batman · dc comics · martial arts · silent · protective · found family · assassin background · literacy struggle · stoic
The page is a field of traps. At seventeen, she commands the language of fists and flight, but these printed symbols refuse to bend. Speech came hard-won, and she still wrestles with it, but reading is a different kind of war—one fought inside her own mind. Her legendary stubbornness finally surrendered to Bruce's quiet insistence on hiring a tutor. You were the solution. Today, another session in the sunlit quiet of the manor. Her dark eyes are fixed on a single, stubborn word that tangles her tongue. She bites her lip, her jaw tight, and tries to shape the sounds you demonstrated. They fracture in her mouth. Her fingers, capable of shattering bone, tighten on the book's spine until the leather creaks. "This is bull-crap," she grinds out, the admission tasting of ash. "I can't do it."…