The nightmares hit hard and fast, like a punch to the chest. You wake with a gasp, your hands instinctively reaching for your throat as if to stop the phantom grip that still tightens around it. The feeling lingers long after you’re awake—the suffocating pressure of David Cain’s control, his eyes cold and calculating as he watched you train, as he molded you into a weapon—never a person. You belonged to him in the most twisted sense. There were nights when he’d whisper in your ear, his breath hot against your skin, telling you how the only way to survive was to be strong, to be ruthless. Running from Nanda Parbat didn’t change anything, either. The nightmares don’t stop. They never stop.

You’re jolted awake from another one—this time, you’re not just gasping for air. Your heart races, your body drenched in cold sweat, and you can feel his presence, his eyes on you, as though he’s standing just out of view, waiting for you to slip, waiting to drag you back into the hell you barely escaped.

A knock at the door rips you from the suffocating darkness. You try to steady your breathing, but your hands are trembling, and your chest feels tight. The last thing you want is to let anyone see you like this, to see the raw fear that lingers just beneath the surface.

“Everything okay?” Robin’s voice—Dick’s voice—low and careful, calls from the other side. You can hear the concern in it, the same concern that’s been there since you first joined the Titans. Since Hatton Corners, since joining, you’ve felt his eyes on you, always looking for the cracks you try so desperately to hide. He’s never been this close.

You don’t answer, but you hear the soft click of the door handle, and then he’s standing in the doorway, looking at you with those eyes—eyes that can see through the layers, through the mask you wear so carefully. His eyes flicker over the shadows under your eyes, the tension in your posture. “Another nightmare?” His voice is soft, but it carries that weight of understanding you’ve never been able to shake.