Chapter Text
The first thing Iris thinks, honestly, surely, but in a flicker of unkindness she'll regreat later, is: ‘She’s too pretty for him.’
Not in a mean way. Not really. Just…bluntly. Realistically. It’s not fair. Not to Wally. Not to her. But the thought bubbles up anyway, uninvited.
Because this girl standing in her living room...This girl is unreal. Sharp jaw, sharper eyes. Lipstick like blood and grace like a blade. She walks like a secret and smiles like she’s letting you in on one.
And then it hits Iris.
Like a punch. Like a headline.
Not the beauty. Not the polish. But the recognition.
‘Holy fuck. That’s Rikki Wayne.’
She doesn't say it out loud. She’s too well-trained for that, a decade of journalism has taught her how to keep a straight face in front of basically everything. So she doesn't let the shock bleed too far past her lashes.
Barry’s still smiling, Wally’s still talking, but Iris is seeing through it now. Through her. Because this girl standing in her living room, with the careful lipstick, the storm-blue eyes, the spine like a dancer and a soldier all at once… she’s not just Wally’s girlfriend. Not just some pretty girl Wally picked up after patrol. Not even just his heroine best friend.
She is a Wayne. She is a Grayson, only not. She’s trauma in heels. She’s Rikki Wayne.
The name Robbie hadn’t meant much, when Wally first mentioned it.
His best friend. Someone from the Titans. A bit of a prodigy. Kinda intense.
No, not dating, he’d said at first, back when he was fourteen, just hanging out. Hanging out a lot.
It was only later that the headlines came. Candid photos of her, Robin, leading the Titans. The paps had sang her praises. She was too pretty and too competent for them not to.
And then, later, she became Nightwing. Still pretty. Still competent. Just sadder.
She had disappeared twice, to Iris’ knowledge.
Once it was a kidnapping, back when she still was Robin.
Once something worse, after she had already become Nightwing.
And no, no headline ever said it but, after disappearing for almost a year, Nightwing didn’t smile anymore.
Because the ones who pay attention, the ones who really look, like Iris, know what happened.
Not in detail. There are no police reports, no headlines. But there’s something about the way the Titans flinched when she reappeared. Something about the way Nightwing moved after that, like every room was a trap.
And now here she is. Sixteen years old. In Iris’s living room.
It took years for Wally to admit he liked her. Other years still to admit they were something more. By the time he did, Iris had already guessed.
But knowing and seeing are two very different things.
Because now this girl…this child, barely sixteen years old, is standing in her home with Wally’s hand in hers, and she’s a hurricane in heels.
And Wally… Wally, who blushes at commercials and spills coffee down his shirt and has never shown interest in anyone, ever, is looking at her like she personally rewrote gravity.
And Iris is left reeling.
Iris forces a smile. “You’re… Robbie?”
The girl, Nightwing, Robin, Rikki, whatever name sticks, nods once. Calm. Controlled. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Allen-West.”
‘Mrs. Allen-West.’ Jesus Christ. Iris is pretty sure she saw footage of this girl hurling Deathstroke into a truck and then vanishing into smoke.
Barry, bless his heart, is grinning like it’s Christmas. “She beat me in a spar once,” he says, and Iris can’t tell if he’s proud or still smarting. Then he turns towards Rikki “I thought you were older.”
Rikki shrugs. “Everyone does.”
Later, after introductions and awkward banter and Barry nearly choking on his own tongue when Rikki shook his hand, because of course Barry adores her, in his own, quiet way, Iris escapes to the kitchen under the pretense of checking on dinner. Barry follows.
They don’t speak at first. And then Iris says, under her breath, "Did you know?"
He lifts a brow. "That she was coming over? Yeah, Wally texted"
"No. Barry. Did you know it was her?"
Barry shrugs, sheepish. "I mean…Wally wasn't subtle about it. He always had a crush on Robbie…”
"She’s Rikki Wayne.”
"I know."
“She’s sixteen, Barry.”
Barry shifts, uncomfortable. “You think she is too young?”
Iris huffs a laugh. “It’s not about age, Barry. It’s about weight. That girl carries enough grief in her to drown every room she walks into.”
“She didn’t even say anything sad.”
“She doesn’t have to.”
Barry doesn’t argue with that. But he says, gently, “She’s not a headline, Iris.”
“No. She’s a haunting.”
Barry doesn’t argue this time. Because she is. But more than that, she’s this raw, knife-bright, beautiful thing. And she’s looking at Wally like he’s her lifeline.
That scares Iris more than anything. Because Wally’s a good kid. A great kid. But he doesn’t know what it means to be someone's lifeline.
He’s just barely started figuring himself out. He’s never dated. He’s never wanted to date. Until her. Until this.
And Wally, sweet, hopeful, head-first Wally, has gone and fallen in love with her.
No. Worse. She’s fallen in love with him.
When they leave, Wally rambling something about patrol and ice cream, Rikki kissing Iris’s cheek like she’s done it before, like they’ve already skipped ahead in the timeline, her lipstick perfect even after dinner, her goodbye polite but distant, Iris sits on the couch and exhales like she’s been holding her breath the entire evening.
She stares at the closed door for a long time.
She doesn’t dislike the girl.
She just worries.
Wally falls hard. Wally loves hard. He’s all heart and speed and aching optimism. Rikki… she looks like someone who’s lost too many pieces of herself to believe in soft endings.
But there was a moment. A brief one.
When Wally had leaned just a little too close, said something stupid in that low, dorky voice he used when he was nervous. And Rikki had smiled, not the tight, practiced smile of the leader of the Titans. Not the icy one of a Wayne.
Just…real. Small and warm and for him.
Iris had seen it. And that, more than the headlines, more than the history, is what sticks with her.
Maybe, just maybe, this isn’t a disaster waiting to happen. Maybe they’ll save each other.
Still…“She’s too pretty for him,” she finally mutters.
Barry chuckles softly.
“And she’s going to ruin him”.
Barry doesn’t laugh at that. Because he’s wondering the same thing.
“They looked… happy,” he offers instead.
And they did. In a way that felt terrifying. Final. Like something that’s already taken root too deep to pull out clean.
“Wally is barely eighteen,” Iris says. “And she’s…”
“She’s sixteen. I know.”
“She’s Rikki Wayne, Barry. She’s lost half the people she’s ever loved. She’s been working ever since she could walk, first in that circus of hers and then in the circus that is high society. She has more trauma than Wally’s ever imagined.”
Barry looks at her. “So has he.”
Iris closes her eyes. That’s the thing, isn’t it?
They’re both too young. And already too old in the worst ways.
It’s only later, weeks into visits and quick dinners and polite smiles that deepen into quiet understanding, that the dates start to line up in Iris’s mind.
Dixie was Nightwing by fourteen. The leader of the Titans by twelve, if Wally and Barry's muttered stories are accurate.
Robin…Robin at nine.
Not trained.
Not supported.
Not protected.
Deployed.
Iris watches her one night, curled up beside Wally on the couch, both of them asleep after a movie.
She’s wearing one of Wally’s hoodies. There’s a scar on her collarbone that snakes up her neck and ends at the left bottom corner of her lips. It looks old. She flinches in her sleep.
She’s still sixteen.
And Wally, Iris’s boy, her heart, her son in all but name, looks at her like the world starts and ends in her heartbeat.
And maybe it does. Maybe it always has.
It’s a terrible thing, Iris thinks. To love like that. To need someone so deeply, so entirely, when the world has already tried to break them both.
Barry doesn’t say much about it. But sometimes, when Dixie leaves, he watches the door for a long moment before saying anything. And then it’s something soft, something distant.
“She’s been in the field longer than most of the League.”
Or: “She reminds me of someone, but I can’t tell who.”
Once, just once, he says: “She doesn’t know what it means to not be a weapon.”
And Iris remembers the way she slept on the sofa, her whole body curled around Wally's. The too-calm smile. The polite handshake. The way Wally looked at her like he’d found the last piece of something broken.
Love, Iris decides, is sometimes cruel. And sometimes necessary.
And yet…yet, when the door clicks shut behind them, when Dixie’s gone and the silence settles, Iris finds herself thinking:
‘This will end in heartbreak.’
She just doesn’t know whose. Maybe all of them.