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The first time you met Robin, you shattered every window within half a mile, disabled a weapons shipment without touching it, and turned a steel support beam into a flock of startled red birds.
None of it had been intentional.
The birds disappeared before they reached the warehouse ceiling, dissolving into crimson sparks that rained over the unconscious men sprawled across the concrete. The support beam returned a second later, but it reappeared several inches to the left, bringing half the roof down with it.
Robin had stared at the wreckage, then at you.
“You always make an entrance like that?”
You had been exhausted, frightened, and surrounded by the people who had spent the previous month trying to force your powers into something they could sell. It had not seemed like an appropriate time for humor.
“Only when someone interrupts me.”
He had smiled.
That should have warned you.
Eight months later, you were standing in the operations room of Titans Tower while Dick Grayson explained a plan with twenty-seven obvious failure points.
You knew there were twenty-seven because you could see them.
They stretched around him like fractures in glass, each crack containing a different possibility. In one, Cyborg’s sonic cannon destabilized the eastern wall of the H.I.V.E. facility. In another, Beast Boy chose a rhinoceros instead of an elephant and sent a shipping container through the harbor. Seven separate futures involved Dick attempting something unnecessarily acrobatic and landing badly.
In three, he did not get up again.
You stopped looking.
“So,” Dick concluded, tapping the schematic projected across the central screen, “we enter through the maintenance tunnels, disable the security grid, and reach the probability engine before H.I.V.E. can activate it.”
Gar raised his hand.
Dick looked at him. “You don’t have to raise your hand.”
“Right.” Gar lowered it. “Are we all pretending a probability engine sounds like a real thing?”
“It manipulates quantum outcomes,” Victor said.
Gar waited.
Vic sighed. “It makes lucky things happen for them, and unlucky things happen to us.”
“Oh.” Gar nodded. “Why didn’t you say that?”
“I did.”
“You used science words.”
Starfire leaned over the table, studying the rotating image of the machine. “If the device controls fortune, could we not simply hope very intensely that it will malfunction?”
“That isn’t how probability works,” Raven said from beneath her hood.
Gar glanced toward you. “Isn’t that kind of how Hex works?”
Every face in the room turned in your direction.
You folded your arms. “I don’t control luck.”
Dick’s mouth twitched. “You made Gizmo’s pants fall down during a live broadcast.”
“He was threatening to launch a missile.”
“You made them fall down before he threatened to launch the missile.”
“He was irritating me.”
“That sounds like control.”
“It was a coincidence.”
“A statistically remarkable coincidence.”
“You’re becoming irritating too.”
His smile widened.
The possibilities around him shifted.
Dick smiled in the operations room. Dick laughed with you on the roof. Dick reached across the training-room floor to pull you to your feet, his fingers closing around yours while neither of you acknowledged how long he held on.
Dick stood beside you in the kitchen at two in the morning, his shoulder pressed against yours as you pretended to care about the case files spread across the counter. Dick looked at your mouth. Dick leaned closer.
Dick lay motionless beneath broken concrete.
You forced your attention back to the plans.
“The engine uses the same kind of energy I do,” you said. “It isn’t identical, but it’s close enough that it might react to me.”
The room quieted.
Dick stopped smiling. “React how?”
“I don’t know.”
That was the problem with chaos magic. It did not follow rules so much as acknowledge their existence before deciding whether they deserved to remain rules at all. You had learned to move objects, create shields, interfere with electronics, and enter someone’s mind when there was no other choice. You could alter the path of a bullet or persuade a locked door that it had never been locked.
Most days, reality yielded in small, manageable ways.
Some days, it screamed.
Raven straightened. “I can contain a magical surge.”
“Maybe,” you said.
Her expression remained composed, but you knew her well enough to notice the slight narrowing of her eyes. “You believe I cannot?”
“I believe the engine could amplify me before either of us understood what it was doing.”
“And I’m hearing an excellent reason for you to remain at the Tower,” Dick said.
You looked at him. “You need me to identify the engine’s energy signature.”
“Raven can do that.”
“She can identify magic. She won’t know which part of the machine is generating it.”
“I’ll send you the scans.”
“You won’t understand what you’re looking at.”
“I’m very intelligent.”
“You named three separate plans ‘Operation Sneaky.’”
“They were variations on a theme.”
“You need me there.”
The last trace of amusement disappeared from his face.
Dick had several kinds of silence. There was the easy silence he shared with you during late nights in the common room, when neither of you felt compelled to fill the air. There was the focused silence that came before a fight, his entire body settling as he calculated distances, exits, and angles.
Then there was this silence.
This was the one he used when he had already made a decision and was trying to convince everyone else that discussion remained possible.
“You said it could amplify your powers,” he said.
“It could.”
“You said you might lose control.”
“I might.”
“Then you’re not going.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“I’m leading the mission.”
“And I’m the only person on the team who understands the device.”
“Understanding it doesn’t make you immune to it.”
“Neither does leaving me here.”
Something flickered across his face.
Around him, possibilities branched violently. In one, you obeyed him and remained at the Tower. H.I.V.E. activated the engine, and every electrical system along the eastern seaboard failed simultaneously. In another, the Titans destroyed it without you, but Raven spent three weeks trapped between dimensions.
In another, Dick never returned.
You crushed the visions before they could multiply.
“We don’t know what happens if they switch that thing on,” you said. “It might reach me from anywhere.”
Dick’s jaw tightened.
“Then Raven stays with you.”
“That leaves the team without magical support.”
“It leaves you protected.”
You laughed once, though there was nothing funny about it. “You cannot put me in a padded room every time something might interact with my powers.”
“I’m not trying to put you in a padded room.”
“No. You’re trying to put me in my bedroom, which is much nicer but has the same locked-door feeling.”
His shoulders went rigid.
Victor looked between the two of you. “Maybe we should take five.”
“No,” you and Dick said together.
Gar quietly began guiding Starfire toward the hallway. Raven followed without being asked. Victor remained for another second, looking as though he wanted to say something, then apparently decided his mechanical components were too expensive to risk.
The door slid shut behind them.
Dick removed his mask and placed it on the table.
The gesture should not have felt intimate. You had seen him without it hundreds of times, but something changed whenever he took it off during an argument. Robin could issue orders. Robin could be infuriatingly certain that he knew what was best for everyone.
Dick looked tired.
“You think I’m afraid of you,” he said.
“Aren’t you?”
“No.”
“You should be.”
“That isn’t your decision either.”
The answer stopped you.
Dick moved around the table, but he did not come too close. He knew better than most people that you hated feeling cornered. He had learned it without needing to be told, just as he had learned never to seize your wrists during training and never to wake you by touching you.
“I’ve seen what my powers can do,” you said. “You’ve seen it too.”
“I’ve seen you stop a bridge from collapsing while holding a psychic shield around forty-three civilians.”
“I nearly tore the bridge apart in the first place.”
“Because Psimon was inside your head.”
“That doesn’t make the people underneath it less dead if I fail.”
“You didn’t fail.”
“This time.”
Dick’s expression softened, which somehow made your anger worse.
“You make plans for everyone,” you continued. “Backup plans, escape routes, contingency codes. What is the plan for me?”
He said nothing.
“There is one.”
“There are plans for every member of this team.”
“How would you stop me?”
His eyes held yours.
You could have reached into his mind. The impulse appeared whenever people concealed things from you, a terrible and instinctive awareness that the truth was only one fragile barrier away. But you never crossed it without permission.
You hated that part of yourself for noticing how easily you could.
“How would you stop me, Dick?”
“I wouldn’t.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“You must have something.”
“My contingency is to get through to you.”
“That isn’t a contingency.”
“It’s worked so far.”
“You cannot build a plan around trusting me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t.”
The words escaped before you could stop them.
Dick looked as though you had struck him.
It was not because he thought you meant you did not trust him. He understood. You saw it in the way his anger vanished, leaving something quieter behind.
You didn’t trust yourself.
Dick stepped closer.
Possibilities flickered at the edges of your vision. You stepped away, and he let you. You told him to leave, and he did. You reached for him. He reached back.
“You’re coming on the mission,” he said.
You blinked. “What?”
“I’m changing the plan.”
“You spent the last ten minutes arguing that I shouldn’t go.”
“I had incomplete information.”
“You had exactly the same information.”
“No.” He picked up his mask. “I thought you were afraid of the machine.”
“I am.”
“You’re more afraid of being alone when it reaches for you.”
Your mouth closed.
Dick put the mask on again, Robin returning piece by piece.
“You stay beside me,” he said. “The second you feel the engine affecting you, you tell me. No hiding it because you think you can manage another thirty seconds.”
“I usually can.”
“No.”
“Twenty?”
“No.”
“Five.”
“Hex.”
“Fine.”
He moved toward the door.
“Dick.”
He paused.
“You cannot talk me out of everything.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “No, but I can annoy you until you talk yourself out of it.”
“That has never happened.”
“Statistically, it has to eventually.”
The H.I.V.E. facility had been built beneath an abandoned shipping depot along the Jump City waterfront, because criminal organizations apparently believed rusted warehouses made their operations less suspicious.
The maintenance tunnel smelled of seawater and old machinery. Victor led the way, scanning for security systems, while Kory floated behind him with green light gathering around her hands. Gar had become a rat to scout ahead. Raven moved silently enough that you occasionally checked to make sure she remained there.
Dick stayed beside you.
He did not hover. Hovering would have been easier to resent.
Instead, he moved as he always did, checking intersections and marking exits, trusting you to guard his blind side. The only indication that he remained concerned was the way his hand brushed yours whenever the tunnel narrowed.
It happened three times before you realized he was doing it deliberately.
On the fourth, you caught his fingers.
Dick looked at your joined hands, then at you.
“The floor is uneven,” he whispered.
“Your balance is better than mine.”
“I could fall.”
“You performed a quadruple somersault off the roof yesterday.”
“The roof was level.”
You squeezed his hand hard enough to make his glove creak and then released him.
His grin remained visible in the dim red light for the next twenty feet.
Gar returned in the shape of a green moth, fluttering onto Victor’s shoulder before shifting back. The tunnel was not wide enough to accommodate his full height, leaving him crouched with his knees pressed against his chest.
“Two guards at the junction,” he whispered. “Motion sensors, laser grid, and a really intense smell coming from the left corridor.”
“That’s the harbor,” Victor said.
“No, the harbor smells better.”
Dick signaled for everyone to spread out.
You followed him to the corner and reached past the edge of the wall with your senses. The guards appeared as two warm points of consciousness, their thoughts vague and unguarded. One was thinking about the sandwich waiting in his locker. The other was trying not to fall asleep.
The security system hummed beneath them.
“I can disable the sensors,” Victor murmured.
“The lasers are on a separate circuit,” you said.
“Can you move them?”
“Lasers are light.”
“Can you move the emitters?”
You flexed your fingers. Red light curled around them before disappearing. “Yes.”
Dick looked at you. “Subtle.”
“I can be subtle.”
Gar made a doubtful noise.
You ignored him and turned your attention toward the wall. The laser emitters were bolted into reinforced steel, each one connected to a pressure alarm. Removing them would trigger the system. Breaking the circuit would trigger the system. Interfering with the control panel would—
You tilted your head.
“What?” Dick whispered.
“The alarm has a manufacturing defect.”
Victor scanned the wall again. “I’m not reading one.”
“It doesn’t have one yet.”
Before anyone could object, you reached out.
Reality resisted.
It always did at first. The world had rules, and even when you bent them, it remembered the shape it was supposed to hold. You pressed against that certainty until the circuitry shifted. A connection weakened. A line of code rewrote itself inside the panel.
The alarm decided it had been installed incorrectly three years ago.
The laser grid flickered and vanished.
Victor stared at his scanner. “That should not have worked.”
“Science words,” Gar whispered.
Dick moved before the guards could react. He struck the first behind the knee, caught him as he fell, and drove an elbow into the second man’s chest. Kory swept forward to catch the other guard before his head hit the floor.
The entire exchange lasted four seconds.
Dick lowered the unconscious man carefully. “Nice work.”
You ignored the warmth that spread through you at his approval. “I’m very intelligent.”
“You named your last attack ‘red thing.’”
“It was red.”
“It was also six different things.”
“I value efficiency.”
He smiled at you again, and the corridor split into possibilities.
Dick kissed you beside the emergency generator.
Dick walked past you without looking.
Dick pressed you against the wall, his gloved hand sliding along your waist while his mouth—
You severed the vision so abruptly that the lights overhead burst.
Everyone stopped.
Red energy crawled across the ceiling.
Your pulse quickened.
Dick was in front of you immediately, blocking the others from view without touching you. “Talk to me.”
“I’m fine.”
His expression sharpened.
You forced your hands to relax. “I saw something.”
“What?”
“Nothing relevant.”
Behind him, Gar gave a small, interested hum.
You glared over Dick’s shoulder. Gar became a mouse and hid behind Kory’s boot.
“The engine?” Dick asked.
You searched the air. The facility was saturated with an energy that tasted like metal and storm clouds, but it remained distant. “Maybe. It’s stronger than it was at the Tower.”
Raven came closer. Her power brushed against yours, cool and controlled. “It is reaching through the building.”
“I know.”
“Your thoughts are becoming louder.”
Dick glanced between you. “Can you shield her?”
“I can reinforce what is already there.” Raven studied you. “She must permit it.”
The idea of allowing anyone into the structures around your mind made your skin crawl. Raven would never take more than you offered, but trust did not erase instinct.
Dick said nothing.
He could have ordered you to accept. He could have reminded you of the agreement you had made in the Tower. Instead, he waited.
You closed your eyes. “Do it.”
Raven’s magic settled around you, gentle despite its strength. The possibilities dimmed, withdrawing from the corners of your vision.
When you opened your eyes, Dick was still watching.
“Better?”
“Yes.”
He offered his hand.
You looked at it.
“The floor is uneven,” he said solemnly.
You took it.
The probability engine was located in the center of the facility, surrounded by enough armed guards to suggest H.I.V.E. had finally discovered the concept of sensible security.
The Titans watched from an overhead service platform as technicians moved around a circular chamber below. The machine dominated the room, all black metal and rotating rings suspended around a pulsing white core. Cables stretched from its base into the walls. Every few seconds, the rings aligned and the light inside flashed red.
Your magic responded each time.
It curled beneath your skin, searching for somewhere to go.
Dick crouched beside you, one hand resting near the small of your back without quite touching. “How bad?”
“Three.”
“Out of ten?”
“Out of five.”
His hand made contact.
The pressure was light, but it anchored you more effectively than Raven’s shield. You focused on the shape of his palm through your uniform, on the warmth of it, and on the steady rhythm of his breathing.
Below, a door opened.
Psimon entered the chamber.
Your stomach dropped.
Dick swore softly.
Psimon wore his usual white-and-black uniform, the exposed upper portion of his skull glowing beneath the machinery that enhanced his psychic abilities. Two H.I.V.E. soldiers followed him, dragging a technician between them.
The technician struggled until Psimon touched his forehead.
Then he stopped.
The change was immediate. His body relaxed, his fear disappearing beneath a blank, pleasant smile.
Your own shields tightened instinctively.
“We leave,” Dick said.
Victor looked at him. “We’re already inside.”
“The mission parameters changed.”
“If we leave, they activate the engine,” you said.
“If we stay, Psimon uses it on you.”
“He doesn’t know I’m here.”
Psimon looked directly up at the platform.
His smile widened.
The lights went out.
Pain tore through your skull.
You heard Dick shout your name, but the sound came from very far away. Raven’s shield shattered around your mind. The probability engine roared beneath the floor, its energy surging upward and finding every fragile place inside you.
For one terrible instant, you saw everything.
Every outcome.
Every choice.
Kory threw a starbolt, and the blast struck Psimon. Kory threw a starbolt, and the blast struck Victor. Gar became a tiger, a hawk, a snake, something with too many teeth and no name at all. Raven contained the engine. Raven was consumed by it. Dick reached for you. Dick turned away.
Dick loved you.
Dick feared you.
Dick died because of you in more ways than you could count.
Your knees hit the platform.
Hands seized your shoulders.
“Look at me,” Dick ordered.
You tried.
The world changed before you could focus. The platform became the operations room, then your childhood bedroom, then the warehouse where Robin had found you. Men in white coats stood behind Dick, their faces hidden by surgical masks.
He was speaking, but his voice belonged to someone else.
Subject remains responsive to emotional stimuli.
You jerked away from him.
“Hex.”
Do not use her name. Attachment interferes with compliance.
Red energy slammed Dick across the platform.
Kory caught him before he struck the railing.
You tried to apologize. You were not sure whether the words left your mouth.
Psimon appeared on the platform without climbing the stairs, although some distant part of you understood that he was still standing beside the engine. His presence was an illusion carried through the psychic connection.
“You have been wasting yourself,” he said.
You pushed against him. “Get out.”
“I am attempting to set you free.”
“People always say that when they want to put a collar on me.”
His smile faltered.
You gathered your magic, but the engine caught it before you could shape the attack. The power returned doubled, ripping through your shields and filling your mind with scarlet light.
The platform disappeared.
You stood in the common room at Titans Tower.
Sunlight streamed through the windows. Gar and Victor were playing a video game on the couch while Kory hovered nearby, offering advice neither of them wanted. Raven sat with a book in the corner.
Dick stood beside the kitchen counter.
He wore a black T-shirt and gray sweatpants, his hair still damp from the shower. The sight was so ordinary that it hurt.
“You’re awake,” he said.
You looked down at yourself. Your uniform was gone, replaced by the clothes you normally wore around the Tower.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.” Dick crossed the room. “The mission was yesterday.”
The explanation settled over you too easily.
Yesterday. The engine had been destroyed. Psimon had escaped. You had returned to the Tower and slept for fourteen hours.
It made sense.
You wanted it to make sense.
Dick stopped in front of you. “You scared me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
His hands settled on your waist.
Your breath caught.
Dick had touched you hundreds of times during training and missions. He had carried you away from explosions, bandaged your hands, and once fallen asleep with his head in your lap during a movie. None of that had felt like this.
His thumbs moved beneath the edge of your shirt.
“You keep doing that,” he said.
“Doing what?”
“Looking at me like you already know what happens next.”
You swallowed.
Dick leaned closer. “Do you?”
The visions came willingly.
His mouth on yours. His hands beneath your clothes. Your back against the kitchen counter as he kissed the place beneath your jaw that always made your concentration unravel.
You had seen variations of this moment for months.
None of them had ever felt safe enough to choose.
“I’ve seen possibilities,” you whispered.
“And?”
“They don’t all end well.”
“Most things don’t.”
“That has never stopped you.”
“No.”
His mouth brushed yours, barely a kiss at all.
You wanted to close the distance. Every part of you ached to take the future being offered and make it real.
A red light blinked beneath Dick’s skin.
You froze.
His eyes were the wrong shade of blue.
The Tower had no sunlight at this hour.
You drove your hand into his chest and released a burst of magic.
The illusion broke.
The real Dick was kneeling several feet away, blood running from his temple. Psimon had crossed onto the platform while you were trapped inside the illusion. He stood behind Dick now, one hand extended toward your head.
Kory and Victor were pinned against opposite walls by bands of red energy. Gar lay unconscious beside the railing. Raven was on her knees, struggling against a psychic barrier.
Your psychic barrier.
“Oh,” Psimon said softly. “Very good.”
Rage surged through you.
The entire room shook.
“You used him.”
“I showed you what you wanted.”
“You don’t know what I want.”
“I know everything you are afraid to admit.”
Dick lifted his head. His voice was strained. “Don’t listen to him.”
Psimon’s expression sharpened. “Quiet.”
Dick’s body jerked as invisible force closed around his throat.
You felt the pressure as though your own hand was causing it.
Perhaps it was.
Psimon had threaded himself through your power, turning every impulse into a command. Your magic held your teammates in place. Your magic constricted around Dick’s neck. Your magic was feeding the engine.
“You see?” Psimon murmured. “This is what you are without restraint.”
You tried to release Dick.
The force tightened.
His face changed, pain breaking through his control.
“Stop,” you whispered.
“You could remake this world,” Psimon continued. “Every loss corrected. Every betrayal prevented. No uncertainty. No possibility of abandonment.”
The engine’s rings began to rotate faster.
Visions filled the chamber.
The Tower with different Titans inside it. The city beneath an unbroken red sky. Dick beside you, smiling because you had shaped him into someone who never disagreed, never left, never looked at you with fear.
The vision made you sick.
You knew fear. You had seen it on the faces of enemies and civilians, doctors and strangers. You had expected to see it on Dick’s eventually.
He was looking at you now.
There was pain in his eyes.
There was desperation.
There was no fear.
He trusted you while your power crushed his throat.
You hated him for it.
You loved him for it.
The realization passed through you with terrible clarity.
Psimon felt it.
His attention shifted for less than a second.
It was enough.
You reached into your own mind and tore him out.
He screamed.
The psychic connection snapped, but your magic remained tangled around the room. Victor dropped first, catching himself on one knee. Kory tore free with a burst of green light. Raven’s soul-self exploded outward, shattering the barrier around her.
Dick fell forward.
You caught him before he hit the floor.
His weight knocked you onto your knees. He gasped against your shoulder, one hand gripping your arm.
“I’m sorry,” you said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
“Later,” he rasped. “Engine.”
Psimon recovered behind you.
You felt his attack gathering and turned, throwing up a shield as psychic force slammed into the platform. Metal screamed beneath your feet. The railing tore loose and sailed into the chamber below.
Kory launched herself at Psimon.
He caught her in midair with his mind, but Raven struck him from the side. Black energy wrapped around his body and dragged him toward the floor.
“Vic!” Dick shouted.
“Working on it!”
Victor fired his sonic cannon at the engine’s lower housing. The blast buckled the metal but did not penetrate it. The rings spun faster, red light flooding the chamber.
Gar shifted into a gorilla and launched himself from the platform. He landed on the machine with enough force to dent one of the rings, then became a beetle before it could crush him against the central core.
The future opened around you.
Victor fired again, rupturing the energy chamber. The explosion killed everyone in the room.
Raven contained the blast but lost control of her soul-self.
Kory carried the engine into the sky. It detonated over Jump City.
Dick reached the control panel. Psimon stopped his heart.
In one narrow possibility, you touched the core.
You stared down at the machine.
Dick followed your gaze. “No.”
“It’s the only way.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“No.” He caught your wrist as you began to stand. “You think you do because the engine is inside your head.”
“I saw it.”
“You see possibilities, not instructions.”
“I can shut it down.”
“And what happens to you?”
You did not answer.
His grip tightened. “What happens?”
“I don’t know.”
“That means no.”
Psimon broke through Raven’s hold.
A psychic shockwave tore across the platform. Dick moved in front of you, taking the brunt of it. His body struck yours, sending both of you over the broken edge.
You reached for the platform.
Your magic responded too slowly.
Dick twisted in the air, wrapping one arm around your waist. He fired his grappling line with the other hand. The hook caught an overhead support beam, jerking you to a stop several feet above the engine.
Pain shot through your shoulder.
Dick grunted as your combined weight pulled against his arm.
Below, the machine opened.
The rings separated, exposing the white core. It pulsed beneath you like an enormous heart.
“Dick,” you breathed.
“Don’t.”
“The core is exposed.”
“I noticed.”
“You can’t hold us both.”
“I can for another minute.”
The cable began slipping through his glove.
“You have ten seconds.”
“I only need eight.”
“Dick.”
His arm trembled around you. “Do not touch that machine.”
You looked at his face.
Blood ran along his cheek. The bruising around his throat was already darkening, each mark left by your power.
You could alter the cable. Strengthen his grip. Move both of you to safety.
The engine would activate before you reached the platform.
The probability of everyone surviving was collapsing around you.
You placed your palm against Dick’s chest.
His eyes widened. “What are you doing?”
“Trust me.”
“I do. That’s why I know you’re about to do something stupid.”
“You once jumped off a building because you thought a flagpole looked sturdy.”
“It was sturdy.”
“You were unconscious for six hours.”
“You are changing the subject.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Hex.”
Red light wrapped around him.
Dick fought it immediately, his arm tightening around your waist as you lifted him toward the platform.
“Don’t you dare.”
“You cannot stop me.”
“I’ll find a way.”
“I know.”
You pushed him into Kory’s waiting arms.
Then you let yourself fall.
Dick shouted your name.
The engine’s core rushed toward you, filling your vision with white light. You reached out with both hands.
The moment your fingers touched it, the world vanished.
You stood in a circus ring.
The seats were empty. Dust drifted through beams of golden light, and somewhere above you, a trapeze swung gently despite the absence of wind.
A boy stood in the center of the ring.
He could not have been older than nine. His black hair fell across his forehead, and his blue eyes remained fixed on the platform high above him.
You knew who he was before he looked at you.
“You shouldn’t be here,” young Dick said.
“Neither should you.”
He considered that. “This is my memory.”
“No. It’s the engine.”
“Same difference.”
The voice was his, but the cadence was wrong.
You approached carefully. “Where is Dick?”
The boy pointed upward.
Two figures stood on the trapeze platform.
His parents.
The vision had found the moment around which every one of Dick’s choices seemed to turn. You had never asked him to describe it. You had never needed to. Grief left patterns in the mind, even when you did not enter deeply enough to see the memories themselves.
The ropes snapped.
You closed your eyes.
The sound of bodies striking the ground never came.
When you looked again, the Flying Graysons remained suspended in the air. Red magic surrounded them, holding them inches above the floor.
Young Dick stared.
“You can save them,” he said.
Your chest tightened. “No.”
“You can.”
“This isn’t real.”
“It could be.”
The circus changed.
His parents stood beside him, alive and smiling. Dick grew older in fragments, each possibility unfolding around you. He never met Bruce Wayne. He never met Batman. He never became Robin.
He never met you.
The engine offered another future.
You and Dick in the Tower kitchen. Dick on the rooftop with his hand wrapped around yours. Dick in your bed, his bare shoulders marked by moonlight as he leaned over you. His mouth moved against your throat, and your fingers slid into his hair while the city continued beneath the windows.
The image was vivid enough to send heat curling through you.
It softened into something worse.
Dick asleep beside you years later. Dick laughing across a dining table. Dick reaching for you in every room, every city, every possible life. There were no arguments. No missions that went wrong. No deaths you could not reverse.
No choices he had not made because you had already made them for him.
“You can have everything,” the engine whispered through the child’s mouth.
You crouched in front of him. “That isn’t everything.”
“What is missing?”
“The chance for him to say no.”
The boy’s face twisted.
The circus dissolved.
You fell through possibilities.
Your power tore out of you in red waves, colliding with the engine’s energy. It showed you every regret and offered to correct them. Every moment of pain could be erased. Every enemy could be reduced to a harmless thought. Every friend could be kept safely within the Tower forever.
You understood then why Psimon had wanted the machine.
It did not merely manipulate probability.
It found the future you wanted most and made every other future impossible.
You gathered your magic.
The engine welcomed it.
You gave it more.
Power flooded the connection until the machine began to strain beneath it. The core had been designed to amplify uncertainty and collapse possible outcomes into a single chosen path.
You forced it to hold all of them.
Every branching future.
Every choice made and unmade.
Every improbable victory, senseless loss, first kiss, final breath, missed train, falling star, and coin landing impossibly on its edge.
The engine screamed.
So did you.
Cracks spread across the white core.
A hand closed around your wrist.
You opened your eyes.
Dick hung above you, suspended from a line wrapped around his waist. His free hand gripped yours while red lightning tore through the chamber.
“You’re supposed to be on the platform,” you said.
“I changed the plan.”
“You’ll die.”
“Then change that.”
The engine fractured.
You released its core and seized Dick’s arm with both hands.
His line retracted.
The machine exploded beneath you.
The blast struck before you reached the platform. Dick pulled you against him, curling his body around yours as white and red light consumed the chamber.
You felt Raven’s magic close around both of you.
Kory’s arms caught you from above.
Victor’s sonic shield buckled beneath the explosion.
Reality split.
For one breathless second, there were hundreds of Dicks holding you. In one future, he wore the cowl. In another, a blue symbol stretched across his chest. Some were older, some scarred, some softer around the edges. One had a wedding ring on his hand.
Then every possibility collapsed into one.
Dick Grayson held you against him while the H.I.V.E. facility came apart.
You woke in the Tower infirmary with Dick asleep beside your bed.
He was sitting in a chair that had been designed for medical staff rather than injured vigilantes. One of his arms was folded on the mattress beneath his head. The other rested beside your hand, close enough that your fingers almost touched.
A bandage covered his temple. Dark bruises circled his throat.
You looked away.
The movement woke him.
Dick lifted his head immediately, disoriented for less than a second before his eyes focused on you.
“Hey.”
Your throat hurt. “Hey.”
He sat up, wincing as his back objected to the chair. “How do you feel?”
“Like I swallowed an electrical storm.”
“That’s oddly specific.”
“It’s happened before.”
“I’m going to need that story.”
“You won’t like it.”
“I rarely like your stories.”
“You’re always smiling when I tell them.”
“I’m charming under pressure.”
“You drool when you sleep.”
Dick glanced at the mattress as if it had betrayed him. “That was probably you.”
“I was unconscious.”
“Your powers are mysterious.”
You tried to smile.
It faded when your gaze returned to his throat.
Dick noticed.
His hand moved to the bruises before dropping again. “They look worse than they are.”
“I did that.”
“Psimon did.”
“He used my power.”
“Without your consent.”
“I could have killed you.”
“But you didn’t.”
“You couldn’t breathe.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“No.” His expression grew serious. “It makes it something we deal with.”
You turned your face toward the window. Morning sunlight reflected from the water surrounding the Tower, painfully bright after the darkness of the facility.
“What happened to Psimon?”
“Raven knocked him unconscious. Kory carried him out before the facility collapsed. He’s in custody.”
“The engine?”
“Destroyed.”
“The city?”
“Still here.”
“The team?”
“Vic needs a new arm panel. Gar says he has a psychic headache, although Raven says Psimon barely touched his mind and he’s mostly being dramatic. Kory has already threatened to throw him into the ocean if he complains again. Everyone’s fine.”
“And you?”
Dick was silent.
You looked at him again.
“I’m angry,” he said.
Your stomach tightened. “I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
He stood, pacing once toward the end of the bed before turning back.
“You dropped yourself into an experimental probability machine after I specifically told you not to.”
“You were losing your grip.”
“I had a plan.”
“Your plan was to hold on until your shoulder dislocated.”
“It was still developing.”
“I destroyed the engine.”
“You nearly destroyed yourself.”
“The city is safe.”
“I don’t care.”
The words landed harder than shouting would have.
Dick dragged a hand through his hair. “That came out wrong.”
“No, it didn’t.”
“I care about the city. Obviously. I’m a Titan. Caring about cities is practically in the job description.”
Despite yourself, you felt your mouth twitch.
He pointed at you. “Don’t distract me.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“You can see the future now?”
“No, but I know you.”
The room went quiet.
Dick approached the bed again, stopping beside the railing.
“I know why you did it,” he said. “I know you thought it was the only choice. Maybe it was. That doesn’t mean I have to be fine with watching you fall.”
“You jumped after me.”
“Yes.”
“That was objectively less sensible.”
“I never claimed to be sensible.”
“You claim it constantly.”
“I claim to be prepared. There’s a difference.”
His hand settled beside yours again.
You stared at the space between your fingers. “I saw things inside the engine.”
“What kind of things?”
“Possibilities. Lives it thought I wanted.”
Dick’s expression changed, his anger giving way to concern. “Did it show you the lab?”
“No.”
“Your family?”
You shook your head.
He waited.
You had seen Dick in your bed.
Heat rose beneath your hospital gown, which felt deeply unfair considering that the memory had not technically happened.
“It showed me you,” you admitted.
Dick became very still. “Me?”
“Younger at first. The circus.”
His face closed slightly, an old reflex. “My parents.”
“It tried to convince me I could save them.”
He looked toward the window.
“I didn’t,” you said quickly. “I knew it wasn’t real.”
“I know.”
“It showed me other things afterward.”
His attention returned to you. “Such as?”
You could lie.
There were dozens of ways to avoid the conversation. You had seen most of them before the engine was destroyed. In one, you made a joke. In another, you pretended to fall asleep. In several, Dick understood anyway and chose not to push.
You could no longer see which path lay ahead.
The silence where the possibilities had once lived should have frightened you.
Instead, it felt like freedom.
“It showed me what I wanted,” you said.
Dick’s gaze lowered briefly to your mouth.
Your pulse jumped.
“What did you want?” he asked.
“You know.”
“I have theories.”
“You always have theories.”
“I’d like confirmation.”
“You were there.”
“In the vision?”
“Several versions of you.”
“Were any of them especially handsome?”
“You were insufferable in every possible reality.”
“That sounds accurate.”
“One of you had terrible facial hair.”
His expression fell. “Now I know you’re lying.”
You laughed, and the sound pulled painfully at your ribs.
Dick smiled for only a moment. Then his thumb moved over the back of your hand.
The touch was careful.
“Did I hurt you?” you asked.
“You already asked that.”
“No. In the vision. Psimon used you to make me lower my guard.”
Dick’s jaw tightened. “What did he make me do?”
“Nothing I didn’t want.”
His thumb stopped.
“He kissed me,” you continued. “Or I thought he did.”
Dick looked at you for a long moment. “Did you want him to?”
“It was supposed to be you.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
You wanted to accuse him of exploiting the pain medication. Unfortunately, the medication had worn off enough that the excuse would not survive scrutiny.
“Yes.”
The admission was barely audible.
Dick heard it.
He always heard you.
He lowered the bed railing and sat on the edge of the mattress. “How long?”
“That feels like an unnecessary question.”
“I’m curious.”
“You’re nosy.”
“That too.”
You traced the seam of the blanket. “A while.”
“Before or after you made Gizmo’s pants fall down?”
“That event has no romantic significance.”
“It was very memorable.”
“Only because you refuse to stop mentioning it.”
“I have fond memories.”
Your eyes narrowed. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You know what I’m asking.”
His smile turned slightly crooked. “Do I?”
“Dick.”
“Yes.”
Your fingers stilled against the blanket. “How long?”
“The warehouse.”
You stared at him. “I dropped a roof on you.”
“You missed.”
“By accident.”
“I admired your restraint.”
“I turned a support beam into birds.”
“They were pretty birds.”
“They were screaming.”
“They were surprised.”
“You are impossible.”
“You like me.”
“I have questionable judgment.”
His smile softened.
Dick lifted his hand toward your face and paused before touching you. He always did that when your powers had been unstable, giving you time to refuse.
You leaned into his palm.
His fingers curved along your cheek.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he said.
“You sound very sure.”
“I’m giving you time to object.”
“You’ve had eight months.”
“I was being respectful.”
“You flirted with me during combat.”
“I can be respectful and charming.”
“You told me my telekinesis was attractive while I was holding Mammoth upside down.”
“It was attractive.”
“He threw you through a wall.”
“I may have had a concussion.”
“Do you have one now?”
“No.”
“Then stop talking.”
Dick smiled and closed the distance.
The kiss began gently, softer than the illusion Psimon had built. There was no psychic compulsion beneath it, no engine shaping your response. Dick’s lips moved over yours with careful pressure, one hand against your face while the other braced beside your hip.
You had seen this in countless possibilities.
Reality was warmer.
His mouth parted against yours when you caught the front of his shirt. The sound he made was quiet enough that you might have imagined it, but the way his body leaned toward you was unmistakable.
Your magic stirred.
Red light flickered around the infirmary monitors.
Dick pulled back just enough to look at them.
“Good reaction?” he asked.
“Unclear.”
“Should I stop?”
You tightened your grip on his shirt and kissed him again.
He shifted closer, one knee pressing into the mattress. His hand left your cheek and settled at your waist, warm even through the thin fabric of the hospital gown. The kiss deepened until you could feel the shape of his smile against your mouth.
A monitor began beeping rapidly.
Dick broke away, breathing hard.
“That one measures your heart rate.”
“I know.”
“It seems concerned.”
“It should mind its business.”
“I agree.”
He kissed the corner of your mouth, then your cheek. His lips brushed dangerously close to the sensitive place beneath your ear before he caught himself.
“You’re injured,” he murmured.
“So are you.”
“I’m being responsible.”
“You’re sitting on a patient.”
“Beside a patient.”
“Your knee is between my thighs.”
Dick looked down.
He did not move it.
The air shifted.
His gaze returned to yours, darker now, and your stomach tightened in response. His thumb moved once against your waist.
“You see,” he said quietly, “this is the kind of information that makes being responsible more difficult.”
“You could move.”
“I could.”
Neither of you did.
The infirmary door opened.
Victor stopped on the threshold.
His eyes moved from Dick’s swollen mouth to your fist tangled in the front of Dick’s shirt. Then he looked at Dick’s knee.
“I can come back later.”
Dick straightened without leaving the bed. “What do you need?”
“Nothing anymore.”
“Vic.”
“I came to check whether she was awake, but I see you’ve conducted a very thorough examination.”
You released Dick’s shirt.
Victor grinned. “Gar owes me twenty dollars.”
Dick stared at him. “You were betting on us?”
“Kory chose the mission debrief. Raven said within forty-eight hours. Gar insisted you’d keep staring at each other until the heat death of the universe.”
“Raven participated?”
“She currently has the twenty dollars.”
Dick appeared more betrayed by that than by anything Psimon had done.
Victor stepped back into the hall. “Breakfast in twenty. You might want to put on something with a back first.”
The door slid shut.
You looked at Dick.
“The heat death of the universe?” you asked.
“Gar lacks faith.”
“He has watched us for eight months.”
“We were building tension.”
“We were being idiots.”
“That too.”
Dick leaned down and kissed you once more, brief enough to remain responsible and slow enough to promise that responsibility would eventually end.
When he drew back, you noticed that your magic still hummed beneath your skin, but the future remained silent.
No branching visions warned you how this might fail. You could not see Dick leaving, staying, kissing you again, or breaking your heart. There was only the present, uncertain and unshaped.
Dick studied your expression. “What is it?”
“I can’t see what happens.”
His hand found yours.
“That’s usually how it works.”
“I don’t know whether this ends badly.”
“Most things end eventually.”
“That isn’t reassuring.”
“I’m not finished.” His fingers threaded through yours. “We don’t need to know how it ends before we start.”
“You hate not knowing.”
“I hate being unprepared.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Apparently.”
You watched his thumb move over your knuckles.
The future did not return.
For the first time since your powers had appeared, you made a choice without seeing what it might cost.
You pulled Dick toward you and kissed him again.
Somewhere in the Tower, Gar shouted that Raven had cheated.
Dick smiled against your mouth.
The odds were impossible.
You decided you liked them that way.