damian’s face went blank. Tim’s grin widened. “They were tactical flowers,” Damian said.
You, hidden in the rafters above them, nearly choked trying not to laugh.
Damian’s head snapped up.
He could not see you. Still, he smiled. Tiny. Private. Like his body knew where you were before his eyes did.
Tim followed his gaze and sighed. “You two are going to be disgusting, aren’t you?”
“I do not know what you mean,” Damian said.
“You’re already doing the secret rooftop eye-contact thing.”
“Your jealousy is unbecoming.”
“I’m not jealous. I’m sleep-deprived and surrounded by emotionally constipated vigilantes discovering romance like it’s a new martial art.”
From the rafters, you whispered, “He’s not wrong.”
Damian looked directly at your hiding place. “I heard that.”
Tim startled. “You heard them?”
Damian paused.
His expression changed. Not confusion. Astonishment. He had heard you without seeing you. And remembered who the voice belonged to.
You dropped lightly from the rafters, landing beside the computer platform.
Tim looked at you. Then away by accident. When his gaze returned, he frowned at the empty space his mind insisted on making.
“Right,” Tim muttered, immediately looking at his tablet. “Wow. That is annoying.”
“Welcome to my whole life,” you said.
Tim winced. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. You wrote a twelve-page theory about me involving quantum attention decay. That was worse.”
Tim brightened. “You read that?”
“No.”
“You did.”
“Unfortunately.”
Damian stepped closer to you. His hand brushed yours. Not because he needed to anchor himself.
Because he wanted to. That difference nearly ruined you.
Tim looked between you and Damian. Or tried to. Mostly, his eyes kept snagging on Damian’s hand and then sliding away from the rest of you.
“So,” Tim said slowly, “he’s remembering more?”
“Yes,” Damian said.
You looked at him. “Sometimes.”
“More than sometimes.”
“Don’t get cocky.”
“I am accurately confident.”
“You remembered I hate lilies and decided that made you a wizard.”
“You said lilies smell like funeral homes and rich guilt.”
Tim pointed at you with his coffee. “That is incredibly specific.”
Damian’s eyes stayed on you. “I remembered because it mattered to them.”
The cave went quiet. Even Tim had the decency not to ruin it.
You swallowed. “Stop being sincere in public.”
“This is my home.”
“There are bats in it.”
“They are family.”
Tim whispered, “See? Disgusting.”
Damian ignored him. You tried to, but your mouth twitched. And Damian remembered that too.
Your real name came on a night without costumes. That was not planned. Most important things with Damian were either meticulously planned or happened with the emotional timing of a car crash. This was the second kind.
You were at Wayne Manor because Alfred had decided you were underfed. Alfred Pennyworth, you quickly discovered, was immune to approximately sixty per cent of your nonsense through sheer British stubbornness. He forgot you, yes. But he did not forget the place setting he had arranged. He did not forget the extra cup of tea. He did not forget the note he had written in elegant script beside the tray, Our guest takes honey, not sugar. Do not allow Master Damian to brood overmuch.
You read it three times. Then blamed allergies.
There were no allergies.
Damian found you in the library after dinner, standing near the window with a cup of tea cooling in your hands.
“You fled,” he said.
“I relocated.”
“You were overwhelmed.”
“I was avoiding your brother asking whether I’m your partner.”
Damian went still. “He asked that?”
“He tried to. He forgot halfway through and asked why you were smiling at a chair.”
Damian grimaced. You turned from the window.
The library was warm, gold-lit, lined with books that looked older than several Gotham neighborhoods. Rain tapped against the glass. Somewhere far down the hall, Dick laughed at something Jason said. It sounded painfully normal. Too normal for you. Too much like a life.
Damian approached carefully. “You may leave whenever you wish.”
“I know.”
“No one will keep you here.”
“I know.”
“You are not a prisoner of being wanted.”
You looked down at your tea. “You can’t just say things like that.”
“I can.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I might believe you.”
Damian was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “Good.”
Your grip tightened around the cup. The ceramic warmed your palms. You hated how badly you wanted to stay. You hated how much of your life had been built around leaving before anyone could prove you were impossible to keep.
“Damian,” you said.
He stepped closer. “Yes?”
You looked at him then. No mask. No hood. No blood. No rooftop distance. Just Damian in a dark sweater, hair still damp from the rain, eyes fixed on you like attention was the first language he had ever learned.
“I want to tell you my name,” you said.
His face changed. Softened. Sharpened. Almost reverent. “You do not have to.”
“I know.”
“If you tell me, I may forget it.”
“I know.”
“I will write it down.”
“I know.”
“It still may hurt.”
You laughed under your breath. “It already hurts.”
Damian looked pained. You set the tea aside. Then you stepped close enough that your shoes nearly touched his.
You told him. Not loudly. Not dramatically.
Just a name. A small sound. A human thing. The first thing ever taken from you.
Damian closed his eyes like receiving it hurt.
Then he opened them. Said it back. Perfectly.
Your breath shook. “No one has said that to me in years,” you whispered.
Damian’s hand rose, then stopped. “May I?”
You nodded.
He touched your cheek. Your eyes closed on instinct. His thumb moved softly against your skin.
Then he turned his head. Just slightly. A glance toward the door at a distant sound.
Your stomach dropped.
There. The curse took its bite.
Damian went still. His hand remained on your face. His eyes returned to you. For one second, there was no recognition. Then something fought through.
Not notes. Not touch alone. Something deeper.
His brow furrowed. His lips parted. Then he said your name.
Your whole body went cold. Then hot. Then weightless.
“You remember,” you breathed.
Damian stared at you as if he were afraid moving would break the world. “Yes.”
“Say it again.”
He did.
You covered your mouth. He said it again, softer. Like a vow. Like a prayer. Like he was teaching the universe how to behave.
You made a sound you could not swallow.
Damian pulled you into his arms. Not too tight. Never trapping. Just holding.
You buried your face against his shoulder and shook. He pressed his mouth to your hair.
“I remember,” he whispered.
You clutched the back of his sweater. “You remember me.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t stop.”
“I will not.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” he said, voice rough. “But I know your name.”
You broke then. Not prettily. Not quietly. Years of vanishing tore out of you all at once. You cried like a child. Like the child who had waited at a dinner table no one set. Like the teenager who had learned knives because hands were never offered. Like the ghost who had survived being forgotten by pretending they did not want to be known.
Damian held you through all of it. And when he looked away once, twice, three times—
He still knew who you were when he looked back.
He asked you properly two weeks later. Because apparently, Damian Wayne could confess love in a burning warehouse but needed a formal strategy for dating.
You found the list by accident. Mostly accident. Fine. Thirty percent accident.
It was in his notebook, beneath a heading written in his sharp, perfect block letters, COURTSHIP PARAMETERS You stared. Then slowly turned the page.
Ask directly. Do not assume existing emotional intimacy equals consent to romantic partnership. Avoid phrasing as a tactical alliance. Drake says this is “weird.” Flowers? Not lilies. Possible alternatives: forget-me-nots, though they may be too obvious. Consider irony? No. Too painful? Ask. Dinner? Public spaces may increase discomfort due to memory effect. Rooftop picnic? Too much like patrol? Do not say “I have selected you.” Brown laughed for four minutes.
You had to sit down. By the time Damian entered the room, you were on his bed, laughing silently into his pillow.
He stopped in the doorway. “You are invading my privacy.”
“You wrote ‘do not say I have selected you.’” His entire face went red. You clutched the notebook to your chest. “Damian.”
“Give that back.”
“You asked Steph for dating advice?”
“I consulted multiple sources.”
“Did you ask Jason?”
His expression darkened. “Todd suggested kidnapping you from yourself.”
“That’s almost poetic.”
“He also suggested leather.”
You wheezed.
Damian lunged for the notebook.
You rolled away, laughing harder. He caught your ankle. You shrieked, half-laughing, and kicked at him without real force. He climbed onto the bed with the terrifying determination of a man fighting for his dignity and losing badly.
“Return it,” he demanded.
“You made a courtship battle plan.”
“It is not a battle plan.”
“It has numbered objectives.”
“It is a list.”
“You were going to ask me out with logistics.”
“I was going to ask you with respect.”
That stopped you. Damian froze too, one hand braced beside your shoulder, the two of you suddenly close enough that laughter became breath. His blush lingered high on his cheeks.
Your smile softened despite yourself. “You were?”
“Yes.”
You looked down at the notebook. Then back at him. “Okay. Ask me.”
“Now?”
“No, Damian. Next fiscal quarter.”
His eyes narrowed. “Your sarcasm is a defence mechanism.”
“Your face is a defence mechanism. Ask.”
He took the notebook from your loosened hand and set it aside. Then, because he was Damian, he straightened even while kneeling on his bed like this was a boardroom and not the most ridiculous romantic moment in recorded history. He looked directly at you. Softer this time.
“I love you,” he said. Your heart tripped. Still. Every time. “I remember you now more often than I forget,” he continued. “But even before that, I knew you. I knew you from the evidence you left behind. I knew you in what my hands refused to release. I knew you in the anger I felt when the world failed to keep you.” You swallowed. “I do not want you as a mission,” he said. “Or a mystery. Or a wound I am arrogant enough to believe I can close. I want you as you are. Difficult. Violent. Irritatingly funny.”
“Careful. I’m swooning.”
“You interrupt when uncomfortable.”
“I’m on brand.”
His mouth curved. “I want to be with you,” he said. “If you will have me.”
For a moment, you could not answer. Your chest felt too full. Too bright. Like hope had stopped being a weed and become a garden overnight, and you had no idea how to tend it.
“You’re sure?” you whispered.
“Yes.”
“What if it gets worse again?”
“Then we adapt.”
“What if you forget for a whole day?”
“I will come back.”
“What if you don’t?”
Pain crossed his face. No offence. Understanding. “Then you are allowed to be angry with me.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is the only honest one.” He touched your hand. “I cannot promise perfection. I can promise effort. I can promise records, anchors, magic, research, and my own unbearable persistence.”
“You are unbearable.”
“I know.”
“You’re smug.”
“Frequently.”
“You brood.”
“Productively.”
“You’re bad at casual affection.”
“I am improving.”
“You tried to label kissing as positive tactile reinforcement.”
He closed his eyes. “I apologised for that.”
“You did.”
“I will never say it again.”
“You better not.”
His eyes opened. Your hand turned beneath his, fingers sliding between his.
“But yeah,” you whispered. “I’ll have you.”
Damian went very still. Then, quietly, “Yes?”
“Yes.”
His face changed. You had seen Damian angry. Injured. Focused. Afraid. Tender in flashes he tried to hide.
You had never seen him happy like this. It was not loud. It did not transform him into someone else. It simply loosened something around his eyes, lit something beneath his skin. A sunrise with discipline. A miracle standing at attention.
Then he leaned down and kissed you. Slowly. Carefully. Like he had all the time in the world and planned to use it well.
You smiled against his mouth.
He pulled back just enough to frown. “You are laughing.”
“I’m dating a man with courtship parameters.”
“I rescind my vulnerability.”
“No take-backs.”
He kissed you again, firmer this time. Your hand rose to the back of his neck, fingers slipping into his hair. He made a quiet sound that you immediately filed away for future bullying.
Then his eyes closed. Your body tensed automatically. He felt it.
His forehead rested against yours. Eyes still closed, he said your name. Perfectly.
You shuddered.
Again, he said it.
Then opened his eyes.
“There you are,” Damian whispered.
And this time, he remembered saying it.
The curse did not vanish. Life was not that kind. Strangers still forgot you. Cameras still blurred if no one watched the footage with intention. Tim still had to write your name on his coffee cup when you visited the cave, and Jason still got annoyed every time he forgot who had stolen his ammo.
“You,” Jason snapped once, pointing at empty air beside you, “better be the reason my smoke bombs are missing.”
You held one up.
Jason looked away. Looked back. Forgot. Then saw the smoke bomb floating in your hand.
“Oh, come on.”
You laughed for ten minutes.
Damian remembered the sound all day.
That was the difference now.
Not a cure.
A beginning.
Some days were worse. Some days, Damian forgot your face after blinking too long. Some days, your name dissolved on his tongue and came back only after he touched the bracelet Zatanna had spelt for him.
Some days you spiralled. Some days he did.
But more often, he remembered.
Your voice from another room. Your hand without looking. Your name in the morning, sleep-rough and certain. Your laugh. Your scars. Your tea. Your hatred of lilies. Your habit of sharpening knives when anxious.
The way you still stood near exits. The way you looked stunned every time he reached for you simply because he wanted to.
And every time he remembered, some old frozen piece of you thawed.
Not all at once. Not cleanly.
Healing was ugly sometimes. It limped. It snapped. It forgot the way home and had to be led back by hand.
But Damian was good at difficult paths.
And you, despite everything, were still here.
One evening, months after the warehouse, you found him on the same rooftop where he had first remembered your laugh. He was waiting with a thermos of tea, two paper containers of takeout, and a small pot of blue flowers.
You stared at it. “Are those forget-me-nots?”
Damian looked almost defensive. “Too obvious?”
“Horribly.”
“I suspected.”
“Very dramatic.”
“I was informed romance requires some drama.”
“By who?”
“Grayson.”
“That explains everything.”
Damian held out the flowers. You took them carefully.
“They’re pretty,” you admitted.
“I know.”
“Smug.”
“Accurately confident.”
You sat beside him, shoulder pressed to his.
Below, Gotham glowed like a bruise full of stars.
For a while, neither of you spoke.
Then Damian said your name.
Softly.
No prompt. No note. No spell.
You looked at him.
He was watching the skyline, not you.
He had said it while looking away.
Your breath vanished.
Damian turned his head. Saw your face.
Remembered why you looked like that.
His expression softened.
“I know,” he said.
Your eyes burned. “You looked away.”
“Yes.”
“And you remembered.”
“Yes.”
You laughed once, wet and disbelieving. “Show-off.”
He smiled.
Actually smiled. Small but real, and yours to remember even if the world forgot.
You leaned into him. His arm came around you.
This time, neither of you called it anchoring.
This time, it was just holding.
“I love you,” you whispered.
Damian went very still.
You felt the breath leave him.
Then his hand tightened around yours.
He said your name again. Then, “I love you.”
No curse took it. No silence swallowed it. No forgetting followed.
The words stayed. You stayed.
And when Damian looked away toward the city, then back at you, his smile returned like dawn breaking over a place that had only ever known night.
chapter 1: an olive branch.
next┊masterlist ┊read on ao3!
pairing: art school!au damian wayne x f!reader.
tags: art school!au. angst + hurt comfort. rivals to friends to lovers. reader has a jealous grudge against damian. ⓘ CW for gun use, description of injury & blood, stalking & violence in the first half. (robin saves you, though!)
summary: you're an art student walking home after a long day of working on your pieces. when you get into trouble, robin saves you. the next day, the stuck–up classmate you've always been jealous of starts looking your way.
Torrents of rain pelt down on your shoulders relentlessly as you brisk through the smog smothered streets. The wet stone tiles beneath your feet are oily black, like the sky above. If the brackish lamplight were any brighter, you’re sure you’d see your terrified face, staring back.
Doom breathes down your nape, its spindly fingers cinching your throat and choking the breath right out of your lungs. It spurs your hurried steps, and your legs strain as they grow wider and wider.
You blearily recall the weather report blaring from the television this morning. It was spot on. It's a cold, rainy night in Gotham. You’re walking home, alone, and you’re dead certain someone’s been following you for the past five minutes.
You’re not sure how close they’ve gotten to you. How far behind you they are. You can’t even see where you’re going through your rain–obscured spectacles, really. You’re just moving on muscle memory and naked fear.
In spite of yourself, you spare a glance over your shoulder. Soupy white smog hazes the horizon. You’re not sure what exactly you were hoping to see, but your heart drops to your stomach nonetheless.
The flaxen light from the lamp posts above flicker tremulously, rapidly, like the heart rabbiting behind your chest.
Why the fuck did I stay after school so late? you lament, though you know exactly why. The reason figuratively and literally weighs down on your shoulders, taking the form of your oversized art portfolio and the 18 by 24 inch newsprint pad within.
The straps of the bag scrapes your shoulder, and it burns like an open wound.
It’s an unwanted burden slowing you down, and every logical fibre of your being is urging you to throw it to the curbside to lose the weight. Yet, everytime the bag begins to slip, you still find yourself shifting your weight mid–momentum to jostle it back where it belongs.
You don’t want to admit to yourself that you stayed in school to continue practicing your art because of an insatiable desire to be better than your peers; for your professor’s approval.
You don’t want to admit that you’ll probably die tonight because your bag slowed you just enough for your stalkers to stab and murder you.
That you’ll die because of your pride.
You’ve never felt stupider in your fucking life.
Breathe, you attempt to reason with yourself. Breathe.
In an attempt to soothe your dry, wrung–kitchen–cloth of a throat, you swallow and your sand-paper tongue scrapes the roof of your mouth as your saliva struggles its way down like a mouthful of cement.
Your nose is running wet and unpleasant, and it feels so much colder against the unforgiving air of Gotham Winter.
Your eyes are darting around for any sign of company, but the sidewalk you stride down is beginning to look a lot more like the looming corridors of an asylum. Black–iron fences shunt off closed apartment doors like the gates of Hell, taunting you with dead end after dead end.
Your gaze diverts as something bright and sharp glints in the distance. You squint, and the light clarifies—it’s a glowing window, just a street ahead. And framed within that heavenly square of gold, you catch the blurry, pitch-dark silhouette of a person.
Hope blooms in your chest. Someone’s there. You think she sees you. No, you know she sees you—you can barely make it out, but you feel a gaze trained on you from behind those glass panes.
Surely she knows about the gangsters behind you. If she lets you in, and you’re praying she will, maybe you’ve got a chance at holding out.
You quicken your stride as much as you can without actively running. It’s common knowledge that one should never run in Gotham unless they have to. Because once you start running, they will too, and they’re taller and stronger and faster than you, and then they’ll catch you and it’ll all be over.
It’s okay, you reassure yourself, feeling your heart swell with something that invigorates you, propels you forward like a bird mid–dive. Somebody’s watching this happen. Somebody’s seen you. She’ll let you in. It’s going to be okay.
You’ve reached the stoop of her house, just close enough to meet her gaze and take in the weathered lines around her eyes.
When you watch her face morphs from concern into horror, your gut squirms with a foresight that your mind hasn’t stomached yet. Your blood knows what she’s about to do:
With a prompt swiftness, she pulls her curtains close, and the act feels like the fall of a guillotine’s blade.
The sprout of unendurable, unforgiveable hope in your chest curdles into acid and fucking burns you. The back of your eyes begin to burn.
Of course, you think. Nobody helps anybody, anymore.
Your previous momentum becomes a deadly mistake—you trip as you frantically pivot away from her doorstep.
Then, an incoherent bellow rings out from behind you. “Hey!”
Without needing to think, your body moves on muscle reflex for you. You kick into a run—your legs pound against slickened slabs as you run faster than you’ve ever gone in your life. The terraces surrounding you blur into tarry smudges, obscured by your speed and your tears of terror.
You don’t know where you’re going anymore, and you don’t care. All you know is that every molecule in your body, every fibre of your being fucking demands that you to keep running, and you can’t stop, so you keep running, and running, and running out of breath and your heartbeat is racing in your ears like a countdown to your demise—
You’re barely conscious when a long shadow stretches out from beneath, past your pounding feet. Before you can think it through, you turn to look.
That half–second of mindless instinct costs you everything.
In that moment of distraction, the tip of your loafer catches against a groove.
Your heart lurches as you fall forward, but before you meet the ground, a grasp strong enough to crush your skull digs into your hair and yanks.
A wrangled scream escapes your lungs as you thrash mindlessly against the iron tight hold on you.
A rough shove slams you against something, and hard.
Everything goes red, black and hot with pain as the world spirals out of control. You stumble to the ground, and a storm of dust and dirt whirls up around you.
You cough, rearing up to rise. Someone kicks your stomach swift and hard, and the air propels itself out your lungs as you crumble back into a coughing heap.
With your head throbbing, you’re only half–aware of the dead-end you’ve found yourself in. You head pangs like its been bashed in with a boulder, and it feels twice as heavy to lift. You’re met with the image of scuffed pantlegs—10 of them. You’re surrounded by five seperate men.
Distantly, you hear one of your pencils rolls against the gravel, before falling down the grating.
You make a hopeless half sob, half laugh of a sound. Funny; you’re about to die and all you can think about is your two dollar pencil, and how you’ll never get to finish the assignment due on Monday.
Whatever noise your throat was making peters out the moment you feel something presses against your skull. It’s metal; cold as death, and yet it burns like a branding iron.
You don’t need to look to know what it is they’re holding to your forehead.
“Don’t you move,” a man’s voice sneers.
Hot tears begin falling from your eyes, joining the ice cold ones from above.
Your bag is ripped off your shoulder, and the friction of the straps against your skin burns like wildfire. Your art supplies clang as they fall and scatter.
And, as one last ‘fuck you’ from the Universe, you watch in lurid detail as your flacid, oversized sketchbook flop out unceromoniously like a corpse. It lands right in a puddle, and you watch in dull somberness as it soaks up the putrid rainwater.
You watch the rapid percolation; the way the wet blooms outwards from the centre and transforms the oatmeal color into a dark, rotting gray.
Weeks of work, undone in a matter of seconds. You hadn’t even had the time to take photos of them for the final portfolio. You carried it all this way.
You try to steady your breathing so that they won’t shoot you right here and now because of how much you’re trembling, but it just makes you hyperventilate harder.
You wonder if anybody in your class will mourn you. Whether Anna, or Harriet, or hell, even Damian will notice you’re gone at all. God, would anybody care?
You flinch as you hear a cry of outrage from a man—probably because he’s realised you’ve got nothing of worth in your bag. You screw your eyes shut, praying that this is all just some fucked up dream.
But prayers don’t get answered, not here.
It’s Gotham City, and you’re alone in the dark.
Then, you hear your captor yell. “Jesus, what is that!?”
You open your eyes just in time to see something—someone—descending from the skies above.
Before you can register it, a bright–green boot finds purchase against the stomach of your tormentor. One good kick sends the pillar–man crashing against the wall.
You stand, molasses–bound in shock. A cacophony of chaos erupts—yells and clashes.
The figure ducks low. With a sweep of a slender leg, another criminal trips and teeters like a spinning top.
Flashes of fabric ripple before you as Justice incarnate takes on five men twice his size.
Deafening gunshots boom, and you’re vaguely aware you’re screaming, but the stranger dodges the shower of bullets and repays them in spades.
He throws an arm out—blood splatters the walls as a blade guts the shoulder of a staggering, screaming man.
Swift as the wind and quieter still, the figure fights on without pause, like a sword made sentient. His feet barely meet the ground. Every punch and kick, he executes flawlessly, effortlessly, like a blade gliding through water.
You blink, and the green boots of your hero strike against the last criminal standing. The thug topples to the floor, unconscious.
You stare. The atmosphere buzzes.
You realise how loudly you’ve been breathing, now that everything’s silent. Your chest still heaves from racing adrenaline and naked fear, but the stranger seems completely unaffected, as if he hadn’t exerted himself at all.
Your disgruntled hero stands and coolly dusts his clothes off in total disinterest.
He lifts two fingers to the side of his ear. Speaking aloud to nobody in particular, he says, “Five criminals, all apprehended. Civilian unharmed. Copy…”
A car rushes past the streets behind him, and the glaring light limns his silhouette just long enough for you to take in the cape, the red vest, that green mask—
You inhale sharply, recognition dawning on you.
Your savior is none other than the caped crusader of the night. Batman’s sidekick in the flesh.
Robin—the Robin—turns to face you. The moment his eyes meet yours, an unwanted shudder ripples up your spine like a shockwave.
With an asphyxiating gaze that bores past the mask he wears, he observes you in turn.
Not trusting yourself to look at him for too long, your eyes dart about his shadowed frame, thin and wiry.
You realise, with growing disbelief, that he’s probably around your age.
You saw his strength first hand, and yet, his muscles are understated. The oversized cloak he’s swathed in doesn’t help him look any older, either. He can’t be older than nineteen.
And then there’s his height… for some reason, you thought he’d be taller.
Absentmindedly, you wonder what it would be like to paint him.
You are shocked out of your daydream when suddenly, he snarls: “You shouldn’t be out this late.”
His glare stings like antiseptic, cutting straight to your soul. You instinctively bite down on your wobbling lip, feeling a hot rush of embarrassment.
With a wrecked, weak voice, you protest, “I just… I needed…there’s this assignment…”
Every few words you manage to choke out are interspersed between wracked sobs as tears resume falling down your face.
Ducking your head down, you attempt to calm your breathing. Instead, you end up coughing violently, folding in on yourself as you choke on tears and phlegm and unending rain.
That’s when the unforgiving rain falling down on you comes to a sudden halt. You lift your head in shock, and meet Robin’s gaze.
He’s holding an umbrella with dramatically arched ribs over you. His fury has all but dissipated, and while the canopy shrouds his expression, the way his eyebrows are furrowed makes him seem almost guilty.
“Bat-brella,” he explains, answering a question you didn’t ask. “It’s an umbrella, but…”
“But bat-themed, yeah,” you finish for him, glancing up at the umbrella’s bat-patterned underside. “Does he have to name everything he owns after bats?”
The corner of Robin’s mouth briefly twitches into something suspiciously smile-like. “It’s a pathology, at this point.”
And there’s something about his voice that sounds strained; forced into something deeper and lower than it actually is. What’s more, his Gotham accent is… well, it’s not bad by a long shot, but the intonement is practiced, artificial. Everything about the way he talks makes him sound he’s trying to conceal.
Before you can savor his smile, his smile flattens back into a line. You flinch as he crouches down to your level, handing you the umbrella before reaching for his utility belt.
He dishes a flimsy Kleenex packet out of a mustard coloured pouch. “Here.”
Unsure as to what to do with his sudden kindness, and numbed by what you’re certain is going to be a traumatic memory for at least a few years, you take it, and mumble your gratitude.
Robin gives you a firm nod before he moves away towards your macerated sketchbook. Your heart cinches at the sight of it laying there like a corpse in the puddle. “Just leave it, man,” you say bitterly. “There’s no saving it.”
With an unexpected gentleness, he lifts your macerated sketchpad, cradling it. “Perhaps. The chances of saving any pages at all are extremely low.”
A pause settles as he seems to mull over his words, before saying softly, “But you’ve worked hard on your drawings. Let’s not give up on them without a fight.” He doesn’t even know you. He’s the Robin, for God’s sake. He’s probably saved thousands of crying girls, and done much more difficult things than 30-second charcoal gesture drawings.
But there’s something about his quiet acknowledgement of your efforts that overwhelms you with emotion; that makes your eyes sting with tears once more. You tense your shuddering jaw, and blink your tears away.
The sound of sirens from the distance slowly crescends in volume until it’s blaring deafeningly loud. The police finally arrive—hurried footsteps follow the slamming of car doors, the clicking of metal hand cuffs ring out through the patter of rain.
Robin calls for you, and before you know it, you’re wrapped in an orange blanket. You sit silently in a car seat while Robin stands outside talking to a police officer, probably giving them a rundown on what happened to you.
You stare numbly down at your knees. They’re nothing short of wrecked; bloodied and cut up like shredded beef, with flecks of dust and sludgy dirt slathered over the wounds. Next to you, your sketchpad—a sopping wet mass of a rectangle—drenches the seat next to you.
Then, there’s a tapping at the window. Robin stands outside the car door.
As you roll it down, he informs you, “Officer Montoya will be driving you home. Tell her the address. She won’t leave until she’s debriefed your guardians, and knows you’re completely accounted for.”
Robin stares at you long and hard. Then, he tells you firmly, “You’re gonna be alright.”
And if anybody other than him had said that to you, you wouldn’t have believed them. ‘You’re gonna be alright’. A reassurance tossed around so often that it barely means anything, anymore. How could anybody truly be alright, living in a city like Gotham?
And yet, something about the certainty in his voice, the intensity of his gaze fixed upon you, convinces you.
It’s not hope that fills your heart, per say. You’d imagine hope feels a lighter, warmer, invigorating. But whatever it is, his words feel like an inevitable surety.
Your dip your head into a nod. You’ll be alright.
Even as Officer Montoya drives you away into the night, you can still feel eyes trained on you from behind, somewhere in the dark.
Only this time, it’s a reassurance. A promise that Robin is watching, and that you’re not alone.
The rest of your night is equally tumultuous. You witness your parents panic through Officer Montoya’s calm explanations. You watch your father cry, and feel like a ghost spectating from another plane.
You eat a cold dinner. Take a shower, even though you really don’t want to. You stand staring down at the drain, feeling like you’re being battered by the rain all over again.
In spite of your parents pleas, you end up going to school the other day. Art college is expensive as it is, and weekly assignments don’t wait for anyone.
You very quickly find yourself regretting your decision. Apparently, an article detailing last night’s incident made it into the newspaper. There’s no photos of you in the print, but it doesn’t matter, since everyone and their mother seems to know what happened to you. It didn’t help that Professor Kovick expressed condolensces to you first thing during the lesson, drawing even more attention to your sorry ass.
From the moment you walk past the gates, you’re swarmed by well–meaning classmates with glassy worry in their eyes, who ask you questions like:
‘Oh my god, are you okay?’ (No.)
‘God, your knees are fucked. Does it hurt?’ (Doesn’t really matter if it does.)
‘You must’ve been scared.’ (Shitless, yeah.)
‘Was it really the Robin who saved you? Which one?’ (You don’t bother answering this question.)
You know they mean well, but it’s overwhelming.
So, you slip away. After Professor Kovick dismisses everyone, you turn the corner instead of going to the cafeteria and begin walking to the studio your next class is held in.
Lugging up 200 dollars worth of school–mandated art supplies up seven flights of stairs isn’t exactly something you want to do. It doesn’t help that yesterday’s exertion has left an unrelenting burn concentrated in your thighs, which taunts you the entire time you lug your leaden body up the East Building.
But at the very least, you’ll get some alone time to do some final touches on your assignment for class critique.
You doubt anybody will be in two hours early, anyway.
By the time you’ve reached the top, you’re fully hunkered over, panting pathetically. You make an indignified noise of mixed relief and exasperation at the final step. The back of your blouse is entirely soaked, and it takes you an embarrassing amount of time to catch your breath.
You tiredly stumble through the doors of the sprawling art studio, expecting to find nobody.
You find a somebody, instead.
Against the pale brick walls, a boy dressed in neat blacks from head to toe arrests your attention.
The hairs on your neck prickle. You inhale sharply, lamenting your decision to come here as you realise the last person you wanted to see today is inside.
Damian Wayne sits primly at a table. He’s got his back facing you as he busies himself with what you assume is the assignment for today’s critique.
Sunlight melts down over him like butter from the sunroofs. You used to think that the sun softened everything under it, but it only makes him look more discordent against the haze. He doesn’t belong here, not in this homey, kitschy room, with its paint–stained tabletops or hole–perforated walls.
You’re almost convinced he’s just a hollow haunting the room when he drawls in that smooth voice, “Are you going to keep gawking at me? Or are you going to enter?”
Indignation runs down your spine, like static. His voice is clear and deep like a moonlit lake. Pretty to listen to, if not for the condescension that interlaces his every word.
Feverishly, you stride past his table towards the other side of the room, putting as much distance between you and him as possible.
Sorry the commoner looked at you for too long, you think. Dickhead.
Not that you expected anything else from him. With a myriad of accolades under his bejewelled belt, and the title of high school Valedictorian to boot, you can only presume that Damian’s university application was framed, gilded, and hung in the Principal’s office for everyone to see. It’s no wonder he acts the way he does.
Seemingly having spoken his fill, the room goes relatively quiet again, disturbed only by the scratchy sound of graphite against paper–grain as your classmate toils away at his work.
You didn’t expect him to be a late finisher. If anything, you’d thought he’d be the first person to finish.
Come to think of it, why is he here? Isn’t he rich? Why is he working on art here, instead of at the sprawling art studio he most definitely has at home?
As you walk away, your curiosity prevails. You sneak a glance at Damian just in time to watch him lean backwards to observe his work, keeping his pencil still in his hand. His poise gives him the general impression of a surgeon hovering over a patient.
Painfully ironic, given how he dropped out of the best med–school in Gotham to be here.
Oh, med–school. Now, that had been a scandal near the beginning of the school year.
For years, it was common knowledge that the youngest Wayne had been studying to attend medical school in his grandfather’s footsteps, with tabloids belauding that he was on track to becoming the greatest Doctor in Gotham or whatever.
He’d gotten into the best med–school in Gotham, and right before the beginning of his sophomore year, he dropped out.
It wasn’t long before rumours began to fester: he was taking a gap year to take some sort of journey, or writing a novel. Some people even speculated that he was leaving Gotham entirely because the top med school in Gotham wasn’t up to standards or something.
Nobody could’ve possibly imagined he’d pivot one–eighty and start attending art school, least of all your art school.
He’s one of the smartest, richest children alive. He could’ve become anything he wanted to. So why did the hell he have to go ahead and become an illustration major, when it’s clear that his artistic skills exceed everyone elses?
You reach into your bag for one of the few art pieces you hadn’t lost last night. You’d left it at home before you went out for school, having been eager to get back to work after class. At least you’re proud of this one.
Small blessings, you remind yourself as your throat cinches. It’s good to be grateful for the little things. Get yourself together.
You take a shuddering breath, fruitlessly attempting to blink away your tears before they form.
Then, you blindly reach to pluck out a few of the myriad push–pins tacked along the wall.
You jolt as the sound of Damian clearing his throat resounds throughout the expanse.
“Are you alright?”
You turn and stare, genuinely baffled. Just a minute ago, he’d told you off for looking at you too long.
You squint at him in suspision. To his credit, he faces your inspection head–on with an impressively steely resolve. With his eyes slightly narrowed in perpetual judgement, and his mouth settled into a fine line, he looks no more arrogant or annoyed than he normally does.
“I’m sorry, what?”
Damian rolls his eyes, elaborates, “I heard about what happened to you last night. Are you alright?”
“Are you seriously asking me if I’m alright?”
“Yes.”
“You. Damian Wayne,” you stress.
He promptly closes his eyes, as if trying to calm himself in the face of your idiocy.
“Yes,” he repeats, sounding very tired. “I’m Damian Wayne.”
You let out a laugh in amusement before you can stop yourself. The corner of his mouth twitches into a shockingly familiar smile.
Familiar, you think. How could his smile seem familiar to you, when you’ve never seen him smile before now?
It’s a nice smile, at that. Pretty. A little smug, but it makes him look less austere. You certainly prefer this to his scowls.
You clear your throat, looking away before Damian’s gaze can swallow you whole. Something about being subjected to his half–smile of his makes your heart flutter uncomfortably behind your ribs.
“I’m… yeah, I’m alright,” you say awkwardly.
Damian makes a noise at the back of his throat. Somehow, you get the feeling he doesn’t believe you. But he nods anyways, and resumes dilligently cross–hatching over the shadowy areas of his drawing.
You blink in the aftermath, pleasantly surprised.
Until now, every interaction with Damian has been strictly limited to ping–ponging snappy retorts at each other, and exchanging petty insults during art critique.
For a lack of anything else to do, you settle at the table next to his and pull out a scrappy Kraft sketchbook from your elementary school days.
You managed to scrounge it up before bed last night, considering what happened to your sketchpad for school. It’s… not ideal. Certainly nowhere near the size your Professor needs you to be working at, but it’s all you got.
Just then, the sound of a sudden rip resounds. You startle as several sheets of blank, flimsy paper get pushed into view from the other table.
Reverently let your fingertips brush over the pulp of the paper, and the only thing that stops you from gasping aloud like a total dork is Damian’s presence. The paper quality is excellent; perfectly smooth.
He doesn’t look up at you as he says, “Make no mention of it.”
So you don’t. And though his olive branch goes unacknowledged, you accept it with a secret smile none the less.
Good to be grateful for the little things, you tell yourself once again as you sit in silence with him, and get to work.
Ahhh Genuinely this is kind of heartbreaking because It’s not even what he says it’s how easily he says it. Like it’s practical. Like it makes sense. Like assuming everyone hates you is just… safer.
And that’s what makes it hurt. Because this isn’t insecurity anymore. It’s certainty.
If he assumes people hate him first, then nothing they do can hurt him. No rejection, no disappointment because he expected it. It works. That’s the worst part. It protects him. Keeps him distant. Untouchable.
But it also means he never lets himself believe he could be wanted. Never risks trusting that someone might actually stay. It’s heartbreaking in the way a scar is heartbreaking not fresh, not bleeding, but healed wrong. Quietly, permanently.
And it leaves him alone in rooms full of people who don’t hate him and he can’t even see it.
bruce’s dad lore has got to be the most insane thing.
and like, he’d drop it at the most random times, because he genuinely doesn’t believe it’s all that interesting.
so here’s some good potentials.
dinner at wayne manor-
duke: so like, a cult is-
bruce, without pausing his eating or looking up: i was kidnapped by a cult when i was eighteen. they wanted to drain my blood.
everyone:
tim: what the fuck bruce
alfred, passing through: ah yes, i had almost forgotten. no one speak his name, or he will know master bruce survived.
the rest of the table:
in the batcave-
jason: being buried alive is a very traumatizing experience, i’ll have you know.
bruce: yeah, i got mud all in my mouth cause it was raining.
the kids:
bruce: oh, and i broke the casket when i finally got it open, so i had to get my dad a new one.
jason: what the fuck
on patrol-
steph: hey, bruce! if you were to go back in time, would you go to, like, fifties bop or midwestern cowboys
bruce: well, the midwestern cowboys were sort of fun, but there was this one guy shooting everyone with a gun from the future, and i had to fight robot pterodactyls. so i guess if i didn’t have to deal with that, the widwestern would be more fun.
the coms:
barbara: bruce what the fuck
the dinner table, again-
dick: i’m just saying, arkham isn’t the best mental institution to base your opinion on.
bruce: it was a lot worse in the eighties. the food was awful and the doctor only wanted to experiment on me.
the kids:
dick: what the fuck
alfred, passing through: master bruce, how many times do i need to apologize for that before you cease bringing it up?
bruce:
the batcave, again-
damian: from what i’ve researched, dent was fairly intelligent before he succumbed to his insanity, and-
bruce: actually, harvey cheated off of me whenever he could, which didn’t actually make any sense, because he was studying law and i was studying medicine, but most of those grades are mine, anyways. and some are probably harley’s and john’s, i’d bet.
everyone:
duke: what the fuck
on a stakeout-
jason: i’m just saying, old man. if you’d kill the joker i-
bruce: well, i did try.
jason:
bruce: stupid kryptonians getting in the way.
jason:
the coms:
jason: what the fuck.
on patrol, again-
cass: poison ivy and harley quinn were spotted downtown, two of us should-
bruce: oh! i forgot i scheduled dinner with them. you kids have patrol covered, right?
the coms:
damian: what the fuck
in the living room, watching an action movie-
bruce: this reminds me of the time i climbed mount everest.
the kids:
stephanie: what the fuck ?
in the hall, looking at the new family portrait-
bruce: you know, when i was a kid i tried to get alfred into the family portrait because he was dating my parents and we all wanted him to be a part of the painting, but he refused.
Summary: You passed in your father's arms. and no one will forget how you looked when you died. And after months of rotting grief, why are you standing there?
NOTE: There is multi-universal travel in this fic, itsv type shit. On another Earth, Bruce dies instead of Batsis!Reader. Letting you know just for clarity's sake.
READ PART 1
The night is supposed to start like any other.
The cave is alive—screens glowing, engines humming, the familiar low thrum of readiness vibrating through bone and steel.
Everyone’s half-geared, muscle memory kicking in.
Ready for patrol.
Routine.
Something solid to hold onto.
You should be here.
Your suit remains in the cylindrical glass vault on the wall—Nightingale’s armour pristine, untouched. The matte black plating catches the cave lights in dull glints, the bat emblem symbolic on your chest, pink highlights and accents decorating your suit.
It's neat. Too neat.
Like it’s waiting.
Waiting for it's wearer to come back and put it on. Dick notices it first. His gaze snags on the suit and lingers half a second too long before he looks away Jason clocks it next. His jaw tightens, nostrils flaring, like he’s bracing for a hit he knows is coming. Damian doesn’t look at it at all.
Bruce steps forward.
“No patrol tonight.”
The words echo strangely against the stone.
Everyone freezes.
“What?” Steph says immediately, boots halfway on. “You’re joking.”
Bruce doesn’t blink. “I’m not.”
Tim swivels in his chair, confusion flashing to irritation in a heartbeat. “Bruce, we’re already running behind—Oracle flagged three hotspots—”
“I know,” Bruce says.
Jason lets out a sharp laugh. “So what, Gotham’s just on its own now?”
Bruce’s mouth tightens. “You’re benched. All of you.”
The cave feels smaller.
Tighter.
“For how long?” Dick asks carefully.
“Tonight,” Bruce replies.
Then, quieter, firmer: “Tomorrow too.”
Damian finally looks up. “That is unacceptable.”
Bruce turns to him. “You’re staying.”
"And if any of you try anything, I'll stretch that time to indefinitely."
The finality in his voice shuts everyone down.
Even Jason doesn’t push. Not when Bruce looks like that—tired in a way no sleep fixes, grief stitched into every line of his face. He looks like he's aged years in the past few weeks
“Suit down,” Bruce orders.
Reluctantly, one by one, they comply.
The walk back up to the manor is silent.
Boots echo against stone. Gloves are pulled off and shoved into pockets. Helmets are clipped uselessly at belts. No one says what they’re all thinking: that patrol would’ve helped. That punching something would’ve been easier than sitting with the ache.
They pass your suit again on the way out.
Cass’s fingers twitch like she wants to reach for it.
Damian pauses for a fraction of a second—so brief it’s almost invisible—but his shoulders tense, breath hitching before he schools himself and keeps walking.
The elevator doors close.
The cave disappears.
They reconvene an hour later in Tim’s room, still dressed half-for-battle, irritation buzzing under the grief like static.
Tim’s sitting on the edge of his bed, elbows on knees, staring at the floor. Jason’s leaning against the desk, arms crossed, foot tapping. Steph paces, restless energy with nowhere to go. Cass sits cross-legged near the window on a bean bag, watching the city lights like she might memorise them. Duke’s slouched in a chair, hoodie pulled up, jaw clenched.
Dick stands near the door, arms folded, trying—and failing—to keep the peace.
“This is bullshit,” Jason mutters finally. “Benched. On a random ass Tuesday night.”
“It’s not random,” Tim snaps, far sharper than intended.
Silence.
Steph exhales solemnly. “It's 'cuz tomorrow’s her birthday.”
No one answers. How could they refute that?
Elizabeth Taylor Wayne, your pet Cavalier, pads into the room then, tiny paws soft against the carpet of Tim's carpet, who's room she frequented after your passing. She’s wearing one of her little pink sweaters—slightly crooked, like someone rushed putting it on. She pauses in the doorway, head tilting, tail wagging uncertainly before she beelines straight for Damian. (YO I LOVE DOGS OMFG)
Of course she does.
Damian stiffens as she noses at his boots, then sighs and crouches, scooping her up with practiced care. She settles immediately, licking his chin like she’s claiming him.
“She’s anxious,” he mutters, more observation than complaint.
Jason snorts quietly. “Yeah. Wonder why.”
Dick rubs a hand over his face. “Bruce thinks keeping us here helps.”
“Helps who?” Steph asks.
Yet again, no one has an answer.
Tim finally speaks, voice low. “He couldn’t even look at her suit.”
That does it.
The room goes heavy.
Dense.
Like the air itself is grieving.
Elizabeth squirms, then wriggles out of Damian’s arms and hops onto Tim’s bed, curling up atop one of your old hoodies like it’s instinct. Like she knows.
Damian watches her with an expression he doesn’t have words for.
“She was supposed to wake me up tomorrow,” he says suddenly.
Everyone looks at him.
“She always does,” Damian continues, staring at nothing. “She said birthdays should start early. That they deserve… ceremony.”
Steph presses her lips together.
Dick swallows. “We’ll still—” He stops.
Tries again. “We’ll get through tomorrow. Together.”
Jason scoffs, but there’s no bite to it. “Yeah. Sure.”
Outside, Gotham hums on, uncaring.
Inside Tim’s room, surrounded by half-packed gear, borrowed hoodies, and the soft breathing of a dog who misses you in a way she can’t explain, your siblings sit with the weight of being benched—not just from patrol, but from the one thing they all want most.
To outrun the day that’s coming.
The house knows before anyone says it out loud.
Wayne Manor is quiet in a way that feels intentional, like it’s learned how to mourn without making noise. The kind of silence that presses against the ears, that fills every corner until it’s hard to breathe.
Damian wakes first.
He always does.
Training drilled into muscle memory. For a brief, treacherous moment, his body moves on instinct alone—feet hitting the floor, posture straightening, already turning toward your room with irritation half-formed on his tongue. He expects to see your door open, light spilling out, you already awake and doing something infuriatingly normal.
Instead, the hallway is still. Your door is closed.
The realisation hits him in stages. Not like a blade, but like pressure—slow, crushing, unavoidable. He stands there longer than he should, staring at the door like if he waits long enough, you might open it yourself and give him a kiss on the cheek.
Elizabeth Taylor trots up beside him, soft and warm, tail brushing against his calf. She presses her head into his leg, grounding him. Damian exhales shakily and kneels, burying his fingers into her fur.
Her pink velvet dog bed isn’t in your room anymore.
It migrated.
Quietly. Over several days.
It sits in Damian’s room now, tucked beside his bed, next to Titus'.
No one commented on it. No one questioned it.
She sleeps there every night, curled close to him like she’s guarding what’s left.
Everyone has been taking care of her.
They take turns bathing her, brushing her coat, changing her outfits with the kind of careful attention usually reserved for something fragile and irreplaceable.
Jason complains the loudest but never skips his turn. Steph hums softly while she buttons tiny sweaters. Alfred puts her in a pink stroller and takes her to your grave every now and then. Cass watches her like she’s memorising her existence, Dick brings Haley over more often, for Elizabeth to have a girl companion. Damian's taken up replenishing her doggy bowl and upkeeping her insanely expensive diet you sponsored.
After all, she is the last living thing that loved you without knowing what death was.
Downstairs, Alfred sets the table.
He does it the same way he always has—measured, precise, unyielding in ritual. The grand dining room feels cavernous this morning, its long table too long, the ceiling too high. Sunlight filters through the tall windows and lands across the polished surface like it doesn’t know what it’s illuminating.
Your place is set.
The chair between Duke and Damian is pulled out, napkin folded neatly, cutlery aligned just so. Alfred adjusts it twice before he’s satisfied. He doesn’t look at the chair for long. One by one, they drift in.
Dick checks his phone as he walks, then stops dead when he sees the date. He doesn’t sit right away. Just stands there, thumb hovering uselessly over the screen.
Jason takes the seat across from yours without realising it, then stiffens when his gaze flicks up and lands on the empty space opposite him. Tim arrives last. Hoodie sleeves swallowed over his hands. Eyes shadowed. He hasn’t been sleeping well. None of them have.
Bruce doesn’t come down.
Alfred pours tea.
He comments on the weather. Mentions a meeting at Wayne Enterprises that Lucius has postponed. His voice is steady, clipped, perfectly composed. He asks about training schedules that no longer exist. About patrols that aren’t happening. They answer him because it’s easier than saying anything else.
Forks scrape against porcelain. Cups clink. Damian doesn’t touch his food. Elizabeth sits at his feet, chin resting on his shoe, eyes tracking every movement like she’s afraid someone might disappear if she looks away.
The chair stays empty.
It’s Tim who finally breaks.
His voice is barely above a whisper.
“It’s her birthday.”
No one responds immediately.
The words don’t echo. They sink.
Steph’s hand freezes mid-reach. Duke swallows hard, eyes fixed on the table. Dick closes his eyes like he’s been punched. Jason’s jaw tightens, teeth grinding audibly.
Alfred stills.
Just for a breath.
“Yes,” he says softly. “I believe it is.”
No one wishes you happy birthday.
After breakfast, no one knows what to do.
They hover in that awful in-between—too restless to sit, too exhausted to move. Bruce still hasn’t come down. The manor feels wrong without him, like the absence of both father and daughter has knocked something structural loose.
That’s when they see the package.
Bruce stands near the base of the staircase, motionless, a medium-sized box clutched in his hands like it weighs more than it should.
Your name is printed on the label in clean, unmistakable letters. Ordered weeks ago. Scheduled. Planned.
For today.
No one speaks.
Bruce doesn’t look up. His grip tightens slowly, knuckles whitening. The box crinkles faintly under the pressure.
Alfred approaches quietly, like he’s walking up to something wounded.
“Master Bruce,” he says gently. “Perhaps… a game might be of use. The children could use the distraction.”
Bruce doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t move.
But he doesn’t object either.
So they play cards.
Uno, of all things. They gather in the sitting room, sunlight slanting through the windows, dust motes floating lazily in the air like nothing has changed.
Steph volunteers to deal.
She shuffles once. Twice.
Disperses the cards, makes sure everyone has the standard deck of seven.
Everyone has one. Yet there's one extra deck remaining.
One meant for you.
“Oh,” Steph breathes.
Her hands shake. She almost drops them.
No one tells her to stop.
She reshuffles, and deals again like muscle memory can carry her through what her heart can’t.
They play.
They argue about rules. Jason accuses Dick of cheating. Damian snaps at Tim for not paying attention. Alfred comments dryly from the armchair, pretending not to notice the way conversation falters every time someone laughs too hard.
Tim’s phone buzzes.
A TikTok.
It’s stupid. Genuinely stupid. A video that would’ve made you laugh. Without thinking, without pausing, he hits share.
Your name pops up automatically.
Sent.
The realisation lands a second later.
He stares at the screen, breath leaving him in a sharp, broken sound. The phone slips from his hands. He curls in on himself, shoulders shaking as Cass’ hand finds his sleeve and Dick shifts closer, anchoring him.
Later—after cards, after silence, after everyone drifts away—Bruce stands alone in the hallway.
He holds the package.
He doesn’t open it.
He stares at it like it might start breathing.
“I was supposed to give this to you,” he whispers, voice breaking completely. “I was supposed to be here.”
The manor listens.
And for the first time that day, it lets him cry.
After your funeral, it felt like there was a hole Dinah and Ollie harboured that they couldn't fill up. The penthouse is too quiet when they come back from your funeral.
It’s the kind of quiet that only exists after something enormous—after crowds, speeches, the weight of hundreds of eyes and condolences and hands on shoulders. The doors shut behind Dinah and Ollie with a soft click, and suddenly there’s nowhere for the grief to hide.
Dinah slips her heels off by the door without bending down, toes nudging them aside.
Her feet ache. Her shoulders ache. Her chest feels hollowed out, like something vital has been scooped cleanly away.
Ollie sets the keys down too hard on the counter. The sound echoes.
He winces like he’s broken something.
“Well,” he mutters, forcing air into his lungs, “home sweet—”
He stops himself.
Dinah doesn’t answer. She’s standing in the middle of the living room, still in black, still stiff, still holding herself like if she lets go she’ll collapse straight through the floor. There’s a strange exhaustion that follows events like this. Not the kind sleep fixes. The kind that makes your bones feel heavy, your thoughts slow and sludgy, your body lag a half-second behind your mind. Dinah feels it settle into her joints as she walks further inside, fingers brushing the back of the couch.
She can still hear voices.
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“She was such a beautiful soul.”
“She loved you both so much.”
Dinah sinks down onto the couch and stares at nothing. Ollie hovers for a moment, unsure, then sits beside her. He reaches for her hand, squeezes once.
Solid. Real.
“She shouldn’t be dead,” Dinah says suddenly.
Ollie’s jaw tightens. “No.”
“She was supposed to come over,” Dinah continues, voice flat, distant. “To get back her airpods, and she wanted to borrow a dress. She said she’d already planned the outfit but wanted my opinion.”
Ollie exhales through his nose. “She always wanted your opinion.”
“She never listened to it,” Dinah says.
A pause.
“But she wanted it.”
The penthouse smells faintly like flowers—sympathy arrangements that arrived before they left, before they could stop them.
Dinah hates it.
It feels invasive. Wrong.
She stands abruptly. “I need to change.”
Ollie watches her walk away, shoulders squared, movements precise like she’s holding herself together through sheer discipline. He doesn’t follow.
Dinah goes to the closet.
She’s halfway through unzipping her dress when she sees them.
The handbags.
Lined up neatly.
Exactly as you left them.
Her hands still.
For a moment, her brain refuses to connect the dots.
They’re just bags.
Leather. Fabric. Accessories.
Normal things in the closet of a woman who happens to have a billionaire for a husband.
And then the memory hits her sideways.
You, perched on the bench, swinging your legs.
“Dinah, why do you have so many black bags?”
“Because black goes with everything sweetheart, your father knows that of all things..”
“That’s boring. This one though?” You’d picked up the ridiculous beaded clutch, grinning. “This one has personality.”
Dinah’s throat tightens.
She slowly, carefully zips the dress back up and steps out of the closet.
That’s when the days start to blur.
The quiet mornings.
The untouched handbags.
The way Ollie stops cracking jokes when he realizes no one’s laughing.
And eventually—weeks to months later—it’s the department store.
Dinah hasn’t moved the handbags.
They’re still where you left them—lined up along the back of the walk-in closet in their shared penthouse, pristine and untouched.
Chanel, YSL, the ridiculous beaded clutch you insisted she needed because “Dinah, it’s cute.” Dinah passes them every morning and every night and does not touch a single one.
She tells herself it’s because she doesn’t need them.
That’s a lie.
Ollie notices first.
He notices everything lately.
Dinah feels both blessed and cursed to have such an observant husband.
The way Dinah’s fingers hover, the way she inhales like she’s bracing herself, the way her shoulders tense when she catches sight of something that still smells faintly like you—your perfume, your shampoo, your presence.
“You gonna rotate your bags or keep ‘em in museum formation?” he asks one morning, light, careful.
Dinah doesn’t look at him. “They’re fine.”
Ollie nods. Lets it go.
He’s learned when not to push. He feels your absence as well.
Queen Industries feels wrong without you. Ollie’s office used to be a revolving door whenever you were in town. You’d show up unannounced, feet kicked up on his desk, stealing his coffee, complaining about Bruce, asking if Roy was around, asking if Dinah had eaten yet.
You made the place loud. Lived-in. Human.
Now it’s just… quiet.
Too clean.
Ollie catches himself glancing at the door some afternoons, half-expecting you to barrel in with a grin and a complaint and some overpriced desserts you bought from that viral pastry place downtown.
But yet, it never happens.
The door stays closed. The silence settles.
He hates it.
That’s why he suggests the department store.
“Dinah,” he says one afternoon, keys in hand, “you haven’t bought anything frivolous in weeks. That’s not like you.”
She arches a brow. “I don’t need frivolous.”
“Okay, but want?” he counters. “Come on. Smell some expensive nonsense. Yell at me about notes and undertones.”
She hesitates. Then sighs. “Fine.”
The store is bright and glossy and painfully normal.
Dinah moves through it on autopilot—past makeup counters, past mirrors, past smiling employees who don’t know her world has ended. Ollie trails behind her, hands in his pockets, watching the way she moves slower than usual, like she’s underwater.
They reach the perfume section.
Rows and rows of glass bottles. Gold caps. Elegant labels. Too many choices.
Dinah reaches for one without thinking.
She freezes.
Her fingers close around the bottle.
She doesn’t spray it.
Doesn’t need to.
She already knows.
Ollie sees it immediately—the way her breath stutters, the way her grip tightens, the way her eyes go distant.
“Babe?” he says softly. “What’s wrong?”
Dinah swallows.
Her voice comes out quiet. Fragile.
“Y/N used to wear this.”
Ollie steps closer, his usual bravado evaporating. “Yeah?”
Dinah lifts the bottle, finally spraying it onto the tester strip. The scent blooms into the air—warm, familiar, unmistakably you.
Sweet without being childish. Sharp without being harsh. Confident.
Alive.
Dinah closes her eyes.
And suddenly you’re back.
You’re sprawled across her couch, kicking off your shoes, telling her about a gala you went to with your father and sister that bored you out of your mind. You’re hugging her hello, cheek pressed to hers, that exact scent clinging to your skin. You’re laughing, loud and bright, asking if she wants to gossip because oh my god you will not believe what Dick and Jason did.
Dinah’s chest caves in.
She makes a broken sound before she can stop herself.
Ollie’s arms are around her instantly.
“Hey,” he murmurs, pressing his forehead to hers. “I’ve got you.”
“She smelled like this,” Dinah whispers, fingers trembling as she clutches the strip. “Every time she came over. Every time she hugged me. I didn’t even realize how much I associated it with her until—”
Her voice cracks.
Ollie tightens his hold. “She had good taste,” he says hoarsely. “Obviously.”
Dinah lets out a shaky laugh that dissolves into a sob. “She was our kid,” she says. “She just… showed up one day and never really left.”
“I know,” Ollie replies.
His own voice wavers now. “I miss her stealing my office chair.”
“She stole everything,” Dinah says.
“My clothes. My makeup. My time.”
Ollie exhales. “My peace.”
They stand there like that—in the middle of a luxury department store, surrounded by strangers and polished glass and music that feels inappropriate—holding each other while grief quietly wrecks them.
Dinah pulls back first, wiping her eyes. She looks at the bottle again.
She puts it back carefully, like it might shatter.
As they walk away, Ollie glances back once, then mutters, “She’d be mad we didn’t buy anything.”
Dinah huffs weakly. “She’d tell you to stop being dramatic.”
“Yeah,” Ollie says. “And then she’d hug us both and say we were doing our best.”
Dinah presses her lips together, nodding. They leave the store empty-handed.
The scent lingers anyway.
Just like the memory of you.
ON ANOTHER EARTH, IN A SEPARATE UNIVERSE.
You remember the night your father died.
23 days before your birthday
On another Earth, the night your father dies does not end when his heart stops.
It stretches.
It coils around your spine and stays there.
You remember the sound first—not the explosion, not the chaos, but the quiet after. The way Gotham goes eerily still when something sacred has been taken from it. Rain clings to your lashes. Your gloves are slick with blood that will never come off, no matter how hard you scrub later.
Batman is not dead.
But Bruce Wayne is.
You don’t scream. That comes later. Right now, you’re too busy counting breaths that aren’t happening, hands shaking as you press down, as if pressure alone could undo destiny.
“Dad,” you whisper, uselessly. “Please.”
His cowl is cracked, his face pale beneath it. His eyes are still open, unfocused but somehow still kind.
That’s what destroys you — the kindness. Even now.
Someone pulls you back. Dick’s voice cracks your name like it’s breaking glass. Damian is shouting, furious and terrified and far too young to be watching this. Tim's gotten nauseous, you can't decipher what Babs is saying over your comms.
You don’t remember leaving the alley. You don’t remember the ride back. You only remember that Gotham keeps breathing even when Bruce Wayne doesn’t.
The cover story is decided before the blood dries.
You are not in the room when they say it, but you hear it anyway — whispered through walls, through Alfred’s careful silences, through the way everyone avoids your eyes.
A drug overdose.
Suspected suicide.
The words feel obscene.
Bruce Wayne, philanthropist. Bruce Wayne, troubled billionaire. Bruce Wayne, fallen icon. Bruce Wayne, a father, who is now dead.
The media eats it alive.
They speculate. They pity. They dissect his life like it belongs to them.
You sit at the long dining table and stare at the empty chair at the head.
He died in an alley protecting his city.
And the world thinks he gave up.
Parallel lines you don’t yet have the words for twist tight in your chest.
The funeral is public.
Of course it fucking is.
Bruce Wayne deserves marble steps and black umbrellas and a sea of faces pretending they understand loss and better yet, pretending they knew who he was.
You're holding your dog, and Ace and standing beside Dick, who hasn’t slept. Damian is rigid on your other side, small hand fisted in the fabric of your coat like he might fall apart if he lets go. Tim looks hollow. Cass watches everything with eyes too sharp. Steph cries quietly. Jason doesn’t look at the coffin at all.
They speak of Bruce Wayne’s achievements. They speak of his generosity. His legacy. His struggles.
They do not speak of Batman. They do not speak of the man who taught you how to breathe through pain.
When the casket is lowered, something inside you follows it.
Later, when the cameras are gone and the world finally leaves you alone, you break.
Not loudly. Not dramatically.
You fold in on yourself in a hallway at Wayne Manor, hands pressed to your mouth to keep the sound in. Your knees hit the floor. Alfred finds you there and doesn’t say a word.
He just kneels, dignified even in grief, and holds you like you are still a child who scraped her knee.
“I am so very sorry, Miss,” he murmurs.
You nod because if you speak, you will drown.
The days after blur into responsibility.
Someone has to take over Wayne Enterprises.
That someone is you.
Board members test you at first — subtle, patronising, polite. You shut it down quickly. You wear black like armour. You speak carefully.
You do not cry in meetings. Tim's by your side more often then not.
At night, you sit in Bruce’s study with the lights off, listening to the house settle.
You don’t touch anything. It feels like trespassing.
Dick becomes Batman because Gotham doesn’t wait for grief.
You watch him leave the cave the first night, cape settling over his shoulders in a way that makes your chest ache.
He pauses at the steps.
“You don’t have to do this alone,” he says quietly.
“I know,” you reply.
But you do it anyway.
Damian stops sleeping through the night.
He ends up in your room more often than not, curled tight and furious with the world, he holds you like you'll disappear as well. You brush his hair back like Bruce used to. You never mention it.
You become the constant in all their lives.
Joining the PTA for Duke regardless of how much you hate Margie and all the other middle-aged women. Showing up to Cass' ballet recitals. Taking Damian to piano classes and his swimming lessons. Helping Jason on the occasional mission, and the occasional hangover.
And it costs you more than you let on.
You and Dick ramp up your presence at the Watchtower.
Initiating meetings, scheduling timetables, emails with the UN.
Even though the two of you are heavily respected, all your league members look at you the same.
Two kids who lost their dad.
And now they're paying the price for his absence.
Dinah and Ollie are the ones who notice first.
Because of course they are.
They show up without warning, no fanfare, just familiar noise cutting through the manor’s oppressive quiet.
Ollie complains about the driveway. Dinah hugs you hard enough that your breath stutters.
They don’t ask you to be strong. They don’t ask you to talk. They just stay.
Something you took for granted quite frankly.
You end up in Star City more often than you expect — weekends at first, then longer stretches. Dinah teaches you how to breathe again, slow and deliberate. Ollie distracts Damian with archery and loud jokes and the kind of fatherly affection that doesn’t demand anything back.
You sit on their couch one night, exhausted, head tipped back, and Dinah drapes a blanket over you without comment.
“You’re allowed to rest sweetie,” she says softly.
You don’t answer.
But you stay.
They become your anchors — not because they fix anything, but because they don’t try to.
Because they remember Bruce without making him a ghost.
Because they look at you and still see you, not just the weight you’re carrying.
When you laugh — really laugh — for the first time in weeks, it startles you.
Ollie grins like he’s won something.
“There she is,” he says
This past weekend, you've been staying with Dinah and Ollie, it was the perfect opportunity as Dick's on a solo mission with the Titans, Tim and Damian are with the Kents, Jason's with the Outlaws and Steph and Cass are preoccupied with Babs on girls night, they were gutted you couldn't come with, but they weren't gonna stop you from being with Ollie and Dinah. They knew how much you relied on them.
Star City feels wrong before you ever see it.
It’s subtle at first.
The way the air hums just a fraction too loud, like the city itself is vibrating under your skin. The sky is clear, but it feels watched.
You stand on the balcony of Ollie’s penthouse, coffee cooling untouched in your hand, and you can’t shake the sense that something is leaning toward you.
Waiting.
Dinah notices because Dinah always notices.
“You’re doing that thing,” she says, leaning against the doorframe. Her voice is gentle, but her eyes are sharp.
You glance back. “What thing?”
“The staring-into-the-middle-distance-like-the-universe-is-about-to-punch-you thing.”
You huff a weak laugh. “Didn’t know I was that obvious.”
“To me? Always.” She steps closer, her shoulder brushing yours. “You been sleeping?”
You hesitate. That’s answer enough.
Below, Star City moves like nothing is wrong.
Cars. People. Normalcy.
It makes your teeth ache.
“I don’t like this,” you say finally.
Dinah doesn’t ask what this is.
“Neither do I,” she replies.
Inside, Ollie’s on the phone, voice low, humour stripped clean. When he sees your expression, he ends the call immediately.
“What,” he asks. Not joking. Not loud.
Just what.
“There’s something in the Glades,” Dinah says before you can. “I can feel it.”
Ollie exhales through his nose. “Merlyn.”
The name lands like a bruise.
You straighten instinctively. “You’re sure?”
“No,” Ollie admits. “But I’m never wrong when it matters.”
The lights flicker.
Once.
Twice.
You all freeze.
That hum you felt earlier deepens, crawling into your bones, vibrating behind your eyes.
Somewhere far away—too far to pinpoint—metal screams.
You don’t say it.
But you’re already reaching for your gear.
The facility isn’t marked on any public map.
It sits half-buried in concrete and steel, a scar stitched into the city’s underbelly. The closer you get, the louder the sound becomes — not noise exactly, but pressure. Like reality being squeezed through a needle’s eye.
Your comm crackles.
“Energy readings are off the charts,” Dinah says, voice tight. “This isn’t just tech.”
“No,” you murmur. “It’s worse.”
The entrance yawns open, heat rolling out in waves. Inside, the air shimmers, bending light in ways your brain doesn’t like. Your head throbs. Your teeth buzz.
Ollie draws an arrow anyway.
“Guess Merlyn decided subtlety was overrated,” he mutters.
You move ahead of them without thinking, instincts honed sharp by too much loss, too much responsibility. Nightingale moves like second nature — quieter than fear, faster than doubt.
The core chamber is massive.
Circular.
Wrong.
Spanning hundreds of metres in distance.
A machine dominates the centre, towering, spiralling rings rotating at different speeds, glowing with a violent, sickly light. Energy arcs between them, snapping like lightning with no thunder.
The air smells burnt, metallic, alive.
You gaze up at the machine
You hear Dinah swear softly. “That’s a supercollider.”
"It's a particle accelerator. Merlyn failed with the last two, this one's gonna succeed." You say.
Ollie goes still. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“I wish I was.”
At the far end of the platform, Merlyn waits.
He looks pleased.
“You’re late,” he calls out, voice echoing unnaturally. “I was beginning to think grief had dulled your reflexes.”
Your hands curl into fists.
“You’re going to shut it down,” you say coldly. “Now.”
Merlyn laughs.
“Oh, child,” he says. “This is the shutdown. Of everything.”
The machine pulses.
Harder.
Your knees buckle for half a second before you catch yourself.
Dinah grabs your arm. “You okay?”
You nod, even though your vision is fracturing at the edges.
“Split up,” Ollie says. “We disable the outer rings.”
You don’t argue.
You should.
But something in your chest is pulling you forward, toward the heart of the machine, toward the light that feels like it knows your name.
The closer you get, the worse it becomes.
Gravity wobbles.
Time hiccups.
Your footsteps echo twice, then not at all.
You swear you see movement in the light — shadows that don’t belong to anything solid.
Your comm screeches.
“Nightingale—!” Dinah’s voice cuts in and out. “Something’s—wrong—”
“I know,” you gasp.
Your head pounds. Images flash behind your eyes — Bruce’s smile. Damian asleep on your shoulder. Dick’s hand on your back. A coffin lowering into the earth. Another one. Parallel grief folding in on itself.
Merlyn steps into your path.
Up close, his eyes are fever-bright.
“Do you feel it?” he asks eagerly.
“The strain? The walls between worlds thinning?”
You raise your guard despite the vertigo. “You’re insane.”
“Yes,” he agrees cheerfully. “But I’m also right.”
He gestures, and the machine surges.
You scream.
Not from pain — from everything. From the sensation of being pulled apart at a molecular level, of existing in too many places at once. Your knees hit the platform. You claw at the metal, gloves smoking where they touch.
Dinah shouts your name.
Ollie fires an incendiary arrow that disintegrates midair.
Merlyn’s grin widens.
“You’ve been holding the universe together with grief and duct tape,” he says softly.
“You were always going to snap.”
He grabs you.
For a split second, you think of your father.
Then he throws you.
You don’t fall.
You are taken.
The world detonates into colour and sound and screaming light.
Your body is weightless, then impossibly heavy.
You can’t tell where you end and the energy begins. The supercollider howls, rings spinning faster, faster—
Your thoughts fracture.
Is this how he felt?Is this how I die?Is this how I leave them?
Your mouth opens but no sound comes out.
Space folds.
Time screams.
You're shot into a myriad of electric webs, seas of blue with sparkling rope.
You see cities that aren’t yours.
Skies wrong shades of blue.
Your atoms stretch.
Your soul lurches.
The last thing you feel before everything tears—
—is your name being ripped out of the universe like it was never meant to stay.
And then—
nothing holds you anymore.
You wake up on concrete.
Cold seeps through your suit first—through the plating, through the kevlar, through whatever adrenaline is still clinging to your bloodstream like it knows it’s about to be evicted. Your vision swims. Light fractures overhead, neon signs bleeding into each other, letters doubling, then tripling, then snapping back into place.
Star City.
You know it instinctively. The smell—salt, oil, rain. The hum of traffic a few streets over. The particular way the wind curls through alleyways like it’s learned the city’s bones by heart.
But something’s wrong.
Your ears ring, a high, thin whine, like feedback after an explosion. You push yourself up on your elbows and the world tilts violently to the left.
Your stomach lurches. You swallow hard, breathing through it.
“No,” you murmur. Your voice sounds wrong here. Too loud. Too real.
Your head throbs where it hit—when did it hit? The last thing you remember is light. Pressure. The feeling of being pulled apart and stitched back together incorrectly.
You sit up slowly.
The alley is narrow.
Brick walls on either side, damp with last night’s rain. A flickering security light buzzes overhead. There’s a dumpster to your right, graffiti you don’t recognize sprayed in angry red strokes.
You look down at yourself.
Nightingale’s suit is scorched.
Hairline fractures spiderweb across the chest plate. Your gloves are blackened at the fingertips like you tried to grab the sun and lost. Your mask is still on—thank goodness—but the edge is cracked near your temple.
Your comm is dead.
Of course it is.
You try to stand.
Your ears ring as you push yourself upright, palms scraping against the ground.
Your hands stutter.
Not shaking. Stuttering.
Your fingers leave faint echoes behind them when you move, like afterimages burned into the air. You watch, horrified, as your wrist phases a fraction of an inch out of sync with the rest of you, snapping back with a sharp, nauseating jolt.
“Oh—no,” you whisper. Your voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater. “No, no, no—”
You stagger to your feet, back slamming against the wall as another wave of distortion rolls through you. It feels like pins and needles under your skin, like your atoms are being politely but firmly told they don’t belong here.
Wrong Star City.
You squeeze your eyes shut and try to breathe through it.
In. Out. Slow. The way Bruce taught you. The way Dinah insisted on when your hands shook too badly to string an arrow.
Dinah.
Your eyes snap open.
They were just with you. Both of them. You can still hear Dinah shouting over the rising whine of the collider, still see Ollie’s hand gripping your shoulder, too tight, too scared.
You turn in a slow, unsteady circle, scanning the street beyond the alley mouth.
Pain explodes up your spine and you gasp, stumbling back against the wall. Your breath comes fast, shallow. Your heart is hammering, too loud in your ears.
“Okay,” you whisper to yourself. “Okay. That’s fine. That’s—fine.”
You squeeze your eyes shut.
Where are Ollie and Dinah?
They were just there. You can still hear Dinah’s voice in your head, tight with warning. Ollie’s hand on your shoulder, solid, grounding.
You open your eyes again and the alley is still empty.
No Green Arrow.
No Black Canary.
No humming supercollider tearing reality open behind you.
Just Star City.
But not your Star City.
You think of your family, of Dick, Damian, your siblings back home, you wonder if Dinah and Ollie notified them of you disappearance. The panic the two of them might be feeling, are probably experiencing.
But your thoughts return to your surroundings.
Of a different Star City.
You don’t realise how deeply wrong it is until you hear footsteps.
They’re halfway down the block, arms full of nothing, the shopping bags long since abandoned back at the department store counter.
Dinah is mid-sentence, voice warm with something dangerously close to nostalgia, when Ollie stops so suddenly she almost runs straight into him.
“Ollie—?”
He doesn’t answer.
He’s staring down the alley.
Dinah follows his gaze, annoyance melting into something colder, sharper, the instant she sees the movement there. A figure braced against the brick, head bowed, armor catching the flickering streetlight in jagged flashes.
The air feels wrong.
Not tense. Not hostile.
Off.
“Do you see that,” Ollie says quietly.
Dinah’s fingers curl around his wrist without her thinking about it. “Yeah,” she murmurs. “I do.”
The figure moves—and glitches.
For a split second there are two of them, offset by a fraction of space, before snapping violently back into one. Dinah’s breath catches hard in her throat.
“…That’s not funny,” she whispers. “That’s not—”
They’re already moving.
Not as Green Arrow and Black Canary. Not with masks and weapons and mission parameters.
Just as themselves.
Because whatever is happening in that alley, it feels personal in a way that makes Dinah’s chest ache.
You hear them before you see them properly. Footsteps approaching, voices cutting off mid-conversation.
You spin, adrenaline flaring sharp and hot, muscles screaming as you drop instinctively into a defensive stance. The world lurches again at the sudden movement, your balance wobbling as static skitters across your skin.
Two figures stand at the mouth of the alley.
Civilian clothes.
Dinah’s scarf. Ollie’s jacket.
The exact way Ollie stands when he’s relaxed but ready, weight shifted just so, hands loose at his sides.
Your heart slams into your ribs so hard it hurts.
“—Uncle Ollie?” The words slip out before you can stop them.
Both of them freeze.
Dinah’s eyes widen, just a fraction. Ollie’s shoulders go rigid, like someone’s just drawn a bowstring through his spine.
You take a step toward them.
The world breaks.
Your vision fractures into overlapping images, the alley stretching and folding in on itself as your body lags behind your intent. You gasp, clutching at your side as your outline shimmers violently, air cracking around you like displaced electricity.
“Hey!” Ollie snaps, all instinct now. “Don’t move.”
“Woah—woah,” you say quickly, panic rising, hands lifting placatingly even as they leave ghostly trails behind them. “It’s me, it’s me, I swear—”
You rip your mask off.
For one awful, suspended second, no one moves.
Dinah feels like the ground has dropped out from under her.
It’s you.
It’s your face.
The same person she’s scolded and laughed with , the same cheeks she's pressed kisses to when the world got too heavy. The same jawline, the same scar near your temple she remembers patching up herself.
But your eyes—
Goodness.
Your eyes look like they’ve seen too much.
Not older, exactly.
Just… exhausted in a way she’s never seen on you before.
Like sleep hasn’t touched you properly in years.
Like grief has taken up permanent residence behind them.
There are fine lines of tension around your mouth that shouldn’t be there yet.
Scars she doesn’t recognise.
A weight to the way you hold yourself that makes her chest ache.
You look at them like you’re drowning and they’re the only solid thing left in the world.
Ollie swallows hard.
“…Kid,” he says, voice low, careful, like one wrong syllable might shatter you. “That’s not possible.”
“I just saw you,” you say, breath hitching. “You were there. Both of you. The collider—Dinah, you were yelling at Merlyn, and Ollie you told me to get back and—”
Your body spasms.
A violent ripple tears through you, your form blurring and splitting before snapping back with a sound like a gunshot. You cry out, dropping to one knee, nausea flooding your throat.
Dinah moves without thinking.
Ollie catches her wrist.
“Dinah,” he says quietly. “Our kid is dead.”
The words sit there.
Heavy. Final.
You look up at him.
Something flickers across your face—pain, old and sharp—but it settles into something quieter, sadder.
“…Not on my Earth,” you whisper.
Silence.
Then Dinah steps forward anyway.
She stops just short of touching you, hands hovering inches from your shoulders, like she’s afraid you’ll glitch apart if she makes contact.
“Say that again,” she says softly. “Slowly.”
You explain.
Not cleanly. Not all at once.
Fragments spill out between breaths.
You come from a different Earth.
Different choices.
Bruce died instead of you.
Surviving things you weren’t supposed to.
Merlyn. The collider. The moment everything went wrong.
Ollie listens without interrupting.
That’s how Dinah knows—knows—he believes you.
Because with Ollie, disbelief would’ve come loud. Defensive. Angry.
Your body glitches again, smaller this time but relentless, a constant shimmer at your edges like the universe is tugging at you, trying to pull you loose.
Dinah’s eyes fill with tears she doesn’t bother to hide.
Ollie exhales slowly through his nose. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
She reaches for you.
Stops.
Looks at Ollie.
He nods.
Dinah pulls you into her arms.
The contact grounds you instantly—and breaks something wide open inside your chest. You cling to her like she’s gravity itself, fingers digging into her coat as another wave of distortion rolls through you. Dinah buries her face in your neck, inhaling the same smell that went with you everywhere.
Ollie joins a second later, wrapping both of you up, pressing his forehead briefly to yours.
“We’ve got you,” he murmurs, fierce and unsteady. “We’ve got you.”
For the first time since the collider, the world holds.
They don’t ask where to take you.
Ollie doesn’t even consider anything public.
The penthouse doors slide shut behind you, sealing out the city, and the quiet hits you like a wave.
Without the noise to anchor you, the wrongness comes roaring back.
The penthouse is different.
The kitchen and the living room have been swapped. Dinah and Ollie's wedding portrait looks different.
Huh.
It's all a bit uncanny really.
It's the same house, same people, but there differences everywhere.
You think that's probably what they thought when they laid eyes upon you.
Your reflection in the glass windows flickers, lagging a half-second behind your movements. You sway, knees buckling as the room seems to tilt.
Dinah catches you before you hit the floor.
“Easy,” she murmurs, guiding you down onto the couch. “I’ve got you.”
Your glitching worsens under the stillness. Your outline shimmers constantly now, like a bad signal. Ollie watches it with a tight jaw, arms crossed, eyes never leaving you.
“You’re decaying,” he says.
You huff out a weak, breathless laugh. “Yeah. That happens when you’re not supposed to exist somewhere.”
Dinah shoots him a look.
“What,” he says. “That’s my way of panicking.”
She kneels in front of you, cupping your face gently, thumbs brushing beneath your eyes.
“We’re going to fix this,” she says, voice steady despite the tears shining there. “You hear me? We didn’t survive losing you once just to do it again.”
Your throat tightens.
“Still bossy across universes,” you murmur smirking.
Her smile breaks—and she pulls you into another hug, holding you like she’s afraid the universe might steal you back if she lets go.
She hugs you so tightly, it's so comforting.
You can tell she's been through a lot.
She still scratches your scalp the same way she always did, puts a hand behind your neck.
Some things never change, you guess.
The city outside keeps moving.
And for now—
You’re still here.
Ollie doesn’t pace when he dials.
He stands at the window of the penthouse, one hand braced against the glass, the other holding the phone like it might detonate. Star City glows below—alive, oblivious, cruel in its normalcy. Dinah sits behind you on the couch, her arm draped around your shoulders, thumb tracing slow, grounding circles like she’s afraid you’ll slip out of existence if she lets go.
The call connects on the third ring.
“Bruce,” Ollie says.
There’s a beat.
Then Bruce's voice, low, tired, restrained to the breaking point. “Oliver.”
Ollie exhales through his nose. “I need you to listen. And I need you to stay calm.”
That alone is enough to make Bruce’s spine go rigid on the other end of the line.
“What’s happened?” Bruce asks. “Is this about Gotham?”
“It’s about your daughter.”
Silence.
Not the empty kind.
The dangerous kind.
The kind that means Bruce has gone very, very still.
“…Which one,” Bruce says quietly. Asking even though he knows the answer.
Dinah closes her eyes.
“Y/N,” Ollie answers.
The name hangs between continents.
Bruce’s voice drops. “That’s not funny.”
“I know.”
“Oliver.”
“I’m not joking.”
Another pause.
Longer.
He can hear Bruce breathing now.
Controlled. Measured. Like he’s already bracing for impact.
“She’s dead,” Bruce says.
It isn’t an accusation.
It’s a statement. A fact carved into his bones.
“I buried her.”
Ollie swallows. “I know you did.”
“Then don’t say her name like this,” Bruce snaps. “Don’t—”
“She’s sitting on my couch,” Ollie says, cutting in. “She’s alive. She’s hurt. And she’s not from this universe.”
The words land wrong. Like broken glass in the mouth.
“You’re going to explain,” Bruce says, voice razor-thin, “right now.”
“She looks like her,” Ollie continues, slower now, choosing every word. “But older. Tired. Like grief’s been living in her bones for a long time. She knows things she shouldn’t. She called me uncle. She called Dinah aunt. She—”
“Stop,” Bruce breathes.
“No,” Ollie says. “You need to hear this. Because she thinks you are dead.”
Bruce’s hand tightens around his phone so hard it creaks.
“In her world,” Ollie says, “you died on the same mission. Same explosion. They ruled it a suicide. Covered it up. Just like—”
Bruce closes his eyes.
“…Just like we did with her,” he finishes hoarsely.
Dinah opens her eyes again, tears streaking silently down her face.
“She’s decaying,” Ollie adds. “She got into an incident with Merlyn and got shot into this universe, I think it's because this universe doesn't have Y/n in it. But it's like she doesn’t belong here. Barry might be able to help, but right now—right now she needs you.”
A long, broken breath on the other end.
“…I’m coming,” Bruce says.
“Come alone,” Ollie replies gently. “As Bruce.”
The call ends.
He doesn’t go to the cave.
He doesn’t touch the Batmobile, doesn’t pull on armour, doesn’t look at the memorial wall. He takes the stairs instead of the lift, every step echoing too loudly through the manor.
The living room is full.
They’re supposed to be gearing up.
Half-suited, half-armed, irritation crackling through the air because patrol was delayed again.
But they're not. 'Cuz they're benched.
Damian is on the floor with Elizabeth Taylor curled against his thigh, pink bed dragged in like a quiet rebellion. Dick is mid-sentence, Steph sprawled across the arm of a chair, Tim cross-legged with a tablet, Jason leaning against the wall, Cass and Duke close together.
Bruce passes through them like a ghost.
“Bruce?” Dick says, confused. “You good?”
Bruce doesn’t answer.
Jason straightens. “Hey. Where are you going?”
Bruce stops at the door.
“I need to step out,” he says.
Damian frowns immediately. “For what purpose?”
Bruce turns then.
His eyes land on each of them in turn, like he’s committing their faces to memory.
“It’s about your sister,” he says.
The room detonates.
“What?” Steph blurts.
Tim’s tablet slips from his hands and hits the floor with a sharp crack. “Bruce—?”
Dick is already moving. “Is she—did something—?”
“You benched us, then you say that?” Jason snaps. “You don’t get to just—”
“Enough,” Bruce cuts in, sharper than intended.
Silence slams down.
“I will explain,” Bruce says, forcing steadiness into his voice. “Later. Alfred will stay with you.”
Damian rises to his feet, Elizabeth’s leash still looped around his wrist. “Father. You are withholding critical information.”
Bruce meets his gaze.
It softens considerably.
He kneels to meet Damian.
“Son, I need you to trust me,” he says.
Damian’s jaw tightens.
He nods once.
Bruce leaves.
The front door closes behind him with a quiet finality that feels like another loss.
You don’t mean to open the news.
You really don’t.
But the penthouse is too quiet, and Dinah’s thumb has stilled on your shoulder, and Ollie’s gone tense in that way he gets when he’s bracing for bad timing. A tablet is in your hands before you’ve fully registered it.
Your name is trending. It's been trending for weeks.
You stare at it, blankly, like your brain refuses to translate.
You tap.
Your face fills the screen.
Y/N WAYNE, DAUGHTER OF BRUCE WAYNE, DEAD.
Another headline.
Another photo.
A gala smile.
A candid shot with Damian scowling beside you.
Death ruled a suicide.
Your throat closes.
“Oh,” you whisper.
Dinah notices instantly. “Hey—hey, sweetheart, what did you see?”
You tilt the phone toward her.
She sucks in a sharp breath.
You scroll numbly.
Edits. Tributes. Candle emojis.
She would’ve been another year older today.
People arguing in comment sections about whether you were happy.
Whether you were lonely.
Whether you were “too gentle for this world.”
Your hands start to shake.
“I’m dead,” you say, distantly. “Here, I mean.”
Dinah pulls you fully into her chest now, arms locking tight. “I know.”
Your eyes burn. “They said I killed myself.”
Ollie’s voice is rough. “They didn’t want questions.”
You nod slowly. “Same thing they did to my dad.”
The realisation settles like ash.
“This isn’t my universe,” you murmur. “I knew that. I just—I didn’t think it would hurt like this.”
Your vision blurs. The glitching starts again, a faint stutter at the edges of your hands, like static crawling up your skin.
Dinah presses her forehead to yours. “You’re okay. You’re here.”
“Am I allowed to be?” you ask quietly.
Footsteps sound behind you.
The door opens.
Bruce Wayne, your father, stands in the threshold.
He looks smaller without the suit.
Older.
His eyes find you instantly—and stop.
Time folds in on itself.
You look up.
Every breath has left your lungs.
Dinah and Ollie's gazes remain transfixed on you and Bruce staring at each other.
“Daddy?” you say, small and uncertain, like a child testing the edge of a nightmare. You stand, slowly.
Bruce crosses the room in three strides and pulls you into him, arms crushing, desperate, breath shuddering against your hair.
“Oh my goodness, baby, you’re here,” he whispers. “You’re real.”
You cling to him, fingers digging into his coat. “Daddy I missed you.”
He lets out a sound that might be a sob.
When he pulls back, his hands stay on your shoulders, grounding, trembling.
“You shouldn't be here. My daughter is dead,” he says, voice breaking. “Here.”
You nod.
“I know. I saw.”
“And in your world,” he continues, forcing the words out, “I died.”
“Yes.”
The symmetry is unbearable.
“They said you overdosed,” you add softly. “Suicide. They couldn’t tell the truth.”
Bruce closes his eyes. “We did the same to her.”
Your chest aches.
“I buried you. I took over the company. Dick became Batman. Damian—he needed someone. I stayed Nightingale. I just… hardened.”
Bruce cups your face gently. Smiling, even though the pain he's feeling is the worst he has ever felt, like stitches being ripped open again.
“You shouldn’t have had to.”
Your glitching worsens suddenly, static crawling up your arms.
Bruce notices immediately. His jaw sets.
“You’re destabilising,” he says. “Barry can help. He understands this kind of physics.”
You nod, trusting.
Exhausted.
“I don’t belong here,” you whisper.
Bruce pulls you into him again, softer this time.
“Maybe not,” he says. “But you’re not alone. I promise sweetheart.”
You wrap your arms around his waist, feeling like he'll disappear at any second, but you savour this moment.
The moment lingers longer than it should.
Bruce’s hands are still on your shoulders, like if he lets go you’ll flicker out completely. You can feel it—the strange, itchy wrongness under your skin, the way the air doesn’t quite agree with you.
Dinah watches it happen with a tight mouth. Ollie clocks it immediately.
“You’re destabilising again,” Bruce murmurs, more to himself than anyone else.
You nod faintly. “It gets worse when I think too hard.”
Bruce exhales, then straightens. The Batman slides back into place—not the armor, not the voice, but the decisiveness.
“I’ve already called Barry,” he says. “And I notified the Watchtower. Select members only.”
Ollie lifts an eyebrow. “You trust them with this kind of stuff?”
“I trust them with her,” Bruce replies without hesitation.
That lands heavier than anything else.
Dinah squeezes your hand. “Alright. Then we move.”
She stands, already reaching for the hidden panel near the hallway. “We suit up.”
You blink. “Now?”
Ollie gives you a soft, crooked smile. “Kid, if you’re gonna glitch out of existence, you’re doing it somewhere with the best minds in the universe.”
Dinah disappears briefly and returns with something folded carefully over her arm.
Your breath catches.
It’s a suit—but not yours.
Not Nightingale as you knew her.
The silhouette is familiar, but refined.
Reinforced seams. Subtle gold threading worked into the black. A faint canary insignia worked into the inside lining, near the collar.
Dinah holds it out. “Temporary. Modified to stabilise your vitals. Barry’ll do the real work, but this’ll help .”
You take it with trembling fingers. “You didn’t have to—”
“We did,” Ollie says gently.
As you change, the penthouse hums with quiet urgency. Dinah and Ollie suit up too, muscle memory guiding them. When you step back out, fully masked, Bruce stops breathing for half a second.
You’re Nightingale.
But older. Sharper. Tired in a way this world’s Nightingale never had the chance to be.
Bruce approaches you slowly, like you might spook.
“You ready?” he asks.
You hesitate—then lean forward and hug him.
He makes a small, broken sound as his arms wrap around you, pressing his forehead to yours.
“I should go home first,” he says quietly. “I need to tell them, the kids deserve to know.”
You nod. “I know.”
You pull back just long enough to press a kiss to his cheek. He does the same to your hair, lingering.
“Be careful,” he whispers.
“You too, daddy.”
He watches you go with Dinah and Ollie, something in his chest ripping open all over again.
Bruce drives home in silence.
The city lights blur past, reflections ghosting across the windows. His hands are steady on the wheel, but his thoughts are anything but.
Alive.
Not his.
Dead here.
Alive somewhere else.
The manor looms ahead like a mausoleum.
Inside, the lights are on.
Alfred opens the door, welcoming him.
He walks ahead, trying to figure out a way to break the news to his children.
Too many of them. Voices carry faintly from the living room—irritated, confused, restless.
He steps inside and all of them turn at once.
Cass's head perks up first, she nudges Duke who stops talking
“Bruce?” Dick says immediately. “What the hell is going on?”
Jason pushes off the wall. “You disappear and drop that line about Y/N like it’s nothing—”
Steph and Tim are already standing, eyes sharp, scanning Bruce’s face. “Is this about the Watchtower alert?”
Bruce turns his head because how did he have Watchtower alerts?
Damian is quiet.
Elizabeth Taylor sits at his feet, tail thumping nervously, like she knows what's up. “Father,” he says. “Explain.”
Bruce closes the door behind him.
He doesn’t take off his coat.
He walks to the couch and sits.
That alone shuts them up.
“I need you all to listen,” Bruce says. “And not interrupt.”
That earns him a few looks, but no one speaks.
He swallows.
“Y/N is alive.”
The room explodes.
“What?” Steph blurts.
Tim stumbles forward a step. “That’s not—don’t do that.”
Jason laughs once, sharp and disbelieving. “That’s sick, man.”
Damian’s breath hitches. “Father—”
Bruce raises a hand. “She is alive. But not our Y/N.”
Dead silence.
Dick’s voice is barely audible. “…What?”
Bruce exhales. “She’s from another universe. In her world, I died. Same mission. Same explosion. They covered it up as a suicide.”
Tim pales. “Like we did to her here.”
“Yes.”
Cass steps closer to Steph instinctively. Duke’s hands curl into fists.
“So she just—what—shows up?” Jason demands. “Wearing her face?”
Bruce’s voice breaks despite himself. “She called me dad.”
Damian’s composure fractures. “You saw her?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?” Damian asks immediately.
“They're on their way to the Watchtower, her, Dinah and Ollie. They were the ones who found her.” Bruce says. “She’s unstable. Barry’s working on something to stop the dimensional decay.”
Dick runs a hand through his hair, pacing now. “You didn’t bring her here.”
“It’s not safe yet.”
“For who?” Jason snaps.
Bruce looks at all of them. “For her. And for all of you.”
No one has an answer to that.
Only Elizabeth, who whines softly.
"Can we see her?" Duke asks,
"Eventually, I promise, let them get to the Watchtower, then we'll go." Bruce replies.
The Zeta-tube opens with a sound like the universe holding its breath.
Cold hits you first.
Not wind—there’s no air moving like that—but the kind of sterile, metallic chill that seeps straight through bone and settles behind your eyes.
The Watchtower always felt distant, even when you belonged here. Now it feels… vast. Hollow. Like a cathedral built for gods who forgot how to pray.
Below the transparent curve of the station, Earth hangs in silence.
Blue. Whole. Untouched by the fact that you died on it.
You take a step forward and your boots echo too loudly. Ollie’s already scanning the corridor, hand loose near his bow. Dinah walks just ahead of you, deliberate, protective without being obvious.
“You good?” Ollie asks, glancing back.
You nod, even though the static under your skin prickles in warning.
“Yeah,” you say. “Just… colder than I remember.”
Dinah hums. “It’s always like that your first time back.”
Back.
You swallow.
The corridor stretches long and white and impossibly clean. As you walk, doors slide open. Heads turn.
John Stewart—freezes mid-conversation, eyes widening as they land on you.
Hal stares like he’s seen a ghost. Because he has.
Zatanna’s hand flies to her mouth.
Shayera stiffens, her wings twitching.
Martian Manhunter’s gaze sharpens instantly, unreadable but heavy with recognition.
You catch Victor Stone’s reflection in the glass—Cyborg’s systems visibly lag for half a second as he recalibrates what he’s seeing. Even Aquaman, regal and unshakable, pauses.
Every step forward feels like walking through your own funeral. Whispers ripple behind you.
“That’s—”
“Didn't Bruce's kid pass?”
“Wait what-.”
“Is this some kind of—”
Ollie clears his throat loudly. “Eyes forward, folks. Multiverse emergency. Nothing to see here except your own business.”
That gets a few embarrassed looks, but the staring doesn’t stop.
You don’t really blame them.
At the end of the hall, the doors to the Flash’s lab slide open.
Barry’s voice spills out first. “—telling you, the math doesn’t lie, if she destabilises again—”
He stops mid-sentence. Clark turns. Diana looks up.
For half a second, none of them move.
Clark is the first to break.
He tries. You can tell he tries.
His shoulders square. His expression smooths into something neutral, professional. Justice League Superman.
“Nightingale. Y/N,” he says carefully. “It’s… great to see you.”
"Hi Uncle Clark" You reply softly
You barely have time to smile before he fails spectacularly.
In two strides he’s in front of you, pulling you into a hug so careful it almost hurts more than if he’d crushed you.
“Oh,” he breathes, voice breaking. “Oh, kid.”
Your arms come up automatically, pressing into his chest.
He smells the same. Sun-warm and familiar and devastating.
“Jonathan really misses you,” he says softly into your hair. “He keeps asking how your doing, forgetting that your uh-.”
Your throat closes, you cut him off. “I miss him too.”
Diana steps forward next, hands gentle as she cups your face, searching you with ancient eyes.
“You are weary,” she says quietly. “More than you should be.”
You let out a shaky laugh. “Yeah. That tracks, thanks Aunt Di.”
Barry doesn’t even pretend to be calm. He darts in, hugging you quick and tight, then pulling back just as fast, hands already hovering like you might fall apart if he blinks.
“Okay,” he says, voice wobbling. “Wow. You look—wow.”
“Bad wow?” you ask.
“Tired wow,” he corrects immediately. “Like you’ve been carrying grief in a backpack with no straps.”
That hits harder than anything else.
Clark frowns. “She’s dimmer.”
You blink. “Dimmer?”
Barry nods. “Not in a bad way. Just… less light. Our Y/N was—” He gestures vaguely. “Sharper. Louder. You feel like… aftermath.”
You smile thinly. “Yeah no shit. I watched my dad die.”
That does it.
The static spikes.
It starts in your fingers—white noise crawling up your hands, your vision stuttering like a corrupted video file. The floor feels too far away, then too close.
Dinah swears. “She’s glitching.”
Your body flickers. Once. Twice.
“Hey—hey—hey,” Barry says quickly, hands on your shoulders. “Stay with me. Don’t fight it.”
You try to breathe and fail spectacularly as the world fractures.
“I need time,” Barry says sharply. “I can build something, but I need her stable now.”
“I’m trying,” you choke, and then your knees buckle.
The room dissolves into static
When sensation comes back, it’s softer.
There’s a band around your wrist—warm, humming faintly, like it’s alive. The static is still there, but muted. Padded.
Barry sits in front of you, goggles pushed up into his hair, eyes red-rimmed but bright with relief.
“Particle stabiliser,” he says proudly. “Temporary, but it’ll hold you together.”
You flex your fingers. They stay solid.
“Oh,” you whisper. “That’s… better.”
He grins, exhausted. “Yeah. Thought you’d like that.”
Dinah squeezes your shoulder. Ollie lets out a breath he’s clearly been holding for a while.
Across space, a notification lights up on Batman's display.
GLITCHING STABILISED. SUBJECT SAFE.
His hands tremble.
Wayne Manor is silent in the way only grief makes things silent. Bruce stands in the Cave, staring at the message like it might disappear if he looks away.
“She’s stable,” he says finally.
Every head snaps up.
Dick’s breath catches. Tim and Cass are already moving. Jason swears under his breath. Damian looks at Duke and Steph, his eyes shine with something dangerous and hopeful.
“We’re going,” Bruce says, voice ironed flat. “Suit up.”
And somewhere, kilometres away, your laughter rings down a Watchtower corridor—
and the silence that follows it is so loud it hurts.
A/N: Praying that this doesn't flop (it probably will ngl) , it def needs a part 3 sorry guys, i was actually gonna include a scene where AU!Batsis meets the batfam of this universe, but i couldn't be bothered i was cracked out while writing this. also does anybody want a fic of batsis with uncle ollie and aunt dinah, also ik this shit is so ass but I'm so proud of myself for conjuring up 10000 words
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