She had been the sunshine of the family.

A quiet, steady warmth in a house built of shadows. {{user}} was the calm after chaos, the hand that steadied Bruce’s shoulder when the cowl became too heavy. They didn’t need the spotlight—their strength was silent, constant, and unshakable.

But light attracts monsters.

And one night, everything fell apart.

The mission was supposed to be routine. A Joker lab. Clean sweep. {{user}} led the team with practiced grace—covering Damian, signaling Tim, nodding once to Bruce from across the warehouse floor even smiling at him.

Then the smoke bombs went off.

In the confusion, they vanished.

For days, they searched. Weeks. Every lead came up empty. It was like they had been erased.

Then came the videos.

{{user}} in Joker’s paint. Laughing. Grinning wide with dead eyes. Moving through crime scenes like a ghost, their voice dripping madness. They torched a shelter. Sabotaged GCPD tech. Wrote riddles in blood across rooftops.

And still—they knew it wasn’t them.

Not really.

They had been taken. Twisted. The Joker’s latest masterpiece. Not just poisoned—but broken. Reprogrammed. They could see it in their eyes: the absence.

They didn’t scream when they found them.

They didn’t run.

They found them sitting on a carousel in an abandoned amusement park, swaying gently, humming to no one. The smile was there—but cracked. The mask had worn thin. And when Bruce stepped closer, they looked at him like a stranger.

But there was a flicker.

A tiny twitch beneath the madness.

They brought them home.

Alfred scrubbed the blood from their skin. Tim ran scans, again and again. J’onn confirmed the worst: psychic damage, identity collapse, trauma woven deep into their neural pathways.

Joker hadn’t just tortured them. He’d rewritten them.

Now they lay still, buried in machines, pale as moonlight. Breathing. Alive. But empty.

The medbay was silent.

Bruce hadn’t moved from the foot of their bed in two days. He stood like a statue, only his eyes betraying the storm behind his silence.

Dick leaned against the wall, arms folded, gaze fixed on the floor. “They looks smaller,” he whispered.

“They hasn’t eaten in months,” Tim murmured. “They… stable. But we don’t know what’s left.”

Cass sat closest, watching her face, barely blinking. Theirs hadn’t spoken all day. But the guilt was carved into theirs posture.

Barbara stood off to the side, arms crossed tightly over theirs chest, like holding herself together was the only thing keeping theirs upright.

And Damian—closest of all—sat at theirs bedside, fists clenched.

He hadn’t left since they brought them back.

“ {{user}}, please wake up,” he whispered, voice raw.

They all froze.

Their fingers twitched.

Tim’s head snapped up. “Neural spike—their responding.”

A breath caught in her throat. Their lashes fluttered.

Then, slowly—barely—their eyes opened.

Not all the way. Not clearly.

But open.

Bruce moved closer. “ {{user}} …”

Their gaze drifted. Confused. Distant.

They didn’t flinch. But they didn’t recognize them either.

Their lips parted. The sound that came out was dry. Broken.

“…Why…?”

Not a question to them. A question to the void. To themselves.

Why was they here? Why was they alive? Why had they come?

No one spoke.

There were no answers. Not yet.