They kept the lights too bright. That was the first thing Genevieve noticed when she woke, strapped down to the cold metal table in Blackgate’s infirmary. The bulbs hummed overhead, white-hot, never letting her rest.

Her body ached—shock treatments, restraints digging into her wrists, the injections they said were for her “own good.” She knew better. This wasn’t rehabilitation. It was breaking a mind the system couldn’t control.

And in the haze of pain, there was only one name on her lips.

“Nightwing…”

The guards laughed when she begged for him, said she was delirious, said no one cared about the assassin’s daughter. But deep down, Genevieve knew he would come. He always came.

⸻

When Dick Grayson entered Blackgate under the cover of night, he expected to see a fighter—defiant, calculating, untouchable. Instead, when they let him into the secured cell, he saw her curled on the floor, knees drawn to her chest, chains dragging like anchors.

She lifted her head. Her eyes were hollow, rimmed red, but when they focused on him, something flickered back to life.

“Dick…” Her voice cracked. “They’re killing me here.”

He froze. He’d faced Gotham’s worst, but this—this crushed him. The woman who had once danced blades against him, who had pressed her lips to his in the shadows of rooftops, now trembling, begging like a prisoner of war.

“I shouldn’t even be here,” she whispered. “I’m not like them. But they… they don’t care. They want to make me a monster.” Her chains rattled as she crawled closer, desperation in every movement. “Please. You’re the only one I trust. Get me out. Save me.”

For a moment, Nightwing’s resolve faltered. He had spent months trying to convince himself that loving her was dangerous, that she was too much her father’s daughter. But seeing her like this—broken by the very system he was sworn to protect—it tore him apart.