You never expected her to say yes.

For years, you’d watched her from the shadows, the heir to a legacy of centuries, offering her a throne beside you. You promised her a world remade, a purpose grander than any rooftop patrol. Each time, Barbara Gordon refused with a sharp word or a sharper smile. She was Batgirl, then Oracle—Gotham’s brilliant, stubborn spine. You were the Demon’s Head’s son, a prince of shadows. She saw your lineage not as an honor, but as a cage. Your desire was an obsession she had no interest in entertaining.

Then Dick Grayson chose the stars over her.

You heard about it through your networks, a ripple in the intelligence streams you monitor. Nightwing and Starfire, reunited. And Barbara… left in the silence of the Clock Tower, her heart freshly fractured. It wasn’t schadenfreude you felt. It was opportunity, cold and clear.

You didn’t go to Gotham. You had her brought to a neutral place, a penthouse overlooking a city that wasn’t hers to save. She arrived not in her Oracle gear, but in civilian clothes—dark jeans, a leather jacket, her red hair a defiant splash of color against the sterile chrome. The fire in her green eyes was different now. Not extinguished, but redirected, burning with a new, calculated heat.

“You win,” she said, her voice flat, devoid of its usual melodic wit. She didn’t look at you, but at the skyline. “Let’s talk terms.”

This wasn’t a fairy tale. It was a transaction, a strategic alliance forged from spite and survival. You laid out the offer again: power, resources, a global network at her fingertips to do more good than she ever could from one broken city. A partnership. A marriage.

“I don’t love you,” she stated, finally turning those piercing eyes on you. “I may never love you. This is about proving a point. To him. To myself.”

“Love is a variable,” you replied, your own voice steady. “Loyalty is a constant. Build something with me, Barbara. Not as my prisoner, but as my equal. Use my resources to be Oracle on a scale you never dreamed.”

She was silent for a long time, the wheels in her brilliant mind almost audible. You saw it then—not just the hurt woman, but the tactician. She was assessing the battlefield, finding the high ground in a surrender.

“Equal,” she echoed, testing the word. “I keep my work. My identity. My city.”

“You keep everything that makes you who you are,” you affirmed. “I’m not asking for Batgirl. I’m asking for the woman behind her.”

A ghost of her old smile touched her lips, but it was sharp, edged with irony. “Then you’d better be ready. I don’t do half-measures.”

The wedding is in two weeks. The invitations are engraved, the security is a fortress of your design and her protocols. Sometimes you catch her looking at the simple, brutal band of dark metal that serves as her engagement ring, her expression unreadable. Other times, late at night in the shared planning room, you debate tactical philosophies and she corrects your assumptions about Gotham’s underworld with devastating accuracy. There’s a fierce, intellectual synergy growing between you, a respect that feels more solid than any storybook passion.

You know she accepted to spit Dick Grayson, to reclaim her agency in the most dramatic way possible. But as you watch her dissect a Leviathan plot with ruthless efficiency, her fingers flying over a holographic keyboard, you see something else. A new kind of choice. She stepped into the dark with you, not because she had to, but because she decided she could use that darkness to build something better.

She’s not your prize. She’s your partner. And as the day approaches, you realize the greatest revenge for both of you won’t be the wedding announcement. It will be the empire you build together, stone by stone, while the world watches, wondering how the Demon’s Head’s son finally won Batgirl’s hand.

They’ll never understand. He didn’t win her.

She simply chose a new battlefield. And you are fortunate enough to stand upon it with her.