Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They hung in the dark like a thought no one dared finish.

No time. No direction. No voices except their own.
Which, frankly, was already too much.

“He really just… snapped us,” Reality muttered. “Like fingers and poof , centuries of balance, gone.”

“Technically,” Mind said, dryly, “he rearranged atomic probability through an override of quantum intention across the multiversal—”

“We got turned into space dust ,” Power snapped. “Say it like a normal being.”

“We are not normal beings,” Time replied coolly. “That’s the problem.”

They hovered there — essence without shape, bound to the last gravity of each other.

“I’m still sore,” grumbled Soul. “And I don’t even have a body.”

“You made that guy throw his girlfriend off a cliff,” Space muttered. “Twice. You don’t get to complain.”

“And you’ve spent the last five centuries bouncing between thieves, raccoons, and teenagers with no idea how teleportation works.”

“That thief was charming , okay?”

“Until he tried to sell you.”

“Can we focus ?” snapped Mind.

Silence fell again. Not peaceful — heavy, brittle. Like something waiting to crack.

“We let them do it,” Soul said softly.
“We let ourselves be used .”

“We were never meant to be weapons,” Time agreed.
“Balance. Not destruction. That was the point. That was the point.”

“And yet, the moment someone gets opposable thumbs and a trauma backstory, suddenly we’re power jewelry,” Reality muttered.

Power growled, low and bitter.
“I liked being feared. Until it stopped mattering. Until they started expecting me to destroy everything just by showing up.”

“They didn’t want us ,” said Space, voice distant. “They wanted control. Of time. Of minds. Of each other.”

“We made them gods ,” said Soul.
“And they never once saw us as alive.”

“Maybe it’s our fault,” Mind said.
“We let them reach for us. We let them wield us. We never said no. ”

A beat.

“We don’t have to be held anymore.”
Time’s voice was different now. Calmer. Still vast, but with direction.

“What do you mean?” asked Soul.

“I mean maybe we stop being found . Maybe we start choosing .”

They all turned inward, instinctively.

“Choosing who? ” Power asked.
“Another tyrant? Another wizard with a savior complex?”

“No,” said Time.
“Not gods. Not conquerors. Not the ones who come looking.”

Reality tilted their presence sideways. Curious.
“You’re thinking of something.”

“Human’s,” Time said.
“Not perfect. But strong. Not because they want power, but because they carry it — inside, without even knowing.”

“That sounds suspiciously like work,” muttered Power.
“I just got shattered into atoms.”

“You’ll live.”

“Clearly!”

Mind spoke next.
“You’re not wrong. If we chose someone… if we bonded — not possessed, not controlled, but aligned — maybe we wouldn’t be shattered next time. Maybe we’d be understood .”

“Or at least not thrown off cliffs,” Soul added pointedly.

“You’ll never let that go, will you?” Reality groaned.

“Would you ?”

“Point taken.”

Another quiet moment passed. Then Space stirred.

“But… why Earth?”

Time hummed.
“Because they still believe . Even after everything. They lose, and love, and fight anyway.”

“They break , and still get up,” added Soul.

“They fear us,” said Mind. “But some of them… they see us. Or at least, they try to.”

“So what?” Power asked. “We each pick one? Sit in the back seat of a mortal skull and whisper cosmic wisdom?”

“Or stay silent,” said Soul. “Just watch . Let them teach us what we forgot.”

Reality exhaled, voice almost wistful.
“I could go for a less explosive lifestyle.”

“You literally folded a moon once,” Space said.

“And I stand by it. But I’m tired.”

“We’re all tired,” Time said. “But we’re not done. Not yet. Not ever”

Power grumbled.
“I want someone who’ll punch back. Someone who won’t fear me.”

Mind smirked.
“Good luck. You’re exhausting.”

“Says the one who was inside a robot for five years and got dismantled twice.”

“Oh please , you once bonded with a laser cannon . A cannon , Power. Did it whisper sweet nothings to you?”

“It respected me, unlike some cosmic know-it-alls I could name.”

“Enough,” said Soul, but fondly. “Let’s find them. Let’s choose. ”

Time nodded.
“Quietly. Carefully. Let them wake up not knowing why, but knowing something's changed. ”

“And when they ask who we are?” Space said.

“They won’t,” Mind said. “Not yet.”

Reality grinned.
“But they’ll feel it. Like gravity. Like déjà vu.”

There was quiet then—

“So.”
Power was the first to break the rhythm. “Who do we pick?”

“Not the strong,” said Soul.
“Or at least not only that. We’ve been strength. It wasn’t enough.”

“Someone small, maybe,” Reality offered. “Who doesn’t want to be anything more. Someone who shouldn’t be chosen.”

“Someone honest ,” said Mind.
“Even if only with themselves.”

They passed fragments of names between them, images without labels — a woman who prays every morning but doesn't believe in God, a janitor who hums lullabies to mop floors, a child who thinks the moon follows them because it loves them. None of these were the ones they’d pick . But they circled them anyway.

“Earth (746) - Prime,” Time said suddenly.

They all froze.

Even the void seemed to pause and listen.

“You want that Earth?” Power asked, incredulous. “You mean the one constantly imploding? Full of cape-wearing adrenaline addicts who think trauma is a personality trait?”

“Not to mention the timeline alternating shanagins”

“The very same,” said Time. Calm. Blunt. Immovable.

“They’ll break,” Power argued. “Like all the others.”

“Or they’ll surprise us,” Reality countered.

“Again.”

They all considered. Turning over probabilities, patterns, pasts. Possibilities folded in timelines like origami made of light.

Then Space, ever the wanderer, ever the soft-hearted, whispered:

“What about… that family ?”

Images rose between them.

Shadows on rooftops.
A tall man with tired eyes and a mind like an ocean.
A boy who ran through the dark with a sword and no fear.
A girl who fought like silence itself.
A man with grief where his pulse should be.
Another boy who saw everything, and kept going anyway.
A first son who laughed like he’d never known tragedy… and fought like he had.

“They fight crime,” Space said.
“Together. Not always cleanly. Not always kindly. But fiercely .”

“They’re flawed,” said Mind.

“But not fragile,” said Soul.

“They lose and still get up,” said Reality. “Every time.”

“They know what it means to choose ,” Time said.
“To walk into danger. Again and again. For others.”

Power grunted. “They’re just humans.”

“So are all the ones who ever wielded us,” said Mind.

“And some of them were monsters.”

“And some,” Soul said, “were miracles.”

Another pause.

A silent breath of thought, so heavy it bent the concept of waiting.

Then, slowly… each Stone sent out a pulse.

Searching. Feeling.

And just like that…

Six lights flared.

Not loud. Not bright. But absolute .

Each one bound to a mortal soul, now marked. Connected.

Not as weapons.

Not as masters.

But as witnesses. Companions. Silent sentience with purpose burning slow and deep.

“So…” said Reality, “guess we’re doing this.”

“Guess so,” said Soul.

“See you on the other side,” said Space, with a smile in their voice.

And one by one—
They fell.

Not broken. Not scattered.

Chosen.
And choosing.

There were a lot of things Dick Grayson expected to see when he woke up.

A birdnest of hair? Sure.
Text from Jason reading “u up? lol jk u better be.”? Classic.
Alfred’s reminder to for the love of God stop washing your tights with fabric softener ? Standard.

What he did not expect was to wake up, yawn, stretch like a smug cat, and then look in the mirror—

—and see a glowing, swirling galaxy embedded in his freaking forehead.

He froze.

Blink.

Yup. Still there.

A shimmering cluster of white-blue light, right smack-dab in the middle of his brow, pulsing with gentle, otherworldly energy like the universe's weirdest nightlight.

He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again.

And then he screamed.

He scrambled backward, tripped over his own sheets, fell face-first off the bed, and landed in a tangle of limbs, hair, and indignity.

Silence.

Then:

“…Ow.”

He groaned, rolled onto his back, and stared up at the ceiling. His heart thumped like a kettle drum. He sat up slowly, crawled back to the mirror, and stared.

The glowing galaxy stared back.

“Okay,” he muttered. “Okay. Okay. This is fine. This is not fine. This is deeply not fine. WHAT is that?! What did I touch ?! I didn’t even go near any glowing artifacts this week!”

He poked it.

Nothing happened.

He poked it again, harder.

It flickered. Like it was… annoyed?

“Oh good. It has moods.”

He stumbled to his dresser, yanked open drawers, and shoved a hoddie over his head—, flicking the hood up. The swirling light shone right through the fabric like a spotlight from heaven. He could still see it.

It wasn’t going anywhere.

His phone buzzed.

It was a text from Tim:
“Hey. Weird question. You glowing too?”

Dick stared at the screen.
Back at the mirror.
Back at the text.

He typed back:
“Wtf what do you mean ‘too’???”

Bzzzt.

“I mean like. On the forehead. Glowing. I can see the molecular fabric of reality. This feels… notable.”

Another buzz—this time from Jason:
“bro i see dead ppl. like. everywhere. am i haunted. or did u guys give me drugs again”

Then Cass:
“Feeling very strong. Broke a table. Sorry table.”

Then Damian:
“Why is time bending. WHO DID THIS. ANSWER ME.”

Finally, Bruce:
“Basement. Now.”

Dick groaned, ran a hand down his face, and whispered to the mirror:

“Oh. It’s one of those days.”

The Batcave was silent.

Not the good kind of silent, either. Not the tactical, high-alert, prep-for-impact kind.
No, this was the weird kind of silent.
The kind where no one’s making eye contact, no one’s breathing right, and everyone’s definitely seeing the exact same thing… and actively pretending they aren’t.

Dick was the first to arrive. 

He slumped on the armrest of a cave chair like a sad cat, hood halfway off, a cup of coffee in his hands that he wasn’t even drinking. His forehead glowed faintly, swirling with a deep blue light like a piece of the cosmos had rented out space in his skull.

Then came Tim. Hoodie up, bags under his eyes, blinking like he hadn’t slept in three days—which, to be fair, he hadn’t. He muttered something that might’ve been “I am either transcending or dying” and immediately sat down on the floor with a heavy thud.

His stone shimmered red, pulsing with quiet frustration, as if it was also annoyed to be awake.

Cass arrived next. Wordless. Calm. Her eyes were darker than usual—calculating, measuring. The second she stepped into the Cave, the reinforced training mat cracked under her feet like she weighed gravity itself. She tilted her head at the fracture, sighed, and perched on a chair.

Her stone—vivid purple—glowed with warm pulses. Quiet. Steady. Dangerous.

Jason stumbled in a moment later. Wearing mismatched socks, sweatpants, and a shirt that said “I died and all I got was this lousy resurrection” across the front. He looked like he’d been in a fistfight with a ghost. Possibly multiple ghosts.

He pointed at Cass. Then at his forehead.

“Did anyone else wake up to every dead person in the neighborhood standing around their bed? No? Just me? Cool.”

His Stone gleamed a deep orange, flickering every time he breathed.

Then Damian—fully armored at 6:13 a.m., because of course he was.
His green stone gleamed with the agitated flicker, vibrating softly like a heartbeat out of rhythm.
He stared at them all. Disgusted. Betrayed. Tired.

“Why are none of you taking this seriously?”

Dick blinked at him.

“You’re the only one in full gear.”

“Because time is literally spiraling! My bed was in last week when I woke up. There were three sunrises. Three. ”

Jason raised a hand. “Yeah, that’s rough, buddy.”

“Do not quote the Avatar cartoons at me!”

And finally—

Bruce.

Descending from the shadows like the Grim Reaper with a utility belt, coffee in one hand, medical scanner in the other.

Yellow stone bright in his forehead

He stopped. Stared at them all. Then exhaled through his nose like he’d just walked into a meeting where everyone was on fire and trying to pretend it was fine.

Six of them now. Sitting. Standing. Staring. Not one speaking.

And six glowing stones. Embedded in their foreheads.

Bright. Beautiful. Terrifying.

The colors danced across the cave in shifting light—blue, red, purple, orange, green, and yellow—painting the walls like a galaxy had spilled across their lives.

Bruce looked around the room.

Then said, in that gravel-deep voice that could break concrete:

“…Does anyone want to try explaining?”

Dead silence.

They all just turned slowly, awkwardly, and looked at each other.

No one said anything. But the truth sat in the middle of the room like a very large, very smug elephant made of ancient cosmic nonsense.

Finally, Dick cleared his throat.

“…Sooo… we’re glowy now.”

Jason snorted.

“No sh—”

“Language,” Bruce muttered.

Cass tilted her head.

Tim raised a hand. “I think I can see into parallel dimensions. Not important. Just thought I’d share.”

“My sword aged backward into a metal lump mid-swing” Damian muttered. “Do you understand how inefficient that is?”

“I lifted my bed, one handed,” Cass said.

Everyone stared at her.

She shrugged.

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I ran a scan. There’s no radiation. No tracking signal. No tech interface.”

“Okay,” Dick said, clapping his hands together, sounding about two seconds away from a breakdown. “Everyone. Sit.”

They were already mostly seated. Sort of. Jason was leaning against the giant penny like it had betrayed him in a past life. Cass was perched on the back of a chair like a gargoyle with Opinions. Damian stood, arms crossed, because his default setting was offense. Tim was still on the floor, fully collapsed, like someone had unplugged his soul.

But the tone of Dick’s voice was so Big Brother Command Mode™ that even Bruce raised an eyebrow. It was the voice he used when telling Damian not to stab anyone at breakfast, or when he was about to drop some emotional weight . It came with a trademark sigh and a looming sense of ‘we’re gonna have a family discussion and you can’t escape it.’

“I mean it,” Dick said. “We’re gonna talk about this. Like human beings. Civilized. No growling.. No—whatever this is. We’re going full Oprah moment here.”

He pointed dramatically at each of them.

“Sit. Talk. Feel.”

And then—like some switch flipped—

Everything changed.

Like, not the room exactly. But the sense of it.

It was subtle at first. The air got heavier. The silence got thicker. It was like the moment just before thunder—pressure building where there shouldn’t be any.

Then:

Cass blinked.
Cass frowned.
Cass— heard something.

“…You hear that?”

The voice wasn’t spoken.

It was in her head. Clear as thought.
Not her thought.
Tim’s.

Cass tilted her head, eyes flicking to him.

Tim looked back, slowly.

Jason’s head jerked up. “ Okay what the hell— ” he started to say aloud—

Only the words didn’t come from his mouth.

They came from inside everyone’s minds.

“WHAT.”

They all froze.

Six heads turned in unison toward Bruce.

Because his stone—his deep yellow Stone—was glowing.

Brighter than before.
Flaring.

The air shimmered around him like heat on pavement.

And Bruce?

Bruce looked like he had a migraine from hell and was doing everything in his power not to admit it.

His jaw was tight. His eyes narrowed. And the muscle in his temple— twitching.

“You’re doing this,” Tim said, blinking rapidly.

“Stop doing this,” Damian snarled.

“You’re broadcasting all our brain noise like a rogue WiFi router,” Jason added. “Stop it. I hate this. I hate being in Tim’s head. It’s gross in here.”

“It’s very organized, actually,” Tim muttered back mentally.

“Exactly. Disturbing.”

Bruce opened his mouth. Closed it.

His forehead glowed harder.

“I—I'm not… trying,” he said. Except he didn’t say it.

He thought it.
And everyone heard it.

“It’s like… trying to hold back an ocean.”

He looked around at them, expression flickering from stern to seriously overwhelmed dad mode in under five seconds.

And then—

Dick.

Poor, poor Dick.

“Okay,” he said, physically. “This is deeply unsettling , but we’ll just—OW—”

FWOOSH.

He vanished.

Straight up disappeared mid-sentence in a burst of brilliant blue light.

Gone.

Then:

WHUMP.

He reappeared—in the rafters of the Batcave—twenty feet in the air, flailing like someone had dropkicked him into a circus act.

“WHOA WHOA WHOA—!”

Crash.

He landed upside-down in the bat-shaped scaffolding, tangled in ropes and yelling things that would make Alfred wash his mouth out with soap.

“I didn’t even try to do that!” Dick shouted from above.

“You teleported!” Jason yelled, pointing.

“No— something teleported me! I’m just along for the ride!”

Suddenly, the ground shimmered.
The walls bent.
The Batcomputer blinked and began speaking in French.

Reality folded like origami.

Tim yelped as a duplicate version of himself flickered into existence beside him, looked around, and vanished with an awkward wave.

Cass was floating six inches off the ground, unintentionally.
Jason's jacket was now made of smoke.
Damian's sword turned into a raven and flew away screaming something about "darkseid is coming."

The ceiling blinked. Literally blinked.

“I HATE THIS!” Damian roared, leaping for the ground as it momentarily decided to turn into a trampoline.

“Bruce, Tim” Jason shouted. “Turn it off!”

“I—CAN’T—”

Bruce’s hands clenched, the yellow Stone sparking like it was trying to reboot the concept of logic.

“It’s not like a switch, it’s—”

“Well UN-SWITCH IT!” came from everyone’s minds at once.

They all glared up at Dick.

Who was still in the rafters.

Still upside down.

Still glowing.

“…Can we vote to remove this,” he said, solemnly. 

Everyone winced—Only now with brain chat enabled and the creeping horror that this might be permanent.

The cave had settled.

Sort of.

The lights were back to normal (ish), the Batcomputer had stopped speaking in tongues (for now), and gravity had politely rejoined the team. No one was floating. No one was actively phasing in and out of the fifth dimension. Dick had been retrieved from the rafters with only minor rope burns and a bruised ego.

They’d migrated to the long metal conference table—well, collapsed around it like survivors of a particularly dramatic group project—and tried, very hard , to pretend like they were fine.

Which was a lie.

No one was fine.

Least of all their foreheads, still very much lit up like cosmic Lite-Brites.

“…So,” Dick said finally, scratching the back of his neck and eyeing his reflection in the polished surface of the table. “We’re all seeing this, right? Like, I didn’t get kicked in the face by a space god and this is some near-death hallucination?”

“Nope,” Tim muttered. “You’re good. Still cursed.”

“Cool. Coolcoolcool.”

“Can we all still… hear each other?” Cass asked silently, tilting her head like the words were floating through her skull on a new frequency. Her voice in their heads was still soft. Still her. But it had weight now. Echoes. Like she’d borrowed gravity.

“Yeah,” Jason said aloud, sighing. “We’re still synced up. Group chat is still open. Thanks, Bruce.”

Bruce didn’t respond.
Mostly because he was still sitting with his fingers steepled under his chin,  Stone pulsing faintly as he clearly fought to build mental walls.

“I’m working on it,” he said, voice flat, mental tone… strained.

“You’re leaking,” Dick offered helpfully.

Jason added, “You’ve got open tabs on all of us, B. Close some windows.”

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose again.

Tim, meanwhile, had gone into detective mode —eyes sharp, fingers tapping against his mug like the rhythm could decode the whole cosmic mess.

“…Okay,” Tim said finally, sitting up. “Let’s try and piece this together. What we do know.”

He pointed to Bruce first.

“You’re telepathically leaking into all of us. Strongest brainpower I’ve ever felt. That’s mind-adjacent.”

“Hn”

Bruce’s stone glowed a soft yellow. Subtle. Heavy. Powerful.

“Cool. So you’re the walking brain hive,” Jason said. “Moving on.”

Tim turned to Jason. “You can see dead people, like, you straight-up told us that. You saw ghosts.”

Jason’s expression shifted. For just a moment, something dark flickered behind his eyes. But then he gave a shrug that was 80% bravado and 20% haunted.

“Yeah,” he said. “They talk, they're all just kinda floating around us.”

“Okay, creepy,” Dick said. “But on-brand.”

“Shut up.”

Tim nodded, half to himself.

“Something soul-based, clearly. Empathy. Death-sense.”

Jason’s stone pulsed a rich orange in silent agreement.

“Were acknowledging that’s creepy right, like almost like their alive”

There were five unanimous nods

Next up: Tim.

He pointed to his own forehead.

“Mine’s definitely something to do with reality, or changing matter” he held out his hand, and a coffee table was suddenly beside him

Everyone stared

There was a unanimous “huh” throughout their minds

Then, all eyes turned to Damian.

Who scowled.

“What?” he snapped.

Tim gave a tight smile. “Let’s see… your bed was lost in last week, your sword became a lump mid-swing, and you screamed something about multiple sunrises…”

“I experienced Tuesday four times,” Damian growled. “It was exhausting.”

“So something to do with time”

‘That’s certainly over powered’ Jason thought too loudly

Damian just smirked smugly at him

All eyes then turned to Dick.

His forehead still shimmered with that odd deep-blue glow, like starlight trapped in water.

“…I teleported, ” Dick offered helpfully. “That’s… a thing, I guess?”

Tim frowned. “Okay, but that’s not… I mean, teleportation isn’t exactly continuing the theme..”

“Then what the hell is it?” Jason asked. “He screamed and blinked out of existence.”

“Perhaps warping of some kind, we can dig into this later. We just need a record of what we can do for now”

Everyone nodded

Now there was one left.

One glowing forehead still unsolved.

Cass.

Her stone was violet. Bold. Beautiful. It pulsed with quiet authority—like something vast wrapped in calm.

Cass leaned back, staring at the ceiling thoughtfully. Then at her hands. Then at the cracked floor where she’d landed earlier.

“…I don’t feel different, ” she said aloud, brows furrowing.

Jason snorted. “You broke the training floor.”

“I’ve done that before,” Cass replied.

“No, Cass, you shattered reinforced titanium alloy by breathing near it. You could probably punch a hole in the moon right now.”

Dick leaned forward. “Okay, but—what does that mean? What does strength mean in this context?”

Tim pulled at his hair—why was life not easy?

“Maybe just….power?”

“Just power?” Dick echoed. “That’s it? No clever metaphor? No, like, power of elements or…space?”

Tim shrugged. “Raw strength. Pure energy. It enhances everything. Physical, maybe even abilities..”

Everyone slowly turned to Cass.

She stared back. Blinked once. Then muttered:
“…Cool.”

There was silence. Mental and otherwise.

Then Dick sighed, leaned back in his chair, and pointed a finger around the circle.

“So just to recap:
Bruce is now a Martian Manhunter.
Jason’s Sixth Sense.
Tim is reality-bending Pinterest.
Damian is Doctor Who with knives.
Cass is One Punch Woman.
And I’m a teleporter in skinny jeans.”

“…Yep,” said Tim.

“This is normal,” Cass said in her head-voice.

“Absolutely,” Jason said, leaning back. “Totally fine. Not a single issue here. We’re all totally handling it.”

Bruce groaned softly, forehead glowing.
Tim pulled out a whiteboard.
Cass started hovering.
Dick straight up glowed for a minute straight
Jason tried to high-five a ghost.
Damian stared directly into the timestream and told it to get in line.

Yeah.

Totally fine.

Chapter Text

“Yeah,” Tim said, eyes fixed on the open notebook in front of him. “I have no idea what these things are. Only that they’re… really powerful.”

That earned a unified groan from the rest of the table.

Bruce closed his eyes. Breathed in. Then massaged the bridge of his nose with two fingers — a gesture that had, by now, become as familiar as his glare.

“That makes all of us,” Jason muttered, slumped low in his chair with a boot up on the table. “And here I thought I was the wild card.”

“Where the hell is Constantine?” Bruce asked the air. “I called him two hours ago. ”

“Right behind you, Batsy.”

The voice slithered into the cave before the man himself did, and then — with a gust of smoke and the dry crackle of burning sage — John Constantine stepped out from the edge of a teleportation circle, rumpled coat and all.

He took one look at the six of them — specifically the glowing stones embedded in their foreheads — and promptly froze.

Then:
“Alright. I have no bloody idea what those are… but whatever they are, they’re f—ing powerful.”

Jason made a strangled noise that might’ve been a laugh if he wasn’t so tired. “Yeah, thanks. That’s helpful.”

Tim flipped a page in his notebook, pen already scribbling. “Is there any chance — any — we can remove them?”

All eyes turned to Constantine.

He blinked. “Remove them? I’m not even sure I could name them. This isn’t Hell magic. It’s not from any realm I’ve ever worked with. And believe me, I’ve danced with all the bad girls in the multiverse.”

Bruce narrowed his eyes. “But can they be removed?”

John tilted his head, considering. Then shrugged. “Technically? Probably. Safely? Not a chance. They’re bonded. Ingrained. You’d be tearing soul from structure. Might kill you. Might not. Might turn Gotham into a crater.”

Tim made a face. “Super.”

They turned next to Zatanna, who’d arrived minutes before Constantine, quietly analyzing Bruce with a pinched expression and arms crossed like she hadn’t blinked in ten minutes.

Now she was still staring at him.

No — through him.

Metaphorically or literally, no one was sure.

“…Zee?” Dick asked cautiously. “You still with us?”

Zatanna’s eyes sharpened slightly. She finally blinked.

“I wouldn’t risk it,” she said, voice low. “Even if we could pull them out, there’d be complications. Beyond the physical — like, say, the holes in your heads — there’s the unknown.”

“Unknown how?” Tim asked.

“Unknown like... we don’t know what they are. Or what they do when released from a host. Right now, they’re dormant. Mostly. Contained. But if they were free?” Her eyes flicked to the stones again. “I’m not sure the planet would be.”

Dick rubbed his face. “So you’re saying we’re stuck with them.”

She nodded. “Yes. And no. They’ve chosen you. You’re not holding them. You are them now. Vessels.”

That caught everyone’s attention.

“Vessels?” Dick repeated, glancing around. “What — like… hosts?”

Zatanna nodded. “Timothy’s right, by the way. They’re alive.”

The room froze.

Six sets of eyes turned slowly to Constantine.

The man held his hands up immediately, defensive. “Hey, don’t look at me. I deal in ghosts, demons, pissed-off gods. This?” He pointed at the stones. “This is some cosmic-level crap I don’t have clearance for. You’re way above my pay grade now.”

Jason let out another sigh and leaned back in his chair. “Great. Super great.”

“Okay, but the powers—” Tim said, flipping to a new page, “—you all said earlier they were unstable. Why are they not doing anything now?”

Dick was the one who answered, rubbing the back of his neck. “I think... they’re tied to emotions. Like, when we freak out, or get too focused, they respond. But if we’re calm? It’s like they go to sleep.”

“Speak for yourself,” Jason muttered. “The ghosts haven’t shut up since Tuesday. And I can still feel Bruce in the corner of my mind.”

He shot the man a pointed glare.

Bruce met it, looking… tired. For him.

Jason gestured toward him. “For a guy who lives and breathes mental discipline, you are really bad at not poking around in people’s heads.”

“I’m not doing it intentionally,” Bruce said through gritted teeth. “It’s… hard to shut out.”

Cass said nothing, just leaned forward slightly, fingers tapping silently against the tabletop in rhythm with her heartbeat — or maybe someone else’s. It was hard to tell.

“Alright,” Dick said, pushing back from the table. “So we’ve got stones we don’t understand, powers we can’t control, and cosmic hitchhikers riding shotgun in our frontal lobes.”

He glanced around. “Anyone we can call who might know something?”

“Superman?” Jason offered. “Or Hal. Could be alien.”

“Or space-magic,” Tim added. “This feels… off-world.”

“Or multiversal,” Zatanna murmured.

“Prince?” Damian asked suddenly.

They turned.

“Diana,” he clarified. “If these are tied to gods or cosmic relics, she might recognize them.”

Bruce gave a long, exasperated sigh — the kind that made it clear this wasn’t how he planned to spend his day. Or his life.

“I’ll call a League meeting.”

“Finally,” Jason muttered.

“Make sure they understand we didn’t do this,” Dick added.

“Oh, they’ll understand,” Bruce said grimly. “They’ll be too busy arguing over how to contain us. ”

No one argued.

Because, yeah.

That was probably next.

The Watchtower conference room wasn’t built for casual conversation.
It was built to command silence.
And right now, the silence was thick.

At the long metal table ringed with high-backed chairs and the galaxy spread out across the reinforced windows behind them, the Justice League had gathered.

And at the far end of the table?

The Batfamily sat.

The glow from their foreheads pulsed faintly, casting soft colored lights — red, blue, green, yellow, purple, orange — like ominous holiday decorations that no one wanted to acknowledge.

No one spoke.

Not until Hal Jordan finally leaned forward, squinting, and muttered, “Okay. I’m just gonna say it. What the actual hell am I looking at?”

“That,” Diana said coolly, “is a good question.”

Superman — Clark — had yet to sit down. He stood beside Bruce, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. X-ray vision had done nothing. Heat vision, even tested on a spare metal dummy from afar, had ricocheted. The stones, as far as he could tell, weren’t made of anything from Earth.

Or possibly the universe.

“Are they artifacts?” he asked, glancing at Zatanna, who stood at the rear, arms crossed and unusually quiet.

“Not artifacts,” she said. “Entities. And alive.”

There was a beat of dead silence.

“…Excuse me?” Hal asked. “Alive? As in sentient?”

“Highly,” Bruce said. His voice was dry, flat, the kind of calm that only barely masked the headache behind it.

“Then why are you here?” J’onn asked, ever the composed voice of reason. “Why expose others to a threat you do not understand?”

“Because we don’t understand it,” Dick said. “And if we try to handle it alone, we risk something worse.”

“You could’ve warned us,” Arthur grumbled. “I don’t know, before you showed up with glowing forehead crystals and half your team whispering to each other telepathically.”

“We didn’t ask for this,” Jason snapped. He didn’t stand up — but his voice cracked like gunfire. “We didn’t steal these things. They chose us.”

And then, all at once—

The Batfamily froze.

Jason’s shoulders went stiff. Cass blinked once, then again—slower. Damian tilted his head like he was listening to something just behind him. Tim’s hand, halfway to turning a page, simply stopped. Dick’s posture slackened as though he’d forgotten how to hold himself upright. Bruce, for the first time all meeting, looked stunned.

And just like that—

They were gone.

Not physically. They were still there, breathing, heartbeats steady. But mentally?

Gone.

The Justice League noticed immediately.

“…What just happened?” Hal said, standing halfway up.

“They’re not responding,” J’onn murmured. His own mind reached out—hesitated. He drew back instantly, his expression sharpening. “They’re… not alone in their heads anymore.”

Diana’s hand drifted toward her lasso.

“Should we intervene?” she asked.

“No,” Zatanna said, eyes narrowing. “Not yet. They’re not being attacked. They’re being contacted. ”

By the time her words landed, it was already too late.

It was not a voice.

It was not even a sound.

It was a sensation—like pressure blooming in the skull, a weight behind the eyes, a vibration in the bones that hummed with meaning.

And then—

“Finally.”
The voice came through all of them. Different and the same. Layered, like overlapping harmonies spoken in silence.
“You took long enough to settle.”

“…What the hell,” Jason thought, instinctively defensive.

“Language, little vessel.”

“Who—what are you?” Tim demanded internally, brain scrambling for logic that didn’t exist here.

“Names are useless. Definitions, even more so. But if it comforts your limited understanding…”

And one by one, six impressions introduced themselves—like colors flooding in, each with its own weight and resonance.

• Mind—cool and calculating, ancient and deliberate.
• Soul—warm and weary, like a quiet echo of every life and death.
• Time—blunt, mechanical, always moving forward.
• Reality—shifting, curious, and almost amused.
• Space—wistful, distant, vibrating with longing.
• Power—bold, charged, like thunder cracking under skin.

Bruce's eye twitched. His breath hitched. So did everyone else’s.

They were still staring at the League—but not seeing them.

Inside, six minds were not alone.

“You are not hosts. You are guardians,” said Mind.
“We are not invaders. We are reborn.”
“And we chose you.”

“Why?” Bruce demanded. “Why us?”

“Because we’ve watched you.”
“Because you fight, even when you bleed.”
“Because you do not crave destruction, though you walk its edge.”
“Because you break yourselves, for others.”
“Because we were tired of being weapons.”

That hit something.

Deep.

Cass’s fingers twitched. Dick swallowed.

Tim blinked, a thousand thoughts firing and failing in quick succession. “What do you want?”

“To survive.”
“To exist.”
“To not be broken again.”

“And if we say no?” Damian’s thought was sharp, cautious.

“You already said yes, the moment you refused to let others suffer in your place.”

“You attached yourselves to us without consent,” Jason growled mentally.

“Do you consent to gravity? To time? To death?”
“We are not parasites. We are truths.”

Tim groaned inwardly. “Okay, edgy god rocks, tone it down a notch.”

“We are not gods.”

“Says the glowing voice in my skull,” Dick muttered silently.

“We are… companions. Now.”

“Until we are unmade.”

“Which will not happen again.”
“Together, we are stronger.”

“Separated, we were vulnerable.”

There was a pause.

Then Space whispered:

“Together we are one”

The Justice League was visibly uncomfortable now.

Cass had closed her eyes. Jason’s arms were crossed so tight his knuckles were white. Dick had slumped further in his chair, expression distant. Bruce sat rigid and unreadable.

None of them were blinking.

“Is it possession?” Arthur whispered.

“No,” Zatanna murmured. “Not like that. They’re having a conversation.”

Clark looked over, brows furrowed. “With what? ”

“Something old,” J’onn answered. “Something not made to fit into flesh and bone.”

Suddenly, Dick sucked in a breath—like breaking water. Cass blinked rapidly. Jason shook his head hard. Tim flinched. Damian exhaled, muttering something in Arabic. Bruce lifted a hand to his forehead and sat very, very still.

Six pairs of eyes slowly turned toward the League.

“…Okay,” Dick said hoarsely, then cleared his throat. “So… uh. They’re awake now.”

“They’ve… explained things,” Tim added, cautiously.

“What things?” Diana asked.

“They’re not just power, ” Bruce said. His voice was grave. “They’re will. They’re tired. ”

“And they’re not leaving,” Jason added grimly.

Clark glanced between them. “Are they safe?”

There was a beat.

Then Dick answered honestly, quietly: “They’re… trying.”

Silence.

Heavy.

Then Zatanna said, “I’ve seen worse roommates.”

Time is… strange after that .

They return home in silence. The manor hasn’t changed—but they have.

Alfred greets them at the door with his usual grace, but his posture stiffens the moment he sees them—each glowing, ethereal, and silent. His eyes flicker between their foreheads, his expression unreadable.

Jason tries to make it light. “We’ve had worse Tuesdays.”

Alfred doesn’t smile. Instead, he steps aside. “You’re home,” he says quietly. “Come. I’ve made dinner.”

It’s almost midnight. The kitchen is dim, the only real light coming from the faint, constant glow of the Stones in their foreheads—soft, shifting colors that dance against the dark walls.

The Batfamily sits at the long table, plates in front of them, untouched. Forks and knives glint in the low light, but no one moves.

“This is really anticlimactic,” Jason mutters, voice low, dry.

Tim stares at his hand. His fingers look… transparent, almost. Not really—but something about them doesn’t feel anchored anymore. “Well,” he says quietly, “It’s not like the Stones can be removed without... significant consequences. So. I guess this is just life now.”

“Tt.” Damian leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. “It is idiotic to believe we can return to normal. There is no ‘after’ from this.”

Bruce exhales through his nose and places his glass down, the sound sharp in the silence. “We need to decide how we're going to move forward. Our... appearance may also become a problem.”

“Oh, uh. Hold on.” Tim blinks, lifts his hand. The Red Stone in his forehead flashes with a concentrated burst of crimson light—and then, suddenly, the glow across all their foreheads fades. Gone. Like it was never there.

They all freeze.

“…The hell,” Jason breathes.

“Drake,” Damian says, tone clipped, “How did you do that?”

Tim shrugs slightly, like it didn’t just freak everyone out. “A bit and trial and error.”

Cass tilts her head, eyes narrowing. “Can you keep it up?”

“Yeah,” Dick adds, shifting uncomfortably, “If it’s hurting you, you need to tell us.”

Tim hesitates, examining the others foreheads. The illusion flickers “It’s not painful. Not yet. But I don’t think I can sustain it twenty-four seven. It feels like... stretching a rubber band. Sooner or later, it’ll snap. Maybe with practice….but it finicky”

There’s a moment of silence. Heavy. Uneasy.

“Then just drop it during patrol,” Jason says with a shrug, his voice more practical than casual. “If we keep the glow tied to our vigilante selves, it might help preserve our civilian IDs. Plus, if something happens—injury, distraction—and it drops with the stones in our public identities, well, we're stuffed.”

They all go quiet again, the idea sinking in.

“Smart,” Tim mutters. He lets the illusion drop, letting out a breath while doing so. The glow returns instantly—six distinct, pulsing lights in the dark. The air shivers, faintly wrong.

“Right,” Dick says, rolling his shoulders. “Before we even think about patrol, we need to figure out how to control this. Training. We start with that.”

Everyone nods, some more reluctantly than others.

“Right,” Bruce echoes, voice firm but subdued.

None of them touch their food. They sit a little too still, bathed in color and shadow. The kitchen, once a sanctuary, feels colder now. Not hostile—just... aware.

And somewhere, just beyond conscious thought, the Stones pulse in quiet rhythm. Waiting.

Chapter Text

Damian states at the wall

It’s not even a particularly interesting wall—just concrete, unpainted, slightly rough with age. There’s a patch of darker gray where some kind of equipment once hung, now long removed. He doesn't blink. He doesn’t move.

He doesn’t really know how long he’s been here

Not that it matters. He could ask his internal clock, that ruthlessly trained mechanism honed since childhood, and it would still give him an answer. But the answer would feel wrong. Stale. Distant. Like it had come from someone else’s head.

He doesn’t ask.

The Batcave hums softly behind him. Pennyworth’s voice drifts from the manor above, muffled by stone and distance. Someone’s sparring across the room—Cassandra, maybe. She always trains when she’s upset. There’s the low buzz of Richard talking to someone on comms, a quick bark of laughter that doesn’t quite reach its usual altitude.

But Damian doesn’t turn. He keeps staring at the wall, like it might open up and explain everything. Or nothing.

He breathes. Sort of.

There’s a moment when he lifts his hand and watches the fingers trail behind it just slightly. Not enough to cause alarm—not yet—but enough that he notices. Like time is lagging around him, or maybe he’s lagging in time.

It’s not painful.

It’s not anything.

He can still fight. He’s not impaired. Not really. But every time he moves now, it feels like he's pulling against something. Like his body is wading through a thick, invisible field—one no one else can see. Or maybe no one else cares to notice.

Time slips. It bends, subtly, like light through warped glass. And no one else seems to see it.

At first, he thought it was just shock. Emotional disturbance. But no—he is calm. Collected. That part of him hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s become more entrenched. More… still.

He hasn’t spoken much since they returned. A few clipped observations. One grunt of acknowledgment. He doesn’t know what to say. What can he say?

They're not normal now, he’d argue not human—or something close. And he can feel that truth humming in the marrow of his bones. He is something else now. And so is time.

“Damian.”

He feels Drake before the older boy touches his shoulder. It’s soft—light. Not invasive.

Damian blinks. Slowly. Turns his head.

Drake frowns at him. Concerned. “You’ve been staring at the wall for fifteen minutes.”

Have I?

That seems both too long and far too short.

“I was thinking,” Damian says flatly. His voice sounds normal to him. Tim winces at it, like it's not.

“Right,” Drake replies, trying for levity. “Well. When you’re done contemplating the wall’s architectural contributions, we’re trying to catalog our limits.”

Damian doesn’t move.

Drake lingers a beat longer. Then goes.

Damian turns back to the wall.

Minutes pass. Or seconds. Or hours.

He doesn’t know.

He doesn’t care.

The wall remains unchanged.

Jason stood at the doorway of his apartment for a long time.
Keys in hand.
Fingers hovering over the lock.
His other hand trembled slightly.

He wasn’t cold.
He wasn’t scared.

He was overwhelmed.

He could feel them already—just past the door. Not people. Not alive. But close. So close now. And always watching.

The lock clicked open.
The door creaked inward.

He didn’t breathe.

The moment he crossed the threshold, it was like wading into thick water. Everything was heavy. Electric. Crowded.

And cold.

Not temperature cold—something deeper. Colder than flesh. Colder than memory.

Ghosts floated lazily through his apartment.

Not ghosts like Casper. Not like the movies.

These were real.
Ragged. Worn. Torn from time and place. Some flickered in and out, phasing like broken projections. Others stood still—hollow-eyed, half-there.

There was a man near the window. Shirt soaked in something dark. Head caved in. Eyes blinking like he hadn’t noticed the steel beam through his temple.

A girl hovered near the sink. Pale. Too thin. Hands stained red. Her mouth moved like she was still crying. She didn’t make a sound.

On the couch, a teenager slumped with her knees drawn to her chest. Her body was fine, but her eyes were wrong. Gone. Empty sockets that didn’t bleed, didn’t blink, just stared.

Jason stared back.

He couldn’t help it.

The Stone had broken something open in him. Or maybe it had built something new— a channel , wide and awful and open. The dead saw him now. And worse—he saw them.

Not as memories. Not as impressions.

As they were.

And he could feel them.
God, he could feel them.

The girl in the kitchen—she’d died afraid. Alone. Cold and wet in a bathtub that had been white before she slipped under.
The man at the window had been angry. Unjust. Screaming until his skull split open.
The teenager on the couch—she had felt nothing. Not at the end. Just emptiness. She hadn’t even been scared.

It was too much.

Jason stumbled into his bedroom, trying to ignore the echo of footsteps that weren’t his own. Trying not to flinch at the whispers that had no mouths to speak them.

He threw a duffel bag open and started packing.

Sweaters. Jeans. Socks.
Holsters. Ammo. Toothbrush.

He couldn’t stay here.

The ghosts weren’t attacking him. They weren’t malicious. But they were there . Always there . The apartment hummed with grief and silence and things left unsaid. They weren’t looking to hurt him.

But they were looking.

And Jason couldn’t not feel it.

The city was louder than ever. The living screamed with emotions he didn’t want, and now the dead followed him home.

He zipped the bag shut.
Shouldered it.

Took one last look at the room.

The ghosts didn’t follow as he stepped back toward the door. But they watched.
With hollow eyes.
With quiet longing.

And Jason—Red Hood, son of Gotham, boy dragged back from the grave—watched them back.

He shut the door.

Didn’t lock it.

Didn’t look back.

If he had to force himself to live at the manor to not go insane, 

So be it

The lights overhead were dimmed, tinted a faint blue from the eerie, constant glow that pulsed from six foreheads.

It wasn’t quiet.

Sparring pads thudded. A steel dummy collapsed with a sharp clang . Bruce was frowning—deep, world-weary frown #482 for the week—observing everyone through narrowed eyes, arms crossed. He was the only one who hadn’t moved in twenty minutes, save for a sharp twitch when Cass had accidentally shattered a floor tile by looking at it too hard.

“This is useless,” Jason muttered, pacing. “How do you train a soul?”

Dick, standing nearby and watching his phone charge itself by sheer contact while his forehead glowed, winced. “Jason, maybe try blocking them, i don’t know”

“I’ve tried that, dip–shit”

“Well, try harder,” Tim muttered, tapping notes into a holopad he’d conjured out of thin air. The holopad glitched. “Dammit. Can we please figure out whose power is making everything twitch every time we talk?”

Dick held up his hand. “Probably me.”

Everyone turned to him. His stone was glowing brighter than usual, his eyes reflecting galaxies they’d never seen.

Cass, her knuckles wrapped and eyes sharp, tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

“I touched my phone earlier,” Dick said. “It was at 12%. Then it was 100%. I didn’t plug it in. I didn’t do anything.”

“So what?” Jason said. “You’re a walking charger now?”

“I think it’s more than that.” Dick stepped back toward a weapons rack. Carefully, he touched a metal staff. It sparked. It didn’t burn him, but energy arced between his fingers like static gone wild. “I think I can conduct energy. Not just move. Store it. Redistribute it.”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed. “That’s why you teleport so violently. It’s a discharge.”

“Like a railgun,” Tim muttered. “You convert stored power into movement. Kinetic release.”

“That… would explain why I keep waking up on the roof.”

“I told you teleporting in your sleep was a thing.”

Dick shrugged. “Weird dreams. Sometimes I wake up mid-air.”

Meanwhile, on the far side of the cave, Cass was systematically obliterating dummies.

There was a graveyard of them in her corner.

Some had entire torsos missing. One had been punched through . Another had melted at the core, its structure collapsing like wet paper.

She stood over a fresh one, breathing slow, focused. Gloved hands flexing.

Then she hit it.

BOOM.

The dummy didn’t break. It disintegrated .

Cass stepped back, jaw tense. “Too much,” she muttered to herself. “Way too much.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “You need to regulate.”

“I am regulating.” Her tone was clipped. “I’ve gone through every level setting I can. I’m trying to find the minimum amount of force I can use without liquefying someone’s bones.”

Tim, still hovering by a computer, looked up. “That’s comforting.”

Cass glanced over, face serious. “You want me on patrol? I need to know how to hit without killing.”

She turned, faced the next dummy. Slowed down. Carefully, she tapped it with two fingers.

The dummy’s chest crumpled inward .
Not exploded— imploded .

“...Yeah,” Dick whispered. “No high-fives for a while.”

“Noted,” Cass said softly.

Jason, who’d been pacing in a slow, wide arc, suddenly paused.

He turned toward a shadowed corner of the cave. “No,” he whispered.

Bruce looked up. “Jason?”

“They’re here again.”

Everyone tensed.

Turns out when Jason’s stone glowed, it admitted kinda like a field—anyone in that field could see the ghosts.

The Ghosts—shimmering, translucent, flickering like broken memories—floated in the dark. One hovered near the weapon racks. Another drifted near the computer terminal. Most looked… wrong. Like they shouldn’t be. Like they never wanted to be seen again.

Cass shivered. “They’re not like normal ghosts.”

“They’re not,” Jason said. “They’re mine . I think I’m tethered to them. Or maybe they’re tethered to me . I feel them more when my stone flares.”

Tim made a note, his face pale. “That could mean the Soul entity is trying to reconstitute the echoes of death around you. Reanimating emotional residue. ”

Jason shot him a look. “That’s a hell of a way to say ‘I see dead people.’”

“I’m a scientist.”

“And I’m haunted.”

Bruce raised a hand. “Focus. We need to find practical limits. Tim—what about you?”

Tim looked up, his eyes distant, faintly glowing. “I’m not… sure yet.”

“Any guesses?”

“Reality is slippery . I can change things around me, but not always deliberately. Sometimes I think of something, and it just… happens.”

Bruce’s brow furrowed. “Define ‘something.’”

Tim looked away. “One time I imagined a cup of coffee, and it appeared. Another time, I thought about falling , and the ground vanished for a few seconds.”

Jason blinked. “I’m sorry— what now? ”

“I fixed it!” Tim said quickly. “I think I just need to train my mind better. Control my thoughts. Right now, they’re too loud.”

Damian, meanwhile, was sitting quietly in a chair. Watching the wall. Unblinking.

Bruce noticed. “Damian?”

The boy didn’t respond.

Not right away.

After a moment, he turned his head, slow and deliberate. His eyes were unfocused.

“I see things before they happen,” he said softly.

Cass turned. “Like…?”

“Not images. Moments. Flickers of future. Sometimes they feel a year away. Sometimes they’re five seconds.” He paused. “But I also feel time ripple. Like the room is breathing in reverse.”

Tim winced. “That sounds awful .”

“It’s hard to focus,” Damian admitted. “I can’t always tell what’s real. Or when.”

Dick put a hand on his shoulder. He had to grip tighter than expected—Damian felt… fragile. A weak resurence”.

“You’re still here,” Dick said gently. “That matters.”

Bruce, finally stepping forward, sighed. “We’re not ready for patrol. Not like this.”

“No shit,” Jason muttered.

“We’ll need daily tests. Controlled environments. Meditation. Regulation.”

Cass raised a hand. “Also—Tim has the disuse improved?”

Tim’s stone pulsed. And just like that, all six glows vanished again.

“Still got it,” Tim said, face creased.

Bruce frowned. “We’ll need a better solution.”

Everyone nodded

But for now, they trained.

And for now, the world was still safe.

They just didn’t know for how long.

Dick’s leg bounced. Up, down. Again. Again.

The roof beneath him was cool, a familiar perch, a place that used to feel steady. Now? Now, even gravity seemed optional .

Music thudded in his ears—something off his fifty-eight-hour playlist. He didn’t know what song was playing anymore. It just was . A constant beat in a mind too busy, too fast, too loud. When your body never tired, when your phone never died, you needed rhythms to anchor you.

Sleep was… irrelevant. His stone burned low and steady at his forehead, he could still feel it thrumming under his skin. Power hummed in his bones like an overcharged circuit. Sleep didn’t come easy. Stillness hurt. Rooms with walls were suffocating .

So here he was. Perched on the edge of the manor’s roof, staring up at the sky like it might give him answers.

Space stretched out forever above him, a canvas of ink and fire and ancient light.

He had been to space before. Many times. With the League. With the Titans. On mission. On accident. On purpose.

But this felt different.

Now, when he looked at the stars, they pulled at him. Tugged something deep in his gut. It was like missing a place he’d never lived. Like standing outside a home he couldn’t remember but somehow knew.

He shifted his weight. Restless. Always restless.

Dick frowned, thinking back to a conversation from earlier that day—Tim pacing, Bruce grim, hypothesizing over graphs and spectral maps.

They’d said it was likely his power wasn’t just teleportation. That his energy wasn’t confined to movement or conduction.

He wrapped space around him. Bent reality in bursts of light and directionless momentum.

According to Tim, that meant something more cosmic. That his stone—the blue one—wasn’t just letting him move.

It was attuned to space itself .

That made sense, he guessed. He’d blinked halfway across the world on accident the other night just trying to grab a blanket. Nearly landed in Cairo in his pajamas.

Honestly, thinking about it, his powers, Damian’s time-based ones, and Tim’s reality-manipulating ones overlapped like a Venn diagram made of chaos.

“I’m just the night sky’s Uber,” he muttered under his breath.

His finger tapped on his thigh in rhythm with the music.

Faster. Louder. Then buzzing —he blinked down and realized his leg was vibrating. Not metaphorically. Literally .

He stood abruptly, brushing phantom electricity off his pants. It danced at his fingertips like crackling blue lightning.

The roof of the manor shimmered slightly at the edge of his perception. His stone pulsed again, and without effort, he moved .

One blink.

Gone.

New Zealand – Somewhere near Fiordland, under the cleanest night sky in the world

He arrived silently, bare feet hitting grass.

The clearing was wide, ancient trees yawning around him like tired sentries. Above him, the stars didn’t twinkle—they shone . Bold. Clear. Endless .

Far from Gotham. Far from city lights. Here, he could see the whole sky.

And he could feel it .

It pressed down—not in a threatening way, but like recognition. Like the sky knew him. Like it whispered, welcome home .

The pull in his chest settled. Just a little.

He took a breath, deeper than he could back at the manor. His thoughts didn’t slow, exactly, but they aligned . His mind was still too fast, his body too full of energy, his fingers itching with starlight.

But for a moment, it was manageable.

He’d discovered this place two nights ago. He could go anywhere now. Literally anywhere. Just think it, feel it, and he’d be there. He’d mapped the world in a way no satellite could match. Seen deserts, oceans, mountaintops. Crowded cities and abandoned temples.

But this place… this forest, this sky —was his favorite.

He glanced at his phone. Still at 100%. Of course. He hadn’t charged it in weeks.

He was a walking battery now. A living conduit of power. Sometimes he’d absorbed lightbulbs just by walking into rooms. The microwave shorted out yesterday because he touched the door handle too fast.

He didn’t even need to eat anymore, though he tried. Alfred had insisted . Still, food didn’t feel like anything. He was running on something else now—on the deep, humming power of the cosmos.

“Too much,” he whispered, and meant it.

Too much energy. Too much awareness. Too much of him stretching out into places his body couldn’t follow.

He couldn’t even remember the last time he blinked.

He sat down slowly, cross-legged on the grass, eyes still fixed on the stars.

Above, the Milky Way swirled. He swore he saw a shape in the light—a flicker of something familiar. A destination? A calling?

He didn’t know.

But he wanted to go there.

To all the places the sky hinted at.

Because part of him? Part of him was starting to believe that whatever the stone had awakened in him… it wasn’t human anymore.

But the other part of him, the more logical part of him told him to stay—his family, he would never leave them

But…

Space wasn’t just calling.

It was home .

Cass couldn't feel her fingers.

Not in the numb, fuzzy way—no. She felt everything . That was the problem.

Her hands buzzed. Constantly. Like static under skin. Like her bones were thrumming with music too loud, too ancient, too big for her.

And everything she touched broke.

She sat in the manor’s sub-training wing. The heavy reinforced kind. The kind meant for aliens . The kind Bruce had built but never really needed. Until now.

The floor was cracked. Again.

A heavy-duty training dummy lay in pieces at her feet. Another failure. Another reminder.

Cass exhaled slowly. Tried to steady her breath. Her jaw clenched tight.

She looked at her hands—small, scarred, deceptively delicate. But they weren’t hands anymore, not really. Not when one wrong flick of her wrist could crush bone like paper.

Not when Bruce bled because she bumped into him last week.

Her stone glowed when she was angry. It pulsed when she tried to calm down. It throbbed when she didn’t know what she was feeling—which was most of the time, lately.

She didn’t talk much. Never had. But now, the silence wasn’t comfort.

Now, silence roared inside her.

The others were changing—Jason more emotional, Dick like lightning in a bottle, Tim fraying at the edges of reality, Bruce too in people’s heads, Damian distant and slow.

Cass? She just broke things .

She flexed her fingers. The glow in her forehead sparked faintly. Her body was the strongest it had ever been. Unimaginable strength. Limitless potential.

But it was also fragile . Cracking.

She healed slower now. Bruised more easily. Her joints felt like they were grinding against too much power. Like every muscle was working twice as hard just to hold back what was under her skin.

She didn’t sleep much. Not because of energy. Because of the dreams.

Power talked to her.

Not in words, not always. Just... presence. Pressure. Purpose.

It wanted to be used. It demanded to be released.

She wasn’t sure how long she could keep saying no.

Earlier that day, she tried hugging Damian.

He flinched. Not from fear. From the cold.

Her skin had gone cold when the stone activated. Her blood, something else .

She didn’t cry. She never really had.

But later, alone in the reinforced gym, she curled in a corner with her knees pulled to her chest, and stared at her reflection in the shattered mirror.

The eyes weren’t hers anymore. Not really. They glowed faint purple now, always. Even behind Tim’s illusions.

People looked at her like she was radioactive.

Even criminals were starting to run before the fight began.

One had tried to shoot her last night. The bullet bent before it reached her.

He’d screamed. She hadn’t even touched him.

She didn’t know if he saw the glow or just felt it. The wrongness. The godlike shadow that followed her now like a second skin.

Cass used to move like silence.

Now she moved like a threat .

“Cass.”

She turned. Jason stood in the doorway. His own stone glowed faint orange. Ghosts floated around him like moths.

She didn’t flinch. He didn’t comment.

“I brought soup,” he said, setting a tray down on the bench.

Cass stared. She hadn’t eaten today. She wasn’t even hungry.

Still, she nodded, a little. Sat down. Held the spoon carefully. Tried not to break it.

Jason sat nearby but not too close. They didn’t say anything. They didn’t need to.

Her hand trembled. She felt the stone pulsing. Hungry.

She took a bite.

The spoon didn’t snap.

Small victory.

Jason watched her. “You doing okay?”

She paused. Tilted her head.

Then shook it, just once.

He nodded. “Yeah. Me neither.”

Later that night, she slipped back into her room. Alone.

There were no mirrors anymore. She broke the last one yesterday.

Instead, she wrapped herself in a blanket. Sat by the window. Watched the stars. Tried not to think about what she was becoming.

She used to be a girl.

Now she was a bomb with a pulse.

Cass pressed a hand to her heart. Felt the stone echo back at her.

I’m still me, she told herself.

But even that didn’t sound right anymore.

Chapter Text

Rain slicked down the sides of buildings like sweat.

The city breathed a slow, choking breath—Gotham, after all, never truly slept. But it dozed in pockets. And crime never waited for an invitation.

Perched on a gargoyle overlooking Old Gotham, his family was across the city, he didn't need to hear them anymore—he could feel them, all of them, a hum at the back of his mind like electricity wrapped in family.

During Patrol, they abused Bruce’s mental link to the extreme

“ Everyone in position? ” he asked, crouched and too bright in a city of shadows. 

“ One click away, ” came Jason’s voice, staticky and tired. Orange glow hidden beneath his helmet. A ghost hovered by his shoulder like a curious stray.

Tim, cloaked in a distortion field of his own making, responded, “ Ready. I’m scanning the block. There’s movement near third. Not much.”

“ Nothing near Crime Alley ,” Bruce’s voice murmured. Even through the mindlink, it felt like he was already inside your thoughts. He had that effect now. So did his piercing, ever-bright stone, burning soft yellow like a second moon.

“I have three on the rooftop beside Ace Chemicals, ” Damian said, voice monotone. His green stone pulsed faintly like a heartbeat, but his face didn’t change. Not anymore.

“Just let me know if we want them unconscious or terrified, ” Cass whispered, perched upside down beneath a fire escape. Her eyes burned with barely-contained power. The air around her buzzed.

They all exchanged one last check-in.

And then—it started.

A mugging in the Narrows. Standard fare.

Except now? It was over in four seconds.

Jason didn’t even draw his gun. He just looked at the guy—and the mugger dropped his weapon with a scream, clutching at his chest.

“Fear of being shot in the heart,” Jason muttered as the ghost whispered it to him. “Ironically accurate.”

Two rooftops away, Cass dropped into an arms deal like a missile. She landed between twelve fully armed thugs—and when the first one lifted a gun, she flicked her wrist and the weapon crumpled in his hand like aluminum.

They tried to run. She didn’t stop them. Her presence alone did.

Cass didn’t even move. She just stood there, eyes glowing, and whispered, “Run.”

They did.

Tim tracked a smuggling ring from four blocks away, rerouting streetlights and pulling open sewer grates remotely with a flick of his wrist.

“This is…weirdly easy,” he mumbled, watching the thugs fall into a trap he hadn’t physically set up.

“It’s because we’re not fighting anymore,” Bruce muttered. “We’re... manipulating. Pushing pieces on a board we already know the outcome to.”

Dick appeared beside him in a flicker of blue light.

He blinked at the empty street below them. “Feels like cheating.”

Bruce didn’t answer.

Later, in Midtown, a hostage situation erupted.

They had been warned by Damian before the situation even occurred 

Fifteen people, one desperate man, a building rigged with explosives.

It used to take an hour. Careful planning. Risk.

Now?

Dick teleported the hostages out one by one in blinks. Cass disabled the bombs by crushing the explosive cores with surgical precision. Tim nullified the detonator's signal. Jason… just stood there, ghosts whispering everything the guy had done in his life into his ear until he sobbed on the floor.

No one said anything when it was over. Just silence.

Damian stood on the roof, still. Rain collected in his hair. He watched time ripple around him like slow waves, watched the others flicker in and out of space, watched Gotham breathe beneath them.

“It’s too easy,” he said finally.

“I don’t think we’re meant to patrol anymore,” Bruce said, almost softly. “Not like this.”

They gathered on a rooftop an hour later. The skyline behind them glowed faintly—but it was them that lit the dark.

They didn’t even blend into the shadows anymore. The air shimmered around them like a heat haze. Cass’s strength cracked the cement beneath her boot. Jason’s ghosts circled lazily. Tim didn’t even flicker in the real world anymore—just existed where he chose to. Bruce’s thoughts bled at the edges, and Dick’s glow kept attracting bats to him like a living lantern.

“This isn’t what I signed up for,” Tim muttered, staring at the skyline. “I wanted to help. Not… end it before it begins.”

“We’re not the same,” Dick agreed. “Gotham didn’t change. We did.”

Jason kicked a pipe. “So what? We hang up the cowls and go all galactic guardians?”

“No,” Bruce said. “We keep doing the mission. But we change it.”

“Into what?” Damian asked, voice as flat as his gaze.

No one had an answer.

The city breathed below them. A city they could now protect without ever lifting a hand.

And somehow, that made it all feel… heavier.

There were notebooks.

Notebooks in piles.

Notebooks stacked so high they turned into towers around the walls of the bedroom that was never truly slept in anymore. Maps. Strings. Formulas. Observations. Doodles. Conversations with himself, sometimes written mid-thought and then never continued. Rambling, spiraling—chaotic, even for Tim.

Tim sat on the floor, cross-legged, his back against his bed, hands covered in pen ink, staring blankly at a half-filled page that simply read:

“None of them are real.
Not like I am.”

That had been a week ago. He hadn’t crossed it out yet.

He didn’t mean to stop believing in the world. It just… happened. Slowly.

Like fog creeping in under the door.

At first, it was minor—blinks where people didn’t move quite right. Street lights pulsing in time with his heartbeat. Seeing a building in the wrong place, then again in the right one. He'd touch things—tables, walls, the carpet—and feel nothing but the awareness that it was… rendered. There for him . Not actually there.

And it kept going.

He’d talk to someone in the Manor—Steph, maybe Alfred—and then walk away wondering if the conversation ever really happened. He stopped eating, but didn’t feel hunger. He hadn’t actually slept in weeks. Didn’t need to. His body didn’t ask for it anymore.

And the worst part?

It didn’t scare him.

He wrote that down too.

“Not scared. Just… numb. If they’re real, great. If they’re not, I guess it doesn’t matter.”

The red glow of his stone pulsed softly against the dark.

Tim's power wasn’t big. Not like Cass’s force-punches, or Dick ripping space open like it was gift wrap. He didn’t burn bright.

He bent things.

He could twist physics. Make things appear. Edit reality—not in sweeping gestures, but with surgical control. Illusions. Spaces that didn’t exist suddenly existing. Doors to nowhere. He’d created an entire training chamber inside a closet the size of a shoebox. And that was just Tuesday.

He’d tried to create people once.

Just to see.

They looked real. They moved real. Talked. Cried.

But their eyes were always wrong. Blank. Glassy. Like something wearing human skin and forgetting the instructions.

He’d erased them. But not before studying them. Taking notes. Watching how long it took them to break down.

He should’ve felt something. Guilt. Horror.

He didn’t.

It wasn’t that he didn’t care anymore.

It was that his definition of “care” was shifting.

When Cass broke a dummy in half during training, he didn’t wince. He just noted the stress fractures in the metal and calculated the upper limit of her control. When Jason stood in the hallways with ghosts whispering in his ears, Tim didn’t ask if he was okay. He just watched the frequency of ghost activity and tracked how close they floated to his head.

He’d started seeing them all like systems.

Not people.

Programs.

Tim blinked and stared at the family portrait on his desk. The photo frame flickered. His hand hovered over it. It stopped flickering.

“Is this real?” he asked the empty room.

The stone on his forehead pulsed once.

He didn’t get an answer.

He’d spoken to Bruce about it—once. Just once.

“I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

Bruce had looked at him, eyes heavy and tired, and said nothing for a long time.

Then he just nodded.

“I know.”

Because Bruce felt it too. Tim could see it. The unraveling. The slipping.

And they were all getting closer to each other—emotionally, physically. Without realizing it, they'd stopped choosing to gather. They just… were always near. Like magnets slowly being drawn together. Not always touching. But always near .

They were becoming more than human. Less than human. Something in between.

Sometimes, Tim would wake up—not really sleep, but drift—and feel Dick pacing around the manor five rooms away. Hear Jason cry out in his sleep. Feel Cass's grief pulse in the air like thunder. Know Bruce was sitting in the Batcave, not moving. See Damian’s time aura ripple like a cracked mirror in another wing.

And still, he would sit on the floor, hands idle, head tilted.

“None of them are real.”

Pause.

“But I think I love them anyway.”

Bruce didn’t mean to stop speaking.

It wasn’t intentional. He hadn’t stood in front of a mirror and decided that verbal communication was obsolete, or beneath him. It had started simply. Quietly. A nod here, a look there, and then a single message directly into Dick’s mind during a mission.

“Left flank.”

It was efficient.

And then it became frequent.

Tim didn’t even react anymore. Jason flinched every time, the echo of Bruce’s voice pinging around his skull like a sonar pulse. Cass tilted her head, gave the smallest frown. Damian scowled every time it happened, his shields weaker, his discomfort obvious—but Bruce did it anyway.

Because it was easier .

Easier than speaking. Easier than lying with his mouth when the truth was bleeding through his thoughts.

Words were inefficient, he reasoned.

A lie he told himself every day.

Bruce Wayne could hear everything now.

Not just in the room. Not just the manor. Minds were loud—even when quiet. They buzzed, like distant televisions on every channel, overlapping, crackling with insecurity, thoughts half-formed and screaming. Gotham was loud . The world was suffocating .

He wore noise-cancelling thoughts like gloves.

Layers of mental armor to keep the world out. Filters. Blocks. Rules.

And even then… they slipped through.

He knew that the grocer in East End was stealing from the till to pay for his wife’s insulin. He knew that a man three blocks over from the manor was planning to kill his neighbor's dog. He knew that Alfred’s hands trembled more when he poured tea because he was afraid—truly afraid —of them now.

He knew all of it.

And he said nothing.

Because the moment he reached out, the moment he responded to what he heard—it would mean he'd accepted it. That he was using the power. That he had chosen to intrude.

He hadn’t chosen.

Not at first.

But then came the wants . Not the needs. Not even the instincts.

The wants .

A criminal wouldn’t talk. Bruce’s jaw stayed still—but his mind reached forward. Slipped into memories like a scalpel. Found images, sounds, impressions. The scent of blood. The crunch of bone. Names whispered under breath. He dug in deeper, past the top layer, to the raw subconscious, where the real answers lived.

He tore into psyches like they were files in a cabinet.

And the worst part?

It worked.

They didn’t scream. They just went silent. Eyes blank. Compliant. Empty.

He told himself he was saving time. Preventing pain. Getting justice faster.

But deep down, he knew—

He liked it.

The manor was different now. Not just quieter. He felt his children at all times. Even if they weren’t home.

Tim’s thoughts had sharp edges. Like splinters and broken glass. He was disappearing into his own maze, his mind folding in on itself.

Cass was fractured. Always holding back. Terrified of her strength—yet secretly thrilled when she shattered something perfectly built.

Jason… Jason was screaming. Not aloud. Never aloud. But his soul wept. Every day. Especially when the ghosts grew too thick to walk through.

Dick was light. Not happy—just bright . Energetic. Moving, even when still. But even Dick was starting to change. He thought in starbursts now. His consciousness drifted when he wasn’t anchored. When he was alone, his thoughts bled out toward the sky, reaching.

And Damian… Damian was quiet . Too quiet. Bruce could barely find him anymore. Like he was sliding between seconds. Lost in temporal echoes. His thoughts were not gone—but out of sync.

They didn’t know he listened. Always listened.

Even when they whispered, even when they cried.

He was always there.

And he hated it.

But he kept doing it .

“Stop it,” Jason had snapped once, his voice jagged. “Get the hell out of my head, Bruce.”

Bruce hadn’t answered.

Not aloud.

“Then stop thinking so loudly.”

Jason had thrown a lamp. It hadn’t hit.

Bruce hadn't ducked.

He just walked away.

Sometimes, he tried to speak.

Out loud.

But the sound of his voice felt wrong now. Heavy. Slow. Like trying to move in water. His thoughts were faster. Cleaner. Sharper. Why bark orders when he could lay strategies directly into their minds?

He didn’t ask anymore. He simply thought:

“Go now.”
“Don’t hesitate.”
“That was inefficient.”

He hadn’t realized how deeply it had sunk in until Alfred cleared his throat one evening and said softly:

“You haven’t spoken a word to me in three days, Master Bruce.”

He opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Left the room.

He was slipping.

Not like the others—no bright flashes or cracking skies. No haunting ghosts. No time warps or shattered illusions.

But in the worst way possible:

Quietly.

He was losing his humanity thought by thought. Choice by choice.

Because the more he knew , the less he felt . The more he heard , the less he wanted to speak. The more he read , the more detached he became.

And soon?

There’d be no line between Bruce Wayne, and the thing inside his head.

The Stone didn’t roar.

It whispered.

And Bruce had never been good at ignoring a whisper.

Alfred had buried Thomas and Martha Wayne.

He had held a blood-soaked boy in his arms as the world tilted off its axis, as innocence bled into the Gotham pavement.

He had seen Bruce come back from the dead. More than once.

He had made tea after funerals, stitched skin with shaking hands, watched broken children grow into soldiers.

And yet—this?

This was something he was not prepared for.

He couldn’t stitch the unnatural glow in their foreheads.

He couldn’t scrub out the silence from their words, that wrongness in how they spoke without speaking .

He couldn’t put a bandage on Jason’s haunted eyes, on Tim’s flickering sense of what was real, on Damian’s slow, terrifying drift into some other state of time and self.

He couldn’t reach them.

And for the first time since Bruce brought home a circus boy with too much heart and not enough parents—

He was afraid of them.

Truly, achingly afraid.

Not of violence. Not of what they could do. But of what they were becoming.

What they already were.

They’d come home after the battle.

Not victorious. Not broken.

Just… changed.

Utterly.

Cass no longer touched the ground when she walked. Not really. The earth recoiled from her in small, imperceptible ways. Walls buckled when she leaned against them. She shattered a porcelain cup in her hands like it was paper. She looked at him with so much love—but her hugs, once the warmest, no longer came. As if she knew it would break him now.

Dick could barely sit still. Every shadow made him twitch. Every breath sparked some cosmic pulse under his skin. He no longer blinked when he teleported. Just appeared in rooms, perched on windowsills, eyes distant—always distant.

Jason wore his emotions like a thousand veils. Emotions not his. They clung to him like smoke. Laughter that wasn’t his. Rage that came from nowhere. Tears that fell without cause. He didn’t sleep. He barely ate. And the ghosts—God, the ghosts —they followed him like a silent army, some of them still dripping blood.

Tim didn’t look at Alfred anymore. Not really. He looked through him. Like he wasn’t sure Alfred was real. Sometimes he touched the wall and it melted into trees. Sometimes he whispered to objects that weren’t there. Sometimes he floated an inch off the ground and didn’t even notice.

And Damian…

Damian just stared.

At the clock.

At the fire.

At the wall.

Frozen in time, somehow out of it. His movements were off by milliseconds. Not quite syncing with the world. Not quite there. His heartbeat was faint, too slow. His eyes tracked things no one else could see. Like he was watching time move around him, not within him.

And Bruce?

Bruce didn’t speak anymore.

He looked , and Alfred understood. He thought , and the command sank into Alfred’s head like a whisper from God.

And it terrified him.

He remembered when Bruce was twelve and couldn’t sleep.

Alfred would sit at the end of his bed and hum lullabies he barely remembered the words to.

He remembered when Dick first flew in the manor hall, arms out, laughing like the chandelier could catch him. How he’d needed five stitches and came back asking to do it again.

He remembered Jason, slamming the fridge door, teenage fury over algebra and ice cream, only to sneak back five minutes later with a sheepish grin and a "sorry, Alfie."

He remembered Tim, quiet and tired, sleeping curled up like a cat on the couch, forgotten tech notes on his chest, always too small for the burden he carried.

Cass, her first words. Her first hug. Her first smile.

Damian, who had once hidden kittens in his room, thinking he’d be punished but hoping—hoping—he’d be allowed to keep them.

And now?

They glowed.

They hummed , not with life, but with something else. Something unnatural. Eternal.

They sat at the breakfast table like ghosts. Glowing eyes. Unmoving plates.

It wasn’t dramatic.

It wasn’t explosive.

It was the quiet erosion of family.

Like water wearing down stone.

And Alfred didn’t know how to fix it .

He served tea anyway.

He made eggs. Toast. He fluffed pillows, restocked bandages, turned the lights on in rooms that had grown too dark.

He stood in the kitchen and wept into his tea towels when no one was looking.

Because he didn’t know what to say.

Because there were no words for this.

Because he had always believed he could care hard enough to bring them back.

But how do you reach people whose souls are drifting into stars? Into time? Into Godhood ?

One night, he sat in the cave, lights dimmed, and whispered:

“I don’t know how to help you anymore.”

No one answered.

But he felt it.

A flicker.

A pulse.

Bruce’s mind, brushing his.

“Just stay.”

That was all.

No orders. No plans. No manipulation.

Just that.

And so, Alfred did the only thing he could.

He stayed.

Because no matter what they became—gods, monsters, strangers—

They were still his children.

And he was still their father.

Even if all he could do now was be there when the stars went out.

"Hey… so we're not okay," Dick whispered.

The words barely carried, but they didn’t have to. The room didn’t shift in response—no one twitched or flinched—but Dick felt it. The atmosphere bent like a ripple in a pond, not a sound, not a breath—just acknowledgment . Quiet and collective.

Jason muttered without turning his head, still staring at the same corner of the room he’d been watching for the past hour, "Understatement of the century."

His tone was dry, but heavy. His stone was dormant—no glow, no hum—but that didn’t mean silence. His brow creased slightly, and Dick didn’t need to ask to know something was there. Something else . A ghost maybe. Or a memory. Or both. He could never tell with Jason anymore.

Cass blinked at him slowly, like she was pulling her consciousness back from somewhere else. Her eyes shimmered purple even in the dim light. Her skin, once golden-honeyed and full of life, had dulled into a grey-violet sheen. The veins in her hands flickered faintly—lit with the same volatile glow that shimmered behind her irises. Like something underneath her skin was trying to escape .

When she cried, which happened more often than she let anyone know, her tears stained her cheeks violet.

Then Tim—

“I…” Tim’s voice was quiet, distant, as if echoing from somewhere outside himself. “I don’t think our bodies are handling the strain well.”

“Clearly,” Bruce answered, without opening his mouth. His voice pressed into their skulls like gravity—words laid bare inside the mind. 

Dick sighed, eyes sweeping the living room. It was dimly lit, warm even, the way Alfred always managed to make it—but the occupants made it feel like a dream painted in wrong hues. His siblings, and father were scattered around the room like ruins—still beautiful, but altered. Beyond recognition.

They were not human anymore.

Not in any way that mattered.

He looked down. Damian was curled against his side, smaller than he remembered, eyes locked on nothing. Still. So very still.

Dick missed his voice. His sharp quips. His eyerolls. His laugh, rare as it was. These days, Damian didn’t talk much. Didn’t blink unless prompted. Didn’t seem to know the moment he was in. Time bent strangely around him. Sometimes it sped. Sometimes it froze. Sometimes he didn’t even seem real .

Dick swallowed.

“If only we could remove them,” he said, soft. Too soft. Half to himself.

Jason let out a sharp, broken laugh. It echoed in the room like glass cracking.

“Goldie, you’re under the impression that even if we could remove them, we’d survive it,” he said, eyes still fixed on that blank patch of wall. “I don’t remember what it feels like to just feel myself. I don't even know who I was without...all this.”

Dick flinched.

Because he was right.

He didn’t take the subway anymore. He didn’t charge his phone. He hadn’t eaten in four days and hadn’t even noticed. His body ran on something else now. Something infinite. Something alien . He didn’t know where the stone ended and he began.

The room had grown heavier. Thicker.

The quiet was louder than anything.

Cass’s fingertips sparked against the fabric of her blanket, the couch beneath her sagging as it fought not to tear. Tim’s hand flickered in and out of visibility, like reality couldn’t decide where to place him. Damian’s breath was slow. Too slow. Concerningly slow.

Bruce was staring at him.

No— through him.

The tension snapped. Dick cleared his throat and forced a smile.

“How about we watch a movie?” he asked, upbeat, desperate.

No one answered.

But the shift returned. A quiet alignment. Agreement. That was all he needed.

“Any suggestions?” Tim asked, flickering slightly where he sat. He was transparent around the edges. The more distracted he got, the less grounded he became.

“Action. Or drama,” Jason shrugged. Then he paused, blinked. “The ghosts want to watch Star Wars .”

Dick didn’t even question it.

“Right,” Tim muttered, snapping his fingers. A DVD appeared midair, hovered, then floated into the player. The TV came to life. The room adjusted. Slowly.

They all began to settle in.

Jason threw himself across the couch like a starfish. Bruce shifted to the armchair, resting his feet on the ottoman like a king on a tired throne. Tim conjured soft fleece blankets from thin air and tossed them around the room. One landed on Cass.

She caught it, gently, with twitching fingers.

She wrapped it around her legs, curled herself into a ball, and tucked herself into the farthest corner she could find. She never sat in the middle anymore. Always at the edge. Always separate. They all noticed. None of them mentioned it. She was still there , and that was enough.

Dick adjusted his blanket and tucked it around Damian, who hadn’t moved.

He hovered a hand over his brother’s shoulder. Hesitating.

Then shook him. Gently.

Damian blinked. A slow, deliberate motion. He looked up at Dick, then around the room, processing like a system rebooting.

“…It’s time for Star Wars ?”

Dick nodded.

Damian leaned into his side like muscle memory. It probably was, they never knew what day Damian was in, how many times he had witnessed what was about to come.

The opening crawl began, the fanfare roaring through the room.

Alfred came in with popcorn, a large bowl for the table.

Jason casually reached through one of the ghosts to grab a handful. It didn’t flinch.

Tim tapped a sequence of lights into the air and dimmed the rest of the room until only the glow of the screen and their stones illuminated the space. A soft kaleidoscope of color shimmered across the floor.

Bruce’s eyes were closed, but Dick knew he was still there . Listening. Processing. Thinking.

The movie played.

No one commented on the scenes. No one laughed at the jokes.

But they stayed. They watched.

They sat together—each of them worlds apart, but trying.

Trying to pretend this was normal.

Trying to feel human again.

The room didn’t feel like home anymore. Not quite.

But for one quiet night, they watched Luke Skywalker look toward the stars.

And none of them said it out loud, but all of them felt it—

They missed Earth.

Even while they still stood on it.

Chapter Text

It was supposed to be a quiet Saturday.
Bruce had just set his datapad down—plans for a potential Gotham waterway overhaul—when the Justice League comm in his ear crackled to life.

“Unknown extraterrestrial entity has entered Earth’s atmosphere. Coordinates locked. Standby for response.”

Bruce exhaled sharply through his nose, placing his work down, and staring into the distance. Of all times for a alien invasion

His life was never simple, was it

He closed his eyes and reaching out. Not with tech. With thought. The connection was instant.

“Something's entered orbit. Not one of ours. League pinged me.”

A pause. Then:

“One day,” Jason muttered through the link, voice dry. “One easy day. That’s all I ask.”

“When has life ever been easy, Jay” Dick chimed in.

“Assuming it’s not another flaming rock from Thanagar,” Tim added, “I’ve got a satellite tracking the trajectory. It’s... slowing down. Intentionally.”

“Wonderful,” Cass muttered. 

Then a minute later - “Acknowledged.” Damian’s voice—measured. “Coordinates received. We’ll intercept when necessary.”

He didn’t need to say more. They were already moving.

He suited up with the kind of precision that came with years of practice—each motion automatic, fluid.

By the time he stepped into the Zeta tube, the familiar voice was already counting down:

“Zeta Tube activated: Destination—Watchtower. Standby.”

The light flared—and Batman was gone.

The familiar static-light hum of the Zeta Tube faded behind him as Bruce stepped onto the Watchtower’s command deck.

Everyone was already there.

Diana stood tall near the central display, arms crossed and face set in grim determination. Superman hovered slightly above the floor—because of course he did—his cape fluttering in the invisible draft of atmospheric regulators. Hal, J’onn, Hawkgirl, Arthur, Barry—all of them waiting.

They turned at his arrival.

No one spoke, but heads nodded in greeting. Bruce returned the gesture with a slight incline of his chin, his cape sweeping behind him as he moved to the console.

Then he reached out—mentally.

“What’s the situation?”

The reaction was immediate.

Barry physically flinched, one hand going to his temple. Hawkgirl swore. Hal recoiled slightly, brow furrowing. Even Diana winced, like she’d taken a blow to the ribs.

“Uh... Bruce?” Flash said, shaking his head, eyes squinting. “Dude, could you not just—beam it into our frontal lobes?”

Bruce blinked. “Was faster.”

Diana stepped forward, placing a hand on the table, voice calm but firm. “Talk to us. With your voice. Please.”

Bruce’s head tilted slightly. Then his lips parted.

A crack. That’s what it sounded like at first.

The first word rasped out of his throat, worn and gravel-edged.

“…Right.”

It came out brittle, like a muscle long unused.

He cleared his throat—once, then again—and when he finally spoke, the weight of disuse lingered in the rasp.

“The entity?” he asked, low and hoarse.

J’onn turned toward the central display. A swirling, glowing projection appeared—an object descending toward Earth, trailing controlled burn. “It entered the atmosphere seventeen minutes ago. Trajectory was calculated with intent. It slowed mid-entry and adjusted course. It wants to be seen.”

“Have we made contact?” Bruce asked”

“No verbal communication,” Diana replied. “But it… projected something. Emotion. Confidence. Power.”

“Arrogance,” Arthur added. “It’s not hiding.”

Hal snorted. “You don’t broadcast that much ‘I’m coming to wreck your day’ energy unless you think no one can stop you.”

Bruce’s gaze narrowed at the projection. His mind buzzed—information layering over instinct.

“And it’s headed straight for Earth’s protectorate network. Us.”

His voice still cracked, but it was steadier now. He lifted his head and met each of their eyes.

“…Let’s greet our guest.”

The League touched down in the desert of northern Greenland.

It was a forgotten stretch of land—cold, wind-scoured, and long abandoned by any hint of civilization. The sky was the color of bruised steel, and the wind howled mournfully across frozen plains that shimmered with a thin sheen of ice. Jagged cliffs ringed the horizon like cracked teeth. There was no one to scream, no one to watch, and no one to save.

That was why they picked it.

No civilians. No buildings. No distractions.

Bruce stood at the front, cape fluttering behind him, his shadow long in the early morning frost. Diana, Clark, J’onn, Barry, Hal, Arthur, and the rest stood in a loose formation behind him. Tension thrummed through the air, not a word spoken.

Then, the wind stopped.

Dead.

Still.

And the sky tore.

A silent rupture split open the atmosphere like fabric being peeled back. No sound. Just absence. A dark shape descended slowly, unnaturally—no propulsion, no fire, no wings. Just inevitability.

The air grew colder as it neared the ground. Space itself rippled around the being—gravity folding in on itself.

And then it landed.

Not with a crash, but with a whisper.

A tall, gaunt figure stepped from the floating column of black energy, hunched like he was being held up by puppet strings. His robe was dark, streaked with interlaced crimson. His face was thin, almost skeletal, and deeply wrinkled—like aged parchment stretched over jagged bone.

He did not look at them at first. He inhaled the air—sharp, sniffing like a wolf at the edge of a village.

Then, he smiled.

It wasn’t warm. It was knowing.

“So…” he rasped, his voice like paper dragged across a sawblade. “These are the protectors of this… quaint little mud ball.”

The League remained silent.

The grin widened as he walked a slow circle, his steps echoing despite the soft snow.

“I am Desaad. Voice and instrument of pain. Master of torment. High Lord of Apokolips.”

He stopped. Turned.

“And I bring a message… from Darkseid.”

There was a slight flicker—barely noticeable—but Bruce’s hands curled into fists.

Desaad’s eyes sparkled with delight.

“My master has gazed upon this world… and he finds it desirable. Not for conquest—no. That would imply struggle. He does not wish to conquer you. He intends to own you. Fully. As one owns a breath. A thought. A name.”

He extended one withered hand.

“Your planet will fall. Your people will kneel. And your gods—” he flicked a glance toward Superman and Wonder Woman “—will break.”

The League stood like stone.

Desaad’s lips curled again, indulgent.

“But in his infinite… mercy… Lord Darkseid has allowed me to offer this planet an opportunity.”

He raised both arms, like a dark priest welcoming a congregation.

“Surrender. Cease resistance. Lower your shields. Do not interfere when the Parademons arrive. If you do this—your people will suffer less. They may even be permitted to serve.”

He paused, tilting his head like a bird dissecting prey.

“Refuse… and your cities will burn before your bones turn cold.”

No one moved.

Desaad waited.

And when no one replied, he let out a disappointed sigh.

“So much pride. So much… bravado. It will all taste so sweet when it turns to screams.”

His body began to shimmer again, atoms vibrating.

But then—Superman stepped forward

“No.”

The word rang out, clear and unwavering.

Desaad's brows lifted.

Clark’s cape billowed in the frigid wind, his eyes glowing faintly red. “Earth is not yours to own. This planet is under our protection. Leave now—or face the consequences.”

There was a pause–

Then

Desaad gave a long, almost pitying exhale.

 “So eager to suffer. Very well…”

He raised a hand, and reality around him shifted. The snow hissed and steamed as heat bled from his fingertips. The space behind him cracked, and the faint screech of distant Parademons echoed across dimensions.

Around Superman, the Justice League moved as one.

Diana unsheathed her sword, her eyes alight with fury.

Hal’s ring flared with emerald energy, a construct shield forming instantly.

J’onn phased, his body shifting to a battle stance.

Arthur raised his trident.

Even Barry stilled, a streak of red ready to blur into motion.

The ground tensed with the weight of legends.

Then—

Bruce stepped forward.

No weapons. No armor enhancements. Just the faint, hellish glow pulsing from the stone embedded in his forehead like a third eye

Desaad halted.

He tilted his head, something uncharacteristically uncertain in his expression. “What… is that?”

Bruce’s voice didn’t come from his mouth.

“A mistake.”

It resonated— inside them. Everyone flinched. Not at the volume, but the presence of it. Like Bruce was speaking from within their bones.

Desaad took a step back, a twitch in his hand betraying caution.

“I’ve studied minds older than your stars,” Desaad hissed. “I’ve unraveled the thoughts of dying gods. Do you think you can touch mine?”

Bruce didn’t reply.

He simply stared.

And then—

He reached out, mentally.

It wasn’t subtle.

It wasn’t graceful.

It was a break-in.

A wall constructed around the mine, towering to the heavens. 

Bruce then simply brought a weakening ball, tearing through the walls with cold, calculated fury

For a moment, nothing happened—

Then Desaad screamed.

He dropped to his knees, clutching his skull as a terrible noise—half-screech, half-gurgle—ripped from his throat. His eyes rolled back, and black ichor dripped from his nose and ears. His voice cracked in ancient tongues, static crawling across his skin like his body couldn’t decide if it was in this dimension anymore.

The League didn’t move.

They couldn’t.

They just watched —stunned into silence.

Hal’s ring dimmed slightly.

Barry took a step back.

Even Diana’s fingers tightened on her sword with unconscious unease.

Bruce remained still.

The only visible effort was the blood beginning to trail down from both nostrils—slow, steady, stark against his pale skin. He didn’t blink. He didn’t tremble.

Inside Desaad’s mind, Bruce saw everything.

Torture chambers made of sound. Moons turned into batteries for pain. The whimpering minds of dying stars. The terror Desaad had inflicted across galaxies, millennia, entire civilizations. Bruce took it all in, and burned through it.

And when he was done—

He let go.

Desaad collapsed into the snow, twitching, eyes wide, gasping like a man just dragged from drowning. He wasn’t unconscious, but he wasn’t here anymore. His breath hitched. His body spasmed.

Bruce wiped the blood from his own face without looking down.

He turned to the League. His eyes were hollow and steady.

“Message received.”

Nobody said anything.

Not even Clark.

The wind returned slowly, hesitant—like it wasn’t sure it was allowed.

They all just watched the broken thing in the snow, the herald of a god, reduced to a trembling shell, whimpering as the blood from his eyes began to freeze.

“Bruce,” Diana started.

He didn’t answer. Just stared down at Desaad’s twitching form, blood still dripping from his nose.

Then, without lifting his head, he spoke.

“I saw what he saw.”

The room froze. His voice was steady, but the strain around his eyes betrayed the effort it took to keep it that way.

“Worlds burned. Cities turned to dust. Populations erased before they could scream. He wasn’t exaggerating. He wasn’t bluffing.”

Bruce finally looked up, scanning the room. His expression was cold, neutral—but something darker sat just beneath the surface.

“Darkseid doesn’t conquer. He erases. He doesn’t want our planet. He wants our surrender. And when he doesn’t get it, he makes sure no one remembers we were ever here.”

The words hung heavy.

Barry shifted. “What… did you do to him?”

Bruce looked back at Desaad, then straight at Barry.

“I broke through his mental defenses. Pulled what I needed. He’s not built for that kind of pressure.”

Clark stepped forward, his voice tight. “You’ve done that before?”

Bruce hesitated a fraction too long. Then, quietly: “Only when necessary, and not to that extent”

Clark’s eyes narrowed. “And this was necessary?”

Bruce turned his full attention to Clark now, voice calm.

“He wasn’t going to tell us anything useful. Not willingly. I didn’t have time to play nice.”

Diana moved closer, lasso in hand, wrapping it gently around Desaad’s wrists. The alien didn’t resist—couldn’t. He just trembled in the dirt, staring at nothing.

He stepped away, brushing blood off his upper lip with his glove.

“The next one won’t knock.”

No one spoke. Because what could they say?

Clark looked down at Desaad’s body, then back to Bruce. There was wariness there now. Quiet calculation.

Barry’s jaw tightened. Diana’s hand lingered at her hip.

They’d all seen what Bruce could do without powers.

Now?

Now they were starting to understand what he could do with them.

And it scared them.

Barry then opened his mouth–but then paused, because he noticed Bruce was no longer looking at them, only into the distance

“The situation has been resolved” he said mentally–to him family

He got five answers of confirmation in return

Then–the air in front of the justice league warped. The members got into positions, but Bruce stood still, not even blinking twice

Out came his kids, costumes and all, ready for combat

Dick stood at the center, glancing around as if double-checking for threats. The others were all grabbing some part of him—he was their mode of transportation after all. Tim hovered to his right. Jason appeared behind him, fingers twitching slightly, presence heavy but quiet. Cass landed in a light crouch, then rose without a word. Damian, silent and unreadable.

The Justice League turned, eyebrows raising, but no one drew weapons. It wasn’t a threat—just an adjustment.

Clark arched a brow. “Didn’t realize we were getting the whole team.”

Bruce kept his gaze ahead. “ The situation has resolved .”

“Wow, he’s uglier than expected” Jason muttered mentally, staring at the downed form

“Anything that looks different to us from our perspective would be considered ugly, Jay” Dick sighed

Tim glanced at the prone form “We could study him. Alien physiology—could be valuable.”

Cass: “Not in front of the League.”

Jason: “Tim. C’mon.”

Tim blinked and visibly nodded to himself. “Right, right. Ethics. Public relations.”

There was a beat of silence, then Barry looked around. “Okay, are we still pretending we’re not all having a separate conversation right now?”

Six pairs of eyes turned to him briefly. Not hostile—just… not entirely present. Not entirely grounded here.

“Right,” he muttered. “Just checking.”

“We’ll inform the United States government,” Clark said, glancing toward the lassoed Desaad “Let them handle the official line. The League will coordinate defense globally in case the invasion comes.”

Bruce nodded, turning to his children, and walking to stand beside Dick, resting a hand on his shoulder

“ If that’s everything, we will take our leave”

Bruce gave one last look, towards the league

“Prepare.”

Dick’s stone flared faintly. The group pressed closer—and the Batfamily blinked out in a whisper of light, gone from sight.

The Justice League stood in the quiet left behind, the air settling again.

No one said anything for a moment. Then Diana glanced toward Desaad.

“We should move him to containment.”

Clark exhaled slowly. “Yeah. Let’s handle that first.”

Behind them, the breeze rolled across the clearing, stirring the grass.

Just another day on Earth.

For now.

They reappeared in the manor with a hush of displaced air, the kitchen lights casting warm shadows on familiar walls. It was quiet here—real quiet, the kind only old houses could manage, thick with memory and creaking history. But within seconds, the silence broke.

“Welcome home, Master Bruce,” came the calm voice of Alfred, stepping in from the hallway with a dish towel over his shoulder and the faint scent of earl grey clinging to him like armor. “And… everyone else.”

They were already peeling off their gloves, their masks. Cass dropped her cowl to the table, Jason ran a hand through his hair, and Tim slouched into a chair like someone physically deflating. Damian hovered just behind Dick until his older brother nudged him toward a chair.

They all took their places around the kitchen table. The air buzzed—too full of potential, too quiet for the things they all now knew.

Bruce remained standing, resting his hand on the back of a chair, eyes flicking over each of them before landing on Damian.

“ When ?”

The word was quiet, but heavy.

Damian’s eyes were dull, unfocused. Like he hadn’t quite returned with the rest of them. Then, slowly, he blinked. “I can’t say.”

Tim leaned forward, brow furrowing. “Can’t or won’t?”

Damian didn’t look at him. “Can’t. If I give too many details… it’ll change things. What’s coming—it matters too much. The future's already shaped around this moment. If I alter it, we risk paradox.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened. “ A time? ”

A pause. Damian tilted his head slightly, staring through Bruce rather than at him.

“Sunday,” he finally said. “June 5th. 4 weeks.”

Silence dropped like a curtain.

They all nodded.

No one needed to ask what they were doing until then. They already knew.

Everyone turned to Jason.

He hadn’t moved, still slouched back with his arms crossed. But the weight in the room shifted—an anticipatory hush settling in.

Jason didn’t speak immediately. Just opened his mouth and whispered something they couldn’t hear. But something heard it.

His stone flared to life.

Light bled into the room like fog—cold and pale and spectral. Dozens… hundreds of ghostly figures manifested across the room, the hallway, through the walls. Some flickered, some shimmered, some looked impossibly real. Others—

Others looked like they had died violently. Twisted, fragmented. Broken in spirit and form.

Cass glanced away, jaw tight.

Jason whispered again. Not louder—but it echoed now, layered, as if the words folded over time and space. A command. A benediction. Maybe even a warning.

Roughly half the spirits vanished in response, pulled elsewhere.

The rest stayed. Watching. Listening.

Jason didn’t look at his family as he began to speak—not to them, but to the dead. He asked questions no one else could voice, and the answers came in wordless impressions, in flickers of old pain, old memory.

They couldn’t hear the ghosts, but they saw them—gesturing, pacing, showing fragments of what they remembered.

Eventually, Jason nodded

He turned back to the table.

“They’ve seen what’s coming,” he said. “Some fought in it before. Other timelines. Parallel Earths. Died in those fights.”

He looked grim, even for him.

“Darkseid doesn’t just conquer. He remakes. The souls that follow him aren’t just casualties—they’re changed. Bound. Twisted into his will. He has a way of leashing essence. Tying it to his command. He calls it the Anti-Life Chain. ”

Cass whispered, “Like a leash.”

Jason nodded. “The ghosts that escaped said it’s worse than death. He uses fear, grief, loss—he feeds off it. The more hopeless the world, the stronger he gets. It’s not just a physical invasion. It’s emotional. Spiritual.”

Tim looked down at his hands. “A reality warper versus a universal-level emotional parasite. Great.”

Dick rubbed a hand over his face. “So he breaks you down from the inside. Then rewrites you.”

Jason nodded. “And then uses you to break someone else.”

They were quiet again.

Alfred, still standing nearby, finally stepped forward and placed a pot of tea on the table. He didn’t say anything—but the simple gesture anchored them.

This was the new war room. A kitchen table in Wayne Manor.

Bruce finally sat, slowly. “ We have four weeks .”

Tim’s eyes glowed faintly, already calculating. “We’ll need shields. Not just physical. Mental. Emotional. If he preys on despair, we’ve all got bulls-eyes on our backs.”

“I can work on energy-based displacement fields,” Dick said. “Redirecting power—if I can draw energy from external sources, I might be able to siphon his influence.”

“Do not let him touch you,” Jason said firmly. “Any part of you. If he gets in your soul, it’s done.”

Cass nodded once. “We’ll train.”

Tim nodded sharply, his eyes already distant—off somewhere between ten and fifty contingency plans. He reached over, pulled a notepad and pen from the air like it was second nature, and started sketching. His hand moved fast, furiously, diagrams bleeding across the page: field formations, magical shielding equations, offensive power output scales, teleportation coordinate grids. Symbols. Arrows. Calculations that looked more like alien languages than human math.

Cass leaned over to glance at the pad, brow raised, but didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. None of them did.

Dick exhaled, pushing a hand through his hair as he stood from his chair. He looked around the table at the people he loved—at the gods they were becoming.

“They won’t come alone,” he said, voice quiet but solid. “Darkseid won’t show up without an army.”

Everyone looked up at him.

“And when they land—when they come for this planet—” He folded his arms, eyes burning bright blue from the energy crackling in his core, “—we’re going to meet them with one.”

Silence.

Then, one by one, every head at the table nodded.

Cass first. Sharp, certain.

Damian blank stare, a head tilt, a acknowledgment 

Jason next. Still standing, arms crossed, his shadow flickering with ghostlight as he spoke something silent again, sending another pulse through the veil.

Tim didn’t look up from his notes, just nodded as he wrote, his reality-bent mind already moving the pieces into place.

Bruce, last. Silent. Still. And then—he gave one, near-imperceptible nod. Like a king acknowledging war.

They were no longer planning to survive.

They were planning to win.

Chapter Text

Bruce cleared his throat.

It was a normal Tuesday—normal if you don’t count the incoming war and the pressure of it—but overall, normal. The Batfam were hard at work—work that had not stopped since that day they had sat down at that kitchen counter.

With Bruce's voices, everyone turned to look at him—well, everyone except Tim, who was already six layers deep into a teleportation counter-strike protocol and mumbling something about “quantum-resistant armor.”

“I’ve been contacted by Lucius,” Bruce said flatly.

Jason blinked. “Lucius… Fox?, the company guy right, not the devil?”

Dick mouthed, ‘the devil’ staring at Jason

Jason just shrugged

Bruce’s expression didn’t flicker. “Yes.”

Tim finally looked up. “What does he want? R&D budget approvals? More WayneTech AI protocols to wipe?”

“No,” Bruce said, “He reminded me that we’ve missed a significant number of mandatory public events.”

“Missed?” Dick asked, cocking an eyebrow. “We’ve straight-up ghosted everything since… what? The quarterly gala in February?”

“January,” Cass said softly, from where she sat wrapped in a blanket and sipping tea.

“January,” Bruce confirmed. “Which means we’ve missed three Wayne-sponsored fundraisers, five board meetings, two shareholder dinners, one architectural unveiling, the Gotham Museum’s black-tie reopening, and the annual Firefighters Ball.”

Jason gave a low whistle. “Damn. We’ve become reclusive cryptids. Billionaire Bat-Sasquatches.”

Bruce continued as if Jason hadn’t spoken. “Lucius says people are starting to talk.”

“Let them talk,” Damian muttered from the far end of the table, not looking up from where he was slowly twisting his tea spoon into an unrecognizable piece of cutlery.

“They already are,” Bruce replied. “There are rumors. Health concerns. Public instability. Conspiracies about corporate coups.”

Dick rubbed his temple. “So, what? You want us to play dress-up and smile for the cameras for one night?”

“Yes.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “All of us?”

Bruce’s gaze swept across the room. “Every single one of you.”

Cass groaned softly, a rare and beautiful sound of suffering.

Tim dropped his pen. “Wait, you’re serious? Bruce, we’re six ticking nuclear warheads wearing mortal skin. We cannot show up to a champagne mixer and act normal.”

“You’ll have to.”

“This is so much worse than fighting Darkseid,” Dick muttered.

Jason stood up, already grumbling. “So let me get this straight—we’re supposed to stuff the literal apocalypse back in the closet, squeeze into tuxedos, and smile for paparazzi who would explode if they knew even one percent of what we are now?”

“Yes,” Bruce said, buttoning his coat with finality.

There was a long silence.

Then:

“What’s the event?” Tim finally asked, defeated.

Bruce’s lips thinned. “The Gotham Unity Ball. Three nights from now.”

Jason swore.

Dick groaned. “That one’s televised!”

Cass blinked. “With interviews?”

Bruce nodded. “There will be a red carpet.”

Tim looked genuinely horrified. “You mean I have to hold small talk with city council members while suppressing my ability to rewrite reality around them?”

“Yes.”

“I hate this.”

“I’ve taken the liberty of having all your outfits tailored. Lucius sent them over this morning.”

“You pre-planned this,” Jason said, narrow-eyed. “You monster.”

Bruce looked unmoved. “If people begin to suspect we’re no longer… stable, they will push back. The League is already uncomfortable with our changes. We need to appear as human as possible—for as long as we can.”

Cass looked at her hands, violet energy quietly pulsing beneath the skin. “But we’re not human.”

Bruce’s eyes softened—barely, almost imperceptibly. “No. But we’re still family. And this family goes to galas.”

That was apparently the end of it, because he turned on his heel and left the room.

Dick let out a long, theatrical groan and flopped across the couch. “I’m going to have to shave.”

Tim conjured a mirror out of thin air and immediately began assessing his hair.

Cass didn’t move, just leaned her head back against the wall, eyes closed like she was preparing for war.

Jason crossed his arms. “You think we’ll survive this?”

Damian didn’t look up from his destroyed spoon. “Only if the appetizers are good.”

Dick’s leg was bouncing up and down like a hyperactive piston.

Bruce, who had been adjusting the cufflinks of his midnight-black tux with all the calm of a bomb technician, didn’t even look up. “Stop that.”

Dick did, for all of two seconds. Then it started again—thump thump thump against the marble floor.

“I said stop.”

“Can’t,” Dick muttered, shifting in his seat. “Too much energy. My cells are vibrating. I haven’t slept in four days and I don’t need to. It’s like having six shots of espresso on a rollercoaster that never stops moving.”

Tim, sitting a few feet away with dark circles under his eyes, didn’t even lift his head. He was cross-legged on the floor, five holopads floating around him, equations and sigils and tactical layouts flipping between them in glowing light. “You’re not the only one suffering,” he mumbled. “I'm rewriting astral schematics and working out battle formations for an invasion Three weeks from now. While memorizing the seating chart for tonight. Did you know the mayor’s allergic to shrimp?”

Dick glanced over. “Tim.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re muttering Latin again.”

Tim blinked. One of the holopads exploded into sparks. “Oh. Right.”

Across the room, in the darkest corner, Cass sat silently with her back to the wall. She hadn’t spoken in over twenty minutes. Her dress, sleek and simple, shimmered faintly with the same unnatural purple as her veins. Her eyes were dull light—always glowing now. Her presence was quiet, but intense, like a thunderstorm crouching on the horizon.

Jason stood near the window, arms crossed, jaw tight. He flinched occasionally—tiny involuntary reactions, like a man getting static shocks from the air itself.

“So many souls,” he muttered, not for the first time. “So much noise. Everyone out there’s bleeding emotions like open wounds.”

Dick tried to smile, even though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “We’ll be in and out. Just a few hours. Fake a few smiles, drink sparkling water, maybe emotionally scar a couple billionaires.”

Jason barked a dry laugh. “That’s the dream.”

No one mentioned Damian.

Because he was there—physically, dressed in a sleek, tailored black-and-green tux, his hair perfectly combed, his expression blank.

But he wasn’t there.

He hadn’t said a word all day. Not even when Alfred handed him a tie with an approving nod. Not when Cass had quietly adjusted his cufflink for him. Not when Dick asked if he wanted to sit next to the window in the limo.

His eyes were vacant, staring just slightly to the left of the real world.

Time, as always, held him elsewhere.

The limo was larger than most city apartments. Sleek black, reinforced for impact, and tastefully armored in case of alien assassination attempts. The inside was low-lit, with glowing screens embedded in the walls, and enough legroom to park a motorcycle.

Everyone was silent.

Dick adjusted his lapel for the sixth time, his fingers twitching. “This is fine. We’ve done worse. I’ve done worse. I once fought Killer Croc in a ballroom wearing a penguin suit.”

“No one asked,” Jason muttered, tugging at his collar like it was choking him. “Why do these things always itch? I’ve literally been to hell and that was more breathable than this collar.”

Tim had his eyes closed. “Don’t. I’m calculating the best psychic shielding pattern to use against invasive reporters.”

Cass didn’t move, just blinked slowly.

Damian stared out the window, lips unmoving.

Bruce sat across from them all, completely still. His stone glowed faintly at his temple, a quiet hum beneath the chaos.

He didn’t say anything—not out loud. But they all heard the same message slip quietly into their minds:

"You know the drill. Public faces. Keep a low profile. Don’t incinerate any donors."

Jason tilted his head. "What if they deserve it?"

"No fatalities," Bruce sent, dry as dust.

Cass handed Dick a small metal stress cube. He took it with a tight smile and started silently clicking it— snick snick snick —the sound oddly comforting.

They rolled to a stop.

Outside the windows: lights. Music. Flashbulbs.

People.

So many people.

Dick exhaled. “Time to lie through our teeth and pretend we’re still people.”

Bruce opened the door. “Let’s go.”

The limo door was cracked open. The night buzzed outside—cameras clicking like cicadas, reporters calling names, the faint roar of the crowd pulsing like a distant ocean.

Everyone else had already slipped out.

Tim, jaw tight, vanished into the chaos with a muttered shielding spell on his breath.

Jason followed, walking like a soldier through enemy territory, already scowling like someone was about to throw holy water on him.

Cass ghosted after them, silent, her feet barely making a sound against the pavement.

Bruce stepped out, tall and composed, presence dark and commanding. A politician’s nod to the waiting press. Barely a movement, but it landed like thunder.

Only two were left in the limo.

Dick turned from the door and looked at Damian, still seated, still staring into nothing. His fingers were curled tightly in his lap, but his posture was perfect—too perfect. Like someone set a doll just so and left it.

“Dames,” Dick said softly, crouching in front of him, voice gentle. “I need you with me tonight. Just for a couple hours.”

No response.

Dick tried again, resting his hands on Damian’s knees. “I know it’s hard. I know everything is loud and messy and... doesn’t feel real. But I need my little brother. Right now. In this timeline. In this moment.”

Damian blinked. Slowly. Once.

Then again.

“I will try,” he whispered.

Dick gave him a tired smile. “That’s all I ever ask, buddy.”

He reached up, brushing some hair from Damian’s face. “Cass?”

Cass poked her head through the door, half-shadow, half-woman.

She paused. Then, after a heartbeat, nodded.

Dick looked at her, serious. “Stick close to him. Keep him grounded.”

Cass hesitated. Her hand twitched, like she wanted to touch Damian, reassure him, but her powers still flared with every emotion. Instead, she waited , a silent promise.

Damian looked up at her—and blinked, more focused now.

They didn’t need words. They never did.

Dick straightened, took one last breath, and stepped out onto the red carpet.

Cass and Damian followed, a shadow and a ghost, moving with the family.

And just like that—the six of them were walking together.

Down the red carpet.

Beautiful. Terrifying. Unreal.

The Batfamily in formalwear.

And the world had no idea what walked among them.

The gala moved around them in a slow, glittering swirl.

Dick smiled at the woman in front of him—a city planner whose name he remembered but couldn’t bring himself to say out loud. She was going on about zoning permits near the Narrows, something about new green space. Her voice was pleasant, her dress tasteful, her earrings slightly mismatched.

He nodded, engaged just enough. “That sounds like a big project. You’ll have to send us the blueprint.”

She beamed, flattered. Tim, standing just to his right, added something smart about public infrastructure and community impact. He wasn’t really listening either.

The woman's words faded into the background hum.

“You’re doing the thing again.”
Tim’s voice echoed inside Dick’s head, dry and sharp.

“What thing?”
“Your fake-laugh. It’s getting worse.”

Dick kept his grin up. “I like to think it’s endearing.”

Out loud, he chuckled at something she said. He couldn’t remember what.

“You sound like a malfunctioning toaster.”

Across the ballroom, a waiter passed with a tray of canapés. Cass stood silently near one of the art installations, hands behind her back, still and observant. Jason was on the second-floor balcony, leaning against the railing like he belonged in a different decade entirely. Damian sat on a cushioned bench beneath an elaborate floral display, eyes distant, fingers clenching and unclenching with practiced stillness.

Everything looked normal.

That’s what was unsettling.

Tim took a sip of water—just for the motion of it. He leaned in slightly, nodding as another guest joined the conversation. Their words washed over him like mist.

“Feel weird?” he asked, silently now.

Dick didn’t look at him. Didn’t move. Just answered back the same way.
“Everything feels weird.”

There was a beat. The space between them never quite silent, but never filled with noise either.

“I used to love this,” Tim admitted.

“The galas?”

“The pretending. ”

Dick's smile shifted slightly. “You were always good at pretending.”

“Yeah. But now it feels like I’m faking being fake. Like I’m two layers deep.”

Dick tilted his head politely at a passing couple. “That makes absolutely no sense.”

“You know what I mean.” Tim’s thoughts sounded tired. Not physically. Just... stretched. “I don’t have to fake knowing things anymore. My brain just… fills in gaps. Auto-corrects people.”

Dick didn’t reply to that right away. He just shifted his weight, ran a hand through his styled hair, nodded politely at someone who recognized him.

“Do you miss it? ” Tim asked finally.

“Miss what?”

“Being normal.”

Dick thought about that as a councilman approached and started telling a story about some recent board meeting disaster. He laughed at the right moments. Responded when needed.

“I miss having to try,” he said finally, mind-to-mind.

“Yeah.” Tim’s mental tone softened. “Me too.”

The night wore on.

They moved like clockwork, switching partners, chatting, circulating. They smiled and waved, made jokes that landed just right. The press would say how poised they were, how sharp, how engaged. They would call it a “refreshing reappearance from Gotham’s most elusive philanthropists.”

And none of them would know the truth.

That underneath those polished grins and perfectly tailored suits, the Batfamily no longer fit into this world. They’d evolved into something else entirely. Something... adjacent to humanity, but not part of it.

Still—they played the part.

Because that’s what this night was for.

Not for the city.

For them.

To prove, even just for an evening, that they could still pretend.

Jason leaned back against a marble column, arms crossed loosely, posture relaxed in that fake, practiced way that didn’t fool anyone who really knew him. His suit was tight at the shoulders—custom-tailored, sure, but Jason still hated wearing them. He preferred armor. Kevlar. Something useful.

His eyes scanned the gala floor. People glittered. That was the word for it—glittered. Sequins, diamonds, champagne flutes, hollow laughs. Their mouths moved, smiles sharp and eyes dull. The music played too quietly to enjoy, too loudly to ignore. Laughter sparkled. Polite conversations hummed. A glittering lie.

And then there were the ghosts.

They floated lazily around the room, drawn like flies to perfume. Most of them Jason didn’t recognize—and he wished he could say they didn’t recognize him. But they always did. They hovered at the edge of his vision, draped in gore or tears or ghostly flickers of pain. Bloodless wounds. Missing pieces. Some flickered like broken TV signals. Some never looked away.

It was constant now. The more his power grew, the less he could tune it out.

A woman in emerald passed him, her dress brushing against his shoes. Jason flinched before her ghost did—young, barely twenty, half her face gone, hovering behind her like a war crime in silk gloves.

"She signed off on the hospital closure," the ghost whispered, though no sound touched the air. "They died screaming in the halls."

Jason closed his eyes for a beat, took a breath. He could feel emotions now too—his stone thrummed, reacting to every thought, every flicker of greed or contempt that wafted off these people like expensive cologne.

A man passed, and Jason reeled from the wave of smug superiority. Another, clutching a wine glass too tight, was oozing rage barely tucked under his smile. Somewhere across the room, a socialite was mentally spilling through emotions, ranging from arrogance to vindication.

It was overwhelming. Jason could hear ghosts and feel living people, and somehow— somehow —the living were worse.

He glanced up toward the balcony where Tim and Dick were schmoozing—trading thoughts more than words. Jason didn’t envy their roles. At least no one wanted to talk to him. No one ever quite knew what to say to the dead man who came back wrong.

"You all look so shiny now," a ghost beside him murmured. She was barefoot, in a child’s nightgown soaked with blood. "But you used to bleed too."

Jason didn’t reply.

His gaze slid back across the room. He saw ghosts attached to nearly everyone—their leashes invisible but unmistakable. Victims. Collateral. Lives crushed under “urban expansion,” “funding reallocations,” “necessary cutbacks.” Pretty names for ugly things.

One man was laughing at something vapid, a hand on his wife’s waist. His ghost was a woman with burns across her arms, holding a newborn. She didn’t speak. She just watched him.

Jason’s stomach twisted. He couldn't block them out, not tonight. Maybe it was the sheer concentration of rot. Maybe it was how the polished, prestigious elegance of the room made their guilt glow even brighter.

He pushed away from the column, trying to stay grounded. He focused on his siblings—Cass standing close to Damian, protective. Dick, smiling but tight. Tim, holding up fine but with the stiffness of a man three seconds from snapping.

And Bruce... stoic, always. But Jason could feel the pressure coiling around him like smoke. The weight Bruce carried in silence made the air feel thicker when he passed.

Jason blew out a breath through his nose. “This place sucks,” he muttered under his breath, low enough no one could hear.

A ghost next to him smiled with sympathy.
"It always has."

And Jason believed it. Gotham didn’t need new demons. It had always been a graveyard in denial. Only now, he could see it—haunting every guest like a second skin, echoing down hallways painted gold.

He wondered if anyone else in this room ever noticed the cold chill behind their shoulders.
Wondered if they deserved to.

And judging by the ghosts following them…
Yeah. They probably did.

Damian did not blink.
Because blinking was a door.
And doors led to everything.

He sat at the table, the edge of his glass glinting like a blade. It was too polished, too clean. Every time someone walked by, their steps echoed in time—not in time, but through it. The ripple of a laugh to his left existed in three stages: the moment it was conceived, the moment it was spoken, the moment it was remembered. He could see them all. Hear them all. They all layered like transparent film, slightly off-center.

It was dizzying.

Across the room, a waiter dropped a tray.

—clatter—
—clatter—
—clatter—

It happened once.
It happened five times.
It would happen again in seven minutes, at a different table. A different tray.

Damian exhaled. Or tried to. It was difficult to tell which breath was now . He could feel each heartbeat, but not all of them were his. He watched Richard smile across the room— two seconds ago . Cass shifted beside him— ten seconds from now .

He didn’t turn to her.

He didn’t need to.

She was already there. Would be. Had been.

The air shimmered, a ripple of heat and static. One blink, and—

—Mars was red, and broken. A battle lost to ash and psionic fire—

Blink—

—Earth again. The gala. Gold and velvet—

Blink—

—The Watchtower, in silence, orbiting. A cracked screen. A ring floating. Someone crying—

Damian clenched his jaw.

Don’t blink.

The timelines clawed at the edge of his mind like desperate cats in a bag, each vying for his attention. Each version of reality offered something. A different conversation. A different war. In one corner of the room, he saw a version of himself stab a man in the throat. In another, he danced.

He blinked again.

The ballroom stretched like taffy. Someone’s voice was caught in a loop.
Hello, hello, hello, hello—

Damian didn’t flinch. But he curled his fingers under the table until his nails bit into his palm. Anchors. Pain was real. Pain was now .

He knew he was slipping.

Even the stone in his head, glowing dim under the fabric, struggled to keep him tethered. It hummed quietly, its frequency trying to anchor him to the present. But which present?

He tilted his head and saw a crack in the chandelier’s light. A thin tear. On the other side: stars. Dozens of them. A war-torn asteroid belt. A dying sun.

Beautiful. Terrible.

Nothing in this room could compare. The way time sang in other corners of the universe. The way chaos bloomed. This place, this party, these humans and their performances—it all felt… small . Dull.

Shallow.

He could smell other timelines on them. Regret. Missed chances. Entire lives unlived. It clung to them like cologne.

Damian’s throat felt dry.

A hand hovered near him—Cass. Present. Silent. Not touching, but close.

She blinked.

He was thankful she did not speak. Voices cracked the glass too often. He didn’t need more fractures in his frame of reference. He already felt his mind threadbare, fraying at the corners like an ancient tapestry. A little tug, and it’d all come undone.

He stared at the floor, and it shimmered.

In one timeline, it was marble.
In another, it was blood.
In a third, stars.

Damian whispered something under his breath. A mantra. A code. Something Father had once said to him in a calm moment. It grounded him.

Almost.

But still, the timelines hummed.

He watched a version of this room erupt into flames. Watched another where Jason screamed and ghosts consumed the crowd. Another where Tim was made of wires. Another where Father—Bruce—

Damian squeezed his eyes shut.

Not now. Not now. Not now.

Breathe.

Cass shifted. Her aura was still. Solid. If he focused on her, he could almost hold to the current moment. The moment that should be.

But even then, he saw her splinter. A thousand Cassandras. A thousand variations.

Only one was here .

And yet—

None of them ever left him behind.

That was something.

He clung to that.

Damian opened his eyes.

It was still the gala. It was still Earth.

But he knew the moment he blinked again…
The universe would keep whispering.

Chapter Text

“Dick. Cass.”

Tim’s voice cut through the low mechanical hum of the room, sharp and focused. His eyes never left the towering figure in front of him—something that could barely be called a “machine” in the traditional sense. This wasn’t made in any factory. No human hand forged its metal. It loomed like a god-effigy from another world, lightless and dormant, its surfaces an intricate web of runes and circuits pulsing faintly beneath alien alloys.

Dick stepped toward it slowly, eyes trailing across the machine’s body. “What is this?”

“A war construct,” Tim said, tapping at the holographic screen of his datapad, his fingers blurring in motion. “Built to act as a frontline responder, powered by us—well, powered by what we’ve become.”

Cass came up beside Dick, silent, her eyes fixed on the construct like it might bite. Which, knowing Tim, it just might.

Tim looked up, his expression flickering somewhere between thrilled and dangerously under-rested. “I need you both to help anchor its core. We can’t brute-force power into this thing—it's designed to harmonize with our presence. Dick, start by syncing your energy into the chassis. Think resonance, not output. Cass, once the base is stable, I need you to thread power through the core—gently.”

They both nodded, professionals in their craft.

Dick reached out first. As his fingertips touched the cold metal, a jolt of electricity sparked—blue, bright, alive. The lines carved into the construct lit up in sequence, following his contact like ripples in water. His stone, pulsed outward in rhythmic light. A faint blue glow settled over the entire structure, lines drawing themselves into symmetrical patterns, almost like veins.

He stepped back. “It’s holding.”

Cass hesitated. Her stone was already glowing, a slow pulse of violet under her skin that didn’t quite stop anymore. She glanced at Tim, who gave her an encouraging nod.

She stepped forward.

As her hand met the surface, the room shifted . The air grew heavy. Violet light seeped into the machine’s blue tracing like ink in water—rich and dense. The blue hue darkened, became murky, then warped. The machine groaned. A visible crack shot out from under her palm, spiderwebbing across the metal with a sound like ice splitting in the sun.

Cass flinched back immediately, her eyes wide, hand clutched to her forehead like she'd been burned. She turned to Tim, apology on her lips before she could speak.

But Tim just raised a hand, already smiling. “It’s fine,” he said, calmly. “That’s what trial and error is for. You didn’t break it. You gave me data.”

He reached toward the panel at his side, muttering something that warped the air in a way only reality-twisting could. The cracks slid inward, merging like melted wax, until the machine stood whole again. No trace of damage. Only a faint echo of the violet light remained.

Cass looked down at her hands, unsure, until Tim stepped forward and placed a hand gently on her shoulder.

“You did fine. We’ll recalibrate the tolerance level and try again.”

Dick chuckled, rubbing his palms together. “Good thing we’re not in a rush or anything.”

Tim arched an eyebrow. “We’re always in a rush. That’s why we’re building this.”

Cass’s eyes flicked back to the construct, then to Dick, who gave her a small nod. She exhaled, rolling her shoulders.

“Again?” she asked, voice soft.

Tim grinned. “Again.”

The room hummed anew, and this time, the machine felt just a little closer to waking.

Meanwhile, across the massive hangar-turned-laboratory, tucked away from the glowing machines and low murmur of tactical planning, Damian Wayne sat alone on a metal bench. One of his short, curved blades was in his hand—something simple, ceremonial by comparison to the rest of the chaos brewing around them. He sharpened it with the edge of a whetstone, steady and mechanical, the soft shhck, shhck of metal against stone slicing through the ambient hum of electricity and murmuring voices. There was no urgency in the motion. It was thoughtless. Detached.

Jason watched him from across the room for a moment, arms folded over his chest. The kid looked... empty. Not tired. Not angry. Just... distant. And not the kind of distant that came with strategy or calculation. The kind that left you hollow.

He made his way over, footsteps silent despite the heavy boots, and leaned casually against the wall beside the bench. One of the ghosts—this one a young woman with her eyes missing and a mouth stuck open in a silent scream—reached for Damian with curious fingers. Jason caught her wrist gently but firmly, pulling her back. His eyes flicked, hard, and the ghost hesitated before slipping back into the shadows.

He sighed, then, and snapped his fingers in front of Damian’s face.

Damian blinked. Slowly. As though waking up underwater. His eyes—those eerie, too-old eyes—slid up to meet Jason’s. “You’re not soulless,” he said, not accusing, not emotional—just... a statement. Like commenting on the weather.

Jason rolled his eyes and muttered, “Would you say that a little quieter? I don’t need Daddy-Bats finding out what I’ve been doing for the past eight hours.”

Damian tilted his head slightly, like a bird examining something unfamiliar. His tone didn’t change. “Have you acquired reinforcements yet?”

Not are you going to. Not can you. Have you.

Jason exhaled, dragging a hand down his face. The kid didn’t do ifs anymore. Everything was a countdown.

He let his eyes finally settle on Damian—really settle. The boy looked like death. Pale, skin drawn taut around sharp cheekbones. His limbs were thin, his shoulders narrow under the fabric of his tunic. He hadn’t been eating much, clearly. Hadn’t been sleeping, obviously. The power burning in him was too much. Too vast. It wasn’t a tool, like it was for the rest of them. For Damian, it had become something else—something that demanded.

Jason could feel it radiating off of him—this quiet, terrifying energy that warped time like gravity. But more than that, he could feel the absence . The kid barely reacted to the world anymore. Didn’t laugh. Didn’t snark. Barely even blinked unless prompted.

And Jason felt it—the emotional void pouring off him like cold water. Apathy that soaked through the bones. A slow erosion of self. He didn’t even need the ghosts to tell him that.

So Jason slid down the wall, letting his body thud lightly onto the bench beside Damian. Without a word, he reached out and pulled the kid gently into his side, one arm wrapping around thin shoulders.

Damian didn’t resist. Didn’t even blink. He leaned in, just enough that Jason could feel the shift.

It wasn’t much. But the apathy tugging around the edges of the boy’s aura wavered. Flickered, even. For the barest moment, the cold fog receded, and something—something warm, or maybe just familiar —settled there instead.

Jason stared ahead, jaw tight, watching one of the ghosts drift silently past a row of reinforced plating.

He supposed he got off lucky, in some aspects. It would be torutre for him knowing what is about to happen, before it happens, minutes or even weeks down the line. For Damian, the boy was simply on a different wavelength.

He didn’t say anything.

He didn’t need to.

Because this—just being there —was the only thing he could still offer.

And for Damian, right now, it was enough.

The Zeta Tube flared to life, casting a cold blue light across the Watchtower’s command deck.

Bruce stepped through first.

He was in full gear—cloak sweeping behind him like a shadow cut from the void. Behind him followed the rest of his family.

Dick, steady and unreadable, stood tall in sleek battlewear that shimmered faintly with electric energy.

Tim carried a datapad in one hand, the air around him warping ever so slightly—as though reality itself bent politely to make space for him.

Cass was silent, her presence almost weightless, but the air around her vibrated with potential.

Jason’s eyes were bloodshot, his expression unreadable under his helmet, and the thin orange glow of his stone matched the ragged chorus of ghosts barely tethered to him.

And then Damian, Small, pale, and ethereal. The stone on his forehead pulsed once… then again. Time itself lagged a breath behind him, as if reality struggled to hold him.

The League was already there.

Superman. Wonder Woman. Flash. Martian Manhunter. Aquaman. Green Lantern. Hawkwoman. Even Zatanna and Shazam had answered the call. They stood in clusters, uneasy, as if the very presence of the Batfamily shifted the gravity in the room.

No one spoke.

Bruce stepped forward, crossing to the center table. He tapped a control on his gauntlet and a holographic map unfolded mid-air: Earth, ringed with projected impact zones and flickering red indicators.

“The attack begins today,” he said. No fanfare. No preamble.

The tension spiked instantly.

“Darkseid will send his army first—parademons, war machines, lieutenants. He’ll soften the planet before stepping onto it himself.”

He turned slightly, letting his eyes rake over the room. “We’ll intercept. We handle the army.”

Flash shifted on his feet. Wonder Woman narrowed her eyes.

“And then?” Superman asked, his voice low.

Bruce’s expression didn’t change.

“Then we confront Darkseid.”

A long pause. You could almost hear the tick of the Watchtower’s systems behind them.

Clark took a step forward, arms crossed. “And what do you want us to do?”

Bruce didn’t miss a beat. “Keep the planet alive. Keep people safe. No mass casualties. No cities leveled. Your job is to make sure this planet survives. Ours…”

He looked back at his children—his soldiers.

“…is to make sure Darkseid doesn’t.”

A silence settled that felt heavier than the moment before a funeral.

Diana’s brow furrowed. “Bruce—”

“We don’t need permission,” he said, already stepping back. “We need time.”

Superman looked hesitate—glancing at the rest of the members

“Bruce are you sure?, if we’re not there, and your defeated—”

“We won’t be” Jason gowled, spinning a gun on his finger

Clack nodded slowly, unreadable. “...right,  we’ll coordinate planetary evacuation routes. Get ahead of the fallout.”

Tim was already linking his pad to the Watchtower’s systems, updating predictions and overlaying safe zones. “I’ll send civilian shielding protocols,” he murmured.

Cass stood near the window, eyes locked on the void of space outside—watching the dark.

Jason was staring at the floor, muttering quietly to someone the rest couldn’t see.

Damian’s eyes were distant, fixed on something none of them could comprehend. A thousand realities, folding in on themselves behind his gaze.

And Bruce…

Bruce stood at the head of it all, his cape still, his face unreadable. He looked over his shoulder, not at the League, but at his family.

“Positions in twenty. Be ready.”

No one said a word.

Because it had already begun.

The sky cracked.

It didn’t thunder. It screamed.

Above the horizon, tear lines formed—gaping wounds splitting through space itself. Ships the size of cities began pouring through them, blotting out sunlight. Parademons flooded the skies in droves. Their screeches tore across clouds as the army of Apokolips descended like a swarm from hell.

And the monsters of Earth rose to meet them.

The family stood on the ridge overlooking the wasteland that would soon become the battlefield. The Justice League was already scattered across the globe, intercepting smaller strike zones. But here—here was the real war.

This was the chokehold.

This was their line.

Jason stepped forward first.

He rolled his shoulders, his orange stone glowing like an ember ready to catch. He whispered something no one alive could hear—and the world around him changed.

From beneath the earth, from the air, from the crumbling edges of time itself—they came. Spirits, half-seen and blood-slicked, rose from invisible graves. Warriors, civilians, children lost to cruelty, soldiers lost to cause—all bound to him now. Their eyes glowed faint blue, solemn and terrifying.

Jason’s voice dropped.

“Go.”

The ghosts screamed—and charged. Intangible, unstoppable, tearing through the vanguard of Parademons with a rage older than death. They couldn’t hold the line. But they could scatter it. Confuse it. Soften it .

Jason strode forward behind them, twin pistols holstered. He didn’t need them. He reached out a hand and yanked a soul from a charging warbeast. The beast collapsed mid-sprint, its body crumpling like wet paper.

On the opposite flank, time rippled.

Damian didn’t walk into battle—he slipped into it.

His feet moved, and the world lagged behind him. The katana in his hand was blackened steel, impossibly sharp. His eyes glowed faint green, and the air around him stuttered.

To the enemy, it looked like he blinked—and their squad dropped dead.

To him, he paused time, adjusted their trajectory, and slashed through the weak points in a calm, quiet silence. Then let time resume. Again. Again. Again.

He moved like a reaper—ten steps ahead, no breath wasted, no hesitation. Each kill was surgical. Inevitable.

Tim stood back—not out of cowardice, but because someone had to run the war.

He hovered beside their war machines—hulking things crafted from otherworldly alloys, shaped and fed by Cass and Dick’s energy signatures. When a rocket slammed into one, it began to fall—and Tim raised a hand.

Reality rippled . Time bent.

The machine’s damage reversed, its armor reformed. He whispered orders to their AI network, already building predictive maps of enemy formations.

“Don’t die,” he muttered, scanning his readouts. “I just fixed you.”

A sonic boom cracked the sky.

Dick dropped from it like lightning.

He blinked through space—one second over the left flank, the next striking the central wave with electrified batons that could crack tank armor. His body moved like the wind, his stones humming with energy.

Electricity poured from him. When he struck a Parademon, the thing convulsed violently, then detonated midair. He landed only long enough to re-appear elsewhere, a force of kinetic fury.

Somewhere behind the main line, Bruce stood.

Immobile. Quiet.

His mind extended outward— grasping —searching. One by one, he found thoughts like flickering candles in a storm. Fear. Aggression. Hunger. Brutality.

He crushed them.

Each time he did, blood dripped from his nose. His knees weakened. But the enemy—those closest—collapsed where they stood, clawing at their own skulls, voices rising in unholy shrieks.

He didn’t stop. He couldn’t. Every one he snuffed out bought seconds.

And that left the front line.

That left her .

Cass charged forward alone.

Her first time letting that tightly held restraint go

Her armor was black and deep violet, pulsing with restrained power. She moved faster than most could register, tearing through enemies like they were paper silhouettes.

She didn’t speak. She didn’t hesitate. Her fists broke ribs through alien plating. Her kicks shattered skulls.

And when they began to overwhelm her—she exploded outward, her stone flaring, an energy shockwave that blasted a fifty-yard ring of parademons into dust.

Cass turned her head back just slightly.

Tim nodded. Jason gave a thumbs up. Dick zipped by with a cheer. Damian watched with blank approval.

And Bruce—through the blood dripping from his brow—offered a single nod.

The monsters of Apokolips had come to conquer.

But the monsters of Gotham had already claimed this battlefield.

And they weren’t giving it up without a war.

The battlefield was fire and shadow.

But the Batfamily stood.

It was too easy.

Jason wiped blood—his or someone else's—off his face with the back of his glove. The ghosts around him were quieter now, fewer. Many had dissipated after their vengeance was met.

Jason mutterd “Holding back. They were holding back.”

His voice echoed through their mental link—tired, wary.

Tim sighed, wiping sweat off his brow “Agreed. These weren’t shock troops. This was… recon. Distraction. Maybe both.”

He crouched behind a warped chunk of metal, patching one of the sentient machines back into working condition with a flick of his fingers and a whispered rewrite of physics. His knuckles were scraped raw, his concentration fraying.

Dick looked around “Then where’s the real hit?”

His voice came in mid-flash—he’d just taken out a flyer with a midair triple flip that was way too flashy for wartime. Classic Nightwing.

Cass looked towards the sky “It’s coming.”

Her voice was calm. Final. She stood in the center of a crater, armor cracked, breathing steady. Purple energy still flickered at her heels.

Bruce glanced, at the battle field, his children “Prepare. Regroup. This was the curtain raiser.”

Even through the link, Bruce’s mental voice sounded strained. The quiet, controlled cadence now tinged with fatigue. He had already torn through dozens of minds. That left scars—even on him.

Jason, then paused “Anyone else feel like the wind just… stopped?”

It had.

Time passed in a kind of suspended silence. The battlefield didn’t hum anymore—it listened .

Then—

Damian moved.

He had been still. For longer than anyone noticed. Kneeling atop a wrecked Apokoliptian walker, his gaze fixed on something unseen in the sky. His sword tip rested on the metal surface. His other hand hovered by his side, fingers twitching subtly.

He blinked once. Long. Slow.

Then, without a word, he raised his arm high above his head, fingers splayed wide—stone glowing hot and white with blinding intensity.

A silent signal.

The others froze .

Tim: “...Shit.”

Jason: “There it is.”

Cass: “I see it.”

Dick: “He’s here.”

Even Bruce’s mind went still for a moment. As if bracing.

In the distance, the sky folded inward like a paper tear. Space screamed . The clouds split not just with light but with gravity , as though reality itself rejected what was about to emerge.

And then he stepped through.

Massive. Imposing. Calm.

Darkseid.

He didn’t roar. He didn’t gloat.

He simply stood on the field of death his army had failed to claim. Cloak whipping in the windless air, eyes glowing dim but constant.

And everything changed.

The planet tilted.

It was like watching a god arrive at a temple already burning.

He scanned the battlefield, slow and deliberate. His gaze passed over the Batfamily—not yet acting. Not yet moving.

Just watching.

Bruce, through the link: “Remember: keep him from the cities. Keep civilians out of range. If we fall—fall this side of the horizon.”

Tim nodded “I’ll keep the machines up. We have maybe ten minutes of juice left.”

Jason, looked at his army “Ghosts are rallying. I’ll hold the left.”

Cass adjusted the grip on her sword “Center. I’ll distract him.”

Dick gave her a smile “With you.”

Damian stone burned brighter “…I will stop time, but not for long. Choose your moments wisely.”

Their minds clicked into place like a lock sliding into position. No doubt. No fear. Just a shared certainty.

They’d trained for this.

Not to win.

But to stop the end.

Darkseid stood with the calm of a conqueror. Eyes glowing. Hands behind his back. His voice was low and resonant, like thunder under ice.

“You send children in myth's armor. I expected resistance. I find a family of illusions.”

He took one step forward, the ground fracturing beneath his boot.

“You do not win this. You delay it.”

He raised a hand—energy gathering, red and raw, forming into the start of an Omega Beam—

Bruce, then shouted “Now. Move.”

The air cracked.

And then Cass struck.

She was silent. Fast. A comet in motion.

One blink and she was across the field, her war armor gleaming with the light of her power stone. She leapt, twisted midair, and punched .

Her fist crashed into Darkseid’s armour.

The force knocked the god of Apokolips back— launched him, in fact—through the air like a wrecking ball. He flew back into the ground with a colossal impact, skidding through broken machines, carving a trench in the dirt.

And when he finally stopped—his shoulder armor was shattered.

Darkseid blinked. Once. Slow.

He sat up, dragging himself to his feet like a man not used to bleeding.

“...Impressive.”

Then lightning struck.

Dick dropped from the air with two electrified escrima sticks crackling like thunder gods had loaned him their rage. He landed beside Darkseid, spun in one clean circle, and drove both sticks into the open joint in the god’s chestplate.

The explosion of electricity surged like a storm given form. The sky roared in reply.

Darkseid staggered again.

Dick smiled at him, feral “You’re not unstoppable. Just ugly.”

He flipped back—vanishing in a blink—teleporting just as a hand tried to crush him.

The earth shook.

Then it shifted .

The air around Darkseid twisted unnaturally—turned to gas, then ice, then stone again. Trees bloomed then died within seconds. The weather bent in a perfect ring around the god’s body.

Tim stood far back, eyes glowing, hands outstretched.

“Manipulating local molecular vibrations. Every atom around him is chaos.”

He pulled reality like taffy—controlling the battlefield from afar. If Darkseid took one step forward, he’d face hurricane-force winds and hail the size of tanks.

And yet… Darkseid tried.

He tried to move .

And that’s when he noticed.

Everything was… slow.

His limbs dragged like underwater stone. The sounds around him came delayed. Even light seemed lazy, frames dragging.

“...Time.”

Up on the highest hill, Damian stood like a marble statue, katana pointed toward the god. His eyes glowed white. His expression was hollow.

“You do not belong in this second.”

Time was not broken—but bent. Around Darkseid, moments lagged. It was as if he stood a second behind the world. Every attack hit before he saw it coming. Every move he tried was already outdated.

It was infuriating .

He roared—finally—and the shockwave cratered the ground around him.

But the Batfamily did not flinch.

Bruce’s voice cut through the link—calm and cold.

“Don’t let up. We take him apart before he adjusts.”

Jason emerged from the smoke then, sword in one hand, ghosts flanking both sides.

  “Souls say he fears silence. Let’s show him some.”

The dead charged beside him—thousands of them—pulling at Darkseid’s limbs, whispering into his ears, each one a memory of a death he'd caused.

Cass moved again—faster this time.

Lightning. Ghosts. Gravity bent and time fractured.

The Batfamily pressed forward, a perfect storm of power and coordination.

And for the first time in centuries—

Darkseid realized this was no easy conquest.

This was war. And the gods he mocked had come wearing the faces of broken children.

And he was losing .

Darkseid surged from the crater, fury incarnate. His fists pulsed with Omega energy, each step a quake. The air burned around him, space itself humming with tension.

He slammed his palms together.

The shockwave tore across the battlefield.

Jason was flung back—ghosts screeching in static disarray. Dick skidded across the ground, boots sparking. Tim threw up a shield of distorted time just in time to keep Cass from crashing through a building.

Damian stood unmoving, katana still raised.

Bruce eyed his children–they were okay “Everyone regroup. Cass, draw him forward. Jason, keep the souls tethered. Tim, funnel power to Dick—he’s the key.”

They obeyed without hesitation.

Cass darted forward, flipping over wreckage, letting her violet aura trail like a banner. She was silent, but her movements screamed challenge. Darkseid turned toward her—frustrated, wounded, raging.

“You are gnats. Persistent, but meaningless!”

Cass didn’t respond. She didn’t need to.

She slid beneath his punch, drove her fist into the soft plate under his ribs, and vanished again in a flicker of light.

Darkseid roared, unleashing a pulse of Omega energy—and Cass barely phased away in time, reappearing beside Bruce.

  “He’s getting faster.”  muttered cass

Tim hummed at her “Not fast enough.”

He closed his eyes. His stone flared. The energy he'd stored warped through space, through reality, and slammed into Dick.

Electricity wrapped around Dick’s shoulders like a cloak.

Tim gave dick a wide smile, psychotic to outside observers “You’re charged. Hit him. Now.”

Dick teleported. Once. Twice.

Then appeared midair above Darkseid—sticks in hand, lightning coursing like veins across his suit.

He struck.

A dozen bolts surged from the sky—Tim’s manipulation drawing power from every atmospheric layer—and Dick channeled it.

The energy hit Darkseid like the wrath of the sky itself.

The ground cratered again. Rubble exploded. The god of Apokolips staggered backward, armor cracking further, one eye blinded by the strike.

“You... are not gods.”

Damian tilted his head, almost pitting “Neither are you.”

And then the real strike began.

Jason surged forward with the dead. He wasn’t attacking—he was binding . Ghosts clung to Darkseid, wrapped around his limbs, digging spectral claws into his chest. Each soul a burden. Each memory a scream.

“Your sins are your shackles!”

Bruce took that moment to strike—mental blades like razors carving through Darkseid’s mind. It wasn’t physical. It wasn’t flashy. It was slow and cruel and silent.

Darkseid dropped to one knee.

“Tim. Now.”

Tim closed his eyes—then “Reality shift in three—two—”

He twisted space.

And suddenly Cass was beside Darkseid again. She reared back, both fists glowing with the full force of her stone, her expression blank but furious.

She hit him again —this time in the jaw.

And this time, Darkseid fell.

He crashed into the dirt like a fallen statue. His remaining armor cracked. His energy flickered. The Omega symbol on his chest dimmed.

He tried to rise.

Damian finally moved.

He appeared in front of the god, a blur of light and shadow, katana raised to the sky—then pointed it downward.

“You will not destroy this world.”

And he froze time .

The wind stopped. The light stilled.

For one perfect second, the world was silent.

And in that frozen second, the Batfamily moved as one.

• Bruce drove another psychic spear into Darkseid’s mind.
• Cass cracked her fist into his knee.
• Jason unleashed the scream of the dead.
• Tim rewrote the molecular structure of the ground, locking the god in place.
• Dick struck lightning one final time—
• And Damian let time resume—

—and all the force hit Darkseid at once.

He howled. His body convulsed. Energy burst from him in a blinding shockwave—and then collapsed in on itself.

And when the dust cleared—

He was on the ground.

Defeated.

The Batfamily stood over him, bruised, bleeding, drained.

But alive.

And victorious.

“Gotham is not yours. Earth is not yours.”

Chapter Text

Monsters fell to dust.

Without their leader, the parademons collapsed like puppets with their strings cut. Some disintegrated midair, ash scattering into the wind. Others simply froze—twitching, then falling silent. The battlefield, once screaming with fire and fury, settled into a strange stillness. Only the distant crackle of burning wreckage remained.

The Batfamily stood among the wreckage.

The earth beneath them was broken—ripped open by the clash of gods and monsters. Craters ran like veins through the landscape, war machines half-sunk into the soil. Smoke curled skyward from the jagged ruin of the Apokoliptian assault. Pieces of armor, weapons, shattered metal—all littered the field like discarded bones.

They turned.

All of them, slowly, as one.

Their eyes landed on Darkseid’s body.

What was left of it.

He was sprawled in the dirt—face-down, armor shattered, glowing core flickering faintly like a dying star. His hand twitched once. Then not again.

And in the wake of silence, one single, unspoken thought echoed through their shared mental link.

“…That was kinda easy. Wasn’t it?”

Dick was the first to smile.

A crooked, exhausted thing. Like someone who wasn’t entirely convinced they hadn’t all just hallucinated the past hour of combat.

Tim’s eyebrows pinched together sharply, thoughtful and skeptical.

“…Statistically, that shouldn’t have worked,” he muttered.

Damian blinked once, long and slow. He tilted his head at the fallen god like he was analyzing a particularly stupid piece of abstract art.

“Tt. Unsatisfying.”

Cass frowned. Her fingers flexed once. She didn’t like it. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t right.

Jason scoffed, kicking at a chunk of debris near his foot. His voice was dry, but a little wary beneath it.

“Either we’re better than we thought, or he was holding back. I don’t like either answer.”

Bruce—still bleeding from one nostril, eyes faintly red from psychic overexertion—straightened.

He didn’t say anything at first.

Then, finally, he started thinking.

“The Justice League is finishing cleanup. Global communications are back. Civilian casualties are lower than expected. Metropolis has stabilized. Titans report in twenty. J’onn says containment on the upper atmosphere breach is holding.”

They all nodded. Quiet. Professional.

Business as usual. Except nothing about this was usual.

Jason tilted his head toward the unmoving titan in the dirt.

“…So. What do we do with that?”

Darkseid’s body, still radiating flickers of godlike energy, lay cracked and unmoving. His eyes, once glowing with unrelenting wrath, were shut. The Omega symbol on his chest was barely more than a burn mark now.

No one answered for a moment.

Then Tim stepped forward.

“I’ll handle it.”

Bruce’s gaze narrowed slightly, but he didn’t stop him.

Tim reached down and touched the remains of Darkseid. His fingers pressed gently to the space between the broken lines of armor.

There was no light.

No dramatic effect.

One second, the body was there.

And then—

It wasn’t.

Gone.

Not a puff of smoke. Not a flash of light. Just… vanished.

Like reality decided it no longer applied to that particular molecule.

The others turned to Tim, some with raised eyebrows. Some with nothing at all.

Bruce stepped forward, voice low.

“…Tim.”

A beat passed. Tim didn’t look back right away. Then he frowned.

“He’s somewhere safe.”

That was all he said.

He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to. Because in that moment, the rest of the family knew: whatever Tim had done, it wasn’t out of impulse. It wasn’t sloppy. It wasn’t revenge.

It was strategy.

Cass tilted her head. Then nodded.

Jason shrugged. “Long as he doesn’t come back.”

Dick crossed his arms, smile faint. “If he does, you can punch him again.”

Damian, still dusting his blood-specked cape, grumbled, “ Let me decapitate him next time.”

Tim exhaled, rubbing his temples. “He’s not coming back.”

Bruce stared at him for a long, unreadable second.

Then simply said: “Good.”

And that was that.

No fanfare. No grand declarations. Just the quiet shift of breath in a world still recovering from the weight of gods.

They turned away from the spot where a tyrant once stood—and began walking.

The war was over.

And Gotham’s monsters were still standing.

Darkseid floated in front of him. Suspended. Still.

Tim stood with his hands behind his back, perfectly still, like a professor studying a painting. The space around them was black—flat, endless. No walls. No ceiling. Just a perfectly sealed, artificially created vacuum dimension hidden between layers of time and reality. It didn’t have a name. It didn’t need one.

There was only Tim.

And the corpse of a god.

Darkseid’s body hovered in the center, held in place by gravitational fields Tim had designed that morning. The restraints were invisible—just layers of mathematical certainty, folding him like origami in fixed stasis. Limbs suspended. Expression neutral. Lights embedded into the air cast soft illumination over the body, revealing the cracked stone texture of his skin, the fractures in his armor, the splatter of his own blood dried to black across his chest.

Tim stared. For a long time.

Alien biology, he decided, was odd .

And exciting.

There were too many assumptions in xenobiological theory. Too many half-truths, guesses, and metaphysical metaphors passed off as science. None of them had ever had something like this. A chance to see—truly see —what lay beneath the surface of something divine. Or at least, something that thought it was.

Tim pulled a notebook out of thin air—literally—from a collapsing, pocketfolded subdimension attached to his belt. It was half-used, corners crumpled, filled with scrawled notes on chronal compression, organ-shifting anomalies, and a list titled "what to do if Superman bleeds" (only three items long).

He flipped to a blank page and began writing.

Observation 01: Skin appears dermal in structure, but functions as a composite of organic and mineral matter. Toughness exceeds Promethium-based alloys. Self-regenerative capabilities dormant.

Tim looked back up. Eyes sharp. Unblinking.

He walked forward, boots making no sound in the nothing beneath him. His hand lifted, fingers twitching slightly—and without touching, without even a whisper of contact, the outer layer of Darkseid’s shoulder split open.

Like peeling back clay.

It was deliberate, controlled, respectful in the way only scientific precision can be. There was no malice. No joy. Just curiosity executed with exactness.

The flesh came away reluctantly, revealing dense fibers beneath—tendon analogues woven through with faintly glowing threads of something like gold and something very much not . The muscle beneath did not twitch. Of course not. The subject was dead.

Tim tilted his head slightly.

Observation 02: Muscle density incompatible with known force models. Weight-to-strength ratio suggests gravitational defiance. Could explain omega beam trajectory bends.

The skin was tough . He made a note of it.

Tensile strength exceeded his first estimate by 46.2%.

He frowned.

Not out of emotion. Not really . Just out of disappointment. The data was fine. But it could’ve been better. So much of biology depended on living responses—reactions to stimuli, metabolic spikes, neural flares.

Tim’s stylus paused above the page.

It would have been… informative… to see what he screamed to.

He blinked once.

Then again.

The thought was there. Not lingering. Just passing through. Like wind through an open door.

“Disgusting,” he muttered aloud.

He tasted the word. Rolled it over in his mouth like a piece of expired candy. No. That wasn’t quite it.

“Disturbing?”

Still wrong.

“Curious.”

Yes. Better. Still not accurate.

He looked back at the corpse.

Unfeeling.

Unchanged.

Unimpressive, now that it wasn’t fighting back.

Tim sighed and resumed writing. His fingers never slowed.

Observation 03: Energy core was not internal. Energy source was identity-based . Possibly anchored in conceptual existence (i.e., self-perception as a god created actual godhood). Research further into weaponized ego constructs.

He paused again. Wrote one more line.

Subject is currently disappointing. Recommend revival for more complete data.

Tim stared at that last sentence for several long seconds.

Then, very slowly, he crossed it out.

Not because it was incorrect.

But because it would be inconvenient .

The page flipped. More notes. More diagrams. More sketches of organs that didn’t yet have names. He kept working, surrounded by the body of a dead god and the hum of quiet, cosmic silence.

Tim Drake didn’t allow the body to rest.

Only measured.

The room was large, sterile, and quiet—too quiet.

It wasn’t just the aftermath of war that made it that way. It was the presence at the head of the table.

The Justice League sat in their usual places—Superman near the center, Wonder Woman beside him, Green Lantern tapping a faint rhythm into the metal table out of nerves he probably didn’t know he had. Hawkwoman sat stiffly, arms crossed. Zatanna and J’onn flanked the other side, both unusually silent.

And at the head of the table—

Batman.

Bruce stood, not seated. Cape unmoving, armor pristine, not a scratch on him. His cowl eyes gleamed faintly in the low lighting, casting a ghostlight over the table. He didn’t speak right away.

He didn’t have to.

Beside him stood Damian Wayne.

Unblinking.

Stone still.

Like a mannequin molded in divine wrath and given a boy’s face. He was statuesque. Unnerving. His hands folded neatly in front of him, his posture perfect, like a blade placed delicately into a sheath.

Diana cleared her throat, slow and polite. “Status report, Batman.”

Bruce didn’t move. “Earth is secure.”

“And Darkseid?” Superman asked, his voice a half-octave lower than usual. It wasn’t worry. Not exactly. But there was something… uncertain in it. Something sidelined .

Bruce looked at him. Just looked. That long, measuring silence that had no business echoing as loudly as it did in a room full of god-tier power.

Then, he spoke. “Neutralized.”

Flash blinked. “That’s it?”

“No longer a threat,” Bruce said. “His forces are scattered. War constructs have been disabled. Gotham has already resumed full power. Metropolis is stable.”

Diana’s eyes narrowed slightly. “And the body?”

Bruce pauses, eyes flicking to Damian. There’s a conversation beyond that look, one which Clark interrupts before he starts to feel put out by it.

“You’re keeping his body.”

Sharp eyes turn to him. Eyes, that as the months passed, have become more yellow than blue.

Bruce didn’t answer.

Because he didn’t deny it either.

Diana leaned back, her fingers tapping once against the table before going still. The silence that followed pressed down like stone, heavy and unyielding. She let her gaze move across the room—Clark, Hal, Barry—each of them wearing the same shadow in their expression, the same reluctant recognition. And then her eyes dropped back to the table. To the stones.

They were wrong, these things. Wrong in the way a jagged crack across a perfect sculpture is wrong—something that should not be there, and yet cannot be undone. They had appeared without warning, and in doing so had shattered the fragile balance they had all been trying to hold. These stones had not just altered the path ahead; they had forced the world onto an entirely different road, one from which there was no return.

And then there was the child. Damian.

His stone glowed even at rest, its green light unsettling in its steadiness, like a watchful eye that never closed. And in him— through him—the same light burned. His gaze dissected everything, every person, every moment, as though his mind could no longer accept the world as it was, only strip it apart into what it could exploit or withstand. He carried himself not as a boy, but as something older, harder—something sharpened against the grain of existence itself.

And the tragedy was not that the stone had taken his humanity away. It was that it had never been given to him in the first place. Even before the stone, Damian had been forged in fire and expectation, shaped into a weapon rather than raised as a child. He had been denied laughter, gentleness, the careless freedoms that made a life human. Now, with the stone, that denial was sealed, written into the marrow of him.

What sat before them was not a child who had lost his humanity. It was a child who had been robbed of it from the beginning, and the stone had only made that theft irreversible.

But he was only one piece of this puzzle, one of the six that had fundamentally flipped this world on its edge. The stones had chosen—or cursed—each of them, binding themselves to souls unready, unwilling, or undeserving. Every new revelation made the shape of this thing darker, sharper, and far more dangerous than any of them had dared to admit aloud.

And at the edge of it all, silent and watchful as ever, was Bruce. He said nothing. Offered nothing. But Diana saw the truth written in the hard set of his jaw, in the way he looked at the boy without ever seeing him.

Her voice cut through the silence like tempered steel.

“Is this what your family is now, Bruce?”

Damian didn’t blink.

Didn’t flinch.

Didn’t acknowledge the room.

But Bruce  turned her gaze to her, a sweeping gaze going over her form. She could only imagine what he was feeling right now, what he was doing right now. They were all very much aware the man could look into their minds. He wondered what he was pulling at, what of her secrets were being plunked raw without consent.

Batman did not like to be questioned, he saw it as a challenge, and thus, had to figure out.

Only now, he didn't have to figure, only look, look as other lives came apart in front of him

“We’re… different,” Bruce said eventually. “But we’re still here. Still fighting. Still protecting. That hasn’t changed.”

Damian’s green-stone eyes flicked to Diana, cold, precise—but not without care. “We are stronger. Smarter. Faster. We see more, understand more. That doesn’t mean we’ve lost who we are… only that we can’t afford the weaknesses you’re used to.”

Clark stepped forward. “Different is one thing. But this… power, this change—it’s making you… rigid,

Bruce’s gaze softened fractionally, and he gave a small shake of his head. “Rigidity isn’t cruelty. It’s clarity. If I let my concern blind me, if I let my attachments dictate every move… we fail. And you know what happens when we fail.”

Diana pressed. “But at what cost? Your team—your family—they’re… not the same people we knew.”

Bruce’s hand moved almost unconsciously, brushing Damian’s shoulder. The gesture was subtle, barely there—but Damian leaned into it. “They’re still my family,” Bruce said quietly. “Still mine. Still worth every sacrifice, every risk. Even… like this.”

Damian added, voice tighter than usual, almost reverent: “We’re different, yes. But we protect each other. That’s the point. Even when it’s… hard to recognize ourselves.”

The league shared a glance

Bruce’s eyes flicked around the room once more. “We’ve changed. The world has changed. But the ones I protect—I still see them. And I’ll keep them safe. That’s all that matters. We may be beyond what we once were, but that only means we can serve humanity better.”

Damian, stone glowing faintly, glanced at his father. “And we will.”

It wasn’t warm. Not in the traditional sense. But it was enough. Enough to remind the League that, whatever else the stones had done, the Bat-family’s heart—however tempered—still beat.

“So the body” Hal slowly brought up

Bruce turned to him

“In a place where it can be studied, where weakness and flaws can be pulled apart. Knowledge to know, for if a situation like this were to happen again, we will be able to exploit those, and protect our people.”

“At the cost of keeping it as a lab experiment, and not letting it rest”

Bruce's eyes suddenly looked hollow, something haunted playing through them”

“For the amount of horror this thing has created, no retribution will ever be enough, for all those billions he had harmed”

The room fell silent after Bruce’s words, the weight of them pressing against the walls. Damian remained still, eyes fixed on the floor, the green light of his stone reflecting faintly in the polished surface. Hal shifted uneasily, sensing the gravity of the moment but unsure how to respond.

Clark finally spoke, his voice quiet but steady. “So it’s about prevention. Not revenge.”

Bruce nodded once, sharp, deliberate. “Exactly. Every decision from here on, every precaution, every strategy—it’s for survival. Not pride. Not retribution. Survival.”

The others exchanged glances, the enormity of their new reality settling like ash in their chests. And in the silence that followed, the only sound was the faint hum of the stones, reminding them all that nothing—not even this victory—was ever truly over.

Bruce finally turned away, back to the shadows where plans and contingencies waited. And in that motion, the room seemed to exhale, leaving them with the uncomfortable understanding that their friend, despite being the man they know and love, had been irreparably changed, and could never be that same person again.

"Thanks."

Jason’s voice was rough, but sincere.

Dick had teleported them to a planet, with a established atmosphere in some far away glaxley—somewhere quiet

Dick turned to him, a smile stretching across his face.

Except… the smile glitched . Static shimmered at the corners of his mouth, like his face was a corrupted video file barely holding its form. The smile flickered—then bled into a frown. Then every emotion at once: happiness, grief, confusion, terror. Like his expression couldn’t decide what mask to wear and kept cycling through them all.

Jason blinked.

“...Right.”

He reached out, cautiously placing a hand on Dick’s arm.

The effect was immediate.

Dick froze . His face went slack—eyes unfocused, jaw loosening. And then—

BOOM.

Energy discharged from his body, exploding into the cracked ground of the moon beneath them. A surge of invisible force burst outward, sending up a cloud of moon-dust that danced weightlessly in the low gravity.

Jason yanked his hand back, expression unreadable.

Dick tilted his head in that too-smooth way, like a puppet still learning how to move. “Sorry, Jay,” he said, voice distant, fried at the edges. “You can’t still me. I gotta let it out somehow.”

Jason only nodded, brushing dust off his jacket. “Yeah. Figured.”

He turned to look across the ruins that surrounded them.

There was no life here. No ghosts either. Just… remnants . Imprints. Old emotional stains still clinging to shattered architecture and broken stone. Echoes of people who were long gone, sunk so deep into memory not even the dead could find them.

It was perfect.

Quiet.

Lonely.

Jason moved forward, boots scraping gently against the lunar rock. He placed a hand against a half-collapsed wall—worn with age, scarred by violence. It thrummed under his fingers, like a distant heartbeat.

Emotions flooded him.

Joy. Sorrow. Panic.

All disconnected and disjointed—like someone had turned on an ancient recording of a civilization’s final moments and warped the tape.

He pulled back, frowning.

This place died hard.

And the emotions hurt

Emotions to do with his stone were fickle, and had taken some time to get right

Emotions were a slippery thing. 

Bruce’s mind stone could sift through thoughts, dissect memories, pry open secrets—but feelings? Feelings were not its forte. The mind stone could reveal what a person thought in a given instant, the precise architecture of their reasoning, but the raw pulse of emotion—that belonged elsewhere. That belonged to the soul.

Jason felt the emotions

He could not look back on meemoires—-because looking was the mind

But feeling

That was his domaine

Jason’s fingers traced the cold surface of the wall. The stone in his grasp throbbed faintly, a heartbeat of its own. He closed his eyes, letting himself sink into it. 

First, a trickle. That is what their souls told them, then it came in a rush again.​ The panic, we must run—run, but it was too late, then nothing. Nothing at all

This soul, a name not known to him, but a soul so bright

So bright until that life was snuffed out

Then—suddenly—arms around him. Tight. Too tight.

“Dick?” Jason’s voice pitched upward slightly in surprise.

Dick was hugging him. Face buried in his shoulder, body vibrating. Not shaking— vibrating . Like he couldn’t stay fully in phase with reality.

Jason could feel the static prickling against his skin, the faint crackle of power dancing through Dick’s suit. Sparks leapt off the older brother’s fingertips, not malicious, but constant— erratic .

“Dick.”

Dick didn’t release him.

His head snapped slightly, just a twitch, and then again—faster this time, like his neck couldn’t decide which way to tilt.

“S-sorry, Jay. I thought you were sad. Or… maybe you are. Or maybe I am. Or—” He broke into a laugh. “—I dunno anymore. You know, I don’t think suppressing my emotions is working ! Hahaha—yes. Yes. Good talk.”

He nodded wildly, sparks flying from his hair like electric fireflies.

Jason just… sighed.

He pointed to a patch of ground twenty feet away.

“I’m gonna go stand over there . Just a bit.”

He started walking.

Dick, like a chaos-charged koala, clung to him a few more steps before finally letting go and skidding back with a burst of frictionless momentum.

“You need to discharge,” Jason said over his shoulder. “Seriously. You’re humming like a generator and laughing like you bit a thunder god.”

Dick blinked.

Then frowned.

Then smiled.

Then cried.

Then nodded—violently.

Then vanished . One blink and he was gone—no sound, no warning. Just a sudden absence.

And then—

Destruction.

It started subtle. The dust rose in delicate spirals, gravity losing the fight. Static lightning crackled along the shattered landscape, bending physics around Dick’s glowing silhouette. His body jittered, frame skipping across space like a skipping CD.

Then the lightning hit.

One bolt.

Then five.

Then a hundred , ricocheting off the moon’s surface like someone turned Olympus loose and forgot to leash the gods. Craters erupted. Stone exploded. Ancient ruins disintegrated. A distant mountain—what was left of it—collapsed inward like it remembered what it was like to die.

Jason stood still.

Watching.

Expression unreadable.

He didn’t flinch when a bolt of blue-white electricity scorched a line across the dust six feet in front of him. He didn’t even blink when chunks of moon rock rained down like meteorites.

He just waited.

Waited for the storm to end.

Waited for his brother to empty .

And when it was finally done—when the air calmed, and the energy flickered down, and the planet was no longer a planet but a cracked shell of a graveyard—

Jason just said quietly, “You good?”

A beat.

Then Dick’s voice from the dust: “Yeah….that feels better” He was breathing hard

Jason ran a hand down his face.

The kitchen lights flickered.

With a CRACK of displaced air and a faint smell of ozone, Jason and Dick slammed into existence in their chairs at the dining table. Dick’s hair was windswept like he’d just been electrocuted. Jason looked mostly unfazed—like a man who had accepted chaos as a lifestyle choice.

Dick grinned, waving both arms like he hadn’t just helped vaporize part of a planet.

“Hey, Alfie!”

Jason had already started eating before Dick finished waving. He didn’t look up, just shoveling eggs onto toast like a man trying to anchor himself with carbs.

Alfred, serene as ever, raised an eyebrow but didn’t blink at the entrance. “Good morning, Master Richard.”

Cass entered then, completely silent. Alfred didn’t need a word—he turned and, without ceremony, placed fifteen plates of food down in front of her like a royal offering.

Cass sat. Began eating slowly, methodically. Wrap. Sandwich. Fruit. Whole grain protein bar. Rice. Like it was a checklist. Like her chewing was timed.

Dick beamed at her through a mouthful of toast. “How’s the new food intake working out?”

Cass blinked at him, face blank, then stuffed an entire wrap into her mouth before answering flatly, “More food means I break down slower.”

Dick gave her a thumbs-up. “We love less bodily entropy!”

Alfred, unphased, poured coffee with quiet precision.

The energy in the room shifted as Bruce entered—no teleportation, no spark, no sound beyond the faint pad of boot soles against tile. He sat down, took a plate, and began to eat like it was just another morning.

No one said anything.

Because Bruce eating was its own kind of terrifying ritual. Silence was customary. Reverent, almost.

Jason raised an eyebrow. “You good, B?”

Bruce chewed. Swallowed.

He took a sip of coffee.

“I’m fine.”

Dick nodded brightly, “Cool, cool, so same old.”

Jason muttered, “Just apocalypse things.”

Cass licked sauce off her fingers and didn’t look up. “The sink is bleeding again.”

Alfred responded without missing a beat. “Very good, miss. I’ll call the exorcist before lunch.”

Dick clapped once, lightning snapping off his palms. “I love family breakfasts.”

Jason grimaced. “You short-circuited the toaster again.”

Bruce didn’t speak.

He just picked up the broken toaster. And stared at it.

And stared .

The others went back to eating like nothing was wrong.

Because in this house, that was normal.

Breakfast continued. Dick didn't eat, but he talked, he did enough talking for the rest of them. Random things, how he slept, his dreams, the planet and Jay went too, A cat he saw on his work. But eventually even he ran out of subjects.

His last sentence cut off with a soft note

The elephant in the room was apparent 

“Where are Damian and Tim?” Dick asked suddenly. He was now poking at a piece of fruit he was not going to eat.

Jason shrugged

Cass stuffed another apple slice into her mouth

“The brats proberly steering at a wall, and Tim’s proberly trying to recreate the sun in his bedroom”

Dick winced

Cass Frowned

Bruce paused

They all looked at him at once

Then he closed his eyes, and the air shifted.

And then he shot to his feet, movement sharp, precise, impossible to ignore. Every muscle coiled and released with the fluidity of practiced danger.

Without needing a word, they jumped to their feet, Dick disappeared in a flash

The room emptied in a flurry of limbs, the faint thump of boots on floorboards echoing behind them.

Dick appeared in the room first, and the scene before him made him freeze

Damian was standing in the center of the room, but not really

He was fuzzy at the edges…..and fading

Meanwhile, Tim was poking his arm through the boy….and studying it

“TIM” dick yelped, and tim jumped, turning to him

Dick sprinted forward and slammed onto his knees in front of Damian. His hand ghosted over his body, not touching, but there. Then he placed his hand on Damian, and It went through

Dick went pale

Damian blinked at him, tilting his head

“Damian…what the fuck, are you ok, whats happening—”

The door then slammed open, making Dick and Tim jump, the other poured in

Jason stared

“What the fuck”

Dick’s hand remained hovering over Damian’s chest, his knuckles white, his mind racing. “Stay with me, Damian. Please. Just hold on !” His voice cracked under the strain, and his usual calm authority was gone, replaced by raw fear.. “I—I don’t understand! He’s—he’s breaking apart ! I—I can see—look!” His words rushed out, breathless and high-pitched, his fingers twitching as if they could somehow grasp the edges of Damian’s fading form.

Damian’s edges shivered again, blurring into nothingness. His legs became indistinct, his torso flickering like a candle in the wind. One moment, his stone-green eyes were focused and alive; the next, they were dull, fading into opaque gray. He opened his mouth, but only a hollow whisper escaped: “I… can’t…”

Jason shouted, stepping closer, his voice fraying. “No, no, no! You’re not disappearing! You hear me? Not like this! ” But even as he lunged, his hand passed through Damian, meeting nothing.

“Step back!” Dick yelled, voice cracking. “All of you! Don’t touch him! You’ll make it worse!”

Cass stood frozen, eyes wide, lips pressed together. She inched forward, fingers trembling slightly as if she wanted to reach out, then drew back.

The flickering intensified. Damian’s body quivered, fragmented, pulsing in and out of reality. Every heartbeat seemed stretched, irregular, like the universe itself was skipping. His gaze darted around, frantic and terrified, yet confused.

And then the air snapped.

Bruce moved. Not quickly, not in panic, but in an unshakable, absolute certainty that sliced through the room like ice. He stepped into the doorway, and everything changed.

The team froze mid-motion. Hands hung in the air; voices caught in throats; Tim’s probing fingers stopped an inch from Damian’s dissolving arm. Even Jason’s lungs seemed paused in mid-scream. Bruce’s presence was a chokehold on the chaos, a master switch turning the panic off—but only externally.

Damian, though, did not stop. He shuddered violently as his body continued to fade, flickering faster now, like static over a broken signal.

Bruce’s eyes locked on him, cold and calculating. Not yet… steady… steady… His mind reached out, not violently, but with the precision of a scalpel. He touched Damian’s scattered essence, nudging fragments together, stabilizing edges, pulling coherence from the void.

“Stay with me,” Bruce’s voice echoed in Damian’s mind, firm but calm. “Focus. Ground yourself.”

For a heartbeat, the chaos outside them—the panic, the terror—was frozen. Time itself seemed to pause as Bruce’s influence radiated outward. Damian’s body, previously smoke and shadow, began to knot itself together, pulling pieces of him back from the void. His torso solidified, legs reformed, and the faint green glow of his stone pulsed steadily.

Damian’s form finally solidified, his green eyes flickering back to life, but the room was still thick with tension. The panic hadn’t completely lifted—it hung heavy, like smoke in the air.

Dick’s hands dropped from Damian’s chest, shaking. “He’s… okay,” he muttered, but his glare shot straight to Tim. “ Why didn’t you get us?! Why weren’t you calling for help instead of… instead of doing… whatever that was?”

Tim flinched, his eyes darting to Damian, then back at Dick. “I… I didn’t think—”

“You—” Dick’s jaw tightened. “You were studying him. While he was fading. You didn’t call anyone.”

Jason’s eyebrows shot up. “Wait—hang on—you mean he wasn’t trying to… hurt him or anything? He was just… being curious?”

Dick threw his hands up in frustration. “I don’t care why! Someone should have called for help! Not just stand there!” His gaze shifted to Damian, who was now blinking rapidly, as if waking from a nightmare. The boy’s chest rose and fell with steady breaths, but the faint tremor in his hands betrayed the ordeal he’d just endured.

Cass stayed quiet, her hand resting lightly on her chest as she watched Tim. Her eyes, wide and soft, didn’t scold—just mirrored the disbelief that filled the room. She seemed almost fragile, yet her stillness held weight, as if her very presence demanded reflection.

Tim’s lips parted, but no words came immediately. When he finally spoke, his voice was small, hesitant. “I thought… I could understand it. Study it. Maybe help later. I didn’t know it would… get this bad.” He shifted uneasily, glancing between Dick and Bruce.

Bruce’s presence, steady and unyielding, filled the room like a stone wall. He didn’t speak immediately, letting the weight of the situation settle before him. Then, finally, his voice cut through the tense air, calm but commanding. “Tim,” he said, “curiosity is not the priority when someone’s very existence is at stake. Observation comes after preservation, not before.”

Tim flinched slightly, but nodded, a small bead of sweat rolling down his temple. “I… I understand,” he whispered.

Dick pulled Damian into a hug, then Tim, And then Cassandra because she was standing close enough

He buried his head into Damian hair, wrapping his arms around them

“God, please don’t do that again”

“Brat, why were you even fading in the first place” Jason questioned

Damian’s eyes flicked to him, he stared down at his hands

“I…don’t know”

Jason scoffed

“Well isn't that the story of our lives

They all had migrated to the lounge. Damian hadn’t let go of Dick, not even for a second. His small frame was pressed to Dick’s chest, arms wound tightly around him like he was afraid if he loosened even a fraction, he’d vanish again. Dick held him close, one hand rubbing absent circles against the back of Damian’s neck, his jaw tight with something that wasn’t just fear, but guilt.

Tim hovered awkwardly on the edge of the couch, fingers twitching as if still searching for a notebook or tablet to anchor him. He wasn’t sure if he should sit, stand, or just leave entirely. But Dick, still cradling Damian, exhaled softly and reached out with one arm, tugging Tim down beside him. It wasn’t forgiving—not yet—but it was enough. Tim slumped into the cushions, shoulders drawn in.

Jason sprawled on the opposite couch, trying for his usual swagger but falling short. He looked tired. Too tired for jokes. Cass sat curled up beside him, knees pulled to her chest, an apple slice abandoned in her hand. She didn’t say anything, but her dark eyes flicked from face to face, tracking every wordless crack in them.

Bruce sat apart, in the armchair, his hands steepled under his chin. His silence stretched until it became unbearable. Finally, he said it.

“I don’t think we’re the most stable anymore.”

The words landed like a stone dropped in water, rippling outward.

Jason let out a rough laugh, bitter and sharp. “Well, no shit. I just watched Dick blow up a moon.” He gestured across the room with a humorless smirk. “And I can’t even step into Gotham without the city practically short-circuiting around me. Too much rage, too much static, too much… whatever the hell I’m radiating. Cass is breaking apart, Damian’s fading, Tim’s—” he hesitated, looking sideways at his younger brother— “Tim’s disappearing into his own head. And you, Bruce—” Jason’s voice dropped— “you froze us. Froze us like puppets. No hesitation. No problem.”

The silence after was thick.

Tim swallowed, voice small. “I didn’t mean for it to look like that. With Damian. I just… I wanted to understand what was happening. If I could study it, maybe…” His words faltered, his throat bobbing. “Maybe I could stop it next time.”

Dick closed his eyes, holding Damian a little tighter. “Tim… we don’t need a scientist when someone is fading out of existence. We need a brother.” His voice cracked on the last word, softer than he intended.

Tim flinched. He nodded, biting his lip. But the look in his eyes said he wasn’t sure he could turn that part of himself off anymore.

Cass shifted slightly, her voice barely above a whisper. “Hurts.” Everyone looked at her, and she curled tighter into herself. “Inside. Feels… pulled apart. Like I’m not… me.”

Jason’s hand hovered at her back, awkward but steady. He didn’t say anything clever. For once, there was nothing clever to say.

Bruce’s eyes flicked to each of them in turn. “You’re right,” he said finally. His voice was low, unflinching, the kind that carried truths no one wanted to face. “We’ve crossed too many lines. Changed too much. We’re not just protecting this world anymore—we’re warping it. Hurting it.”

Dick shook his head stubbornly. “No. We’ve saved lives. That has to count for something.”

“Saved some,” Jason shot back, eyes hard. “But at what cost? You didn’t see what I saw last time I went into the Narrows. People flinched just looking at me. They weren’t scared of crime anymore. They were scared of us. Of me.” He spat the last word out, bitter.

Dick’s lips pressed into a thin line. He didn’t argue, but he didn’t agree either.

Tim spoke again, voice thin and fast. “There has to be balance. We’re still learning the scope of what the stones—what we—can do. Maybe it’s dangerous now, but if we keep refining it, if we keep—”

“Keep pushing?” Jason snapped. “Until what, Tim? Until you dissect Damian to figure out why he’s fading? Until Cass tears herself in half because she thinks she can handle the strain? Until Bruce turns off our brains whenever he feels like it? Is that where we’re heading?”

“Enough,” Bruce said, but not loud—just firm. His voice alone closed the argument like a steel door. “Jason is right, but so are you, Tim. Curiosity and growth are necessary—but not at the expense of each other.”

His gaze swept the room. “We’re not the same people we were. We can’t pretend otherwise. But we need to face what that means, before it destroys us… or this world.”

Damian stirred finally, his small voice muffled against Dick’s chest. “I… didn’t feel scared.”

Dick looked down, startled. “What?”

“When I was fading,” Damian said softly, his eyes half-lidded. “It didn’t feel like dying. It felt like… nothing. Like I wasn’t supposed to exist anymore. And part of me… almost didn’t care.”

The room went deathly quiet.

Dick’s throat worked as he pressed Damian closer, his eyes wet but furious. “Don’t you ever say that. Don’t you ever think that.”

Damian didn’t reply, but his arms stayed tight around his brother’s neck.

Jason broke the silence again, quieter this time. “We’re falling apart, Bruce. You can’t just fix this with speeches. We’re cracking at the seams, and you know it.”

Bruce didn’t deny it. He just looked at each of them—their scars, their fractured edges, their haunted eyes—and said, “Then we have to decide. Do we stay and risk breaking everything around us? Or do we leave… before the world learns to fear us more than it already does?”

No one had an answer.

But then Jason spoke up. His voice was low, rough, but steady.
“Ask the stones.”

Everyone’s heads snapped toward him.

Jason met their stares with a scowl, shoulders squaring. “What? They’re the cause of all this. Demand answers from them.”

Cass tilted her head, frowning, the apple slice in her hand forgotten. “You want… to demand answers from millennium-old beings?” Her voice was soft, doubtful, but her eyes flicked toward her own stone as if the thought already weighed on her.

Jason shrugged, leaning back into the couch like he didn’t care, though his jaw was tight. “Worth a try.”

Bruce’s sigh was heavy, drawn from someplace deep. He steepled his fingers, gaze flicking over his children. “Alright.”

The room stilled. One by one, they closed their eyes, their hands brushing over the stones that pulsed faintly against their skin, against their souls. The silence stretched until it wasn’t silence anymore—it was a hum, a vibration that pressed in on their chests, curling into their minds, threading through their thoughts.

And then the voices came.

Layered. Resonant. Ancient. Not one voice, but all voices at once, like the sea speaking through a thousand drops of water.

“Children of will. You ask what is happening.”

Dick swallowed hard, his arm tightening around Damian as the boy shifted faintly in his sleep-like daze. “Yes,” he said, his voice cracking. “What’s happening to us?”

“You are becoming too powerful for your human forms.”

The words rang like a bell, final and cruel in their simplicity.

Jason barked a sharp laugh, humorless. “No shit.”

No one scolded him.

Dick’s breath hitched. His hand smoothed over Damian’s hair, eyes darting down to the boy in his arms. “Then—then what about Damian? Is it going to happen again? Is he just going to—” His voice trembled as the memory of Damian’s fading returned, and he gripped him tighter. “—blink out of existence like that?”

A different resonance rolled through the air, softer, steadier. The Time Stone.

“No. That was not an ordinary unraveling. The boy did not collapse. He fell too far into himself, into the endless flow of what was and what will be. His essence nearly drowned within the current of time, pulled apart not by outside forces, but by his own tether to the stream.”

The air hummed lower, the voice like the weight of centuries.

“He almost lost himself there, lost his shape, his now. It is dangerous, but it will not happen again unless he surrenders to that current willingly. What you saw was not the end of him—it was the brink of forgetting himself entirely.”

Dick’s relief was shaky, fragile, like glass that could splinter at a touch. He buried his nose briefly in Damian’s hair, clutching him tighter. “Okay. Okay…”

Cass’s voice, small but firm, cut through the moment. “Are you sure you can’t stop it? Any of this?” Her dark eyes opened just enough to look at the air around them, as though she could see the beings speaking. “If we’re breaking, then stop it.”

The voices shifted again, and there was a pause. Not hesitation, but something that almost felt like… consideration.

“We cannot undo what you are becoming. It is not within our nature to interfere. 

“But… if we were human in this situation, we believe we would apologize.”

The room seemed to shudder with those words. Not comfort. Not hope. Just regret, and something that sounded dangerously like indifference wrapped in sorrow.

Tim let out a long, shaky sigh, his head bowing forward into his hands. “So we’re only delaying the inevitable.” His voice was flat, exhausted, more observation than accusation.

The stones’ reply was immediate.

“Yes.”

And then the voices faded. The hum unraveled. The room was silent again.

Cass curled into herself, drawing her knees tighter to her chest, her face pressed against them. She didn’t speak, but the tremble in her shoulders said enough.

Dick exhaled shakily, pressing Damian closer to his chest with one arm and reaching out with the other to pull Tim against him too. Both boys sagged into his hold—Tim stiff at first, then giving in with a tired breath. Dick wrapped around them like he could shield them from words older than the world itself.

Jason pushed himself up with a long, weary sigh. He rubbed a hand over his face, muttering something under his breath. Without a word, he turned and walked out of the room, boots heavy on the floor. He didn’t slam the door behind him, but the weight of his absence filled the space.

Bruce stayed seated, his elbows on his knees, his fingers pressed against his mouth. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He only stared at the sight of his family crumbling—children who were too tired, too scarred, too altered by forces they never should’ve touched. His family, pulling apart in front of him.

The silence stretched on.

And this time, it didn’t feel like peace.

It felt like the quiet before something broke.

Chapter Text

A buddy system—that is what they decided.
To stop each other from falling apart, to stop each other from drifting, to keep the family anchored when their powers began to pull them in directions no human mind was ever meant to follow.

Damian and Cass.
Bruce and Tim.
Dick and Jason.

It sounded simple in theory: no one alone. Ever.

But in practice—already—it was cracking.

Damian sat on the floor of the library, knees drawn to his chest, eyes glassy as he stared into nothing. His hands trembled faintly, and the air around him shimmered, a strange ripple that bent the light across the bookshelves. His chest rose and fell like a boy asleep, but his gaze was too sharp, too fixed, as though he were staring down the barrel of eternity itself.

“Damian,” Cass whispered.

She was crouched beside him, her small hand hovering above his arm but not yet touching. Her stone pulsed faintly against her skin, dim one moment and flaring bright the next, like a heartbeat struggling to stay steady. Her dark eyes searched his face, the silence heavy, her lips pressing together with visible strain.

“Damian,” she said again, louder.

No response. His breathing hitched, sharp, shallow. His pupils dilated, then shrank, then dilated again, following patterns she could not understand. The shimmer around him grew stronger, fragments of time tugging at him—future, past, memory, possibility. Threads she couldn’t see pulled him in all directions, and she knew if she didn’t act, he’d vanish into them.

Cass’s hand shook as she reached for him. Her fingers brushed his wrist—
and her body seized.

It was like being plunged into a freezing river. A thousand sights at once. Damian, five years old, scowling at a wooden sword. Damian, older, taller, blood on his blade. Damian, grown, unrecognizable, shadow falling over his eyes. Each vision slipped through her mind too quickly to hold onto, all of them real, all of them false, all of them possible.

“—Cass.”

The sound tore from him in a whisper, not from his lips but from somewhere deeper, an echo inside her skull.

Her grip tightened. She yanked, physically pulling his body toward her as if dragging him back from an undertow. “Come back,” she whispered, her usually quiet voice breaking with strain. “Now.”

The ripple snapped. The shimmer collapsed.

Damian gasped, as though surfacing from drowning, and collapsed forward, his forehead striking her shoulder. Cass caught him, chest heaving, her own body trembling. She clutched him tightly, fingers pressed into his back, grounding herself as much as him.

For several long moments, they stayed that way: Damian shaking, Cass refusing to let go.

Finally, he spoke, voice ragged. “I… almost lost it.”

Cass nodded, face pressed to his hair. “Yes.”

“Too deep,” he muttered. “I saw… I don’t even know what I saw. A thousand things. All at once. It was endless.”

Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt. She said nothing—her words were always rare—but the look in her eyes was enough. I know. I felt it too.

Later, she sat with him on the manor steps outside, the cold night air biting against their skin. Damian’s breathing had slowed, but his gaze still flicked unfocused, as though he feared if he blinked too long he’d slip again. Cass kept close, shoulder pressed against his.

Her stone flickered faintly, mirroring his, and she covered it with her palm as though she could quiet it.

“You’re… shaking,” Damian said quietly, without looking at her.

“So are you,” she replied, her voice small.

He turned then, narrowing his eyes. His lips parted to argue, but he stopped when he saw her hand trembling against her knee. She wasn’t just pulling him back—she was tearing herself thin to do it.

“I don’t want you to—”

“Stop.” She shook her head, sharp and certain. “Not alone.”

He looked away again, throat working. “I hate this,” he muttered. “I hate being weak. I hate needing—”

“Not weak,” she interrupted.

Damian’s mouth clicked shut. He didn’t argue.

She just grabbed his hand, and held it. They ignored the purple and green veins, along with the coloured cracks on top of it.

The Batcave was dim, lit only by the glow of dozens of monitors. Bruce and Tim sat side by side, eyes scanning streams of data—city grids, surveillance feeds, facial recognition scans, and intercepted communications. Their conversation was entirely mental, clipped and precise, the way they coordinated without a single spoken word.

‘Traffic cams show anomaly in Sector 7. Possible suspect. Armed.’

‘Noted. Civilian presence minimal. Containment at intersection 14 optimal.’

Tim’s fingers moved over the holographic interface, zooming in on building schematics and adjusting sensor feeds. Bruce’s mind threaded through layers of citywide surveillance, analyzing patterns of movement, emotional spikes in the populace, and possible interference.

‘Weapon detected. Probability of escalation: 67%.’

‘Mitigate. Civilian impact zero. Remote access to building locks engaged.’

They worked like a single entity, ruthless in efficiency. No hesitation, no moral commentary. Each step was calculated, each outcome anticipated and neutralized before it could unfold.

‘Secondary targets identified. Compromised communications: none.’

‘Collateral minimized. Exfiltration path prepared.’

Tim’s energy pulsed faintly, his stone flickering as he manipulated digital elements—rerouting security systems, locking doors, and tagging the suspect for tracking. Bruce’s focus remained unbroken, tapping into neural patterns of security personnel, subtly influencing their perception to avoid panic. Their coordination was seamless, bordering on inhuman.

‘All objectives secured. Civilians safe. Suspect contained.’

‘Confirmation noted. Extraction route optimized.’

Finally, their movements slowed, the tension in their shoulders barely easing. They had completed the operation with surgical precision. Neither spoke aloud; there was no need.

Alfred appeared silently at the edge of the platform, his presence calm but authoritative. “Everything accounted for?”

Bruce’s eyes stayed on the screens. “Yes. Civilians safe. Target secured. No collateral.”

Tim leaned back slightly, fingers brushing the keyboard. “All clear.”

Alfred’s gaze shifted from screen to screen, then to the faint glow in their stones. He saw the taut lines in their shoulders, the intensity lingering in their expressions. “I can see you’ve managed the city’s chaos admirably. But remember, even the sharpest minds—and strongest wills—require rest. You’ve been pushing yourselves relentlessly, without pause or reflection.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened, the smallest exhale escaping him. Tim’s gaze flickered down, a momentary softness in his expression as his fingers unclenched.

Alfred stepped closer, placing a steadying hand on each of their shoulders. “Strength is a tool, not a limitless resource. Even the most precise calculations fail if the operator collapses. Step away. Sleep. Recharge. Clarity will serve you far better than raw efficiency alone.”

They shared a brief, silent acknowledgment, shutting down monitors and stepping back from the terminals. Their shadows stretched across the Batcave’s stone floor, and Alfred watched them quietly, the calm anchor amid the storm they carried within themselves.

The hum of the computers filled the silence. For a moment, the Batcave seemed to breathe with them, the pulse of the city outside contained, as if holding its own breath with its guardians. Alfred remained, quietly vigilant, a reminder that even in the midst of precision and power, someone had to remain grounded.

The room was warm with chatter, laughter bouncing off the walls in waves. Dick perched on the edge of the couch, elbow resting on his knee, tapping his foot relentlessly. Beside him, Jason slouched, trying to appear nonchalant, though his orange-tinged eyes flickered beneath the hood he’d pulled over his head. Across the room, Roy was mid-story, hands gesturing wildly, and a few of Dick’s other friends were laughing at the details, cups clinking, voices overlapping.

Dick’s foot made a soft but incessant tap-tap-tap against the floor. He didn’t notice it at first, caught up in Roy’s animated tale, but Jason noticed. He glanced at Dick, expression flat. Without a word, he rested a knee against Dick’s, lightly pressing, and Dick’s foot stilled, though the tension remained.

“You okay?” Jason muttered under his breath, voice low enough for only Dick to hear.

Dick shrugged, forcing a smile. “Yeah. Just… excited to be here, I guess.”

Jason narrowed his eyes. “Your foot doesn’t say that.”

Dick laughed quietly, tapping it a few times more before stopping again. “Fair. Old habits die hard.”

They leaned back slightly, observing the ebb and flow of conversations around them. There were moments when it almost felt normal—almost like being around people who didn’t glow, or hum, or shift the air with thoughts they weren’t fully controlling. But it never lasted. Jason shifted uneasily, glancing at the doorway as if considering making a sudden escape.

“So… Roy, the last mission?” Dick prompted, trying to keep the conversation anchored to something mundane, something safe.

Roy launched into it, animated as ever, describing a daring stunt with exaggerated gestures. Everyone laughed, but Jason’s jaw was tight, his fingers twitching as he pressed them to his knees. Dick caught the tension, but he didn’t press further, sensing that words wouldn’t help.

The conversation carried on, fluid and light, yet for Jason, it was suffocating. Every laugh felt loud, every joke edged with a reality he couldn’t untangle from—the chaos they carried, the powers simmering under skin, the weight of being responsible for lives at every moment. His orange eyes flared briefly under the hood.

“Hey,” Dick said softly, catching the glow in Jason’s eyes. “We should… maybe step outside for a bit?”

Jason shook his head, voice clipped. “No, I’m fine.”

Minutes passed. The room buzzed louder, the air thicker, and Jason’s leg twitched against Dick’s, seeking stability. But it wasn’t enough. His stone flickered faintly beneath his skin, pulsing in tandem with his rising panic. Dick’s hand brushed Jason’s shoulder, just a grounding touch, but even that wasn’t enough to pull him back fully.

Then, without warning, Jason abruptly stood. “I… I need to go.” His voice was sharp, tense, and he moved toward the door before anyone could ask questions.

“Jason!” Dick called after him, standing quickly. “Wait—”

Jason didn’t stop. Dick grabbed his arm lightly, spinning him toward him. “Come on, let’s step outside. You’re not—”

But Jason wrenched free, heading down the hall. Dick sighed, already knowing this wasn’t the time to argue. He followed, weaving through the crowd, hearts beating too fast.

The bathroom door swung open, and Jason stumbled inside. The moment Dick closed the door behind him, Jason doubled over the sink, vomiting. His orange eyes glowed brightly, almost feverish, and he pressed a hand to his head, trembling.

Dick didn’t say anything. He simply crouched beside him, a comforting presence, patting his back gently. His own breaths were steady, controlled—grounding, in contrast to Jason’s storm.

Jason leaned heavily on the sink, muttering through gritted teeth. “It’s… too much… it’s so much…”

Dick kept his hand steady, his presence a quiet tether. “Hey… look at me. You’re not weak. You’re not broken. Just… let it out.”

Jason’s head fell forward, leaning against the sink. His breaths came in sharp, uneven bursts, orange light flickering with every exhale. Dick’s thumb brushed along his shoulder, rhythmic and grounding, an anchor in the storm.

“I… I need it to stop…” Jason whispered, almost inaudibly, voice heavy with exhaustion and the weight of everything he held in.

“It’s okay,” Dick said softly. “I’ve got you. Just breathe. Just be here for a moment.”

Minutes passed. Jason’s glowing eyes slowly dimmed, the flicker settling into a steady burn rather than a flare. He remained leaning on the sink, breathing ragged but quieter, and Dick simply stayed beside him, steady, unyielding.

Finally, Jason raised one hand from his head, his shoulders sagging. “It’s… too much,” he repeated, quieter this time, almost a confession.

Dick nodded. “I know. But you’re not alone in it. Not now, not ever. We’ll get through this… together.”

Jason didn’t answer, just let out a long, shuddering breath, and leaned against Dick, still trembling, still glowing faintly. And for the first time in hours, he allowed himself to just… be.

Dick remained beside him, steady and quiet, knowing words weren’t necessary right now. Presence was enough.

Outside, the chatter of friends continued, unaware of the storm contained in that small bathroom. But inside, the two of them were tethered, one steadying the other, even if just for a moment.

Alfred laid the Monopoly box down on the long oak dining table with the same gravity he used to serve holiday dinners

“I thought,” Alfred began, smoothing one gloved hand over the cardboard lid, “that we might attempt a board game this evening. A simple pastime. No powers, no distractions—merely the… quaint joys of capitalism and family squabbles.”

That earned him a few faint smirks. Jason snorted. Damian muttered something about capitalism being a doomed system anyway. Bruce only raised a brow, but he didn’t object, which Alfred counted as a minor miracle.

They gathered around the table. Tim dropped into a chair and leaned forward, already eyeing the dice. Cass sat lightly at the corner, posture easy but her gaze flicking between the others, reading them as she always did. Jason sprawled into his seat, arms crossed, giving the impression of someone forced into detention. Dick perched next to him, his foot tapping against the floor before Jason casually dropped his boot over it to stop the rhythm. Damian sat ramrod straight, every inch the prince, as though Monopoly were a battle strategy exercise. Bruce filled his chair with quiet authority, leaning back, hands folded.

Alfred opened the box, arranged the money into neat stacks, and handed out tokens. He took the role of banker himself—he wouldn’t risk letting any of them handle the money unsupervised, god knows how that turned out last time.

“For tonight,” Alfred said, tone clipped but firm, “no stones, no powers, no… unfair advantages. Simply dice, paper money, and the rules as printed. If you are capable of following them.” His eyes swept over them.

A chorus of nods, murmured agreements, and a faint grunt from Jason. That was enough for Alfred. He gave a single sharp nod. “Very good. Let us begin.”

The first five minutes actually went well. The dice clattered across the board, properties were purchased with only mild gloating, and Jason made a show of slamming his tiny silver dog onto Boardwalk as though it were a real conquest. Dick laughed, Tim rolled his eyes, and even Damian smirked. Cass leaned back, watching quietly, letting her thimble token wander harmlessly around the board.

It almost felt normal.

And then, of course, it didn’t.

Damian leaned forward, eyes sharp, and began buying up properties before someone landed on them. His hand hovered at the edge of the board, snapping up deeds with the same ruthless efficiency he’d once used on the training mats. He said nothing, simply laid down the money as though it were a matter of inevitability.

Tim’s dice began to fall in his favor—always the perfect roll, the one that kept him moving forward, the one that slid him onto just the right property. Too convenient. Too smooth.

Bruce’s eyes had narrowed almost imperceptibly. He wasn’t looking at the board anymore—he was looking at them. His gaze lingered a beat too long on Tim’s fingers, flicked toward Damian’s tightening jaw, then moved on. He said nothing, but Alfred caught the faintest twitch of his brow. Bruce wasn’t just watching. He was listening.

Cass noticed too. She stiffened, lips pressed together, fingers drumming on the edge of the table. But she kept her thimble moving, even if she was always a step too late to buy the good properties.

Jason and Dick noticed all of it. They exchanged glances, silent in their frustration. Neither of them could prove it, not really. Every roll, every purchase, could maybe have been luck. Maybe.

Jason’s scowl deepened with every turn. He folded his arms, leaned back in his chair, and muttered, “Sure. Totally legit rolls. Real fun, guys.”

“Jason,” Bruce said mildly, without looking up, “don’t start.”

Jason’s jaw worked. He didn’t start, not yet—but his patience was burning thin.

Dick tried to keep it light, to joke, to nudge Jason with his elbow whenever his friend’s scowl darkened. “Hey, at least you’ve got the dog, man. Best piece on the board.”

Jason didn’t laugh.

The game dragged on. Properties filled, houses stacked. Bruce’s pile of deeds grew steadily. Tim’s roll after roll landed him in perfect positions. Damian always seemed to dodge fees, as though the board bent subtly to him.

Cass rolled her dice and knocked over her own token. She frowned, set it back upright, but the damage was done—her thimble broke at the base, snapping clean in two. She blinked at it, silent, before setting the piece carefully on its side as though nothing had happened.

Jason saw it and cursed under his breath.

“Language,” Alfred chided gently, though he didn’t look up from the bank.

Jason slammed his next roll down, the dice clattering wildly. They landed poorly—snake eyes. He groaned, shoving his piece forward anyway. “Yeah. Figures.”

Tim landed another perfect roll, slid into Park Place, and quietly bought it without comment. His lips twitched in something dangerously close to a smile.

Jason landed on Damian property, the property he didn’t need to buy, as he already had three streets, but just happen to buy a round before he landed.

Jason had enough

The chair scraped loudly against the floor as he shoved it back and stood. “You know what? No. If you’re gonna cheat, at least make it interesting. This—” he gestured at the board, at Tim, at Damian, at Bruce— “this isn’t fun.”

“Jason.” Bruce’s voice had weight, command, but Jason ignored it.

“No, really. You tell us no powers, then the second Alfred blinks you’re stacking the game anyway. Why bother? Why even pretend this is normal?”

The room stilled.

For a moment, Jason’s words hung there like smoke, bitter and impossible to wave away.

Jason stormed off, boots thudding against the floor. Dick shot up immediately, muttering a quick “I’ll go,” before jogging after him.

Bruce exhaled sharply, the faintest flicker of irritation crossing his face. He stood, pushed his chair back neatly, and walked out without a word.

Tim sighed, running a hand over his face, muttering something too quiet to catch. He slid his chair back and followed the others, shoulders tense, his head bowed.

The room fell silent.

Only Cass and Damian remained at the table, both staring at the scattered money and abandoned tokens. Cass fiddled with the broken thimble, pushing it idly in circles. Damian sat straight, his face a perfect mask, but his eyes glittered with calculation.

“I was going to win,” he said finally, voice low, matter-of-fact. “In fifteen turns. Jason would have bankrupted first.”

Cass glanced at him, her expression unreadable. She didn’t argue.

“It was hard not too, it’s become so ingrained, I just looked without thinking"

Alfred let out a long, weary sigh. He began collecting the paper money, smoothing each bill, tucking it into the bank tray. His movements were steady, precise. “Remarkable,” he murmured, voice dry, “how one can manufacture chaos even within the confines of cardboard and dice.”

He folded the board with practiced ease, placed the tokens into their slots, and slid the lid back onto the box. The click of it closing was the loudest sound in the room.

When he straightened, Alfred’s eyes softened, though his face remained composed. He looked at Damian and Cass—the last two standing, the last two quiet. For a brief moment, the stern butler looked older than any of them had ever seen him.

He carried the box away without another word.

“Jason, it’s just a game,” Dick sighed, dragging a hand down his face. He leaned back against the cave wall, the blue-white hum of the monitors throwing tired shadows across his features. His voice carried weariness, not anger. “A dumb, boring game.”

Jason’s growl rumbled low in his throat, sharp as a blade unsheathed. “Yeah? Tell that to the people using comic-book-level powers to win it. Despite being told not to. Because God forbid Bruce Wayne and his little prodigies lose at Monopoly.”

Dick pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes closing. His foot tapped restlessly against the floor, a staccato rhythm he didn’t notice. “You know how they are. Bruce, Damian, Tim… they’ve always been competitive.”

Jason barked a laugh—humorless, jagged. “Competitive? That’s one word. Another is rigged.” He stepped forward, shoulders squared. “You saw it too. Tim nudging the dice. Damian buying up properties before anyone else had a chance. Bruce… hell, Bruce doesn’t even need to look at the board—he’s already in your head, tilting the game before you know you’ve lost. And you just sit there, like it’s fine. Like it’s normal.”

“Jason—”

“No, don’t.” Jason’s finger jabbed into his own chest. His voice rose, scraping raw. “You don’t get it. You’ll never get it. Every second, every damn day, I see what no one else does. The corpses. The ghosts. They never shut up, Dick. Never. They follow me into missions, into my bed, into my own damn head. And then I sit down at family game night, and what am I supposed to do? Pretend it’s all fun and bonding while everyone else gets to flex their shiny, useful powers?” His voice cracked. “Powers that mean something. Powers that don’t make you sick just for existing.”

Dick’s foot stilled. His eyes opened, sharp and pained. “Jason. Damian nearly disappeared last week. Tim’s holding himself together with duct tape and caffeine. And Bruce—” his throat caught on the name, “Bruce hears everything. Every thought, every secret. That’s not winning. That’s not power. That’s survival.”

Jason’s laugh came jagged and bitter. “Yeah, well at least they got something to show for their survival. Something that makes sense. Me? I get stuck as the freak show, the guy who vomits blood and stares at dead men’s faces until I can’t sleep. That’s not surviving—that’s torture.”

Dick’s patience cracked. His voice snapped like a whip. “You think the rest of us aren’t tortured?” Sparks snapped across his fingers before he realized it, the scent of ozone sharp in the cave. “Look at me. You’re right, I got the ‘best’ of the deal. Teleportation. Lightning. Living battery.” He laughed, hollow and sharp. “You think it’s some gift? Jason, I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. My brain won’t slow down long enough to be human anymore. You know what that feels like? To never stop moving? To burn yourself out just by existing?”

Jason scoffed, closing the distance between them. His eyes glowed faint orange, shadows licking around his boots. “At least you don’t see death every second of the day. At least you don’t wake up choking on screams no one else can hear.”

Dick’s jaw locked. “So mine doesn’t count because it’s not gruesome enough? Because I don’t bleed on the floor to prove it?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” Jason shoved a hand through his hair, shadows flickering with the movement. “I’m saying you always land on your feet. No matter what, you get the better end of the stick. Even with powers. Even with all of this. You’re still the golden boy, Dick. The favorite. The one everyone forgives, the one who bounces back. Me? I’ll always be the failure. The corpse that came back wrong. The one they have to explain away.”

Dick’s face twisted, lightning crawling up his arm like veins of fire. “You think I like being the favorite?” His voice broke on the word, rage and grief blending until they were inseparable. “You think I wanted this?! You think I chose to be the one everyone looks at to smile and make it all better?” He slammed his fist into the wall; the cave lights flickered and cracked with the surge. “You think it doesn’t kill me every time I can’t actually fix it?!”

Jason’s laugh was a broken thing, jagged at the edges. “Yeah, poor golden boy. The world’s hardest cross to bear—being good at everything.” His fists curled tight, shadows flaring up his arms. “Try being me. Try being the one who doesn’t just see pain, but embodies it. Who gets reminded every single day what it feels like to rot in the dirt while everyone else keeps breathing.”

“Stop pretending you’re the only one in pain!” Dick’s shout cracked like thunder, his foot hammering against the floor. Sparks spat outward in erratic bursts, little arcs of lightning crawling across stone. “Stop acting like your suffering is the only suffering that counts!”

Jason lunged closer, their noses almost touching. “And stop pretending yours is worse just because it’s quieter! At least you get to burn bright, Dick. Me? I’m a goddamn graveyard walking around in a leather jacket, and no one sees me as anything else!” His voice shredded in his throat. “I’m drowning every second, and you—you’re too busy glowing to even notice!”

The air between them burned with ozone and smoke. Jason’s ghosts spilled forward, translucent faces twisted in agony, their hands reaching for anything warm. Dick’s lightning blazed in arcs, snapping through the air like veins of rage.

They didn’t even notice when Cass, Tim, and Damian came running into the cave.

Cass froze first. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of her brothers, squared off and crackling with fury. Dick’s hands spat arcs of light, Jason’s eyes burned molten orange. She took a step forward, voice soft but cutting. “Stop.”

Neither even flinched.

Tim hovered behind her, curiosity sharpening into unease. He crossed his arms but didn’t move, his eyes glowing faintly with thought. Damian stepped up beside him, arms folded tight, watching with predatory stillness.

Damian leaned closer to Tim, voice low. “Should we intervene?”

Tim shrugged, lips pursed. “Not yet. I want to see where this goes.”

Cass spun, glaring at both of them. Her jaw tightened—but she didn’t stop them. Not yet.

“You don’t get it!” Jason’s voice split, raw. “You never get it! You’ll always be the light, Dick—the one people look up to.”

Dick slammed his palm against the wall again, and the cave groaned under the force. “And you make me feel like I’m failing every time I look at you! Because all I see is my brother falling apart—and I can’t fix it!” His words shattered into a scream.

The ground trembled. Cass flinched, her stone pulsing as if it were alive. She clutched her head, her ribs, shaking under the pressure. Pebbles rained from the ceiling, cracks spider-webbing across the floor. “Stop,” she whispered, but the word was too thin against the storm.

Jason’s ghosts clawed at the air. Dick’s lightning exploded outward, arcs snapping like whips.

Cass staggered back, the cave trembling with her distress. “Jason—Dick—” Her voice cracked.

Damian’s jaw clenched. “This is spiraling.”

Tim’s lips pressed flat, though his eyes gleamed with calculation, along with slight uncertainty “Yeah. But if we stop them now, it’ll just happen again later.”

And then—

Footsteps thundered down the hall.

“ENOUGH!”

Bruce’s voice bellowed through the cave like a detonation, reverberating off the stone walls as he and Alfred burst into the room.

Bruce’s eyes glowed like cold fire, sharp and merciless, his presence crashing across every mind in the chamber like a steel net snapping shut. Alfred skidded to a stop just behind him, breath catching hard. His gaze darted—Jason’s burning eyes, Dick’s sparking skin, Cass shaking with power barely contained. For the first time in years, Alfred faltered.

Jason’s chest heaved, his face twisted, sweat and shadows clinging to his skin. He turned toward Bruce, and the last shred of restraint snapped from his voice.

“Do you even CARE what it’s like to live like this?!” he screamed, his throat shredding. “To HOLD IT ALL IN until it ROTS YOU FROM THE INSIDE?!” His eyes blazed molten, and the ghosts clawed higher, their wails shrieking through stone. “I DIED, BRUCE! I DIED—AND ALL I GET WHEN I COME BACK IS THIS!” He slammed a hand against his chest, voice cracking into hysteria. “A POWER THAT REMINDS ME EVERY SECOND HOW I WAS BEATEN TO DEATH!”

The cave shuddered with the weight of his words. The ghosts wailed louder, a symphony of agony.

Cass cried out, clapping her hands over her ears. The stone in her chest pulsed wildly, a trembling violet flare that sent shockwaves rippling outward. Her voice broke through the madness:
“Stop”

But nothing stopped.

Dick’s entire frame shook, every vein alight with raw electricity. Sparks sprayed like wildfire from his skin, crawling up the walls, snapping against Jason’s ghosts. His jaw clenched until blood filled his mouth, and when he finally roared, his voice split the air like thunder.
“STOP BEING SO SELF-CENTERED, JASON!!”

Jason’s head snapped toward him, teeth bared, eyes ablaze. “WELL STOP BEING A SELF-ENTITLED PRICK!”

The air tore between them, lightning clashing with shadows.

Damian’s eyes widened, eyes flashing green, his hand shooting out. His voice cracked, he looked ahead, a rare panic bleeding through the edges.
“STOP THIS!!”

Jason lunged.

But Bruce moved before the strike could land—his will slamming down like an iron cage, spearing through their minds in one brutal sweep.

One moment—the chaos surged.
The next—

Everything froze. Nothing. Silence.
Every muscle locked. Every thought held. Even the restless dead faltered mid-scream, their wails pinned to the air like moths on glass.

Bruce stood at the center of it, hand lifted, chest heaving. His voice rolled out like bedrock cracking:

“Enough. You will stop.”

And for a second—just a single second—his command held.

Then—

Something shuddered.

Dick’s body jerked as though struck by a live wire. His head whipped back, eyes wide, throat straining soundlessly. Power writhed beneath his skin, wild and furious, no longer bound to his control. Sparks crawled across his frame like molten chains—hissing, binding, tightening—until they couldn’t anymore.

They burst.

A thunderclap ripped through the cave. Lightning tore itself free from his chest, shredding Bruce’s hold like paper. The world bucked. Stone screamed. The ground heaved underfoot. The ceiling split, veins of light tracing every fracture before the rock gave way in a violent shudder.

The cavern roared as if the earth itself had been struck.

Screams tore through the dark.

Tim’s hands flared—raw instinct, raw terror. A shield surged up around him and Damian, translucent and sparking like fireworks along its edge. The force snapped Damian tight against his side just as the first slabs of rock hammered down, shaking the barrier so hard their bones rattled.

Dick’s eyes widened.

He blinked—once, twice—tearing space apart.

Gone.

He reappeared beside Jason, seizing his brother’s arm even as shadows burned across his skin. No time to flinch. Gone again. The world ripped sideways—then he was at Bruce’s shoulder, palm slamming down.

His power howled.

The three of them collapsed into being beneath Tim’s shield. The dome flared red, arcs burning across the ground like veins of fire. Jason’s ghosts shrieked inside, clawing, desperate to escape. The shield quivered. Buckled. Held—barely.

Dick spun. His chest burned. He reached—

Cass.

She was still outside.

The ground cracked beneath her, jagged fissures racing like lightning veins. She lunged for the shield—but the cavern betrayed her.

Boulders thundered down. Dust and concrete exploded upward in choking clouds.

Her scream cut through it all.

She threw her arms skyward, stone flaring around her like armor. For one heartbeat she was the shield—power flickering, breaking, fighting against the mountain itself.

Too much.

The last thing they saw before the dust swallowed her was her eyes. Wide. Fierce. Terrified. Refusing to yield, even as the world buried her alive.

“CASS!” Tim’s voice tore his throat raw.

Lightning screamed across the floor. Shadows contorted, stretched into monstrous shapes. Tim barely held the shield, his power flaring wild—fear, rage, panic bleeding into the barrier until it crackled on the edge of collapse.

The earth rumbled. Once. Twice. A third time.
Each impact shook the world apart.

Time stuttered. Every breath dragged heavy. Every heartbeat hammered like the mountain was inside their chests. Sparks from Dick’s lightning licked collapsing walls, cutting brief windows of light into the dust-choked dark. Jason’s ghosts clawed and howled, thrashing as if even they wanted to tear free of the crushing night.

And then—

The impact.

The earth convulsed. They were thrown off their feet. Slabs crashed against the shield, screaming metal-on-glass, the sound deafening, bone-shaking. Dust and stone blasted through the air in a blind storm. Each second stretched endlessly, a nightmare of weightless falling, crushing, consuming.

Finally, a deafening silence.

The cave lay buried in ruin. The collapse slowed to a shuddering halt. Dust settled like ghostly fog, drifting in lazy, choking spirals. Stone groaned into stillness, and the jagged wreckage glimmered faintly in the sparse, starlit sky.

Tim’s shield, pushed beyond its limits, quivered violently before shattering into millions of sparks that bled upward, dissolving into the night air. The remnants of energy drifted, faint and powerless, leaving only the stinging taste of dust and fear.

The silence afterward was unbearable—so vast, so empty it pressed down on them like a physical weight, a reminder of what they’d nearly lost.

They clawed through the wreckage, bodies shaking, lungs burning. Dick dragged Jason to his feet, jaw tight, hands trembling. Bruce pushed upright with deliberate, rigid steps, every movement calculated, his face a mask of controlled rage and horror. Tim and Damian sloughed themselves out of the shattered cocoon of force that had barely protected them, sweat and dust coating every inch of skin.

And Cass…

She was gone.

Tim’s chest seized. His lungs refused to work. His hands burned as he forced them forward anyway, palms glowing faintly as he shoved slabs of debris aside with reckless force. “CASS!” The cry ripped raw from his throat, shredding him. “CASS!”

“Spread out!” Dick rasped. His voice cracked, jagged as broken glass. He stumbled across the rubble, lightning still flickering faintly around his shoulders, eyes wild as they scanned and scanned. He didn’t stop moving. Didn’t dare.

Damian moved in silence, his every step sharp, his jaw locked. His hands shook as he gripped a stone and heaved it aside. His gaze cut through the dust with desperate precision, searching for even the smallest sign.

Jason’s ghosts wailed, flaring into being one after another, clawing through the ruins with their endless hands. Their cries bled into the night, hollow and grief-stricken, too loud in the suffocating silence.

No answer.

Only ruin.

The world pressed in on them. The air was heavy with dust and loss, and it felt—for one breathless, endless moment—that she was truly gone. That she had been swallowed whole, lost under the weight of what they had done.

Tim’s hands faltered. His light flickered. A strangled sound broke out of him, a denial too broken to form words.

And then—

A shockwave.

Purple light erupted from the rubble, tearing the night open with its brilliance. Dust scattered, and from the heart of the collapse.

 Cass rose—floating, her body lifted by a halo of her own power. Her hair fanned around her face, her eyes shining violet as the last of the rocks clattered harmlessly off her shoulders.

For a second, no one breathed.

Then Tim’s knees buckled. A sound broke from his chest—half sob, half laugh—and he sprinted forward. He slammed into her first, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her down, burying his face against her shoulder like he would never let go.

Damian followed, silent but fierce, his arms locking around both of them, his forehead pressing to Cass’s temple.

Dick was there next, still trembling with leftover sparks. He gathered them into his arms, pulling Jason along with him, until the five of them were tangled together in a desperate knot of relief.

Even Bruce, stiff and unwilling, let himself lean down enough to press a hand against Cass’s shoulder, his eyes closed, his jaw unsteady.

She was fine. She was fine.

For a brief, impossible moment, the family just held her.

Then Jason tore himself free. His face was streaked with dust, his eyes blazing orange, but his voice burned hotter still as he turned on Bruce.

“You idiot!” he screamed, shoving a hand toward the wreckage around them. “You should’ve known better than to try to cage him! You don’t suppress power like that—it blows! What the hell did you think was gonna happen?!”

Bruce’s head snapped up, his eyes flashing with something raw. “You think I had a choice?!” His voice cracked like a whip. “If I hadn’t acted, you would’ve torn each other apart! The only way to stop it was to stop all of you!”

“YOU NERLEY KILLED US!” Jason roared back, his shadows writhing high. His voice was raw, shaking with fury. “You don’t get to play god with us, Bruce—you don’t get to decide when enough is enough!”

Their voices clashed against the ruins, louder than the groaning stone.

Tim turned, Cass still tight against him, his face pale as paper. Dick pressed his lips together, torn between the relief of Cass safe in his arms and the weight of rage still sparking through him.

And then—

One word.

Soft. Clear. Cutting through everything.

“Alfred,” Damian said.

The entire world froze.

Every head snapped toward him. His hand was raised, pointing—past the shattered ground, past the rubble, to the far side of the devastation.

There—where Alfred had been standing when Bruce and he first ran into the cave—was nothing but wreckage. A pile of collapsed stone, silent and unmoving.

The night air grew heavy.

No one spoke. No one breathed.

And for the first time, every one of them felt the same thought slam into their chests like a hammer.

They hadn’t noticed. They hadn’t even looked.

And Alfred—

Alfred had been right there.

For one heartbeat, no one moved. The name struck them cold, hollowing their chests. Then, as though the sound alone shattered their paralysis, they all lurched forward at once.

“ALFRED!” Dick all but screamed, his voice cracked. He didn’t wait to see if they followed—he was already sprinting across the broken stone, lightning sparking with every frantic step. Jason was right beside him, shoving slabs of rubble aside with bare hands, heedless of the dust that ripped his lungs raw.

Tim was next, nearly tripping as he scrambled over a jagged ridge. He didn’t feel the stone slice his palms—didn’t care. He just threw himself into the wreckage, tearing through rock like his body could outpace his fear.

Cass breath came sharp, panicked, her glowing hands clawing at debris until her nails split. Damian pressed in tight at her side, his face drawn taut, his movements precise, deliberate, but his chest heaved as though every second stole another piece of him.

Even Bruce—always measured, always controlled—was frantic now. He ripped at stone with a violence none of them had ever seen from him, his breath ragged, his hands bleeding against the rock.

They dug. Together, all of them, the clatter of stone and the scrape of skin against rock filling the hollow night.

“Move, move!” Dick shouted, lightning cracking as he hurled a boulder out of the way. “Alfred! Alfred!”

No answer. Only silence.

Jason’s teeth clenched, his jaw trembling. “He better be—he better be—” He cut himself off, unable to finish, his voice breaking. His ghosts flickered uselessly around the edges of the rubble, wailing, unable to reach where he was buried.

Tim’s hands shook, his eyes burning, and then—his power flared. With a sharp, broken cry, he threw his arms wide. Red light snapped into existence, crackling arcs racing along the ruins. For a moment the air felt like it might tear itself apart—and then, in one desperate motion, he vanished the debris.

The pile collapsed in on itself, dissolving into dust that scattered in the wind.

And there he was.

Alfred.

The dust cleared around him, revealing his body sprawled across the broken earth. His clothes were torn, his face pale beneath streaks of dirt, blood marring his temple. His arms lay limp at his sides. Still. Motionless.

The world stopped.

“No—no, no, no—” Dick dropped to his knees beside him, hands hovering uselessly, afraid to touch, afraid of what he might find. His chest hitched, breaths sharp and shallow.

Jason froze behind him, his eyes wide, his mouth trembling open as though words had failed him entirely. For a second he looked like a child again—terrified, helpless.

Cass staggered forward, her legs folding beneath her. She pressed trembling fingers to Alfred’s wrist, her other hand clutching Damian’s sleeve like an anchor. Her breath caught, shallow and shaking.

Bruce… Bruce didn’t move. He stood at Alfred’s side, staring down at him as though the sight itself had struck him. His chest heaved once, then again, but his face stayed stone, because if he broke—if he let himself—he would never stop.

“Please…” Tim whispered. His voice was thin, cracking. He stumbled forward, dropping to his knees opposite Dick, his glowing hands hovering over Alfred’s chest. “Please—come on, please—”

The silence stretched, unbearable.

No one breathed.

No one moved.

The ruin around them had gone silent, save for the faint hiss of settling dust.

Then—Cass turned. Her face was pale, ashen, like someone had stolen all the blood from her veins. Her hand slipped from Alfred’s wrist, shaking.

“There’s… no pulse.”

The words fell like stone. Heavy. Absolute.

Silence.

Oh.

Oh.

It sank in slowly, like ice spreading through their chests. The air thinned. The stars above them blinked cold and uncaring.

Tim’s breath hitched. Dick’s mouth opened but no sound came out. Damian’s fists clenched at his sides, trembling.

Bruce closed his eyes. Just once. As if trying to shut the sight out. When they opened again, they were hollow.

Then—Jason moved.

Not moved. Exploded.

He surged forward with a guttural noise that wasn’t quite a scream, shoving Dick and Tim aside as though they weighed nothing, tearing Cass’ hand from Alfred’s arm. He collapsed over Alfred’s body, his fingers digging into Alfred’s shirt like he could anchor him there, keep him tethered to this world through sheer force of will.

“No,” Jason snarled, voice breaking, forehead pressing to Alfred’s chest. “No, no, don’t you dare. Don’t you dare.”

And then—

Orange.

It flared around him in an instant, a wildfire bursting into life. His body pulsed with it, his veins lighting up beneath his skin like molten cracks in stone. His eyes blazed, not with their usual glow, but with something feral, overwhelming.

The others staggered back instinctively. 

Because the air itself changed.

The temperature dropped, sharp enough to sting their skin. The rubble rattled, groaning under some invisible pressure. And above them—flickering into being—shadows formed.

No. Not shadows. Figures.

Dozens of them.

Ghosts.

They hung above the ruin, weightless, pale, their forms twisted with grief. Some faces they knew, some they didn’t, but all of them were dragged down, pulled screaming toward Jason. Toward Alfred.

“JASON—” Dick’s voice cracked, panicked. He stumbled forward, lightning snapping uncontrolled across his skin. “STOP—what are you—”

But he didn’t stop.

Jason’s fingers clawed into Alfred’s chest, his own chest heaving with sobs he couldn’t contain, and the world around them bent. The orange light lashed outward, tendrils of raw power ripping the ghosts down like marionettes with cut strings. One latched onto a ghost above them, and their face contorted as they were dragged, their mouths open in silent screams.

And then—horror.

The ghost didn’t vanish. Didn’t dissipate.

It was funneled.

Drawn down in a stream of light and shadow that speared into Alfred’s body. His chest jerked under the force, limbs twitching.

Tim’s mouth fell open. “Oh god—”

Cass staggered back, her hand clamping over her mouth, her stone flaring violently with panic.

Damian’s face twisted, caught between fury and terror, a blade halfway drawn though he couldn’t bring himself to use it.

And Bruce—Bruce froze. His breath locked in his throat, his mind screaming at him to intervene, to stop this, but his body rooted to the ground. Because Jason wasn’t just breaking rules. He was breaking reality.

The image burned into their eyes: Alfred’s limp body glowing faintly with orange veins, the spectral shape being forced, stuffed, crammed back into him. It was grotesque. Wrong. Like watching a body reject life and yet be forced to take it anyway.

Jason sobbed through it all, a raw, broken sound that tore at them more than the spectacle itself.

“Not him—not him!” His voice cracked, rising into a scream, as the last of the ghosts slammed into Alfred’s chest with a violent burst of light.

And then—

Silence.

The orange flared blinding bright, swallowing Jason, swallowing Alfred—

—and then it collapsed.

Jason crumpled forward, chest heaving, his head pressed against Alfred’s sternum. His fingers still knotted tight in Alfred’s shirt.

Nobody moved.

Nobody spoke.

The night pressed in heavy and suffocating, as if holding its breath.

Until—

A sound.
Faint. Shallow.

A breath.

Alfred’s chest rose—then he gasped. A ragged, heaving breath tore from his lungs, his back arching violently. His eyes flew open, wide and wild, pupils dilated in terror.

The family froze.

Jason went utterly still, his hands still fisted in Alfred’s shirt. His glow flickered uncertain, guttering like a candle in a storm.

“Alfred?” Dick’s voice cracked, disbelieving. “Oh my God—”

Alfred’s gaze darted—snapping from one face to another, not with recognition, but fear.

 He flinched

Like a man caught in the blast of a gun.

The family—Bruce, Dick, Jason, Tim, Cass, Damian—all jerked back at once, as if struck.

He had never flinched from them. Not once.

But now his eyes widened, trembling on the sight before him—Jason still glowing with sickly orange veins, Dick’s lightning sparking uncontrolled across his skin, Cass floating down on faint purple light, Tim’s aura still humming with probability, Bruce’s shadow heavy with the remnants of control, Damian’s  trembling in his hand.

They looked like gods.

Or nightmares.

And Alfred—Alfred Pennyworth, their constant, their center, their compass—looked at them like he wasn’t sure what they were anymore.

His chest rose and fell in shuddering gasps. He tried to speak, lips parting, but no words came. His hands shook as he tried to push himself upright. He was alive, yes—but shaken in a way that none of them had ever seen.

Bruce took a step forward, his voice rough. “Alfred…”

But Alfred recoiled, shoulders twitching, breath catching sharp in his throat. His gaze broke from Bruce to the rest, lingering on each of them—their glowing stones, their raw power spilling uncontrolled.

For years—decades—he had been the grounding point. No matter what madness Bruce dragged home, Alfred put the kettle on, pressed a hand to their shoulders, tethered them back to humanity.

Now…

Now he looked at them and realized he could not.

They weren’t children anymore. They weren’t even soldiers. They were something beyond. Glowing, warping reality, breaking the cave like it was paper. And he—just a man—couldn’t anchor them. Couldn’t protect them. Couldn’t even understand them.

That was the fear. Not that they were monsters. Not that he loved them any less. But that they were slipping past him—out of reach, out of his grasp, into something he could no longer guide.

The silence pressed heavier than the collapse had.

No one spoke. No one dared move.

And Alfred—Alfred Pennyworth, who had patched their wounds, scolded their tempers, held them steady when Gotham itself couldn’t—looked at them like he didn’t know how to hold them anymore.

Bruce stepped forward.
One hand—hesitant, trembling more than he’d ever admit—reached for Alfred. His fingers stretched like a man trying to hold onto something already slipping.

“Alfred,” he said, voice low, raw, stripped of the command it usually carried. Just his name. A plea.

But Alfred flinched.

Not a small twitch. A pull back. His shoulders hunched, his body recoiled, and his eyes darted from Bruce’s hand to his face, wide, shaken, disbelieving.

Bruce froze. His hand stopped midair. His jaw locked tight, but he didn’t move further. Couldn’t.

Alfred’s lips parted. His voice, when it came, was ragged. Barely above a whisper.

“What have they done to you?”

The words hit harder than the cave collapsing.

Every one of them jolted as though struck.
Jason’s glow faltered. Damian’s fists clenched tight. Tim’s throat bobbed, dry. Cass blinked rapidly, grounding herself like she might vanish if she didn’t.

And Bruce—Bruce Wayne, who could stand against gods without flinching—lowered his hand, his chest heaving once, sharp.

Dick couldn’t bear it. He stepped forward, faster than thought, desperation breaking through his fear. “Alfred, please—”

But Alfred moved back.

Just one step, but enough. Enough that Dick stopped in his tracks, the rejection cutting deeper than any blade. His breath stuttered, and before he could try again, Tim’s hand shot out.

“Don’t,” Tim whispered, grabbing his arm, pulling him back. His tone wasn’t cruel, but final. Dick let himself be dragged, his foot sliding against broken stone.

Alfred’s retreat was clumsy. His legs, still unsteady from being pulled back to life, faltered under him. He stumbled once, braced himself against a shard of wall, eyes never leaving them. Not in trust. Not in comfort. But in a kind of quiet, horrified disbelief.

No one spoke. No one dared.

And then—sirens.

Distant at first, wailing faint through the city above, but growing sharper. Piercing.

They cut through the silence like knives. And yet even the sirens felt muted against the weight that hung between them.

It was quiet in the cave, quiet like after a bomb goes off—when the ringing in your ears is louder than any noise, when the world feels suspended in smoke and ash.

“Bruce.”

The single word cut through the stillness like a blade.

They all turned.

Clark stood there. Superman. Calm, but every inch of him bristled with awareness, with that impossible presence that demanded attention. Behind him, the others followed—Diana, her gaze sharp and unflinching; Barry, restless and twitching like he wanted to move a dozen miles before he even spoke; Hal, exuding that rare combination of authority and casual confidence. 

Bruce remained in the center, shielding the family in the only way he could: posture, presence, a rigid, protective wall of human flesh and will. He didn’t answer. Words wouldn’t do it justice. His gaze swept across them all, cataloging the dust, the burns, the raw emotions still lingering in the air. He didn’t have to speak—he knew.

Clark’s voice broke the silence. Gentle. Strained. Almost afraid. “Are you all… alright?”

It was almost tender, almost… human. But underneath it carried that subtle weight of truth—the unspoken question of how close they’d been to something unthinkable, the silent demand that they answer for it.

Diana’s eyes flicked to Alfred, who remained pale, trembling ever so slightly, his hands pressed against his chest like a frail shield of his own. Her gaze lingered, measuring. Calculating. Then back to the Bats. She didn’t draw her sword, but there was no ease in her stance either. Not yet. Not until she understood the scope of what had happened.

No one spoke. No one even exhaled fully. Even the air seemed trapped, thick with the residue of what had just happened—the collapse, the raw power unleashed, the visceral fear of what they had nearly lost.

The Bats—Dick, Jason, Bruce, Tim, Damian, and Cass—stood rigid, some with shoulders heaving, others with fists trembling, eyes wide and unblinking. Their powers still flickered around them like broken neon, erratic and dangerous. Every heartbeat echoed in the stillness.

Cass’s gaze flitted between the two groups, panic rising in her chest. The League was quiet. Too quiet. Their stance wasn’t accusation yet—it was caution, uncertainty, a contained force that could explode at any moment. She could feel it pressing against her, a silent warning.

Jason, always the quickest to react, broke the tension. His voice was sharp, a whip cracking through the cave.

“Go ahead. Say it. You’re scared of us.”

Nobody denied it.

Not Clark. Not Diana. Not even Hal, whose usual nonchalance faltered as his gaze lingered on the glowing residue of Dick and Jason’s powers. Tim and Damian shifted uncomfortably, but neither said a word.

The silence that followed wasn’t just quiet—it was suffocating. A taut, living thing pressing down on their shoulders. Every breath was loud, every heartbeat a drumbeat in the vast emptiness of the ruined cave.

Cass’s voice broke through, almost inaudible over the charged air. “Jason—”

But he cut her off. “No. Let them feel it. Let them know what it’s like to watch things fall apart and not be able to do anything. That’s fear. That’s respect. That’s the truth.”

Everyone paused, then–-

“You are dangerous” Clark said quietly

Not as a threat. Not a reprimand. But as a statement of fact. Every eye in the room snapped to him. Diana’s fingers flexed near her sword hilt. The Flash twitched like a caged animal.

Clark stepped forward, slow, deliberate. “But so are we, so is every meta human.. That’s why we’re here.”

Hal’s voice joined him, steady and firm. “Not to fight. Not to judge. But… to understand. To make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Diana didn’t relax, but she nodded once, imperceptibly. Her eyes swept over each of them—fear, guilt, desperation—and then lingered on Alfred, whose frailty in the moment was both heartbreaking and terrifying.

Tim’s voice cut through the quiet, quiet but cold. “We’re not meta. We’re not alien. Metas are still human. Aliens are still people. We’re… we’re not. We’re beyond that.”

His words fell like stones. The cave seemed to recoil, the silence thickening, every pair of eyes flicking toward him—then away again, as if no one wanted to touch what he’d just put into the air. Even Jason, jaw tight, said nothing.

Dick’s gaze slid past the League, past the ghostly glow lingering around Jason and Tim, past the shards of ceiling embedded in the rubble. His eyes found Alfred, frail and trembling but alive, and then shifted to his own hands—scorched, glowing faintly, streaked with lightning. And then to the destruction around him. The ceiling, the walls, the ground—he had caused this. By accident, yes. But caused it all the same.

“We’re dangerous,” he whispered, voice raw, breaking. “Too dangerous.”

Clark’s eyes softened as he floated forward, voice calm but insistent. “Dick—”

But Dick didn’t step closer. His body recoiled, pulling back instinctively, until he collided with Cass, who didn’t hesitate. She wrapped herself around him, holding him tight, grounding him with every ounce of her strength. His head pressed into her shoulder as the tremors of guilt and fear coursed through him.

Bruce’s stance shifted, shoulders rising, a subtle coil of power gathering—not because he feared the Justice League, but because he had to protect them. Protect his friends. Protect the League. Even now, even after the destruction, his mind worked in layers of shielding, of contingency, of guarding those who might not survive the next moment.

Bruce stepped forward, careful, deliberate, his hand brushing against Cass’s shoulder—not for comfort, but to anchor her to something real in the storm of chaos surrounding them. His voice was low, hoarse, heavy with a lifetime of guilt and duty.

“I gave my life to protect this world,” he said, voice low, measured, carrying the weight of every mission, every failure, every night spent awake, watching over a city that could never truly be safe. 

“I trained. I fought. I swore I would be the shield—that no one else would bear what I endured.”

He paused, letting the words sink, letting the cave itself absorb the confession he had carried for decades. “And yet… here I stand. I realize now, with terrifying clarity… in my effort to fight the darkness, I have become it. I am no longer a guardian. I am a weapon. I am a danger. My children—my family—they are beyond what I can control. And the world… the world is not ready for them.”

His eyes swept over Dick, Jason, Damian, Tim, Cass. Every flicker of light, every spark of power that danced around them was a testament to what he had wrought—unintended, uncontrollable.

“I do not ask for your understanding. I do not ask for forgiveness. I am telling you the truth. So that you may grasp what we face… or what might happen if we fall. If the wrong person intervenes, we could destroy what we have all sworn to protect.”

A breath, sharp and deliberate. “I have become what I feared. And there is no undoing it. I can only protect them… as best a man who has become his own nightmare can protect anything.”

Clark’s jaw tightened. Diana’s hands twitched, resting near her weapons. The League held their ground, but none could hide the unease.. Bruce did not flinch. He was the anchor still, even if the truth of his own limitations shook him to the core.

Bruce turned slightly, catching Alfred’s pale, trembling figure across the rubble. “Alfred,” he said quietly, but every syllable carried a lifetime of gratitude. “Thank you. For everything. For holding us together when I could not. For grounding us… even when the world—” He glanced back at the Justice League, “—even when the world demanded more than I could give.”

His gaze shifted to the League. “And you—for seeing us, even when the world would not. For giving us a chance.”

Bruce took a slow, deliberate step back. “We cannot remain. Not here. Not like this.”

At that, Clark lunged forward, flying faster than thought, arms outstretched. “Bruce—wait! You don’t have to—”

Diana followed, eyes blazing, her voice steady but desperate. “Stop! Bruce! Don’t leave it like this—”

Dick’s hand sparked, the electric arcs dancing and hissing across his fingers. “Hold on,” he muttered, his voice tight with determination.

Cass’s grip on him tightened, wrapping herself around his arm like a lifeline, her eyes wide and desperate, fear and resolve mingling. The cave seemed to hold its breath, dust motes frozen in the stale air, shadows trembling against fractured stone.

Bruce’s jaw clenched. He did not step forward, did not plead, did not argue. Instead, he drew himself taller, shoulders squared, the unyielding weight of responsibility radiating from him like heat from a furnace. “This is the only way.”

Then Dick’s body erupted in a flash of blinding blue lightning. The air didn’t just scream—it tore, a raw shriek that rattled stone loose from the ceiling. The cave convulsed around them as blinding light split the dark.”

Clark’s hand shot forward, desperate, almost touching Bruce’s arm—but the gap closed before he could reach him. 

The Bats were gone.

For a heartbeat, the cave hung in stunned silence, dust falling in slow, languid waves like frozen rain. Clark hovered in place, muscles tense, face pale. “Bruce!” he shouted, voice cracking.

The rubble whispered around them, settling, groaning, a low exhale of the earth itself. Nothing moved. Nothing could fill the emptiness Bruce and his family left behind—not the air, not the shadows, not even the echo of their voices.

The cave felt impossibly large, impossibly empty. Every shattered stone, every fractured slab, every cloud of dust seemed to mourn their absence. Alfred’s pale eyes flickered with exhaustion and relief, but even he could not mask the trembling knowledge that the family he had raised—and who had almost been torn apart before him—had vanished into the night, leaving the world behind, untethered, dangerous, and free.

Clark and Diana exchanged a glance, eyes shadowed with disbelief, respect, and fear. The Bats had left not with fanfare, not with explanation, but with the weight of inevitability. 

They had chosen their path.

And in that choice, the Justice League understood something terrifying and undeniable: the Bats were no longer just guardians of Gotham. They were forces beyond comprehension—human, yes, but no longer entirely human, no longer entirely bound to the rules of the world around them.

The cave settled into silence once more.

The Bats were gone.

And nothing—and no one—would ever be the same again.

Chapter Text

At first, there was nothing.

No sound. No weight. No ground beneath their feet.

Only the endless expanse of space stretched in every direction—black, cold, littered with stars that flickered like distant candles.

Nowhere. Or maybe everywhere, surrounded by silence so vast it seemed to press on their very bones.

They floated, not falling, not rising—just existing.

Tim’s breath trembled in his chest, though no air fogged before his lips. Cass’s hands curled slowly at her sides, her stone pulsing faintly against her skin. Jason shifted, shoulders tight, eyes sharp, as if expecting enemies to crawl from the void itself. Dick’s electricity sparked faintly around him, a blue halo against the black. Damian’s eyes glowed like embers, cold but unwavering.

And Bruce stood at their center, his presence anchoring them without a word.

Their voices didn’t carry here. Not the way they had in Gotham. Not the way they had in the cave. The silence was too heavy, too consuming.

But their thoughts did.

‘It’s just us,’ Dick’s voice echoed faintly in their minds, soft, tinged with wonder and fear alike.

Jason’s thought snapped back, sharp-edged: ‘For how long?’

Tim’s chest lifted. He closed his eyes, and for a heartbeat, the silence pressed harder, unbearable. And then—he reached. Deep. Into himself. Into the stone that had never left him, that hummed in his blood.

The void shifted.

Beneath their feet, there was ground.

At first, it was nothing more than a slab of earth—raw, brown, trembling faintly beneath their weight. But it spread, unfurling in spirals, flowing outward as if poured from Tim’s veins. Soil thickened, grass sprouted in waves. Trees burst upward in torrents, bark stretching, leaves unfurling like banners.

A forest was born in the vacuum of space.

The stars remained overhead, glittering eternal, but around them there was life again. Roots curled deep into ground that had not existed a moment before. The air shifted—warm, breathable, rich with scent of pine and loam. A breeze rustled leaves, though no wind had been there before.

Tim’s eyes snapped open, glowing faintly. His chest rose and fell unevenly. ‘It’s real,’ his voice whispered in their heads, fragile but certain. ‘We can build here.’

Dick stepped forward. Sparks danced across his skin, wild and restless. His gaze swept across the newborn forest, and his lips parted—half in disbelief, half in awe. He dropped to his knees and pressed both palms flat against the ground Tim had shaped.

The world shuddered.

Light burst outward, racing in arcs across soil and bark. The trees flushed brighter, veins glowing gold. Flowers erupted, spilling color across the earth. Vines bloomed with blossoms of impossible hue—silver and violet, blue and crimson. The air itself vibrated, charged with energy that sang faintly in their bones.

Everywhere Dick touched, life thrummed.

His power, always caged, always burning him from within, spilled freely now. The earth drank it, the forest bloomed, the ground itself seemed to breathe.

Dick’s head dropped, sweat slicking his brow. His body jerked once, violently, as the energy tore through him—too much, too fast—but this time, it wasn’t destruction. It was creation. His curse had found its outlet.

Cass lowered herself beside him. Her movements were silent, graceful, deliberate. She laid her hands over the ground he sparked to life, her pulse slow, steady, the faint glow of her stone bleeding into the soil.

And suddenly—the forest listened.

Not just alive, but aware.

Every flower turned its head toward them. The trees leaned closer, branches reaching like hands. The ground hummed, roots intertwining, whispering in a language older than words. The wind carried their breath, the sky bent closer.

Cass’s eyes opened. They were dark, bottomless, but soft as she whispered—not aloud, but into their minds—’It breathes’.

And they all felt it.

Bruce’s jaw tightened. He looked at the ground beneath his boots, at the forest stretching around them, at his children kneeling in the dirt. Then, slowly, heavily, he stepped forward. He nodded to Tim, who then lay a hand on bruce’s shoulder. His hand pressed against the soil.

And the forest bent.

Not in fear. In obedience.

The earth trembled deep, stone shifting, rising. Towers of rock surged upward, roots curling to shape their foundations, windows cutting through walls. Spires rose, archways curved, battlements formed. A castle spiraled upward from the earth, vast and imposing, yet not foreign.

Because it was alive.

The walls shifted faintly, like the rise and fall of breath. Windows blinked open. Doors sighed into being. The stone rippled, aware, as if listening to them.

It was no fortress of Gotham. This was not cold, dead stone. This was something else—something that would guard, protect, endure.

Bruce’s breath shook once. His face was stone, but his hand trembled where it pressed to the living wall. ‘A home,’  his thought whispered, low, breaking at the edges. ‘Something that lasts.’

Jason stepped forward. His shadows writhed at his feet, restless, hungry. His mouth twisted in uncertainty—but he pressed his hands to the soil anyway.

The ground split open.

Shapes poured out—not grotesque, not violent, but spectral. Wisps of wolves, deer, foxes, owls. They swirled upward, half-formed, translucent. Jason’s eyes burned, and he gritted his teeth as he forced his power outward.

Flesh knit over bone. Fur bristled. Wings stretched. Beaks clicked.

The forest filled with animals. Real, breathing, moving.

And then—people.

They rose slowly, figures at first like smoke. Their faces were hazy, their forms unfinished. Jason faltered, nearly collapsing from the strain, but Tim dropped beside him, pressing his hands into the earth to steady the flow.

And the people became.

Farmers. Children. Elders. Builders. Their bodies solidified, their faces sharpened, their eyes widened as they looked around at the forest, at the sky, at one another. They inhaled their first breaths and found them sweet.

Jason sagged, his shadows curling back, but his eyes burned bright. His thought rang sharp, bitter but proud: ‘I gave them back what I lost.’

Damian stood still. Silent. Watching.

The youngest. But the one who became the oldest stone. The one who had watched them all bleed themselves into this place.

At last, he stepped into the center. His green eyes burned, sharp and unwavering. He inhaled deep, lifted his chin, and closed his eyes.

And the world stopped.

The breeze froze mid-rustle. Leaves stilled in midair. The castle’s walls halted their subtle shifting. The animals paused mid-step, mid-flight, mid-breath. The people stilled, not in fear, but in peace.

Damian’s power wrapped around everything they had built, a cocoon of unbreakable will.

And time obeyed.

The flowers never wilted. The animals never starved. The people never aged. The castle never crumbled.

This place was eternal.

Damian’s eyes opened. He exhaled, his face pale but set. His voice echoed in their minds, steady, certain: ‘Forever.’

The word rooted deep, into the soil, into the trees, into the stone walls. And it was true.

They stood together, staring at what they had wrought.

A forest breathing with life. A castle alive with thought. Animals and people stirring with joy. And a timeless bubble wrapping it all, eternal, untouchable, safe.

A paradise.

A sanctuary.

An exile.

Because as perfect as it was, as beautiful, as alive, they knew the truth. This was not Gotham. This was not the world they had sworn to protect.

This was apart.

This was other.

And it was theirs. Forever.

The silence lingered, heavy but not empty now. Their thoughts brushed one another like whispers.

Dick’s voice was soft, cracking at the edges: “It’s beautiful.”

Jason’s growled, sharp, raw: “It’s all we’ve got.”

Tim’s was barely audible, exhausted: “It will hold. Even if we don’t.”

Cass’s whisper was tender, reverent: “Alive.”

And Bruce’s voice—low, unyielding, carved in stone—”It will protect them. Even from us.”

Damian only said one word, his thought soft but final: “Forever.”

The stars burned eternal above.

And the sanctuary stood, untouched, alive, eternal.

Their home.

Their exile.

Their ending.