Chapter Text
The night breathed like something alive. The kind of cold that slipped under armor, through the gaps in gloves and gear. Bruce crouched on the lip of the Narrows' tallest rooftop, stone crumbling beneath his boots. The wind pulled at the edges of his cowl. Below, the city churned—distant sirens, steam from grates, headlights cutting through mist like scalpel blades.
Gotham never slept. Neither did he.
His wings retracted with a soft whine behind him, the faintest hiss of pneumatics—like a sigh. Two weeks ago, a gang member swore he saw "the Bat" fly . Rumors had a strange gravity in this city. Bruce had learned to use that.
He hadn’t started with wings. At first, it was just shadows, a cape, theatrics, and brute force. But fear wasn't enough if it only lasted as long as a fistfight. The myth had to live beyond him. He’d watched people flinch at the silhouette—a cape rippling like wings—so he leaned into it. Then came the prototype glider rig. Clumsy. Short-range. Useless in high winds.
Lucius had found the early drafts sprawled across Bruce's desk at Wayne Tower, tucked beneath architectural renderings and coded patrol maps.
“These are wings,” Lucius had said, eyes narrowing, fingertips tracing the curved framework of alloy struts on the blueprint. “Why does Batman need wings?”
Bruce had offered a non-answer. “For dramatic effect.”
Lucius didn’t buy it, but he’d smiled. The kind of smile that meant: You’re out of your mind, but I’ll help anyway.
And he had. Upgraded alloys. Flex-mesh membranes. Smart servos integrated into the suit. Quiet. Strong. Functional.
Now the wings weren’t just for gliding. They extended on command, hissed open like knives. They hummed faintly when charged, a near-silent warning to anyone with a reason to look up.
Bruce didn’t mind the stories. Gotham needed to believe he wasn’t human.
Tonight, the wings were still. Compact. Watching.
He dropped.
The wings exploded out behind him, catching wind, redirecting thrust. The glider panels flexed mid-air, adjusting to his angle. The suit shifted weight through his hips and boots. He soared low across the alley, cutting between buildings, a shadow slicing across brick and steam.
He landed hard on the roof of a black sedan parked at the mouth of the alley. The men below scattered like rats. He didn’t give chase.
They would talk. They always did.
And tomorrow, more would say they saw the demon in the sky.
He didn’t expect him to be beautiful.
Clark had heard the rumors—whispers passed from street kids and criminals alike, half in fear, half in awe. Gotham’s demon. The Bat. Wings like death. Most metas he’d met were loud, proud, costumed, cloaked in color or iconography. But this one didn’t advertise. He stalked. He hunted. He vanished.
And now, Clark had found him.
The vigilante was crouched at the edge of a rooftop overlooking the East End, shrouded in mist and sodium streetlight. Still as a statue, wings folded tight against his back like living architecture—black, angular, sculpted and terrifying. Gargoyle didn’t quite cover it. He looked like he belonged there, perched above the chaos of Gotham, not a man but a sentry carved from darkness.
The wings were what drew Clark in first. Bat wings—thick and leathery, claw-tipped at each joint, stretched like a predator’s patience. They looked real. Not just visually convincing, but biologically real. Every movement had weight, every small adjustment in posture made them twitch, stretch, breathe. Clark had seen shapeshifters. He’d seen illusions, cloaking tech, bone-deep mutations.
But these? These were something else.
Clark hovered just above the roofline, then touched down lightly behind him. The man didn’t flinch, didn’t turn. His awareness was immediate and absolute.
“How did you know I was—?”
The man turned.
Clark forgot the rest of the sentence.
The cowl covered most of his face, but not enough to hide the angles—sharp jaw, tight mouth, a tension carved into every feature. His armor was sleek but brutal, matte black and sculpted like plate, as if each piece was forged for war. It clung to him like a second skin, and underneath it, Clark could see how the man was built—solid, lean muscle shaped not by aesthetics but by necessity. Every line of him was purposeful.
And those eyes—glowing white under the lenses—locked on Clark with the quiet intensity of a bomb waiting to detonate.
It was like looking into the dark and realizing the dark saw you first.
“You’re the Batman,” Clark said, trying to keep his voice warm, even. “I’ve heard about you.”
Still no response. The wings shifted slightly, the sound low and dry, like wind moving through bone.
Even folded, they loomed. Easily twelve, maybe fourteen feet in total wingspan. The joints flexed with subtle micromovements, like the Bat was resisting the urge to spring forward or flee. And the texture… rough, almost scaly, with no sign of feathers. All tendon and membrane. Like something prehistoric.
Clark felt a shiver crawl down his spine.
It wasn’t fear. Not exactly.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said, taking a cautious step forward, hands open at his sides. “Not you you, I mean. Others like me. Metas. People doing the right thing on their own terms.”
No answer.
“I thought you’d be taller,” he added, offering a small grin.
Nothing. Not even a twitch.
“Or… less grim.”
The silence that followed was dense enough to cut. The wind picked up, cold and oily with city smoke. The Bat didn’t blink. He didn’t breathe . Or maybe he did and Clark just couldn’t hear it. His hearing was sharp, but the man in front of him seemed to absorb sound, not emit it.
Clark tried again. “Look, I’m not trying to intrude. I just think what you’re doing here matters. Gotham’s lucky to have someone who gives a damn. I know how it feels to carry the weight of it all. Maybe we could help each other.”
Still nothing. Just those white eyes, watching him like a threat assessment. Like a countdown.
Clark narrowed his focus. He listened deeper. The man’s heart was racing—not wildly, but fast enough. Around 115, maybe 120 BPM. Controlled breathing, but not effortless. Muscles tensed, ready to bolt or strike. He was afraid.
But you wouldn’t know it from the way he stood. Arms loose at his sides. Posture tall. Not backing down an inch, even while staring down an alien who could rip steel like paper.
It was stupid. It was brave . And Clark couldn’t look away.
“You’re scared,” he said, genuinely puzzled. “But you’re—”
“I said,” the Bat snapped, low and quiet and hard as bedrock, “I don’t need your help. Stay out of my city.”
And then the wings opened.
Not just opened— unfurled with a snap and a roar of displaced air. The span was even more massive than Clark had estimated. They flapped once, a strong motion as the Bat stepped back. Then again—stronger. The rooftop trembled slightly under the gust. Clark’s cape fluttered violently as he stepped back.
The Bat jumped out over the city like something out of a nightmare, silhouetted against the smog-choked moonlight. A shadow breaking free of the concrete. He didn’t soar, not exactly—his trajectory wasn’t graceful or endless—but it was fast. Controlled. He caught an updraft and vanished between the buildings.
Clark stared after him, stunned.
The wind still clung to him, tugging at his collar, rustling his hair. The city roared far below, oblivious.
And Clark stood there, heart hammering, eyes scanning the clouds.
He didn’t know what shocked him more—that Gotham’s infamous Batman had wings, real wings… or that he was hot . Quietly, devastatingly hot.
Either way, this wouldn’t be their last meeting. Clark would make sure of it.
It happened the way all disasters did—with footsteps where there shouldn’t have been any.
At first, Bruce thought he was imagining it. A soft scuff. The faintest shift of weight on stone. Hesitant, but not clumsy. Careful. Curious.
He paused, tools still in hand, frown tightening under the cowl he’d only just pulled off.
There. Again. A footfall—light, like someone trying not to be heard. Coming from the stairwell that led down from the manor.
He should’ve caught it earlier. The security system was airtight. Every entrance to the cave monitored, every pressure plate, retinal lock, thermal trip set to flag even a mouse.
But it was late. He was tired.
And as he turned—slowly, carefully—he saw the small silhouette halfway down the stone steps, caught in the spill of pale blue light from the overhead monitors.
“Dick.”
The boy froze.
Wide eyes. One hand gripped the carved stone banister, fingers gone white at the knuckles. He was barefoot, wearing flannel pajama pants and one of Bruce’s old sweatshirts, sleeves nearly swallowing his hands.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Then Dick stepped down one more stair. His voice, when it came, was soft and shaking.
“You’re—” he started. “You’re Batman?”
Bruce didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.
He was still in the suit. The cowl rested on the workbench beside him, the armor scuffed and dark with soot from the night’s patrol. The wings, half-deployed behind him, caught the cave’s low lighting and gleamed like obsidian blades. Around him, the evidence was everywhere—schematics on screens, old case files scattered across metal tables, weapons racked neatly along the walls.
The mask was off, but the truth was laid bare in every corner of the room.
Dick stared.
His gaze moved from the suit to the monitors, to the equipment, to the cowl, to the towering computers... and finally to the wings.
The sight of them seemed to hit hardest. Steel and carbon. Matte-black panels shaped like stretched, industrial leather—bat wings, folded but unmistakable. Not magical. Not alive. Just a machine.
The kid’s face broke.
“You can’t even fly?” he asked, voice cracking at the edges. He blinked hard, like he was trying to hold something in. “I thought you could fly.”
And then he started crying.
Not a quiet sniffle, not one or two tears— crying . Shoulders shaking. Breath stuttering. A deep, ugly sound pulled straight from the chest, like something broke open all at once.
Bruce stood there and took it.
He didn’t speak. Didn’t step forward. Didn’t reach out. He didn’t know how.
Dick was nine.
Nine, and already knew too much about falling.
His parents had flown. Glided through the air like they were born to it. Then the wires snapped. And the next time Dick saw someone take to the skies, it had been him . A figure cloaked in black, soaring out of the night. Wings unfurled. A myth come to life.
He’d believed it. Believed in it. Believed in him .
And now, here was the truth: wings of metal, bolted and jointed. No magic. No flight.
Just a man in armor, standing in a cave too big and too cold, with a face too tired and a voice that said nothing at all.
The words hit harder than they should have.
I thought you could fly.
Bruce didn’t know what to say. Not then.
He just stood in the shadows, watching a child cry over the death of an idea he hadn’t meant to create. And silently, without realizing it yet, Bruce Wayne made a decision.
If the kid needed him to fly—
Then he’d learn.
It started as spite.
Stubborn, bone-deep, irrational spite.
Bruce had spent years refining the wing system. He’d designed it for function—controlled descents, stealth gliding, swift tactical repositioning. The glider array was precise. Efficient. It let him drop from rooftops like a knife through the air and vanish before anyone knew he’d been there. That was enough.
Flight— actual flight—was unnecessary. Illogical. Heavy. Messy. It introduced complications: strain on the spine, power draw too high for combat stability, heat build-up in the rotors, structural fatigue on the servos. It was one of those ideas you left on the sketchpad because you were smart enough to know better.
But Dick had believed in it.
Not in the machine. In him .
He hadn’t seen a man with armor and carbon-plated wings. He’d seen someone who could fly. Someone who should fly. Someone bigger than life, faster than gravity, stronger than fear.
And Bruce had shattered that.
So flight stopped being optional.
He made it necessary.
He dismantled the entire glider rig and stripped the wings down to their bones—titanium-alloy support beams, carbon-fiber struts, reinforced motor housings. He ripped out the old stabilizers, redesigned the articulation joints, recalculated torque-to-lift ratios until they stopped making sense even to him.
Lucius had warned him early on. “You want vertical lift from a dead stop? You’ll overheat every motor and fry your legs in the process.”
“I’ll rewire the suit.”
“You’ll melt your spine.”
“I’ll reinforce it.”
And he did.
He rerouted the power core, added secondary buffers, rebuilt the heat sinks from scratch. He tore apart the back of the suit and rebuilt it to accommodate the upgraded wing harness—bulkier, heavier, less elegant. But strong.
Then he tested it.
And the wings burned out.
On the first attempt, he got two feet off the ground before a servo blew and he slammed into the reinforced platform hard enough to crack a rib. The second attempt ended with a full systems failure and a blackout that knocked power offline in half the cave.
He didn’t stop.
Every test was a new scar. A dent in the cave floor. A lesson carved into bone.
He reinforced the boots. He rewired the flight sensors. He swapped the polymer plates for lighter adaptive mesh that could flex under strain. He studied bird flight, bat movement, drone lift dynamics. He changed everything.
It took two months to build a prototype that didn’t kill him.
Another three before he left the ground.
The first successful flight wasn’t beautiful. It was a desperate leap, a brutal flap of wings, and the grinding protest of overworked rotors. It was him forcing something unnatural into submission.
The cave reeked of burned copper and ozone. His jaw was bleeding. His shoulder was half out of its socket. But the wings—those massive black things—flapped, once.
He staggered upward.
Then flapped again.
And rose.
Not a glide. Not a dive. Not a fall turned into a trick.
Real, upward movement. Real flight.
It was clumsy. Inefficient. Costly.
But in that moment, none of it mattered.
He flew.
Dick had begged.
Not just once. Not just casually. It became a campaign.
It started small—offhand comments over breakfast, tossed into the silence like bait. “You know I’ve been training, right?” or “I bet I could sneak up on you if I tried.”
Bruce ignored them.
But Dick didn’t let up. He escalated.
He cornered Bruce in the kitchen, arms crossed over his too-big T-shirt, barefoot on cold tile. “I want to help.”
“No.”
In the hallway, as Bruce returned from patrol, bleeding from a cut over his brow. “I can help.”
“No.”
In the study, standing in front of the grandfather clock, as if that alone would force the issue. “I already know the secret.”
“I said no.”
Then came the guilt tactics. “You’re the one who brought me here. You made me see this city. You don’t get to shut me out now.”
Bruce stayed firm. He’s not ready, he told himself. Too young. Too angry. Too everything.
But Dick was relentless. He trained harder. Studied Bruce’s movements like a scientist. And then—he got clever.
One night, after Bruce had spent two hours running full drills in the Batcave—dodging drones, disabling target nodes, working through silent takedowns—he pulled back into the shadows to cool down. The wings were half-retracted, the cave quiet, only the low hum of the computer core keeping time.
And then he felt it.
A tap between the shoulder blades.
Bruce spun. No one there.
Until he looked up.
Dick was hanging upside down from the underside of the observation platform. Grinning. Chalk in hand.
Bruce reached back and felt it—an X marked across his backplate in white.
“I got you,” Dick said.
And he had.
Bruce stared at him, the mask still in place, but the rest of him stunned. Dick dropped from the rafters, landing in a clean tumble, then stood, breathing hard, flushed with effort and pride.
“I’ve been watching you,” he said. “Learning.” He gestured at the platform. “I’ve been practicing there for weeks.”
Bruce said nothing for a long time. Then, finally, he sat on the edge of the training deck, the wing frame clicking shut behind him.
“Sit,” he said.
Dick did. Instantly. Cross-legged, eyes wide and bright with anticipation.
“You want in?” Bruce asked.
Dick nodded so hard he nearly unbalanced himself.
“Fine.”
The word hit the air like a gunshot.
Dick’s entire face lit up, joy and triumph blooming so fast and bright Bruce had to look away.
“But we do it my way,” Bruce added, turning to face him fully. The voice he used wasn’t negotiable. It was the same one he used with criminals—low, sharp, final. “You follow my orders. You train every day. You listen when I say stop. No exceptions. You earn everything. Understood?”
Dick’s grin didn’t falter.
“Yes, sir.”
And just like that, Bruce knew he’d lost the argument the moment it started.
The wings took a month.
Not because Bruce couldn’t build them faster—he could have, easily—but because this wasn’t just gear. It was a promise. A responsibility. A symbol.
He started with the frame. Carbon fiber, like his own, but scaled down and restructured for someone half his weight. The supports were narrower, the articulation points more flexible, the servos quieter and quicker to respond. Where Bruce’s wings had been engineered to absorb force and hold line in a dive, these were made to move .
He swapped his usual matte plating for a lighter, high-durability composite, shaping it into individual feathers. Realistic, aerodynamic, and striking—red, green, and yellow, catching the light like sparks. Bruce wouldn’t have been caught dead in that palette himself, but for Dick? It worked.
It was bold. Bright. Alive.
Like the kid who’d insisted on earning his place, and then done exactly that.
Where Bruce’s wings were an extension of a weapon, Dick’s were an extension of momentum—fluid and fast, built to twist and roll and recover midair without losing speed. They didn’t fight gravity. They danced with it.
When the wings were ready, Dick didn’t hesitate.
He suited up in a modified compression rig, joints exposed for flexibility, his hair still too long and wild, his grin barely restrained behind the reinforced goggles Bruce had handed him like a ritual.
“You ready?” Bruce asked, standing by the central column of the cave.
Dick rolled his shoulders. The wings flared out in a burst of color, catching on the floodlights. “Born ready.”
He launched without waiting for clearance.
The cave was cavernous enough for flight tests—Bruce had designed it that way—but he’d never seen anyone move through it like this.
Dick flipped between the stone columns like he’d trained there his entire life. He skimmed within inches of the rafters, spiraled down toward the floor, and pulled up at the last second just to prove he could. His wings adjusted instinctively, each flap pushing him higher, tighter, faster.
He laughed. Not a restrained chuckle— laughed —the kind that echoed across the Batcave and made Bruce’s chest ache with something he didn’t have a name for.
Bruce watched from below, arms crossed, jaw tight.
He could fly now. He had spent months building and bleeding to make it real. He had bent science and stubbornness until the impossible gave way.
But he didn’t fly like that .
Dick was weightless. Joyful. Controlled chaos in motion.
When he finally landed, it was in a low arc that ended with a one-knee skid on the polished stone. He popped up without missing a beat, cheeks flushed, goggles pushed to his forehead, chest heaving with breathless pride.
He looked at Bruce expectantly. “So?”
Bruce raised one eyebrow. “You still need a name.”
Dick didn’t even blink. “Already picked one.”
“Oh?”
“Robin.”
Bruce stared at him for a moment. A quiet beat passed. He thought of Grayson, the family name. Of circus flyers. Of winged things that weren’t meant to fall.
Then he nodded once. Just once.
“It fits.”
He didn’t say what he was thinking. That the name made something in his chest twist a little. That watching Dick take to the air so easily made the months of pain worth it. That maybe, just maybe, the kid wasn’t a distraction.
Maybe he was the reason Batman needed to fly at all.
Bruce saw the shadows move before he heard them.
There was a shift in the air pressure—high altitude displacement, just subtle enough to miss if you weren’t trained to feel it. The kind of warning that whispered along the edges of his awareness like a coming storm. He didn’t need to look up to know what it was.
A low-frequency hum brushed the edge of his hearing. Wind displaced by unnatural velocity. The quiet, rhythmic flutter of fabric—long, heavy, unmistakably a cape.
They weren’t trying to sneak up on him this time.
He didn’t react. He stood still, positioned at the edge of a rooftop overlooking the Narrows, wings folded against his back in their resting frame. The city pulsed beneath him, endless and indifferent. He counted the seconds. Waited.
Then: the soft crunch of boots on rooftop gravel.
They’d landed.
Two of them.
Bruce didn’t turn immediately. He took in their reflections in the glass panel of the nearby ventilation tower—two silhouettes against the stars, unmistakable even without full profiles.
Superman hovered just above the roofline, arms folded across his chest like a man waiting to be proven right. His posture was relaxed on the surface—shoulders loose, feet unplanted—but Bruce had seen enough battlefield tension to know the signs. That stance wasn’t neutral. It was the stance of someone strong enough to wait you out.
And beside him stood someone else.
The second figure didn’t hover. She stood, grounded, like the wind itself had chosen to stop around her. Tall. Regal. Still. Her armor gleamed bronze in the citylight—intricately forged, half ceremonial, half combat-tested. A sword hung across her back. A lasso coiled at her hip.
Diana Prince.
Wonder Woman.
Bruce didn’t sigh, but he wanted to.
“You’re getting bolder,” he said flatly, his voice cutting through the wind, his gaze still fixed on the city below.
Clark’s boots touched down lightly beside him. “We figured we’d try a different approach.”
Bruce glanced over his shoulder, once. “ We ?”
Diana stepped forward, her expression unreadable but respectful. Her voice was low, even. “You’ve made quite an impression, Batman. Enough that I wanted to see it for myself.”
Bruce turned to face them fully now. His suit was still marked with the wear of the night’s patrol—scratches across the chestplate, dried blood at the knuckles. The wings at his back were folded but present, the mechanical struts casting long, unnatural shadows behind him.
“I handle my city,” he said.
Clark didn’t blink. “It’s not just about Gotham anymore.”
Bruce’s expression didn’t change. “I don’t work with teams.”
“You have a partner,” Diana said gently. Her tone wasn’t accusatory—just observant. “The boy. Robin.”
Bruce’s jaw ticked. “He’s different.”
“He’s still someone you trust in the field,” she replied. “That says more than you think.”
Clark stepped forward, palms open, voice even. “We’re not here to issue demands. We’re here because we think you’re the missing piece.”
Diana nodded once. “We’re building something. A coalition. Global scale. Not politics—action. When the next major threat hits—and it will hit—we need to be ready. Together.”
Bruce exhaled slowly through his nose. His eyes never left theirs.
“I said no before.” His voice was calm. “The answer hasn’t changed.”
Diana’s gaze sharpened, just slightly. “Why?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Because I don’t trust either of you.”
Clark’s expression shifted, the first crack of frustration breaking through.
Bruce didn’t wait. He kept going.
“I know what you’re capable of. I’ve seen it. Up close. On screens. In casualty reports. I’ve studied both of you. I know your pressure points, your weaknesses, your limits. What happens when one of you breaks? When the League turns into a hammer looking for nails?”
His voice didn’t rise. But the weight in it settled like concrete.
“I’ve watched what happens when power goes unchecked. When oversight fails. I’ve cleaned up what’s left behind. So no—I don’t join clubs. I don’t do press conferences. And I don’t build sandcastles that collapse the second someone with a god complex gets bored.”
The silence that followed was thick and tense.
Clark looked away, jaw tight. Diana, for her part, didn’t flinch. She met Bruce’s stare like someone used to challenge, not threatened by it.
“You’re not wrong,” she said. “But you’re not the only one carrying that weight.”
Bruce turned his head, looking past them, past the rooftop, past the city. The skyline gleamed like broken glass under moonlight.
“I already carry enough,” he said.
Behind him, the wings adjusted with a soft mechanical whine—subtle, but full of coiled strength.
Then, with a sharp clack , they extended—broad and dark against the glow of the city, like a living shadow.
He took one last look at them, expression unreadable.
“You want your League?” he said. “Fine. But leave me out of it.”
Then the wings snapped down—once, twice—and in a rush of wind and force, Batman launched into the night.
No goodbye. No fanfare.
Just smoke, motion, and silence.
And once again, he disappeared into the sky—alone.
Bruce found the boy where all lost things in Gotham seemed to end up—bleeding in an alley, fists still clenched, teeth bared like he hadn’t figured out when to stop fighting.
Jason was small for his age but walked like someone with something to prove. He’d tried to steal the tires off the Batmobile.
Bruce should have left him with the GCPD. He didn’t.
He brought him home.
Jason was quiet the first week. Snapping sometimes, but mostly closed off. His eyes watched everything. Never still. He didn’t trust Bruce, not really—but he didn’t trust anyone , so it didn’t count for much.
He was smart. Sharp. Angry.
And curious.
It happened in the same stupid way it always did—by stairs.
Bruce had increased security after Dick. He’d installed retinal locks, biometric failsafes, pressure sensors along the hallway floors. Jason still managed to bypass them.
The alert chimed too late.
By the time Bruce reached the bottom of the cave stairs, Jason was already on the main platform—eyes wide, chest heaving, frozen like a kid who just found out monsters were real and one of them lived in his basement.
And on the training deck, Dick was in the air—barrel-rolling through a set of vertical pillars, laughing breathlessly. His mask was off. His wings—bright red, green, and gold—flashed like firelight in motion.
Bruce stood off to the side in the suit. Wing harness removed. Watching. Studying.
He didn’t even notice Jason until the boy shouted, “What happened to your wings ?!”
Jason’s voice cracked on the last word.
Bruce turned.
Jason was pale. His fists were clenched, eyes darting wildly between Dick and Bruce, and then back again.
“Did they break?” Jason demanded. “Did someone—did they take them off you? Can you not fly anymore?”
Bruce didn’t speak right away.
Alfred, appearing from the lift with uncanny timing, put a steady hand on Jason’s shoulder. “Master Jason,” he said gently, “I assure you, there is no crisis. Perhaps you might give Mr. Wayne a moment to explain before you throw yourself into a panic.”
Jason shrugged off Alfred’s hand, but stayed rooted. Breathing heavy.
Bruce stepped forward and removed the cowl. He kept his tone even.
“They’re modular,” he said. “The wings. I don’t wear them all the time.”
Jason blinked. “You can still fly?”
Bruce nodded once. “When I need to.”
Jason exhaled so hard it was almost a sob. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palms, furious at himself for getting emotional in front of anyone.
“You shouldn’t just leave them off like that,” he muttered. “You scared the hell out of me.”
Bruce didn’t respond to that.
But he understood it. Too well.
Jason looked back at Dick—now standing, wings retracted, watching the scene with open curiosity. “So he gets to help? He gets to fly ?”
“Dick’s been training for over a year,” Bruce said carefully.
“I can train too.” Jason’s eyes lit up—not with hope, but challenge. He crossed his arms. “Let me help. I’m not scared. You need more people who can fly.”
“No,” Bruce said immediately.
Jason stiffened. “Why not?”
“Because I won’t let you die,” Bruce said, voice low and flat. “Because you’re still healing. Because if you go out there full of rage and grief, you’ll get hurt. Or worse—you’ll hurt someone who doesn’t deserve it.”
Jason’s jaw clenched.
“I can do this,” he said. “I want to do this.”
Bruce shook his head. “Wanting it isn’t enough.”
Jason looked like he was going to yell. Or cry. Or both. But instead, he turned and stormed back toward the stairs.
“I hate this place,” he muttered.
Alfred raised an eyebrow. “Quite an improvement from last week’s ‘I hope it burns down in its sleep.’”
Bruce didn’t smile.
But his shoulders loosened, just slightly.
Dick landed beside him a few seconds later, quiet. “He’s got the spark,” he said, folding his wings. “You saw it, right?”
“I saw it.”
“You’re gonna say no again.”
Bruce didn’t answer.
He just looked up at the empty air above the cave—then back toward the stairs where Jason had disappeared.
Someday. Maybe.
But not yet.