INTERLUDE: THE ART OF LETTING PEOPLE IN

The mission had ended without bloodshed.

That should have felt like a victory.

The mayor was alive. The League of Shadows had been pushed back, their infiltration quickly and quietly dismantled. Whatever whispers filtered out to the press were quickly swallowed by Gotham’s ability to forget. A few guests murmured about strange noises, a momentary flicker in the lights, but the official story—a security drill misfire—held.

The city moved on the way it always did.

Scar tissue over bone.

But Taylor didn’t move on with it. The aftermath was the part she hadn’t prepared for.

She’d expected the debrief to come with corrections. Notes. Silence. She’d expected distance, cool professionalism, maybe even a quiet reminder that this wasn’t her place yet.

What she hadn’t expected was inclusion.

Nightwing passed her in the hall the next morning with a grin and tossed her a protein bar like it was tradition. Spoiler elbowed her during gear checks, muttering that Taylor was “hogging all the cool entrances” and threatening to redesign her cape out of spite.
Barbara said nothing at all—just gave her a bright grin as she reviewed mission footage, the kind of expression that meant: You did good.

No hesitation. No skepticism.

No one looked at her like an outsider anymore.

Even Damian seemed more accepting of her place in the manor now. 

It should’ve been comforting. Like a step forward.

Instead, it felt like standing at the edge of a cold pool—ankle-deep, breath held, waiting to see if she was allowed to dive in. Waiting for someone to pull her back.

One night, after training and a quiet dinner Alfred usually made feel normal, Taylor lingered near the library. She wasn’t sure why—she had no book in hand, no goal in mind. Just… drifted there, the way she used to patrol rooftops for comfort she couldn’t name.

Alfred found her there.

He didn’t say anything at first. Just approached with the calm surety of someone who never needed to raise his voice to be heard. And when he did speak, it was steady. Gentle in a way that left no room for protest.

“You don’t have to earn your place, Miss Hebert.”

Taylor’s jaw tightened. “I wasn’t trying to—”

“No,” he interrupted, though not unkindly. “But you’re still waiting for someone to take it away.”

She couldn’t look at him. “That’s not—”

“It is,” Alfred said, offered with the same grace he gave everything. “And it’s all right. But there are people here who don’t expect you to prove anything. You need only let them in.”

Then, like always, he left her with that—no expectation, no pressure to answer. No demand for understanding. 

Just truth, dropped like a key in her hand.

. . . . .

Later, Taylor stood alone on one of the manor’s balconies, arms crossed, eyes on the skyline. 

“I never thought I’d make it this far,” she murmured, not expecting anyone to hear.

But that wasn’t quite right.

She hadn’t expected to make it at all.

She thought back to the first days. Waking up in a body that felt unfamiliar. The confusion. The green liquid. The absence of powers—her insects, her swarm-sense, her reach across a thousand tiny bodies—gone. It had felt like death. Maybe it was death. But whatever brought her here, whatever strange twist of fate threw her into Gotham’s orbit, she had survived it.

Survived this.

“I didn’t know what I was supposed to be anymore,” she whispered. “Not a villain. Not a hero. Not even a person, really. Just… something broken that kept moving forward.”

She thought of the Narrows. The gang war. The fire. 

Of Marla.

Of Evan.

Of the moment she nearly crossed a line she couldn’t come back from.

And then she thought of now.

Her suit.

The sparring matches.

The quiet moments with Alfred, the sideways smiles from Dick, the eye-rolls from Stephanie, the measured patience in Barbara’s corrections.

The trust.

And the way none of it had come with strings.

Taylor Hebert, the savior of a broken universe, was gone. What remained was someone still learning what it meant to stop fighting. To let people in. To stay.

She rested her hands on the railing.

“I don’t know where this ends,” she said. “But for the first time in a long time… I’m okay not knowing.”

She let the silence stretch for a moment longer before stepping back inside.

The city would still be there tomorrow.

But tonight, she had a home to return to.