tw. mentions of unsafe sexual encounters, substance abuse, self-harming behaviours, self-destruction, overdoses, suicide attempts, grieving, 

Maeve started going out at night.

Not for air.

Not for escape.

But to feel something.

Bars that didn't card. Men who didn't ask her name. Pills she couldn't pronounce, but took anyway because they dulled the edge of grief long enough for her to pretend it wasn't there.

She hooked up with strangers who smelled like smoke and regret. Always kept the lights off. Never let them kiss her. She wasn't looking for connection — just punishment.

Sometimes she'd go to the alley where she first met Jason. Sit on the same curb. Hope some ghost of him would crawl out of the shadows and drag her home.

But no one came.

She overdosed three times.

The first time, she woke up alone in the ER, IV in her arm, wrists bruised from restraint straps. Bruce was there. Quiet. Eyes cold and sad.

"You promised me," he said.

Maeve laughed. "I didn't promise anything. You just assumed I had something left to live for."

He didn't argue. Just walked out.

The second time, Dick found her.

He pulled her off the bathroom floor in the Manor — limp, unresponsive, foam at her mouth. He stayed with her the whole ambulance ride. Held her hand when the Narcan hit and she started shaking.

She woke up screaming Jason's name.

Dick cried.

Right there in the hospital room.

She didn't apologize.

She didn't know how.

At seventeen she left the Manor. After her prior overdoses she decided she wanted away from the Wayne's.

Told Bruce she needed "space."

Dick didn't fight her. He just gave her a phone and said, "Call me if you need anything."

She didn't call.

She moved into a studio apartment on the edge of the Narrows — no kitchen, one cracked window, and a mattress on the floor.

She found work at a bar that didn't ask questions and learned how to mix drinks better than she could hold a conversation.

She started smoking.

Then drinking.

Then pills.

She told herself she wasn't an addict — just someone trying to feel less dead.

At eighteen, she overdosed again.

No one was there to find her. She woke up hours later on her bathroom floor with vomit in her hair and blood in her nose.

She didn't go to the hospital.

Just crawled to her bed and stared at the ceiling for two days.

The voicemail from Jason was still on her phone.

She played it on repeat until the battery died.

At ninteen, she stopped crying.

Not because she was healed — because the grief had calcified into something colder. Something meaner.

She started doing more dangerous jobs. Bartending turned to backroom gigs. Sometimes she sold fake IDs. Sometimes she helped move things for people who didn't use names.

She started carrying a knife.

Started using it.

She picked fights she didn't need to. Slept with people she didn't remember. Walked through alleyways like she was begging the city to finish what it started.

One night she stood at the bridge with her hands on the railing, the water roaring beneath her.

"I'm not scared of you," she told the river.

But she didn't jump.

She didn't know why.

And at Twenty, she looked older than her age. Lean, sharp, tired.

Her eyes had seen too much. Her smile was a rumor.

She still wore Melina's jacket, though it was worn down to the stitching.

Still had Jason's scarf, folded in a drawer like a secret.

She didn't talk to anyone about them.

Didn't visit their graves.

Didn't answer Dick's messages. He still sent them. Hey. Thinking of you. You good?

She never was.

She wasn't angry anymore. Just numb.

The kind of numbness that lets you stand in front of a gun and not flinch.

The kind that made you forget what day it was. What year. What the point was.

The kind that convinced you ghosts were better company than the living.

She still walked past Crime Alley sometimes.

Still listened to Jason's voicemail on old headphones, sitting on the curb with a cigarette and tears she couldn't cry.

Still stared at the scars on her wrists and wondered if they were deep enough.

They never were.