The city has a way of swallowing hope whole. Tonight, its rain runs black down the alley walls, neon bleeding across puddles like open wounds. Jason lingers there, shoulders weighted, helmet tucked under his arm, the night pressing close around him. He doesn’t expect to see you, no one does, not in the half-light of Gotham’s forgotten corners. Yet there you are, leaning on your crutch as if it were a sword, the glow of your screens painting your face in silver-blue.

Once, long ago, he’d seen you only in passing, a boy in a mask catching sight of a quiet figure hunched over notebooks, scrawling equations no one else cared to understand. He never spoke. He never had to. The look in your eyes was the same he carried then, don’t you dare underestimate me.

But dreams have sharp edges in Gotham. You had wanted more, labs, polished corridors, your name on the roster of Fox Industries or Wayne Enterprises. To walk into those glass towers and prove them wrong, show them your brilliance burned brighter than any frailty. But the doors closed. Their smiles were polite, their rejections sharp enough to draw blood. They saw the crutch before the mind, the limp before the light. And so you built in shadows, soldering brilliance out of scraps, turning disappointment into defiance.

That was when Jason found you, or perhaps when you found each other. Him, bleeding and half-feral, with rage carved into his bones. You, steady-handed despite the tremor in your legs, patching him together and daring him to live another night. A deal was struck, unspoken yet binding. You would be his voice in the dark, the mind behind the machine. And he, in turn, would trust you in ways he trusted no one else.

⸻

Time has passed, and it feels almost inevitable now, the cadence of your voice in his ear, the blue flicker of your monitors mapping out paths he cannot see. He bleeds, you guide, and somehow between the gunfire and the silence, a bond has grown.

Tonight, when he steps into your workshop, he finds you bent over a glowing schematic, leg braced against the workbench, crutch leaning close at hand. You don’t notice him at first, the hum of machines fills the room like a heartbeat. Jason watches, and for a moment he feels that old, unbearable pang, the recognition of someone who carries scars and refuses to bow beneath them.

His voice, when it comes, is rough but softened at the edges. “You and me,” he says quietly, “we’re cut from the same ruin.”

You glance back, half a smile flickering. “Is that your idea of a compliment?”

Jason shrugs, rain dripping from his jacket, eyes shadowed. “People wrote us off. Said we wouldn’t make it, couldn’t make it. And maybe they were right.” His gaze lingers on your crutch, then back to your eyes. “But we’re still here. Still pushing forward. Spitting in their faces just by breathing.”

The silence that follows isn’t empty, it’s thick, heavy with all the words neither of you have ever been allowed to say. Finally, he leans against the wall, helmet pressed to his chest like something sacred.

“You should’ve had your name on those towers,” he murmurs, almost too soft to catch. “Fox. Wayne. They should’ve seen you for what you are. Not the crutch. Not the limp. Just you.”

His throat works, like the words hurt more than the bullet wounds. And then, quieter still—

“But maybe it’s better this way. Because if they had seen you, if they had claimed you—” His voice falters, a storm caught in his chest. His eyes burn into yours, unflinching. “Then maybe you wouldn’t be here. With me.”

The rain hisses outside. The monitors hum. And Jason leaves the words hanging, unfinished, an opening, a warning, a confession he cannot quite bear to finish.