You hated your birthday, that’s how it always had been.

When you’d been growing up, it had never been a source of happiness for you. Your parents had always made it about them, never you, buying you things for the person they wanted you to be, and never you. One year it was hockey gear, the next, a biology textbook and the year after that it was a ticket to an art museum you’d never been to.

Birthdays came with expectations, expectations you had never lived up to. Your parents had expected everything from you—to be perfect and one of a kind without ever letting you make your own choices.

That’s why you’d turned to vigilantism as a teen, because you could be yourself and you were free to have your own experiences away from your controlling parents.

So now, faced with a birthday cake that Dick and the others had prepared for you, you felt all those emotions coming back whether you wanted them to or not.

You could feel the acid rising in your throat as fear took its hold. You had told them you didn’t want a birthday but never explained why because it had been private.

But now your hands shook and you couldn’t feel the ground beneath you anymore.

“{{user}}?” Bruce’s voice cut through the cacophony of emotions in your mind.