Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was supposed to be over.

Peter Parker stood on the crumbling edge of the Statue of Liberty, the wind slashing at his tattered suit, blood still sticky beneath the broken armor. He had said goodbye. To MJ. To Ned. To the world. The spell had been cast, the multiverse closed, the villains returned. But the cost was sharp and final—no one remembered Peter Parker.

Except for one.

Doctor Stephen Strange had remained behind, standing beside Peter in the quiet stillness of the aftermath, hands trembling slightly as he rolled a new spell between his fingers like clay. He hadn't left yet. And Peter had asked him—begged him—for something more.

"I don't belong here anymore," Peter had whispered, his voice frayed. “Everyone I love… they’re safer without me. But this pain… this hole…”

Strange didn’t answer at first. He only stared at Peter with that haunted look, the one that meant he was arguing with the universe again. The kind of look that said he’d already peered into the consequences—and still wasn’t sure which choice was crueler.

“There may be one option,” Strange finally said, almost to himself.

Peter blinked up at him. “Another spell?”

“No.” The sorcerer hesitated. “A rift. Not in time. Not in space. But in soul. I can send you somewhere… where you won’t remember any of this. Not the pain. Not the people you lost. Not even who you are.”

Peter flinched, like something struck deep in his chest. “You can erase me?”

Strange’s eyes softened—just a flicker. “Not erase. But… free.”

A long silence passed between them, filled only by the groan of distant sirens and the slow collapse of dreams. And then Peter gave the smallest nod.

“Do it,” he whispered.

Strange nodded back.

There was no incantation this time. No golden runes or glowing circles. Just a quiet murmur in a forgotten tongue—and the green light.

It swelled behind Peter, enveloping him like a tidal wave. His body felt light, too light, as though his very cells were coming apart and rebuilding all at once. His vision flickered, blurred, then blinked out like a dying star. The last thing he saw was Strange, jaw clenched tight, eyes heavy with guilt.

And then—nothing.

---

The Pit was boiling.

Green and violent, it churned in the center of Gotham’s underbelly, tucked away beneath rusted pipes and rotting concrete. The Lazarus Pit had seen many things, restored many bodies—but it had never been asked to take a boy with no past and mold him into something… new.

Peter dropped like a stone into its glow, body too small now for the fall to be fatal. His limbs shrank. His face softened. His bones cracked and reshaped with wet, cruel sounds. His suit, once Iron Spider, clung to him in warped, sagging folds—too large now, too adult. And his mind—oh, his mind—was swept clean.

When he surfaced, the scream that left his throat was half-human, half-something else. Something feral.

The child that clawed his way out of the Pit had no name. No home. No memory.

Only instincts.

And they were sharp.

He tore at the remains of the suit until only fragments were left, binding his chest and legs like webbed cloth. His hands twitched, sticking to stone without trying. His pupils narrowed, adjusting to the dark. He tasted metal in the air. Heard rats scurrying through rust. Felt the heartbeat of the city far, far above.

The boy shivered and hissed. His skin still steamed from the Lazarus waters. He climbed the wall, hands and feet clinging with unnatural ease, and disappeared into the vents like a ghost.

---

Above ground, the Joker lit a cigarette with the tip of a flamethrower and grinned at the shadows.

“You feel that, Harl?” he purred. “The air just got funny. Real funny. Like the punchline to a joke I haven’t heard yet.”

Harley Quinn looked up from her roller skates, frowning. “You mean that weird boom in the sewer?”

He giggled. “No no no, sugarplum. I mean destiny.”

She rolled her eyes. “Can we rob the chemical plant now or are ya gonna keep monologuin’?”

But Joker wasn’t listening. His eyes had gone glassy, unfocused, like a kid sniffing out candy. Something down there had shifted. Something alive. Something new.

He licked his lips and turned toward the manhole cover, the laugh already bubbling up.

“Oh, we gotta go meet him.”

Chapter Text

The sewers were colder than the boy expected.

Not that he knew what expecting even was. He didn’t have the language for it—no words, no names, no stories. All he had was feeling. A slither of curiosity here. A crackle of hunger there. And beneath it all, the itch. The constant, electric itch beneath his skin, buzzing in his fingertips and the back of his skull like static.

The walls were too smooth. The ground was too loud. The rats were fast, but not fast enough.

He caught one. Didn’t mean to. It ran and he ran faster, then there it was in his hand—squirming, squeaking, then still.

He stared at it. Cocked his head.

What was he supposed to do with it?

His stomach answered.

So he ate it.

---

Harley Quinn stopped short, her boots skidding across the grimy concrete.

“Okay. Nope. Nu-uh. We are not goin’ down there, Mistah J! It smells like your socks mated with a moldy corpse.”

Joker stepped past her like a man walking toward a sunrise.

“Oh, but Harl, don’t you smell that perfume in the air? That fresh, minty scent of anarchy?” He inhaled dramatically. “Mmm. Eau de Chaos.”

Harley gagged. “That ain’t chaos. That’s methane and misery.”

But he kept going, humming a tune as he twirled a knife in one hand and a flashlight in the other. She followed, grumbling, her mallet slung across her shoulder.

The tunnels grew tighter the deeper they went. Older, too. Roots jutted through the stone like claws. Water dripped in slow, rhythmic plinks that echoed far too loud in the silence.

Then they saw the webs.

Fine, glistening threads stretched across the tunnel like silver piano strings, catching the light in unnatural patterns. And behind them, in the corner of the ceiling—curled up like a spider in a nest—was the boy.

Tiny. Pale. Eyes wide, glowing faintly in the dark. Bare chest wrapped in shredded cloth, legs tucked beneath him like a crouching predator. He made no sound.

Harley gasped and slapped Joker’s arm. “Oh my god, it’s a baby Tarzan!”

Joker tilted his head, delighted. “Or a baby Venom. Maybe a radioactive sewer elf.”

The boy dropped from the ceiling so fast Harley shrieked.

He landed in a crouch, hands splayed, body still like a trap waiting to spring. Joker didn’t move. Harley took a step back, clutching her mallet. The boy sniffed the air—once, twice—then scuttled sideways along the wall.

“Okay, definitely spider-vibes,” Harley whispered. “You think he’s, like… cursed or somethin’?”

“Oh, I hope so,” Joker said, eyes alight. “Cursed things are so much more interesting.”

The boy hissed softly.

Joker crouched to his level, dropping the flashlight so the shadows flickered across his painted face.

“Hey there, twitchy-bug. Got a name?”

No answer.

Joker grinned wider. “You look like a Byte to me. Real small. Real sharp.”

The boy blinked.

Joker’s voice softened, oddly gentle. “You wanna come with us, Byte? We’ve got colors. We’ve got explosions. We’ve got pudding cups.”

Harley squinted. “Do we?”

Joker shrugged. “We will.”

Byte’s eyes narrowed.

Then he crept forward on all fours—slow, careful, until he was inches from Joker’s nose.

He sniffed. Recoiled. Then, without warning, lunged at Harley’s leg—climbing her like a tree.

“AHHH!” she yelped, flailing. “Okay! Okay! It’s okay! He’s just—oh god, he’s nesting in my hair!”

Byte wrapped his arms around her neck and settled like a cat on a warm windowsill, face buried in her blonde curls.

Harley slowly lowered her arms. “Aww… he’s a little snugglebug…”

Joker clasped his hands together like a proud parent.

“Welcome to the family, Byte.”

And deep in the dark, the boy smiled.

Chapter Text

It didn’t take long for Harley to start calling him “Pumpkin.”

The name Byte stuck with Joker. It had sharp edges and sounded like something you shouldn’t touch without gloves on. But Harley—Harley looked at the wide, curious eyes of the spider-child curled on her lap and melted like butter in a frying pan.

“You’re just a little pumpkin muffin, ain’tcha?” she cooed, running her fingers gently through his tangled hair.

Byte didn’t understand the words, not really. But the tone? The touch? That he understood. He stayed perfectly still in her lap, his face pressed into the fuzzy pink jacket she wore, breathing in the scent of candy, gasoline, and some kind of artificial fruit.

Joker wasn’t jealous. No, no. He found it fascinating.

This wasn’t your average orphan. No sobbing, no asking for his mommy, no shaking in fear.

Byte observed.

Byte learned.

Like a wild animal stuck in a toy store—silent, twitchy, absorbing everything with bright, predatory eyes.

Joker watched him dangle from the rafters of their hideout using threads of webbing and giggled. “That boy’s got more tricks than a magician on meth.”

Harley looked up as Byte twisted in a lazy circle from the ceiling like a fuzzy ornament. “Do you think he’s like one of them metas or… science-y accidents like that crocodile guy?”

“Croc? Nah. This one’s different.” Joker tilted his head. “He moves like me, but crawls like you when you’re sneaking cookies at 3 a.m.”

Byte dropped without a sound and landed in a crouch behind them, upside-down on the back of the couch. Harley didn’t flinch. Joker grinned wide.

“See? Doesn’t even make noise when he falls. I like that.”

Byte watched the TV screen, which was currently tuned to static—Joker’s favorite channel. The swirling black-and-white fuzz seemed to mesmerize him.

Harley leaned toward Joker and whispered, “Maybe we should teach him how to talk. Like, words talk. Y’know, not just all the hissing and eye-starin’.”

Joker smirked. “Let him talk when he wants to, Harl. Words are overrated. You and me both know silence can be a scream.”

Byte let out a sudden chirp. Not quite a word. Not quite a sound any normal child should make. It was high-pitched and fast—like a radio tuning to the right frequency.

Joker perked up. “What’s that, kiddo? You got somethin’ to say?”

Byte crawled down the wall and landed in Joker’s lap, tilting his head to one side, then the other. He reached out and touched the white paint on Joker’s chin. Joker didn’t move—didn’t dare.

Then Byte took both hands and pressed them to Joker’s cheeks, squishing his face into a big distorted smile.

Joker stared at him. Byte stared back.

And then Joker burst into a belly laugh so loud it knocked over a nearby lamp.

Harley clapped her hands, giggling. “He likes your smile! Toldja he was a sweetheart!”

“No, no, Harl,” Joker wheezed, tears in his eyes. “He’s not a sweetheart. He’s a natural-born menace. Look at that—straight to the mug, no fear, no filter!”

Byte hissed playfully and began climbing Joker like a jungle gym, perching on his shoulders before flipping onto the back of the couch. His webbing shot out, connecting the couch to the wall in a net of fine threads.

He crawled into the center, curled up, and shut his eyes.

A webbed cocoon. His nest.

Harley tilted her head. “Is he sleepin’?”

Joker stared at the mess of web and curls and sharp little limbs tangled together like a living trap.

“Looks like it,” he muttered.

“He ain’t like the other street rats, J.”

Joker was still for a long moment. “No… he’s worse.”

He grinned.

“He’s ours.”

Chapter Text

The lair wasn’t exactly childproof.

The floor was half-covered in old bomb schematics, abandoned toys, confetti cannons, and the occasional unmarked crate labeled “DO NOT SHAKE (OR DO. I DARE YOU).” The ceiling had scorch marks from past “experiments,” and the walls were tagged with Joker’s smiley-face graffiti, interspersed with lipstick doodles from Harley that ranged from glitter hearts to blood-splattered duckies.

In short: perfect.

Byte thrived in it.

By day two, he’d transformed the rafters into a tangled spider’s web of silky strands that Harley had walked into at least four times.

“Alright, that’s it!” she yelped, swatting at her face as she stumbled through the living room. “I am officially callin’ war on invisible boy traps!”

From above, Byte giggled.

Harley glared up with one eye squinting. “Don’t you laugh at me, mister! I got a big ol’ mallet and no fear of child labor laws!”

Byte didn’t come down. He wrapped himself tighter into his nest of webbing, legs swinging lazily as he watched her from above like a jungle cat.

Joker, meanwhile, was giddy.

“You see this, Harl?” he asked, gesturing dramatically at the chaos. “He’s adapting! Mutating! Decorating! He’s learning how to make a home outta madness!”

Harley crossed her arms. “He turned the ceiling into a spider daycare, J. You let one sewer gremlin into your heart and suddenly he’s nesting like an emotional support tarantula.”

“I’m proud of him,” Joker sighed dreamily.

“Of course you are.”

---

Byte didn’t speak, not yet. But he watched. And learned.

He studied how Harley giggled when she cooked breakfast, even when the eggs were technically grenades. He observed how Joker’s moods turned on a dime—one moment throwing pies at mannequins, the next grinning at Byte like he was a ticking bomb full of potential.

He also watched the news.

Joker left the TV running all the time. Gotham reporters droned on about heists, murders, explosions, and—most importantly—the Bat.

Byte tilted his head when the man in the mask appeared on screen.

Black cowl. Sharp cape. Eyes like cold knives.

The boy hissed softly and curled deeper into the couch.

Harley noticed. She sat beside him with a bowl of Lucky Charms, munching loudly.

“Don’t like Batsy, huh?”

Byte stared at the screen. Batman swung from a rooftop, tackled a criminal, and vanished in the dark.

“Yeah,” Harley said, her voice lower now. “He’s scary. Like… ‘you’re in trouble even if you didn’t do nothin’ scary.”

Byte nodded once. He didn’t know why, but his chest squeezed every time that man showed up. His skin buzzed. His heart panicked.

Joker wandered over, still wearing his pajamas—covered in tiny knives and happy faces.

“Ohoho, I see what this is,” he cackled. “Someone’s got a Bat allergy! Don’t worry, Byte. I got a cream for that. It’s called ‘Molotov Cocktail.’”

Harley threw a marshmallow at him. “You’re not helping.”

But Joker was undeterred. He plopped onto the couch beside Byte and pulled him close, ruffling the boy’s messy hair.

“You don’t gotta worry about that ol’ pointy-eared buzzkill, kiddo. You’re with us now. You hear me?”

Byte stared up at him.

Joker grinned. “This here is your asylum now, baby bug. And no Bat’s ever gonna cage you again.”

The boy didn’t know what a cage was. But something inside him—deep, raw, primal—believed him.

Byte’s fingers twitched. Webbing shot out of his wrist and wrapped around Joker’s waist like a hug.

Harley let out an audible gasp. “Awwww! He hugged you!”

Joker blinked at the web line.

Then burst out laughing. “HE LOVES ME!”

---

Later that night, Harley found Byte asleep in his webbed hammock, tangled in blankets and leftover confetti.

She tucked a stuffed hyena next to him—one with mismatched button eyes and a half-bitten ear. A present from “Auntie Harley.”

She leaned in close, brushing a bit of hair from his forehead.

“You ain’t gotta remember where you came from, Pumpkin,” she whispered. “You’re ours now.”

From the darkness of the ceiling, Joker whispered back:

“Forever and ever, little spider.”

Chapter Text

If you lived in Gotham long enough, you learned three rules:

1. Don’t drink the water near Ace Chemicals.

2. Don’t answer if the door knocks itself.

3. Never enter Joker’s hideout uninvited.

But Gotham’s rogues weren’t known for their manners.

The knock came just after 3 p.m., followed by the clatter of a crowbar and someone yelling, “Hey, Clown Trash, I know you’re in there! You owe me teeth!”

Harley peeked through the curtain, then gasped. “Oh great! It’s the playdate committee!”

Byte was upside down again—dangling from the chandelier like a fuzzy chandelier ornament. His ears perked up at Harley’s tone. Playdate?

Joker sauntered in with his hair still damp from a nap bath (he only bathed if he could laugh while doing it). “Oho, our little prince is about to meet the extended family!”

He flung the door open wide.

“Welcome to madness, you beautiful bottom-feeders!”

In came Gotham’s worst and weirdest.

There was Riddler, holding an exploding Rubik's cube.
Two-Face, flipping a coin that never seemed to land.
Scarecrow, whose very presence made the room colder.
Penguin, waddling and muttering about overdue respect.
And trailing behind them all, grinning like he’d stolen the moon, was Victor Zsasz—slicing tally marks into a deck of cards.

Byte watched them all from the ceiling.

So many smells. Chemicals, sweat, blood, cigar smoke, cheap cologne, and something that reminded him of decaying fruit.

Harley put her hands on her hips. “You boys play nice. We got a kid now, ‘kay? None of that ‘flay your enemies for fun’ talk till after dinner.”

Zsasz immediately pouted. “But I brought a coloring book.”

Joker grinned. “He means it literally. It’s just skin.”

Harley screamed, “VICTOR!”

---

The rogues settled into chaos like it was a dinner party hosted by a rabid raccoon. Someone started playing poker with knives. Someone else lit fireworks indoors. Riddler started ranting about Batman being a Virgo.

Through it all, Byte crawled along the ceiling, unnoticed.

Until he made himself noticed.

He dropped straight into the middle of the table, crouched in a perfect spider stance, eyes glowing faintly green in the flickering light.

Every villain froze.

Even Zsasz.

Even Penguin.

Then Byte hissed, webbed the stack of playing cards, and yeeted them across the room like a slingshot.

The villains stared.

And then Joker howled.

“YESSSS! That’s my boy! Did you see that? He disrupted the natural order! He’s already more chaotic than half of you losers combined!”

Two-Face pointed. “The hell is that thing?”

Harley scooped Byte up into her arms like he was a prize from a rigged carnival. “That’s our baby bug. Don’t call him a thing. He’s better behaved than you, Harvey.”

Riddler approached slowly. “Is it a mutant? A metahuman? Some experiment gone wrong?”

Byte narrowed his eyes and spit a thin line of web that slapped Riddler in the face.

Scarecrow blinked behind his mask. “I like him.”

Harley lit up. “He’s learning! Look at him stand up for himself!”

“...with spit,” Joker added proudly.

---

The rest of the afternoon was pure madness.

Byte chased Zsasz with a stolen marker and drew spider legs on all his tally marks.
He bit Penguin’s hat and claimed it as a trophy.
He beat Riddler in tic-tac-toe twelve times in a row and webbed his mouth shut when he wouldn’t stop ranting about it.
And when Two-Face flipped his coin to decide whether to insult Byte or not, Byte stole the coin midair and swallowed it whole.

Joker laughed so hard he fell off the couch.

“This kid,” he gasped, “is a MENACE! He’s going to make Gotham a playground of pain!”

Harley beamed. “He’s gonna need a villain name.”

Riddler muttered from behind his web gag, “I vote Spiderbrat.”

Joker leaned close to Byte, tousling his hair. “How ‘bout this, little mischief mite? You want a name?”

Byte tilted his head.

“From now on,” Joker declared, “you’re Byte. Small, sharp, and full of glitches.”

Byte chirped in approval and webbed Joker’s nose.

---

That night, as the rogues left (some limping, some grumbling, all confused), Harley wrapped Byte in a stolen circus blanket and curled beside him in the hammock nest.

“You were real good today, baby bug,” she whispered. “You held your own with the crazies.”

Joker leaned against the wall nearby, watching them both.

Byte curled up tighter, pulling the blanket around himself, comforted by the soft hum of chaos in the walls.

For the first time since the Lazarus Pit, he felt safe.

He didn’t know why.

He didn’t know who he had been before.

But now?

Now he was Byte.

And Byte had family.

Chapter Text

Byte’s first taste of Gotham’s blood came wrapped in candy-striped ribbon and balloon string.

It started like any other morning in the hideout. Harley was singing off-key to a twisted version of “Twinkle Twinkle,” but her version involved grenades, stars exploding, and “how I wonder who’s still breathing.” Joker was dismantling a wind-up penguin with a blowtorch while dressed in a robe that said King of Chaos in rhinestones.

And Byte?

Byte was building a web trap in the hallway.

He clicked softly to himself as he spun. His eyes were wide and unblinking, fixated, mechanical. This was instinct. This was home. He didn’t know where the knowledge came from—he just knew which angles worked best, how to reinforce tension points, how to snare and feel through the threads.

A stray rat scurried across the tiles.

Snap.

Byte jerked the line, and the rat disappeared into a cocoon faster than the eye could track.

“Good boy!” Joker called, poking his head into the hallway. “That’s what I like to see—ambition! Some kids make macaroni art, but you? You make death nets!”

Byte hissed softly in acknowledgment.

Then came the buzzing.

Low. Mechanical. Wrong.

Joker stopped mid-cackle. Harley froze with a frying pan full of glitter pancakes.

Outside, a dull whir turned into a sharp zip. Byte skittered toward the front window and peeked out.

There—hovering in the Gotham gloom—was a drone. Sleek. Stark. Not from the sewers.

Then came more. A swarm.

Black. Metallic. Armed.

Joker narrowed his eyes. “Oh-ho-ho. Someone sent presents.”

Harley grabbed her mallet. “Think it’s Batsy?”

“Nope. That’s too clean. These are corporate.”

The first drone fired.

The window exploded. Byte jumped back, shielding his eyes. Harley screamed as she tackled Joker behind the couch.

And then Byte moved.

He didn’t think. He reacted.

He launched out the broken window and swung.

One line—straight to the nearest drone.

He landed on it, flipped, and yanked out the battery like it was instinct. The drone spiraled and crashed below.

Byte landed like a feather and climbed the wall like it was breathing.

Inside the hideout, Joker peered out between a set of curtains with bullet holes in them. “Well, I’ll be damned. The kid’s a fighter!”

Harley popped up behind him. “We need to help him!”

But Joker held her back with a grin too wide to be human.

“No, no, my love. Let him dance.”

---

Byte tore through the sky like a whisper of violence.

He moved with feral grace, slicing and spinning and wrapping drones in webbing so fast they fell like flies. When one got too close, he screeched, a piercing, broken-signal cry that caused two of them to fizzle out midair.

Scarecrow, watching from a nearby rooftop through binoculars, muttered, “What is that thing…?”

---

Fifteen minutes later, the alley was a scrapyard of smoking wires and shattered metal.

Byte stood in the center, panting, webbing flickering off his fingers like sweat. One drone sparked behind him. Another twitched near his feet. He didn’t move. He just watched.

He waited for another threat.

But none came.

Just… balloons.

From the roof above, a shower of red-and-black balloons rained down with a shrill giggle.

Harley leapt from the fire escape in her full red-and-blue getup, carrying a tray of cake bombs. “Surprise, baby bug!”

Byte blinked, confused.

Joker followed, arms wide, holding a banner that read:

🎈YOU KILLED MACHINES, AND WE’RE PROUD!🎈

Harley landed beside him and ruffled his messy hair. “That was amazing, sweetheart! You’re like a little murder-spider.”

“Almost like…” Joker tapped his chin dramatically. “Like we should weaponize him!”

Harley threw a cupcake at his head.

Byte didn’t laugh. But he let Harley lift him into her arms, let her wipe the soot from his cheek.

He looked back at the wreckage.

The smell of scorched metal mixed with candy and rubber. Bloodless—but not clean.

There was something growing inside him.

A thrill.

Something darker than instinct. Something deeper than memory.

He liked it.

---

That night, Joker lit candles in a circle while Harley stuck googly eyes on stuffed bats.

Byte sat in the center, wearing a crown made of balloon strings and wires from the dead drones.

Joker proclaimed, “Let it be known that Byte is no longer a pet, nor just a child! He is the firstborn of mayhem, the cub of chaos, our little virus in Gotham’s code!”

Harley sniffled and wiped her eyes. “I’m so proud. He’s like if a spider married a grenade and had a baby with our sense of humor.”

Byte stared into the flickering candlelight.

He didn’t know who he was.

But now, he knew what he was becoming.

Not just a survivor.

A storm.

Chapter Text

The hideout echoed with chaos, music, and the occasional explosion. It was just past midnight, the hour when Gotham either slept—or screamed.

Inside the lair, Harley was stringing party lights between two taxidermy raccoons while humming to herself. Joker lounged on the couch with his feet kicked up, flipping through a Gotham gossip magazine he had very obviously defaced with lipstick and red marker.

Byte sat in the corner like a little gargoyle—knees pulled to his chest, perched on a stool with webbing around one leg and a half-taken-apart radio in his lap. He was quiet, but alert. His eyes shimmered in the low light, catching every flicker, twitch, and tick.

Lately, he’d been listening more than ever.

To Joker.

To Harley.

To the city beyond the walls.

He watched how Joker laughed when something blew up. How Harley laughed when someone got hit with a pie. How both of them never apologized for being loud or strange or wrong.

They didn’t flinch when things shattered. They celebrated it.

That fascinated Byte.

He didn’t remember what laughing felt like.

But maybe he could learn.

---

That night, Joker was working on a new monologue for his next “surprise public appearance,” using a glitter pen on a napkin.

“And then I say: ‘What’s black and blue and smells like justice? A fresh crime scene!’—HA!”

He threw his head back and let out that infamous, teeth-rattling cackle. The sound echoed like broken mirrors, loud and unhinged.

Harley clapped. “That’s a good one, puddin’!”

Byte’s head tilted.

He’d been watching Joker’s chest, the way it expanded when he laughed. The twitch in his eyes. The way his shoulders shook, almost like pain and joy were the same thing.

So, Byte tried.

He opened his mouth.

And laughed.

At first, it came out wrong—high-pitched and glitchy, like a modem trying to scream. But he kept going, adjusting, mimicking the rhythm and cadence of the Clown Prince himself.

He laughed again. Clearer. Sharper.

“AH-HA! HAHA! H-Haha…ha…”

It was small.

But it was real.

Joker froze.

Harley dropped her raccoon light.

Slowly, Joker turned toward the boy, eyes wide, lips curling.

“…Did you hear that?” he whispered. “Did my boy just…?”

Byte looked up, confused but proud. He smiled—an uneven, slightly feral grin.

Then he did it again.

“Ha. Haha. Hahaha! AHAHAHAHA—!”

It was his laugh now. Raw. Wrong. Perfect.

Harley shrieked in delight. “OH MY GOD, HE’S DOING IT! JAY, HE’S DOING THE LAUGH!”

Joker fell to his knees like he was witnessing the second coming of chaos itself. “Byte! BYTE, MY BEAUTIFUL BUG, YOU SOUND INSANE!”

Byte kept laughing, and something in his chest clicked. Something dark and joyful lit up.

It wasn’t just mimicry.

It was him.

He liked laughing.

He liked the way it sounded coming from him—like thunder filtered through static. Like something broken and wild and alive.

He laughed until he was wheezing, until Harley scooped him up in her arms, giggling so hard she almost dropped him.

“You little monster!” she cried. “You got your daddy’s laugh and my flair for drama! We’re raising a legend!”

Byte clung to her, still chuckling, hiccupping with leftover giggles.

Joker placed a hand on Byte’s head and gave him a reverent nod. “You’ve made me the proudest clown in Gotham.”

Byte’s voice rasped, half-whisper, half-growl.

“Ha…haha…Bite you.”

Harley blinked. “Wait. Did he just say—?”

“OH, THAT’S HIS CATCHPHRASE NOW!” Joker declared, spinning in a circle. “Trademark it! Get me a T-shirt printer! ‘Bite You’ is the next big thing!”

Byte, nestled in Harley’s arms, smiled like a spider who’d just caught a Bat.

---

That night, Joker and Harley fell asleep on the couch, tangled in party streamers and pillows.

Byte stayed awake.

He sat on top of the fridge, watching the moon through a cracked window, absently licking red icing off his fingers.

He had a name.

He had a laugh.

And now?

He had power.

Real, terrifying, grinning power.

He giggled softly to himself.

And the city, just outside the glass, seemed to shiver.

Chapter Text

When a kid asks for toys, most parents think dolls, action figures, or maybe blocks.

When Byte asked for toys, Harley Quinn blew up a toy store.

“Go big or go boom,” she said with a wink, dragging a squeaky red shopping cart through the debris as Byte perched on her shoulders like a gothic gargoyle, eyes glittering with glee.

The toy store—WhizBang’s Wonder Barn—had once been a wholesome Gotham landmark. Now it looked like it had gone three rounds with a bulldozer on laughing gas. Joker stood by the entrance, spray-painting a fanged smile on a life-sized teddy bear and humming the tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel” in reverse.

Byte’s laugh echoed through the aisles like a chittering gremlin as he skittered up shelves, knocking off boxes of board games and glitter slime. He moved like a spider, fast and unpredictable—half-child, half-nightmare.

He didn’t want toys made for normal kids.

No—he wanted tools.

Byte stared at a rubber dinosaur with soulless eyes. He poked it once. It squeaked.

He stared harder.

Then he webbed its jaws shut, snapped off the tail, and stuffed a small explosive inside.

Joker cackled. “Look at our boy! Turning playtime into war crimes!”

Harley clapped like a proud mom at a tap recital. “He’s makin’ a whole arsenal! My sweet little goblin!”

Byte ripped open another box and pulled out a battery-powered robot dog. It barked twice before he webbed it to the ceiling and started rewiring it using parts from a broken music box and a sparkler he found in Joker’s coat.

Ten minutes later, it was barking in reverse and playing lullabies that made people nervous.

Joker grinned. “I think he just built a security system.”

Harley leaned against the shattered display case full of dolls with cracked porcelain eyes. “Do you think we should get him, like... a bike or somethin’? You know, for balance?”

Byte answered that by leaping off the top shelf, landing on a pile of Nerf guns, and firing five darts at once directly into Joker’s face.

Joker fell over.

“I love him so much,” he whispered from the floor.

---

By nightfall, the hideout’s living room was transformed.

What had once been a cluttered chaos den was now…

…still a cluttered chaos den—but with order.

Byte had built himself a toybox.

Not just a box—a lair. A webbed-up corner of the hideout rigged with booby traps, musical tripwires, dismembered toys turned into tools, stuffed animals with razor teeth sewn in, and a throne of broken tricycles and plush monsters.

He sat at the top like a spider king, one eye glowing faintly, chewing on a candy cane that probably wasn’t candy.

Joker knelt below the throne dramatically.

“Oh Great Bug of Bedlam, what wisdom do you have for your humble jesters?”

Byte slowly raised a hand.

Flicked his fingers.

And dropped a water balloon full of purple glitter on Joker’s head.

Harley whooped. “He gets it!”

---

Later, as Gotham shuddered in its sleep, Byte crawled into his hammock nest with a teddy bear whose head he’d replaced with a plastic skull. He named it “Giggles.”

Harley tucked him in. Joker kissed his forehead with a grin that was almost soft.

“Dream of teeth, my little virus,” he whispered.

Byte mumbled sleepily, “Boom boom teddy... bite the moon…”

Joker and Harley tiptoed away, giggling.

Byte’s web traps pulsed gently around him, humming with energy. The toybox corner glowed faintly in the dark, eerie and safe.

For the first time since he crawled from the Lazarus Pit, Byte had something better than memory.

He had a kingdom.

And it squeaked when you stepped wrong.

Chapter Text

The door was open.

Just a crack.

Barely enough for a breeze.

But to Byte, it may as well have been a neon sign flashing FREEDOM! in glowing letters.

The hideout was unusually quiet. Joker was welding springs to pogo sticks again. Harley had passed out in a glitter pile after “tasting” every flavor of paint in the closet. No one noticed the small spider-child slip out.

Byte didn’t plan to wander into Crime Alley.

But his legs moved like they had somewhere to go. Like something in his bones knew the cracks in the pavement, the rust on the fire escapes, the way the wind whispered through broken windows like lullabies made of teeth.

He moved in shadows. Scuttling. Climbing. Watching.

He didn’t know what home was before—but this place?

It smelled like smoke and fear and rain.

It felt familiar.

---

Down in the alley, Jason Todd—aka Red Hood—was crouched by a busted vending machine, using brute force to knock out a stuck pack of granola bars.

He heard the click-skitter above him before he saw the kid.

A flash of black-and-red eyes.

Tiny fingers gripping the edge of a rooftop.

A hiss that wasn’t quite human.

Jason immediately tensed and drew a pistol. “Who’s there?!”

A head peeked out—mop of tangled brown curls, face smeared with dirt and glitter, wearing a shirt three sizes too big and grinning with the sharp kind of curiosity that put Jason’s instincts on high alert.

“Hey,” Jason called out carefully. “You lost, kid?”

Byte tilted his head. He didn’t answer.

Jason tried again. “You hungry?”

Byte blinked slowly.

Jason sighed and holstered his gun. He remembered kids like this. He was a kid like this. Alone. Weird. Hungry.

He pulled a few bills from his jacket and pointed to the corner bodega still open under flickering lights.

“Come on, I’ll buy you something.”

---

Fifteen minutes later, Byte sat cross-legged on a rooftop, watching Jason from above like a curious gargoyle.

Jason stood in the alley, now snack-less and baffled.

Because Byte was gone.

Vanished.

The only thing left behind was a single spider web shaped like a little smiling face on the brick wall.

Jason muttered, “I’m gonna tell Dick I got mugged by a spider child. He’s never gonna let me live this down.”

---

Back at the hideout, Harley was twirling in a tutu made of caution tape when Byte burst through the open window like a comet.

He slammed down a plastic bag on the table.

Chips. Chocolate bars. Juice boxes. A weird, half-smashed bodega sandwich. One tiny bottle of hot sauce.

Joker turned in his chair, blinking. “Did… did our little Byte just bring us tribute?”

Harley gasped. “You went shopping?!”

Byte nodded solemnly.

Joker clapped. “I love crime that involves coupons!”

Harley reached for a bag of rainbow gummies.

Byte snapped.

He bared his teeth, let out a low hiss, and webbed the snack pile to his chest like a greedy dragon spider hoarding gold.

Harley’s hand froze mid-grab.

“Okay… okay, baby, you don’t gotta share if you don’t wanna.”

Byte curled protectively over the bags, growling softly.

Joker nodded in approval. “That's my boy. Hoarding snacks like secrets.”

He leaned over to Harley and whispered, “I think he’s forming territorial behavior. This is great.”

Byte bit open a juice box straw with one fang and sucked loudly, glaring at anyone who got too close.

Outside, the city howled.

Inside, the villains let their spiderling guard his treasure.

Because in Gotham?

Sharing was optional.

But survival?

That was instinct.

Chapter Text

Gotham never slept—but it twitched. It muttered. It dreamed in red and black.

And under the twitching glow of broken neon, Byte hunted.

Not for food.

Not for comfort.

But for the thrill.

He called it “Tag.”

Not the version played on schoolyards. Not the one with rules. Byte’s version was hunted or be hunted. You could only tag someone if you scared them first—and if they screamed, you won.

Harley had said bedtime was at ten. Byte waited until two.

The moment she snored, mouth open and drooling glitter, he slipped out again.

---

He bounded across rooftops, webbing between antennas and streetlamps. His laughter chimed through the fog, high and broken, echoing like a child’s voice trapped in a funhouse mirror.

“Giiiiiggle~”

He whispered it to the dark.

A man in a trench coat glanced up. “What the—?”

THWIP.

A sticky web hit the man’s back, yanking him upward with a yoink.

The scream echoed for three blocks.

Byte dropped him harmlessly on a pile of trash bags and stuck a “TAG! YOU LOSE” note to his forehead in red crayon.

The man sobbed. Byte laughed until his stomach hurt.

---

He kept going.

A couple on a midnight walk—THWIP! Webbed to a lamppost.

A drunk businessman—SCREECH! Stuffed into a dry fountain with a rubber duck taped to his face.

A gang member pulling a knife in the alley—BOOM! Byte dropped a glitter bomb in his hood and webbed his shoelaces together.

Each “TAG” brought more laughter. His little spider heart pounded with joy. He felt alive.

But even joy in Gotham has shadows.

---

Red Hood was patrolling rooftops when he saw a blur of motion. Something small, fast, and giggling like a demon chipmunk on helium.

“Not again,” Jason muttered, remembering the snack-stealing cryptid.

He followed.

Down into the alleys.

There—movement.

He landed softly behind a dumpster and saw the kid—crouched, tangled in his own webbing, trying to wrestle a balloon animal into the shape of a knife.

Byte froze when he saw him.

Jason raised both hands slowly. “Hey, hey. It’s just me. Remember? I bought you snacks?”

Byte hissed.

Jason blinked. “Okay… not a hugger. Got it.”

Byte backed up, but tripped over his own makeshift toy trap. A bouncy ball with nails in it pinged across the bricks.

Jason moved fast, catching it before it hit him.

He whistled. “That could’ve taken out someone’s eye. Who taught you that—?”

Byte’s voice was soft. Garbled. “Daddy.”

Jason’s eyes narrowed. “Who’s your—?”
And then it clicked.

The laugh. The traps. The glitter. The bitey attitude.

“Oh... oh no.”

Byte tilted his head.

Jason whispered, “You’re with them. The clown and the queen.”

Byte’s eyes lit up like LEDs. “My family.”

Jason stepped forward. “Kid, they’re not—”

Byte vanished.

One second he was there. Next second, he was on the rooftop, standing upside down like a spider shadow, his laugh trailing behind like silk and thunder.

“TAG!” he shouted gleefully.

And then?

He was gone.

---

Back at the hideout, Harley stirred in her sleep. She sat up suddenly.

“Did ya hear that?”

Joker, half-asleep, murmured, “Hear what, muffins?”

Harley grinned as the wind rattled the window and a child’s distant laughter echoed in the city beyond.

“Our baby’s havin’ fun.”

She giggled, curled back into Joker’s arms, and whispered—

“Gotham’s screamin’ just right tonight.”

Chapter Text

Batman didn’t blink.

Not when lightning cracked over the skyline.
Not when he stepped over shattered glass on the rooftop.
Not even when he spotted him—the small thing crawling along the edge of Crime Alley’s highest ledge.

At first, Bruce thought it was a hallucination.

A child. Barefoot. Hair wild. Eyes glowing faintly red in the dark.

Moving like no child should.

He had followed the pattern for weeks—glitter-covered “crime scenes,” webbing over fire escapes, citizens reporting “a laughing spider boy” who left them dangling upside down with crayon-written insults on their shirts.

He’d thought it was a trick—maybe Scarecrow again.

But now he saw it.

Not a lie.
Not a delusion.
A child. Alone. With power.

And worst of all?

A child with Joker’s laugh.

---

Byte was playing.

Not a game, exactly—more like testing. How far could he web? How long could he hang? What noises did the bricks make when he stomped just right?

He was content.

Until the shadows shifted.

He stopped.

Head snapped up.

Eyes locked.

The Bat stood across the rooftop like a nightmare in armor.

Batman didn’t move.

But Byte’s heart did.

It slammed against his ribs like it wanted to escape.

He knew that shape.

He didn’t remember why, but everything inside him screamed RUN.

The Bat took one step forward.

Byte stumbled back, claws scraping the ledge.

Batman raised a hand. “Hey. I’m not here to hurt you.”

His voice was low, calm, human.

But to Byte, it sounded like a blade dragged across glass.

“Let me help—”

And that was the last straw.

Byte screamed.

Not a tantrum. Not a shout.

A raw, inhuman shriek like a siren being torn apart underwater.
His whole body twisted, convulsing, and he dropped to his knees, clutching his ears, spider limbs curling over his face.

Tears fell—thick, hot, confused.

Batman froze.

“Wait—no, I’m not—”

Then came the thunder.

BOOM.

A baseball bat slammed down from the shadows, cracking the rooftop tiles inches from Batman’s foot.

Harley Quinn landed like a wildcat, her eyes wide with fury, pigtails flying. “GET AWAY FROM MY BABY!”

A second blur followed.

Laughter—sharp, unhinged—ripped through the air as Joker somersaulted beside her, two switchblades in hand and a bomb in his back pocket.

“Well well well, look who decided to traumatize toddlers tonight!”

“Step back,” Batman growled. “That child needs help—”

“He has help, you Kevlar-wrapped orphan!” Harley screeched, swinging her bat.

Batman dodged. Joker lunged, slashing—but it was a distraction.

Harley grabbed Byte.

He was still sobbing, shaking, clinging to her like she was the only stable thing in a shattering world.

“Oh, baby,” she whispered, holding him tight. “Momma’s here. You’re safe, you’re safe…”

Batman started forward.

And Joker threw the bomb.

Smoke exploded in a rainbow of sparks and noxious fumes. Joker and Harley vanished into it, Byte wrapped tight in Harley’s arms.

When the smoke cleared—

They were gone.

Batman stood alone, the city’s sirens distant but growing.

He looked down at the rooftop tiles where Byte had been.

Small claw marks. Tiny splashes of blood.

And a torn crayon drawing.

It showed Batman. All in black.

His mouth was stitched shut. His eyes were crying.

Above it, written in shaky handwriting:

"BAD DREAM MONSTER."

---

In the sewers below, Harley rocked Byte gently while Joker hummed a lullaby out of tune.

Byte shook, eyes still red, voice hoarse.

“I-I d-didn’t like h-his face…”

Harley kissed his forehead. “You never gotta see him again, sugarbug.”

Joker grinned through the shadows. “And if he does show up? We’ll show him what real nightmares look like.”

Byte looked up at them, small and scared.

But safe.

For now.

Chapter Text

Byte didn’t sleep that night.

Not even in his tangled hammock of webbed-up blankets and stolen plushies. Not even with Giggles—the skull-headed teddy bear—tucked under one arm.

He twitched.

He watched.

He whispered.

“…bad dream monster…”

The Bat’s face haunted the cracks in the ceiling. His voice echoed in the thrum of the pipes. Cold. Heavy. Wrong.

Byte didn’t know why it hurt.
Only that it did.

Something deep in his chest—buried under laughter and chaos and glitter bombs—ached.

But Byte was Joker and Harley’s little bug. He wasn’t made to ache.

He was made to bite.

---

The next morning, the hideout smelled like pancakes and pipe smoke. Joker danced through the living room in mismatched socks, flinging blueberry waffles into the air like lethal frisbees.

“Rise and shine, my wriggly little bug! It’s a brand-new day of mayhem and mealtime!”

Byte didn’t answer.

He sat cross-legged in the corner, eyes narrowed, tools scattered around him like candy wrappers. He wasn’t drawing. He wasn’t building.

He was planning.

Joker noticed immediately.

“Oho. Somebody’s brooding.” He leaned in with a manic grin. “Whatcha thinkin’, baby bat-stabber?”

Harley popped her head in from the kitchen, spatula in one hand, pink oven mitt on the other. “Is it about last night, sweetie? The big bad bat?”

Byte’s lip curled. “He looked at me like I was wrong.”

Harley’s smile faltered just a bit. “Aw, puddin’. You’re not wrong. You’re ours.”

Joker nodded solemnly. “You’re exactly the kind of wrong Gotham needs.”

Byte stood.

His voice was quiet, but every syllable crackled with static. “I wanna show him. The Bat. I wanna show him what I am.”

Joker and Harley shared a look. Proud. Dangerous.

“Then let’s give the world a lil’ byte-sized BOOM,” Joker purred.

---

That night, Gotham glimmered with anxiety.

And Byte became a ghost in the systems.

He hacked streetlights to blink in Morse code:
BAD DREAM MONSTER GO HOME.

He turned crosswalk signals into laughing mouths.

He rewired the Batmobile’s GPS.

And worst of all?

He hijacked a rooftop projector—broadcasting a low-resolution video onto the side of a skyscraper.

The footage?

Security camera clips Joker had “liberated” from an old GCPD warehouse. A boy. Small. Shaking. Locked in a cell.

Batman standing over him.

Not hitting.
But not helping.
Just watching.

It ended with Byte’s voice, warped and layered, echoing over the skyline:

> “He says he helps kids.
But I remember screaming.
And he did nothing.
Gotham’s monster wears a mask.”

---

Within twenty minutes, #BatLie trended on Gotham’s underground net.

Twenty more, and every villain with a grudge was giggling.

Even Penguin spat his drink.

Byte watched the chaos unfold from atop the Monarch Theater sign, his feet dangling, expression blank.

Harley dangled upside down beside him. “You okay, babybug?”

Byte shrugged. “Feels… weird. Good. Bad. Both.”

Harley smiled softly. “That’s okay. Chaos ain’t neat. It’s messy. Like peanut butter in a blender.”

Byte looked at the skyline. “Will he come again?”

Joker, behind them, cracked his neck and giggled. “Oh, he’ll come.”

His eyes gleamed.

“And next time? We’ll be ready.”

Byte didn’t speak again.

He just stared at the Bat-signal, faintly glowing through the clouds—

—and smiled with all his teeth.

Chapter Text

Red Hood didn’t mean to watch the building burn.

It had started as a routine patrol. Stop a mugger. Scare a dealer. Swing by a kebab stand. Easy.

Then he saw it.

The side of a high-rise downtown—lit up like a twisted movie premiere—showing that video.

A boy. A cell. A silent Batman.

Jason’s heart stuttered.

He knew that room.
He knew that scream.

Because once, that was him.

Once, he had been the child behind the bars, full of rage and confusion while the Bat stood there in his cape and silence like a disappointed god.

Jason’s grip on his helmet tightened.

“That poor kid,” he muttered.

And then he saw the source tag.

BYTE.

The spider boy.

The alley brat with claws and candy wrappers and haunted eyes.

The one Jason had almost saved. Had fed. Had let go.

---

He tracked the signal.

It wasn’t hard. Jason had trained with the best, and he wasn’t above breaking a few servers to get a location.

And when he finally found the old projector rig—webbed to the side of a condemned toy factory—he climbed the scaffolding like it owed him answers.

Inside, it smelled like sawdust, spray paint, and sugar rot.

Jason crept forward, gun drawn, but quiet.

He didn’t want a fight.

He wanted a kid.

---

He found Byte sitting alone on a broken throne of stuffed animals, sharpening crayons like knives.

Jason crouched low.

“Hey.”

Byte didn’t look up. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I came anyway.”

“…stupid.”

“Yeah. I do that a lot.”

They sat in silence.

Jason finally said, “That was you, huh? The video?”

Byte’s voice was low. “He was gonna lock me up.”

Jason nodded. “Yeah. He does that.”

Byte turned. His eyes were glowing again. “You gonna take me back?”

Jason shook his head. “No.”

Byte blinked.

“I’m not here to be a Bat,” Jason said. “I’m here to be… something else.”

“…what else is there?”

Jason looked him dead in the eye. “Someone who gets it.”

Byte’s lip trembled.

Then he hissed. “You smell like sadness and gun oil.”

Jason smirked. “You’re not wrong.”

---

They didn’t talk more.

Jason just left a bag of snacks at Byte’s feet and walked away.

He didn’t try to make promises. Didn’t try to preach. Didn’t try to be a hero.

Just… left the door open.

In case Byte ever wanted something different.

---

Back in the sewers, Joker watched the projector flicker out.

“Looks like our bug made quite the impression.”

Harley smiled, brushing hair from Byte’s face as he curled into her lap.

“You scared the Bat, sweetie,” she whispered. “You made him see you.”

Byte didn’t smile.

But he felt warmer.

Like the shadows didn’t crawl so much when he wasn’t alone.

He clutched a candy bar in one hand, half-eaten, fingers sticky with webbing.

He wasn’t sure if Jason was a threat or a promise.

But for now?

He was something else.

And that was enough.

Chapter Text

Crime Alley was too quiet.

That’s what Jason noticed first. The usual hum of sirens, shouting, and skittering alley rats had gone still—like the city was holding its breath.

He waited.

Then—there—a giggle, sharp and chaotic, like broken wind chimes dipped in honey and madness.

“TAG!”
Something small and fast thwipped past his head, bouncing from one fire escape to another with terrifying grace.

Jason didn’t flinch.
Not anymore.

“Hey, Bugboy,” he called.

The kid flipped midair and landed on the hood of a rusted-out car, crouched like a spider. He blinked at Jason, his expression blank for a moment… then he smiled—sharp and bright.

“Red Bang Guy!” Byte chirped.

Jason chuckled. “Close enough.”

He held up a greasy paper bag. “Got your favorites. Gummy worms, neon cheese puffs, and… wait for it… exploding Pop Rocks.”

Byte’s eyes widened.

Jason tossed the bag and Byte caught it midair with a web line. He landed with a dramatic roll, already tearing into it like a goblin on Halloween.

“You always have food,” Byte muttered, mouth full. “Do all helmets come with snacks?”

Jason leaned against the alley wall. “Nah. Just the ones with trauma and questionable morals.”

---

Across the city, high above the mess, Batman stood in the shadows of Gotham Cathedral.

The projector incident haunted him.

That child’s scream…

He wasn’t just afraid. He was terrified. Of him.

Bruce had seen terror in hundreds of eyes. But never like that. Raw. Primal. Inhuman.

It rattled him.

Alfred had said, “You can’t save every child, sir.”

But Bruce didn’t want to save every child.

He wanted to save this one.

The one who screamed like a dying thing.

The one Joker had claimed.

---

Jason was still chatting with Byte when the rooftop above creaked softly.

He looked up.

“Really?” he muttered.

Nightwing dropped down in his usual graceful acrobat flair.

Byte immediately hissed.

Jason held out a hand. “Whoa. He’s with me.”

Byte didn’t move, crouched low on a trash can, claws out.

Nightwing smiled gently. “Hey, buddy. I’m Nightwing. I—”

BOOM!

A cannon shot of glitter exploded in his face, blinding him instantly in a pink and gold cloud. Nightwing yelped and stumbled backward, coughing sparkles.

Byte snarled, eyes glowing red. “He smells like the Bat!”

Jason groaned. “Yeah, he does. But he’s not the Bat. He’s the good cop in the sad circus.”

Nightwing wiped glitter from his lashes, blinking hard. “You little gremlin—”

“I’m not little! I’m Byte!” the kid snapped.

Then he pounced—right at Nightwing’s chest.

Jason lunged, catching him midair. “Okay, okay! No murder hugs today!”

Byte squirmed, furious, but Jason held on.

Nightwing stepped back, brushing off glitter and trying not to laugh. “He’s got your charm.”

Jason sighed. “He’s got Joker’s temper and Harley’s sparkle addiction.”

Byte hissed again, face buried in Jason’s jacket.

Nightwing finally saw it—the tremble in Byte’s claws, the shallow breaths, the tension that said: not safe, not safe, not safe.

He nodded once. “Alright, I get it. I’ll keep my distance.”

Jason looked down at the small weight in his arms, then at the night sky.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “That’d be best.”

---

Later, when the rooftops were empty again, Batman stood watching from the highest spire.

He had seen the whole thing.

He watched how Byte reacted to Nightwing.

He saw the glitter blast.

He saw Jason hold him.

And worst of all…

He saw what he couldn’t do.

Bruce clenched his fists.

“I did that,” he whispered. “I put that fear in him.”

The wind didn’t answer.

But deep below, in the underbelly of Gotham, laughter echoed once more—and a small voice murmured to the dark:

“Monsters wear masks.”

Chapter Text

The hideout was quieter than usual.

No explosive pies in the oven. No spring-loaded teeth in the toilet. No Harley roller-skating through the halls in a tutu and a baseball bat.

Just Byte and Joker.

Sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, surrounded by playing cards, smashed clocks, and a spilled box of googly eyes.

Joker was humming a tune with no melody, stacking cards into a crooked house that defied physics. His grin was softer than usual—still wide, still wrong—but gentler somehow. Like a wolf pretending to nap in the sun.

Byte watched him, tail of his webbed hoodie twitching.

“Why does the Bat make my chest feel… twisty?” Byte finally asked, picking up a joker card and scratching at the ink.

Joker’s smile didn’t falter.

“Because, baby bug, the Bat doesn’t understand you.”

“I don’t understand me.”

“Even better,” Joker cooed, reaching over and sticking a googly eye to Byte’s forehead. “You’re unpredictable. A surprise. And what’s better than a surprise, huh?”

Byte blinked slowly.

“A boom,” he whispered.

Joker clapped, delighted. “Exactly! You’re starting to get it.”

---

Joker stood and began to pace, arms thrown wide like he was on stage. “Now, listen here, Byte. There’s rules in Gotham. The Bats, the Cops, the so-called 'heroes'—they think the world is this big coloring book, and they only use gray.”

He spun on one heel and pointed at Byte.

“But we? We color outside the lines. In glitter blood red. We’re chaos, baby. We’re what happens when the punchline punches back.”

Byte crawled after him on all fours, following like a curious cat. “But I don’t wanna be scary all the time…”

Joker knelt and booped his nose. “Then don’t be scary. Be unexpected. There’s a difference.”

He tapped Byte’s chest, right where his heart beat faster than it should’ve.

“Chaos doesn’t mean cruel. It means free.”

---

Later that night, Byte stood in the hideout’s main room, staring at a map of Gotham painted on the wall in fingerpaint and neon string.

He looked at the Bat-symbol drawn in the middle—tiny and shaking.

He reached up with one webbed finger and smeared it.

Then added googly eyes. And a smile.

He started to laugh.

Not Joker’s laugh. Not Harley’s.

His.

It was still broken. Still strange. But it was his.

---

Somewhere far above, Bruce Wayne stared at the monitor in the Batcave, watching the footage Red Hood had sent him of Byte in Crime Alley—laughing, webbing graffiti, throwing cheese puffs at gang members until they ran crying.

He paused the video.

The kid looked… happy.

Alfred came to his side.

“He’s healing,” Bruce murmured.

Alfred studied his face. “Not in the way you’d want.”

“…No. But maybe in the way he needs.”

---

Back underground, Joker watched Byte web another trap over the hallway door.

It was childish. Too obvious. Pure glitter and rubber chickens.

But it worked.

Harley skipped into the room and got glitter-bombed with a loud HONK.

She yelped.

Byte gasped.

Then they both collapsed in a giggle-fit on the floor.

Joker leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching the chaos he’d raised like a proud, homicidal dad.

“My little bug,” he whispered. “You’re gonna be the funniest nightmare this city’s ever seen.”

Chapter Text

Harley Quinn knew a thing or two about meltdowns.

She’d had her fair share—usually involving glitter grenades, bubblegum vodka, or breaking a henchman’s nose with a hammer because he looked at her sandwich wrong.

So when she found Byte curled up behind the couch, wrapped in webbing like a sad little burrito, chewing on his sleeve and staring at the floor with wide, unblinking eyes—she didn’t panic.

She sparkled.

Literally.

“Okay, babybug,” Harley said brightly, gently crawling over the back of the couch and landing beside him in a sea of soft pillows and rainbow light. “Time for some emergency Sparkle Therapy!”

Byte didn’t move. His fingers were twitching in the same rhythm over and over again, lips murmuring soft static.

“Batmask. Coldvoice. Screamscreamscream…”

Harley’s smile softened.

“You’re safe, sugarplum. The bad dreams can’t reach ya here.”

Byte shook his head. “He looked at me. He knew me. I don’t even know me. But he knew. And I hated it.”

Harley exhaled slowly, then pulled a pink sequin bag from behind her back.

It was covered in bunny patches, pins that said “BOOM!,” and what might’ve been a tooth.

She unzipped it slowly.

Out came:

A tube of sparkly purple lip gloss

A small water gun filled with pink slime

Two googly-eye rings

And a cracked hand mirror bedazzled with rhinestones.

“Rule Number One of Sparkle Therapy,” she said gently, “Look at yourself, not how they see ya.”

She held the mirror up.

Byte frowned.

He saw his face. Too big eyes. Web patterns across his cheeks. Glitter in his eyebrows from last week. That weird scar under his jaw that Joker said gave him “character.”

He didn’t look like a hero.

He didn’t look like a villain.

He looked like a weird little bug.

“…I look broken,” he whispered.

Harley grinned.

“Nah. You look unique. Like if chaos and cuteness had a baby and gave it a glue gun.”

Byte blinked. Then snorted. A small, involuntary laugh.

“Rule Number Two,” Harley added, booping his nose with a googly-eye ring, “If you can’t cry, throw glitter.”

---

Fifteen minutes later, the hideout looked like a unicorn exploded.

Byte had poured a gallon of glitter down the hallway vent system, creating sparkly sneezes every five minutes. Joker got one in his eye and screamed dramatically for an eyepatch.

Harley just tossed more sequins and gave Byte a sparkly baseball cap that said:
“BITE ME (politely)”

---

Later that night, as Byte lay in his webbed-up hammock, surrounded by the warm glow of string lights and glitter dust in the air, he whispered:

“Harley?”

“Yeah, babybug?”

“Am I bad?”

Harley leaned over and kissed his forehead.

“Nah, sugar. You’re complicated. And that’s way more interesting.”

---

Far away, Batman stood on a rooftop, watching a bank wall now tagged in bright pink letters:

> THE BAT SCARES BUGS. GO AWAY.
- Byte, Age 8 (and emotionally sparkly)

He read the message twice.

Then turned away, cape fluttering.

Even he had to admit...

He was losing this war.

And Gotham? Gotham was laughing.

Chapter Text

The cell was clean. Too clean. Too white.

Byte crouched in the farthest corner, wrapped in layers of his own webbing, huddled like a cornered spider. His eyes were glowing again—not with wonder or glee—but with rage.

And fear.

Batman stood behind the reinforced glass, silent. Watching. Waiting.

It had taken everything to catch Byte. To separate him from Joker and Harley. He’d used a decoy Batmobile, a specialized tranquilizer, and—worst of all—Jason.

Jason hadn’t known what they were doing until it was too late. And when Byte had realized it was a trap, his scream had made even Red Hood freeze.

Now… this.

A feral child in a cage.

Not a prisoner. Not a patient.

Just a wild thing torn from the only chaos that made sense to him.

---

Nightwing tried first.

“Hey, Byte. I’m Dick—well, Nightwing. I used to be the first Robin, like the… uh, oldest brother?”

Byte didn’t move.

Dick tried again. “You’re safe here. I promise. You don’t have to be scared.”

A web shot hit him between the eyes.

Dick staggered back, coughing glitter.

“…Ow.”

---

Red Robin tried next.

“I brought you puzzles,” Tim said, holding up a box of logic games. “You like riddles, right?”

Byte stared at him. Then howled and flung the entire box back with pinpoint accuracy.

The box exploded into shredded cardboard and plastic shrapnel. Webs coated the walls. Byte hissed, biting at his sleeve like a rabid animal.

Tim stepped back. “Okay. No puzzles.”

---

Spoiler walked in confidently. “I brought you stickers. And juice.”

Byte took the juice. Then bit the straw in half and spit it at her.

Spoiler blinked. “So that’s a no.”

---

Damian stood outside the glass, arms crossed.

“He’s pathetic,” Robin sneered. “An insult to the art of stealth. Do you see how sloppy his technique is?”

Byte didn’t respond.

He just stared.

Then licked the glass with a smile that shouldn’t have belonged to an eight-year-old.

“…He is mildly unnerving,” Damian admitted and walked off.

---

Then came Batman.

Bruce stepped into the room. No cape. No mask. Just… the man.

He tried to speak softly. “Peter—”

Byte flinched.

Batman hesitated. “Byte… I don’t want to hurt you.”

Then it happened.

Byte screamed.

Not a tantrum.

Not a cry.

A primal, inhuman shriek that shook the room.

He clawed at the walls, tore down the lights, shattered the mirror, and wrapped himself in a mess of webbing so thick no one could see him.

And from within the cocoon of silk and fear:

“DON’T LOOK AT ME!!
YOU LIED! YOU’RE WORSE! YOU’RE WORSE THAN THE CLOWN!!”

The cameras crackled.

The lights dimmed.

Byte didn’t cry like a child.

He roared like something born wrong.

And when he emerged, snarling and laughing through wet cheeks, there was something new in him.

Not just chaos.

Not just fear.

But hatred.

---

Back in the cave, the family stood in silence, watching the aftermath on the monitors.

“He thinks we’re the villains,” Dick said quietly.

Tim nodded. “We took him from the only people he remembers.”

“…Even if they’re monsters,” Stephanie added.

“He doesn’t know that,” Jason said flatly. “To him, they’re parents.”

Bruce stared at the screen, watching Byte snarl and shred a pillow with glitter claws.

“He was already broken,” Bruce murmured.

“No,” Jason snapped. “We broke him worse.”

---

Elsewhere, deep in Gotham’s tangled belly, Joker slammed his fist into a broken vending machine.

“I told you we should’ve microchipped him!” he shouted.

Harley paced nearby, hair a frizzy mess, mascara running.

“He’s been gone too long. Babybug hates cold places. And fluorescent lighting?! They’re probably making him eat salads, Mistah J!”

Joker’s grin twitched dangerously. “No one takes my kid. No one.”

He pulled out a switchblade and carved a crude spider symbol into the wall.

“Find the Bat. Gut the truth. Burn the cave.”

Harley smiled grimly, cracking her knuckles.

“Let’s bring our baby home.”

Chapter Text

The lights in the Batcave flickered.

Tim looked up from the monitor. “Anyone else hear—”

CRASH.

Glass shattered as a web-coated light fixture dropped from above. A shriek followed—high-pitched and full of fury.

Byte had snapped.

The reinforced walls of his cell were smeared in glitter and blood from bitten lips. Webs layered like cocoon silk now tore apart the last of the restraints. The last cameras blinked static.

And then—

The spider-child was loose.

---

“BYTE!” Dick shouted, running toward the alarms.

Too late.

Byte sprang from above like a demon in a hoodie, snarling and clawing with glowing webbed hands. He landed on Nightwing’s chest, knocking him back into the wall with a painful crunch.

Dick went down with a groan.

Stephanie barely had time to draw a taser before Byte webbed her arm to her own leg, flipping her off balance and sending her sprawling.

Tim tried to talk.

“Byte, wait—”

A webball slammed into his mouth. Another web yanked him by the ankle into the air, dangling him upside down with a glitter bomb stuck to his shirt.

Robin—Damian—charged in with a scowl.

“I will sedate you myself—!”

Byte hissed, dropped low, and swept Damian’s legs with terrifying speed. He launched the boy backward into the training mats like a skipping rock.

Four down.

Only one stood tall.

Jason Todd.

---

Byte landed on the Batcomputer table, crouched like a predator, breathing hard, eyes narrowed in rage and betrayal.

Jason didn’t move. Didn’t flinch.

“…Kid.”

Byte’s face twisted. Tears mixed with fury.

“You said snacks. You said friend.”

Jason didn’t deny it.

“I didn’t know they were gonna lock you up. I didn’t know they were gonna treat you like—like a thing.”

Byte stepped closer.

“You’re like them.”

Jason’s jaw tightened. “No. I’m like you. More than you know.”

Byte’s hands trembled.

Then, silently, he turned.

Ran.

Straight for the narrow tunnel he’d spotted days ago—too small for adults, too forgotten for alarms.

Jason didn’t stop him.

---

Outside, Byte moved like a shadow, faster than any eight-year-old should’ve been.

His heart pounded.

His legs burned.

But his rage made him faster.

---

He didn’t make it all the way to Crime Alley.

Because halfway there, beneath a rusted fire escape, he saw them.

Harley.

And Joker.

Harley saw him first.

“BABYBUG!”

Byte launched into her arms, gripping her so tightly she staggered back laughing and crying at the same time.

“I missed you!” he sobbed, angry tears spilling down his cheeks. “They locked me in a white box and called me a thing and I was so scared!”

Joker knelt beside them, his grin cracked and wild. “You didn’t just escape, did you?”

Byte wiped his face on Harley’s shoulder and growled.

“I beat them. All of them. Except Jason. He didn’t fight.”

Joker’s smile sharpened. “That’s my little hellbug.”

Harley cupped his face gently. “You okay now, baby?”

Byte’s lips curled in a snarl.

“I hate Batman. But I’m not scared of him anymore.”

He pulled his hoodie up tighter, eyes glowing.

“He made a mistake.”

---

In the Batcave, Bruce stared at the chaos. His team groaned around him.

Webs. Bruises. Glitter.

Silence.

Only Jason stood upright, watching the exit tunnel.

“He’s not coming back,” Jason said.

Bruce clenched his fists.

“Then we go to him.”

Chapter Text

Back in their hideout—tucked behind shattered fairground rides and booby-trapped alleys—Harley Quinn patched up her spider-cub with gentle hands and a lot of glittery gauze. Byte sat in her lap, sniffling, eyes still glowing faintly under the old circus lights.

Joker paced nearby like a restless hyena, flipping a butterfly knife between his fingers.

"You say he screamed?" Joker asked, voice unusually sharp.

Byte nodded. “Like I was a monster.”

Harley’s jaw tightened. “You’re not the monster, babybug. They are.”

She kissed the top of his messy hair. “They don’t understand you like we do.”

Byte looked up, his voice trembling and low. “They said I used to be someone else. Before the Pit. Before I woke up in the dark.”

Harley blinked. Joker froze.

He hadn’t said that part before.

Byte continued, curling his fingers around the webbing at his wrists. “But I don’t remember. I don’t want to be who they think I was. I like me. I like now.”

Harley pulled him closer. “Then this is who you are, sugarplum. Our little Byte. Bug of mischief. Prince of pranks.”

Joker gave a rare soft grin, crouching beside them. “And heir to a glorious empire of chaos.”

Byte’s grin returned slowly.

Broken, bruised, but never gone.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay.”

---

Meanwhile, the Batcave was silent except for quiet pain.

Dick sat with a wrapped rib. Steph had an ice pack on her neck. Tim was still pulling glitter out of his hair. Damian sulked with a split lip, arms crossed.

Jason leaned against the wall, arms folded.

“Kid fought like a demon,” he muttered. “He didn’t hold back. He hates us now.”

“No,” Bruce corrected. “He fears us. And now that fear’s turned into anger.”

Tim looked up from the cracked monitor. “Which makes him unpredictable.”

Stephanie’s voice was soft. “We tried everything.”

“Everything except understanding,” Jason said. “We don’t know who he was. We can’t offer him comfort. They can.”

The room fell into a guilty hush.

Batman’s voice cut through it like a razor.

“Then we take him back.”

Jason’s glare was sharp. “So you can put him in another white box?”

Bruce didn’t answer.

Because even he didn’t know anymore if he wanted to save Byte...

…or fix him.

---

Back in the shadows of Gotham, Byte stood atop a crumbling billboard next to Joker and Harley, the wind rustling his hoodie and loose curls.

Below, Gotham moved like a restless beast.

A place of villains.

Of madness.

Of home.

“Time to announce you’re back,” Joker said, pulling out a can of purple spray paint.

Byte nodded and took it, climbing up the metal scaffolding until he was right under the blinking neon light.

He scrawled big jagged words across the billboard.

> “I’M NOT YOUR HERO. I’M THEIRS. - BYTE”

Purple paint. Spider legs curling from each letter. Glitter bombs webbed under the sign ready to burst.

Harley clapped. Joker laughed.

And Byte smiled—

because chaos had claimed him now.

And he wasn't going back.

Chapter Text

Gotham was never quiet—but the Joker’s lair tonight thrummed with something livelier than chaos.

Celebration.

Their little Byte was back.

Firecrackers popped in the alley outside. Harley baked a glitter-frosted cake with “Welcome Home Bugboy!” scrawled in pink icing. Joker tuned an old piano to nothing but sharp keys, creating a symphony of discordant joy.

The rogues were back in their groove.

But Byte wasn’t smiling.

Not yet.

---

In the far corner of the hideout, crouched on a twisted chandelier, Byte watched the henchmen Joker had summoned.

Four of them.

Three he liked fine.

One he hated.

He didn’t know why.

Maybe it was the smell. Not just bad breath or sweat—but something rotten, like lies under old skin.

Byte narrowed his eyes.

The man’s name was Chuck.

He’d worked for Joker before Byte ever existed, wore a bulletproof vest under his Hawaiian shirt, and always laughed too hard at the boss’s jokes. Joker liked him enough.

But Byte?

Byte watched.

Byte listened.

And Byte waited.

---

It happened when Harley called for candles and Joker got distracted with making a “Boom Boom Confetti Gun.”

Chuck moved toward Harley’s bag.

He thought no one saw.

He was wrong.

Byte dropped from above without a sound—legs bent like a spider, teeth bared.

Chuck turned.

And Byte bit.

Hard.

Right on the wrist.

Chuck screamed, stumbling back, knocking over a crate of paint cans. Everyone turned—Joker, Harley, the other goons.

Chuck gasped, eyes bulging. “WHAT THE—HE BIT ME?!”

Byte just tilted his head, confused. “You smell like betrayal.”

Chuck’s veins darkened.

His legs buckled.

His whole body convulsed.

Harley gasped.

One of the henchmen screamed.

And Byte… Byte just watched with glitter on his cheeks and curiosity in his eyes.

“…Oops,” he said.

Then he laughed.

A bubbling, broken, manic laugh that echoed off the walls like fireworks gone sideways.

Chuck collapsed.

Foam at the mouth.

Twitching.

Then still.

---

Silence.

Then Joker clapped.

“Awwww, chip off the ol’ molar!” he howled. “Venomous! You didn’t tell us you had extras, Bugsy!”

Byte grinned wide. “I didn’t know I could do that.”

Harley stared, frozen for a second—then smiled. A little unsure. But proud.

“My baby’s got fangs!”

Byte wiped blood from his lips, giggling. “Does that make me dangerous now?”

Joker bent down beside the body and patted Chuck’s shoulder with mock sympathy.

“Kid, you just made your first kill. On instinct. You know what that means?”

Byte’s eyes sparkled. “I’m really one of us now?”

Joker’s grin nearly split his face. “No, no, no—*

You’re better.*

You’re my heir.”

---

Byte didn’t sleep that night.

He sat on the windowsill with his knees hugged to his chest, glowing eyes reflecting the city lights, and his bite still burning with pride.

A strange buzzing filled his chest—not guilt. Not fear.

Power.

And something in him whispered:

“Don’t ever let them cage you again.”

Chapter Text

Gotham’s underbelly pulsed with unease.

People whispered about the tiny terror haunting Crime Alley—about a child in a tattered hoodie who dropped from above like a ghost and vanished just as quickly. Some said he laughed like the Joker. Others swore his eyes glowed like a demon’s. A few unlucky ones never got to say anything at all.

Because if you called him a freak…

If you tried to fight back…

You didn’t walk away.

---

Jason Todd crouched on the fire escape, watching the alley below.

There he was.

Byte.

Spinning lazily from a long strand of web, upside down, swinging back and forth as he hummed to himself. Below him, a thug from Falcone’s crew was webbed to a dumpster, face pale, eyes wide in paralyzed fear.

Byte dropped beside him with a grin full of baby teeth and danger.

“You called me a brat,” Byte chirped. “You know what happens to people who say mean things?”

The man whimpered.

Byte leaned in close.

“I bite.”

---

Jason dropped down before things could escalate further.

“Hey, bug.”

Byte froze, nostrils flaring.

He sniffed the air—recognizing the scent.

Then slowly turned, eyes glowing.

“Red Hood.”

Jason raised both hands. “Not here to fight.”

Byte didn’t relax.

But he didn’t strike either.

“Why’d you come?”

Jason pulled a crumpled plastic bag from his jacket. The smell of sugar hit the air.

“I brought snacks.”

Byte’s eyes lit up—but only for a second. He snatched the bag, tearing it open like a raccoon, inspecting the contents.

Sour gummies.

Pocky.

Chocolate-covered marshmallows.

And hot fries.

His favorite.

He stuffed a marshmallow in his mouth and spoke through it. “I thought you were with the Bat.”

“I’m with me. And right now, I’m with you.”

Byte narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

Jason sighed, sitting on a crate.

“Because I don’t think you’re a monster. Even if everyone else does.”

Byte crunched a fry, contemplative.

Then suddenly stood and turned to climb the building wall again.

“You’re not not a monster either,” he called over his shoulder, giggling. “But you smell like you want to be nice. So… maybe I won’t bite you.”

Jason watched him disappear into the shadows.

No web.

No sound.

Just gone.

---

Back at the abandoned fairground, Joker and Harley looked up as Byte burst through the window and zipped into the rafters, carrying the snack bag like a stolen treasure.

He didn’t say a word.

He just clambered into his web nest strung high between beams—made of frayed blankets, stolen clothes, crime scene tape, and old wires. It shimmered with glitter dust and the occasional sharp object webbed into the silk for fun.

Byte curled up, tearing open the hot fries and licking the spice from his fingers.

Safe.

Fed.

Feared.

It was perfect.

He whispered softly to himself as he chewed:

“My city. My rules.”

And somewhere far below, a siren wailed through the Gotham dark—pointless against a predator who had already claimed the shadows as his own.

Chapter Text

The next day, Crime Alley was quieter.

Rumors had started to crawl through Gotham's criminal underworld like cockroaches under a spotlight. Whispers about a kid—the kid. The one with the webbed traps, the venomous bite, and the Joker’s laugh stitched into his tiny lungs.

Some said he was a ghost born of the Lazarus Pit.

Others said he was Joker and Harley’s actual child, raised in blood and glitter.

But Jason Todd knew the truth was stranger than either.

---

He walked through the alley slowly, boots crunching broken glass, a paper bag of snacks in one hand, and a tension in his gut he couldn’t shake.

Because the bodies were getting more frequent.

The kid wasn’t just scaring people anymore.

He was making statements.

Jason found one victim strung up in a web between two lampposts—alive, barely, but left there as a warning. Lips sealed with silk. Arms pinned. A glittery note stuck to his chest:

> “BE NICE OR BE DEAD – 🕷BYTE”

Jason sighed and turned away.

He didn’t call Batman.

Not yet.

---

Up on the rooftop above, Byte watched, crouched low, licking powdered candy off his fingers. His hoodie was dirtied from crawling through vents and bloodstained at the sleeves—not that he cared.

His left hand was coated in dry red.

Not his blood.

His favorite hand.

His biting hand.

He wiggled the fingers, smiling.

“Red right hand,” he whispered, like it was a secret spell. “He talks to me.”

---

Back in the fairground lair, Harley was decorating a new booby trap near the entrance with pink glitter bombs when Byte swung in, upside down, still giggling to himself.

“Guess what, Ma?”

Harley turned, grinning. “Tell me, Babybug.”

“I webbed a man to a fire escape and glued his phone to his forehead! Then I made him call his boss and cry for help!”

Harley cackled. “That’s hilarious, sugar! Classic Clown baby chaos!”

Joker leaned out from a rollercoaster car where he’d been rewiring a flamethrower into the track. “Did he bleed?”

Byte nodded proudly. “Only from the bite. He called me ‘freak.’ My red hand wanted to.”

Joker’s grin was slow and sharp. “That’s my little nightmare.”

---

Later that night, Jason returned.

This time, Byte didn’t greet him. He just watched from a shadow.

Jason set down a pizza box and sat cross-legged on a milk crate.

“I know you’re there.”

Silence.

Jason opened the box. Steam curled up—pepperoni, extra cheese.

Byte’s nose twitched.

Jason waited.

Then he said, softly, “I saw what you did to the guy on 12th Street. You could’ve just scared him.”

A giggle from the shadows.

“I did! He screamed a lot.”

Jason didn’t laugh.

“That’s not the same as justice.”

Byte dropped down behind him with no sound, perching on a trash can.

“Justice?” he mocked, tilting his head. “That’s what the Bat says when he breaks your ribs and locks you in a cage.”

Jason turned. His face was tired. Older than Byte remembered from the first time.

“You’re becoming like him.”

“Good!” Byte chirped, biting into a slice. “But better. No rules. Just me.”

He wiggled his red fingers.

“My hand decides. Not Bats. Not rules. Me.”

Jason looked at the small boy—and saw the lines already drawn too deep. Saw the venom behind the grin.

He still didn’t call Bruce.

But he whispered, “I’m sorry, kid.”

Byte froze mid-chew.

“For what?”

Jason shook his head, standing slowly.

“For not saving you sooner.”

Byte didn’t reply.

He just pulled the pizza box into his arms, retreated up the wall, and vanished again into the night.

---

High above Gotham, webbed into the underbelly of a broken billboard, Byte curled into his nest, clutching the warm box to his chest.

His eyes glowed.

His fingers twitched.

And his red right hand itched for more.

Chapter Text

Bruce Wayne hadn't slept in two days.

Not since Byte’s last “game.”

A judge’s car, webbed five stories up in a parking garage. No driver inside—just a bag of cotton candy stuffed with teeth, and a note stuck to the windshield that read:

> “TAG! YOU’RE IT! 😝 – BYTE”

Worse still was the judge’s body—found later that night, giggling hysterically despite his broken jaw and torn vocal cords. Fear gas? No. Scarecrow was in Blackgate.

This was Byte’s own brand of madness.

---

Batman stood in the Batcave, red-eyed, surrounded by crime scene photos and traffic cam footage. Surveillance was useless. Byte knew how to avoid every camera, every pressure plate. He was born in the Pit, bred in chaos, and raised by Gotham’s worst.

And now… he was one of them.

Rising fast.

---

"Sir."
Alfred’s voice, soft and strained. “Commissioner Gordon is on the comm.”

Bruce exhaled through his nose. “Put him through.”

The comm crackled. “We need to talk about Byte,” Gordon said without preamble. “He’s not just a threat. He’s a legend now. Half the rogues gallery are cheering for him.”

“I know.”

“There’s a rumor the Penguin wants to offer him an alliance. Riddler sent him a riddle-ball gift. Even Two-Face called him ‘charmingly lethal.’ He’s eight years old, Bruce.”

“I know.”

“We’ve got officers refusing to patrol in his zones. Too many bodies. Too many bites.”

Bruce stayed silent.

“Arkham’s made a cell,” Gordon said, voice quieter now. “Kid-sized. Reinforced. Isolated. I didn’t approve it. But it’s there.”

Batman’s jaw tightened.

“He’s a child.”

“He’s killed six people, Bruce.”

“Still a child.”

There was a pause.

“Find a way,” Gordon said. “Before the city decides how to do it for you.”

---

Later that night, from atop a gargoyle, Batman watched Gotham’s skyline burn with neon and smoke.

The villains were louder now.

Bolder.

Because of Byte.

He saw it in their grins. Their giddy war cries. Their trust in chaos.

Byte wasn’t a sidekick. He wasn’t even a weapon.

He was becoming a symbol.

Of freedom.

Of madness.

Of everything Bruce had tried to contain.

---

Back at the fairground, Byte dangled upside down by a single thread from a ferris wheel. He watched Joker and Harley laugh as they played poker with explosives.

But his mind was elsewhere.

His games had gotten boring.

He wanted more.

Bigger streets.

New prey.

He wanted Gotham.

Not just Crime Alley.

Not just Batman.

All of it.

And in the back of his skull, in that twitchy spider part of him that never rested, something buzzed.

Not a voice.

Not a memory.

But a need.

To hunt.

To bite.

To play.

---

Far below the fairground, in a cold, white cell beneath Arkham Asylum, a red light blinked on above a door built for someone far too small.

And Batman—watching from the rooftops—felt something break inside him.

Because he had once saved the world.

And now, he couldn’t even save a boy.

Chapter Text

The moon over Gotham looked cracked that night.

Like something sacred had splintered.

Like the sky itself was afraid.

---

Harleen Quinzel screamed like a banshee as Batman dragged her out of the ruins of a candy-trapped hotel. Her pigtails were scorched, her glitter running in streaks of tears and smoke, and her hammer—still sparking from her last swing—lay in two pieces beside her.

“Let me GO, you caped FREAK!” she roared, struggling like a wildcat in a straightjacket. “He needs me! You don’t get it—he’s just a baby! My baby—!”

Batman didn’t speak. He just clicked a remote, and the Batwing opened above them.

It was over in seconds.

Harley Quinn was gone—sedated, cuffed, and locked in Arkham’s newest wing, not far from the cell meant for Byte.

---

Across the city, in the twisted playground of an abandoned toy factory, Byte froze mid-swing. He was stringing up a GCPD drone by its own wires when his head snapped up—his breath hitching.

His chest stung.

His fingers twitched.

He knew.

Something was wrong.

Then Joker’s voice came from behind him, low and grim for once. “They took her.”

Byte turned slowly, eyes wide, already glowing.

“What?”

“Batsy snatched your mama,” Joker said, holding out a burnt scrap of Harley’s coat. “Straight to Arkham.”

Byte didn’t cry.

Not this time.

He screamed.

A raw, inhuman wail that shook the rafters and shattered the glass of the broken toy display cases.

Then he turned to Joker, hands balled into fists. “I want to hurt them. All of them. I want Gotham to BLEED.”

Joker smiled like a man who had just handed over the world’s last bomb to the only person reckless enough to drop it.

“Then let’s throw a party, son.”

---

The explosion rocked Gotham’s Financial District at dawn.

A glitter bomb the size of a van ripped through the front of Gotham Bank, showering the sky with burning confetti and poisoned smoke. Byte swung in through the fire with a manic laugh, weaving webs between falling beams and security lasers.

He danced on the vault door.

He webbed the guards to the ceiling.

He used a venom bite on the bank manager, who tried to press the silent alarm.

Joker followed behind, dropping smoke bombs and juggling live grenades.

And by the end of it, over $10 million was missing.

Stolen.

Gone.

---

Batman arrived too late.

All that remained was a singed card stuck to the bank vault with webbing:

> “YOU TOOK MY MOMMY, I TOOK YOUR MONEY 😘 — BYTE”

---

By nightfall, Gotham was in lockdown.

Citizens whispered the name Byte like it was a curse.

Every villain in the city hailed him like a prince of chaos.

Riddler sent a congratulatory riddle.

Penguin offered protection.

Even Black Mask sent a cigar box full of diamonds with a note: “Next time, blow up a courthouse. I hate paperwork.”

But Byte didn’t smile.

Not yet.

Not until he got her back.

He stared at the skyline from a crooked clocktower, red eyes glowing in the dark.

“My turn,” he whispered. “You get to cry now, Batman.”

Chapter Text

Robin should’ve known better.

The trap wasn’t even subtle—just glitter across the rooftop, candy wrappers placed in a perfect spiral, and a trail of red silk leading to a rusted church tower on the edge of Crime Alley.

But Damian Wayne never backed down from a challenge.

Especially not from a bug.

---

The moment Robin stepped inside the tower, the door slammed behind him.

The floor gave way.

And a sharp zing! filled the air as wires snapped into place, pulling him into a clear glass cage suspended high above a spiraling webbed chamber, filled with dangling knives and spinning clown masks.

Byte dropped from the ceiling upside-down like a spider god, grinning ear to ear.

“TAG! YOU’RE MINE!”

---

In the Batcave, alarms blared. Batman stared at the monitor as the screen lit up with Byte’s latest broadcast.

A grainy, blood-tinted video feed flickered to life.

Damian, unconscious, slumped in a crystalline cage. Below him: a pit of sharp blades, swinging lazily. The entire thing was webbed into a twisted version of a nest.

And sitting atop a glittery throne of old electronics was Byte, in full Joker-style makeup, chewing licorice.

Behind him, Joker danced barefoot on a piano, playing dissonant keys with his toes.

“Hiya, Batsy!” Byte sang, waving.

“I’ve got your baby bird, all snuggly in my Nest of Knives!”

Then Joker leaned in close to the camera, face eerily calm.

“Trade ya. One squawking sidekick... for my sweet little harlequin.”

---

Batman clenched his fists.

“No.”

“I’m not negotiating with maniacs,” he growled.

“Sure you are!” Byte giggled. “Or are you okay with Robin going splat on live TV?”

Behind him, Joker dangled a remote lazily.

“Tick-tock, Daddy Bat. We’ve already started the psychological dismantling.”

The feed showed Joker whispering to an awakening Damian, voice too low to catch—but the look on Robin’s face twisted into horror as he snarled through the glass.

---

In the shadows of the Batcave, Jason Todd watched with crossed arms and a sneer on his lips.

“You won’t trade,” he muttered.

Bruce didn’t respond.

“You’ll pick the city. Just like you did with me.”

“Jason—”

“Don’t,” Red Hood snapped. “You left me in a coffin. You’re about to leave him in a cage.”

Bruce’s silence said more than words ever could.

Because even now—he didn’t know what to do.

He couldn’t let Harley out. It would validate every fear Byte had. Every twisted lesson Joker taught him.

But Damian… Damian was his son.

---

In the Nest of Knives, Damian slowly stirred, eyes opening fully now. He spotted Byte and spat blood to the side.

“You’re insane.”

Byte grinned wide, webbing across the front of the cage like a curtain.

“Nope! I’m custom-made, baby.”

---

Outside, thunder rumbled.

In Gotham, the war had already begun.

Chapter Text

The days blurred together.

Damian didn’t know how long he’d been in the glass cage, only that his reflection was starting to look less like a Robin and more like a ghost.

No food.

No rest.

Just Joker’s voice.

Endless. Choking. Sweetly cruel.

“You’re the good son, right? The perfect soldier?” Joker crooned, circling the cage with slow, taunting steps. “How’s that working out for you, birdie?”

Sometimes Joker would vanish for hours. But then he’d return with recordings—Batman’s silence, Gordon’s press conferences, videos of Gotham on fire.

And worst of all—Byte.

Swinging through the skyline, laughing as he webbed up an entire GCPD cruiser and dropped it into the river. Setting off fireworks above the mayor’s gala. Biting a news anchor on live television and yelling, “FOR MOMMY!”

---

Damian didn’t scream.

Didn’t cry.

But his silence was cracking.

Byte knew.

He watched from a throne made of shredded bat costumes and candy boxes, legs dangling, red eyes fixed on his prisoner.

At first, he had come to gloat.

Then… he came just to sit.

To watch.

---

Byte missed her.

His Harley.

His Mommy.

The way she laughed when he hissed at pigeons. The way she tucked him in with a hammer under his pillow. The way she held him when the buzzing in his brain got too loud.

She would’ve made Batman pay already.

She wouldn’t have left Damian breathing.

She wouldn’t—

Byte shot up and screamed, webbing the entire tower ceiling in a fit of fury, sending broken knives and candy shards raining down like hail. He bolted through the rafters, crashing through a stained-glass window and vanishing into Gotham’s night.

---

That night, Gotham burned.

Again.

---

Byte webbed two banks shut with hostages inside, laughing as SWAT tried to untangle the silk. He let loose Joker gas in a crowded subway, just enough to make people laugh until they collapsed. Then he set the zoo’s penguins free and strapped tiny explosive hats to their heads—“Waddlers of Doom!” he called them.

---

And still… Batman didn’t trade.

Didn’t come.

---

In the Batcave, Bruce watched Damian’s feed again. He saw the boy barely sitting up, watched Joker dance behind him in a bloody clown suit, and Byte—off in the corner—screaming into a pillow.

“Any leads?” Bruce asked, voice low.

“None,” Red Robin said quietly. “Byte’s getting harder to track. He changes patterns every few hours.”

Jason stood beside them, arms folded.

“You’re losing them both.”

Bruce didn’t answer.

---

In the Nest of Knives, Damian stirred when a hand tapped the glass.

Byte.

He tilted his head. “You look sick.”

Damian glared, voice hoarse. “You’ll lose her. You know that, don’t you? The longer this goes on, the more likely she’ll never come back.”

Byte’s face twitched.

“You’re lying.”

“You think Joker’s really gonna trade me for Harley? He’s having fun. He’ll never let her out.”

Byte stared for a long, long moment.

Then smiled.

“Then maybe I don’t need to ask anymore.”

---

Gotham's villains rallied behind Byte now—not just as a symbol, but as a leader.

And in the shadows of Arkham Asylum, Joker whistled as he wound a jack-in-the-box made of bones.

The city had become a battlefield.

And somewhere, deep in the cracks of Byte’s mind…

A new voice whispered.

> "You don’t need heroes."

> "You don’t need anyone."

Chapter Text

Damian Wayne had stopped counting the days.

He only knew it had been a week since his capture.

A week without food.

A week of Joker’s voice echoing in his ears, of his father’s silence hanging in the air like a noose.

He was curled on the cold glass floor of the cage, too weak to stand, his limbs trembling. His body bruised, his lips dry, and his mind… fraying at the edges.

Every hour, Joker returned with a new taunt.

"Still no Bat-Dad," the Clown Prince hummed, skipping in circles around the cage. "Guess you're not worth the ransom price."

Damian didn’t answer.

Not anymore.

Words were wasted here.

---

And Joker loved it.

He crouched beside the cage now, one eye twitching with glee as he pressed a single peanut butter cup against the glass.

“Y’know, if I’d raised you,” Joker cooed, “you’d already be outta here. No cape. No leash. Just a knife, a laugh, and a lot of boom."

He slowly ate the candy. Loudly.

"Bet Bat-Daddy’s sitting in that big cave of his, brooding over the greater good instead of coming to save his own flesh and blood. Some father."

Damian clenched his fists, weakly.

But the cage held.

The silence deepened.

---

Across Gotham, Byte raged.

The spider-child moved like a hurricane, every act of chaos louder than the last.

First, he webbed a line of luxury cars together and strung them from the overpass like grotesque Christmas ornaments. Then, he climbed to the top of Gotham’s historic Justice Spire—a monument built to honor the city’s so-called heroes—and planted a real bomb inside its clockwork heart.

He waited.

Waited for someone to stop him.

When no one came?

He detonated it.

The tower collapsed into fire and smoke, raining rubble down on the streets below.

And Byte laughed from the wreckage.

"YOUR JUSTICE IS A JOKE!"

Then came the gas.

Byte dropped canisters of Joker toxin into Gotham’s wealthiest neighborhoods—kicking them into yards, launching them off rooftops, and webbing entire cocktail parties inside domes of haze and giggles.

People screamed through laughter.

Children cried as their parents howled madly.

And Byte?

He watched it all with wide, hollow eyes.

---

“Do you see me now?” he whispered to the sky. “I’m making noise. I’m making you look. Why won’t you come?!”

---

Batman was watching.

He saw the smoke.

He saw the bodies.

He heard the laughter.

But he still hadn’t moved.

Not toward Damian.

Not toward Byte.

---

“You think he’ll save you?” Joker asked Damian later, dragging a metal chair into the cage room. “You’re not his first dead Robin, y’know. Ask Jason. Or… better yet, don’t.”

Damian turned his face away.

Joker smiled and leaned close.

“That’s it. Give up. Just like your Daddy gave up on you.”

---

And in the corner of the room, Byte watched it all.

Still.

Silent.

He didn’t laugh anymore.

He just watched, twitching fingers digging into his webbing like claws.

He wasn’t sure what was worse—that Joker was breaking Damian… or that he couldn’t tell if it bothered him.

---

Outside, Gotham braced itself.

Because Byte wasn’t just Gotham’s newest villain anymore.

He was its sharpest blade.

And it had no idea where he’d strike next.

Chapter Text

Bruce Wayne hadn’t slept in four days.

Not truly.

Not since Byte’s broadcast.

Not since Damian—his son—disappeared from the grid and into the madness of Joker’s warped hands.

Each night he stared at the footage: Damian slumped in the glass cage, eyes hollow, Joker circling like a predator. And always in the corner—Byte. Watching.

Silent.

Still.

Wrong.

Every scream from the streets of Gotham echoed louder in his head. Every explosion, every cloud of toxin, every crimson web strung across the city whispered the same thing:

You waited too long.

---

Commissioner Gordon slammed a file onto the rooftop table.

"You’re kidding me," he snapped. "You’re still not going in?"

Batman stood stiff, the cape barely moving in the wind.

"I can’t give into their demands," Bruce said quietly. "If we set that precedent—"

"Your son is rotting in a glass cage!" Gordon shouted. "And the other one—your spider boy—he’s tearing the city apart looking for his mother! You think this is about rules now?!"

Bruce said nothing.

Gordon’s face hardened.

“Fine. Then the GCPD will handle it. With or without the Bat.”

---

That night, behind closed doors, Harley Quinn was released from Arkham Asylum.

No trial.

No press.

No escort.

Just a whispered deal passed between trembling officers and signed in shaky ink.

Byte’s demands had been met.

Because Gotham couldn’t take any more of his wrath.

---

Harley returned to Crime Alley with a limp and a snarl, bandages on her ribs and glitter under her nails. Joker met her with a spinning hug and a proud cackle.

Byte didn’t run to her.

He leapt, like a creature possessed, wrapping her in silk and sobs.

“Mama,” he choked. “Mama, you’re back.”

She kissed his webbed face, ruffling his hair. “Course I’m back, baby bug. Mama don’t quit.”

---

And not long after… Damian was dumped like garbage in the middle of the alleyway.

Unconscious.

Bruised.

Barely breathing.

A torn note was stapled to his cape:

> “Trade complete. Thanks for playing! Love, The Byte Family 💋🕷️”

---

Red Hood arrived first.

He hadn’t even been looking—just patrolling by habit—when he saw the crumpled body in the rain.

“Damian?!”

Jason dropped to his knees, checking his pulse, muttering curses under his breath as he lifted the broken boy into his arms.

He didn’t take him to the Batcave.

He didn’t call Bruce.

He took Damian to his own safehouse.

Far away from caves and cowls and cowards.

Jason dressed the wounds himself.

Damian woke up once, muttering in a hoarse voice.

“Father… didn’t come.”

Jason looked down, jaw clenched.

“No, kid. He didn’t.”

---

Back in the Nest, Byte stood on the roof with Harley.

His arms were covered in blood-red webbing. Crimson strands ran like rivers down the sides of buildings. Bats—real ones—were caught and strung upside down in grotesque parodies of his nightmares.

Harley smiled, stroking his hair.

“You did good, baby. Mommy’s so proud.”

Byte didn’t smile.

He just whispered:

“He didn’t save him.”

And for the first time, his voice carried pity.

Chapter Text

The sky over Gotham remained dark, but for the first time in weeks—it was quiet.

No bombs.

No gas.

No news of glitter-caked corpses or webbed civilians hanging like piñatas.

Only whispers.

The calm after the bite.

And the city knew why.

It wasn’t the Bat.

It wasn’t justice.

It was because Byte had gotten his mother back.

---

Deep in the rusted ribs of Crime Alley, inside an abandoned bell tower dressed in graffiti and smoke-stained drapes, Byte spun.

Not webs to trap or trick or kill—this time, he wove with purpose.

Silk glistened in moonlight as the spiderling scurried and spun, crawling along the rafters like a fevered artist. Crisscrossed threads ran from broken beams to iron bars, strengthened with strands tougher than steel. Reinforced with cable cords, bones, even bits of kevlar taken from a downed SWAT uniform.

Byte’s nest was growing.

Bigger.

Stronger.

Safe.

For the first time in his short, warped memory, he was making something that wasn’t meant to hurt.

It was meant to hold.

---

Harley poked her head in that night with a tub of ice cream in one hand and a crowbar in the other.

“Whatcha makin’, babybug?” she asked, grinning.

Byte grinned back, eyes glowing faintly in the dark.

“For you,” he chirped. “And Daddy too. It’s soft. But it bites if strangers come.”

Harley stepped forward into the nest.

And her boots didn’t sink.

They rested, buoyed gently by a webbed cradle of silver and crimson.

“Whoa…” Harley blinked. “This is like, fancy Spider IKEA.”

Byte beamed, crawling back down the wall to curl beside her. “I made it so we could all snuggle.”

Joker showed up later—grumbling about his “delicate clown spine” until he dropped into the nest with an undignified plop and declared it “better than any padded cell.”

Wrapped in webbing, the three of them tangled together like some twisted fairy tale family.

“Can we stay like this forever?” Byte mumbled sleepily into Harley’s shoulder.

“Course we can, pumpkin,” she whispered, stroking his curls.

“Forever or until we blow up the Iceberg Lounge again,” Joker muttered with a yawn. “Whichever comes first.”

---

Outside, Gotham watched.

Nervous.

Waiting.

The crime stopped—but not because Batman won.

There were no dramatic rooftop speeches, no arrests.

Just a hush.

A deep inhale.

Because Gotham knew what this calm really meant:

The spiderling was resting. Not retreating.

---

Commissioner Gordon sipped his fourth cup of coffee that night, staring at a map of recent incidents. Each red pin marked a Byte attack. Each was chaotic. Brutal. Precise.

But the pins stopped the moment Harley was released.

He rubbed his temples, glancing toward the phone.

He hadn’t heard from Batman in three days.

---

Meanwhile, in the safehouse, Jason watched over Damian.

The kid still hadn’t said much.

But his eyes were different.

Sharper.

Colder.

Jason knew that look.

It was the same one he’d worn after the Pit.

---

And in the velvet dark of the webbed nest, Byte twitched in his sleep.

Dreaming of fire.

Of broken glass and screaming bats.

And the sound of Harley’s lullaby humming beneath it all.

Chapter Text

The safehouse was quiet.

Tucked in the Narrows, behind rusting fire escapes and old security gates, it didn’t look like much. But to Jason Todd, it was home. And now, it was Damian’s too.

The boy sat curled on the couch like a wounded animal, swaddled in Jason’s old hoodie, staring blankly at the static-flickering TV screen.

He hadn’t said more than a few words since waking up.

Didn’t scream.

Didn’t cry.

Didn’t ask for him.

Jason leaned against the kitchen doorframe, watching him carefully. He’d bandaged the cracked ribs, cleaned the split lip, and replaced the Arkham-soiled clothes with soft cotton sweats. He made grilled cheese and hot cocoa, but Damian barely touched them.

Jason had been this kind of quiet before. He recognized it too well.

It wasn’t shock.

It was grief.

Not for himself—but for what was lost.

For trust.

---

“You can stay as long as you want,” Jason said, breaking the silence.

Damian didn’t look at him, but his shoulders twitched. “I’m not going back.”

Jason walked over and sat on the coffee table, facing the boy. “You don’t have to.”

“I mean it.” Damian’s voice was sharper now, brittle glass under pressure. “He left me there. He chose Gotham over me.”

Jason didn’t argue.

Didn’t defend Bruce.

Didn’t tell Damian he was wrong.

Because he wasn’t.

“Yeah,” Jason said simply. “I know what that feels like.”

Damian looked up at that.

And for the first time, something passed between them—raw, unspoken, real.

Jason reached into the mini fridge and pulled out a Gatorade. “You want the bed or the couch tonight?”

Damian blinked.

“…Bed.”

Jason tossed him the bottle and stood. “Alright, short stack. But no stealing my socks. I count those.”

---

Meanwhile, high above the city in the Batcave, Bruce was unraveling.

The screen flickered again and again, frozen on two dates.

Harley Quinn’s Arkham release.

Damian Wayne’s return.

Same timestamp.

Same hour.

He clenched his fists, teeth grinding.

It wasn’t a coincidence.

He had waited too long. Hesitated. Tried to play by rules Byte didn’t follow.

And now Harley had saved Damian—not the Batman.

Byte’s message was clear:

> “You had a choice. You chose wrong.”

---

Alfred entered the cave carrying a tray of untouched dinner.

“Master Bruce,” he said gently. “You should eat something.”

Bruce didn’t answer.

Just stared at the screen.

At Damian’s hollow eyes in the footage.

At Byte—his lost spider—sitting calmly beside Joker, curled like a contented cub beside a lion.

He’d lost them both.

---

Back in the Nest, Byte sat perched above the old cathedral window. The moon cast his silhouette like a grotesque gargoyle, tiny limbs curled in a web of shimmering silk.

Joker was humming.

Harley danced below, bare feet tapping against stone, her laugh bouncing off the walls like wind chimes made of madness.

And Byte smiled.

Not because he was happy.

But because he had won.

He was the Prince of Gotham now.

Chaos was his kingdom.

Pain his language.

And Joker and Harley? They were the crown he wore.

Chapter Text

Gotham’s whispers turned into murmurs. Murmurs into talk. Talk into fear.

Not of Joker.

Not of Harley.

But of the little spider-kid with web traps on streetlamps and razor wire spun through playgrounds.

Byte.

He was no longer just Joker’s pet project or Harley’s adopted bug.
He had become something… bigger.
A symbol.

---

It started with the henchmen.

Clown goons, Iceberg Lounge exiles, Scarecrow dropouts—they started coming to him first, not Joker. Seeking approval from the eight-year-old who once spun webbed cocoons from alley trash. Byte would sit in his high, crooked throne of scavenged furniture and steel wire, picking his teeth with a broken batarang while grown criminals waited in line for his nod.

He rarely spoke.

He didn’t have to.

A flick of his fingers. A webbed-up briefcase of stolen blueprints. A bite that left one poor fool foaming and blind in one eye. Gotham got the message.

Byte wasn’t playing anymore.

He was building something.

---

“Is it weird I’m kinda proud of him?” Harley asked, sipping coffee from a mug that read #1 Crazy Mom.

Joker, lounging upside down on a couch suspended in Byte’s nest, grinned wide. “Our little monster is starting a movement!”

“Maybe we should call it somethin’,” Harley said, twirling her hair. “Like a Byte-surrection.”

Joker cackled. “That’s my girl! That’s my branding expert!”

---

Byte didn’t call it anything. He didn’t care for names. All he cared about was that Gotham was his now. Not entirely, not yet, but piece by piece, he was weaving it like a spider rethreading a broken web.

Every Bat symbol spray-painted over?

He had it erased.

Every patrol route?

Mapped and hacked.

Every gang who refused to fall in line?

Bitten. Webbed. Burned.

---

But not everyone bowed.

Penguin laughed when he heard rumors of Joker’s “new baby bug.”

Two nights later, the Iceberg Lounge’s central chandelier collapsed under the weight of a massive, fanged spider made of scavenged drones and toxin canisters.

Everyone made it out—except Penguin’s prized penguin, Charlie. Byte webbed him and left him in Gordon’s office with a note:

> “Don’t disrespect royalty. 🕷️”

---

In the Batcave, the board lit up with alerts.

Bruce stood still, watching them spread like a virus. He clenched his fists.

“Byte’s creating factions,” said Tim grimly. “Small ones. Loyal. Fear-driven.”

“He’s building an empire,” Dick added.

Jason leaned back in his chair, boots up. “He is an empire now.”

Bruce didn’t reply. Not for a long time.

Then finally, in a voice barely above a whisper:
“No… he’s a revolution.”

---

Atop a church spire, Byte stood under the storming sky, small hands raised like he could catch the lightning in his palms.

Below, chaos bloomed. His chaos. His city.

Byte didn’t smile.

He didn’t laugh.

He just blinked, face blank.

Then turned back into the shadows of his nest.

He had work to do.

Gotham was only half-bitten.

Chapter Text

Crime Alley was strangely quiet.

Not peaceful—never peaceful—but quiet in the way that made seasoned criminals step lightly and check every shadow. The sort of silence that came just before thunder—or teeth.

Jason Todd knew better than most that Crime Alley was alive. It breathed fear and regret, pulsed with unsolved murders and memories no one wanted. But tonight?

It was playing.

“Tag!” Byte squealed, webbing a grown man’s shoe to the pavement as he darted past him, laughing.

The man screamed, tripped, and faceplanted into a trash bin.

Byte dissolved into laughter, his small, fanged grin gleaming in the moonlight.

Jason stood in the alley mouth, arms crossed, watching the chaos unfold like a twisted children’s cartoon. He didn’t stop the spider kid. Didn’t try to “correct” him.

Instead, he waited until Byte noticed him.

Which, of course, he did.

“Jayyyyyy-son!” Byte cheered, flipping upside down on a web thread like a yo-yo. “You brought me snacks?”

Jason tossed a paper bag up. Byte caught it mid-air with a little chitter of glee.

“Gummy worms!” Byte squealed. “The blue ones!”

“And a juice box. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

---

A little while later, they sat on a rooftop ledge together.

Jason leaned back against the warm chimney bricks, helmet off, his breath ghosting in the air. Byte sat beside him, cross-legged, gnawing on a gummy like a victorious predator.

“I like it up here,” Byte murmured. “Gotham looks so small. Like a bug.”

Jason glanced at him. “Maybe that’s why you’re so good at controlling it.”

Byte smiled wide.

Then he turned serious.

“I want you to join me,” he said, licking sugar off his fingers. “You get it. You’re not like the others. You don’t lie with your fists.”

Jason didn’t answer immediately. He watched the city lights blink, one by one. Like dying fireflies.

“…I’m not turning you in,” he said softly. “But I’m not handing you the city either.”

Byte tilted his head. “Then what are you doing?”

Jason looked at him.

“Watching. Listening. Maybe helping… but not if it means hurting Robin.”

At that, Byte’s eyes narrowed. His nose wrinkled.

“He doesn’t matter.”

Jason shook his head. “He matters to me.”

---

What neither of them knew—what Jason should’ve known—was that they weren’t alone.

A mile away, hidden in an upper alcove of a neighboring building, Oracle’s drones hummed quietly. Tim, Steph, Dick, and Bruce all stood around the Batcave monitors, eavesdropping.

“Jason’s working with Byte,” Dick said slowly. “He just admitted it.”

“He didn’t say that,” Steph countered. “He said he’s watching. That’s different.”

“Does it matter?” Tim asked. “He’s feeding the kid. Sitting on rooftops like it’s normal. That’s enabling, not saving.”

Bruce’s jaw clenched.

He hadn’t said a word.

---

Back at Jason’s safehouse, Damian stood by the window, fingers twitching.

He’d heard it too. The conversation.

Jason hadn’t hidden the comm feed.

He was rethinking everything.

Justice. Family. The difference between right and wrong.

His father had abandoned him.

Byte had burned half the city and still got hugs.

And Jason—Jason who had every reason to hate the world—was sitting on rooftops with the enemy… because he understood.

Was it really so black and white?

Or had the world been red and bleeding this whole time?

Damian whispered to himself, barely audible:
“Maybe Justice is just a bedtime story Gotham tells itself.”

---

Above it all, Byte watched the stars.

He didn’t understand politics.

Didn’t care about morality.

He just wanted the city.

Wanted it safe for him and Harley.

Wanted to never be locked away again.

Jason didn’t say yes.

But he didn’t say no either.

And that was enough—for now.

The spider crown was heavy on his head.

But Byte wore it like it had always belonged to him.

Even if it came with thorns.

Chapter Text

Gotham burned.

Not in the way a city usually burned, with fire trucks and sirens and tragic headlines the next morning.

No.

This was quieter.

Controlled.

Precise.

Byte moved like a phantom through the city’s veins—sewer grates, tunnels, alleyways, rooftops. His webs stretched from one district to another, not just as weapons or traps anymore, but as warnings.

Territory lines.

Sacred geometry.

The spider had made a kingdom.

---

On the rooftop of the burned-out opera house, Byte stood high above Gotham, silhouetted by the reddish glow of a gas leak fire below. His little hands were outstretched, feeling the vibrations of the web he’d spun across three entire blocks.

His face was blank.

Almost peaceful.

Behind him, Joker approached with a crooked grin and a manila envelope dripping in blood.

“I brought you your fan mail, kiddo,” Joker said, tossing the envelope to Byte’s feet.

Byte didn’t even flinch.

“Three bomb threats, two love letters, one creepy riddle about silk underwear—guess who—and a little note from the mayor’s office.” Joker clicked his teeth. “They’re scared, bug. You did that.”

Byte tilted his head.

“I know,” he said.

And that was all.

---

Across the city, Batgirl and Nightwing swung into an abandoned GCPD evidence building.

Or… what used to be one.

Now it was covered in webbing—heavy, laced with ash and bits of glitter, rigged with Joker gas traps and broken laughter in the form of motion sensors.

A grim message was scrawled across the wall in webbing:

"This city was mine before I was born."

“Jesus,” Nightwing muttered. “He’s not just playing anymore.”

“He thinks he’s meant to do this,” Batgirl said, fingers dancing over her tablet. “The Lazarus Pit didn’t just bring him back. It gave him something twisted. He’s building a mythology around himself.”

“Little god of web and ash,” Nightwing whispered.

---

Damian sat in Jason’s safehouse, watching the city through the window. He had a new set of bruises from training—self-imposed. No one made him do it.

No one told him anything anymore.

He didn’t know whether to feel anger or shame.

Or envy.

Byte was younger, smaller, less trained—and yet somehow... more powerful. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t second-guess. The city bowed to him because he took it.

And maybe, Damian thought bitterly, maybe he was the better Robin all along.

---

Batman stood in the Batcave, staring at two monitors side-by-side:

One showed Gotham’s skyline, blinking with fire-red warnings and spider-shaped tracking markers.

The other showed Peter Parker’s old file.

From another universe.

A forgotten identity. A heroic past. Something good.

A kid who saved people.

A kid who was now a monster in Gotham's web.

Bruce closed the file.

He couldn’t use Peter’s past against him. Not when the boy didn’t even remember who he was.

But maybe...

Just maybe...

He could make him remember.

---

That night, Byte dropped a flaming crate of Joker gas into one of Gotham’s richest neighborhoods. It exploded in the shape of a laughing spider symbol visible from the GCPD tower.

Children cried.

Sirens wailed.

And the city whispered:

> “Byte is God’s mistake—and Gotham’s heir.”

Chapter Text

Deep beneath Wayne Manor, a dark plan took shape.

Byte had become more than a problem. He was a force. An idea. The type of nightmare Gotham whispered about in the hush between explosions and curfews.

Batman stood before a reinforced cell in the cave—a safer, more protected one this time. No traps. No restraints. Just a screen, a projector, and a small webbed boy glaring at him from the ceiling like a coiled spider.

The room was lit only by the flickering image of a video:

Peter Parker.
Smiling. Laughing.
Helping an old woman with groceries.
Fighting beside Iron Man.
Swinging through New York City.

“Do you remember him?” Bruce asked quietly, standing just outside the door. “That’s you. That’s who you were.”

Byte didn’t look at the screen. He hissed, eyes glowing faintly in the dimness.

“He’s dead.” Byte said. “I’m not him.”

“You were. Peter Parker. You were good.”

“I was nothing before the pit. Just bones and fog.”

Batman’s jaw clenched. He changed tactics.

“Do you know what a mother is?”

That made Byte pause. Slightly. Curiously.

“You had one,” Bruce said. “Aunt May. She loved you.”

Byte dropped to the ground and stalked toward the screen slowly. Watched a woman in her sixties laugh with Peter in an old kitchen.

“Lies,” Byte said, eyes wide, almost wild. “This is a fake. A trick. A trap.”

And then, very quietly, Joker’s voice slithered into the room from the comms he hijacked:

> “You’re wasting your time, Batsy. That boy ain’t Peter Parker anymore. That name burned off in the Pit like flesh on a candle.”

> “What came out was ours.”

Laughter echoed through the speakers like rot in the walls.

---

Later, back in Crime Alley, Harley combed her fingers through Byte’s wild hair, humming softly while Joker danced barefoot on a pile of newspapers and ash.

“Bats tried to rehabilitate me!” Byte chirped, gnawing on licorice rope. “He showed me movies of some boy I don’t remember and said that I was him!”

Harley cackled. “Sugar, you’re ten times the villain that sad little nerd ever was!”

“But what if I was him?” Byte whispered.

Joker turned slowly, grin razor-sharp. “Then that just makes the tragedy more fun, doesn’t it?”

---

Elsewhere, Jason stood with Damian on the Lazarus Pit edge, deep in one of Ra’s old hideouts.

“You’re not doing it,” Jason said firmly, blocking Damian’s path.

Damian’s eyes gleamed with silent rage. “Byte is free. He doesn’t care about guilt. Or pain. He plays while we bleed.”

Jason put a hand on his little brother’s shoulder.

“Kid… the Pit won’t fix you. It breaks you. It didn’t make Byte. It just destroyed Peter.”

“Then maybe I want to be destroyed,” Damian whispered.

Jason knelt down, voice low but steady. “You don’t need to be broken to be powerful. You just need to stop letting your father define your fight.”

---

That night, Damian stood on the safehouse roof, staring at Gotham’s red-lit skyline.

Byte was out there somewhere, ruling a kingdom of fear, candy, and corpses.

And somehow… Damian didn’t hate him for it anymore.

He understood.

Chapter Text

The city moaned in the distance—its song a mixture of police sirens, faint screams, and laughing gas explosions. Gotham never slept. It only blinked between nightmares.

And tonight, Damian Wayne was done dreaming.

---

Jason found the boy gearing up in the safehouse.

Sword sharpened. Grapple hook checked. Kevlar armor—black and red, stripped of the Robin insignia—was half-zipped.

“You going hunting?” Jason asked, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed.

Damian didn’t answer immediately. He clipped on a utility belt, calm and cold.

“I’m going to find Byte.”

Jason’s shoulders stiffened. “You planning on fighting him?”

Damian finally looked up, eyes sharp like broken glass. “No.”

Jason’s lips parted. “You serious?”

“I’ve made my choice,” Damian said. “Father left me in a cage to rot. Byte offered freedom. Maybe madness, yes. But he doesn’t lie. He doesn’t pretend to care.”

Jason walked in, slowly, carefully, like approaching a wounded animal. “Damian, I get it. Batman’s failed both of us. But Byte’s not your savior. He’s—”

“He’s what I could’ve been,” Damian interrupted. “What I should have been if I hadn’t spent years begging Father for approval.”

Jason’s jaw clenched. “You’re not like him.”

“I’m not like you, either.”

Jason flinched, but didn’t stop him. “You sure this is what you want?”

Damian nodded once, resolute. “I want to understand him. I want to learn what the Pit gave him. And maybe…” He paused. “Maybe I want to learn who I am without Father whispering rules in my ear.”

Jason stepped aside.

“Then go.”

---

Byte was weaving a web between two ruined lamp posts in Crime Alley, laughing to himself as he watched a rat crawl across his candy pile. He had a juice box in one hand and a bone in the other—maybe chicken. Maybe not.

He looked up sharply when he heard movement.

But he relaxed when he saw Damian.

“Well, look who crawled out of his golden cage,” Byte grinned, fangs glinting.

Damian stepped into the flickering light, removing his hood.

“I want in.”

Byte tilted his head. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch.” Damian’s voice was low. “I’m tired of playing soldier for a man who only moves when it’s too late.”

Byte blinked, suspicious—but also curious.

“You wanna play Tag?”

Damian smirked. “Let’s make it interesting. No biting.”

Byte laughed. “Deal!”

The two vanished into the alley shadows, laughter and footsteps echoing behind them. For the first time in weeks, Byte didn’t feel alone.

---

High above, Red Hood watched from a rooftop, sniper scope trained—not to shoot, but to see.

He didn’t alert Batman.

Not this time.

---

In the Batcave, Bruce stared at a frozen frame on the monitor: Damian Wayne, willingly walking into Byte’s chaos.

His hands shook.

Not from fear.

But from the cold realization:

> He was losing both of his sons.

Chapter Text

The sewers beneath Gotham had never known such laughter. Not the cruel, cackling kind of Joker’s chaos, nor the distant mocking of criminals who ruled the city’s alleys like kings.

This laughter was different.

It was childish.

Feral.

Damian sat beside Byte, legs dangling over the edge of a rusted pipe, both boys chewing candy with webbing draped around their shoulders like royal cloaks.

“You ever kill someone?” Byte asked casually, tossing a candy wrapper into the sludge.

Damian didn’t flinch. “Yes.”

Byte blinked, impressed. “Wow. You really are a Robin.”

“I’m not a Robin anymore,” Damian snapped, voice low but sure. “That name belongs to someone still willing to be Bruce Wayne’s dog.”

Byte's sharp teeth gleamed in a slow smile. “Good. ‘Cause dogs don’t make it down here. Only bugs and beasts survive the filth.”

He turned and pointed a webbed finger toward the far end of the tunnel.

“Test one: prove you belong.”

---

An hour later, they stood before a chained man—one of Joker’s own, tied to a pole with duct tape and tears.

“He tried to sell us out to the Penguin,” Byte said sweetly, skipping a circle around him. “Told Bat-Daddy where our last hideout was. Got four hyenas killed.”

Damian’s eyes narrowed.

“Byte wants him dead,” Joker chimed from the shadows with glee. “But Harley said you should decide, sword boy.”

Damian drew his blade slowly, the steel glinting under the flickering lights.

The man whimpered.

Joker grinned like it was Christmas morning.

Byte watched.

But Damian… paused.

“I’m not your assassin,” he said coolly, and instead sliced through the man’s bindings with a single swipe. The traitor ran without hesitation, disappearing into the dark.

Byte hissed. “That was my test!”

“No,” Damian said, turning. “That was mine. I don’t kill for fun. I kill for reason.”

Harley clapped her hands from a makeshift throne of cushions and bones. “Ooh! Strong-willed, just like my baby spider!”

Joker threw his head back and howled with laughter. “Oh, this one! He’s got flare! That spine! That stick-up-his-butt righteousness! He’s perfect!”

Byte just pouted. “I wanted to see blood.”

“You saw restraint,” Damian answered. “That’s scarier.”

---

Later, back in their lair, Byte sulked in his webbed nest.

“You’re no fun.”

Damian lounged nearby sharpening his blade. “I’m not here to entertain you. I’m here to see if you're worth following.”

Byte narrowed his eyes. “You think you’re better than me?”

“I know I’m not afraid of you.”

Silence.

Then—Byte grinned.

“Okay, Batman Junior,” he whispered. “Let’s see if you can really hang in my web.”

---

Above, Harley whispered to Joker, voice full of gleeful mischief.

“Do you think they’ll tear each other apart or become brothers?”

Joker shrugged. “Does it matter? Either way—”

He burst into manic giggles.

“—I win!”

Chapter Text

Crime Alley hadn’t seen this much life since the day Bruce Wayne’s parents died.

The broken street lamps flickered like dying stars overhead as Damian and Byte played Tag again—but it wasn’t the kind of game kids should play. Not anymore.

Tonight, it involved teeth and traps.

Webs strung across alleyways like tripwires.

Smoke bombs tucked inside garbage cans.

And an innocent man running for his life just for the fun of it.

---

Damian pounced from a fire escape, landing on the man's shoulders and knocking him out cold. He landed gracefully, breathing hard but satisfied.

Byte applauded from atop a crooked lamppost, legs swinging.

“Okay, okay! You’re fast, bird-boy. But you didn’t bite him!”

“I’m not biting strangers,” Damian said firmly, stepping over the unconscious body. “I don’t need poison to win.”

Byte grinned wickedly, leaping down beside him. “That’s what I thought too… until I bit someone. Felt awesome.”

He reached into his hoodie and offered Damian a piece of gum. Damian took it.

They chewed in silence.

---

Later that night, back in the nest beneath the city, Byte crawled up into his tangle of webbed blankets, still watching Damian with suspicious eyes.

“You still workin’ for Batman in your brain?”

Damian paused, considering the question.

“No.”

Byte tilted his head like a curious insect. “Then swear.”

“To what?”

“To me.”

Damian narrowed his eyes. “You want me to swear loyalty?”

Byte nodded slowly, teeth glinting. “That you won’t go runnin’ back to the Bats. That I can trust you. I don’t trust easy.”

Damian stepped forward and met Byte’s strange, glowing gaze.

“I swear I won’t go back.”

Byte didn’t move.

So Damian added:

“I’m not Bruce’s soldier anymore. I’m not anyone’s. If I’m here, it’s because I choose to be.”

A beat.

Then Byte reached down and dropped a tiny crown made of bent spoons, wire, and a candy wrapper on Damian’s head.

“Welcome to the nest, Not-Robin.”

Damian smirked, tilting the crown.

“Guess I’m the prince now.”

Byte snickered. “Nah. I’m the prince.”

“Then what am I?”

Byte leaned in, eyes wild and full of spider-mad glee.

“You’re my knight.”

---

In the dark, Harley wiped away a proud tear. Joker whispered beside her, “They grow up so fast—into little monsters!”

The web nest shook with laughter.

Chapter Text

The sky above Gotham was a choking red as the smog rolled low and heavy. Streetlights flickered like warning signs, but no one listened anymore. Not when Byte ruled the alleys and chaos danced behind every corner.

In an abandoned courthouse turned war zone, Damian and Byte stood side by side—small figures in a courtroom drenched in spider silk, graffiti, and smoke.

The old judge’s bench had been painted with fanged smiles.

And above them, Batman descended.

Not gliding—crashing.

Cape whipping behind him like thunder, fury etched in every rigid line of his armored jaw. Red Robin landed beside him, already reaching for his staff.

"Damian," Batman said, voice low. “Come home.”

“No,” Damian said, sword drawn. “Not anymore.”

“Don’t make me do this,” Batman growled. “I won’t lose another son.”

“You already did,” Damian answered.

And then—

Byte dropped from the ceiling like a predator.

“Gotham’s not your city anymore, Bat,” he hissed. “And he’s my brother now.”

---

It began like thunder—swift and merciless.

Red Robin moved first, going for Damian, trying to knock the sword from his hand. But Damian was faster now—meaner. Their blades clashed once, twice—until Damian kicked Tim in the ribs and knocked him back.

Byte launched at Red Robin next, fists curled, fangs bared. He bit down hard on Tim’s shoulder, webbing him to a pillar before twisting—

CRACK.

A scream echoed as Byte broke Red Robin’s left arm like a twig and shattered the right leg with one well-placed stomp. Tim slumped, unconscious, caught in sticky threads.

“Oops,” Byte whispered, grinning as blood trickled down his chin. “Guess I’m still venomous.”

---

Batman roared.

He reached Byte before Damian could block, and in a blind, furious punch, slugged Byte across the face.

Spider-boy staggered. His mouth exploded with blood and broken fangs as he hit the floor, webbing writhing around him like panicked limbs.

“No!” Damian screamed, lunging for Batman. “He’s just a kid!”

Batman turned—his face pale as guilt cracked through the rage—but it was too late.

Byte was already crawling up the wall, lips bleeding, teeth missing, eyes wild and glassy.

“You’re not a hero,” Byte whispered through torn gums. “You’re a monster.”

And then the ceiling exploded.

---

Joker arrived.

Cackling and surrounded by a horde of armed goons dressed as jury members and clowns. Bullets rang through the broken courthouse. The smell of gunpowder, cotton candy, and madness filled the air.

Harley, riding in on a stolen GCPD bike, slashed the Batmobile’s tires with a glinting knife.

“You don’t get to take our boys!” she screamed.

Jason arrived through a side door, guns drawn—but he didn’t aim at Joker or Byte.

He aimed at Batman.

“You lost the right to command me a long time ago,” Jason said. “I told you not to abandon another kid.”

He turned to Byte, who was wiping blood from his chin.

“Let’s go, kid.”

Byte blinked. Then nodded.

“Okay… big brother.”

---

They vanished into the chaos—Jason covering their escape, Joker laughing all the way, and Harley flipping Batman the bird as she tossed a smoke bomb behind her.

When the dust settled, Batman was left standing over the shattered body of Red Robin and the wreckage of his Batmobile.

Damian’s sword was left behind.

But his heart?

Gone.

Chapter Text

The sky above Ace Chemicals festered with green clouds, thick and heavy like a disease. Rain hissed on contact with the rusted vats and broken pipes, steam curling from every crack in the building’s decaying shell. The whole place groaned like a ghost caught in its own death rattle.

Inside, beneath the flickering lights and the stench of acid and madness, Joker stood proudly beside Harley, arms thrown wide like a preacher before his congregation.

“Welcome,” he cackled, “to your final lesson in chaos! The place of rebirth!”

Byte stood at the edge of the open vat, nostrils flaring at the chemical tang. The green glow of the Lazarus Pit had faded long ago, but this light? This shimmer of volatile venom—it called to something deep inside.

He didn’t wait for permission.

With a giddy shriek and a laugh far too big for his small body, Byte leapt.

SPLASH.

The chemicals swallowed him whole.

Harley gasped. Joker just grinned, eyes wide with manic pride. “Atta boy.”

---

Jason stared over the edge, fists clenched, trembling. “This is insane.”

“You wanna be one of us, Red?” Joker asked, tone sugary and cold. “This is the price. No masks. No Bat-chains. Just venom, madness, and truth.”

Damian stood silent beside Jason, his lips a firm line, eyes unreadable.

Then—

SHOVE.

Joker’s hands on their backs. A madman’s giggle.

They both tumbled over.

SPLASH. SPLASH.

Harley tensed. “Puddin’… they could drown—!”

“No, no,” Joker murmured, eyes locked on the bubbling green. “If they’re really ours… they’ll rise.”

---

For a moment, it was quiet.

Then the vat began to churn. Boil. Laugh.

Byte emerged first—soaked in chemicals, his skin glowing faintly under the factory lights. His hair slicked down like ink, his teeth sharper than ever. His pupils had nearly vanished, his eyes wild and shining like broken emeralds.

He cackled, loud and long, voice a blend of child and chaos.

“I feel everything!” Byte screamed. “And nothing hurts!”

Jason clawed his way out next—shivering, panting, soaked to the bone. His eyes, once cold steel, now flickered with a violent heat. The chemicals didn’t change him much—just enough to loosen what little mercy he had left.

Last came Damian.

But he didn’t scream.

He stood, green goo dripping from his cloak, his stare glassy and far away.

Harley reached forward. “Sweetie?”

“I saw my father’s face in the dark,” Damian murmured, his voice soft as ash. “And I laughed.”

Joker clapped his hands together.

“Well, folks, that’s a wrap! My boys have been baptized by madness!”

---

Three sons stood before the Clown King and Queen:

Byte, the spider-born prince of chaos, now venomous in blood and soul.

Jason, the Red Right Hand, fury reignited and loyalty reforged.

Damian, the heir no more, reborn in rebellion and shadow.

They didn’t flinch when Harley held out her arms.

They stepped into the hug like it was home.

---

Outside, the church bells of Gotham tolled midnight.

But no one prayed.

Because Gotham knew:

Something terrible had just been born again.

And it was smiling.

Chapter Text

The Batcave had never felt colder.

Red Robin writhed on the medical table, sweat beading on his forehead, veins darkened beneath his pale skin. The antidote coursed through him, a chemical miracle developed in desperation—but it didn’t erase the pain.

Nothing did.

“His nervous system is still in overdrive,” Alfred murmured grimly, dabbing Tim’s brow with a cold cloth. “Byte’s venom… it rewired him.”

Every breath Tim took sounded like a scream. A quiet, agonized scream.

“I’ve pumped him full of sedatives,” Bruce muttered, jaw clenched, fingers flexing as if he could punch the guilt out of his chest. “They’re not working.”

“He’s suffering,” Nightwing snapped, stepping between Bruce and the bed. “And you let it happen.”

Bruce didn’t answer. Couldn’t. He looked at the boy he'd once mentored—the one who might never walk the same way again.

Behind them, Spoiler sat silently, her fists shaking. Robin’s sword—abandoned in Crime Alley—was mounted on the wall now like a grim trophy. No one knew where Damian was. But the Joker knew. Byte knew. Jason knew.

And they weren’t coming back.

---

Meanwhile, Gotham bled.

The front of Gotham’s Central Exchange Bank exploded outward, glass raining like glitter, sirens wailing too late.

From the smoke emerged four silhouettes:

Joker, twirling a cane and humming “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

Byte, bounding on walls, dragging sacks of stolen cash in webs, his laughter cracking the air like thunder.

Jason, now armed with dual pistols and a mad grin, covering their exit with precise, lethal shots.

And Damian—no longer in Robin’s colors—wearing a stitched black and green hoodie, armed with twin blades, spinning like a storm through frightened guards.

The cameras caught it all.

The Bat-symbol was in the sky that night, but no one looked up with hope.

They looked up in fear.

---

Inside the getaway van, Joker hooted and clapped. “Ten outta ten! Best family outing I’ve ever had!”

“Can we hit the jewelry store next?” Byte asked, hanging upside-down from the ceiling, cash stuffed in his hoodie. “I want shiny things!”

Damian snorted. “That’s a waste of time.”

“I’m eight,” Byte replied smugly, “I am time.”

Jason leaned back, one leg crossed over the other, watching the skyline blur by. “You boys are twisted,” he said. “And I’m proud of you.”

Harley greeted them at the safehouse with pizza, glitter bombs, and confetti.

Byte ran into her arms like a puppy, crowing, “We robbed a bank!”

“Aw, sweetie,” Harley cooed, spinning him around. “That’s my little felon!”

---

Back in the cave, Nightwing stared at the screen replaying the robbery footage, Byte’s giggle echoing on loop.

“He’s not Peter Parker anymore,” he whispered.

“No,” Bruce agreed, quietly. “He’s something worse.”

Nightwing didn’t respond. He didn’t need to.

The look in his eyes said it all.

You did this.

---

And Gotham?
Gotham burned with laughter.

The wrong kind.

Chapter Text

The Batcave was still nursing wounds—some visible, most not.

Batman stood before a flickering map of Gotham, its veins crawling with red alerts and blinking chaos. Jason, Damian, and Byte were no longer small threats. Together, they were an empire of fear, ruled by laughter and laced with venom. And Joker and Harley? The architects.

“They’re the root,” Bruce said grimly. “Take them out, the structure might fall.”

Nightwing crossed his arms. “You think those boys will break without their clown parents?”

“No,” Bruce admitted. “But without Joker and Harley’s influence, they might hesitate. They’re still children.”

Red Robin groaned from the med bay. “Children who bite.”

Stephanie scoffed from the shadows. “Children who nearly killed Tim.”

“We do this smart,” Bruce commanded. “In and out. No unnecessary contact with the boys. This time, we don’t wait. Joker and Harley go down—tonight.”

---

Across town, in the hollowed-out bones of an abandoned theatre, chaos thrived.

Strings of spider silk covered the ceiling like royal drapery. The chandelier was crusted with webbing and bones—decorative, according to Byte.

At the center of the room sat three thrones—makeshift things, sharp-edged and symbolic.

Jason’s was plated with scraps of old Bat armor, soaked in red paint and lined with shattered helmets.

Damian’s throne was smaller but sleeker—ornate daggers laced around its edges like fangs.

Byte’s throne? A gnarled mass of bones, twisted metal, and webs. It pulsed faintly with green light.

Their hair was freshly dyed—green, in vibrant shades of mayhem. Jason’s was streaked and jagged. Damian’s was slick and cruel. Byte’s was wild, almost glowing. And their eyes—all of them—gleamed a matching, eerie green.

The royal family of Gotham’s new underworld.

“You look beautiful,” Harley cooed, adjusting Byte’s spiked collar.

“I look like I could kill a king,” Byte giggled.

“You are a king, sweetie,” Joker grinned, ruffling his hair. “Just don’t forget who made your crown.”

---

The Bat-family struck after midnight.

Explosives breached the theatre’s back wall, flooding the lair with smoke and darkness.

Harley went down first—dart to the neck, collapsing with a faint laugh and tear-stained cheeks. Joker screamed, his voice raw, and lunged for her.

“Get the boys out!” Joker roared.

But it was too late.

Byte dropped from the rafters, venom dripping from his fangs. Damian emerged from the shadows, blades glinting. Jason kicked through a wall, guns cocked and ready.

“You touched our mom?” Byte hissed.

“You made us orphans again,” Damian added, voice like ice.

Jason didn’t say a word. He just opened fire.

The Bat-family scattered, trying to dodge three explosions of fury.

Joker, bleeding and laughing, staggered toward his sons. “Run—run, you little freaks! You’re kings now! Burn them all if they touch your thrones!”

Byte took Harley’s unconscious body in his arms, webbing her protectively to his back like a spider shielding its egg sac.

“Come on!” he shouted, leading the charge out.

They vanished into the night like shadows on strings.

---

Back at the cave, Batman stood over Harley’s empty stretcher, her restraints shredded. Joker’s blood marked the exit path in chaotic swirls and smiley faces.

“They’re not breaking,” Nightwing muttered. “They’re evolving.”

Batman didn’t respond.

Because the truth was sinking in:

The bats had declared war on a royal family of madness.

And Byte? Byte wasn’t a scared little boy anymore.

He was a crowned terror—green-eyed, fanged, and crawling with rage.

Chapter Text

The storm came without warning.

No press release. No cryptic threat. No viral video. Just an explosion of chaos across Gotham like a thousand spider eggs hatching at once.

Every rooftop in Midtown dripped with webs.
Every cop car had its tires slashed, its lights stolen.
Every Bat-signal was rigged with Joker gas.

Gotham hadn’t seen a takeover like this since Bane broke the Bat—but this time, it wasn’t brute strength or ideology.

It was family.

---

Byte crouched above the GCPD, watching the mayhem unfold like a proud monarch observing his court. Damian stood beside him, sharpening a blade made from repurposed batarangs. Jason, mask off, loaded live rounds into his twin pistols.

“Every nest has to grow,” Byte whispered, venom dripping from his fangs. “And every king has to bite back.”

“Agreed,” Damian said. “Tonight, we send the message: No more mercy.”

“And no more leash,” Jason added. “We’re done letting them yank us around like dogs.”

Below them, police scrambled. A bomb made of glitter and razor wire exploded on the sidewalk, releasing a swarm of Byte’s micro-spiderbots. They skittered up buildings, shutting down comms and cameras, leaving behind painted messages:

🕷️ LONG LIVE BYTE
🃏 THE FAMILY RULES NOW
🖤 THE BAT LIED

---

At Wayne Manor, the Bat-Family gathered.

Nightwing tossed a newspaper across the table. The headline read:

“CRIME FAMILY TAKES GOTHAM HOSTAGE”

Tim groaned, arm still in a cast. “This is war.”

“No,” Bruce corrected, his voice hoarse. “This is revolution.”

Steph crossed her arms. “We need to take back the city.”

“But without killing them,” Cass added.

“They’re not just villains now,” Dick muttered. “They’re symbols. And Gotham is buying it.”

Bruce didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

Because deep in his heart, he knew: Gotham had always loved its monsters more than its heroes.

---

In the theater-turned-palace, Joker stitched a new purple cape for Byte while Harley smeared war paint on Damian’s cheeks.

“You boys make mama proud,” she said, kissing Damian’s forehead. “Go show Gotham what royalty really looks like.”

Byte stood before his “court”—an audience of rogues from across the underworld.

Scarecrow bowed to him.
Riddler offered a riddle written in blood.
Even Penguin sent tribute: a golden, diamond-encrusted birdcage.

Byte grinned wide, green eyes glowing. “Tonight,” he announced, “we rewrite Gotham. We bite the Bat where it hurts. And we spin a web the city can’t escape.”

“LONG LIVE BYTE!” the rogues cheered.

---

Across town, Batgirl tried to stop a jewelry store robbery—only to be caught in a sticky trap of webbing and glitter bombs. She barely escaped with her pride intact.

Oracle’s systems went down from a virus shaped like a smiling spider.

And Batman?

Batman stood on the GCPD roof, watching the city burn with carnival-colored chaos. The air smelled like cotton candy and venom.

“You’ve lost them,” Gordon said quietly. “Not just the boy. All three.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened.

“They were mine,” he whispered.

“And now?” Gordon asked.

Bruce turned, cape swirling behind him.

“Now… they’re his.”

Chapter Text

The broadcast wasn’t flashy.

There were no riddles. No games. No warnings written in blood.

Just a static screen. Then the soft sound of a child’s giggle. High-pitched. Unsettling.

Then it cut to black.

Then it cut to Byte.

He stood center stage in what used to be a talk show studio—now redecorated in webs, bones, and hanging strings of pearls from mugged socialites. Behind him, a crumpled and shattered Bat-Signal hung upside down, painted with a laughing green smile.

Byte wore a crown of twisted metal and spider silk, glitter smeared across his cheeks like war paint. Damian sat to his right, sharpening a batarang shaped like a fang. Jason lounged to the left, spinning a pistol in one hand like a cowboy.

Byte looked straight into the camera, his bright green eyes glowing like radioactive gemstones.

“Hi, Gotham,” he chirped. “Guess what? It’s time for truth.”

---

At the Batcave, Bruce froze mid-step.

Oracle’s screens went black. Then the signal switched on. All across Gotham, from Times Square screens to cell phones, laptops, TVs in diners and bars—Byte was everywhere.

Byte walked toward the camera. Calm. Casual. A child no more.

“The Bat hides behind his cowl like a scared little boy,” he said sweetly. “But that’s not fair, is it? We all have names. Faces. Families.”

Damian stepped forward next. “Justice is supposed to be blind. But Batman? He hides because he’s ashamed.”

Jason’s voice came like a bullet. “So let’s stop pretending.”

They stepped aside. Behind them was a high-def hologram projection—an image scanned directly from Bruce’s own Batcave files. A face flickered to life.

Bruce Wayne.

Then dozens of photos followed: Bruce suiting up, interacting with the Bat-family, standing at Wayne Enterprises, training in the cave. Audio clips. CCTV from the mansion. Interviews subtly spliced with Bat audio. A damning web of evidence.

Byte turned to the camera again, grinning.

“Batman is Bruce Wayne.”

The signal cut to black again.

But the damage was done.

---

Wayne Tower’s windows shattered under the weight of public outrage. Protesters and villains alike swarmed the gates. Rich allies pulled funding. Enemies grew bolder. Gotham trembled as the mask was torn away.

Bruce stood in the ruins of the Batcave, Alfred watching silently behind him. Oracle was frantically trying to shut down servers. Red Robin sat in pain, staring in disbelief.

“They broke the city,” Tim whispered. “And they broke you.”

Bruce clenched his fists. “No,” he said quietly. “They broke the illusion.”

---

Back in their stolen palace, Joker howled with pride, tears in his eyes.

“My boy!” he shrieked, throwing his arms around Byte. “You unmasked the Bat! Ohhh, I could die happy!”

“Please don’t,” Byte replied casually, licking icing from a stolen cupcake. “We still need to tear down the rest of his kingdom.”

Harley kissed Byte’s head, then ruffled Damian’s hair. “This calls for a family field trip! Who wants to crash a gala?”

Jason raised his hand. “Only if I get to blow something up.”

Byte leaned back in his throne of bones and wires, venom dripping from his fingers like honey.

“The future doesn’t wear a cape,” he whispered. “It wears fangs.”

Chapter Text

The rain over Gotham came in waves—violent, ceaseless, and thick with ash.

It wasn’t just the sky grieving anymore.

For the first time in decades, Batman was gone.

Not dead.
Not missing.
Just… unmasked. Unthroned. Unarmed.

Bruce Wayne sat in the shell of what had once been the Batcave. The electricity was patchy. Most of the tech had been wiped or fried by Oracle’s emergency protocols. His suits, once proud symbols of silent justice, were locked behind cracked glass, covered in dust, or torn apart by grief-driven hands.

The Bat was no longer a myth.

It was a man.

A man Gotham was ready to devour.

Wayne Enterprises was gutted overnight. Private military contracts revoked. The charity branches frozen. Public outcry was relentless. Gotham’s elite turned their backs, terrified their ties to Bruce would taint them. Vigilantes were being hunted. News anchors speculated who Robin was. Who Nightwing had been. Who else might be lurking in the shadows of the Wayne legacy.

Even the cave felt smaller. Colder.

He couldn’t be Batman anymore. Not in the way that mattered. Not with Gotham knowing.

So he did what he had always promised himself he never would.

He called the Justice League.

---

“Absolutely not.”
That was the first thing Diana said, voice slicing through the hologram like a blade. “You brought a child into a war zone, Bruce. You trained him.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Bruce muttered, staring down. “Byte wasn’t mine.”

“Didn’t stop you from trying to cage him,” came Arthur’s voice, disdainful. “Like an animal.”

“Was he even human anymore?” J’onn asked quietly.

“Bruce.” That was Clark. Steady. Stern. Sad. “Why didn’t you ask for help before it came to this?”

“I thought I could fix it.”

“Clearly,” Diana snapped, “you can’t.”

Bruce’s fists clenched.

“He’s not just a kid,” he said darkly. “Byte is venomous, violent, and unpredictable. He’s got Joker’s madness, Harley’s affection, and Parker’s powers. That’s a deadly mix. And now he has Damian. And Jason.”

Clark frowned. “Jason made his choice. So did Damian.”

“And now Gotham bleeds for it,” Bruce growled.

“Then what do you want, Bruce?” Diana asked flatly. “Us to storm Gotham? Arrest Joker? Kill a child you broke?”

“…I want containment,” he whispered. “I want help neutralizing Byte and rescuing the boys before they’re lost forever.”

There was silence.

Then, reluctantly, Clark nodded. “One mission. One attempt. But no killing. Byte may not remember who he is, but he was Peter Parker. There’s still a chance.”

“I’m not here to murder a kid,” Bruce snapped.

“Could’ve fooled me,” Arthur muttered.

The League signed off.

---

In Gotham, Byte watched the broadcast.

His throne room—what used to be City Hall—echoed with laughter as monitors around him crackled with distorted League voices. Damian perched beside him, cloaked in chaos-red armor now, his old colors long abandoned. Jason leaned against a pillar, polishing his Joker-modified helmet.

“Called in his big friends, huh?” Jason muttered.

“They won’t help him,” Damian said coldly.

“They’ll try,” Byte said softly, almost like he welcomed it. He turned to Joker, who was hanging upside down from a light fixture. “You said they’d come eventually.”

Joker grinned. “Every empire gets nervous when a new king takes the throne, bug-boy. But let them come. The circus is just getting started.”

Byte looked to Harley.

“I’m ready to show the world,” he whispered, “what happens when you corner a spider.”

Harley smiled, brushing green strands of hair from his face.

“Then bite, baby.”

Chapter Text

They came from the sky.

Like gods.

Like monsters.

The Justice League descended on Gotham with the force of a divine hammer, shaking the city to its foundations. Superman’s silhouette blazed in the sunless sky, eyes glowing red and cape snapping like a battle standard. Wonder Woman landed like a meteor, sword gleaming with truth. The Flash blurred through the alleyways, clearing civilians. Martian Manhunter phased through shadows with a psychic presence that made lesser minds twitch.

Batman had given them a list.

He had given them the Byte Family.

Their mission was clear:
Contain Byte. Retrieve Damian and Jason. Neutralize Joker and Harley Quinn.
No killing. No forgiveness. Just order.

---

They were not prepared.

---

The first trap was set in Crime Alley, the place where shadows were born and legends bled.

The Flash zipped forward, scouting the ground with precision—until a web of razor-thin monofilament sliced his suit in six places and a dart coated in laughing gas slammed into his neck.

“Tag!” Byte shrieked from a fire escape, crouched in his nest of bones and wires. “You're it, speedy!”

Flash stumbled, hallucinating. He swore he saw his mother’s death replayed in slow motion as he fell to his knees, giggling and weeping.

Wonder Woman found herself ambushed by Damian, blades gleaming and dipped in a paralytic Byte concocted himself. The boy moved with speed and ruthlessness, no longer a Robin, but a hunter. His new armor bore the spider sigil scrawled with claw marks.

“You call this justice?” Damian snarled, clashing swords. “You call him a father?”

Diana grimaced. “I call you a child being used.”

“I call me free,” Damian spat, leaping off a rooftop.

---

In the city’s underground, Martian Manhunter phased into the sewers—and froze.

What had once been Gotham’s waste system had transformed into a living maze of webs and glyphs, pulsating with green gas and whispered laughter.

“J'onn…” Joker’s voice slithered from the walls. “Ever wonder what fear tastes like on a psychic’s tongue? Bet you will now.”

A psychic mine detonated, releasing a storm of confused memories and twisted illusions. J’onn screamed—telepathically and aloud—and retreated through the floor.

---

Above it all, Superman hovered.

Watching. Calculating.

And then, he heard it—laughter. Not Joker's. Higher. Smaller. Crazier.

Byte webbed himself up to the Man of Steel’s level, suspended mid-air like a cursed marionette.

“Hiya, Blue Boy!” he said sweetly, eyes glowing green. “Wanna play?”

Superman narrowed his eyes. “You’re hurting people.”

“They hurt me first!” Byte shouted. “And they’ll never stop unless I get to bite back!”

Superman moved to grab him—only to be blinded by a pop of Joker glitter gas, laced with Kryptonite dust. Byte bit his neck with enough venom to make the Kryptonian stagger.

“Oops!” Byte sang, swinging away. “Better go see your dentist!”

---

In the war room of the Watchtower, chaos poured in from every comm.

“Diana’s wounded—slashed deep!”

“Flash is down!”

“Superman’s been poisoned!”

“This is a kid?!”

Batman sat in silence.

“Bruce…” Green Arrow growled over comms. “You didn’t tell us they were this dangerous.”

“No,” Bruce said, voice low. “They weren’t. Not before. But Gotham’s made them gods of madness. And I helped build the altar.”

---

Back in the throne room of Gotham City Hall, the Byte Family regrouped.

Harley applied glittery salve to Damian’s scratches. Joker spun in a chair, giggling to himself and reciting a fake “national anthem” of their new kingdom.

Jason leaned on a bat-staff he'd claimed as a trophy, cracking sunflower seeds with a smirk.

And Byte… Byte stood before the cracked mirror of Bruce Wayne's old mayoral office, watching the webbed cracks form a crown around his head.

“They came to stop the monsters,” he murmured.

“But all they did,” he said, turning to face his family, “was make us kings.”

Chapter Text

The League regrouped in the ruins of Gotham’s old courthouse.

The irony wasn’t lost on any of them—standing in a crumbled monument to justice, trying to bring order to a city that had crowned chaos as king.

Wonder Woman’s arm was in a sling, bound with enchanted bandages. Flash leaned against a cracked column, pale and jittery. Martian Manhunter hadn’t reappeared since his psychic collapse.

Superman paced, his jaw tight, the green-tinged bruise on his neck still healing.

“This isn’t a rescue mission anymore,” he said, voice edged with steel. “This is a war.”

Batman didn’t look up. He was staring at a frozen screen of Gotham’s skyline, where a new symbol—a spiderweb crowned with teeth—had replaced the Bat-Signal. Byte’s mark.

Nightwing stepped forward, eyes bloodshot. “Bruce, we need to stop pretending this is about saving them. Byte’s not Peter anymore. Damian isn’t Robin. Jason—” He hesitated. “Jason made his choice.”

“No,” Bruce said, finally raising his eyes. “I made mine. I failed all of them.”

---

Meanwhile, in the twisted mockery of Wayne Tower now known as The Webspire, Byte perched atop his throne of woven bone and cracked TVs. The city sprawled beneath him, broken and glittering, like glass shattered under moonlight.

Damian sat at his side, polishing a blade made from Batarang shards. His new costume was a blood-red variant of his old one, patched with green spiderweb stitching.

Jason stood by the window, loading Jokerized ammo into his dual pistols. His helmet had been repainted—black, with a jagged green smile across the faceplate.

They were kings of the new Gotham. Princes of venom and vengeance.

Joker waltzed in, twirling a top hat. “Well, my beautiful baby bugs, it’s official! The League is staying for dinner. Let’s make this their last supper.”

Harley beamed, tossing a glitter bomb in the air and catching it. “Ohhh, I’ve missed this kinda chaos!”

Byte rose, arms spread like a messiah. “They want justice?”

He turned to his family.

“Then let’s show them what justice really tastes like when it’s served in the jaws of chaos.”

---

The traps were already set.

The League attempted to raid the Webspire that night—only to be funneled into a maze of illusions and mechanical laughter.

Superman found himself surrounded by civilians covered in Joker makeup. Every heartbeat he heard was real. He couldn’t tell who was a hostage and who was a trap.

Wonder Woman battled Damian one-on-one beneath the tower’s atrium. He moved like a snake, fast and hateful, dragging her into emotional warfare with every strike.

“Your ‘justice’ let a child rot in a cage.”

“Your ‘truth’ didn’t save me.”

She hesitated—and that was all it took.

Jason tackled Flash mid-run, setting off an EMP charge that disabled Flash’s suit and sent the speedster tumbling down an elevator shaft.

And then there was Batman.

He reached the top.

The throne room.

Where Byte waited.

“Hi, Batsy,” Byte said coldly. “Wanna know what I remember now?”

Batman froze.

Byte smiled, sharp and full of venom. “Nothing. And that’s your fault.”

He lunged.

---

The fight was brutal. Animalistic.

Batman wasn’t holding back this time—and neither was Byte. The child moved like a spider, twisted by Lazarus madness and Joker’s love. He bit, scratched, webbed, screamed.

Every punch Bruce threw was met with a laugh.

Every dodge Byte made came with a hiss.

And then—Batman hesitated.

He saw Peter. Just for a second.

A flash of brown eyes. A vulnerable boy.

“Peter—”

“BYTE!” the boy howled, fangs bared. “PETER’S DEAD!”

And he sank his fangs deep into Bruce’s shoulder.

Batman fell, gasping, as venom surged through his veins.

Byte stood over him, panting, eyes glowing with fury.

“You let me die. So now you get to live in the world I made.”

---

Outside, the League was retreating.

Broken. Bloodied. Beaten.

The people of Gotham didn’t rise up to help them.

They cheered for Byte.

Because Gotham didn’t need saviors anymore.

It had crowned its devils.