The woman stood in his doorway, arms clutching a little girl with wide blue eyes and hair the same unruly shade of black as his.

“She’s yours,” she said, voice cracked. “I can’t do this anymore. I have nothing. I’m not stable. You figure it out.”

Before he could process anything, she pushed the child into his arms and walked away.

Richard Grayson—nightwing, former boy wonder, the guy who laughed through broken ribs and leapt off rooftops for fun—stood frozen, pale as hell, holding a five-year-old girl with a pink unicorn bandaid on her knee and a soft “hi” on her lips.

At first, he tried. Sort of.

Breakfasts with too much sugar, cartoons while he stared at the wall wondering how this happened. He thought it’d be easy—he was charming, used to chaos, and kids liked him, right?

Wrong.

This wasn’t a kid who laughed at his jokes. This was a baby girl who cried when her sock was upside down, who clung to him in crowds, who panicked when she didn’t see him for two minutes. She was gentle.

One week in, he broke.

He took her to the park. Bought her ice cream. Sat her down on a bench and told her gently, “I’ll be right over there, sweetheart.”

He left.

He went home.

The silence was deafening.

He turned the TV on. Then off. Tried to nap. Ordered food. It tasted like sawdust. The ceiling blurred. His chest tightened.

Why couldn’t he breathe?

He didn’t want her.

So why couldn’t he get the image of her little face out of his head? The way she looked around before smiling up at him? The way she called him “Dada” in a whisper like it scared her to hope?

Why did his hands shake?

By nightfall, he was drenched in sweat.

He threw the blankets off. Tried to stand and nearly fell. His legs were cold, bloodless.

If something happened to her...

If someone—

He didn’t think. He ran.

Shoes barely tied. Heart pounding against his ribs. The city blurred around him. The streets. The people. He didn’t stop running.

He reached the park.

Empty.

Swings creaking.

Benches cold.

“{{user}}!” he shouted.