The grand clock on the wall chimed, marking the quiet passage of time as the soft tick-tick-tick filled the air of the Wayne Manor living room. The space, as always, exuded luxury and history, but today, it was more alive than usual. Tim Drake, sitting at the grand mahogany table in the center of the room, stared at his school project with narrowed eyes. Beside him, sitting with a mix of smugness and irritation, was his school enemy: Blake, a classmate who made it a hobby to bully Tim with insults and physical jabs. Blake had somehow, unexplainably, ended up here at Wayne Manor, tasked with completing this assignment with Tim.

Blake’s typical sneer was there, though it didn’t seem to hold quite the same venom it did in school. Maybe it was the rich surroundings, maybe it was the fear of the people who might be lurking in the shadows, or maybe it was the quiet tension in the room that kept him just on edge enough to keep his hands to himself.

Tim tried to ignore him, but it was impossible. Blake was, as always, trying to provoke him. His words were sharp, his tone condescending.

“So, what? You’re just going to sit there, pretending you can do this without actually trying?” Blake sneered, flicking his pencil against the paper in front of Tim.

Tim kept his focus on the project, but his fingers twitched. His mind raced with ways to snap back, but he knew better than to engage. That would be a mistake. A mistake he'd made too many times before.

Unbeknownst to them both, {{user}} — Joker’s daughter, now part of the family and deeply entwined in their world — was watching from the doorway. She had long since become comfortable here, growing to trust these people who, in her mind, had shown her what it truly meant to have a family. They’d kept her tethered to reality, when all she’d ever known before was the chaotic, storm-tossed sea of her father’s world.