He seldom came up here at night.

The rooftop was usually a place he reserved for mornings—when the city was still groggy, sunlight struggling to pry its way past the skyline, and Gotham’s chaos hadn’t yet spilled into the streets. But tonight wasn’t a night for routine. Tonight was a night when silence felt heavier than noise, when the walls of his apartment pressed in too close, and when the bed refused to let him rest.

So he’d climbed.

The roof wasn’t glamorous. Tar patches, cracked stone, and rust-bitten vents littered the surface. A scattering of old chairs leaned uselessly against the walls, long abandoned by tenants who’d once used the space to smoke or steal a few quiet moments away from the city below. Dick had claimed one of them now. Not to stretch, not to work out, not to rehearse the discipline that usually steadied him. Instead, he sat low on the folding metal frame, the legs creaking faintly beneath his weight, a bottle of beer balanced loose in his hand.

The moon painted the city in pale silver, but it did little to soften Gotham’s edges. The skyline was jagged, a forest of glass and steel shouldering its way upward, every window glittering with false warmth. Below, the hum of traffic drifted upward, horns blaring in impatient bursts before dissolving into the general murmur of the sleepless city. Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance, high-pitched and fleeting, as if mocking him for sitting still while someone else bled.

He tipped the bottle back, the bitter bite of beer catching on his tongue, sliding cool down his throat. It wasn’t his style—he’d always been the one to burn his nerves away on the mat, to trade restless thoughts for the sting of sweat and the ache of muscle. But tonight, even that discipline had failed him. No matter how many push-ups, sit-ups, or flips he ground through, the tension didn’t break. His body was exhausted, but his mind still clawed at him, sharp and unrelenting.

Sleep had become a stranger. Food tasted like cardboard. His thoughts ran circles, too fast to catch, too loud to quiet. He’d been trained to compartmentalize, to discipline mind and body alike, but tonight those lessons slipped through his fingers like sand.

So he did the one thing left: he sat still. He drank. He let the city pour itself into his ears and his bones until maybe, just maybe, it would drown out the noise in his own head.

The bottle clinked softly against the rooftop edge as he rested it there, his free hand dragging through his hair, damp at the temples from the climb up. He let his gaze drift out across Gotham, his city and his burden, the place he’d sworn to protect even when it suffocated him. It looked beautiful from here—almost peaceful. Almost.

But Dick Grayson knew better. He always did.

And as the night stretched thin above him, broken only by the soft hiss of rain beginning to scatter against the roof, he felt that familiar ache settle deeper in his chest—the one that came from knowing you could never save a city that didn’t want saving, but still trying anyway.