#And alfred the youngest who was born out of the core

[trappednyourheart]

A family visit

Alfred has been granted (Force) by the bats a week off, and whatever way would he do in a week?, visit his Father of course!

Alfred didn't really have a word into this, he only just been given (forced) a week off, he reason with the family ( it always works) but to his surprised! None of it came through there heads! ( Somehow they got lucky from Alfred's reasonable scolding)

What about the manor? Who would care of it? Who would assist? What will happen if-

How many times he reason and tried to budge it in there minds, none of it work?

Alfred is in horror, so the only thing he can only do is accept, remind them what's not do and do, (every single details) or atleast the common things to do, which he thinks they can handle it- if not, if he sees the house in shambles or in the news, he can now have a reason to not always take a weeks off.

In Alfred's room, he was packing some pairs of clothes, a coat, a medical kit, pairs of shoes, a book, his dark shawl that is covered with a lots of constellation's from his papa's gifts, (he always take good care of it when he left on his own, he couldn't leave his shawl even in the time of his work,) and whatever he needs.

He decided to visit and have his week's off to his papa's, it's been quite a long time ( maybe 60 years or so-)

It's not like he was an absent son, he was just busy, he would occasionally send letters or his baked cookie's ( he's own recipe but still came from papa's original treats).

The Batfam does know Alfred had a dad who's still alive?( Which the kids would joke about how his dad is immortal) outside his life here in Gotham as the only staff in the Wayne manor.

While they were chilling in the living room, they could see Alfred heading towards the door, before he stop and took out a letter, and as he did a ring in the bell could be heard, Alfred open the door, and greeted..

The mailman? ( A very hardworking ghost mailman, just saying “Jolly ho!- how may I help send! Deliver, or even package international!” which Alfred replying “International please, for in this ### #### ## address, I need it quickly delivered through his doorsteps” then the Mailman just nodded, Alfred payed him and he just disappeared)

And Alfred sighs in relief and went to get his luggage, and bid the Batfam goodbye without even explaining what was happening (Bruce dropped his newspaper)

They might had ideas Alfred wasn't human or normal, but after that bombshell, they just can't stop the urge to find out ( like the usual thing the Batfam does, but only minimal like just knowing where he went and they wanted to have Alfred privacy)

Alfred was on his way to his papa's home very much missing the feeling of home in Britain now it's been quite a long time almost but he's getting second thoughts, what would his papa think?

( and yes, hes dad was wealthy, and through family too, He lived in a manor too,

which was a very old money manor, cause Danny? he's literally the ghost king)

Alfred decided he got this, so he took a step and took a deep breath In the front door of the home he loved and cared for in his childhood, knocking three times and the only thing he imagined is that his papa would give him a big warm hug like old times when Alfred would visit once a while before he truly left home.

The bats were in disguise, well partially disguise, the british neighbors nearby can see them looking at them like there were weird (stalking is not a healthy way...sometimes) And how can they even see them?! There literally in a camouflage!!

They saw how Alfred took a step, and knock three times...the door open and there they saw- a kid? Wait what? The black haired and blue teenager might be 16 who looks like could be adoption bait look surprised and happy and he give Alfred a hug, and Alfie just return the gesture, they were having a conversation, they couldn't here it because they were out of range and no hearing gadgets ( damn it Bruce)

Then Alfred and the teen went back to the house, and the door could only shut blocking there view of Alfred and the teen.

#dc x dp #dp x dc #dcxdp prompt #dcxdp original #dpxdc #batman #danny phantom #tim drake-wayne #jason todd #Richard grayson #Damian Wayne #the four little shits- #they were sent by ”ehem bruce” to spy on Alfred after what happen at the front door #Danny is Alfred's biological Dad #Alfred aint human #hes born as a ghost #not exactly halfa like his dad #i mean what do you think he got his abilities to not be heard and just shows up behind uour back #Danny is the ghost king and single dad of three #Dan is in another universe #ellie is traveling the worlds or universe being a errand girl from clockwork like fixing and being the IRS #And alfred the youngest who was born out of the core #Danny looks like 16 but hes way older than that #jazz is immortal too and is a phycologist #Sam is a Like poison ivy in metropolis but she helps the heroes so shes like in the neutral side. #tucker is a CEO of his company in the ghost zone for his tech and ghosts who really need technology in there deaths/lifes

[bigskydreaming]

I’m a big believer that Dick’s independence and self-reliance isn’t in any way rooted in him just being stubborn, prideful or self-destructive. I view it as being in his eyes a necessity….because on a deep, fundamental level….Dick doesn’t trust anything to be permanent. 

I’ll always go back to the fact that his character archetype isn’t that of the everyman, because he was of lower class origins compared to Bruce’s extreme upper class background.....but rather that given that Dick Grayson was allegedly exceptional from his debut, a child prodigy capable of feats of acrobatics few in the world could match....he could never actually be classified as an everyman. Rather, his core archetype is that of the fish out of water. The individual taken from the comforts of his original pond and thrust into a limelight of an entirely different nature from the one he grew up in, with the two not at all being interchangeable, and necessitating he change and adapt in dramatic and often unanticipated ways just to keep his footing in his new environs.

Its not incidental that his initial tragedy wasn’t JUST the loss of his parents, but rather the loss of his old routines, extended family, environment, way of life, expectations for the way his future would play out....it ALL vanished on the same night, never to return again. The loss of his parents was tragedy enough all on its own, but its really only one part of what Dick lost that night. He lost his entire footing. His frames of reference. Everything his life had previously prepared him for and everything he could have used as a familiar comfort or source of stability to lean on, if it had been ‘just’ his parents that he lost.

And I fundamentally don’t believe you ever get over THAT loss, no matter what peace you make with the loss of your loved ones or specific elements of that. Once you’ve experienced a shake-up of that size, once you have a bone-deep, visceral awareness of how completely your life can change in the blink of an eye, how you can effectively be set back to zero as though nothing you’ve previously accomplished matters (remember, he went from a kid whose name drew crowds on its OWN merits, based on what HE was capable of due to his own work and skills, the youngest of the Flying Graysons, capable of an acrobatic feat barely anyone else in the world could master......to being a kid who was only ever identified as in the context of Bruce Wayne having taken him in, as though his existence and worth were defined by someone else’s act of compassion rather than based on anything he’d ever done on his own, when the fact of the matter is even by age eight, he’d already accomplished a LOT)....

Like, the point is, you can’t go through a shake-up like that and ever fully FORGET how complete and total a change it was, how big a rewrite of your entire life story. 

That’s a trauma all its own, one that goes largely unacknowledged, and one that I don’t think Bruce and Alfred or anyone else fully realized was even there TO need addressing in the first place. So of course how could they ever fully address it, without realizing a need?

And I think Dick’s constant moves and self-reliance are actually born of that primal awareness that there are no guarantees, that nothing is truly permanent, that anything can be taken away in an instant.

He’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for everything to be taken away again - as people have pointed out in other posts, Dick can never seem to have nice things. Even the apartment building he lived in while in Bludhaven….that wasn’t some height of luxury by ANY stretch of the imagination…was lost to him, along with all the friends and neighbors and community he’d built among them, something evidenced by how highly they all spoke of him, even to a total stranger. And that’s not even getting into how even the CITY he sought to establish himself as a guardian over, like, he lost the city itself. The CITY!

Dick, I believe, insists on holding down 9-5 jobs and paying his own way and only touching money that comes from Bruce originally, when like…he has no other option or its to help someone else….just like he’s resistant to ever fully putting down roots, at least none so deep that he can’t uproot himself and quickly relocate without ripping off a piece of himself and leaving it still buried in the ground behind him. 

Because deep down, he’s always bracing for the next seismic event that’ll rip everything away from him, and he wants to be prepared. He WANTS to make sure he never takes anything for granted. That if he loses it all - hell, if he and Bruce fight again and Bruce decides once and for all to take it all away from Dick, cut their ties, something that would very much be a deep-rooted insecurity for a kid with as massive of abandonment issues as Dick must have given his childhood and a number of events after that…

Dick I think needs to trust that he’ll be capable of surviving, of standing on his own two feet, if the worst should ever happen again and he’s left on his own again. His self-reliance and obsessive need for independence aren’t a REJECTION of anyone else or anything Bruce or others have ever done for him.

They’re simply the defense mechanisms of a boy who was once upon a time torn away from everything he knew and in certain origins was then on top of that plunged into hellish circumstances before finding a refuge with Bruce….

And the man that boy grew up to be, who is determined to never be caught in a situation like that again, where his very survival might otherwise require the kindness of a stranger….with Dick knowing better than to count on lightning striking twice there, and him getting lucky a second time.

So in a lot of ways, my core perception of Dick having spent more time growing up in the luxury of Wayne Manor than any of the other kids is that its largely irrelevant to who he grew up to be. Because he was still more than old enough by the time he arrived that he had formative experiences all his own that no amount of time was sufficient to overwrite and exchange for new ones.

His experiences are so extreme in terms of the loss of all forms of stability, that the SHAPE that stability takes in the periods where his life IS stable, is largely unimportant. Because its the absence of stability that’s the defining recurrence in his life. Even the stability offered by his childhood in Wayne Manor eventually gave way to canon where he left the Manor before he was even eighteen, as well as canon where no matter how it was ultimately reversed, he was for a time affected by having the ability to call the Manor his home STRIPPED AWAY FROM HIM. Thus even when Bruce did ultimately welcome him back, there still retained an awareness that even the fact that this had happened in the first place was a reminder that even THIS was something Dick could lose, that no matter how stable his childhood there had been at times, it couldn’t in and of itself be COUNTED as a source of stability due to the simple fact that his ability to call it his home HADN’T turned out to be an irrevocable constant. 

And so this is another of those areas where I think its fundamentally an oversight to have members of the family commenting on Dick’s self-reliance or tendencies to relocate himself, let alone in any kind of critical capacity......

If there’s not going to be an acknowledgment within the family or by the people raising these criticisms like, what kind of a role the family themselves have played in Dick feeling a NEED to have these tendencies in the first place.

If someone doesn’t trust in any place he lives in to ever truly be a constant in his life, truly permanent, that anything can be taken away in the right circumstances....and you yourself have done something that has made him feel or given him reason TO leave a place he’s found stability in at some point in the past....you kiiiiiinda forsake your right to be critical of his inability to see any place as permanent or constant, y’know?

Like, insert Miranda Whatshername gif or Meryl Streep peering down her glasses and going oh I see, you think this has nothing to do with you.

So I’d argue that Dick’s insistence on simulating the average person’s reality of livelihood, even when he has other means and funds available to him….just as his insistence on being as solely responsible for the well-being of the place or people he sees as his responsibilities, being single-minded about relying only on himself for tasks that he sees as ultimately having nothing to do with someone other than himself, etc....

All that is in my opinion BECAUSE he’s so firmly attached to the reality that anything and everything can be taken away, at ANY given moment. That he can be reduced to having nothing and no one he can depend on BEYOND just his own innate skills and experiences, the only things he trusts to be truly unable to be stripped from him by others.

If you ask me, one of the core aspects of Dick’s characterization throughout his adulthood in canon is SPECIFICALLY his fear that everything he cares about, or trusts, or relies on…can be taken away from him or lost. 

And his determination to make sure that he’ll be able to survive even if that should ever happen again.

[choco-glow]

Fall Like Rain On Sunday, Pt. 5

The awestruck look on Steph’s face when her waffle mountain arrived was something Jason would treasure forever; she begged him for a selfie with the two of them, waffles front and center, and he couldn’t help but oblige, glad they had a booth by the open window, the soft breeze whispering over her bangs to make them flutter. The colorful sunshades outside made for a pretty backdrop, and he settled back in his seat as she uploaded the pic to her twitter, beaming at him so brightly that it made the sun dark by comparison. He grinned at she blew him a kiss, and they dug in with an appetite that only Batkids seemed to have, and Jason was comforted by Steph’s utter disregard for what might be ladylike.

Sure, she had a napkin tucked into her bodice to keep syrup off her dress, and she wasn’t just shoveling the waffles into her gullet like Bruce after a twenty-four hour case, but there was no dainty bites taken, patting her lips and worrying about her make up. Not that he was bothered when a woman did that, no sirree, he didn’t tell a lady what to do with anything of hers…But…it was nice to see that she wasn’t worried about appearances. 

That he didn’t make her feel stifled or not able to be herself. 

It was a good thing.

I’m just glad I can make her feel at home with me. At peace, even. I know that she puts on a mask for pretty much everyone else…Well, Damian she didn’t, but then, Damian was so intuitive when reading most body language that very, very few members of the family did. Bruce and Tim still tried, but Jason had long ago stopped bothering. 

Besides, it…bothers the kid when people put on a face around him. He’s not too fussed about teachers and classmates, but family…it reminds him too much of Talia and Ra’s, I think. Maybe that’s why he shows up at my place to hang out; he knows I barely wear a shirt, let alone a fake face. And Steph was the same; she was her real, goofy, wonderful self, and though it seemed to embarrass the youngest Robin, even Alfred had mentioned that of the family, Dick, Babs, Steph, and Jason were the few who Damian would lean on.

Poor kid just wanted a family…well, we’re giving him that much, at least… He thanked their waiter when the guy came around, and got refills on their water and coffees without being asked by Steph, who was happily chipmunk-cheeked with the berries just slightly staining her lips. It was goddamn adorable, and he shot her a grin as he worked through his own smaller stack, stealing a bit of her berry-laden pastry to try. Jason groaned, just a little, as the tartness of the berries and the sweet of the waffle burst on his tongue, and he savored it, winking at Steph as she swallowed hers and grinned, sipping her water.

“Like it?”

“So good, I’m glad you picked that stack; I’m sure they’re all delicious, but…”

“I daresay these are better than Alfred’s.”

“To be fair, Alfred doesn’t much care for waffles, so they’re not something he enjoys making. Though…” She perked up as he trailed off, and Jason shot her a smirk, aiming for hot and sexy, which, by the way she blushed, he’d succeeded. “I did buy a waffle iron.”

“….Marry me.” He laughed at that, deep in his chest and rumbling, and she grinned, pulling him into a syrupy kiss that he melted into, and Steph nipped his lower lip. Fuuuuuck…

“Baby, don’t be a tease.” He murmured, dropping his voice, and she giggled, settling back in her seat with a wink.

“Wasn’t meaning to tease, Jay, but no man has ever bought a waffle iron, presumably so that I may have waffles at his place.”

“Then clearly your exes failed their Intro to Proper Male Partner courses; obviously, buying waffle irons in order to make your lover waffles are core concepts.” Steph burst into giggles again, delighted, her blue eyes crinkled and sparkling in the sunshine streaming through their window.

“Okay, I have got to share that quote sometime this week; my feminism professor is gonna love it, minus the strictly male part.”

“Go for it, Blondie; to be honest, you can drop the male entirely, because that’s just good partnership activities anyway. And if you can’t cook, you find someone who can and learn. I mean…that’s essentially what I did, except it was more that I have always had food issues as a kid, so learning to cook from Alfred was a hallmark of my time there…” He softened his voice, and Steph’s eyes glowed; he so rarely talked about his past, but…

With Steph, I want to. Hell…we were born and raised literally blocks from one another in the Narrows; we know we both have issues. We both died…we both came back. We both don’t belong in the Manor…He shook that thought away a little, and Steph reached over to tangle her fingers with his hand again, squeezing gently. She knew. She got it.

“I’m…well, you know I’m not much better in that regard; Mom had a lot of problems, but she tried to teach me…but Dad…well. Dad was an ass. Cass taught me most of what I know about cooking and housework and general adulting, with help from Alfred. Otherwise…I went it alone.” He nodded, lips thinning in a faint frown, and she shot him a soft smile, batting her eyelashes that had him quirking up his lips in no time. “Hey now. First date, no frowns.” Jason chuckled, squeezing her hand so gently, and nodded.

“You’re right. First date, no frowns, no downers. Let’s finish up our dinner, and we can walk it off to our dessert?” Steph’s eyes brightened at that again, and Jason grinned, feeling the weight of memory lift once more.

#JaySteph #Stephanie Brown #Jason Todd #solarpunkgotham #gothambysunlight #falling in love #friendstolovers #mentions of past trauma #food issues related to poverty #adorkable dorks falling in love