Webs of Pain. chapter one: a cruel world
summary | you died. you should be buried, or at least not waking up. yet you lie there, suffering, very much alive.
pairing | platonic batfam x spider!batsis!reader.
warnings / tags | angst, hurt/little comfort, y/n is mentioned as a female. literal death, experimentation, consequences of being brought back to life. reader has a severe depression and many scars of what joker and scarecrow did to her. mentions of torture because she has a backstory of how did she end up like that. not the nicest point of her life.
word count | 4.7k
authors note | hi there!! english is not my first languaje so there might be some mistakes, or not, it can depend :) i plan on making this a series. please vote <3
this is NOT a yandere series, but it has dark themes that you already saw on warnings.
dick is 26. cass is 22. jason is 21. reader is 21 tim and steph are 19. duke is 18. damian is 14.
next.
AFTER DEATH, THE HUMAN BRAIN PLAYS IT'S MOST TREASURED MEMORIES FOR SEVEN MINUTES.
It doesn’t feel like that. Time doesn’t move. Time doesn’t end. It just bends inward, pulling back on itself, dragging you into yourself. You don’t feel the weight of your body anymore — there’s no pain, no sense of dying, no echoes of the final blow, of blood pooling beneath your ribs, of lungs collapsing.
All you feel is warmth. Not the warmth of your skin, or the sun. No, this is different — this is the warmth of love.
Seven minutes of love. Of snapshots stitched together by your soul. Memories you never thought you would have to relive—not because they were buried, but because there was no reason to believe you would ever need to hold on so tightly. They were yours. They lived with you.
And then, in four hundred and twenty seconds, they unfurl like silk through your mind. Bright. Soft. Agonizingly perfect.
Your parents — your biological ones. Mary, with her sweet smile and gorgeous curls. Richard, his soft blue eyes, his gentle explanations. You were six when the Joker killed them. You were six when Bruce adopted you. You were six when you became a younger sister to Richard Grayson.
Bruce follows quick — you don't call him that, you don't remember ever calling him by his name. He was dad. Your dad. Yours and your brother's. His proud smiles, his way of loving —not the easiest to understand, but his love anyway—, him patching you up. Running alongside Batman.
He trained you. You never got to be just a kid, but in some way, being Dragonfly was your childhood. Your dad designed your wings. Your tech. Your suit, that midnight lilac that shimmered like if a fairy was in place. He watched you soar.
Oh, how you would miss being her, the most precious creature to run with a Robin.
Alfred came by immediately, his warm hands —how they smelled faintly of mint and old books—, his tender words. The way he knew you. His tea was a love language, his honey-lemon remedy for every scraped knee and broken heart. Every time you thought you had finally fallen too far, done something too reckless, said something too cruel, Alfred never once looked at you like you were lost.
Dick was your older brother, the one who made you a sister, as you had been the only child in your parents marriage. He was the light in the house, the laugh in the cave. The first time you went out on patrol, he called you Dragonfly because you were fast, sharp, beautiful in the way you cut through the air. The name stuck.
You would miss that name. You would miss him most of all.
Then Jason.
And God, if Dick was light, then Jason was fire. Uncontainable, furious, alive in a way you never were before he entered your orbit. You were both twelve and had been rivals from the second he arrived, but not in a cruel way — no, it was more like iron sharpening iron. You trained together. Fought together. Bled together.
Perhaps that was what made you both so close. Powder and fuse, had once Alfred called you. Your twin in everything but blood.
You remember when he first died.
That was the first time you felt your soul break all over again. You were fifteen. You had been grounded — again — for going on missions without your father's permission. And then, just weeks later, he was gone. You were supposed to be with him. You were supposed to—
You stopped fighting after that. For months.
Then one day you started again — harder. With rage.
When he came back, angry and carved from vengeance, you tried to hold him the same way you used to. But Jason wasn’t Jason anymore — not for a long time. Still, he always softened around you, called you “Bug,” his voice dropping in pitch when no one else could hear.
You two were the same age. Same chaos. Same grief.
And in your last year alive, he had started calling you “sis” again. Just once. But once was enough.
Tim came next.
He was awkward when he met you, all logic and eyes too wide for his head. You were fifteen still. He was ten. He didn’t smile much, but he didn’t have to. He listened. And that meant more than anything. You used to steal his headphones when he was coding, just to mess with him. He’d scowl, sigh, and hand you a second pair.
Tim was your constant. When everything fell apart — Jason’s death, Bruce’s disappearances, your injuries, your silence — Tim was there. Steady. Intelligent. Often overlooked, always observing.
Steph was loud, sun-bright, and wild in ways that made the manor feel less like a mausoleum and more like a dorm room. You don't exactly remember when she moved in more regularly, and though you tried to act above it all, you loved her presence. She left your makeup bag notes. Borrowed your boots without asking. Hugged you like she meant it.
And then came Cass. She didn’t speak with words, and you hadn’t needed her to. You had connected through movement. The memory that burns brightest with her is the silent training session under moonlight, just the two of you — your bodies flowing like water, like poetry, like rage. The only sound was your breathing.
Afterwards, she pressed her forehead to yours and signed something with her fingers.
“I see you.”
You had burst into tears.
Were you crying now as well? You couldn't exactly know.
Duke came later. Light, quite literally.
You were older when he joined — already hardened. But he softened you. He reminded you of everything bright that Gotham tried to strangle. You remember him racing you on patrol, skateboarding off rooftops just to make you smile. His optimism was relentless.
And finally — Damian.
Only a year you had with him. But it mattered.
You remember the cold shoulder, the bitterness. But more than that, you remember the slow thaw. Seeing him alongside that cow he loved, the dog he commanded and still treated with so much love. You saw through him, as once your father had with you.
Seven minutes.
You were dead for much more than seven minutes.
And then . . . you weren't.
Water.
Cold, thick water.
You choke on it as you jolt back into existence. Not awake — no, this isn’t waking. Waking is peaceful. Waking is gentle. This is violence. This is agony carved into the shape of resurrection.
Your body convulses. Your lungs scream. River water floods your throat, burns up your nose, and you thrash beneath the surface — flailing, spiderlike, unnatural, primal. Your senses are all wrong. They come too fast, too loud, too bright. Every drop against your skin is a blade, every ripple a scream. Your hands — god, your hands — twitch and tremble, joints locking and unlocking like marionette strings yanked by God Himself.
You claw to the surface.
The air cuts into your lungs like knives. You sob, but it sounds feral, not human. Half-spider, half-death. Your fingers grasp the muddy embankment, tearing into the dirt like your body is demanding to stay this time.
You don’t know how long you lay there.
Time doesn’t mean anything anymore. Not when your memories are still flickering behind your eyelids like film reels melting in heat. Not when you can still taste Joker’s laughter in your mouth, his filth on your skin. Not when you can still hear Crane’s voice, calm and clean and clinical, saying things like "subject stability" and "arachnoid molecular elasticity."
Your skin is raw.
You heave again. River water, bile, and rage spill from your mouth.
And you scream.
A scream that splits the air open. A scream that is seven minutes late.
You don’t know who you are anymore.
You don’t remember coming back. You only remember dying. You only remember blood. And needles. And the look on your father’s face — Dad’s face — when he found your mask, broken in two, lying in a pool of blood.
Why? Why were you there?
Didn’t you have a family? Didn’t you have brothers? Where were your sisters? Didn’t someone come for you? Didn’t he come for you?
“WHERE ARE YOU?!”
You don’t realize you’ve screamed the words until your throat cracks. Your voice is nothing like it used to be. It’s not light or soft or sharp. It’s gravel and glass. All cracked edges and venom beneath.
You drag yourself up the bank. Knees collapsing beneath you. Limbs shuddering with effort.
Your fingers twitch — and from your wrists, soft threads pulse, wet and twitching like veins. But they don’t fire.
You blink. Your eyes adjust to the dark. And you run.
You don’t know how far. Maybe blocks. Maybe miles. Your feet don’t feel the ground. You don’t feel anything. Not until you crash into the rusted gates of Crime Alley.
Of course. You always end up here.
This place was your grave once. Now it’s your shadow.
You collapse in the corner of an abandoned laundromat, curling into yourself. Shaking. Your clothes are too tight. Or maybe your body is wrong. Everything hurts.
You dig your nails into your arms — but you don’t bleed. Not properly. The skin seals again in seconds. You hate that. You hate how quick your body fixes itself. Like it’s trying to forget what happened. Like it’s trying to pretend you weren’t broken at all.
“You should be dead,” you whisper.
You say it again. And again.
“You should be dead.”
You mean it. You were dead. For months. Years. You know you died. You remember the cold, the rot, the last sound being Joker’s voice in your ear, whispering something horrible — something you’ve blocked out because if you remember it, you’ll break apart again.
So you don’t. You press your forehead to the tile. You tremble. You try not to vomit.
Your fingers twitch again, and the webs flex. Unfired. Uncontrolled. You need something. You need someone.
But who? Bruce?
He didn’t come for you. He didn’t save you. None of them did. Not Dick. Not Jason. Not Tim. Not Cass. Not even Alfred. You were just... gone.
Buried in an empty casket. A name on a plaque. A whisper in the manor halls.
You want to believe they looked. That they searched. That they tore the city apart. But you don’t know.
You curl in tighter, and for the first time in years, you cry. Not rage. Not fury. Grief.
You cry because you don’t feel human. Because your reflection is gone. Because the world moved on. Because the girl who was once Dragonfly died and no one ever found her.
Because now you’re something else.
Something more.
Something wrong.
Scarecrow had called it “Project Spider.” As if giving it a name made it less monstrous. As if branding your horror made it a triumph.
You still remember the needles.
Twelve-inch syringes of something black. He called them serum trials. You called them torture. Your veins remember — you can still see them, your skin pale and thin and patterned with scars. Two symmetrical paths running from your wrist to your elbow, like rivers of ruin.
You had screamed.
They had laughed.
Joker. That bastard.
His voice still haunts your dreams. Still echoes in the rhythm of your heartbeat, because sometimes it beats too fast — spider-fast — and that makes it worse.
“Sing for me, little bug,” he’d said once, pressing a scalpel to your throat.
You hadn’t sung.
You’d bled instead.
You are not what you were.
You feel it.
The way your muscles twitch without command. The way your skin itches from the inside. The way your senses sharpen and shatter simultaneously. You feel everything. The worms in the earth. The dew on the grass. The distant heartbeat of a rat two blocks away.
And worst of all — the hunger.
It claws at you.
You need.
But you don’t know what. Or why. Or how.
You stumble to your feet. You’re barefoot, and your legs tremble under your own weight.
Something is… wrong with your spine.
Your balance is off — until you adjust, and your limbs shift with the grace of a predator. It’s not human. It’s not you.
You wander for days.
The sewers. The back alleys. The places even Gotham forgets. You eat trash and rats and once — once — a pigeon. You weep after. You vomit it up and cry so hard you almost pass out.
You aren’t human.
You aren’t.
The city doesn't feel like yours anymore.
But you clawed your way back. Bone by broken bone. Breath by burning breath. And now the city you once lived in lives in you. It breathes through your skin. It pulses with every strand of web you shoot, every scream you silence, every desperate child you wrap in warmth before vanishing into shadow.
You are Crimson Silk now.
Crimson, like blood. Silk, like the threads you cast to protect the only places that still feel real. Crime Alley. The Narrows. The places no one else dares to watch.
They don’t get heroes. They get you. And that’s enough.
You do not own them — you protect them. As best you can. In the way only something like you can.
You move through the city like smoke. The rooftops don't creak under your weight. You work in silence, in spider-patterns. No flair, no flourish. A body hits the ground — a molester trying to corner a teen behind a bar — and within ten seconds he's webbed to the wall and gagging on his own fear. You don’t even stop. He’ll be found. Eventually. And it will take a lot to take off those webs.
You leave notes now. Sloppy handwriting on torn papers or napkins.
“Tell them I said hello.”
You sign them with a bloody spider. Not your blood, that one is poisonous, would kill anyone in contact with it, or at least burn them bad.
No one needs to know who you are. Not really.
You patrol until you collapse. You live that way. Move, move, move until your muscles start to tear, until your stomach caves in, until the hunger swallows thought. Then, and only then, do you stop.
Then it’s back to the den. A racked apartment above a pawn shop where the landlord only comes once a month to collect rent. He doesn’t speak English. You don’t speak Portuguese. You give him the cash and he gives you a nod. It works.
No one else knows you live there but three cats that won't leave. You don’t mind them. One sleeps on your chest sometimes. You call him Alfred. He’s gray. Stern. Judgy.
You haven’t seen the real Alfred since…
You bury that thought like you bury everything else.
You have a system now.
Feed the kids. Break the gangs. Avoid the Bats.
Especially Red Hood.
Jason is out there. You feel him in the same way your spider-sense warns you when something shifts in the air. He doesn’t patrol like the others. He stays. He breathes the Narrows like you do. He sees more than he should.
But you’re faster.
You’ve seen his eyes once — through his helmet.
He’d stared at the fresh webbing across an alleyway, half a man stuck to the side of a dumpster with a sticky note slapped on his cheek.
It had said: “Keep your hands off the girls.”
Jason had tilted his head. You were already gone.
Anyways, the floorboards of your apartment at least don't creak. But the heater doesn’t work, and the window locks are broken —nothing you couldn't replace with your fresh webs. You fixed the sink yourself. Ripped out the moldy pipes and welded them back together with pieces of scrap you stole from the junkyard. Rewired the whole breaker box. Built your own water filter using gravel and charcoal and an old coffee tin.
You survive.
Your mattress is old, your blanket stolen from a motel linen bin, but it’s warm . . . Sort of.
By day, you work at Cecilia’s Diner — a rusty little dive on the edge of Crime Alley, where the windows fog up from grease and the neon sign buzzes loud enough to drive anyone sane up a wall.
You’re the waitress most nights. Sometimes the cook, if Luis doesn’t show up. Occasionally the bouncer, if things get ugly.
They get ugly often.
Gotham doesn’t let anything stay clean. Not for long. Men come in bleeding, high, staggering. Women with black eyes and nowhere to go. Kids hungry enough to eat sugar packets straight.
You serve them all.
“Three eggs, overdone, no yolk?” you ask without writing it down.
Cecilia watches you from behind the counter, chewing on the end of a pencil. She knows you’re not normal. Doesn’t say anything. Lets you eat free. Pays you in cash. Keeps her mouth shut.
You’d bleed for her. You already have.
Once, a guy grabbed your wrist too hard. Tried to drag you toward the kitchen when you brought him the wrong drink. You dislocated his elbow with a flick of your hand and webbed him to the door before he could even scream.
No one questioned it.
They just started calling you Silky.
The name stuck.
By night, you patrol. No tech. No Bat-support. Just instinct. And your suit.
You made it from scraps — stolen Kevlar panels, spandex, other materials you don't even remember the name. The base is black, from toes to neck, a white web pattern you painted with your own hands covers the chest and the abdomen, sharp angular white lines on the arms and thighs. A single red mask covers the lower half of your face, leaving the eyes; they tend to get white when you are too spidey-like.
The web-shooters are homemade. Not pretty but they work.
Your spider sense guides you — a thousand whispers inside your skull, dragging your head toward crime like a moth to flame. Your eyes adjust to pitch black. Your bones bend in ways no human’s should. You leap across rooftops with the silence of something more insect than girl.
The kids love you.
They scream and point when you swing overhead. “It’s her!” “It’s Crimson Silk!” “She’s back!” “Did you see that? She crawled on the wall like a lizard!”
You stop for them.
Drop into alleyways with your mask half-down and crouch low so they don’t feel too small. You mend their toys with webbing. Carry them to the clinic when they’re sick. You make them feel safe.
You used to feel that way once.
Once.
Before the needles.
Before the Joker.
Before Scarecrow cut your body open and called it science.
You don’t hate the Joker, though. Not anymore. Not really.
Maybe, once, you did. Once, you were Dragonfly, and the thought of his face made your fists clench. Once, he was the monster in the closet, the bogeyman in your bloodstream, the voice in your nightmares whispering, laugh, little bug, laugh—
But now?
You thank him.
He pulled the trigger, even if it was a knife, and it was slow and so painful, he ended it. Ended the cage, the surgeries, the ice-cold labs, the peeling scent of Scarecrow’s toxin mixed with your sweat. He dumped your body in the river. He ended the experiment.
Joker was a madman.
But Crane? Crane was methodical.
He didn’t laugh. He recorded. He took notes while you screamed. Adjusted the dosage while you convulsed. Tilted your face toward the light and measured pupil dilation while your organs begged for mercy.
You remember the click of his pen better than the sound of your own name.
You ache for him. Not in any human way. Not with longing or hope or justice.
You ache with the same sharp hunger that your body does when you haven't eaten in two days. That need to consume. To end. To burrow into his chest and tear him apart from the inside out.
You whisper his name sometimes, when the walls get too quiet.
You want him to hear it coming.
But that's another story. For another day.
You eat five meals a day now. It’s required.
Your metabolism burns too hot — you need mass, carbs, salt, iron. You once cleared half the diner's pantry in one sitting after a particularly brutal patrol. Cecilia didn’t blink. She just refilled the fridge the next day.
When the hunger hits too hard, you get twitchy. Mean. Shaky. You smell things no human should. Taste colors. Your fangs poke out whether you want them to or not. You have to chug honey and rice just to calm down.
You learned the hard way that venom leaks when you’re starving. It paralyzes. Not forever. But long enough. You’ve only used it on people three times.
You don’t like to remember. You don’t want to remember what you’re capable of when you lose control.
The rooftops are slick with rainwater, summer heat refusing to cool even under the weight of dark clouds pressing down on the skyline. Gotham breathes in smog and exhales smoke; its heartbeat pulses in alleys and fire escapes, in the rustle of newspapers blown through empty streets, in the groan of buildings old enough to remember the blood that stained their bricks. You move with it. You always have. Or at least, you did—back when you were still someone else.
You land without sound, crouched low like instinct demanded, fingers pressed to the ledge of a dilapidated old clock tower near the upper east blocks—still too close to the nice part of town. You shouldn’t be here. But you followed a lead, and when someone whispers “Scarecrow” in your ear through black market contacts and dying dealers with bleeding noses and red-glassed eyes, you don’t exactly get picky about which roof you bleed on.
Your eyes flick toward movement—blurred but deliberate. Another vigilante silhouette, sleek, red-trimmed, confident.
Red Robin.
He’s standing tall in the spotlight cast by a security beacon that’s been out since last winter. Of course he’d find the one light still working. He’s like that. You can’t hear him yet, but his posture is so damn smug, you don’t need to. It drips off him in waves. You could smell that arrogance even if your spider-sense didn’t warn you first.
You straighten slightly, head tilting.
He speaks before you do. Of course he does.
“New mask,” he says, arms folded across his chest. “New name, new face… but same drama, I’m guessing?”
You don’t answer. Not right away. You don’t need to explain yourself to anyone. Especially not a kid who still smells like Wayne Manor shampoo.
“Didn’t know the Bat let metas out to play without a leash now,” he continues, stepping forward, motioning vaguely at you. “We doing that? Some sort of spider-themed affirmative action?”
Your shoulders roll with a pop as you stand, eyes narrowing beneath your mask.
“I’m no meta.”
He snorts. “Sure. And I’m not tired of getting dive-bombed by people with bloodthirsty nicknames and unresolved trauma.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” you uttered.
He drew his staff in a single, fluid motion. “You won’t.”
You descend in a blur, faster than he expected. His back hits the gravel rooftop with a sharp exhale, but he’s already swinging a baton before your feet even land. You leap, mid-flip, body folding tight over his strike, back bending unnaturally as the baton sweeps under your ribs. You land behind him and kick.
He spins just in time, catching your foot with his forearm and sliding backward.
“Ow,” he says flatly. “Was that supposed to hurt more, or are you pacing yourself?”
“I don’t pace,” you reply, and your voice comes low, measured. Like something that’s learned to sound calm before it bites.
“Noted,” he grunts, and this time he lunges.
Your fights are always quick. They have to be—your strength is nothing short of brutal, and even when you try to pull back, bones break. But Red Robin isn’t just good. He’s calculated. He moves like he knows he’s two steps behind but bets he can fake being ahead long enough to catch you off guard.
Your limbs move faster than human—he notices. His brow furrows mid-swing, even as he ducks your elbow and tries for your side again. You grab his cape mid-motion, twist, and yank him to the rooftop. He gasps, lands on his side, rolls—and smiles.
“You’re really not the friendly neighborhood type, huh?”
You bare your fangs.
You are not going do to anything with them, but you bare them to scare him, to make him run away from you, so you don't have to force yourself to hurt him.
Venom glistens faintly in the shadows of your mouth—two sharp canines that have long since grown used to being out of place in a human face. You clench your jaw, willing the urge down. You're not hungry, but your hunger doesn’t care. Your body is always reminding you of how much it costs to stay alive.
He freezes, just briefly, eyes locking on your mouth, and you know he's trying to place it—trying to match it with files, images, lost faces.
You leap again.
This time, he doesn’t try to be funny. He fights like a trained weapon, baton in one hand, throwing disks in the other, shouting mid-fight like he can’t turn off his damn commentary.
“You know, for someone this bendy,”—your leg folds around his throat, flips him to the ground again—“you really don’t have a lot of chill.”
You hiss. “Stop talking.”
“Can’t. Contractually obligated.”
You slam him into a metal ventilation unit, denting it in the shape of his ribs. It knocks the wind out of him, but still he gets up. Of course he does. You almost admire it. Almost.
“You’re not a meta,” he coughs, rubbing his side. “But you’re definitely not normal. Not even Gotham-level weird.”
You crouch low, spider-like, wrists twitching subtly. “There’s no one like me.”
He raises a brow. “Oh, you’d get along great with Jason.”
That makes something ugly twitch behind your ribs.
You dart forward again, spider-sense flaring bright white across your nerves. He throws smoke. You web it apart midair.
He whistles, low. “Oh, that’s cheating.”
“This isn’t a game.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” he says, flipping onto a higher ledge. “You fight like someone with something to prove. But you don’t kill. You don’t maim. You just knock the air out of me and bounce.”
You follow. He barely gets a block of movement before you web his ankle, yank him down, and flip him mid-fall.
“Whatever you are, you shouldn’t be here,” he said, tone shifting. “You’re interfering. Gotham has a system. If you’re rogue, then you’re a problem.”
“You think Gotham’s system works?” you asked. “Go look at the kids two blocks from here selling powdered poison to keep the lights on. Go tell them the Bat’s system is working.”
“I do,” he cracked. “Every damn night. Which is why I’m not letting some half-feral experiment run wild through it.”
His breath is hitching, his stance slower. He’s buying time. You feel it in the way he keeps baiting. The talking isn’t just annoyance—it’s cover. He doesn’t understand what you are. And maybe, if he talks enough, it won’t hit him. That awful feeling that creeps into your skin like static.
Your spider-sense tingles again. But this time it’s not him.
Something far away—watching.
You twist sharply toward the distant skyline. A flash of blue. A glint of escrima sticks. A rooftop higher than yours, and too far to act on.
Nightwing.
Just for a second, you see him. Tall, composed. Shoulders squared like a warning beacon in a city full of ghosts. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t interfere.
Your breath catches in your chest like guilt.
“Hey!” Red Robin’s voice yanks you back. “Eyes on me. That’s rude.”
You throw the last of your web fluid without hesitation.
It fires in tight spirals, engineered for speed and impact. You slam him against the wall of the rooftop stairwell, wrap him up head to toe before he can move. Arms pinned, legs locked, mouth left free.
“Wha—seriously?” he grunts. “Do you know how much this suit costs?”
“I don’t care.”
He wiggles a little. “I’m gonna get out of this in, like, ten minutes.”
You’re already backing up toward the edge of the roof. “That’s all I need.”
“And when I do, I’m following you.”
“No,” you say, stepping onto the ledge. “You’re not.”
And with that, you vanish into the night. Web-line launched toward the old power lines that string across Crime Alley like ribs, you swing low, fast, pulse racing, heart torn between venom and sorrow. The world behind you shrinks into silence. But your ears still ring.
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t recognize you. The younger brother who used to annoy you in the kitchen, beg to train with you, joke until you were wheezing from laughter—he doesn’t see you now. Just another shadow in the city. Another threat. Another thing to chase.
And maybe that’s better. Maybe it’s safer that way.
You slip back into the darkness of your own making, breathing hard, tears you won’t cry stinging at your throat. The kids in the Narrows need you. Crime Alley is waiting.
But your limbs still ache with the memory of the fight. And your chest still aches with the truth that you can’t say.
You are Crimson Silk.
And you're not supposed to be alive.
