#Even though Jason is a highly trained fighter | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fightabear · 3 years

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so some time ago, someone asked me to do meta about a scene in Injustice and i wanted to revisit that scene with the scene from Year Zero in mind. and then i ended up getting deeply into injustice damian, his relationship with his two awful dads, and it’s kind of a mini character essay?

so! here’s a warning for: tyrannical totalitariam regimes, child abuse, abusive fathers, emotional manipulation, evil superman, character death & also random he-man. please note that this is entirely about injustice and its characters, which are not a reflection on their mainstream counterparts.

there’s tension between damian and bruce from the get-go in injustice, and we’re never really told why. if we take cues from the game (though that entire scene doesn’t make sense) then it’s because bruce didn’t save jason, which fits in with my reordered robin theory in which tim and jason were switched, and jason has only recently died.

now, we don’t know whether jason is running around as red hood right now or not. but i’m inclined to say he isn’t, as his injustice 2 ending makes a big deal of him becoming red hood. and damian is close with jason in injustice 2, close enough that jason listens when damian tells him that he’s a lot more than bruce thinks he is and drops the shitty batman costume. close enough that during the (extremely weird, extremely out of alignment with the comic) scene in injustice 2 where damian betrays bruce for clark, jason is the name damian throws at him with the most vehemence. regardless of the robin ordeer, bruce’s failure to save jason is seems to be an incredibly sore point between them.

so it’s interesting that bruce is already counting damian out before injustice even starts. he’s comparing damian to jason - someone who he apparently no longer considers part of his legacy.

the kicker is: damian in injustice is actually probably the most morally centered version of himself. he shows open compassion and care for other people more often than he does in most of the mainstream runs. damian’s sense of right and wrong is solid, but what he wants is to break the cycle that gotham is trapped in. which from his perspective, is something bruce doesn’t seem to want to do.

injustice’s version of bruce is someone who truly believes that the ends justify the means - which means he’s apt to do some heinous things to people until they see his side of things. he seems to view people questioning as an act of betrayal, so instead of ever explaining himself he resorts to things like installing viruses in cyborg, kidnapping hawkgirl and replacing her, beating allies within an inch of their life - all of it is fine to him so long as they’re not dead.

but it’s not fine to damian. damian is constantly horrified at the lengths bruce will go to.

damian is afraid of his father.

so, this is about a specific scene. let’s get to that scene. its just important to note the difference between them, and emphasize that he’s not going with any intent to fight. if he was going to do that, he wouldn’t be doing this:

or respond like this:

or this:

he’s there to make amends, or at least try to. he still loves his father and he wants to be forgiven, and this is something that will carry on ten years later in injustice 2. damian made the choice to oppose bruce’s controlling nature but damian didn’t choose to abandon him and the bat family permanently. that choice was made for him. damian wants to come home.

and he’s terrified of his father. i cannot stress that enough. bruce at this point has already shown that he knows how to hurt his closest friends if they oppose him.

damian is a highly trained fighter, but he’s also a thirteen year old boy who knows he can’t overpower a man twice his size and weight.

and bruce?

bruce’s entire argument really hinges on ‘you, my thirteen year old son, didn’t take my side in this argument’. because, i have to put this in bold, the league was not executing the criminals they were removing from arkham. they were just transferring them to a more secure facility. something which is actually sorely needed, especially given what has just happened to metropolis. arkham isn’t fit to house them. and as far as damian sees it, bruce doesn’t like it because it’s removing an element of his control.

now, bruce isn’t wrong about how things will escalate.

but damian’s not wrong about his motivation here. i think there’s a conversation to be had about how bruce’s methods in trying to stop the regime actually drove it to further and further extremes. bruce never tries to talk to clark - or anyone, really. he just starts playing mind games to make them do what he wants.

it harkens back to the conversation bruce and dick have in the batplane. that bruce doesn’t talk to people, he doesn’t explain himself. he’s either right or you’re wrong and he won’t explain his stance. there is never room for debate. he’ll just stop talking and leave until you agree. there is no option where he sits and listens to an open and honest dialogue, no scenario where he entertains that he might be in the wrong or maybe things aren’t black and white.

and that’s why injustice bruce is not a good guy.

even on prime earth, damian had to bend over backwards to prove to bruce that he wasn’t a monster. it was damian who spent months digging through the sewers for martha’s pearls. damian who had to prove he was capable of loving titus. damian who constantly had to show that he was capable of empathy and thinking of others - bruce did none of the heavy lifting in that father-son relationship, he made damian climb the entire hill and still continues to put little effort into it.

and injustice bruce is even less empathetic and expressive than prime bruce.

which is why you get a confrontation like this:

this goes beyond dick’s accident and ties back into what clark said about bruce not tending to his son’s who are grieving because they lost friends in metropolis. damian’s fed up with never meeting bruce’s expectations. but more than that, he’s fed up with his feelings coming second to bruce’s.

bruce has already made a judgement on who and what damian is. damian has the potential to be dangerous and requires work to fix, and so he’s not interested in getting to know him beyond that. he tells dick that he’s “worried about damian being seduced by darkness” but never talks to damian himself with him about it.

but clark has looked at damian and and decided that damian is good. damian has problems, clark can admit that and does, but damian is good. like bruce himself.

and ultimately why when dick dies, clark is the one that reaches out to him because he sees damian for what he is: grieving child who just made a terrible mistake. it was an accident. damian didn’t mean for this to happen. meanwhile, bruce feels as though he was proven right. damian was dangerous and now his real son is dead. bruce will later admit, once he stops trying to manipulate damian, that damian was dead to him the moment dick died.

going back to year zero for a minute, they subtly show that damian is doing his best to be like bruce. baby damian idolizes his father. so i imagine a lot of bruce’s own feelings towards damian stem from self-hatred. from bruce seeing himself in his son and not liking the reflection it forces him to confront. injustice bruce projects a great deal of his own insecurities and shortcomings onto his youngest. damian is his worst what-if.

even though damian doesn’t deal with his grief the way bruce does. there are similarities, he puts his feelings into his fists and hits. just like bruce. but unlike bruce, and most likely because of dick, he does try to communicate. come injustice 2 he even talks about his feelings.

that doesn’t justify any of the violent outbursts. and he has a lot of them. he has significant issues with controlling his anger and struggles with lashing out, verbally and physically. it both worsens and improves as he gets older.

damian knows that he’s more than his grief, his loss, his anger. he’s also compassionate and capable of incredible feats of kindness. we see that in the flashback chapter in injustice 2. people aren’t pawns for damian, they aren’t a means to assuage his own guilt and validate himself as a good person. he wants to be good for those people.

damian’s relationship with heroism isn’t built on an intrinsic need for control or power, nor is it a means of validating his self worth.

people just need him. they’re suffering. and he wants to be there for them.

but again, we’re not there yet.

so, alfred reaches out to touch damian. damian asks him repeatedly to let go. when alfred doesn’t, damian tries throwing him off, not realizing how much strength he now possesses.

damian has a thing about being touched when he’s wound up tightly. it almost always ends with him lashing out at someone. which, tying back into why he felt comfortable coming back here, probably goes into his expectation that he’s going to get the lights knocked out of him. because again, damian did not go to the cave to fight or hurt anyone. the pill is entirely for his own defense.

from what we know of damian’s childhood in both prime and injustice, violence is the expected retaliation for misbehavior. toeing out of line is grounds for getting the shit beaten out of you, and while things should be different here....

from how bruce reacts he’s not wrong to expect it. note that bruce dodesn’t run to alfred to see if he’s okay, he goes after damian for hurting him. it’s damian who runs to alfred after he’s thrown bruce away from him.

( granted, yes, he threw bruce into the penny and it almost crushes alfred )

damian apologizes and he means it. alfred’s first question is to ask for bruce.

“”hawkgirl”” intervenes to try to end this fight before it can escalate further.

damian deduces that this isn’t hawkgirl and blows some stuff up. bruce calls after him probably - not to have a serious heart to heart with him about what just happened, or what happened in arkham, but to try to manipulate him into taking bruce’s side or in the very least stop his ruse from being uncovered.

this is a theme moving forward. bruce will dangle forgiveness in front of damian, but only when it benefits him and can be used to control him. eventually he’ll stop and will use the guilt he knows damian feels to wound him.

and here’s the second theme it introduces: damian is scared shitless of his father. he’s not afraid of bruce’s violence, as after this he charges straight for him time and time again, but he is utterly terrified of the lengths bruce will go to get his way.

this is also where he takes dick’s suit. i think this was his way of telling bruce that he didn’t deserve to use dick’s memory the way he uses his parent’s death - as justification for what he does. this comes up in injustice 2 later down the road, damian will bring up that bruce uses his pain to justify how he brutalizes the people around him. damian does the same thing -- but we also see damian grappling with his conscience about it. he wants to be better. he doesn’t want to be all his violence and loss.

back to the topic at hand, damian doesn’t do anything with dick’s suit. unlike bruce, damian doesn’t wear his grief and guilt in plain sight. he puts it in a box and doesn’t look at it, he covers the wounds with anger and as he gets older, develops a death wish and basically begins seeking a noble death in order to make up for what he’s done. it isn’t until dick passes the mantle to him in an attempt to steer him back on the right path that he even looks at it again.

damian isn’t the one that ended his relationship with bruce. bruce did. damian is very willing to reconcile if bruce genuinely wants it, but bruce doesn’t bother with damian outside of combat or when he needs something. damian actually keeps up visits with alfred, he gets him birthday presents, they meet up often and despite their opposing viewpoints, they get along just fine. damian even listens to what alfred says. he still loves his family.

damian himself is a mess. this line resonates because damian, too, is afraid. afraid of bruce, afraid of being what bruce thinks he is. there’s only so far he can bury it under the anger.

by the next issue of year one, after the confrontation at the manor, damian’s discarded any notion that bruce is a good person or justified in anything he does. everything he says on this page is true.

he’s not wrong. he’s more than bruce has even given him credit for being. injustice bruce sorts people into boxes impossible to climb out. damian made his attempt at reconciliation and instead, found out that bruce has kidnapped and replaced one of his friends to spy on all the rest. in that split second when bruce came at at him, he saw the disgust and anger in his eyes. he’s seen how bruce sees him and wholeheartedly rejects it.

he doesn’t want to be bruce. he will not be bruce.

batman was supposed to be better than the league. it was supposed to be a new way. instead he just found a new, different means to brutalize and control, and a new way someone justifies causing harm. and he doesn’t want it.

this isn’t to say that damian is a saint. he’s a very flawed, very broken person. he went from one abusive parental situation, to another, to another, and has the damage to show for it. he’s got bad habits from all of them, many of which he isn’t aware of or doesn’t think are a problem.

but unlike his two dads, damian doesn’t close himself off to what he’s feeling completely, nor does he decide to rush towards external solutions for his pain. he’s, again, very aware that something is wrong. he doesn’t hold to his convictions the same way bruce or clark do, he questions. he’s deeply unhappy with who he is and what he’s doing.

but damian is seeking answers using a very limited toolset, and there’s a very limited pool of people he can ask that won’t give him a biased answer or try to manipulate him for their own means. one of the people he confides in does just that.

the other gives him the honest truth.

his relationship with selina is fraught and she’s often one of the very nastiest people towards him, but it’s because of that he ends up opening up to her. she isn’t going to bullshit him and just say what he wants to hear.

and this is what makes damian different from them. both of them.

because he stops, because he questions, he’s still connected to reality. to his own humanity.

injustice’s bruce is a bruce that has quietly let his humanity die. he’s completely given over to the cold logic of batman and the idea that whatever he does to the people around him, no matter how morally dubious, is justified so long as it means protecting lives. he might not kill, but he really stops just short of that. he just doubles down on his beliefs and takes anyone who doesn’t agree with him as a traitor. he will go out of his way to rationalize how a largely guilty person is innocent (harleen) and how a largely innocent person is guilty (damian). and so he uses damian’s “betrayal” - ie, damian standing with clark instead of him - as justification for icing him out. that way he can ignore all the people who have reminded him time and time again that it was an accident.

bruce also can’t stand that damian won’t do what he says. bruce will ignore damian unless it benefits him. bruce will go on to frequently weaponize how badly damian wants forgiveness against him. there are multiple instances where he says “just do as i say and i’ll forgive you, son.”

and then in the next breath, he’ll tell damian that he “can’t forgive the deaths”, all the while he has harleen as his new sidekick. it’s fine that harleen helped with the scheme to blow up metropolis, killed jimmy olsen, and countless others. it’s not fine that damian did something he did all the time to dick - something dick himself shrugged off, because the expectation for this behavior was that dick would catch the baton - and it ended in tragedy.

because harleen listens to him and damian doesn’t. bruce cuts damian neatly out of his life and only really cares about him again when he’s a corpse.

damian, meanwhile, never stops trying to earn bruce’s forgiveness. in the canonical bad end (or well a comic offshoot of the canon ending) damian essentially dies begging bruce to forgive him, admitting that he always cared. he launches an absolutely insane rescue mission to save his father from clark’s torture and it costs him his life.

( but it’s worth mentioning - it takes damian showing bruce an image of kara for bruce to acknowledge him. )

even before this, damian was looking out for bruce in other ways. he was the reason selina got involved with the regime. because he offered her the chance to join and save bruce. damian’s anger towards bruce is less that he wants him dead, and more that bruce won’t stop unless he’s killed.

and damian is willing to kill him if bruce poses a threat to his ‘new’ family. he’s not going to watch bruce hurt the people he loves.

but his new father sucks just as much as his old one.

talia and bruce were more obviously abusive parents. they were controlling and sometimes asserted that control and obedience using physical violence and intimidation. in obvious ways you can point to and see abuse.

damian doesn’t recognize clark is using him until he sees clark discard kara, who should be everything to clark and is someone important to damian. before that, he has inklings that they’ve gone too far, but clark has been such a paragon of good that when he tells damian not to worry about it, he doesn’t. he hides all his darkness behind that smile and tells damian he’s good and worthy of people loving him, that they’re saving people and they won’t let another metropolis happen. clark talks to him and still (seems to) accept him even when they disagree.

damian misses clark’s equally as abusive tendencies because they hidden under the guise of a fatherly concern.

clark is manipulating him into divulging more than he wants to. a boundary damian set is being broken without damian even realizing it. damian’s uneasy. his body language goes from very easy and relaxed to overtly uncomfortable and almost submissive. it’s also very subtle but clark actually rises higher off the ground to intimidate and loom over him.

damian, who has only known bruce’s stormy silences in moments of disagreement, doesn’t recognize this for what it is. clark doesn’t take the slight out on him. clark doesn’t stop talking to him because he dared to question.

instead, he loops an arm around damian and praises him, rewards him for being honest and makes it seem like this is an open dialogue and not an interrogation. which it is. i wouldn’t call it gaslighting, but i would call it lovebombing. damian doesn’t realize that there was anything off about the encounter, or if he does, he’ll tell himself he’s just being paranoid.

after all. this ended amicably, not with him standing alone wondering what he did wrong, or being thrown across the room. clark basically stops just shy of ruffling his hair and calling him sport.

he was rewarded for honesty. and so any discomfort he felt was imagined.

i think a thing that a lot of fans miss is that injustice’s damian is a forthright person. he doesn’t lie or deceive much, and later on it will bother him that he’s keeping secrets from kara for ‘the greater good’. he loathes that bruce does it and works hard to not fall into that trap. he wants to be honest. he’s glad when he’s rewarded for that honesty.

because injustice’s damian doesn’t want to be batman. he wants to be superman. he wants to be good.

but injustice’s superman is not a good man.

clark keep secrets, many terrible secrets, and often hurts people and justifies it to himself. he just hides it far better than bruce does. clark is even more controlling and cruel, but he leans harder into his humanity and emotions to hide it. it’s easier to see bruce being cold and calculating and miss the way clark subtly uses what you want to get what he wants out of you. and you never really see it coming when he lashes out. he’ll apologize for it, of course, and if you’re not dead you’ll forgive him, because it’s clark. he didn’t mean it. right?

bruce manipulates overtly and grandly using intimidation, clark manipulates subtly using emotion. damian only recognizes one of these things when they happen.

so clark gives damian what he wants - a parent who loves him, someone he can talk to and even show a little vulnerability with - and then uses that against him.

the worst thing - the very worst thing - is that bruce and clark love damian. he knows this. both seem to genuinely consider him their son. and he knows this.

in injustice vs motu, bruce snaps fully into awareness just as diana snaps damian’s neck. he’s awake just in time to watch his son die. and when clark is brought onto the scene, clark falls to his knees and mourns damian and laments his role in driving him to this.

but they weaponize this parent-child bond he wants against him and each other. frankly, neither of them were very interested in him for who he was. nor for helping him be better and master his anger. damian’s body isn’t even cold before bruce uses it against clark, failing to acknowledge his own part in damian’s all too early demise.

he’s another chess piece on their board. one clark can use to wound bruce. one bruce can use to wound clark.

the person damian is when away from both of their influence is a more complete damian. he’s the very best of both of them.

the damian here is still curt and sometimes rude, but he laughs and bonds with the people around him. he values people’s freedom and seems to strive for honesty and communication. meaning no one is in his war to reclaim the world doesn’t want to be, and he makes no move without everyone knowing.

when he recruits adam, he tells them their story and what they’ve gone through and gives adam the choice to join them or stay in eternia.

anyway, all of this is to say that even all these years later, i continue to be so sad about injustice damian wayne.

edit:

now, there’s actually one other thing i want to bring up because i totally forgot about it.

so. issue 8 of injustice 2.

if we’re going with the idea of the reordered robin theory, which is what makes the most sense to me considering jason’s age and the friction between bruce and damian, this before jason dies. and if i’m wrong and the robins don’t have a different order, then this is before some enormous event that broke the slowly building trust.

there’s none of the undercurrent of hostility and distrust that shows up in year 0, which is immediately before year 1. we’re not given a timeframe for when this occurs, either, it’s just happier times.

but what’s really hard to ignore is that the dynamic between bruce and damian is completely different here. maybe tom taylor’s just settled more into writing the two of them, but i don’t think so. year zero comes after this.

he even acknowledges damian’s anger earlier in the chapter. but it’s less of a condemnation of his character and more a concern that he might not be ready to be on his own. alfred is the one advocating for caution, asking if he’s ready, bruce is the one saying yes, he is.

it’s a complete reversal.

and his trust is rewarded with a night of damian abandoning the “”mission”” he was given (get home from the furthest point of gotham in three hours) to help everyone along the way. which was the real goal all along, it was a test to see if damian’s compassion would win out over his want to win. and it does. bruce is proud of him.

so... what happened between them? what caused that shift?

i’m kind of worried we’re never going to know. like, i’m so glad that tom taylor is dc’s new golden boy and they’re just letting him build a million different aus. i buy every book he writes.

but also i’m dying because IJ2 was clearly planned to go on a lot longer than it did and i have questions that i know netherrealm doesn’t care about answering.

#damian wayne #injustice #bruce wayne #dick grayson #alfred pennyworth #jason todd #clark kent

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wesavegotham · 3 years

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So don’t hate me but I’m kinda liking damian’s animated versions better than his comic one I really like his comic one but after all the shit happening where he has been nerfed nonstop getting beat by Thomas Wayne Batman, the teen titans red hood (although Jason attacked from behind like a bitch) and now flatline beating him. Not to mention Bruce not being a father and Damian now Being blamed for everything when they all have no room to talk. God I was satisfied when his old team died in future.

This is going to be a really long post, my apologies in advance.

I absolutely get where you’re coming from. I personally still like comic Damian more because I feel like there is more nuance and layers to him compared to the animated universe Damian, but that is simply the fault of the limited time they could spent on him in the movies.

Movie!Damian certainly wins more fights than comic!Damian and was never regressed in any way that is comparable to the shitshow that was Teen Titans (2016).

You’re adressing a problem I have with comic!Damian too right now, a problem that I’ve already talked about with some people here on tumblr in private. Which is that for all the talk about what Damian can do the comics have rarely shown all those skills Damian should have being used in the actual story in recent years and that is frustrating. I find Damian’s arrogance interesting as long as I feel like he can at least back it up in some way, but in recent time he comes off as just an idiot because he has done almost nothing but fail and lose and the writers still have him act like he’s the greatest. But it doesn’t feel like he can back up his confidence anymore. At all.

If I had to name a skill that differentiates Damian from the other Robins right now then I could only list his skill to hide from Batman and that is a skill he only has for plot convenience. We don’t see him do anything to cover his tracks, we are only told that he somehow did it. And I’m pretty sure that the second this skill stops being convenient for the story it will vanish once again. It will probably end like it did with Jon, where Damian somehow hid so well that Jon said they would never find him in Teen Titans, when they wanted an excuse for Jon to not get involved with his friend’s fall into darkness, but now that DC wanted them to interact again all of that is forgotten and Jon has no problems finding Damian.

Damian is not the most social Robin, nor the most intelligent one and considering how he seemed to lose against everything and everyone in recent years I can’t say with a straight face that he’s the best at fighting or the most skilled. And that IS a problem. Damian will never be known for his social skills or his detective skills, those niches are already taken by Dick and Tim, but in theory he should be a great fighter or a highly skilled person. Damian has sacrificed his entire life for training, both in the league of assassins and during his time with the batfamily. But if Damian sucks at fighting (as in: he loses a lot more than he wins) and his skills play no significant role in advancing the plot, then what is the point of his character? Great, he’s good at drawing and likes manga now, but how will that help with a fighting tournament? Or with solving the mystery behind the league of lazarus? A protagonist is usually supposed to be able to change the situation he is in, that is why he’s the protagonist and not someone else. So what makes Damian so unique that only he can solve the situation he finds himself in during Robin and not someone like Conner Hawke? Or what makes him unique in the batfamily? I hope Robin adresses that soon.

Of course now one could say “He still has an unique position as Bruce’s biological child”, but that also was completely irrelevant in recent years. For all the moments since the start of Rebirth that had batfam-fans complaining that Damian was favored by DC because of his status as the only biological child of Bruce, there were actually very few interactions between the two. Stuff like Bruce talking about Damian or saying that he loves him was primarily found in scenes in which Damian was not present. Or it came way too late, like in Teen Titans (and Bruce refusing to hit Damian in the face because he is his child sets such a low bar, I refuse to acknowledge that as a sign of love)

If you look at how Bruce actually treats Damian or describes him then there is little love there. He ignored his 13th birthday, did nothing when Damian left him after the events of Justice League: No Justice, it had no impact on the Batman books at all, Bruce only called Damian for missions like two times, once in City of Bane (which was just so shitty, as I already explained in a previous post) and a second time in Detective Comics #1017 (He sent Damian to find a missing kid in a snow storm, while he dealt with something else), refused to comfort him at Alfred’s wake and when Bruce reflects on what happened in Teen Titans he blames most of it on Damian’s personality, both in Detective Comics #1030 and in Robin #1, and both times there is nobody questioning Bruce’s asessment. He really doesn’t have anything nice to say about Damian and apparently we are not supposed to disagree with him. So in summary: Damian seems to have no skills that make him indispensable for the batfamily, Bruce seems to have a very low opinion of Damian’s character and now that they have decided to give us Bruce searching for Damian the only reason for that seems to be that Bruce suddenly feels responsible for his child, even though that should have already been the case when Damian seperated from him in 2018 or at least directly after the second Teen Titans annual.

Even the kinda nice things Bruce says about Damian in Robin #1 can be called into question if you think about them. He says he has no doubt that Damian can take care of himself...and then we see Damian getting his heart ripped out at the end of the very same issue. Of course we know that Damian’s story doesn’t end there, so I won’t judge this too harshly yet, but to me this didn’t come off as Damian being able to take care of himself.

And I get letting Damian lose at the start of the tournament to establish Flatline as a threat and to make it clear that this tournament is not a game. I also get that Damian’s fight against King Snake was supposed to make sure that we still think of Damian as competent even though he loses later on. But at least for me, winning against King Snake was not cool or badass enough to make up for the fact that Damian was easily killed, in front of everyone, by a literal nobody like Flatline. King Snake is an old, blind guy, that didn’t show up in any DC comic I read since I started in 2018 and that was apparently beaten by Tim in his solo comic when he was 14 back in the 90s. Sorry, but that just isn’t impressive enough for me, especially since I’ve seen Damian lose so much in recent years. It doesn’t establish Flatline as a badass, it just makes me think that Damian is not that great of a fighter and shouldn’t be in this tournament.

I have some more thoughts on the tournament that make me wish that the arc will start being less about winning the tournament itself and more about something like taking down the league of lazarus soon (mainly the fact that a fight about being the best fighter is useless if the big guns are not taking part, the fact that you can only win by killing your oponent, which should be a problem for Damian and how nothing we know about the rewards for winning, becoming part of the league of lazarus und apparently immortality, is desirable for Damian), but this answer is already too long.

I’m going to be honest an admit that I did not like the ending of Robin #1 at all and that I hope that Williamson will show Damian being competent really soon because I’m not here for another pointless arc about Damian learning humility. I want to see Damian win for once, you know, like other protagonist usually do at the end of an arc and if Damian can’t even win or tell us what’s going on with him from his point of view in a book about him then I’m probably going to feel very disappointed by this book.

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Ive been reading some debates on whether or not Dick has LoA training because of the Vengeance Academy stuff and was wondering what you thought about that. Do you think this counts?

Yes and no? I mean, lol, it depends on your purposes for exploring this train of thought.

Thing is, I personally think it would be a mistake to view “League of Assassin training” as some complete singular thing that you either have or you don’t have, like a specific training regimen or course work for lack of a better analogy, that you either make it to the end of and have in its entirety, or else it doesn’t matter.

And I also think that part of the reason for viewing it this way is fandom’s tendency to try and rank the Batkids, according to a lot of various arbitrary variables like skillsets they do or don’t have.....which, if you’ve followed me long enough, you know is something I heavily disagree with, the trying to rank them in skills or competency in general.....as I tend to be more interested in ways this found family that I do ultimately gravitate towards for their ability or potential to be actual FAMILY, can like.....work together and come together rather than so constantly be pitted against each other. Like yeah, I’ll rant to Kingdom Come about times they’ve been pitted against each other in terms of my feelings on those specific instances or how the dynamics played out in them, but that’s in terms of scenes or stories that already exist....for the most part my thing is not really looking to INCREASE the divide between the characters, but rather the opposite.

So like......my point here is I’ve mentioned the League of Assassin training Dick likely has from his time at Vengeance Academy myself, but not in the interest of like......adding to his ‘rankings’ within the Batfam or being like anything the others can do he can do better, as frankly, I don’t think the time Dick spent at VA puts the training he got there as directly comparable to the time Damian or Jason or Cass spent with the League or League trained tutors....but that’s not really my aim in exploring that line of thought. Rather, I look at what League training Dick might have as being more a possible source of insight into experiences his siblings have.

After all, the thing about the League of Assassins is they’re very good at what they do, but what they do isn’t inherently all that different from any of the other hand-to-hand combatants throughout the DC Earth. I mean, depending on what continuity you go with, in most of them Bruce himself trained with the League or various League affiliated teachers before he came back to Gotham to be Batman, and he just sorta took what worked for him and put aside all the more lethal applications of their training and knowledge. But his own training methods when teaching Dick and the other Robins and Batgirls no doubt included more than a little overlap with League skills and training, because not all of their knowledge and expertise is STRICTLY lethal....as Bruce himself has shown, and later on Jason and Cass and Damian....most of what they can do can just as easily be repurposed for non-lethal combat. So in a lot of ways, depending on your interpretation of things and what angle you’re going with, all the Batkids can be said to have some degree of League training.....the same training Bruce himself had.

So when I talk about Dick having League training from his time at VA, Ilike I said, I’m talking more about insight, things he could glean from having firsthand knowledge not just to various League techniques or skills, but also League training methodologies and mindsets. Dick was only there a few weeks, at most maybe a couple months, and the thing is....you can pack a LOT into fairly short term experiences. That’s what boot camps are, essentially, and that’s how I viewed VA....a short term but extremely rigorous and intensive boot camp for prospective League recruits, as Shrike used it to put potential League candidates through their paces with little regard for their health or longterm prospects if they couldn’t make the cut. I called them prospective League recruits but its important that the kids weren’t recruited into VA itself first....they were literally kidnapped off the streets like Dick himself, and forced to prove themselves daily in their training and the missions Shrike set up to advance that. And all of that can be extremely motivating and act as a pressure cooker that packs a ton of training and skill acquisition into very short periods of time......BUT.....that’s not ever going to measure up to all of that being equally in place and acting as a pressure cooker when training Jason, Cass, Damian, etc over even LONGER periods of time, y’know?

BUT. Equally true is all of that is never going to measure up directly to the still extremely intensive and longterm training Dick himself received OUTSIDE of VA....just one on one with Bruce, training with the other Titans, hell, this is a guy who was an acrobat on the world stage before his parents died. Every day of his life he’s been training intensely. VA isn’t just a footnote compared to the lengthier League training some of Dick’s siblings underwent, its a footnote in the overall tapestry of Dick’s own training. And I have extreme reservations about the way League training is referred to as something various Batfam members have in addition to or on top of their other training as reasons for why they’re an even better fighter, etc....same as when Talon training comes up for Dick in AUs....when like......Bruce, Dick and the Batfam overall have never NOT ultimately defeated the League and the Court of Owls every time they come up against them.....so why does assassin training so often get regarded as this ‘leg up’ over the Batfam’s primarily non-lethal approach to combat, as though its a superior skillset? If its inherently superior, why do the assassins keep losing to the Batfam, I’m just saying. So on that front, the idea that “was trained by assassins” is innately translatable to higher elevations in the eternal quest to rank the Batkids, like.....just does not work for me and that specifically tends to be where people lose me here, not whether or not Dick has this training at all in the first place.

Another way to look at things here is like....let’s take one specific skillset: Dick’s use of escrima sticks in his fighting. Now, this DIRECTLY hails back to his time at Vengeance Academy. It was a literal plot point, that VA is where Dick first trained with escrima sticks and discovered an affinity for them. Once he was back with Bruce though, he didn’t do much further with this while Robin, but upon becoming Nightwing, he picked them up again and RENEWED his training with escrima sticks, becoming extremely proficient with them and making them his signature weapon.

Now, is Dick’s status as one of the best fighters with this particular weapon because of his several weeks boot camp when he was ten? Again - it just depends on what you mean by that specifically. If you’re asking did he gain the proficiency he’s known for with that weapon AS a ten year old during that short span of weeks - hell no. His proficiency comes from the intensive, regular training he does with them here and now, as an adult, over a course of years, still constantly growing and improving day by day. BUT at the same time, you can ask the same question and examine it through the lens of “would he have ever discovered and explored and FURTHERED his affinity with this particular weapon if not for his time training at VA”.....the answer could still very well be no. Thus his training there matters, its just its not the only thing that matters, and the context and qualifiers that go not just with this question but the reasons for asking that question and the purposes you intend for the answer.....all of that matters too.

So to circle back.......do I consider Dick’s time at Vengeance Academy to be him having League of Assassin training?

Yes, but I must specify that my reasoning for that, and for exploring that line of thought, have absolutely nothing to do with my view of Dick’s overall status as a fighter, and everything to do with my view of him as a brother.

I think Vengeance Academy was tough and brutal, and did a lot to increase and hone Dick’s skills in various areas over an extremely short period of time. I think that it absolutely left an impression that shaped his training and fighting in later years whether in terms of preferred weapon choices or even choices he makes in the heat of the moment, like Last Laugh (which I think absolutely built upon Dick’s feelings about having once stood over a similarly unrepentant and mocking Two-Face years earlier, gun in hand, poised to make a choice.....as well as Dick’s awareness of how many times Two-Face, like the Joker, has busted out of jail and hurt and killed more people since that time).

But I also think that Dick would still be one of the foremost fighters in the DCU even without his time at VA, and that his short time there is not anywhere close to being the reason he’s at the heights of skill and aptitude that he’s reached over the course of years and years of rigorous, intensive training.

So while my answer remains yes, he has League training and it matters and counts, my reasons for bringing that up will never be because I think it adds to his status or reputation as a fighter, or is necessary for him to be as highly regarded there as he is.....but more for what his time at VA, his firsthand experiences with their approaches to training, the methodologies and ideologies they train kids with, what all of that gives Dick in terms of insight to members of the League, and to those people League members have trained, like his siblings.

One thing I’ve long wanted to see fandom explore more in the context of Jason’s views on killing is the fact that so much of that was shaped while he was in the pressure cooker of being freshly resurrected, traumatized, still an impressionable teenager, with feelings of obligation towards the League for the Pit’s rejuvenation of his mental faculties, taking him in and training him, and like......feeling isolated and abandoned by everyone else who’d previously known and loved him, thinking that he had no one who really cared about him, and that not only was he dependent on the League for his survival at that time, but like, he owed them and he was that much more open to being persuaded of their way of looking at things.

And thing is, in terms of like, scale and shit, Dick’s experiences in Robin: Year One and his own mindset at the time and how vulnerable he was mentally and emotionally, they’re not the equivalent of what Jason was going through but like I’m always saying, when you stop looking at trauma in terms of arbitrary rankings and stop pitting what the various Batkids have been through against each other’s experiences and just like......look for potential common ground, this opens up SO MUCH potential bonding, insight and understanding between the brothers and positions Dick to be so much more capable of intuiting even a sense of what Jason went through at the time and why he was clinging so desperately to things he may or may not have actually believed in (at least so strongly) if circumstances had been different, etc....but you get what I mean, I think. There’s so much that can be done with this angle, that’s opened up entirely just by virtue of Dick having SOME shared experiences here.

Because while like I said, in terms of actual training, Bruce has a lot of the same skillsets and knowledge the League does, and his own history with them, its the MINDSET that’s so key here. The one thing that sets Bruce and his experiences when he was a young man with the League and League affiliates apart from Jason, Damian, Cass, etc.....is that Bruce went looking for training, and never was without resources or options. The League-trained Batkids though were either approached (or ‘approached’) by the League at key low points of extreme vulnerability in their formative years, when they HAD no other options (or felt they didn’t) or else were just outright raised by them like Damian or Cass, with no knowledge of anything else until they left or escaped. And that puts everything through an entirely different filter, because its that specific element of vulnerability, of having no one else to turn to or anything else to cling to or put your faith in, that renders you particularly vulnerable to being influenced or exploited by those who seem to hold all the cards there.....and its a shared insight that Dick can have into various of his siblings BECAUSE of his League of Assassins training, as short as that might have been, because of the specifics of why it was so intense and influential despite how short a time it was.

So. In conclusion:

Does Dick have League training because of his time at VA? My answer is yes, but not if the follow up is anything in the vein of “and how does this factor into which of his siblings he can or can’t beat while sparring.” In that case my answer is yes but YAWN. If however the follow up is along the lines of “and can this open up tons of doors for potential conversations, bonding, trauma-unpacking or camaraderie with siblings due to their own histories with the League and its training methods and teachings and mindsets” then my answer is YES GOOD NOW LET’S HAVE SOME MORE OF THAT PLZ.

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batricide · 3 years

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i’ll drop this on my blog here too actually bc it’s Important to how i play damian and also let me yell about the fact that ij’s bruce is not a good person and the reason why so many people hate damian is because they somehow miss that.

so! here’s a warning for: tyrannical totalitarian regimes, child abuse, abusive fathers, emotional manipulation, evil superman, character death & also random he-man. please note that this is about injustice and its characters, which are not a reflection on their mainstream counterparts or how i view them.

so it’s interesting that bruce is already counting damian out before injustice even starts. he’s comparing damian to jason - someone who he apparently no longer considers part of his legacy.

but it’s not fine to damian. damian is constantly horrified at the lengths bruce will go to.

damian is afraid of his father.

or respond like this:

or this:

and he’s terrified of his father. i cannot stress that enough. bruce at this point has already shown that he knows how to hurt his closest friends if they oppose him.

damian is a highly trained fighter, but he’s also a thirteen year old boy who knows he can’t overpower a man twice his size and weight.

and bruce?

now, bruce isn’t wrong about how things will escalate.

and that’s why injustice bruce is not a good guy.

and injustice bruce is even less empathetic and expressive than prime bruce.

which is why you get a confrontation like this:

but clark has looked at damian and and decided that damian is good. damian has problems, clark can admit that and does, but damian is good. like bruce himself.

damian’s relationship with heroism isn’t built on an intrinsic need for control or power, nor is it a means of validating his self worth.

people just need him. they’re suffering. and he wants to be there for them.

but again, we’re not there yet.

so, alfred reaches out to touch damian. damian asks him repeatedly to let go. when alfred doesn’t, damian tries throwing him off, not realizing how much strength he now possesses.

( granted, yes, he threw bruce into the penny and it almost crushes alfred )

damian apologizes and he means it. alfred’s first question is to ask for bruce.

“”hawkgirl”” intervenes to try to end this fight before it can escalate further.

damian himself is a mess. this line resonates because damian, too, is afraid. afraid of bruce, afraid of being what bruce thinks he is. there’s only so far he can bury it under the anger.

he doesn’t want to be bruce. he will not be bruce.

the other gives him the honest truth.

and this is what makes damian different from them. both of them.

because he stops, because he questions, he’s still connected to reality. to his own humanity.

because harleen listens to him and damian doesn’t. bruce cuts damian neatly out of his life and only really cares about him again when he’s a corpse.

( but it’s worth mentioning - it takes damian showing bruce an image of kara for bruce to acknowledge him. )

and damian is willing to kill him if bruce poses a threat to his ‘new’ family. he’s not going to watch bruce hurt the people he loves.

but his new father sucks just as much as his old one.

damian misses clark’s equally as abusive tendencies because they hidden under the guise of a fatherly concern.

after all. this ended amicably, not with him standing alone wondering what he did wrong, or being thrown across the room. clark basically stops just shy of ruffling his hair and calling him sport.

he was rewarded for honesty. and so any discomfort he felt was imagined.

because injustice’s damian doesn’t want to be batman. he wants to be superman. he wants to be good.

but injustice’s superman is not a good man.

bruce manipulates overtly and grandly using intimidation, clark manipulates subtly using emotion. damian only recognizes one of these things when they happen.

so clark gives damian what he wants - a parent who loves him, someone he can talk to and even show a little vulnerability with - and then uses that against him.

the worst thing - the very worst thing - is that bruce and clark love damian. he knows this. both seem to genuinely consider him their son. and he knows this.

he’s another chess piece on their board. one clark can use to wound bruce. one bruce can use to wound clark.

the person damian is when away from both of their influence is a more complete damian. he’s the very best of both of them.

when he recruits adam, he tells them their story and what they’ve gone through and gives adam the choice to join them or stay in eternia.

anyway, all of this is to say that even all these years later, i continue to be so sad about injustice damian wayne.

edit:

now, there’s actually one other thing i want to bring up because i totally forgot about it.

so. issue 8 of injustice 2.

it’s a complete reversal.

so... what happened between them? what caused that shift?

but also i’m dying because IJ2 was clearly planned to go on a lot longer than it did and i have questions that i know netherrealm doesn’t care about answering.

#ooc.#tl;dr dick grayson raised a good boy who needed support at a critical time and instead was taken in by cruel god wearing a kind smile #and damian doesn't realize it until it's far too late and he's done so much he can't take back

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chronicbatfictioner · 4 years

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Exchanges and Compromises - Chapter 10

The pretty boy in a tight leather suit was as good and pretty with his stitches as he looked in a tight leather suit, Jason observed. The older man, looking much more like a highly trained and competent fighter, but with a similar mental age as Damian, was having quite a success in entertaining the boy.

Overall, the accommodation was decent - no one could come in undetected, or get out unnoticed. He figured this was some sort of containment unit, originally; only later used as a safe house. It was located, ironically, near Jason's old home at Crime Alley. He knew the area well, even the underground side of it. If he were to escape this place, it would have been easy.

But the boy - 'Stray' - seemed earnest when he said the Oracle's name. Thus far, however, there was no presence of the Oracle themselves. Jason was still unsure if the Oracle was a man, a woman, or a group of people - and has settled for a non-binary pronoun in his mind.

Plus, he was receiving free, neat stitches without having to face some sort of legal authorities. He sincerely doubted that the Gotham Police would be able to provide protection or service quite like this, regardless of what he was told.

"What's the Oracle, by the way?" he finally decided to ask, his curiosity won.

Stray blinked. "Uh, an entity that holds numerous kind of information network to help the good people of Gotham take the city back from evil?" he replied.

"Did you rehearse that?" Jason quipped.

"No, thankfully, I'm a professional. That one came straight out of my sitting end." Stray retorted.

Jason barked a laugh. Stray beamed a little at him. "Sorry... just... it's been a while since I hear sincere sarcasm." Jason apologized.

"Heeey, I like this guy! You're a Gothamite, aren't you?" Talon commented from halfway across the room.

"I... how'd you know?" Jason didn't bother trying to deny it. He realized that only Gothamites would appreciate good sarcasm. "Are you?"

"He's not. He was a circus dude and got this mad skillz in figuring out where people came from." Stray replied. "I am, though."

"I could tell that one, actually. You both know how to fight well, yet you have no superpowers, and you helped a random someone and joined a brawl without wondering who was good, who was bad. Typical Gothamites." Jason snarked, only slightly regretting the rudeness.

Talon seemed unperturbed. "See, kitten? You should really reign in your tempers," he commented.

Stray sighed dramatically. "Seriously, dude. It was you who said something about the brawling party and you're not invited. I was just there to make sure nobody died." he deadpanned. "And by nobody, I meant those ninjas. He has a nasty temper."

"What can I say? I had to join in, we're heroes, man!" Talon quipped.

"Are you heroes like Superman?" Damian asked curiously. "You have colors, but muted, unlike Superman's... rather obnoxiously eye-catching uniform..." he added with a slight scowl on the corner of his lips.

"Costume. But hey, you know, he operates in the daylight hours. He has to be visible, right? Otherwise, people might think of him as a weather blimp or something. We, on the other hand, prefer to work nights because the bad people of Gotham City like to work nights, too." Talon explained; reasonably, simply, but not condescendingly. At least Damian bought the explanation. Jason knew how his tempers would flare if he thought he was being belittled.

He unconsciously sighed. The two 'heroes' have provided adequate meals in the form of Turkish fast food for them. The taste was... horrible, compared to the ones made by the League's cooks. But Damian had eaten them, anyway, after seeing Jason ate his. Jason himself wasn't bothered by the taste - he would never be bothered by the taste of food as long as they're hot and fresh; he'd had his share of eating cold discarded leftovers, anyway.

The bright side of consuming the high-carb food was that Damian was starting to sway on his feet.

"Damian, I believe it's time for me to turn in for the night. Will it be okay if you explain to these two what we're doing in town?" he told Damian. The latter blinked owlishly, obviously fighting his exhaustion.

"I... if you don't mind, Red, I would prefer you to explain to them while I repose. My mind does not want to compose words in English right now," he admitted, and Jason snickered internally.

"You want to go to bed?" Talon asked, a little oblivious of Damian's attempt to behave older than his actual age. "Would you like me to keep you comp--" Jason cleared his throat just in time, and blessed be, Talon seemed to understand and corrected himself, "...stand guard for you?"

"If you deem it necessary, then conduct yourself, Talon. I shall not attempt to escape this... establishment - not especially while Red is quite incapacitated. But I understand you have your orders." Damian replied. Stray coughed, and Jason would swear that he was hiding a giggle.

"So he thinks he's a prisoner." Stray finally commented once Talon and Damian walked out of the med-bay toward the bedrooms.

"I hope we're not since you've both been so kind and am not looking forward to popping a stitch," Jason replied. "at least not tonight. Such neat stitches, too," he added.

"You're not. We'll know if you get out, but we won't stop you." Oracle finally made its presence known, through a projection on the wall. Stray pointed at the area between his eyebrows, and Jason immediately noticed a camera located roughly on the projection's forehead. "So, now that we're all adults here... Stray notwithstanding, care to let us in on what's going on?"

"About the boy being Bruce Wayne's son?" Jason groaned.

"That, among all others. What happened to Ra's Al Ghul and his daughter, Talia? Why are they not here?" Oracle asked. "I have done some researches and found that both Ra's and Talia have disappeared. Care to enlighten us?"

"They're dead," Jason swallowed around the lump in his throat. "They were murdered, and I've been assigned by Talia to send Damian to his father if or when she is deceased."

"And you're sure the father is Bruce Wayne?" Stray asked.

Jason shrugged, "Hey, it's not like I was there when it happened, right? Damian was three years old when I met him for the first time. That's what she told me, and that's what I'm gonna go by."

"If..." Oracle hesitated. "A hypothetical situation here: if you did get to meet Bruce Wayne and told him that he has a son, what's next?"

"I suppose there would be processes - DNA tests and whatnot. I'll remain by Damian's side, regardless. Talia has assigned me to be Damian's main Ghost. That is, the caretaker." Jason explained. "Are you worried that Wayne would not admit it?"

"That's one of the things I worry about," Oracle admitted. "What then, if he won't accept Damian?"

Jason shrugged again. "We shall convince him by all means. Otherwise..." he paused and inhaled sharply. "I can take care of him, legally or whatever."

"Jason Peter Todd, 19, has been a milk-box face for six years. You're a few months away before being declared dead in absentia." Oracle recited. Jason was not surprised. He knew that Stray had collected his blood - presumably for use of identification. "So I suppose you don't want to be declared dead, and thus you allowed Stray to take your blood."

"You're good," Jason smirked. "Talia revered you highly; said that you're the epitome of all that is good in the world. Even while being invisible."

"You're a charmer, obviously," Oracle quipped dryly. Stray actually snickered this time. "You didn't even ask who'd put your face on said milk box,"

"Must be some people my folks owed money to," Jason snorted. "Anyway, I was planned to return to Gotham prior to being declared dead, anyway. So that I can exist alongside Damian if... the scenario you mentioned above happened. It just kind of happened a little too soon." he sighed dejectedly. "I was taking Damian out on a training excursion when they attacked... We tried..." he paused, wondering just how much Oracle knew of the Lazarus Pit. "The damage on their bodies were too extensive. The perpetrators were... long gone when we got back."

"I hope by 'we' you don't mean just Damian and you," Stray remarked, looking a little pale even under his amber-colored goggles. "and who's 'the perpetrators'?"

"Oh, no, I meant me and a number of my trusted compatriots. Damian's guards. We're spreading out as we speak to divert attention from the League of Shadows, each of us carrying a child of Damian's size. League of Shadows is... 'the perpetrators'. They're a league of murderers and covert assassins that reneged from us to follow Lady Shiva, who was once one of Ra's Seven Men of Death." he explained. "Anyway, Houston, since you said I'm not a prisoner here, I think it would be fair if you answer my question this time. What was the problem Talon talked about to you?"

#JayTim #Jason Todd #Tim Drake #Damian Wayne #Dick Grayson #Barbara Gordon #Batless!AU #Red Robin #Robin #Nightwing #Red Hood #oracle!barbara #stray!tim #Talon!Dick #Bruce Wayne #batfamily

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bearly-writing · 4 years

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Batman - All Media Types, DCU Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Dick Grayson/Slade Wilson, implied Roman Sionis/Jason Todd - Relationship, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Jason Todd & Slade Wilson, Jason Todd & Dick Grayson & Slade Wilson Characters: Dick Grayson, Slade Wilson, Deathstroke, Jason Todd, Roman Sionis, Black Mask Additional Tags: Child Abuse, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Dick Grayson is Renegade, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Protective Slade Wilson, Protective Dick Grayson, Hurt Jason Todd, Parent-Child Relationship, Accidental Baby Acquisition, Except Jason isn't a baby, Good Parent Slade Wilson, Good Parent Dick Grayson, Minor Character Death, Blood and Injury Series: Part 3 of SladeRobin Weekend 2020 Summary:

"Most of Black Mask’s recruits are adults - or at least teenagers. They’ve never been asked to train someone so young before.

Because the boy Black Mask has brought with him this time can’t be much older than ten."

In a world where Robin doesn't exist, Deathstroke and Renegade are asked to train Black Mask's latest recruit.

A super late entry for the @sladerobinweek Weekend prompt Accidental Co-Parenting.

It isn’t the first time Deathstroke and Renegade have been asked to train one of Black Mask’s new lackeys. As good as Sionis is at what he does, he isn’t a fighter, and he certainly isn’t anywhere near the level of the two highly-trained mercenaries. The man can handle a gun decently and even Deathstroke can’t deny that he has a talent for inflicting pain, but actual fighting skills? Well, he wouldn’t last long against anyone that Deathstroke has trained - even those without any natural aptitude.

But one of Sionis’ better skills is knowing when to delegate and Deathstroke, no matter what, is a mercenary at heart. Black Mask pays good money for them to turn whichever new passion project he deems worthy into something worth keeping around. Not that Black Mask tends to actually keep them for long. It’s a dangerous job, being one of Black Mask’s soldiers and even being trained by the best can’t keep them safe from Sionis’ boredom.

So there’s usually a new one every other year or so. Both Deathstroke and Renegade are used to it by now, and the money is good, even if it usually means having to take a few weeks - or months, depending upon how much instruction is necessary - out of the rest of their work. Dick kind of looks forward to it. Sometimes it’s nice to spend time with new people. Even Slade can get boring after a while.

Still, most of Black Mask’s recruits are adults - or at least teenagers. They’ve never been asked to train someone so young before.

Because the boy Black Mask has brought with him this time can’t be much older than ten.

“Little small for a fighter, isn’t he?” Slade asks, mirroring Dick’s thoughts exactly. There’s none of the judgement Dick feels in his tone though. Deathstroke’s own moral line in the sand can be a little blurry at times but it doesn’t pay to be judgemental in this line of work.

Despite that, Dick can feel his own disapproval rising in the back of his throat. With Black Mask looming behind him, one hand clasped on a thin shoulder, the kid looks tiny. Even the expensive suit Roman has wrangled him into can’t disguise the fact that the boy is way too skinny. When he lifts his head to glare at Deathstroke - brave, Slade will like that - Dick can see a dark, wine-stain bruise purpling his eye, the yellow edge of another peeking out from the collar of his shirt.

“I can fight,” the kid snarls, all bravado, even though his hands are trembling where they’re fisted against his thighs.

“Yeah?” Slade steps close enough to reach out and catch the kid’s chin between long fingers. The kid flinches and Roman’s hand moves possessively to the back of his neck, but Deathstroke has never been afraid of Black Mask, Dick knows. If Slade wants to touch, Roman won’t stop him. “That how you get that bruise?”

The kid jerks his head again but Slade’s doesn’t let him go. There’s a flash of fear in the boy’s eyes that makes Dick’s stomach turn uncomfortably. Renegade is used to fear, but not like this. Not from a child.

“Little Jay fell down the stairs,” Roman says, before the kid - Jay - can answer. His tone is full and indulgent. When he looks up from Jay’s scowling face, his smirk is an invitation, an offer to share in his little inside joke. It sparks something sour across Dick’s tongue. He’s never liked Roman.

“Didn’t you, pumpkin?”

“Yeah,” Jay mumbles. Dick thinks he would drop his gaze if Slade wasn’t still holding onto him. Instead he settles for glaring at the mercenary with impressive heat. “I’m clumsy like that.”

Slade just hums. He tilts Jay’s head from side to side like someone examining a horse. Dick half expects him to lift Jay’s lip up and look at his teeth.

“We don’t train kids,” Dick says, eventually, because it doesn’t look as though Slade is about to put a stop to this. And there’s a lot of things Dick will do for Slade but not this. Training a kid to become a killer - a killer for Black Mask - isn’t something even Renegade is comfortable with.

If Black Mask’s expression changes, it’s hard to tell. But Dick thinks he stiffens a little. Thinks his fingers might tighten where they’re pressed over the back of the kid’s neck. The kid grunts, caught between Deathstroke and Black Mask, but doesn’t try to pull away. Dick can’t tell if it’s because he’s too afraid or if it’s because he isn’t afraid enough.

“You train who I pay you to train,” Roman says, pleasantly enough, but with an edge of warning.

That finally makes Slade drop the boy’s chin. The kid immediately drops his gaze, then seems to think better of it, lifting his eyes to watch Slade warily. It’s obvious that he considers Dick a lesser threat.

“You haven’t paid us yet, Mask,” Slade says in equal warning. “How old is he?”

“Old enough.”

“We’ll decide what’s old enough,” Dick snaps. “How old is he?”

It’s probably not a good idea to lose his temper with the man who pays a substantial amount of their paycheck, but Dick is tired of Black Mask thinking he owns them. Thinking he can snap his fingers and they’ll come to heel. He’s tired of working with Black Mask’s men - of having to deal with all of the useless, arrogant assholes that a man like Roman Sionis employs. Or worse, having to watch the ones he actually likes be utterly destroyed by the man in front of him, for greed or power or sometimes just for fun.

Dick doesn’t want to help him destroy this child.

“I’m twelve,” the kid says, before Roman can answer.

Dick almost does a double take. With the kid’s size, he had expected younger than that. But then, this wouldn’t be the first child stunted by a lifetime in Gotham.

There’s a considering silence then. Dick wants to refuse again but he knows he’s already spoken out of turn and Deathstroke might not be Roman Sionis, but he doesn’t appreciate being shown up by his subordinates any more than Black Mask does. Still, Dick wishes there was a way they could speak in private, so Dick can let him know exactly how much he hates this idea.

“It’ll be double the usual amount,” is what Slade finally says and Dick feels his heart sink in his chest. That means the man’s mind is made up - if Black Mask pays up, they’ll have to train the kid no matter Dick’s objections.

“Double?” Mask scoffs. His grip on the kid hasn’t loosened. “You’re out of your mind.”

“Take it or leave it. You know no one else will train him the way we will. But if the price is too steep feel free to take him elsewhere.”

“He’d better be the best Goddamn fighter in the business,” Mask growls.

Slade only smirks, even as Dick’s stomach twists itself into a painful little knot. That’s settled then - Dick never really had a chance if Slade had made up his mind, but Dick honestly hadn’t expected him to agree to it. It’s not as though Slade has ever shown any real interest in kids before - even his own. It’s not as though they need the money.

“Be a good boy then, sweetheart,” Roman says, finally relinquishing his grip on Jay’s neck.

He strokes a hand through the boy’s curls in a surprisingly tender gesture before his fingers tighten hard enough to have the kid whimpering, yanking his head back to expose the column of his throat. There are more bruises there. Dick can see black stripes that look like finger-marks, purple and green smudges that could be anything but that make his stomach roll.

“When we’re reunited, you’re gonna be something special, baby. So don’t fuck this up. You don’t want to disappoint daddy, do you?”

“No sir,” the kid grits out, voice small and strained.

Roman hums, then he leans down and presses a mocking kiss - or as much of a kiss as he can give without any real lips - to the kid’s forehead. Jay goes rigid but doesn’t try to pull away. Dick can see him shaking.

Finally, Black Mask lets go of him. For a moment, the kid just stands there, clearly unsure what’s expected of him. Then Sionis gives him a harsh shove that has the kid stumbling.

“Go on sweetheart,” he says. The kid doesn’t look back at him, but Dick can see the tension in his shoulders. “Be good.”

⁂

Slade gives the kid the same speech he gives everyone they take in to train. No special treatment here. The whole time, the kid is quiet and sullen, but he’s clearly listening attentively to Slade’s little speech. Dick follows behind them whilst Slade leads Jay on a brief tour of the compound. There’s not much to show: a communal kitchen, a shower block, and a bare guest bedroom. The only area of any importance is the dojo and training room. It’s where Jay will be spending most of his time with them.

“We start training at 8am,” Slade explains. He sounds bored, apathetic. But Dick knows he’s watching the kid carefully. “Breakfast is from six. Evenings are your own free time. Do with it what you will.”

“Anything?” The kid asks.

“Within reason,” Slade clarifies, obviously catching the look in his eyes. “And you can’t leave the compound.”

It’s not a rule they’ve ever had before. Dick is a little surprised by the concession to the kid’s age, even if it is as minimal as not letting him run off on his own, Slade hadn’t seemed like he cared.

The kid scowls, obviously unhappy with the ruling. Is he just annoyed at having Slade exert his control? Or had this been a chance for the kid to slip Sionis’ leash? Something cold tightens Dick’s stomach. He doesn’t like the idea of holding the kid here against his will. Likes the idea of keeping him prisoner for Roman Sionis even less.

“So I can’t do anything then?” The kid grumbles.

Slade’s eyes narrow. It’s a look that Dick’s had directed at him countless times but the kid seems to quail under it in a way Dick never has. Not that that’s a surprise exactly, very few people can stand up to even a mild look from Slade.

“You can train. Let’s start now. Take off your shirt and jacket, Renegade will show you the ropes.”

Dick shoots Slade his own narrow look. None of this is unusual - they almost always do the introductory spar with Dick as a way to test their current abilities. And Dick usually enjoys it. He likes to show off, likes to get a feel for the people he’s going to be training with for the next few weeks. Likes the excuse to beat on the arrogant assholes that Sionis usually employs. But he doesn’t like the idea of fighting a twelve year old - especially not one as small and scrawny-looking as the kid. Slade must know that.

Still, with Slade it’s best not to voice your displeasure too openly. The man can be surprisingly petty. So Dick doesn’t put up any more of a complaint.

The kid shucks his suit jacket immediately, following the command as if he hasn’t even thought about it. But he hesitates when he gets to the buttons of his shirt. Undoes the button at his throat, then does it back up again, biting his lip and throwing Slade a nervous look. His fingers are trembling.

“You can leave the shirt on if you prefer,” Slade says, eventually, when it’s obvious that the boy is just going to stand there. It’s another uncharacteristic move on Slade’s part - usually, if he gives an order, he expects you to follow it. Somehow, Dick hadn’t expected him to be soft. Slade doesn’t hurt kids, but he had agreed to this - Dick has so rarely seen him make concessions before.

The kid lets out an almost unnoticeable sigh of relief, some of the tension softening out of his shoulders, before he turns his focus on Dick.

“This is just to get a feel for how you move,” Dick tells him. He circles the kid as he says it, taking in his form, his size, the way he’s holding himself, trying to figure out how best to start. “We don’t expect you to know how to fight right now, but it’s good to get an idea of how you move. What your instincts are.”

Jay follows Dick with his eyes, twisting to keep him in vision, but otherwise doesn’t move. He’s so stiff that he’s trembling. Dick doesn’t have to be an expert in body language to read the anxiety in it.

He strikes.

All in all, Jay isn’t a bad fighter. There’s no strategy to it, no real thought, and definitely no expertise, but his instincts are good. It’s painfully obvious that the kid has no training, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know his way around a fight. He can take a hit. Can deal them out too, when Dick leaves himself purposefully exposed. And he isn’t afraid to fight dirty.

It makes sense with what Dick knows about the kid - even more sense with what he can guess. Most likely, Jay had to look out for himself on the streets before Black Mask took him in; he fights like a street rat, all dirty tricks and mindless desperation. Dick’s seen it before.

It’s something they can work with.

By the time the fight ends, Jay is drenched with sweat. The expensive shirt he’s still wearing is so damp that it’s sticking to him, moulded against too-skinny ribs. The wet strands of his curls are practically dripping. His movements, already wild and unpredictable, turn frantic. It allows Dick to catch the kid’s arm when he makes a poorly-timed attack that leaves him open, gripping his wrist and using the leverage to force Jay to the floor.

For the first time in the fight, Jay flinches. A sharp, wounded sound bursts out of him even before his knees hit the floor. If it weren’t for his own training, that might have had Dick letting go. Instead, he tightens his grip, losing himself to instinct and muscle memory as he follows Jay to the ground, twisting his arm behind him in a loose pin and pressing a knee into the small of his back to keep him there. Jay goes stiff beneath him. The only movement is the heave of his ribs as the kid pants for air, otherwise surrendering himself to Dick’s hold.

Then, tight and panicked: “Get off me.”

Dick lets the hold drop immediately, sitting back on his heels and lifting his hands in surrender. He’s won the fight. There’s no need to lord it over the kid. Jay had done well, even, all things considering. And Dick remembers that sharp little noise of pain the kid had made when Dick had grabbed him. The way Jay had flinched at the grip of Dick’s fingers when he’d taken all the previous blows with barely a twitch. It makes Dick’s stomach twist uncomfortably.

“Did I hurt you?” he asks, as the kid pushes himself upright.

Jay scowls. “No,” he snaps. But Dick can see the way he’s cradling his wrist in one hand, his face tense with pain.

“Let me see.”

Dick reaches out but the kid draws away from him. There’s such naked fear on his face that it takes Dick’s breath away. It’s gone almost as soon as it comes but Dick pulls away anyway.

“Don’t lie.” Slade is suddenly looming over them. He snatches the kid’s wrist in one huge fist, pulling him half off the floor, ignoring Jay’s pained squeak. “Hiding injuries gets you killed out in the field.”

Jay struggles, but if he’d lost the fight to Renegade, there’s no chance he’ll overpower Deathstroke. Slade just drags the kid’s sleeve down his skinny arm, ignoring the weak protests. The skin revealed is pale and smattered with bruises. A dark ring of them circles the kid’s wrist, some of them an angry purple, others faded to sickly yellows and greens. Dick’s stomach clenches. There’s no way his hold caused an injury like that - this is something the kid has had for a while. Something inflicted on him again and again if the variation in colour is anything to go by. Some of those bruises are at least a week old. Some of them are clearly fresh.

Slade doesn’t let go of Jay’s wrist, but there’s a sudden tension to his face as he eyes the marks on the kid’s skin. It’s difficult to tell with Slade, but Dick can’t help but wonder if he’s feeling the same hollow disgust in his gut as Dick is. Someone has clearly hurt the kid and not in the controlled way Dick was just moments ago. Those marks aren’t from any training Dick has ever been a part of.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, really. Dick knows exactly what Black Mask is like. Knows exactly the sort of thing that man is willing to do. It’s hardly a shock that Roman is a child abuser, along with every other terrible thing the man has done. He’d asked them to turn Jay into a killer, after all. And they had agreed to it.

“Any other injuries?” Slade asks, and his voice is softer than before, although Dick thinks he can only tell because of the years they’ve known each other.

“No,” the kids lies. He tugs against Slade’s grip, his face twisting when there’s no give. “Are we done here?”

For a moment, Dick thinks Slade might call him on it. There’s little doubt in Dick’s mind that there are more bruises under the sweat-drenched cotton of Jay’s shirt. He remembers the kid’s hesitance to remove it - thinks now that it was probably more than just self-consciousness. Slade doesn’t like to be lied to. Likes being disobeyed even less.

But, for whatever reason, Slade doesn’t. He releases his grip on the kid with a grunt, letting him slide back to the floor. Jay stays there, a crumpled little heap, watching Slade from under furrowed brows.

“Go clean up,” Slade growls. “You’re done for tonight.”

Jay scrambles to his feet with the air of someone who’s been pushed out the path of a speeding truck and disappears before Slade can change his mind.

⁂

“Why did you agree to it?” Dick asks, later, once they’ve turned in for the night.

Slade hums as he pulls his shirt over his head. From his position on the bed, Dick gets to watch the muscles of his back slide and flex as he does so, scarred skin bared to the dim light of their room. Normally, the sight would have heat fluttering low in Dick’s belly. Tonight, he’s too angry to really appreciate it.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Slade throws back, as he slides into his side of the bed. The mattress dips heavily with his weight. Cool air brushes against Dick’s skin as Slade disturbs the blanket, settling it over his own legs. “The money’s good. You’ve never had a problem with it before.”

“They’ve never been twelve before,” Dick snaps, icily. In the privacy of their own bedroom, Dick isn’t afraid to let his opinion known. Slade might not like to be shown up in public, but he’s never begrudged Dick an argument when they’re alone. Sometimes, Dick thinks his temper is one of the reasons they work so well together. Slade wouldn’t want to lose that.

“It’s no different from any of the others we’ve trained.”

“Yes it is, Slade, and you know it.” Dick crosses his arms over his bare chest, feeling like a child himself, angry and petulant under Slade’s heavy gaze. “He’s a little kid and now we’re training him to be a killer. It’s not right.”

Slade is silent for a moment, as if he’s actually considering that. Then, “You were a kid when you started.”

Dick’s shoulders tighten. “Yeah, and look how I turned out.”

Slade hums again. Then he shifts, leaning across the space between them to press warm lips against Dick’s jaw. Despite everything, Dick still melts at the touch, eyelashes fluttering, some of the tension sliding out of his muscles.

“You turned out perfect,” Slade murmurs. Those hot lips ghost across Dick’s skin, leaving little tingles of desire in their wake, until they’re moulded over his mouth. Dick sighs into the kiss. Lifts a hand to Slade’s throat and rests his fingers there, feeling his pulse beating against Dick’s palm. Then he uses his grip to gently push Slade away.

“Says you.” But he can’t help the little smile he can feel tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Besides, it’s different. You gave me a home, a life. Black Mask is going to destroy that kid and we’re helping him do it.”

Slade is still close enough that Dick can feel the huff of his breath against his cheek. His single eye gleams in the dim light as it flickers over Dick’s face, taking in whatever it is the man sees when he looks at Dick. Then he sighs, a hot gust across Dick’s skin, and pulls back a little further, breaking Dick’s grip. Immediately, Dick misses the heat of him so close.

“What do you think would happen if we didn’t agree to train him?” Slade asks. “What do you think Black Mask would do to a kid who he doesn’t see as worth keeping around? Do you genuinely think we would help the kid by refusing?”

Dick grinds his teeth hard enough that his jaw aches, because Slade is right - he knows Slade is right - but it doesn’t make the situation any easier. Knowing that this is the best of a bad bunch doesn’t exactly ease Dick’s conscience.

Strong fingers stroke over Dick’s jaw, loosening some of the tension there. Then they slide around to cup the back of his neck, massaging at the muscle before gently tugging Dick forward, against Slade’s chest. Dick lets himself relax, tilting his head up to nuzzle against the older man’s throat.

“I hate this.”

“I know,” Slade murmurs.

Dick can feel the vibration of it through Slade’s broad chest and it stirs something in his gut. When Slade presses a kiss against Dick’s temple, Dick turns his face into it, slipping his tongue out almost immediately to run it over the seam of Slade’s mouth. The older man opens himself up to Dick with a groan. Warm hands slide up Dick’s side as he twists to straddle Slade’s lap, tunneling his own hands through Slade’s white hair. The solid weight of Slade between his thighs always does something to him. It’s why they almost always end up fucking after sparring.

“Dickie,” Slade breathes, dropping a wet kiss to the curve of Dick’s collarbone.

Dick shivers, tilting his head back to allow Slade’s mouth access to the span of his throat. Lets out a soft little moan as Slade nips at the skin beneath his jaw and-

The door opens.

It’s quiet, but neither Slade nor Dick got where they are without developing an obsessive awareness of their surroundings. The soft sound of the door gliding across the thick cream carpet might as well be a shout. Beneath Dick, Slade stiffens. Dick is already sliding off of his lap, twisting to face the intruder. He isn’t concerned, particularly, because he knows who’s going to be standing in the doorway before he even turns around. If they were dangerous, they wouldn’t have just waltzed through the door.

Still, he is a little annoyed at being interrupted. Jay hadn’t even knocked. If he’d walked in just a little bit later, he might have got an eyeful.

“What do you want?” Slade grunts, low and dangerous.

It’s difficult to see the kid’s face in just the dim light of the bedside lamp, but Dick sees him stiffen. Can see that he’s trembling even though half of him is still hidden behind the door. It’s obvious that the kid is frightened. Dick frowns. Did he have a nightmare? It wouldn’t be a surprise if he was unsettled, but Dick finds it hard to believe that the kid would come to Deathstroke and Renegade - practical strangers beyond the knowledge that they're going to train him to fight - with this sort of vulnerability. Is twelve too old to be crawling into someone else’s bed? Dick stopped being able to seek comfort like that when his parents died - long before that age - and he hadn’t been able to again until Slade had first taken him to bed, well after he’d reached adulthood.

Jay doesn’t answer but he does step into the room, letting the door close behind him with a soft click. He hesitates for a moment, shuffling his feet, his hands twisting in the material of his shirt, until Slade growls and he startles, covering the rest of the distance to the bed in a few quick steps.

“Jay,” Dick tries, bemused. “What are you doing?”

Because the kid is pulling his pyjama top up over his head, discarding it carelessly on the floor as he clambers up onto the bed. Dick gets a brief look at the determined set of the kid’s jaw before he’s crawling into Dick’s lap. One hand settles on Dick’s blanket-covered thigh. The other clutches at his shoulder as Jay leans up to press his lips against Dick’s throat.

Dick pushes the kid away automatically, instinctively. One moment, Jay is a warm, uncomfortable weight in Dick’s lap, the next he’s lying on his back at the foot of the bed, blinking up at the ceiling. Shock tingles like electricity through Dick’s veins. For a long moment, all he can do is sit there in stunned silence.

Jay doesn’t move either. Not until Slade shifts, looming up over the bed, dragging the kid upright by the arm and shaking him lightly.

“What the hell was that?”

The expression on Jay’s face as Slade pulls him to his knees is pure fear. Slade looks huge in the darkness, kneeling on the bed in only his boxers, Jay tiny in his grip. Despite knowing that Slade wouldn’t hurt him, Dick can’t stop the clutch of fear in his own chest. The kid looks so small. So easily hurt.

“What?” Jay gasps, cringing away from Slade, although he doesn’t try to pull free from his grip. “I thought…”

Slade growls. “You thought what?”

“Slade,” Dick interrupts. He can’t sit here and look at the terror on the kid’s little face any longer. Whatever Jay had been trying to accomplish - and Dick’s mind keeps stalling over that because the idea makes Dick feel sick to his stomach - manhandling him like this is not the way to respond to it. “Let him go.”

There’s another perilous moment where Slade’s grip doesn’t loosen. Where the kid stares up at him with huge, wet eyes and Dick’s heart throbs on his throat. Then Slade drops the skinny arm in his fist and the kid sinks back against the bedsheets with a scowl.

“You said you wanted double,” Jay says and his voice is tight. There’s a hint of a whine to the words, as if Dick and Slade are being unfair. “You said...I thought…”

He crosses those skinny arms over his chest. The movement draws Dick’s eyes to all the pale skin on show - the hint of ribs visible even in the semi-darkness, the jut of his collarbones, the dark bloom of bruises. If it hadn’t already been clear that the kid was lying earlier, this is all the proof they need to know he is injured.

Because the bruises are everywhere. Littered up and down his arms - and Dick swallows thickly at the knowledge that Slade has probably contributed his own there - splashed across his ribs, dotted over his throat. There are more braceleting the kid’s wrist - a matching cuff to the ones they had found earlier. Still more staining the crest of his hips, sneaking under the waistband of his pyjama bottoms.

Dick feels suddenly, violently ill. Has to tighten his throat against the horror surging through his chest. The sheer volume of bruises is bad enough but it’s everything else they imply that has Dick’s stomach clenching painfully.

Jesus, Dick had known Roman was bad but this...this is something else.

“You thought we wanted you as payment,” he manages, squeezing the words through the tightness of his throat. They sound....odd, even to his own ears, strangely distorted.

Jay shrugs, a sharp, jerky movement, scowling so hard that moisture leaks out of the corner of his eyes - not proper tears, but on the edge of them.

Slade leans away from him and the kid flinches at the movement before going still, stiff and trembling like a rabbit under the jaws of a fox. Dick can’t even blame him - the fury on Slade’s face is frightening.

“I don’t rape children,” Slade growls. “Or anyone.”

Jay’s head jerks, his expression transforming with surprise. “It’s not -” And even in the darkness, Dick can see the kid’s face flush, red blooming across his cheeks and chest. “It’s not - “

“What isn’t it?” Dick asks, gently. Nausea claws at the base of his throat, but he manages to flatten most of it out of his voice. This is not a conversation he ever wanted to have. This is not a situation he wants to be in.

Jay’s face scrunches up again. “It’s not rape!” he shouts. Then he starts to cry.

Dick’s heart breaks. He wants to reach out so badly. Wants to pull this poor little kid into his arms and soothe away his distress, his pain. But he knows that his touch won’t be welcome. Not right now. Not considering the kid had, just moments ago, believed that Dick and Slade were going to hurt him.

Slade sits back fully on the bed, making himself smaller and less intimidating in a way that Dick remembers from his early years with the man, putting more space between them. “Why not?” he asks and it’s as gentle as Dick has ever heard him.

At first, the kid is crying too hard to answer. It hurts to listen to - huge, gasping sobs that sound as if they’re being wrenched from his chest, little whimpering cries that he muffles with his fist. Tears stream over his red cheeks, streaking all the way down his neck, over all those terrible bruises.

Then, in a small, hiccupy voice: “I owe you, for - for the -” a wet swallow “- the training. I owe you.”

“Oh Jay,” Dick whispers, at the same time as Slade growls, “You don’t owe us anything.”

The kid sniffles, scrubbing a boney, bruised wrist against his eyes. The tears don’t stop, still leaking steadily down his face.

“Is that what Roman told you?” Dick asks, swallowing against his revulsion. “That you owe him for taking you in? That it makes it OK for him to touch you?”

“He didn’t have to tell me.” Jay’s voice is still small and wet, but there’s an edge to it too. Dick cant tell who he’s angry at - Dick, Roman, himself, the world. “Nobody does shit for free and I ain’t got anything else to give him. I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to go with him. I’d be - I’d be doing worse on the street.”

Somehow that doesn’t make Dick feel much better. Somehow, knowing that a twelve-year-old had been forced to make the decision between Roman Sionis and starving to death on the street, only makes Dick feel sicker.

“Get that shit out of your head,” Slade says, gruffly. Dick can tell he’s as disturbed as he is, despite all the shit Deathstroke has seen as part of the job. “You don’t owe anyone anything, OK kid. Not us and especially not Roman. Your pedo boss owes me a lot of money and I owe him a bullet in the head.”

Jay flinches at that but he falls silent, barely even sniffling. He scrubs at his face again. Stares at the blanket with wet eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says, finally.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Dick tells him. Then, taking a risk, he brushes the back of his hand across the kid’s wet cheek. Jay doesn’t pull away - in fact, he leans into the contact, his eyelashes fluttering, letting out a quiet sigh.

“Go back to bed kid,” Slade says. “Forget this happened.”

Jay bites his lip, looks between the two of them quickly, like he’s looking for something, before sliding off the bed. He hesitates at the door. “It’s Jason,” he says, softly. “My name’s Jason.”

Dick’s heart hurts.

⁂

Jason stays with them for longer than anyone has before. It’s not that the kid is a slow learner or a bad fighter or anything like that. Jason is actually good at the training. He’s smart and eager to please, young enough to absorb correction but with a solid enough foundation that they aren’t starting entirely from scratch. Usually he would have been out of there in a few weeks - a month at most - but Jason has been with Deathstroke for over two months now and it’s getting harder to justify why.

The thing is, Dick doesn’t want to give him back. Not to Roman. Not to the life he knows is waiting for the poor kid. Dick couldn’t justify allowing that to happen to any child, but Jason - he’s grown on Dick in the time he’s been with them. Dick likes him. Yeah, he can be a brat, annoying and mouthy and rude. Yeah, he can throw tantrums, kick and scream and yell (although only with Dick, never with Slade, he notices). But the kid can also be painfully sweet. In his spare time, he likes to read. So ferociously that he’s gotten through a good portion of Slade’s library. He likes to cook too. Likes, most of all, to follow Dick around like a little puppy or an imprinted duckling. Slade too, sometimes, when he’s feeling brave enough.

It’s clear that the kid still doesn’t trust them. Not fully. He never initiates contact with them unless it’s required for training. He still flinches at sudden movements, cringes and cowers if he thinks they’re angry at him or he’s done something wrong. Dick can’t imagine him ever asking for a hug or wanting to hold their hands. But he’s still a kid. A sweet, sad, traumatised little kid. And Dick can’t stop the slow, creeping knowledge that he’s starting to think of Jason as his.

“Will you read to me?” Jason asks, one night, crawling up onto the sofa Dick had been lounging across. When Dick sits up a little, the kid slots himself against Dick’s side, offering up the book for him to take and Dick is frozen for a moment by the shock of the contact.

“Sure,” he says, taking the book with one arm, letting the other one rest across the back of the sofa, not confident enough to actually put it around Jason’s shoulders like he really wants.

Jason falls asleep like that, curled against Dick’s side, Dick’s voice slow and steady as he reads.

After that, Jason seems noticeably less frightened. As if it was some sort of test that Dick managed to pass. It’s not as though he’s suddenly touchy-feely with them, but there’s a tangible easing of tension, a shifting in the atmosphere between them. Dick thinks, sometimes, that he could get away with a hug, if he caught Jason in just the right mood for one.

Only, it’s Slade who actually gets to hug him, in the end.

They’re working through pins and how to escape them - something that they’ve already gone over with Jason plenty of times - when it happens. During training, Jason never begrudges them the physical contact they need. He never flinches from the blows they throw at him either, even though sometimes he can be startled just by a sharp movement of Dick’s hand when they’re outside of the dojo. It’s the control, Dick thinks, even as it makes his chest throb a little, that makes the difference. If Jason knows it’s coming, he can prepare for it.

But this time when Slade pins him down, Jason goes stiff and silent. Slade sustains the hold for a minute, waiting for Jason to make his move, to pull himself out of whatever panic he’s suddenly sunk into, but the kid doesn’t surface. Even from across the dojo, Dick can hear his rough, panting breaths. The edge of fear in them.

“You alright, kid?” Slade asks, pulling away from Jason with careful movements. Jason doesn’t acknowledge him. With Slade no longer on top of him, DIck can see the kid’s face, the slackness of his expression, the way he’s staring blankly up at the ceiling without really seeing it. Dick’s stomach drops.

“Kid?” Slade reaches forward, as if he wants to grab Jason - to shake him maybe. Jason twitches at the movement, blinking rapidly as he seems to come back to himself. Dick watches his eyes flicker. Then his whole face crumples out of that scary blankness into something agonised. He looks terribly, awfully young,

“I don’t want to go back,” Jason whispers. The words hitch, like he’s trying not to cry, breathed out on a shaky exhale.

Dick watches Slade’s face soften. Feels his own crumple to match Jason’s as devastation blooms, hot, behind his ribs. Then Slade is reaching out with one muscular arm, pulling Jason up against his chest. Surprisingly, Jason lets him, limp and pliant in Slade’s grip.

“I know, kid,” Slade growls. He lifts one hand to tuck Jason’s face against his neck, settling himself cross-legged on the floor and shifting Jason around until he’s held more firmly in his lap. Jason sniffles, one little hand reaching up to fist in the material of Slade’s shirt. It’s a surprisingly paternal gesture from Slade. Dick isn’t sure if he can remember the last time Slade was so soft with someone beyond the confines of their bedroom. Isn’t sure if he can even remember Slade hugging him back when he was a kid and the man had been everything to Dick. He must have done, at some point. Dick has always been clingy.

Either way, it touches something deep in Dick’s chest to see the man he loves embracing the kid so gently. Slade’s soft side is something rarely seen, but treasured. And seeing Jason accept comfort like this is a rarity too. One that Dick wants more of.

“Do you think we’re going to let you?” Slade asks, rubbing his bristly chin over the top of Jason’s head. “Knowing what that bastard’s done? Do you think we’ll let you go back to him?”

Jason shrugs jerkily, sharp little shoulders shifting in Slade’s grip. He’s started to fill out in the time he’s been here - building up muscle where before there was just skin and bones - but the kid is still too skinny.

“Where else would I go?” he asks, voice small and wet. “I- I’m Roman’s.”

Slade growls. “You don’t belong to anyone but yourself kid.”

“And you’ve got us,” Dick adds, moving across the room to crouch beside them, not content to be left out of the moment any longer. Jason twists to blink up at him with wet eyes, peering out from where he’s pressed against Slade’s neck. “You can stay here as long as you need to, Jason.”

Dick lifts his chin to meet Slade’s gaze as he says that, daring him to disagree. It’s not that Dick expects him to hand the kid off to Roman, but offering him a permanent place here is something they haven’t discussed. Dick is stepping wildly out of bounds with that declaration. But Slade doesn’t seem annoyed. The skin around his eye crinkles with something that might be affection as he steadily meets Dick’s gaze, as if Dick has done something particularly cute.

“I can’t,” Jason whispers, dropping his eyes down to where Slade’s thick arm is curled around him. “I can’t…”

“Yes you can,” Dick says, just as softly. “I won’t let Black Mask take you back, Jason.”

It will be the end of this lucrative little agreement between them, but they’ve never really needed the money. And Dick has never liked Roman. This is no loss to him. If the alternative is sending Jason back to the man who raped and abused him, well….

Dick isn’t going to let that happen.

⁂

“You can’t be serious?”

Slade shifts, looming menacingly over Roman, despite being several feet away from him. In his full armour, Slade always looks enormous. In his fancy little suit, Roman looks a little like a child playing dress-up beside him.

“Deadly.”

“What?” Roman sneers, clearly wrong-footed but trying to claw back control, “You train him up and now you want your own little assassin?” His eyes slide to Dick, cold and cruel. “The old model isn’t good enough for you, anymore?”

“My motivations are none of your concern, Roman,” Slade growls. “I’ll waive payment.”

It’s hard to read Roman’s expressions behind that eponymous mask, but Dick can see the tension in his body. The way his muscles bunch, as if he’s considering actually attacking Slade - as if the mobster could go against Deathstroke and Renegade on their own turf and actually have a chance of winning. Roman has his body guard, of course, and probably a good number of guns on his person, but he’s never going to beat Slade. Especially not with Dick as backup. Not that Slade would need it.

“That kid is mine,” Roman snarls. “I dragged the little slut off the street and gave him everything. If you want your own little whore because the old one got too big for you, fine. But you’re not getting this one.”

Slade moves almost before Roman has finished speaking, drawing his katana in one fluid movement to press it threateningly against Roman’s unprotected throat. The mobster’s arms jerk, as if he means to grab for his gun, or maybe push Slade away from him, but Deathstroke is a solid mass on top of him, immovable.

“Don’t try my patience Mask. I should take your head off for what you did to that kid. Whatever our dealings in the past, I don’t take kindly to rapists.” The blade of his sword presses a little harder into Roman’s throat. Hard enough to draw a little trickle of blood when Roman swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously under the threat. “Even less kindly to pedophiles.”

Roman sneers again - or maybe that’s just the only expression he can pull, with a face like that. “That’s rich coming from you. Everyone knows you’ve been fucking that one since you took him in.”

Slade snarls like an angry dog. The muscles of his arm tense and Dick sees exactly what’s about to happen a moment before it does.

Roman’s head hits the ground with a dull thud before anyone can react - not Dick or the useless body guard. Blood sprays up into the air in a thick wet swathe. It soaks Slade, his hair, his beard, drenching the front of the armour. The bodyguard takes one look at him and turns tail. Slade doesn’t bother chasing him. Neither does Dick.

“Did you have to?” Dick asks. But he can’t find it in himself to be too disapproving. Just thinking about the bruises Jason had quells almost all of his ire. It’ll be a pain to clean this up - both the physical mess and the political one that’s going to follow this move. Still, Dick can’t find it in himself to care.

Slade shrugs, an effortless movement of his muscled shoulders. “Now he’ll never touch another kid again. Don’t tell me you’re not happy about that.”

Dick shrugs too. There’s a smile tugging at the corners of his lips that he can’t stop. The knowledge that Roman will never touch another kid - never touch Jason - again makes him so happy he’s almost dizzy with it.

“You’d best clean up before we tell Jason what happened.”

“Why?” And Dick kind of wants to kiss the smirk right off Slade’s face. “He’s going to have to get used to a bit of blood. He’s part of the family now.”

Family. Dick can’t stop grinning. He likes the sound of that.

#sladerobinweekend2020 #sladerobinweek #Day 2: Accidental Co-Parenting #DC #Batman #Slade Wilson #Dick Grayson #Jason Todd #sladedick #sladerobin #my writing #fanfiction #violence tw #child abuse tw #rape tw #blood tw #Please check the warnings guys

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dontbesoweirdkira · 4 years

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It's how she's able to deal with him (and aizawa) (aizawa reminds her of Bruce and always gives him a smile due to it (or a hug when he allows it, she misses her dad) while yamada reminds her of all the happy ones in the family(he automatically gets a hug) ie dick, Steph, Duke, Harper)

A/N: *MUA* you my friend is just..you are a blessing. THIS EVERYBODY THIS ANON ABOVE ALL. When I see you in the street...it’s on sight with hugs and kisses.

Literally i hope you don’t mind i made this into headcanons^^ this was such an interesting view on it. Y’know i’ve kinda been thinking of DC and MHA too so i'm convinced you have tElEkiNeSIS tyPE pOwERs

-SO let’s just make up a scenario to make this work shall we??

-Well i’d imagine you’d be like the youngest?? Maybe like second to Damian. I don’t know if I can totally just imagine the Batfam just being super soft and always spoiling her because of how young she would be compared to them.

- That’s why when she sees the batfam in Aizawa and Yamada, she’s instantly so affectionate and loving to them. Just out of instinct or more so a sense of familiarity.

-OMGIHSHB what if one day like Aizawa is wearing a super formal type business suit. Like top of the line, totally only has one of those in his closet and is wearing it for a school event since it’s gonna be public and they must be top tier or something. And literally from a side view he looks like Bruce and she just runs up to him and jump hugs him, thinking that Bruce came to surprise her like ahhhh

-”Bruce you came~~ I missed you so much”

-and Aizawa is just in pure shock like wtf just happened???? Then he realizes what you just said and just is super soft

-”haha y/n tell me, do i look that sharp to be mistaken for my multi-billionaire??”

-He would understand how you missed you dad and just allows you to be in his arms for a bit, even after you apologized.

-But hugs on the daily for him aren’t really a thing, he’s just not a really affectionate person and it’s nothing personal to be fully honest. He shows his love by the soft smiles or chuckles, or just talking to you sometimes. Even just being near you is his way of spending time. SImilar to Bruce, harper, and Jason. They all love you lots but they aren’t necessarily fond of hugs and kisses. However you’ll most definitely get one if it looks like you really need it or if they feel up to it.

-For yamada it’s like how when Aizawa and him are together and Yamada is saying something utterly sly or just making stupid puns and Aizawa and just really done with it but still sticks around because he still loves him.

-Like when this happens you always start laughing and they always get super confused and and ask you why are you laughing so much and it’s always the same answer…

-”yo Miss.America? Why are you laughing so much?”

-”Oh I'm sorry, you just remind me of my older brother and my dad so much. Like this same scenario always happens, Dick is always annoying Bruce and Bruce always has this unbothered facade on and it’s very funny to me.”

-”AWWWW LOOK SLEEPY MAN WE REMIND OUR LITTLE GIRL OF HER REAL FAMILY.ODCJBVKINONJKJeojOJENJONCJO OMG OMG DOES THIS MEAN WERE PRACTICALLY HER JAPANESE PARENTS??? DO WE HAVE UNOFFICIAL CUSTODY?? AIZAWA WE SHOUL-”

“Shut up yamada- however that's cute Y/N.”

- he radiates Dicks chaotic energy it’s so ughhh.

- Sometimes during lunch you’ll sit with Yamada and play a few games while eating some food. It reminds you of the times in the summer when you sometimes would play board games with Duke while eating some of Alfred's famous sandwiches.

-Of course you’re the reigning champion and always beat both of them at every game you’d play. Both are 100% sore losers

-”Come on Y/N! That’s totally cheating. I’ll go get Bruce if you keep it up”

-”YYYY/NNNN THERE’S NO WAY YOU WON THAT!! I CALL CHEAT CODES. I’LL GET AIZAWA ON YOU.”

-But HUgs yes like everyday when you come into school, you give Yamada the biggest hug everrrrr. It’s so cute like he’s always super happy to see you.He’s ruffle your hair a bit and ask you about your day. It reminds you of Dick, Steph, and Duke. They are always the quickest to greet/play with you. Yamada’s warm child-like demeanor 100% is a carbon-copy of that.

-MIght i add how literally over-protective both parties are over you. Like even though you’d be like 15 given UA is a high school, they still treat you like you’re a lost 9 year old haha. You’re not as much of a fighter as the rest of your siblings, most of them are highly trained and are lethal weapons. You on the other hand focused on brains-over-brawns. SUper smart and can make super cool gadgets?? Perhaps?? Anyways they are always on top of you and making sure you’re safe just incase shit hits the fan. 100% all of them will throw hands for you. Blood will be shed in your honor.

-Like the attack on tiTaN sorry my inner weeb just auto corrected

-Like the attack on UA with all the villains, first thing first i’d feel yamada or Aizawa would have made sure you are protected and not in harm's way at all costs. You’re too precious to them. pLUs iF bRuCE fOUnD oUT yoU wErE hURt tHE wAY tHE lAwsUiT woUlD deSTrOy thEIr WHoLE LIFE.

-This ahh the way you made me imagine this whole universe ANoN liKe DamN. seND moRe of This To ME OKAY liKE my lIfE suPPoRt is BatsIs and MHA at thIS pOint. If i don’t see you in my asks in like 24 hrs then...DUN DUN DUN

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mobius-prime · 4 years

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216. Sonic the Hedgehog #148

Hey, nice cover art! For those who aren't familiar, it's drawn using the same style as the art from the little-appreciated Gameboy Advance game Sonic Battle. It's always interesting when the comics imitate the art style of one of the games for a little while as a kind of lowkey advertisement.

The Good, the Bad & the Unknown (Part Three): Genesis

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Steven Butler Colors: Jason Jensen

We open not in the underground facility where all the action is taking place, but in Knothole, as Dylan delivers a message to Sally about how the Freedom Fighters haven't been answering any communications for the past hour. Oh, hey, Dylan, long time no see! We haven't seen the members of the Substitute Freedom Fighters in a while, now that I think about it. Shame, I always liked them. Anyway, Sally is highly concerned upon hearing of the loss of contact, and orders Dylan to bring Sonic's father Jules to the court immediately. Back in the facility, Tommy rushes off to find a way to help Rotor, Bunnie, and Fiona while leaving Tails behind to man the monitor room. Tails finds Sonic on the monitors, who is currently lying winded on the ground where he fell after the floor dropped. He hears a loud rumbling, and hops up in time to dodge an incoming train car, since it turns out he landed on some tracks for an underground rail system. Shadow isn't far behind, approaching Sonic rapidly, but Sonic decides he's going to turn the tables and fight on his own terms, hopping onto one of the passing cars (which is really more like a high-tech mine cart than anything). Shadow stops, catching up to Metal Sonic and Isaac and wondering why Sonic would use the train car to travel if he can run faster than it at his highest speeds, and neither of the two robots have an explanation.

I think that's literally the first time anyone in the entirety of the comic so far has actually acknowledged out loud that Robotnik is just Kintobor backwards. I mean, it's kind of obvious if you look at the name for more than two seconds, but no one's ever actually said it. While this is going on, Tommy arrives at the corridor where the other three teammates are being electrocuted, and searches around frantically for a way to save them without getting caught in the electricity himself. After finding a random leather glove, he hits a circuit box, hoping it will help.

This is where things get a little jumbled. Tails finds Sonic on the monitors, as well as the two pursuing robots close behind him, and becomes fascinated by the conversation that Metal Sonic and Isaac get into. Their conversation continues in the background of the next several pages, so instead of trying to describe it interspersed with the rest of the action I'll just summarize it here. Isaac explains that he was created by one Dr. Ivan Kintobor, who was born in 2006 - yes, our 2006, only a few decades before the Xorda dropped the gene bombs on Earth. Ivan anticipated the Xorda's genocidal response to the capture and dissection of one of their own by the humans, so he designed Isaac to be able to function in a post-apocalyptic environment before sealing himself away in a stasis pod. Isaac bore firsthand witness to the results of the gene bombs, which, contrary to their intention to kill all humans without disturbing the planet's ecosystems, threw tons of volcanic ash and dust into the atmosphere, transforming the planet's surface forever. As mentioned before, this was the first "Day of Fury" recorded by the echidnas, and over the next thousand years, humans devolved into the Overlanders we know today (though how losing one finger and nothing else counts as "devolving" I have no clue), while their residual DNA mixed with that of various ordinary animals, who consequently had their own evolution accelerated into Mobiankind. When Ivan, from his pod, learned that societies were emerging from the newly-created Mobian species, he ordered Isaac to chronicle important historical events of the planet in addition to scientific data. Not long after the sun finally burned through the rest of the ash and dust in the air, the energy from the gene bombs, having finally absorbed deep into the planet's crust, reacted with beryl deposits to create… the Chaos Emeralds! Yes, interestingly enough, this is the backstory of the Chaos Emeralds in the comics. But wait, remember how Sonic encountered red Chaos Emeralds on another planet during Tossed in Space? All I can imagine from that is that Earth must not have been the first planet the Xorda used their gene bombs on - it makes sense, as the other species of the galaxy are clearly terrified of them for some reason - and thus, there are slightly different versions of Chaos Emeralds on other planets that the Xorda have targeted before.

Anyway, Isaac explains all this to Metal Sonic as Sonic continues to ride his train car to get away from Shadow and the two robots. He tries to contact Tails for help, but Tails is caught up in listening to the impromptu history lesson over the monitors, and thus Sonic is attacked from behind by Shadow. He manages to throw him off by abruptly stopping his car, and abandons the vehicle while Shadow is still stunned from the impact to run down another side corridor, shutting the door behind him. Rotor, also listening to the audio feed as he, Bunnie and Fiona race to meet up, asks Tails if he's recording this, but Tails doesn't have time to figure out if he can download a recording form the computers' systems, as Shadow is quickly approaching Sonic's hiding place.

The three finally meet up, and Shadow directs them to the door Sonic has taken refuge behind, trying to deadlift it open. Isaac says frankly that if Sonic has gone in that particular room, he's dead, but Shadow replies that Sonic tends not to die even in the face of otherwise-mortal danger, lifting the door and calling in that he just wants to talk. Wait, what? Shadow, this entire time you've been beating on Sonic for no good reason, and now you want to try to talk things out? Sonic is clearly as skeptical as I am, immediately darting out to hit Shadow in the face once his hiding place is discovered, but at that moment everyone is distracted by an ominous new sight - the room Sonic was hiding in is in fact a gigantic launch base for a missile, whose thrusters have just fired… Wait, now I'm even more confused! How the hell did Sonic hide in that room for a good minute without somehow noticing the huge flaming missile behind him?! Ah, whatever, this is Penders, we already know his stories don't make much sense.

Playing Around

Writer/Pencils: Nelson Ribeiro Colors: Jason Jensen

Time for some more silly stuff! Apparently, the Freedom Fighters (along with a few other of their allies) have decided to put on a play for some of the younger children of Knothole, about one of their missions against Eggman. Sally isn't in the play, leading Rosie to question who will be playing her if not, well, her, but Sally just giggles and tells her to wait and see as Sonic and Tails come out to welcome the kids to their play. Before Sonic can even get his final words out a spiked mitt emerges from behind the curtain to drag him backstage, and we see none other than Knuckles in an auburn wig and blue vest and boots, furiously reminding Sonic that the only reason he's doing this is for the kids, and otherwise he would be clobbering Sonic into the ground right now for even suggesting this crazy scheme. Oh, boy, this should be good…

So, who exactly is playing who in this production? It opens with Knuckles-Sally in "her" room in Knothole, when Geoffrey, played by Bunnie, arrives to warn of an impending attack on the castle. Knuckles-Sally, barely able to contain his disdain for this whole affair, uses Nicole, played by Archimedes, to call Uncle Chuck for help, but just then, Eggman, played by Big the Cat, and Snively, played by Tails, burst in and capture the two to roboticize them. Wait, if Tails is playing Snively, then who is playing Tails? Why, Rotor of course, being laboriously held aloft by ropes controlled by Jules, Mighty, and Espio from the rafters. He and Sonic (played by, well, Sonic - guess we know who got the most preferential treatment during casting) are relaxing in Knothole when Uncle Chuck, also played by himself but sporting various kitchenware all over his body to suggest a roboticized form, rushes in to warn them of Knuckles-Sally's capture. Rotor-Tails flies Sonic to Robotropolis, where the two prepare to attack Eggman, Snively, and a shadow-bot played by Vector. Also, we get some convenient sound effects, courtesy of Amy Rose!

With Knuckles-Sally rescued, Sonic embraces "her" and goes in for a kiss, and well, let's just say he's really in the spirit of the role, with Knuckles having to warn him away from actually kissing him through clenched teeth, that is unless he's ready to redeem that promise of a clobbering. Oh, come on Knuckles, we all remember how you said quite a few issues ago how you didn't want to have to deal with girls and would rather only hang around boys - accept your gay side, my dude! Smooch that 'hog!

Destiny's Child

Writer: Ken Penders Pencils: Tim Smith 3 Colors: Jason Jensen

Tim Smith… 3? I'm so confused by this name. Do they perhaps mean Tim Smith III, as in, he's the third person in his family named Tim Smith? Or is there just a hidden cloning facility in the back of the Archie Comics headquarters that occasionally churns out extra Tim Smiths to draw for random issues of their comics?

Tails is hanging out alone by a pond at the outskirts of Knothole Village one afternoon, and it turns out that though he's kept quiet about it, he's extremely frustrated at the knowledge that even though his parents are alive somewhere on the other side of the galaxy, no one seems to be rushing to actually go and rescue them. Suddenly, Athair's disembodied head appears floating in front of him, speaking cryptically about how the hour of the Chosen One draws near or whatever. Tails isn't impressed, and confronts him about the whole Chosen One thing, that by now multiple different people have talked to him about it and he was even kidnapped and held hostage for months by Mammoth Mogul over it, yet no one will actually tell him what this supposed prophecy even refers to. He asks if everyone knows about this but him, and honestly, I don't blame him one bit for being upset - not even us readers know what the hell the prophecy is all about, and we're normally given behind the scenes info like, all the time!

Oh, about time someone informs Tails that he has other family still left on the planet! Seriously, this kid has believed he was an orphan all his life, and yet Merlin never thought to, you know, contact him and reassure him he still had an uncle? Athair recounts the exact hostage situation with Mogul from before, how it occurred when Tails was in transit to help Knuckles back then, and Tails waves him off, saying that Sonic already told him everything that happened while he was captured. He demands an explanation, but Athair simply fades from view, leaving him frustrated and alone by the water once more. However, Athair's voice echoes back to him after a moment, urging him to be patient, as soon he'll finally know what all this is about… and about time, too, this has been going on since literally the first era of the comic with no resolution in sight.

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #sth 148 #writer: ken penders #writer: nelson ribeiro #pencils: steven butler #pencils: nelson ribeiro #pencils: tim smith 3 #colors: jason jensen

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m00nslippers · 5 years

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Why as a Jason Todd fan, I don’t talk about ‘punishing’ Jason.

I wrote this as a response on one of my other posts but I think it needs to be it’s own post.

I’ve been seeing a lot of ‘discourse’ about Jason fans not talking about the things Jason has done like shooting Damian (twice) and beating up Tim (twice) or railing on Bruce or Dick or whoever. They are annoyed that I and others are not calling for the pitchforks and continue to be sympathetic. I’ve seen some unreasonable people who seem to think no Jason fan will admit (at least to their satisfaction) that Jason has done bad things. Some seem to want me to admit that Jason is a bad person, which I think is unreasonable and untrue. They also think it’s unreasonable for me to hold the bat family responsible for not giving Jason adequate psychiatric care and emotional support.

So here. I’ll explain why I think the way I do.

Do I, as a Jason fan not talk about Jason’s violence that much or hold him as accountable as you apparently do? Maybe not, I don’t know, but if that’s the case then I’ll tell you why.

Jason-Antis see Jason’s violence as something he chose to do with full knowledge, presumably because he just likes hurting people or because he’s so selfish that he’s willing to hurt people to get something that benefits him and only him.

But that’s not how I see it. I see Jason’s violence as a symptom of abuse. The vast majority of the time, Jason’s violence is a reaction out of fear, to escape or prevent himself from being hurt or abused, or prevent the hurt or abuse of others.

Honestly the vast majority of time in society in general crime or abuse is a result of past abuse or other issues like poverty or the person’s needs otherwise being met. You meet the need, you treat the root, the unwanted behavior goes away.

Jason has been conditioned to violence for his entire life, by his upbringing in Crime Alley, by the abuse from his father, by Bruce training him to be Robin, by Talia training him to kill people. Jason’s entire life has taught him to use violence to meet his needs and solve his problems. It’s not his nature, it’s just all he knows how to do. He’s like a dog who has been hit and beat and starved and thrown into dog fights. Of course he’s going to attack people the moment he thinks he needs to. Is that the fault of the dog? No, it’s the fault of the human who trained him that way. So if it’s not the dog’s fault then should it still be punished? No, it should be re-conditioned in a place where it can’t hurt anyone until it’s safe to enter society.

But Jason is not a dog, he’s a human with logic and reason and empathy, you say. Yes, but the kind of systematic abuse and conditioning that someone like Jason has undergone will literally warp your view or reality, will interfere with your ability to use reason and logic and if you are afraid or desperate enough it will overcome your ability to empathize with others too.

But Jason’s actions often seem systematic and manipulative, you say, so doesn’t that mean he’s just hurting people for selfish reasons because he wants something? Not necessarily, Jason is highly trained and clearly makes decisions in a very systematic way. He’s highly intelligent and has a lot of self control, so he channels his fear into planning and strategy, which have been taught to him by others. Most times when he’s been really violent he’s actually been trying to get away/escape capture. Other times when he’s been violent he’s been very emotionally distraught. And still other times it’s in service of his goal to kill criminals–which is born out of his fear and pain of them continuing to hurt him or others. He might seem in control, but that’s only because of his training, and his constant planning and goal in itself is mostly a response to his constant anxiety and fear. He channels it into his revenge/execution plans.

So you look at me and you say, well fine, let’s say for arguments sake all Jason’s actions all stem from his untreated mental illness. But there still needs to be a punishment because what he did was wrong.

But I’m telling you that, logically speaking, no. He actually shouldn’t be, not if your goal is to prevent the behavior–which for Jason absolutely needs to be the goal because clearly punishing him is impossible if you aren’t going to kill him since he keeps escaping prison (which is part of his point, that punishment is either impossible or doesn’t work for some criminals. He is a walking case of his own point.). Punishing him isn’t going to stop him from killing people, it’s not going to stop him from hurting people, it’s not going to stop anything it’s mostly just going to make it worse. Because nothing the bats are willing to do is worse than what he’s already been through, what he’s already built up in his head as the consequence of not killing/hurting people. At this point every criminal he sees is just the Joker and he’s terrified at the thought of him/them walking free to hurt him or hurt others.

The bats tried to punish Jason multiple times, they’ve tried fighting him, they’ve tried imprisoning him, they’ve tried yelling at him, they’ve tried ‘reasoning with him’ (he’s sick, he’s not reasonable). But none of it worked. Jason kept killing, kept ‘acting out’.

But you know what curbed Jason from killing? Roy and Kori. Once he got friends who weren’t telling him every moment ‘you’re a killer, stop killing, you’re crazy’, who were emotionally supportive, who made him feel safe–low and behold he stopped or at least significantly calmed down. That’s honestly how I know that most of his behavior is anxiety/fear based.

And sure you can say, ‘well different people wrote different things it’s just different writers writing him differently you can’t read anything into it.’ Well maybe, but I can and I am. The more I read about him the less I actually want to throw out, the more cohesive it actually feels to me in a lot of ways. And If you are going to hold Jason responsible for everything he’s been written as doing, then you have to take his New 52 change too. You can’t have the first and not the second. Either he beat up Tim and shot Damian and calmed down as soon as he got friends, or neither count because they are both writers writing him ‘out of character’ and there’s not point even bringing those things up.

So to my mind at least, talking about punishing Jason is stupid, it’s pointless, and it’s pointless talking about it. That’s honestly why as a Jason fan I don’t and why I don’t dwell on the fact he’s done “messed up things to his family.”Yeah, I identify with him but I don’t identify with his ‘need for validation’. I identify with his need for psychiatric treatment that he can’t get because his family will not treat it as the disease it is, with the care he deserves. Because that’s been me before, and it’s a reality for a lot of people in the country I live in.

And yes, asking his family to recognize his illness and bring him in, to accept him and help him even though he’s actively hurting them is a lot to ask for the average family. But the bat-family is not the average family. They are geniuses and they have all been trained in psychology and victim treatment, and they are trained physical fighters who can protect themselves against him. If anyone can handle it, it’s them. They know better, they can do better. In a world with non-shitty DC writers they probably would do better. But if we’re taking all of Jason’s shitty writing, then we are taking all of theirs too. And I don’t think they are doing as much as they are capable of.

So that’s a problem which a lot of the anti-Jason arguments that I see. They are solely focused on the bad things he’s done, and saying his fans are ignoring them. They say ‘yeah he’s traumatized, but that doesn’t excuse him hurting people’. And from my perspective that’s missing the point.

And I don’t want to call anyone out or make assumptions about anyone, but this kind of thinking, that people with mental illness and people who commit crimes are responsible for their own actions and no one else is culpable even though their action or inaction resulted in their behavior–feels like the same kind of bullshit I see everywhere in society. This person steals–let’s not address the fact that they can’t afford to eat because they aren’t paid a living wage, let’s just throw them in jail. It’s the same mentality.

Punish the symptom instead of treating the illness. It’s just laziness, in my opinion.

#Jason Todd #Red Hood #mental illness #critical analysis #analysis #psychology #dc comics #batfamily #batman #fan wank #discourse #jason anti

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takaraphoenix · 6 years

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Jercy Week Day 3: Loyalty

Prince Perseus was the second youngest child of King Neptune and Queen Salacia.

Prince of the ocean and of all merpeople. And he was absolutely breathtaking. Everyone who got to meet the prince in person knew that. His skin was a light, soft blue and so was his long, sleek tail, his eyes were a sparkling sea-green and his hair black, softly floating around his face.

Jason had watched the young prince grow up, through the press and through official events when the royal family would visit Atlantis. He had always admired the prince, who had the kindest smiles and who always interacted with everyone. The prince got into a lot of trouble all the time, it was always a topic of gossip around Atlantis.

Jason? He came from nothing. His mother had died when Jason was only two years old. His big sister Thalia and her best friend Luke had basically raised him. Jason and Thalia grew up on the streets, urchins living in a gang of orphans. Stealing to get by and have food on the table.

He worked hard. As soon as he was old enough, he started working hard. He joined the army, went through basic training, he worked his way through the ranks, climbed the ladder.

He came from nothing and he got everything.

He was a decorated general, the youngest that Atlantis' army had ever seen. He was highly respected and had the king himself pin the medal to Jason's chest. Probably the last medal he would ever earn, because during that last battle, he had lost one of his fins. He couldn't go back to war, not like that. And just like that, he was back at square one, back to having nothing.

/break\

Jason was sitting on the couch, glaring at the wall. He had bought the house for them, once he had the money. Thalia and Jason's three best friends – Leo, Piper and Reyna. Luke had moved in with his by now fiance a couple of years ago and had taken the youngest street-kids with him. Jason and Thalia had taken the older. Jason wondered how long they'd be able to afford it.

"Stop sulking, Jay", sighed Reyna and rested a hand on his shoulder.

"We'll be fine", assured Piper gently, tilting her head.

Reyna was also in the army. She'd leave soon again for deployment. Piper had gotten a job as a chamber-maiden at the palace, Leo worked at the forges. They would be fine, probably. And Atlantis took care of their veterans, so it wasn't like they stood there with nothing now that Jason was honorably discharged. It still stung. Jason had worked so hard and now it was all gone.

A knocking at the door disturbed Jason's gloominess. Thalia swam right through the living room to go and open the door. Jason sighed and slipped lower on the couch, fingers clawed into the armrest.

"...Jason. Jason, it's... for you", called Thalia out, sounding stunned.

"I'm not in the mood for visitors", growled Jason back.

"I did hope you would welcome your queen."

Jason froze and turned slowly to see that indeed, it was Queen Salacia. She smiled kindly, her brown hair flowing around her as did the pink silken robes she was wearing. The light from outside caught in her crown, making it sparkle. Piper and Reyna exchanged a surprised look.

"Queen Salacia, what... It's an honor, but... what are you doing here?", asked Jason slowly.

"I've watched your career very closely, General Jason", replied the queen with a smile.

"My... You... have?", grunted Jason stunned and confused.

"You and I, we're much alike", continued Queen Salacia with a kind smile. "We both came from nothing and we worked very hard to get to where we are."

Slowly, Jason nodded at that. She had come from nothing, that was true. A teenaged orphan working hard at a bakery and catching the recently widowed king's eye. She never forgot her roots though, she had always watched out for the little guy. She always kept close to her neighborhood.

"Percy... Prince Perseus, he's a good boy, but oh, he is a lot of trouble", sighed the queen, brushing her hair out of her face. "He's a free spirit. He's not made to stay cooped up in the palace. He wants to explore. I... I'm so afraid that something will happen to him."

"I... understand that. He's your son", nodded Jason. "But... what do I have to do with this...?"

"You are a good, honorable man, General", replied the queen. "A strong fighter and brave soldier. And you are, above all else, loyal to the royal family."

"I... am", nodded Jason, still very much confused.

"I felt for you, during the ceremony. Being discharged. I know the service meant a lot to you. I'm here because I want to offer you a job. It might not be what you are used to, it might not be what you were expecting of your life at this point, but I had hoped you might be up to becoming the prince's personal guard", explained Queen Salacia. "He wants to travel the ocean and I don't want him to travel alone. If that is... in any way a job you could see yourself doing... come to the palace and see me. For now, just think on it, please."

All Jason could do was nod in confusion and watch the queen leave. What had just happened...?

/break\

"Wait, so the queen wants you to become the prince's bodyguard?", asked Leo excitedly.

He rubbed the dirt off his cheek. He had just gotten home from work to hear the news. Piper and Reyna were making dinner together, Thalia was setting the table and Jason was just sitting at the table, staring into the figurative void. He was still trying to process.

"Apparently, my little brother left an impression", chuckled Thalia.

"Percy is pretty amazing", shrugged Piper.

"Percy?", echoed Jason doubtfully, one eyebrow raised.

"Yeah. He prefers to be called Percy. We ran into each other a lot – he regularly steals laundry from the laundry room to build pillow-fords with his younger brother", grinned Piper. "He's a good guy."

"No one doubts that", sighed Jason. "But... am I fit to protect the prince?"

"Well, how about a trial run?", suggested Reyna with a shrug. "Test it. For... a week or two. See how well you two work with each other. See if this can work."

"Not a bad idea", agreed Thalia.

"You know exactly what I mean", grumbled Jason with a glare, flapping his tail.

"Oh please", huffed Leo and rolled his eyes. "The new fin I built you works perfectly as a replacement. You might not be as fast anymore as you were and you can't use your tail for fighting anymore, but it's not like you can't swim straight."

"Leo-", started Piper with a frown.

"No", grunted Leo and shook his head. "Jay, I love you man, but we're all getting real tired of your moping. You lost your fin during battle. It sucks. It really sucks. But it's been... months. And it's been months that you have returned home and... you need to get your shit together. You gotta train, learn to use your new fin and you got to sort your life out again. You did it before. You worked your ass off to achieve what you had. It took years of hard work, but you did. You gotta do it again and it sucks, but you know you can do it and sitting here and giving up is not like you."

Jason stared at his best friend in surprise, before he let his eyes wander over the others. Piper and Reyna avoided his gaze, Piper shuffling around a little. Thalia was the one to heave a sigh.

"Leo's right", agreed Thalia. "You've been... bitter and moping since you got home. If this is a new chance, in any way or shape, then take it. Please don't give up, Jason. Give this a chance."

"Who knows where it'll take you", tagged Reyna on gently. "Try it."

/break\

Percy was laying on the ground in the stables, arms crossed over his chest, a deep glare on his face. He wanted to travel the ocean, but his mom and dad were being overly protective of him. Dad flat-out said no, mom got him down to 'in the company of a guard'. Percy was twenty-three. Other, normal merpeople that age went to college or had work already, some were even already married. And he was being coddled, just because he was the prince. He hated it.

"Big brother? Why are you moping?", asked his baby-brother Tyson.

Sighing, Percy opened his arms and welcomed his brother in his arms. Tyson happily snuggled up to him. The little boy was barely eight and he absolutely adored Percy and Percy adored him.

"I wanna travel, but mom and dad are being... mom and dad", sighed Percy.

"But they said yes?", offered Tyson, even more confused.

"If I take a guard with me", grumbled Percy. "That's... like a babysitter. I'm too old for a babysitter."

"That's true", agreed Tyson and tilted his head. "But it's because mom and dad love you and are worried, right? That's not a bad thing... right?"

"I guess", sighed Percy with a frown. "But still..."

"You should at least meet him, right? I didn't want a babysitter either, but then I met Rachel and now I really-really love her and spending time with her sister Ella", suggested Tyson. "Maybe you'll like your babysitter too and it'll be all okay?"

"...Maybe", mused Percy with a small smile, kissing the top of Tyson's head. "Thanks, bro."

"Boys. Here you are", sighed Sally as she entered the stables.

"Mom? You were looking for us?", asked Percy and sat up.

The queen sighed as she swam up to her children. "Percy. I want you to meet General Jason. He agreed to come and guard you for a week, to see if the two of you can get along. And if you do, if he agrees to take the job, then you... Your father and I agreed to send you to the Pacific Ocean as our ambassador, officially. You can go, if you take a guard."

Percy perked up at that. He got to travel and do official family business. Two birds, one stone. All he had to do was get along with his babysitter. His babysitter, who... oh. Nice. Tall, broad-shouldered, muscular arms, sharp features, a golden tail and golden-blonde hair, electric-blue eyes. There was a scar on his lip and he was missing his right tail-fin, but neither made him any less handsome.

"General Jason", said Percy slowly, surprised. "Mom. When you said guard, I was not expecting a highly decorated general of our army. Are you kidding me?"

"Please", huffed Sally amused. "You really think your dad would have agreed for just any guard?"

Percy rolled his eyes and got up to properly greet the general. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for your service, general."

"It will be an honor to work for you, your highness", replied Jason and bowed.

"Right, no. First rule: No highness and majesty stuff. I'm Percy. Not Perseus", stated Percy. "That's a really important one, okay? Okay. Now... mh... Right. How about I show you around?"

"That would be much appreciated, your... Percy", nodded Jason with a small smile.

Percy laughed at that and flipped his tail. "Okay, so, this is Blackjack. He's important. He'll come with us, when we travel. I've trained him since he was a foal."

Jason stared in amazement. Everyone usually did. Hippocampi were shimmering in all the colors of the rainbow, but Blackjack was, as the name might suggest, pitch-black. He whined and tilted his head, leaning in to sniff Jason suspiciously.

"That the babysitter, boss?", asked Blackjack.

"That the babysitter", confirmed Percy with a smile. "And aside from Blackjack, two more will accompany us. Annabeth and Mrs. O'Leary. They're very important."

"Annabeth... Chase? Your personal adviser?", guessed Jason, earning a nod. "And who is this Mrs. O'Leary? I'll be happy to meet her, if she is that important to you."

Percy grinned and whistled. Moments later and an orca tackled Percy, licking his cheek.

"That is Mrs. O'Leary", grinned Percy, patting the orca's head.

"...Of course does the prince have a pet orca", muttered Jason beneath his breath.

Percy's grin grew at that. He had a feeling he was going to like Jason.

/break\

Percy did like Jason. And it was a mutual thing. They hit it off right away. The trial week passed in the blink of an eye and both of them agreed that they worked together pretty well. King and queen seemed very pleased with the match-up too and a week after, they packed their stuff up and left the Atlantic Ocean behind. Blackjack and Mrs. O'Leary were pulling the chariot, with Annabeth, Jason and Percy in it. Annabeth kept eyeing the boys suspiciously.

"Why do you keep glaring at us, Annabeth?", asked Jason with a frown.

"Just waiting for Percy to crack", shrugged Annabeth with a small, nearly mean grin.

"What does that mean?", asked Jason confused, earning a huff from Percy.

Two hours later and he had his answer. The gorgeous prince was not good with being cooped up in enclosed space with nothing to do. Percy laid sprawled out on the bench, including Jason who sat next to him. It was startling for Jason, even though he had gotten used to Percy in the past week, but the level of comfort and physicality that was so quintessentially Percy was still... odd to him.

"I'm bo—ored. I'm so—o bo—ored, Annie, when are we the—ere", groaned Percy.

Annabeth rolled her eyes and didn't look up from the book she was reading. "The same as five minutes ago, minus five minutes. Pacifika is not exactly right around the corner, Perce."

"I kno—ow, but... urgh", grunted Percy. "When will someone invent a teleporter?"

"You are a god. You could teleport", offered Annabeth, raising one eyebrow. "Your dad's literally the god of the ocean. Me and the general, we would have to travel."

"Well, that'd be even more boring", pouted Percy with a huff.

Jason smiled, just faintly. Their bickering reminded him a lot of Thalia. After another hour of riding, he started caressing the prince's tail, more out of boredom than anything else. There was something soft laying on his lap, so why not pat it. It was instinct. But it seemed to actually help, because Percy settled down and quieted down, to the point that Annabeth lowered her book suspiciously and watched them in surprise. But all Jason could look at was the prince, calm and serene and beautiful.

/break\

Jason woke screaming from a nightmare. His eyes were wide and wild, his breathing rattled.

"Jason? Jay? You alright? What happened?"

He turned stiffly, looking unfocused at the figure at the door, ready to attack. The figure paused.

"Jason. Jason, you're alright. You're in Pacifika. It's me, Percy. You're safe. It's Saturday, it's... three AM, you're in your room in the Pacifican palace. You're safe. Everything is fine."

The voice was gentle and soothing and came very slowly closer. Taking shaky breaths, Jason slowly started to focus. The figure in front of him came back into focus. Percy. The prince.

"Breath with me", whispered Percy gently. "Slowly. In and out. You're fine. Can I... touch you?"

Jason shook his head jerkily, but he managed to regulate his breathing. Sighing, he pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. When he looked up again, Percy was still there, watching him concerned and not looking as though he planned on moving.

"You better?", asked Percy carefully.

"I... I... yes", nodded Jason, taking deep breaths. "I'm sorry if I woke you. It's just..."

"Yeah?", prompted Percy very gently. "You had a flashback, right? PTSD, huh?"

"...Yes", nodded Jason tentatively, leaning heavily against the headboard.

"I get that. I mean, I don't get it. But... Proteus, my oldest brother, he's been a general for a while now. He sometimes gets that. Panic attacks and flashbacks", offered Percy carefully. "You... wanna talk about it? Or not? Not is fine too. I just... If you need someone, I'm here for you, okay?"

Jason stared at Percy in surprise. "I am your protector. I should be there for you."

Percy just shrugged. "You're supposed to protect me, sure. But that doesn't mean I can't be there for you. You... I'd like for us to be friends, you know? And friends are there for each other."

"...Thank you", whispered Jason gently, looking at the prince.

"So. Is there anything I can do?", wanted Percy to know.

"I... I don't know if it's asking too much, but usually, when I have... Thalia, my older sister, she'd stay with me, just... hold me", shrugged Jason and bit his lips. "It helps me feel grounded to know there's another living, breathing being there, here. Helps me keep from slipping back."

"That's okay", nodded Percy and got comfortable, laying down to face Jason. "So...?"

"It's the new place", sighed Jason and shook his head. "Every time I sleep somewhere else, the first night always... gives me flashbacks, because it's all... new."

Percy hummed softly and folded one arm under his head, looking at Jason. He started talking about something unimportant and silly, just to keep Jason distracted, until they both fell asleep.

/break\

People didn't give Prince Perseus the credit he deserved. It was all the way in Arctika that Jason's tail started acting up. He was still not a hundred percent used to the fake tail-fin. Long swims still were too much for him. He glared viciously at his tail as he slowed down.

"I'm sorry. I really need a break. I'm parched. Why don't we have some sushi? This place looks like a lovely inn and I could truly use the break", declared Percy with the brightest smile.

He was fanning himself and convincing the local royals to take a break. Percy turned toward Jason and winked at him. He had noticed that Jason's tail was acting up. Because Percy noticed things. Percy was brilliant and caring and sweet and kind and he always did everything to help those around him. Over the past weeks of traveling together... Jason had... fallen for the prince.

"Thank you, Perce", whispered Jason softly as they sat down at the table.

"What? Why? I'm absolutely starving and I'm very exhausted", hummed Percy innocently. "I am, after all, just a frail little prince, not used to such long, exhausting swims."

He winked and grinned broadly. How was this boy so cute and amazing...?

/break\

It was during their last stop that Jason had already gotten used to Percy sneaking into his bed during the first night. Every hotel they stayed at, whether it be the small stops during the way when the journey was too long, or when they had reached a palace, Percy would always come to him to make sure Jason would not be alone during the first night.

"I'm really liking this place", started Percy with a soft yawn, patting Mrs. O'Leary.

The orca was sprawled out half on top of the two. Jason smiled and also patted the small whale. He had gotten so used to Percy, to them all. To this all. Percy, after he had noticed that Jason was not fully used to his fin, had taken to doing exercises with Jason. He kept an eye on Jason, to make sure he was okay – even though it was Jason's job to make sure Percy was alright.

"You're amazing", whispered Jason as he stared at the prince's face.

"Ye—eah. What else is new?", asked Percy and laughed.

"No", whispered Jason more urgently, shaking his head. "No. You are absolutely amazing. I was... This was supposed to be a job. But you... you're so much more than a job. You helped me... through something I didn't think I'd ever get through. I'm not through it yet, but... you helped me so much. I... admire you. In a way I never admired someone before. I... adore... you..."

"So, this like... a platonic adoration, or is this a love-confession?", asked Percy cautiously.

"What... Whatever you want it to be", admitted Jason. "I know it is highly unprofessional and I know we have only known each other for a few, precious months now, but... no one has ever made me feel the way you make me feel. Even though I am your bodyguard and I am loyal to the throne, but I can not... I can't betray my heart either."

"Well. You're amazing too, you know?", smiled Percy and leaned in very slowly. "You're funny and cute and I love spending time with you. I've always made friends easily, but with you... with you it feels different. I... I feel different, when I'm with you."

"You... You do?", asked Jason surprised, eyes wide.

"I do", confirmed Percy and reached out to cup Jason's cheek. "So... kiss?"

Jason snorted at that, shaking his head. "You're absolutely ridiculous and I adore you."

"Yeah, yeah. We covered that. Now, kiss or no kiss?", asked Percy with a grin.

Smiling faintly, Jason bridged the last space between them and pressed his lips against Percy's. He could feel the excited flutter of Percy's tail, his fins brushing against Jason's tail because they laid so close. Eagerly, Percy scooted closer and closer to him until they were pressed against each other, Percy's hands against Jason's chest, trapped between them as Jason had his arms around Percy's waist to keep him close. Slowly, Percy wrapped his tail around Jason's to keep him close too.

"I adore you a lot, General Jason", whispered Percy against Jason's lips before kissing him again.

"Your father is going to kill me", whispered Jason with a crooked grin.

"Oh yeah, he will totally pull your scales off one by one", confirmed Percy seriously, nodding. "Seriously, you break my heart, he'll break your spine. That is one hundred percent a thing."

"Well, I guess I better not break your heart then, mh?", whispered Jason amused.

Mrs. O'Leary made a long-drawn cooing sound at that and nudged them both, as though she was agreeing to them. Percy and Jason laughed before they adjusted to lay more comfortably together, with the orca comfortable next to them. Jason smiled as he fell asleep with Percy in his arms.

~*~ The End ~*~

Read this here on FFNet & here on AO3

#jercy week #imaginejercy #jercy #jason grace #percy jackson #pjoverse #fanfiction #merman percy #merman jason #tw: ptsd #percy jackson and the olympians #heroes of olympus

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diedformyownsins · 5 years

Text

Settle For A Draw | Red Hood and Batman

Jason was atop a skyscraper in midtown, eyes set over the city. Patrol duty. Dick was at home, probably keeping himself entertained. He was good at that. The incessant rain was pounding down on the indifferent man, and he made no attempt to avoid it. A police broadcast played in his cowl. [Code 211S, silent alarm triggered at Gotham Museum of History. Officers unable to respond. Activating the Bat-signal.] Jason smirked. With a flying leap, he was off the rooftop, grapple gun in full form. Man, I really need a glider. Traveling above ground is getting old.

He arrived at the museum within five minutes, landing softly on the roof. He could see flashlights inside, a lot of them. Fifteen? Jesus, that’s ballsy. Still, better get going before Bruce shows up. Opening up a hatch, he slipped inside, noiselessly hitting the top floor. Creeping to the balcony, he began to assess the situation, judging the angles, the trajectory needed to begin his attack. He pulled a smoke pellet out of his belt, hefting it in his hand before tossing it to the ground level. He followed it down, landing invisibly. His infrared lenses activated, and he began his attack.

With a small grunt, the first man was out, his head bouncing off a marble pillar. Number two went down the same way, a silent takedown. No need to use a gun here. Drawing several shuriken, Jason hurled them at a cluster of the men, using the distraction to leap into the middle of them. A kick, a right hook, and an elbow handled them. He thought he heard a nose break. Spinning around, he found himself face to face with none other than the Batman, two unconscious men at his feet. "Nice of you to visit, Batman. Mind giving me a hand?“

As if on cue, the cargo door opened, and thirty more armed men swarmed the lobby. "No time to argue-go!” Jason was already rushing the group, determined not to use his pistols tonight. After all, he had to prove that he could beat Bats at his own game, right?

Since his return to the public eye only a short time ago, Bruce had seen a lot of action. Minor things - raiding drug dens and breaking up gang meetings - but enough to get him back in shape after his extended absence, and after Joker stuck him in the side with his knife. Again. He was in top form, now. Or at least very nearly. More importantly, however, his confidence had returned. Attitude was everything in a battle that was really based more on scaring the enemy than on overwhelming them.

He arrived at the museum perhaps seven minutes after the signal lit up Gotham’s cloudy sky, to find that the fight had already begun. All at once, Bruce was surprised and not surprised. He was getting the idea that people had emerged to take his place, in his absence. He couldn’t help being glad of that - Bruce wouldn’t always be young and strong.

It took nothing to slip silently into the depths of the museum. The enemy was distracted by whoever was fighting within the cloud of smoke that had expanded to fill the hall. Bruce’s infrared vision made short work of the cloud and it wasn’t long before he had floored several opponents.

It wasn’t long before he found himself face to face with another masked vigilante. If things hadn’t happened in such a rush, Bruce might have taken time to put this man together with the man who had challenged him at the cafe, but Bruce’s mind was in the game and the only identity that mattered just then was the red hood that covered the other man’s face. He didn’t have time to think about the meaning behind that snide remark.

Always the type to stalk from the shadows, Bruce left charging head-on into the crowd to the other man. He raised his grapple gun and hoisted himself off the floor, soaring nearly twenty feet over the heads of the mob of thieves. At the last minute, he loosed the tension on the line and plummeted down. It was a move he had practiced dozens of times. Against people like this, it was highly effective. As he reached their level, Bruce snagged his hands in the collars of two of his opponents and then grappled upwards again. The men screamed as they were hoisted off of their feet and brought helplessly into midair.

The screams and gurgling noise coming from the Batman’s wake of destruction only spurred Jason on.

Jason knew he was a better fighter than Bruce, he knew it. He had been raised as a warrior since childhood, he had been trained in every martial art known to man (and several that were curated from long dead civilizations, thanks to Ra’s and the League). He was 16 years younger than Bruce Wayne. He had to show that he could hang with the Batman.

And so, Jason tore his own swath of destruction thorough the mob, bones breaking and flesh giving way to fists, when he saw it-what the men were after. “The diamond. Bats, the diamond!” Without another word, Jason was airborne, grappler taking him to the mezzanine, pointed straight at massive red diamond that was surrounded by the thugs.

He landed silently, close enough to the men to touch. Reaching out, he disarmed the first, then knocking him out with a swift rabbit punch. Thug number two aimed his shotgun at Jason. A swift kick sent it careening to the ground level. Jason grabbed him by the collar, tossing him into the last man. They collapsed into a pile. Spinning around to check on Batman, Jason let his guard down, just for a split second.

The next thing he noticed was the hard steel of a gun barrel pressed against his back.

Shit.

Bruce did not make a practice of being where people expected him to be. He heard Red Hood’s warning well enough, but he trusted the younger man to deal with a small cluster of thugs on his own. Red Hood had already held his own with the others, after all.

Instead of following Red Hood immediately, Bruce took the time to down every last one of the thugs in the back of the room before they could following the younger vigilante to the diamond. It wasn’t a difficult job, even if he was just a little bit rusty. He smashed a couple of heads together, twisted a few arms the wrong way and slammed a man or two to the ground.

Still, by the time he had knocked the feet out from under the last man, he wasn’t surprised by silence from the direction of the diamond’s case. Looking up, he saw exactly what he expected - Red Hood standing among a series of fallen enemies. For a heartbeat it seemed that they had finished, but Bruce should have known that nothing was ever really that simple.

A movement in the shadows distracted Bruce, and he looked off into the corner. A man with a gun crept closer to Red Hood, who was working on the very last of the thieves and was apparently unaware.

Firing his grapple into the ceiling, Bruce was lifted into the air. He sailed across the room to the platform where the display case had been set up. Just as the man put his gun into Red Hood’s back, Bruce’s feet collided with his ribs. The impact carried both Bruce and the shooter over to collide with the diamond case, and the sound of gunfire echoed all around them. Landing, Bruce rolled to his feet and smacked his gauntlet into the side of the criminal’s head. He crumpled, senseless.

Only then did Bruce look up to see if the shot had hit or missed its target.

The bullet had missed Jason by inches. Mentally cursing himself for the slip, he began to fight back with a vengeance, no longer caring how injured the men he faced ended up. Several shoulders were rent beyond repair. Another man was elbowed in the nose so hard Jason thought he might have killed him. He didn’t allow himself time to consider checking for vitals. This was war, and Jason and the man who had killed his father were on the same side, against all odds.

Jason fell in seamlessly with Batman, each using the other man as both backup and cover, appearing to all the men as if they had been fighting side by side for years.

For the first time in Jason’s life, he felt drawn to Bruce. Jason cast a stark sense of fear into the men he faced, but the Batman was more than that-he was fear. Every inch of him, from his boots to the ears, exuded dread. Jason was a bit awestruck. Still, he fought on, not stopping until Bruce did. He would fight to the death, if just to prove he was better than Batman was.

Was there no end to these thugs? They crawled into the museum like grimy cockroaches, charging in without thought to their wellbeing. It made Bruce think that this was more than just a diamond heist. Something else was here, something he was missing. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the chance to dwell on that thought for much longer. The ten or so that were left in sight had frazzled nerves and wide, frightened eyes, bodies running on heightened adrenaline as they rushed forward to meet the two vigilantes.

Working with Red Hood was almost ideal. The other man held his own while still looking out for Batman’s back, and he was a near-flawless fighter. He was brutal and perhaps a tad excessively violent, but he knew what he was doing. His movements spoke of extensive training beyond what Bruce knew, but his actions were slowed by his anger. He lost his vision, saw red, as it were.

With precision, he disabled half the men and rendered them unconscious just as Red Hood was finishing up as well. Having recently returned to the vigilante scene, Batman was slightly out of breath, though he’d be hard-pressed to admit that. Still, the diamond and whatever else they were after was safe, they had come out of the fight relatively unharmed, and as always, he’d spoken too soon.

The shot went off before he was really able to process it.

Bruce hadn’t seen it.

Jason had.

The man was mere feet away from Batman, brandishing a 12 gauge Mossberg shotgun. Without a second thought, Jason dove off the balcony, tumbling after he hit the floor.

This is gonna hurt.

There was no time to warn him. Jason would took the shot, directly to the ribcage. His armor would absorb most of the blast, but it would probably break several ribs, if not more.

The gun fired, and the Red Hood crumpled. He felt his spleen rupture before the pain made him black out. His last conscious thought was “If anyone is going to kill Batman, it’s gonna be me...”

Red Hood had taken a near-fatal hit for him, pieces of his armor caved in where the shot had struck. Within seconds, the situation had been analyzed, processed, and the thug with the shotgun was down on the floor with a snapped arm and shattered knee, the firearm thrown yards away. No one was left standing but Bruce.

As he let his cape fall over his shoulders, Batman looked down at Red Hood, a pest and a very dangerous adversary, as he started to bleed out onto the floor. He could leave him there and it would be one less problem to worry about later on. The situation was reminiscent of Ra’s al Ghul’s final moments, something Batman regretted later on in only the smallest of ways. The strange kid who’d approached him in that cafe months ago and threatened him because he’d killed—not saved, not saved, not saved—his father came to his mind. He’d ruined people by letting Ra’s die, but he’d saved many others by not letting him live. He’d played God. It was wrong.

It begged the question then, or maybe it didn’t. Was it enough that this man was dear to other people that Batman would allow him to live? Did that matter? The streets he’d claimed as his own were lost already—others had risen to fill the gap he’d left behind, Hood being one of them. The red of the fake Bat on his chest then stood out more than the small pool of blood forming around him. If Batman was going to save him, he was going to have to trust him—and soon. He could hear the police sirens outside finally.

With a quick call to Alfred demanding both the Batmobile be sent to his location and the med bay be prepped, Batman squatted down beside the outlaw and quickly checked his vitals. “This will hurt,” he said under his breath, though he was sure Hood could not hear him. He looked thoroughly unconscious. Bruce was no medic, but he knew Red Hood had a very high pain tolerance and he should not be unconscious by a gun wound. He had internal bleeding, most likely, which raised the stakes considerably higher. As gently as he possibly could manage, Batman lifted Hood into his arms and fled the scene.

When they had arrived at the secondary cave under the Wayne Foundations Building, Blake had been there, a surprise in itself, and had asked questions. Bruce hadn’t cared to answer at the time, too focused on his task to spare much attention to his protege. As it turned out, Red Hood’s spleen had ruptured and several of his ribs were cracked, a few broken entirely. He spent an hour in private emergency surgery with Leslie Thompkins, Alfred having refused the daunting task. As per request, Leslie had left Hood’s helmet on to conserve his identity. The rest of his gear had been shed, however, and was currently sitting atop a lab table being holographically scanned by the Batcomputer for immediate analysis.

Bruce had taken to staring at it as Leslie finished up, having taken a bit of offense at the poor structural integrity of the armor. No wonder it had caved; it was considerably worn, outdated even. To keep his hands and mind busy, Bruce made several corrections and modifications to the chest guard while he waited. He hadn’t touched much besides a small receiver of some sort that kept beeping, a small red light flashing near the top of the device. For some reason, he kept it on hand when he went to talk to Red Hood minutes after Alfred informed him of the outlaw’s regained consciousness.

The younger man looked positively livid to have been forced to rely on his enemy for anything at all and was already trying to leave, despite Leslie’s constant insistence to stay put. “Do as she says and stay there,” he said once he walked in the med bay. The two stared at each other for some moments before Red Hood relented and sat back, still looking ready to jump up and dash away. His injuries must have had taken a lot out of him, for him to concede so quickly. Bruce hadn’t taken him to be the obedient type. The IV stand wobbled before settling still.

“Your armor is insufficient, yet you deliberately put yourself in harm’s way for me.” He didn’t ask why, though the question remained in the air. He remained silent for awhile, assessing. A muffled, urgent beeping could be heard, though it was very faint. It seemed to pique the Hood’s interest more-so than his current physical status. “This keeps going off.” Bruce dropped the receiver into Hood’s lap, expecting him to turn it off.

Instead, the IV stand crashed to the floor.

So this is what the Bat HQ looks like. Funny. I expected more doom and gloom. Shit, that hurts.

Jason realized he was still alive, and in a great deal less pain. Didn’t mean it felt good, though. Forcing his way through the fog and haze, he located the center of the pain-his side-and focused on minimizing it, bringing the pain down to a manageable level.

Finally able to respond to Batman, he spoke.

“My armor isn’t Wayne technology, sorry to disappoint. Some of us work on our own gear. Can I have it back?” Bruce didn’t respond, though, as Jason saw for the first time just how damaged it was. His heart sank, just a bit. That had been his oldest suit, his original prototype. He’d not planned on any actual firefights tonight, and had let sentiment get him nearly killed.

He turned his attention back to Bruce. “Why did you save me? You could have easily let me die there. What stopped you?” Before he could get a response, Batman tossed a beeping receiver into his lap. Jason blanched, jumping up faster than his broken body could allow.

With a practiced movement, he reached over his armor, drawing his .357 revolver, loaded with Kevlar coated, armor piercing rounds. It’d shred most bulletproof vests, and certainly put the hurt on the Batman. Pointing it at him, he gestured to the device.

“I need to find the source of that locator. Now. My gear is ruined, so I’ll need a batsuit. And transport."

Batman didn’t move. Jason was beginning to lose his temper.

"There’s a boy who I care deeply about at the other end, and he’s in trouble. That beacon is for emergencies only, he’d never activate it unless he was in grave danger. I need to find him.”

Bruce wasn’t reacting fast enough. Jason sucked in his breath before pulling a dangerous trump card.

“Bruce. It’s Dick Grayson we’re talking about.”

Even with a firearm pointed at him, Bruce’s only reaction was to tighten his fists. He knew Dick Grayson, alright. (How was Hood related? There were puzzle pieces he needed to put together, but he didn’t have the time right now.) The child was rambunctious, overly-talkative, and disturbingly lighthearted and cheerful 24/7. It was no wonder he’d managed to find himself in trouble. Bruce had had the joy of meeting the kid precisely three times—twice when the child had been residing in the manor as an orphan and once not too long ago, when he’d finagled his way into lunch with the billionaire while trying to hide in one of his cars.

Still, a (wounded) criminal was asking him to give him a suit and a means to get where a frightened (possibly wounded) child was. Already, he’d extended his hand in mercy; there was no reason for him to comply with Hood’s wishes other than the fact that someone so mind-numbingly innocent was in need of help. Already, he knew he couldn’t deny a man’s request to help a loved one, even if it meant giving up equipment that would further exacerbate Batman’s struggle in taking Red Hood down. The Batman fought for the safety of the innocent. He could, however, drug Hood and go himself. Before that thought could go any further, he swiftly turned on his heel and walked over to the western wall of the cave where the batsuits were kept.

“You can take an older model of one of my own suits.” The man placed his hand on the biometric recognition security panel burrowed into the wall and tried not to think about the fact that he was handing over more Wayne Technology to someone he didn’t trust. He was greatly regretting his decision to preserve Hood’s identity. “Security override,” he said into the system, “Master access authorization code TDK02.”

The wall opened up and Bruce stepped aside so Hood could put on the armor, busying himself with remotely starting up the newly re-made Batwing and opening up the outside access tunnels. Planning on going along, Bruce locked his cowl back into place just as Red Hood vaulted himself into the Batwing and took off.

He holstered the weapon after Bruce turned his back, not stupid enough to believe that he had intimidated him in the slightest. He spent the next few minutes removing the belt, holsters, sword and sheath, and several other tools that he could salvage off of the old suit, not wanting to waste any undue time. Satisfied, he swiveled around to see Bruce opening up the vault.

A set of eyes peering at him from a dark corner caught his attention, and Jason swiveled to meet them. They blinked at him, then met his gaze without fear. Curious, he knelt down, bringing his eyes to the height of the shadowed ones. Bruce muttered something about the suit’s security code. Jason looked back at him, and then again to the corner. The shadowy figure was gone.

Donning the suit that Bruce handed him, Jason quickly fit his gear over it, grinning as he felt the superior build quality. “Thanks, Bruce. I could get used to this.” Leaving the cape on the floor, he darted past Bruce and slid into the Batwing. The canopy closed, and Jason mock saluted before flying off. He gunned the machine towards the old circus grounds, following the steady beeping on the locator. He tried not to think about what had cause Dick to activate it.

He soon reached the source, landing (and locking) the Batwing on the dusty ground. He slung his sword over his back, making sure his gun was loaded. He heard a simpering voice, then a cry of pain. Sprinting as fast as his injured side allowed, he tore through a tent, finding it empty. He searched three more before coming out on the other side of the grounds, finding the Joker standing over Dick Grayson, who was bloodied and holding his stomach in pain.

With a roar of anger, Jason cleared the distance between them, his gloved fist striking the Joker in the mouth. A bloody molar spun through the air as the man stumbled, caught off guard. The pain that shot through Jason’s side sent him to his knees, clouding his vision red. He forced himself to his feet, drawing his sword and holding it at the clown’s neck.

“You’ll die for hurting him, you sadistic fuck." continued in Better Men

#p: settle for a draw #y: year two #c: the pretender #c: icarus #c: bad company #jason todd #bruce wayne #red hood #batman

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alixofagnia · 6 years

Text

TLJ Novelization: Review & Revisiting Episode IX Speculation

I’ll be honest: I skim-read a lot of Jason Fry’s novelization.

It’s not the worst SW book, not by a long shot. But I wasn’t drawn in by his writing, an unfair critique, perhaps, given that nothing was going to be surprising. It’s very rote, though, and there were times when his prose wandered surprisingly close to boredom, bafflement, or both. Needless to say, what really disappointed me was the lackluster depiction of Rey and Kylo and some of their scenes together. Take, for example, this description of the closing Falcon scene between Rey and Kylo:

He stared at Rey. She stared back at him, her gaze level and unafraid. There was no hatred in her eyes, as there once had been. But there was no compassion, either.

I’m aware that there are some Reylos currently swooning over this even as other Reylos are mortified at what the “no compassion” bit could really portend. But read it again.

Read it out loud.

It is the most dispassionate description of how that scene played out onscreen, does not even come close to capturing the emotional weight behind that moment.

If that doesn’t convince you or you think I’m being too harsh, there’s also this:

Rey fell backward, bumping into Kylo’s back.

You know what scene that is, right?

Bumping. Into his back. O.M.G.

The misfire in translating Rey and Kylo’s simmering-to-boiling screen chemistry from screen to paper was bound to be inevitable. But I take heart in knowing that this had to be intentional: its absence speaks to the desire to keep their story unknown and suspended. In other words, it’s a way to keep their dynamic relevant for the next two years. It also solidifies the fact that the romance of Reylo will continue to be quite distinct from the sudden war time passion of HanLeia or the childishly baffling obsession of Anidala, just in case that wasn’t already obvious.

I’ve come to the conclusion that, much like the TFA novelization, this one could be skipped over in lieu of actually watching the movie, which is A) way more exciting and B) way more successful at the nuance, which was one of its strengths. Of course, we should also remember that whatever happens in the film is unquestionably canon, regardless of conflicting details in the expanded content. There’s cute little Easter egg-type details (ships have personalities, for example) and passages not seen in the movie that Reylos created head-canons for anyway (such as why Rey left an unconscious Kylo alive). Overall, this novel is about as good as one could expect from someone other than Rian Johnson himself adapting his own script. But that’s to be expected, and this must have been a great challenge. I do think what this book best has to offer is a reiteration of the theme of perspective ambiguity.

Alright, that’s done. Now, I’m going to revisit an Episode IX speculation post I did (X) in December, because I read quite a few quotes in the novelization that were particularly relevant to what I speculated on for Hux, Kylo, and the foreshadowing of a power play between them.

Take Hux Seriously

What I said:

Hux was played up for comedic effect in TLJ, but it’s somewhat undermined by examples of real leadership, engagement with fellow, high-ranking FO officers, and the distinct feeling that this man is more cunning than you think. That’s not to say that Hux will hit epic levels of villainy; but he will most assuredly continue to be an antagonist to Kylo and, with Snoke’s murder, he will now have a justified reason for being so.

What the novelization said:

Commander of the Supremacy would be an excellent title…surpassed only by that of Supreme Leader Hux. Hux almost whispered those three words to himself, but caught himself in time. Snoke had spies everywhere in the First Order—including, quite possibly, electronic ones in the turbolift leading to his private domain at the Supremacy’s heart.

Comments

First of all, here is written proof of Hux’s lofty, ultimate ambitions. (Again, in case that wasn’t obvious in the film.) Second, we also now have the knowledge that Snoke takes advantage of stealth security. The reason that it’s “possible” he has cameras installed in his private elevator is because he makes use of “electronic spies” elsewhere. This begs the question: if something as innocuous as an elevator is bugged, then surely his throne room, his private room, is similarly outfitted, right?

There’s no way Kylo will be able to keep the truth of his ascension a secret. No way.

Dirt for a Smear Campaign

What I said:

Aside from the fact that he’s basically in charge of the FO military, Hux could go after Kylo with a smear campaign by revealing his true identity. Of course, this hinges on whether the galaxy at large knows that Kylo Ren of the First Order is Ben Solo, son of rebel Generals Leia Organa and Han Solo. Evidence points to the negative:

-Poe seems unaware of Kylo’s relation to his revered general, both in TFA and TLJ -Han and Leia speak about Ben in a hushed, private conversation in TFA; they never speak his name aloud (though mostly, of course, to withhold information for dramatic effect) -barely anyone in the FO is shown wanting to make eye contact with Kylo Ren; I doubt they know anything personal about him -Finn clearly has no idea

What the novelization said:

Poe studied the two figures standing in front of the command shuttle for a long moment. “This isn’t just a family reunion,” he told the remaining Resistance fighters. “Skywalker’s doing this for a reason. He’s stalling so we can escape.”

“Escape?” Finn asked, incredulous. “He’s one man against an army. We have to go help him! We have to fight!”

Leia joined them, trailed as always by C-3PO. She and Poe exchanged glances.

“No,” Poe said. “We are the spark that will light the fire that will burn down the First Order.”

Had some member of the Resistance opted to commit suicide in dramatic fashion? Amused, he glanced over at Ren—and whatever he had been going to say died on his lips. Because the new Supreme Leader looked like he was staring down at a ghost.

Comments

Because there is no written shock or surprise from the Resistance fighters after Poe’s statement, this means that Kylo’s relationship to Leia is actually common knowledge, at least among her ranks. The subsequent lines with Leia and Finn further demonstrate how inconsequential this information is: Leia isn’t currently trying to hide it, nor has she in the past evidently. After the events in Bloodline, maybe she decided not to hide her truths from her colleagues and close allies again.

Hux, on the other hand, can’t even identify Luke Skywalker let alone understand why Kylo is so shaken by his appearance. That Finn is more “incredulous” at Poe’s deduction about Luke than he is about Poe’s reference to Luke’s family connections means the latter is not a surprise to him either. So, how could a Stormtrooper know that Kylo is a Skywalker yet the high-ranking FO officer who reinvigorated the Stormtrooper program doesn’t? A reasonable answer is that Finn learned about it at some point in TFA before Starkiller Base.

However, Leia’s close comrades knowing about her son doesn’t necessarily mean that the galaxy at large knows. Otherwise, how could Hux not know? To be fair, I don’t know how she contained that information from ruthless politicians and prevented it from becoming a weapon against her for a second time. But I guess Leia figured it out.

No Fit Leader

What I said:

Only consider how badly a secret identity, one with close ties to the enemy, would threaten Kylo’s position within the FO:

“Kylo Ren is a New Republic and Resistance sympathizer, a double agent and traitor! He is the son of rebel scum, but not just any dirty rebel: he’s the son of Leia Organa, the most dogged enemy of the Empire and First Order! At her behest, he aided and abetted a Jedi in the assassination of Supreme Leader Snoke, and then allowed her to escape! He has seized power in order to restore the Republic!”

Kylo’s visible instability on Crait could only have made a poor impression on the FO military, hitherto shown to be highly ordered and rigidly structured, if nothing else. And I’m not just talking about his gross waste of FO resources for, what, 40 rebels in a crumbling base, but also on a single man who turned out to be, well, a freaking wizard! Imagine following someone like that, putting your trust and loyalty into someone so obviously unhinged and undone?

What the novelization said:

Hux looked at Ren’s face and saw terror—naked and undisguised. That fear meant weakness—and opportunity.

The First Order had thrived despite Snoke’s weakness for mystical nonsense, but that was because Snoke had kept himself largely shrouded from view, letting his directives speak for him. Ren had never been so wise. He was incapable of it—a slave to his emotions. That wouldn’t do in a Supreme Leader. It would endanger all Hux and his technologists had created. Well, Hux wouldn’t allow that. And the more delusions Ren suffered, the easier it would be to arrange for him to be sidelined and eliminated.

Comments

Hux is providing commentary on the fact that the First Order will not accept Kylo; a fearful, uncertain leader is no fit leader. Futhermore, Kylo is trained in Jedi and Sith ways—“sorcerery” as Hux (and undoubted others) constantly calls Force powers. After the forthcoming, highly visible display of “sorcerers’” ways, no wonder Hux feels confident in his position; in contrast to Kylo’s horrid display, Snoke had maintained his “man behind the curtain” persona and in that way was able to gather and consolidate power. In a one-on-one situation, Hux could never overpower Kylo. That’s never been questioned. So, this is where Hux’s strategic cunning comes into play, along with the implied camera recordings, which could include recordings that reveal Kylo’s true identity as the last Skywalker, especially now that Snoke is not alive to prevent someone from snooping through his (likely) throne room security footage.

One thing to note is that the novelization does not mention the ^Look^ Hux gives Kylo in the abandoned Crait base. In the book, Hux is not even apparently part of the landing party. One could argue, then, that all of this time spent on Hux and his ambition are for the express purpose of explaining the meaning behind that Look. It is evidence that is not so much foreshadowing as it is confirming.

Fugitive Life

What I said:

Hux may initiate an arrest or even an assassination, which Kylo escapes. After his escape, Hux puts out the smear campaign as well as a bounty, making Kylo a wanted fugitive of the FO. As a fugitive, I think the second half of the movie will find Kylo on his journey to self-discovery and self-reconciliation. It would also be an opportunity to visit different worlds within the Star Wars galaxy, some so far removed from the political feuding that Kylo will be able to find that inner peace and resolve he needs.

What the novelization said:

Finn had dreamed of convincing her to join him somewhere in the wilds of the Outer Rim, where the First Order could never find them. The First Order would never stop hunting the Resistance until it was destroyed, but two fugitives might have a chance to escape its notice and create a life for themselves on some quiet backwater world.

Comments

OK, yes, I’m using Finn’s wishful thinking to support my own fugitive Kylo theory. It applies very well to Finn’s story arc and his habit of dealing with the FO by running away from it. But I think it could be taken as foreshadowing for Kylo as well, because one of the main concerns about Kylo’s redemption revolves around atonement. People have suggested exile (one I personally find regressive) and death, of course. Kylo’s been running from his past, like Finn, But he actually needs to run from the ideologies that have smothered him his whole life and come into his own, as Finn did.

Final Comments

Going back to what I said at the top of this post—about the novelization doing a decent job of underscoring perspective ambiguity—here’s what I mean:

Yago would endure Hux just as Peavey had—because both men knew the general wouldn’t last. He would undoubtedly succeed at destroying the remnants of the Resistance, and bask in the glory of that accomplishment for a time. But then the real challenges would begin. […] And sooner or later, Hux would be undone, revealed as an incompetent officer and an intemperate leader. […] Hux was a revolutionary, full of fire and fervor, but revolutionaries’ seasons were fleeting.

I was pretty naïve about how his comrades in arms feel about him. For all the confidence Hux has in himself, apparently his fellow officers lack faith in him. Like Yago and Peavey (the officer shown to be at Hux’s right hand in the film), the veteran Captain Canady of the Dreadnought Fulminatrix is similarly disdainful of Hux and the other young people around him. None of these officers seem to have faith in the younger generation, which represents the future, and that implies that the veterans might not have much hope for the future of their cause. Will this result in in-fighting?

It seems more than likely that Episode IX will highlight the ideological war because, as things stand, it lacks a clear cut Big Bad; we thought Snoke would be this trilogy’s Big Bad to the Emperor’s OT Big Bad. Keep in mind that the New Republic (the good side) is virtually gone, blown out of the galaxy. If there is in-fighting or mutinies within the fledgling FO (the evil side), whose leadership was so recently destroyed and quickly usurped by an unstable “sorcerer”, then might the FO simply destroy itself? Will the galaxy then be free to re-start, in a way? Or is that too simple? Sometimes, the answers to complicated questions are simple.

And speaking of that “sorcerer”, the perspective ambiguity rears its head again:

And then there was his most glaring failure of all: his inability or unwillingness to use his power to redirect the course of his own destiny.

Rey had learned that the Force was not her instrument—that, in fact, it was the other way around. Just as Kylo was its instrument, despite his determination to bend it to his will. He would learn that one day, she sensed—the Force wasn’t finished with him.

I mean, what is up, what is down?

In the beginning of the novel, Snoke knows that Kylo has an “inability” or “unwillingness” to use his power to control his destiny. At the end, Rey believes Kylo is “determined” to use his power to control the Force. There’s an arc here—Rian Johnson’s comment about Kylo “the villain, standing on his own two feet at the end” comes to mind (X). You might think this sounds ominous for the hope that Ben Solo will be redeemed. But, in the movie, we left him downcast on the floor of an abandoned base and now, in the novel, Rey’s addendum, her sense that Kylo will someday recognize himself as an instrument of the Force, almost blatantly foreshadows Ben Solo’s redemption.

Which is the big roundabout way of me saying that this novelization isn’t a complete waste of trees.

#reylo #rey #kylo ren #ben solo #armitage hux #tlj novelization #star wars episode ix #episode ix speculation #save ben solo #redemption meta

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