RANDOM SHIT FROM DISCORD!!!!
Person 1: “Jason!Neal walks into WC office one morning, followed by Bruce Wayne (as Brucie Wayne). Jason!Neal is shouting “you’re not my father!”
Bruce, Deadpan: “I have the DNA test to prove it. Faking your death doesn’t change that, Jason.”
What if this was actually how Jason comes back. As in: instead of becoming Red Hood, Jason becomes Neal Caffrey.
Person 2: Jason: you know most people would take me faking my death as a fucking hint!
The team who didn’t know any of this but won’t step in cause this is the most they’ve learned about Neal’s past:…….👀
Person 3: Bruce: You know as well as I do, the your death death wasn’t planned.
P2: Jason: that’s why it was supposed to work so well. Now get out
P3: Bruce: technically you don’t have the authority to kick me out.
P2: Jason: I don’t care. Get out
Peter: Now hold on Neal, there must be a reason he came here
Jason: yeah, to get to me. Bruce go. I’m actually happy here
P3: Bruce:………alfie misses you.
P2: Jason: ᵀʰᵃᵗ'ˢ ᵃ ˡᵒʷ ᵇˡᵒʷ ᵃⁿᵈ ʸᵒᵘ ᵏⁿᵒʷ ᶦᵗ. Besides he could visit me cause and count it as a vacation you constantly want him to go on.
P3: Bruce: He refuses to leave us home alone.
Bruce: We're on probation till next winter.
P2: Jason: ok, so either you got shot in a bad spot and refused to stay on bed rest, or the little feral demon stabbed multiple people. Which was it?
Bruce:........
The team: now hold on what-
Jason: god damn it. It was both wasn't it. Who did little feral stab?
P3: Bruce: He got dosed with Fear Toxin. He stabbed everyone.
Person 4: Jason: "...that's a you problem"
P2: Peter to himself: I thought Neal was non-violent....
Jason across the room: I am, my family isn't so much though!
Peter surprised: How did you even hear that??
P3: Bruce: See "unplanned death" and think about how he came back from it.
P1: Peter: .... he's a meta??? Our Neal???
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Reunion In Due Course
In which Cat and Isaac are reunited after two years
@isaacapatow
TW: Discussions of kidnapping, cults, torture
Catherine -
Two winters, skin bit by cold. Two summers of last year's rot thawing to cook all over again. Too many nights stubbornly pushing away what-ifs. The singular drive to get back - get revenge - to find the one soul in the whole bleak world who treated her like she wasn't some tainted *thing*.
Sitting on the holding cell floor, back to the far wall and knees hugged to chest, Catherine passed into and out of unwanted sleep. Any noise, movement, stir of air jerked her head up anew. She'd let them take her here, handed over weapons, endured touch, let their questions fall upon her.
In return she just needed to know. Was Isaac still here? Had they deserved him?
Isaac -
"Hey there." Ike wasn't surprised that just the shift of pressure in the building was enough to alert Cat to his presence; she'd been like that before him, of course she'd be like that after him. The surprise was that she looked so much like the last time he'd seen her; for some reason it felt like so long, it felt like an eon. He'd only caught a glimpse of her on the way in but here she was, and he crouched down on the other side of the bars, holding out his hands to her between them. "Come over, kitling. Lemme get a good look at you, see what's happened with my girl."
Catherine -
The tremble started in her hands. His voice was different - tired? New scars, different weight distribution. Someone hadn't backed him in a fight like they should have. Catherine's eyes couldn't stop darting, trying to look the entirety of him over in a moment's opportunity.
Standing on shaking legs, Catherine commanded them to stop before crossing the space. She would keep herself together where other eyes could see.
A crouch to accept his hands, and Catherine's voice was a croak. "Sorry I took so long."
Isaac -
A grin spread across Ike's face at that and he folded her hands in his own, tugging one up to bump against his forehead. "Always did have something else catching your attention and taking you scampering off," he said, and then slid one hand up to her elbow, clasping their forearms together. This felt familiar too; the two of them crouched together, keeping low, everything tight within the circuit of their lowered voices and sheltered expressions. "This time wasn't your idea, though, was it."
Catherine -
"No rest for the wicked," Cat exhaled softly. Blood, blood, blood to the knees this time. Ends to an end.
His grip steadied and grounded Catherine, but her eyes lacked calm. "No." Elaboration could come later, when it was safe to exhale the venom and ichor. For now, immediate concerns. "Did they send you to tell me no?" A small mercy, a twisted knife. In their right minds they'd throw her back out quick. Reaver stains were hard to clean off.
Isaac -
"Nobody sends me anywhere. I'm Council and I'm head raider. I got some running room around here." It wasn't a boast; Cat had never been impressed with titles and Ike wasn't either, finding other aspects of his personality much more bragworthy. It was just to let her know that there would be nobody throwing her out, not with Ike's cooperation. "And they're not saying no. It's protocol for you to be in here for three days but after that you're one of us." It hadn't occurred to Ike to open the cell door and go inside, though he could have, easily. They'd been in constrained circumstances before and this almost felt *more* secure, in comparison, close to the ground.
Catherine -
That was surprising, and then not. He'd charmed the snake that she was, hadn't he? This place saw his value and it reassured Catherine by degrees. "Good."
Her eyes scanned the surroundings, before she raised their joined arms to press one side of her face against his skin. They could change their mind, and she'd want this memory. There wasn't a good way out without someone else being involved. She'd let herself get caged up for the chance to -
"Tell me about raiding," Cat blurted to interrupt her own thoughts. A team - his team. Probably not the ones who'd let him get those new scars.
Isaac -
"Not much I can tell you about the actual raiding that you don't already know inside out," Ike said, but he knew what she was asking. Who he was out there with, who he had around him, who was watching his back. "There's three of em -- Nicki Torres, I wouldn't be surprised if you ran across her on your own, she's--" he huffed a laugh, "--nonstop. And Ares Melaina, I knew him when he was a punk kid dealing back in NYC, but he's shaped up now. And Orion." Ike stopped, took a breath, quirked his mouth to the side.
"Orion Carnell. Grew up with just his parents on an isolated farm, prepper shit. They didn't let him have a bedroom door growing up. They didn't even teach him how to read but they'd drop him tied up in the woods to see if he could get free and make his way home." *Culty shit*, was the unspoken underlining, even if it had been a cult of three for Orion and not the sprawling families that Cat and Ike had escaped. "You'll get to know them," Ike said, without further elaboration. She'd be one of them, of course. There was no question in Ike's mind.
Catherine -
Her head was still, breathing in his words, the world with him in it. Until Orion and the pointed recounting stilled her. Nicki was present, Ares the middle. But Orion was childhood; one unique and shared. Isaac had plainly seen him like he'd seen Catherine. The information was good. "What else do I need to know?" Who was trouble? Where were the weak points? Who were the weak points?
Isaac -
"Don't take the doctor out. If she doesn't like you, she won't listen. She'll put you in danger." Ike ran his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip, then tipped his head down; his hair had grown back, short and greying and soft, but the long L-shaped scar that started near his left temple, ran along his head, and then hooked down behind his ear was still visible. He breathed out long and slow and let his head rest against the bars -- talking about it still unsettled him, how close he'd come to going down for good. "All of my raiders are under orders to not take her anywhere. Dr. Brandon. Renee. You'll get to know her, people talk about her like she's one step below the Mother of God."
Catherine -
Her eyes narrowed at the close view of the scar. Brother Sparrow talked plenty about God and his wives and his daughters and mothers. Idolatry that this doctor clearly didn't tamp down. A doctor that got Isaac hurt - bad from the look of it. Some uppity educated fool thinking she knew better than people who lived reality....
Catherine's breathing had shallowed as her thoughts spun, her hands gripping Isaac's forearms. She lowered her own head until lips pressed to ear, voice hardly more than breath. "Worth keeping?"
Isaac -
"Only game in town, sorry to say." Ike let himself have that, then chuckled and nudged against Cat. "It is what it is. And living here means putting up with people we don't like and who don't have our best interests at heart. So yeah, she's off-limits, they all are." He tugged back to level a stern look at her. "You know there's gonna be rules like that. Ones from the normal people world. But they're not so bad here."
Catherine -
Her head dropped to his shoulder. Damned thing, society. Too long away and you forget the endless little compromises.
When Isaac took himself back, Catherine immediately and obediently released his hands. Only, he wasn't going, just making a point. A hundred scenarios started their movies in Catherine's head, each an argument she didn't voice. He knew them and she didn't and that meant deferring for the time being.
"Normal people world," was her eventual reply, and laced with venom. Why would he want to stay with anyone who clung to the ways that got the world ruined? *Why did I stay with the Reavers?* Cost and benefit.
"Are the Reavers still outside?" She couldn't sort out Redwood, but she could sort out Reavers. A comforting hope she knew made little sense to, well. Normal people.
Isaac -
"Hell, girl -- I didn't even know enough of the Reavers made it out of here to drag you with em." Ike rumbled in his chest, ill at ease with the implications, with what had been done to Cat. "It's possible they re-formed, whoever got out. But I don't know if they'd make another attempt on Redwood without being absolutely sure they wouldn't get shitcanned again." He reached for her arm again, not wanting to give up contact so soon. "You wanna tell me? About what your last two years have been? You don't have to." Ike didn't wait too long before he qualified it: "Yet."
Catherine -
Staring where he touched, hope was barbed wire. It cut and cut and cut. "Deep mountain..." Cat started, quiet like Confession. "Burned me like witches, Papa Bear."
She stole one hand back to hike up the mud-stiff, blood-stiff shirt. "Couldn't even think up new pain for me." Her laugh was as cracked as the rest of her, burn scars rippling across her abdomen at the motion. Cat let the shirt drop and sighed. "Tedious little men didn't die new, either."
A beat pause and her expression went someplace else. "The rest can be later." For now, Cat wanted to think about him. Hope and its teeth.
Her free hand traced the edge of his jaw, the crown of his hair. Hovering just shy of touch. "You've got new grays."
Isaac -
Back into the fractured spoken word that Cat tended to, when it was with other people. With him, she managed fuller sentences; like this, talking about the things she'd been through anew, she was roof tiles. Fish scales. Pieces slotted under the ones that went over them, and you kind of had to know where she'd started or you'd miss plenty. Good thing Papa Bear already knew her bare and untiled. Ike reached out and folded his fingers into the hem of her shirt, feeling his nails bumping against the scarred flesh. "I got more years on me, kitling," he said, broaching the last half-inch to push his head against her fingers, letting them run along his scar track from the scalping. "And I'm feeling em all, these days. But I got a place to rest my head that's all mine." He kept hold of her shirt. "You could too. Find ways to rest that don't reignite all those pains."
Catherine -
Her vision blurred hot, didn't matter how hard her muscles tensed. Joints creaked and popped and still some hot fell. Isaac had deep damage like her, but the charm to slip through crowds like satin through fingers. "They won't accept me. I don't know how to be the way you can be."
She inhaled sharply at the confession wrung loose, and pressed her wet eyes closed against his hairline. "Normal isn't in me."
Cat held Isaac as tight as she could with bars between them; wishing as always that she could climb between his ribs and live there, instead. "They're going to see me and do what everyone with sense does." And wasn't that the darkest truth? The deepest and scariest thing? To be seen and found unworthy. To carry the shame of trying.
Hope and its teeth.
Isaac -
"Oh, believe me -- I still got enough rough edges that I get snapped and snarled at. I live outside the town gates for a reason. But even with that it's still worth being here." Ike could feel Cat's tears against his skin, was glad that he wasn't looking at her face for it; she could maintain some of her fierce independence that way, cry in peace but the safety of his presence. "You don't have to be any kind of normal except your own."
Ultimately, though, Ike could pet and soothe Cat till the cows came home, but that programming inside her was a motherfucker to quiet down. Didn't he know that too? Didn't all the catechisms of Ark chant in his head unceasingly until the heroin shut them up? "You have me," Ike said, because that was proven, that was dependable. "And you'll have the raiders. That's a place to start."
END
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