Batboys and Neglected! Venom! Reader.
Or how Reader gets sick about her situation and the condescension of all the family, so, Venom makes her yell talk about it.
Characters: Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne, Alfred, Venom.
Warnings: Use of she/her pronouns. Characters out of character. Reader is neglected all her life. Alfred the only light on Reader's life because I say so. Venom is the best thing that happened to this Reader, but I won't say anything more because it would be a spoiler. This is long.
Author's notes: I tried to make something different. And yes, I'm a bit emotional right now so I wrote this. And now I'm reading this again, this can have a second part 🤔
Everyone always took her for granted.
The quiet, tiny figure trailing behind them like a harmless shadow wandering through the manor since day one.
But here’s something they don’t know: she won’t stay a shadow forever.
Sure, she may not be the most cherished member of the family, but she has something none of them could ever imagine — and that secret is the greatest thing she owns.
And she won’t say it out loud, not even when nobody pays attention to her.
No.No, no.
She’ll keep it to herself until the day she dies — and her alien friend can guarantee that.
…Okay, maybe I’m not explaining this properly. Just hear me out.
(Name) is another one of Bruce Wayne’s children — but not just any child.
She’s his biological daughter, born after a three-year relationship with a contemporary artist he once met at a gala.
And after seven years living with her mother, she ended up in Gotham, armed with only a handful of English words she remembered from kindergarten and a pair of big, shy eyes.
He didn’t know how to teach her, or how to slow down, or how to meet her halfway, so his idea of “help” became something else entirely —condescension disguised as kindness.
Bruce was the most important figure in that gigantic, pristine jail they all called home. And yet, he was also the most clueless when it came to being patient with a child who didn’t speak his language.
He spoke slowly, loudly, as if volume could bridge the gap between worlds. He offered her things she didn’t ask for, decisions she didn’t want, smiles that felt more like obligations than comfort.
He tried. Maybe that was enough for him. But she learned early on that trying without understanding can feel a lot like pity.
Then came Dick.
Oh, Dick. The golden child. The first Robin.
Condescension in human form — and, to (Name), the absolute worst brother she could’ve asked for.
If she had to say anything about Dick Grayson, she’d be cursing him in her mind, because out of everyone in that mansion, he was the biggest idiot she knew.
He was the brightest light in that manor — yet somehow, the one who never noticed the shadows behind him.
Warm, charming, a walking sunbeam with too much energy for the walls of the manor to contain. But even suns cast blind spots.
When she arrived, small and silent and holding onto a language that wasn’t his, Dick had no idea what to do with her. Not clueless like Bruce —no— just painfully unaware.
He assumed everything would be easy: talking, bonding, connection. Because it was easy for him.
For her, it wasn’t.
So Dick tried the only way he knew: smiles, jokes, fast words tossed into the air like confetti. But to a girl who barely understood English, he might as well have been speaking in riddles.
His help wasn’t cruel, but god, it felt like it.
It was unintentional condescension —kindness that moved too fast, affection that demanded a reaction she couldn’t give, conversations that left her more lost than before.
He thought he was including her. He didn’t realize he was overwhelming her.
And every time she stared at him with confusion, he mistook it for shyness, admiration —anything except the truth:
she simply couldn’t keep up with him.
Dick meant well. He always does. But good intentions don’t feel like kindness when they crush you in the process.
But Jason was something completely —almost violently— 360° different from Dick. He just… ignored her. Like she was nothing more than another shadow drifting through the manor’s endless hallways.
He didn’t talk to her. He didn’t joke with her. He didn’t even bother pretending to be polite.
To Jason, she was simply there. A presence. A background noise he refused to acknowledge.
And that was its own kind of cruelty.
Because while Dick suffocated her with attention and Bruce smothered her with well-intentioned pity, Jason weaponized silence.
Not deliberately —no, Jason didn’t hate her.
He just didn’t care enough to notice her in the first place.
Where Dick’s light blinded her, Jason’s absence erased her.
He’d walk past her in the manor like she didn’t exist, boots echoing on the marble floors, shoulders squared, eyes forward. Never a glance. Never a question. Never a word.
For a girl who barely understood English, it should’ve been a relief. Less pressure, less noise, less chaos.
But somehow, his silence hurt more than Dick’s confusion or Bruce’s clumsy attempts at kindness. At least they tried.
Jason didn’t.
And there was something painfully honest in that.
He treated her exactly how the world treated things it didn’t understand —by pretending they weren’t there.
Then came Damian —the little demon brat, the “real heir to the Wayne name,” not like her, not like the shadow wandering through the manor.
Damian didn’t bother hiding his opinions. Why would he? He was raised to believe that honesty was a weapon, and he wielded it with surgical precision.
From the moment she arrived, he looked at her like she was an intruder. A stranger. A mistake.
He spoke to her only when he had something sharp to say, and even then, his words were quieter than his disdain. He’d correct her posture, her silence, her breathing —anything he could use to assert dominance.
And when she didn’t understand him —when the words tangled in her mind and her tongue froze— Damian’s eyes would narrow with something between annoyance and superiority.
After all, why should he, the trained son of Batman, lower himself to accommodate someone who could barely speak?
His cruelty wasn’t loud. It was precise. Calculated. Almost elegant in its indifference.
To him, she was just a side sister, one of the many shadows of the manor.
And Tim? Well… Tim is a different story. He wasn’t cruel like Damian. He wasn’t overwhelming like Dick. He wasn’t indifferent like Jason. He wasn’t clumsy like Bruce.
Tim was —in the kindest way possible— exhaustingly thoughtful.
He tried too hard. Way too hard.
He used translators, apps, speech-to-text programs. He spoke slowly, carefully, like she was a seven-year-old learning her first words, not a seventeen-year-old fighting to survive in a new world.
Every conversation felt like a tutorial. Every look felt like pity wrapped in good intentions.
And the worst part? Tim genuinely believed he was helping.
He didn’t realize that talking to her through an app made her feel more alien than her actual alien friend ever did. He didn’t notice the way she shrank every time he simplified a sentence for her, how she flinched when he over-explained basic words, how she hated the way he smiled proudly whenever she managed to answer him.
Tim meant well, he really did. But sometimes kindness burns just as much as cruelty —especially when it reminds you how small everyone thinks you are.
The only person in that house worth keeping close was Alfred.
The old man was the only one who actually helped her learn, adapt, exist.
So after a full week of locking herself inside her room, he worried. Of course he did.
And that’s what makes the dinner so surprising later —the burst, the voice, the crash. The moment that made everyone straighten in their seats.
But to understand that, we need to go back. Not years, just a week ago.
Back to her seventeenth birthday. The night that changed everything.
Her seventeenth birthday was supposed to be normal — or as normal as it could be in a manor where everyone either ignored her, pitied her, or treated her like a minor inconvenience.
No party, no cake, no “happy birthday.”
Just the same routine: wake up, be quiet, stay out of the way. Be the shadow the manor preferred.
And honestly? She was okay with that.
What she wasn’t okay with was the alien goo monster that decided to crash her on her birthday.
It started when she ran away from the manor that night. She needed air. Silence. Anything that didn’t sound like Damian judging her every breath.
She walked through Gotham, hands in pockets, mind blank, the cold biting at her cheeks. Then she turned into an alley —because of course she did— and saw something that should’ve made her run:
A moving, bubbling, pitch-black… thing; it trembled, it pulsed like a heartbeat.
And then —it launched at her face.
She screamed. Obviously.
The creature screamed too. A rough and deep "How rude!" from the creature.
She fell backwards, hit the ground, and before she could even process her life choices, she heard it: a voice inside her head. Deep, gravelly, annoyed.
“WHY ARE YOU SCREAMING? I SAVED YOU FROM THE SMALL HAIRY thing.”
“Small hairy thing?” She whispered.
“THE STRANGER HUMAN. IT WAS HAIRY. DISGUSTING.”
“…what?”
The alien— her new companion paused, as if judging her intelligence.
“YOU ARE ODD. I LIKE YOU. YOU MUST BE A BORING CREATURE IF THW MOST INTERESTING THING THAT HAPPENED TO YOU IS ME."
She blinked.
“Uhm, maybe, yes,” she muttered, half in shock.
There was a silence. Then, very proudly:
“I WILL BE YOUR PRESENT.”
She groaned, not annoyed, surprised.
And he purred (somehow.)
A companion choosing friendship, and terrible timing. A bond that would feel far more familiar than anything she’d ever found in the Wayne family.
That was the beginning.
And when the dinner happened —when everyone underestimated her again, talked over her again, treated her like the shadow she used to be —Venom growled inside her mind:
Venom stayed. He kept her company. He stood by her. He whispered truths and reassures no one else dared to say.
“NO. WE SPEAK NOW.” Venom demanded, hearing the poor attempt from Tim to act like a "good brother".
And that’s exactly what she did.
That burst, that voice, that moment that shook the entire table — it all started with a new friend, a new family that wants to be with her because she's her.
"I'm fed up with you and your stupid habit of treating me like trash!" She shouted, and everyone shouted up at the imminent explosion.
Bruce Wayne.
At first, he’s shocked by her outburst—he never expected her to yell like that, not at him, not in front of everyone.
He straightens up, ready to argue back… but she forces him back into his seat with nothing but the fury in her eyes.
Then he sees it. A thin line of black slime climbing up her hand. Barely visible but there.
He reaches out instinctively, trying to calm her —or maybe himself— and she slaps his hand away.
The slime instantly recoils, disappearing beneath her skin like it’s hiding.
“(Name), don’t start—”
“Don’t start WHAT!? Saying the truth!?”
Bruce falls silent. Not because she “won” the argument, but because that thing under her skin… and the pain in her voice keep echoing in his mind.
Dick Grayson.
The king of condescension. The first to get defensive.
“Whoa— hey, calm down, we're just trying to—” Then the slime appears on her neck and Dick jumps back, chair scraping loudly across the floor.
“What the— Bruce, what is that!?”
But beneath the fear, there’s something worse; guilt.
For the first time, he realizes they all treated her like a shadow…
and she finally shattered.
Jason Todd.
Jason rises instantly —not in fear, but because he knows that tone too well: the tone of someone breaking.
He doesn’t yell at her. Doesn’t tell her to calm down. Doesn’t move closer either.
What a day to come to the manor again.
He just stares when the black slime crawls up her neck.
“…Kid, what the hell did they put you through?”
"You too! You act like an edgy shit and look where it brings you to!" And that hurt Jason more than he thought.
Jason doesn’t understand the creature, but he understands her.
And the fact that she’s not alone eases something inside him he didn’t know was tense.
Tim Drake.
Tim’s phone is in his hands before he even realizes it —reflex, instinct, panic, like if he knew where he saw the thing running through her neck… and body.
“Is that— is that a symbiote? Wait—how long has you—?”
He nearly jumps when she looks at him and her eyes just… become distorted by the symbiote, as if that were backing her up.
And then Alfred cleared his throat, immediately calming her.
That means one thing: Alfred knew. And chose not to expose her, or yell, or argue.
“Why didn’t you tell us…? We could’ve helped her.”
But even Tim knows the truth: they wouldn’t have helped. Not when they never saw her.
Damian Wayne.
Damian is the only one who moves with intention. Hand on his katana, posture tense.
“Father. Something is attached to her.”
“Damian, stop—” Bruce warns.
But when (Name) screams again and Venom slides higher up her arm making a bulk, Damian freezes.
Not in fear. But because he realizes something: this creature isn’t attacking her.
It’s shielding her.
And he doesn’t know what to do with that revelation.
Alfred Pennyworth
The only person who does not react in shock. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t rise. Doesn’t gasp.
He simply watches with an ancient sadness in his eyes.
“Miss… that is quite enough.”
Not scolding. Not angry. Just heartbroken.
He has seen Venom before. He knows the symbiote appears when she needs someone to support her.
And he knows this explosion was earned after years of silence and invisible wounds.
When the others start panicking, Alfred speaks firmly.
“Her reaction is justified. And had any of you listened to her before, we wouldn’t be sitting in this situation tonight.”
Venom, hidden under her skin, calms slightly when Alfred puts up for her, because he knows what happened in those yen years of (Name) in the manor, and he knows Alfred knows.
Venom.
Throughout the entire confrontation, Venom enjoyed moving around the body of (Name) to scare the boys and basically tell them she has someone that is with her.
So, when (Name) goes to her bedroom, Venom came out and spoke to her face to face, proud of his friend.
