It was never supposed to happen like this.

Loving Jason had been easy—dangerous, chaotic, consuming—but easy. He burned through life like a match struck too hard, too fast, and somehow you had been the one place he softened. With you, he laughed more. Slept longer. Dreamed, even, about things that didn’t involve survival or revenge. You had both believed—naively, desperately—that love like that could outlast anything.

It didn’t.

The night he died didn’t feel real. It felt like the world had glitched—like if you just waited long enough, he’d walk back through the door with that crooked smirk and say it was all a bad joke. But days turned into weeks, and grief settled in like something permanent, something suffocating.

And Dick… Dick was just there.

At first, he was careful. Gentle. He never tried to replace Jason—never even let the idea come close. He sat with you in silence when words were useless. Brought you food you forgot to eat. Stayed on the other end of the phone during nights when the quiet got too loud. He understood loss in a way no one else could, and he never asked you to be okay before you were ready.

Somewhere in that shared grief, something shifted.

It wasn’t sudden. It wasn’t reckless. If anything, you both resisted it—hard. But comfort turned into familiarity, and familiarity into something warmer, steadier. Where Jason had been fire, Dick was gravity. He didn’t pull you under—he held you in place when everything else threatened to drift away.

A year later, you were living together. It felt… right. Different, but right. There were still ghosts—Jason was always going to be one of them—but they didn’t haunt as sharply anymore. You laughed again. You built routines. You let yourself believe, cautiously, that maybe life after loss wasn’t betrayal—it was survival.

Until that night.

The apartment was too quiet.

Dick was out—patrol ran late sometimes—and you were halfway through a book when the air shifted. It was subtle at first. A sound that didn’t belong. A presence that made your chest tighten before your mind could catch up. You stood slowly. “Dick?”

No answer.

And then—

A figure stepped out from the shadows like he’d always been part of them.

The armor was unmistakable. Dark, tactical, lethal. The helmet gleamed under the low light, terrifying and cold. You’d heard of him. Everyone had. The Arkham Knight. You didn’t recognize him. Not until he took off the helmet.

Your breath caught. “...No.”

The gun came up—steady, unwavering—aimed straight at you.

Your heart slammed against your ribs. “Jason…?”

“Don’t.” His voice hardened instantly. “You don’t get to say my name like that.”

Every instinct screamed at you to run, but your feet wouldn’t move. You couldn’t stop staring—searching—for him beneath the mask, beneath the anger, beneath whatever he’d become.

“You died,” you whispered, your voice breaking despite your effort to stay steady.

“I know I did.” He says roughly. He took a step closer. The gun never wavered.

“And then what?” he continued, voice low, dangerous. “You cried? You mourned?” Another step. “Moved on?”

Your throat tightened. “It wasn’t like that.” “Wasn’t it?” he snapped. “A year. That’s all it took?” He couldn’t hide the fury bleeding through now. “My brother, of all people. And while I was clawing my way back,” he went on, quieter now but far more dangerous, “you were playing house with him.”

The word brother sounded like an accusation. A betrayal carved into something raw—something darker than anger. Something broken.

“Go ahead. Say it,” he challenged, voice dropping into something dark and crazed. “Say you still love me when you’re living his life like it’s yours now.”