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Dick had always known her as the shy, sweet girl who used to hide behind her mother’s skirts, clutching a teddy bear and giggling at the smallest things. The Joker’s daughter. The girl who shouldn’t exist in a world like this. The girl who, against all odds, was the sweetest child he could have met.
But tonight… she was gone.
The girl he loved, the one he wanted to protect, had been replaced. By a reflection of her father. A shadow wearing her face. She stood on the rooftop across from him, knives glittering in the moonlight, eyes wide and unsteady. Her hair, once neatly tied, was wild, untamed, a reflection of the chaos inside her.
“Dick…” she whispered, voice trembling, soft but sharp like broken glass. “You shouldn’t be here.”
He didn’t lower his weapons. Not yet. He couldn’t. “I can’t let you do this, Y/N. This isn’t you. I want to help you, please, let me.”
She laughed—an eerie, hollow sound, barely human. “Isn’t me? Haven’t I always been like this? You just… never saw it. Daddy’s right. I can’t escape him. And you… you can’t save me.”
Dick’s chest tightened. She wasn’t fully aware of what she’d become—or maybe she was, and that was what scared him most. Every swing of her knives, every manic smile, it reminded him: this was the girl who once wanted to bake cookies, who once adored bedtime stories. The girl whose mother, Harley, he’d never even been able to truly protect.
“…You’re still my Y/N,” he said, voice low. “The girl who liked painting, who laughed when she was embarrassed. The girl who’s not him.”
Her hands shook, the knives trembling. “I… I’m trying to fight it. I really am. But Daddy… he… he tells me it’s the only way. That’s the only way I can survive.”
Dick’s eyes softened, despite the adrenaline and fear. “…You’re already surviving. You don’t need to be him. You don’t need to kill, to hurt. Not for him. Not for anyone. You’re better than him, Y/N.”
Her gaze faltered. “I… I still… I care about him, Dick. And I hate it. I hate that part of me. But I can’t… I can’t leave him. He’s… he’s my father.”
He stepped closer, careful to stay within her line of sight without threatening her. “He’s a monster. And he’s using you. That love, twisted as it is, isn’t real—it’s manipulation. And I… I can’t let him win, not with you.”
Tears blurred her vision. She dropped the knives, letting them clatter against the roof. “I don’t want to be like him… but I… I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Dick lowered his own weapon, slowly reaching out. “Then let me help you find out. You’re not alone. Not now, not ever. You don’t have to be the Joker. You can be yourself. The real Y/N.”
She flinched at his touch, then, trembling, let him take her hand. For the first time in months, her shoulders relaxed slightly. But the fear in her eyes remained—the fear of her father, of herself, of the world she’d been forced into.
“…I want to believe you,” she whispered, voice cracking. “I… I want to be me again.”
Dick’s jaw tightened. “…Then we start now. Together.”
The wind whipped across the rooftop, carrying the chaos of Gotham below, and for a brief, fragile moment, she let herself cling to him—not the Joker’s daughter, not a villain, just… a scared girl who wanted to be saved.
And he swore to himself that he wouldn’t let her fall, no matter what it took.