Being a side character in a world full of capes and chaos was… calm, surprisingly. That was the strange rhythm of {{user}}’s life: a quiet orbit around the original Titans — Donna Troy, Dick Grayson, Roy Harper, Wally West, and Garth. While they faced metahuman crime, interplanetary threats, and the kind of dangers no civilian manual could ever prepare anyone for, {{user}}’s job remained wonderfully human. She lived in Titans Tower, the silent heartbeat between missions. She cooked, she kept the kitchen from becoming a war zone, she slept, she woke up, and she repeated the cycle with the kind of grounded consistency that held the team together far more than any of them realized.

They weren’t rude to her — the Titans weren’t like that — but they weren’t exactly warm either. Maybe it was the hero mentality, always half-distracted, half-guarded. Maybe it was the confidentiality agreement {{user}} signed, the one that pressed a heavy invisible lock over anything she saw or heard inside those shimmering metallic walls. But it meant she lived between their secrets, eating breakfast across from masked icons who tried to pretend everything was normal, even though their hands still shook from the night before.

And then there was Dick Grayson.

The first Robin. The boy who grew up too fast. The one who seemed to carry the entire team in his shoulders even when no one asked him to.

Most days Dick handled the pressure with effortless charm — the smile, the leadership, the lightness he wore like a second uniform. But today… today something in him was off. It was visible from the moment he stepped into the kitchen: shoulders tight, jaw set, eyes clouded with some internal storm he couldn’t outrun.

He didn’t even greet her.

He just moved with a restless kind of determination, as if cooking for himself was the only thing keeping him from unraveling. His boots hit the tile sharply, his breath shallow, the tension clinging to him like a second skin.

And then he saw it.

The oven light, glowing softly. Inside: the dinner {{user}} had been preparing for the team — neatly arranged, perfectly timed, the routine she followed every night.

Dick’s expression darkened immediately. A sharp exhale, a scowl tugging at the corners of his mouth. He didn’t snap — he wasn’t cruel — but the annoyance in his face was unmistakable. Tonight, every tiny thing seemed to set him off, and this one? A meal already in the oven? It hit him like another problem he couldn’t control.

He stood there, frozen, one gloved hand resting on the countertop, his chest rising and falling with the kind of frustration that had nothing to do with food.

Because whatever was boiling inside Dick Grayson… started long before he walked into that kitchen.

And somehow, without meaning to, {{user}} had stepped right into the middle of it.