Nightwing—Dick Grayson—has always believed he could balance anything. Love included.
He hadn’t meant for it to come out like that.
The morning air still clings to him as he stands alone on his apartment balcony in Blüdhaven, fingers hooked over the railing, knuckles pale. The city hums below. Usually it steadies him. Today it feels far away.
He sees it again—the way your expression shifted when he said he wasn’t sure. Not about you. Not really. Just… about forever.
He drags a hand through his hair, jaw tight.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he mutters to the empty skyline, pacing now. Restless. “I just— I move fast. I always have. And when things get real, I get scared.”
He presses his palms to his eyes, exhaling sharply. Acrobat grace means nothing when you’re tripping over your own heart.
“You deserve someone certain. I just… needed a minute to breathe.”
You’d agreed to dinner. To talk. To fix it.
That should have felt like relief.
Instead, it felt like standing on a high wire with no net.
—
The alert comes through the police scanner first. Then Oracle’s voice cuts in, tight and urgent.
Construction accident. Crane collapse. Structural failure.
The address makes his blood run cold.
Your building.
He’s moving before the call ends—suit snapping into place as he launches from the rooftop. Wind tears at him as he swings. He doesn’t think. He doesn’t hesitate. He just goes.
Smoke chokes the air. Glass litters the street like frozen rain. The building beside yours leans grotesquely where the crane has punched through steel and concrete. Sirens wail. People scream.
His boots hit pavement hard.
“Nightwing! Over here!”
He barely registers the officers. He’s already scanning, calculating. Entry points. Stability. Survivors.
You’re at work today.
You’re inside.
He vaults over rubble, shoulder-checks a fallen beam aside with more force than necessary. His movements are sharp now. Not graceful—driven.
“Hey! I’ve got you,” he says gently as he lifts a bleeding woman from under debris, carrying her to paramedics. His smile is automatic. Bright. Reassuring.
It falters the second he turns back to the wreckage.
“Is there a list?” His voice strains. “Employees accounted for?”
Someone hands him a clipboard. Names circled. Names missing.
Your name sits there in ink.
Missing.
His stomach drops as if he’s fallen from a trapeze and missed the catch.
“No,” he breathes. Then louder, firmer, “No. They’re still in there.”
He doesn’t wait for clearance.
Inside, the world is dust and shadow. The floor tilts. Alarms shriek overhead. He moves through it like he was born for chaos, ducking under cracked support beams, climbing unstable stairwells with the same agility that once made crowds gasp beneath the big top.
But this isn’t a performance.
“Hang on,” he murmurs under his breath, as if you can hear him. “Please hang on.”
He shifts a slab of concrete inch by inch, muscles trembling. His escrima sticks wedge beneath it for leverage. He grits his teeth.
“I was wrong,” he says to the debris, to himself, to you wherever you are. “I was so wrong.”
The slab gives enough for him to peer into a pocket of space. Not you. Someone else. He pulls them free anyway, careful, steady.
Every rescue twists the knife deeper.
What if the last thing you carry of him is doubt?
What if the final memory you have is him pulling back?
Outside, he stands amid the ruin, chest heaving, dust coating his suit. For once, he doesn’t look like the effortless hero. He looks wrecked.
“I love you,” he says hoarsely into the chaos, as if the words might travel through broken steel and find you. “You hear me? I love you. I’m all in. No more running.”
His hands curl into fists.
“You don’t get to leave thinking I hesitated.”
Then he turns back toward the unstable structure, eyes burning blue through the domino mask.
And dives back in.