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strawberrysoup · 4 years

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Pocketful of Posies || Chapter 2

You’d been hiding for years and years now; from your family, from society, from alphas and packs. Suppressants were dangerous but effective and necessary for an omega who refused to be owned—but no suppressants were strong enough to fool the nose of a super soldier, who together with his pack would stop at nothing to bind you to them forever.

pairings: dark!Avengers x reader word length: 5k chapters: 2/? warnings: A/B/O dynamics, power imbalances, noncon and dubcon sexual situations, loss of autonomy, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat — this is a dark!fic, read at your own risk. Open the read more and CTRL + F, search “content warnings” to skip to detailed trigger warnings at the bottom of the chapter.

hey read this: im desperately hoping this lives up to the standards the first chapter apparently set my dudes, fingers crossed i don’t lose any of you with this one 🤞🤞 also before we get started i just wanna let yall know i am very firmly set in my decisions for the designations and i do not apologize lmao 🤙

You had been manhandled often enough in your life but fuck this time in particular. Even if you’d managed to pass as a beta for more than a decade, you weren’t strong and couldn’t stand your ground in the face of an alpha three times your size. Steve had sucked his fingers clean and easily hefted you up into his arms, following Bruce back into the cabin and down into the basement—you hadn’t been allowed to clean the basement, it was one of the off-limits areas that were noted in your many instructions. If a door is locked, leave it alone. No cleaning is necessary in the basement, garage, or third floor. Wash the linens with a scent free detergent. Make sure the refrigerator is properly scrubbed out.

He’d left you on a metal countertop with instructions to be good for Bruce. You weren’t sure what that entailed but as soon as the blond left the room, your mind started to race. There was no way you could get away from Steve, Sam you could potentially outrun, but Bruce? Being left alone with the beta was the best thing they could’ve done for you. You could get away from Bruce.

“Have you been to see a doctor recently?” His voice was gentle, intended to be soothing as he came to stand in front of you. "Any check-ups, clinic visits?”

You knew there was blood drying on your cracked lips, cutting a jarring path down your throat. The taste was still in your mouth, you’d gouged your tongue and it was still actively bleeding. With that in mind you made direct eye contact with the beta before letting the mouthful spill over your bottom lip and drip down your front, hoping the gore would help emphasize your opinions on the situation.

“Sweetheart, I know you’re upset—”

“Bruce, why is she bleeding?” It was like getting punched in the face by alpha pheromones the moment the door to the room opened again and a much younger alpha stepped through with a practically panicked expression.

Before you or Bruce could respond you’d been swept up in the alpha’s arms. He was a few years younger than you, early twenties probably and being manhandled by a fetus was particularly bothersome. His scent kept you still for a few seconds before you started squirming, making a beta-like snarl while he corralled your limbs.

“Here Pete, can you sit with her over here? We need a blood draw and full work up, her natural hormones have probably been devastated by the chemicals in the suppressants she was taking,” Bruce gestured for the alpha to carry you to a metal table, likely meant to be used for some sort of experiments if the rest of the room was anything to judge by. "All of her reproductive organs could’ve been affected, I’ll need to do a pelvic exam. We’ll run an STD panel and—”

“No! I don’t consent!” Your voice came out as a growl, the best one you could manage. "This is false imprisonment! Let go of me you fucking knothead! This is illegal!”

The alpha started to purr immediately and you found yourself rendered boneless under the onslaught. It was startling—you’d forgotten how it felt, how calm and safe it made you feel. Alpha purrs were meant to soothe and comfort, the tones perfectly adjusted to the omega ear. They also caused a completely involuntary reaction in omegas, the same as all other alpha sounds. You had no choice but to feel relaxed, the white noise of a purr jumbling your thoughts.

Bruce smiled down at you, hand running over the top of your head where it rested against the alpha’s chest. "It’s okay, you don’t have to be afraid. I won’t let anything happen to you, I just want to make sure you’re healthy.”

“Isn’t that better baby?” The alpha sat back on the table and pulled you to sit between his legs, tucked close to his chest. “And unless you have a guardian alpha, it’s not illegal. We’re doing our civic duty, taking care of an omega in unsafe conditions.”

The worst part was that you couldn’t fight it; you couldn’t find your way out of the calm static the purr filled your brain with. Even when Bruce started taking multiple vials of blood from your left arm, when he opened your mouth to check the damage to your tongue, when they started undressing you, you couldn’t fight. It was a hazy sort of half thought, that you wanted them to stop. It must’ve been apparent in your eyes, that you were trying to work your way out of the purr’s effects.

“Shhhh, sweetheart, you’re alright,” Bruce murmured quietly as his hands pressed the glands in your neck, fingers brushing gently against the scent gland in particular. "No swelling in your thyroid or mating nodes, that’s good. Suppressants can really cause problems in your hormone glands; the blood tests will tell us for sure but it looks like you might’ve dodged the worst of it if nothing’s enflamed. How long have you been on suppressants?”

Answering was the last thing on your mind, your eyes slowly roving over the room instead. It was some sort of lab set up, tons of machines and parts of machines, technology you couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Bruce had been taking things from one particular cabinet that seemed to hold medical supplies, the rest of the place resembling a robotics factory or some kind of high-tech research and development lab. The doors had swished open automatically when Steve brought you in and when the new alpha came through. Who had automatic doors in a vacation home?

“Should I stop?” The alpha questioned the doctor, chest continuing to rumble. “I might be making her too calm I guess.”

“No, just keep doing what you’re doing Peter,” Bruce sighed slightly. "There’s too much coherence in her eyes as it is, I don’t know if the purr affects her as much as it should. I’m worried that if you weren’t enhanced it wouldn’t work at all. Look at me sweetie, can you focus on face?”

His hands cupped your cheeks, tilting your head carefully while watching your eyes. You couldn’t find the energy to focus on his face; you couldn’t imagine the purr affecting you more than it already was and dreaded the idea that it could be worse. What did enhanced mean? Like the superheroes you’d been hearing about? You didn’t keep up on current events, unless they were Omega's Rights related.

“I’m sure it’s a result of the beta chemicals dampening her omega instincts,” Peter shifted you slightly as Bruce exchanged his gloves for a new pair. "Once her body starts producing hormones on its own again she should revert back to common responses to alpha stimuli.”

“You’re probably right, we’ll know for sure once I get the blood results,” Bruce gestured for Peter to sit up more, bringing your limp body with him. “I’m going to do a breast exam and a pelvic exam and we’re done. There are some other tests I want to run but I don’t have the equipment on hand so they’ll have to wait until Tony manages to get here. Peter, can you help move her arms?”

You felt like you almost managed to swim through the purr, rage fueling you as hands manipulated your breasts. The exam itself was clinical, professional even—or it would’ve been if he hadn’t been cooing at you the whole time, how good you were being, how sweet you were, how pretty your breasts were. Peter had hummed in agreement along with the doctor, his nose trailing up and down your neck. Your hands clenched into fists and you could feel Peter’s grip on your wrists shift with the movement.

“Calm down, baby,” the alpha’s voice cooed gently against the side of your head, lips pressing into your hair as Bruce shifted away and went for the medical cabinet again. "This is important. Suppressants could’ve caused tons of problems, cancerous growths in sexual organs or secondary sex characteristics is very common.”

Death would be a reprieve. The same thought that crossed your mind any time you considered the potential effects of suppressants. A reprieve from the hiding, the exhaustion, living out of your car or a tent, eating garbage because it was all you could afford—from the constant threat of having your autonomy ripped from your hands.

You relaxed your fists until you felt his grip loosen again, even if only slightly. Your only chance would be to rely on surprise and your speed, there was no other way you’d be able to get away. Forcing your body to relax was a trial though, adrenaline was starting to course through you the more you became used to the effects of the purr. Your scent was still massively dampened by the suppressants, Peter likely wouldn’t be able to smell the shift from fear to anticipation. You bit down on the sluggishly bleeding wound on your tongue, reigniting both the pain and blood flow.

“Alright, last part, we’re almost done and then we’ll get you comfortable, okay?” Bruce was wearing new gloves again, a bottle in hand as he walked back over. "Have you had a pelvic exam before?”

You waited until he was close enough and performed what seemed to be your go to act of defiance: spitting blood directly in his face. He reared back with a short curse, Peter immediately releasing your wrists—his goal was likely to readjust you in his lap, to gain a better hold, but you were fast, faster than an alpha (always faster than alphas, it was all you had). You’d slipped from his lap and darted for the automatic doors before either of them could respond. Running through the woods naked was the lesser evil.

Steel bands. You should’ve noticed, the doors opened too soon for them to be reacting to your presence, you were so focused on getting through. But the moment you did, it felt like steel bands wrapped around your torso, pinning your arms.

The alpha’s scent was like Steve’s—the moment your brain registered it the world went hazy. You were floating, body going limp for a precious few seconds that the alpha used to sweep you into his arms and stalk further into the room. Your senses came back just in time for you to be deposited back into Peter’s lap on the table, a massive blond alpha coming into view for the first time. Your gaze was immediately stuck on his, the heterochromatic eyes nearly hypnotizing. Fighting the daze he put you in was overwhelming, especially when a wide smile split his lips and his cheeks dimpled. One massive hand reached out, almost engulfing the entire lower half of your face.

“Hello little love.” Were alphas always as insanely massive as this one and Steve, or had you just stumbled across literally your worst nightmare? “They told me you’re a flighty thing, I suppose I arrived just in time, hm? Are you going to spit blood in my face as well? It seems to be your calling card.”

The look on your face must’ve betrayed the fact that you were really, really considering it. You had a mouthful of blood and nowhere to put it but his face, honestly. Instead you used the fact that Peter was mostly propping you up to lean over the edge of the table and proceeded to open your mouth, spilling blood down onto the alpha’s shoes nice white shoes.

“I wouldn’t challenge her,” Bruce’s voice drew your attention to where he was using a towel to wipe blood off his glasses, a wry smile and affection clear on his face. "She’s putting a lot of effort into being belligerent.”

The blond alpha rumbled with a grin, thumb brushing across your cheekbone. "It’s been a stressful day for her, there’s nothing she can do that will cause any persisting damage anyway. Let her have her little rebellions.”

You wanted to be furious—what kind of asshole looked a person dead in the eyes and called their attempts to escape false imprisonment little rebellions?—but Peter seemed to have realized where your train of thought had gone because he started purring immediately. Your spine went boneless, laying you flat against his chest.

“Can you lean up against the wall with her?” Bruce directed the younger alpha to shift until both of your legs were dangling over the edge, Peter’s back to the wall the table sat against. “You’re going to need to hold her in place, even while you purr. Alright sweetie, let’s get this out of the way. Thor, will you hold her leg please?”

The sound you made was an accident. Desperation and humiliation were crawling up your spine with astounding speed, even with Peter’s purr going like a motorboat and the sound was making it too hard to think through your instincts. Omega cries were a deliberate counterpart to the noises alphas made; whines and cries and hisses, perfectly pitched to make an alpha’s hindbrain stand at attention. The sound you made was a sharp, chirping whine—distress, distress, distress, help me, help me help m—

“Oh little love,” Thor’s voice had dropped several registers and he gently shuffled Bruce to the side so he could stand in front of you, slipping as close to the table as possible and tugging your legs to rest on either side of his hips and gently running his hands over your skin. “Let’s get you taken care of, you need rest.”

The pheromones he was putting out were meant to calm but you immediately opened your mouth, using the overwhelming scent of your own blood to drown them out. The alpha sighed and stepped aside again, taking your leg with him and spreading your thigh to rest over Peter’s leg with your foot planted on the table. A whine rose in your throat again but you locked it down, instead biting down on your tongue yet again. It was as grounding as it was painful, the tang of it souring your stomach.

It was your last coherent thought, that you were starting to feel nauseous from all of the blood you'd swallowed. Thor began to purr just after that and the sound was entirely devastating, bone deep and you went completely limp, your head falling to the side against Peter’s chest and your shoulders dropping. This is what acid felt like, you were pretty sure.

Your eyes lazily followed Bruce’s path as the doctor took his place between your legs again, lifting the other into a matching position. Some part of you was fully aware of how gut wrenching this was; completely naked and spread wide in front of two alphas and a beta, a situation you’d rather kill yourself than be in, but your brain couldn’t follow any emotional tethers while Thor purred. The doctor was speaking, you could feel his hands manipulating your vulva, but you couldn’t understand anything coming out of his mouth.

Peter’s hand came to your chin and tilted your head back until you could see him, smiling down at you. His mouth moved, your eyes almost able to track the movement of his lips enough to read them but your brain gave up halfway through. The two alphas were chuckling over something but you were distracted by the discomfort of something being inserted into your vagina. A sharp yip escaped your lips, your body still completely boneless as your eyes rolled down.

“It’s a speculum, sweetie, I’m sorry it’s uncomfortable,” it sounded like Bruce was talking underwater and you could almost feel his breath on your thigh, your mind irritatingly unable to think beyond the question 'who just keeps a fucking speculum lying around?' "Just a few more seconds while I get a pap smear.”

More discomfort came before the instrument was removed, another yip leading Peter to purr along side Thor. The rest of the exam was a blur, slippery fingers and pressure and foreign sensations. You could barely think, let alone realize that Bruce was finishing up the manual exam, when your eyes noticed movement behind them. You couldn’t really make out anything, nothing would focus, but you assumed it was Steve and Sam.

There were more voices but you couldn’t hear anything for an indeterminate amount of time. It wasn’t until Thor stopped purring again that you were able to start regaining your senses, as much as the continuous rumbling in Peter’s chest would allow. The difference between the sounds the two alphas produced was marked by your sudden ability to focus your eyes, to concentrate on voices, in the way your muscular control was slowly returning.

You were almost glad the young alpha was still purring—it meant that the spike of terror that tried to shoot through you was somewhat dulled, enough that it wouldn’t show in your scent. Sam and Steve had indeed come in, accompanied by a young woman with long auburn hair and porcelain skin, a beta from the scent. As soon as she made eye contact with you she smiled vibrantly, slipping forward and sneaking between your still spread thighs.

“You’re so beautiful,” she murmured, long fingers stroking absently against your neck as she leaned in, forcing your back tighter against Peter’s chest. "Will you let me see your trauma my love?”

Some sort of red miasma filled your vision, a fog you quickly realized was coming from her hands—and realization slammed into you like a freight train. You seen that before, in passing. And then the recognition made you nauseous—Thor. You didn’t keep up with current events, but certain names you couldn’t miss. Thor, Tony Stark, Captain America. Your eyes flashed to the blond man standing towards the back of the room; Captain America, Steve Rogers.

Desperation shot through your body like you’d been tazed. Your foot shot out of Thor’s hold, the alpha hadn’t been putting any actual effort into holding you still since you’d been so dazed, and connected with the woman’s chest to send her reeling. Before anyone else could respond, your throat rasped for several seconds before a warbling shriek escaped. The four alphas in the vicinity reacted like they’d been shot; Thor and Steve both stumbled back, and Sam’s knees practically gave out, sending him careening into the wall. Behind you, Peter, far too close to the source, immediately went limp.

There were several distress calls an omega could make. Most of the time, they were whines or chirps, noises meant to draw attention from packmates. They were small, careful sounds—nothing loud enough to attract attention from a foreign alpha or delta. Omegas were quarry to be stolen, after all, which was precisely why they had one, singular method of defending themselves against their biggest biological threat and that was a shriek.

When in close proximity, the sound was loud enough and tuned just so to daze an alpha’s hindbrain. The evolutionary explanation was that a loud shriek meant that an omega being confronted by an aggressive alpha could both temporarily stun their attacker and summon assistance—alphas or deltas, far enough away that the negative effects were nullified but within proximity to hear that an omega was in danger. The assumption being, of course, that an omega who shrieked was in danger from a stranger, not a packmate.

It only worked for a very short time though, any alpha or delta in the area would immediately converge on the omega’s location and deal with the problem—it was the reason you hadn’t used it outside. There was no reason for the effects to last when it summoned immediate assistance, though, and that meant you needed to move. You slid off the table, bare feet slapping tile as you just barely managed to dodge Bruce’s grasp. The woman, the witch from the news, was on the floor clutching her sternum.

The stairs were a blur, so was the foyer and the driveway. You hesitated at your car for all of ten seconds before running for the forest; your keys were in the pocket of your jeans, back down in the basement. Abandoning all of your possessions hurt somewhere deep in your heart but there wasn’t any time for sentiment. You had to get away, quickly.

Luckily the woods had become your home a long time ago. You moved between the trees silently, feet so heavily calloused from constantly going barefoot that you didn’t even notice the twigs and sharp stones digging into your flesh. Your brain shot into overtime. You needed to steal clothes, then cash. You’d lived with nothing for years, you could do it again for however long you needed to. The only thing you really needed was suppressants; everything else was a luxury.

You assumed they were behind you, you’d been running for a good three minutes. The straight path meant they could follow you easier but the goal had to be the maximum distance possible rather than the most strategic pattern. Your only advantage was being fast and you had no choice but to rely on it, especially since your hindbrain was wailing with every step you took. The suppressants were the only reason you could do it at all, the trade off for quieting those damn instincts being a tolerable mildness of character that did not appreciate the constant, incessant shriek of your baser self while you were trying to focus.

All you had to do was keep quiet until you could find one of the creeks running through the forest—so close to Lake Superior there was water everywhere. You would run through the creek in several different places, to mask your scent and make it difficult to follow. It wouldn’t be hard to find a hunting blind or shack, a hole in the ground was better than going back there. The moment your eyes caught on running water you dove into it, covering yourself with mud before jumping back up to continue running.

Captain America was super fast and you’d bet the rest of them were similar if not the same and you needed more distance. Somewhere in the back of your mind, prey behavior was setting in. Natural selection had driven your existence, you were the result of thousands of years of evolution, and the life you’d lived meant you were far more adapted to being hunted than most omegas. You were vulnerable but not helpless and as you coated yourself in more mud from a different part of the creek, chemosensory instincts started rattling through you.

They were coming. Your scent was inhibited by the suppressant’s and that made it harder for them to follow you but they were doing their best. Combined with the water and the mud, your scent was very difficult to pin down, even for a super soldier. You contemplated climbing a tree to hide, but the insane memory of how keen the noses of the pack following you were spurred you on. You kept running, covering yourself in mud two more times, before finding a tree with a massive tangle of roots at the bottom. Fighting whatever creature had made a home down there was worth it—it went deep, was heavily covered by underbrush and detritus from the trees, but most importantly it was surrounded by wild bergamot in full bloom.

It smelled lovely, spicy and floral with a citrusy overtone. You crawled through the dirt, wiggling between the roots and carefully avoiding crushing any plants or branches that could give you away. Whatever lived in there was out, likely foraging, and you took the creature’s absence to your advantage and pressed as far back into the hole as possible.

You weren’t tired, despite the long, exhausting day and the fucking trauma. Another small grace that adaption had provided was that once an omega began producing adrenaline, sleep became unnecessary—it was actually considered a very unenviable omega trait in the general population, but you’d found it’s uses worth the unpleasant side effects. Your heart would continue to race for the next several hours, your pupils wouldn’t return to normal for potentially days and your blood sugar had sky rocketed and that was going to be a nightmare for how ever long it lasted.

The waiting was going to hurt—there was nothing to pass the time and you had to actively focus on not being terrified or your omega scent could seep through, oh, what was it now? Five coats of mud from the creek, a significant amount of bergamot, and fifteen years of whatever the fuck suppressants did to your scent over time.

It wasn’t ten minutes later that you heard them. Stealth wasn’t their objective, that was clear from the amount of noise they made. You could hear Steve and Peter calling your name, although you didn’t know how they knew it. Thor was speaking, his tone low but certainly not quiet. They weren’t even moving that fast, walking almost leisurely.

“She’ll need to bathe and eat. Clint and Natasha are finishing up in New York. Steve, have you heard from Tony or Bucky? Carol?”

“Tony’s wrapping up, should be flying over pretty soon. Carol and Bucky were on their way up but I gave them a list of things to grab while they’re going through the bigger cities. Shouldn’t be too much longer for them either though.”

Steve and Thor were different than Sam or Peter. You couldn’t pin down exactly what had set your teeth on edge, but the scent the two blond alphas gave off was different. Their pheromones were worse, more infectious. Eye contact with Steve had made your hindbrain beg to go to him, regardless of the rationality you could usually manage thanks to the suppressants. You could remember the feel of Thor’s hand on like it was seared into your skin instead, you wanted him to never not be touching you ever again—

If you could’ve slapped yourself without making noise you would’ve. The stupid omega in your brain, that dumb, easy cunt was going to get you killed. You sealed your lips, clenched your teeth and tucked your hands under your bent knees. Night was starting to fall to your benefit, the shadows were getting darker. You were so far back they would have to crouch down and crawl half way in to see you.

If you could keep your wits until they passed you could double back, trying to find your keys would be a wash but you could grab clothes from the back of your ancient Tahoe. You weren’t sure how long you’d been in the basement, but you didn’t think it was long enough for them to have gone through your things.

“Could she have gotten this far?” You held your breath as Sam stopped far too close to your hiding place for comfort.

“Omegas are fast and she seemed faster than most,” Bruce answered. “We’ll know for sure once her blood work comes back, but from her physiology I’d say she presents as a classical omega. She’s probably the first in her family in a long, long time. To have a scream that loud in this day and age? The omega gene must’ve been skipped so long that there was no chance for it to adapt to modern omega qualities.”

“There’ve been some studies suggesting that the classical omega attributes are making a come back in the general population,” Peter’s voice came from much farther away. "They haven’t been peer reviewed enough yet and they haven’t been replicated en masse because they don’t have enough subjects, alphas aren’t exactly thrilled to have their omegas studied, but—”

“The lack of data aside, I assume there’s a correlation between the alphas willing to allow their omegas to participate and the behavior of the omega in question. Do you think—”

“Focus, Bruce,” Steve’s voice was light with affection. "The point is that yes, she could’ve gotten this far or farther. The way she keeps running into the creek is messing up the footprints and—”

Their voices faded as they continued the same linear path you’d been running earlier. The fact that they didn’t even sound a little concerned that you could get away was both insulting and unnerving. You didn’t need alphas having that kind of confidence regarding your behavior—and why weren’t they moving any faster? The paranoia was immediate and overwhelming, what did they know about that you didn’t? Something they assumed would hinder you farther along in the woods? Something they were planning for when they found you? When.

You forced yourself to count slowly to six hundred, waiting what you hoped was a full ten minutes before silently crawling out of your hide. Their scents were everywhere, you could smell where Sam had been standing almost directly over the opening in the roots. They were still too close for comfort and you turned, running back through the forest. Your feet were starting to feel sore, usually you’d at least watch where you stepped but there just wasn’t time—you had to get away before they could enact their plans.

The clearing the cabin sat in was coming up and you forced yourself to slow as you approached the tree line, keeping a careful eye out for the beta woman. You couldn’t remember what her call sign was, something to do with witches, and you definitely didn’t want her using that red magic stuff on your head.

The extra seconds of waiting paid off, watching her pace the porch for a few moments before her phone rang. She answered, walking inside and closing the doors behind her. You didn’t wait an extra second, darting across the clearing to where you car was sitting in the driveway with the trunk popped. They must’ve started going through your things but stopped part of the way through.

You could see one of your go bags though, squished between your rolled up sleeping bag and tent. The straps of the bag squeaked with how hard you yanked it out, hesitating slightly—instinct told you to leave the sleeping bag, but you’d grown used to the luxury of it and leaving the stupid thing behind made you decidedly sad. You tossed the straps of the go bag over your shoulder and turned away, knowing it would slow you down and—

There was an Iron Man suit standing directly behind you, gauntlets rested on the hips and the head cocked to the side. You froze, as if staying still could prevent it from noticing you. Fuck, you hoped there wasn’t a man in there. A stupid thought, you considered as you stared silently, trying to decide if there was any way out. Hope was a joke at this point but you didn’t have anything else.

“Hi princess,” it was a distinctly human voice, if filtered. "Hope I didn’t miss too much of the fun.”

content warning: nonconsensual medical procedures, general noncon touching/assault.

edited 7/9/21 - still on hiatus

#avengers x reader #dark!avengers x reader #steve rogers x reader #thor x reader #peter parker x reader #bucky barnes x reader #sam wilson x reader #wanda maximoff x reader #natasha romanoff x reader #tony stark x reader #bruce banner x reader #carol danvers x reader #clint barton x reader #will reblog w tags

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punnyasitgets · 3 years

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[cha cha slide voice] reverse!

Freeze! Everybody clap your hands!

Ok so Catwoman Guardian of Gotham was a disaster so I'm taking it into my own hands. Only Bruce and Selina are swapped and Alfred still exists, not. The weird maid lady and Bruce is Not a bloodthirsty murderer

This got Very long so it's under a cut

Selina's parents were murdered by Joe Chill and she vowed to never let anyone feel the same pain she did, hence why she later became Catwoman

Bruce grew up on the streets with his big brother Thomas taking care of them both, but Thomas ended up killing a guy in a mugging and got sent to prison and left Bruce on his own

Catwoman hears about a number of high-profile thefts (museums, aristocrats) springing up and starts trying to track down the cat burglar and ends up interrupting a burglarly from a wealthy woman's penthouse

She chases the burglar down and they have a fight on the rooftops where they kick the everloving shit out of eachother but the burglar throws her off the roof and when she gets back up he's gone

Next night, she attends a charity event and meets an activist and fundraiser by the name of Bruce Wayne and they have a nice chat and hit it off

In the middle of it, a waiter bumps Selina in the side right over where her ribs got cracked from the other night and she doubles over so Bruce helps her out of sight and asks what happened

She tells him she tripped down the stairs of her house but he does Not believe it and ends up sticking by her the rest of the night, at the end of which Selina is like. "He's nice I think" and invites him out for lunch soon

Jump a day or two and Selina runs into the burglar again but this time he's got full body armor and a bat motif and she is Not Happy With This Development

Bruce stole a ton of armor and weaponry from the GCPD and made his own suit because Selina rly messed him up the last time they met

So they fight and Bruce hits her in the side and it floors her and he is like. Wait A Minute, but she recovers and he's forced to run

And then over a period of a month or two, Bruce starts hanging out with Selina in the day (lowkey stalking her to see if his wild theory is right) and while over at her manor he spots a bloodstain on her shirtsleeve from a wound that bled through the bandages she was wearing and when he questions her she says she cut her arm open on a nail accidentally and it's not a big deal but he's just. Hm

Also during this period, Catwoman keeps showing up to stop all of Batman's robberies and he's really getting sick of it because he's been using the money from his stolen goods both to like, feed himself but also to support a gang of homeless kids in the neighborhood he lives in and to help provide food for the local orphanage and it's getting Really Hard To Do That When He Can't Steal Stuff

So basically he knows she's Catwoman and Selina is his friend and he's just. I Have An Idea

Batman starts going out more often just to taunt Catwoman while she's on patrol and he starts going to other rogues like Two-Face and Cobblepit to egg them on and he actively breaks Bane out of prison and the Riddler out of Arkham just to set them loose

He's basically manufacturing a crime wave to try and wear Catwoman out and it's working

She's really exhausted because of all this and every time she has to make an appearance in public she's all tired and struggling to keep it together and Bruce makes a point to be there and to cover for her whenever she's too overwhelmed

Eventually Catwoman gets severely injured during a fight and she's too far from the Cave so, not really having another option, she shows up passed out in Bruce's apartment bleeding out and he's all surprised and helps her and gives her impromptu medical care but never pulls off her mask

Selina wakes up on his couch and he's asleep in a chair he pulled up next to her and she's like :] and leaves him a thank you note before going

So Batman has basically become priority one but he keeps causing so many new problems to spring up that she can't actually go after him while he commits a robbery spree, and every tine she deals with everything else he goes to ground for weeks on end

All the while Bruce is there being Supportive Friend Of The Year and they keep going out to eat and they spend events together and it's Grand

Eventually Bruce asks her out! And she's like. Oh No because while she likes him, she genuinely doesn't know if she can handle being in a relationship at the moment but she doesn't want to say no so she gives a tentative yes and so they're dating

Luckily he is a very understanding man and whenever she has to dip out to be Catwoman or when she's too tired to go out he's all "oh it's fine, I can reschedule" and it's a Very Big Relief

Batman goed to ground after another round of Mess With Catwoman and he stays that way for like three months and she puts all her rogues away so for the first time in a While she has proper free time to spend with Bruce and it's lovely! And shes like. "If this is how our relationship is, I don't want it to end" but because she's Catwoman and she doesn't know that she could hide it from Bruce if they were married and so one night she shows up in his apartment as Catwoman and shows him that she's Selina and he's just "!!!!! Oh that explains a lot, that's really awesome"

He swears he'd never tell anyone about her identity and makes a joke about how because Selina makes herself seem so ditzy at parties, nobody would believe him anyway and so Selina proposes to him the next night and they end up getting married and Bruce moves into the manor ❤️

Unfortunately Batman comes back and he pulls a pro gamer move which involves releasing every inmate from Arkham and Blackgate, including but not limited to her entire rogues gallery

So she's having a Time and literally just can't handle everything and every time she does well against a rogue Batman swoops in out of nowhere to divert her and really it's exhausting and she's working herself to the bone

Eventually she manages to wrangle most of them but the Joker is still on the loose and Batman keeps evading her and she Has Not Slept For Four Nights

While she's in the Cave, Alfred makes a comment about how at night it always gets so nerve wracking, especially since Bruce tends to leave after she does and Alfred is worried he might get caught up in something dangerous considering Batman and the crime wave and Selina is like

"He leaves the house at night??? [wh]" And Alfred gets confused tells her how he can never find Bruce in the manor from around eleven pm to two in the morning so he assumes Bruce goes out to visit friends or to deal with personal business and he tells her abt how he asked Bruce about it and he told Alfred that he and Selina had already talked about it

And Selina is just. "He was lying to you, I had no idea he was going out" which makes her Very Suspicious

She can't Do anything about it because she's trying to track down supercriminals but she checks the manor security feeds and she can't find any trace of Bruce leaving which is Concerning

Basically she ends up finding the Joker and stopping him from bombing the city and he gets sent back to Arkham, but before she can go home Batman shows up and they facedown on the roof

Batman goes all "I really didn't want to do this but you gave me no choice" and then starts trying to kill Selina

He gets a bunch of good stabs in but Selina seems to get the better of him and so he runs and she follows him into an apartment building but loses him in the hallways

She spots a bomb behind one of the doors and realizes the building is about to explode so she gets out of there just before it does and Batman corners her with a gun on a nearby roof

He tries to kill her again but Selina manages to get close and hits the gun away

Batman tries to run but she grabs him by the cape and yanks him back and manages to rip his cowl off before he gets away, at which point she sees that it's Bruce and she's Horrified

And it finally clicks that Batman has been trying to get every other criminal in Gotham to either kill her for him or wear her out so that he can do it himself, which would Also be killing Selina Kyle, and since she doesn't have any other heir, Bruce would get her fortune

And she's all "why would you do all this" and he gets really angry and starts telling her all about the people that aren't as privileged as her and he basically tells her that he wants her money so he can use it to help the people living in the East End and the Narrows, since Selina and the other aristocrats of her stature didn't know the problem like he did and refused to help

So Selina is just baffled that he'd go this far and he apologizes to her genuinely before he tries to kill her one last time because now that she Knows, this is his last chance to get away with the plan

It doesn't work, Selina fights him off and manages to get cuffs on him but he gets away and Selina goes home and Divorces That Man Immediately but also realizes that while he was living with her he'd been stealing things like jewelry she never wore or fancy paintings from rooms nobody ever went into and she is just Not Pleased

But she also allocates a ton of money towards charity projects focused in the more rundown areas of Gotham and actively starts funding all sorts of orphanages, soup kitchens, clinics, etc

She tries to track Bruce down but he's just Gone and so she lets it go even though she's very heartbroken and sad that he tried so hard to kill her

#bat and cat swap #batman #catwoman #dc comics #gaysonlyocean #adobe decrees #tysm rat 🥺

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demivampirew · 4 years

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A new chapter begins

One-shot Henry x Reader

Triggers: mild smut, crying, blood loose, breakup.

A/N: I’ve decided to continue to tag the stories under the Henry tag. (like my dear @littlefreya says, we are no breaking the rules) I will also tag it under smut, even if there’s barely no sex on this story, but just in case. If you don’t like to see smut and you’re a lazy person who did not filtered the smut tag, don’t come at me, is no my fault; you’re the one to blame for that. Is a free world. I’m free to write whatever I want.

Tag list: @lunedelorient @henrythickcavill @wolvesandhoundshowltogether @mary-ann84 @desperate-and-broken @peakygroupie @summersong69 @ivvitm1109 @madbaddic7ed @iloveyouyen @the-soot-sprite

Henry was in the middle of an important mission on Word of Warcraft. All his attention was put on it when the non-stop barking interrupted his attention. Kal was trying hard to announce to him that someone was knocking at the door. When he finally took-off his headset to ask the Akita what was going on, he heard the knocking. He ran into the door before the person left. With the virus going on, he received no visits unless it was an emergency. Since he hadn't ordered anything online, he wasn't expecting any packages either, so whoever was on the other side of the door, came without any previous notice. He asked who it was before opening and he felt goosebumps when your voice met his ears and your name was pronounced. His legs were shaking and his heart was beating fast. He hadn't seen you in a few months after you two broke up and things did no exactly ended up in the best way - Henry promised that he loved you and would fight for you two to be together, but decided to terminate the relationship because due to work you couldn't travel with him and he was not the type who could be in relationships that would require time apart from each other. And, for the first time in his life, he regretted that decision. You were right, the love you felt for each other was worth fighting for. Seeing you confused him because you were mad at him and said that never wanted to see him again after he broke his promise and your heart. He allowed you to enter the place and you sit on the couch of the living room. - How are you? - Henry asked, sitting in a chair in front of you. - Fine, I guess- you replied with a dry tone and shrugged. You were still angry and it was obvious. - Can I get you something to drink? I have cold Guinness in the fridge.- he offered. - No, thank you.- you rejected the beer and a long silence follow after that. - Why are you here? - your ex-boyfriend questioned confused. - Because I have something to tell you.- you answered and paused revelling the motive of your visit. You looked into his eyes and grabbed the bottom of your loose shirt and raise it, revealing a baby bump. It was big enough to be obvious what it was, but no so big that was visible with clothes on - unless you were wearing tight clothing. Henry was speechless. He felt as if all the oxygen was escaping from his body and he couldn't concentrate or breath correctly. - How... Since when have you... - he could complete any sentence of how shocked he was. - I found out a week after we broke up when the symptoms started.- you explained- I didn't tell you back then because the firsts months can be risky and I had no desire to bother you if I lost it. My intention is not to bother you at all, I just wanted to let you know in case you wanted to be a part of the baby's life. In case you don't want to do anything with her/him, that's fine with me. - Are you serious right now? Of course, I want to be part of my kid's life. That's like, everything I've ever wanted. A family... a true family. Children to love and a woman that I love.- he said while kneeling in front of you with a huge smile on his face, extending his arms to grab your face. You pulled them off and he felt his heart crush as a reaction to your rejection. - I think you are confused.- you informed him- I'm not here to get back together with you. I'm here to let you know that you'll be a father if you choose to be it. But, just like you decided months ago, our relationship is over. I want a partner that wants to be with me for me and not because he feels obligated for we have a child together. I deserve love, true love. - But I love you.- Henry assured you- I had and I'll always love you. - Yeah, sure. That's why you broke up with me or why you didn't go looking for me after that to say you were wrong, because you love me.- you replied, rolling your eyes and pouting. - I wanted to do it, but I was afraid you were going to reject me like you're doing now and I couldn't take that.- he explained. - Then you're a coward and selfish.-you defied him- We could have been together if you care about my feelings as much as you care about yours.- you pointed out and stood up. You walked towards the door and stopped yourself abruptly. You turned around and after a deep sigh, you took a picture from your bag. It was an ultrasound photo of the baby. You left it in a piece of furniture and then left the place. Henry took the picture and stared at it. His head was spinning and he felt a rollercoaster of emotions. His biggest dream and nightmare came true at the same time: he'd have a child with the love of his life, but he wouldn't be able to spend time with them together, because he hurt you and he made you feel like you weren't worthy of his love and attention.

In the following months, you allowed him to come with you to doctor's appointments and ultrasounds. You approve for him to text you two times a day - on the morning and at nighttime- and the only subject you'd talk was the pregnancy and its symptoms.

At 2 am, Henry was woken up by a phone call. You informed him that you were at the clinic due to blood loss but the doctor had already checked on you and told you that everything was fine but that you had to stay for a few hours on observation just to be sure. Your intention was only to keep him updated in everything baby related as he asked, but soon enough he was there keep you company. Wearing a green lose the shirt, some grey sweatpants and a beanie; clearly, he hasn't changed from his sleep-clothing before rushing into the medical centre. By midday, after a few other routine tests, the doctor confirmed that there was no risk at all and let you go. Henry took you to your place, but refuse to leave until you accepted to move with him. He assured you that he was no going to try to get back together with you, since clearly you had no desire, but was only for him to be there if you needed anything. You had always been a bit stubborn, but you knew that was the best thing to do, so you accepted.

Taken aside the hurtful part of seeing each other every day, living with Henry was amazing. He cooked all meals. Would gladly satisfy your cravings. He even moved into a little guest room, leaving you the biggest bed in the house; you told him that you were ok in the smaller one, but he insists you on staying in the main room to be more comfortable.

Week 24 of your pregnancy. Your belly was growing bigger by the day. After a conversation with Henry both agreed to wait until the baby was born to know the sex. As for the cohabitation, you two finally reached a good place. He was always friendly, but you were cold and distant, but after almost two months of living together, you finally started to be nice to him. Now you would even spend time watching movies together and laugh like you used to do in the past. Henry was on his free day from shooting the series. Production returned a few weeks before, and most days he'd woke up at 3 am, but he'd sleep until 10 am on his work-free days. However, that night you woke him up at 5 am. He was peacefully sleeping when you entered the room and started to call his name. You had to move his arm to get him to wake up, for naming him wasn't enough to wake him up. - What's going on? - he asked worriedly as he tried to wake up. - Is moving! - you exclaimed excitedly- The baby is moving for the first time! - you repeated- Do you want to feel it? - Hell yeah! - he replied smiling and put his hands on your belly. He waited for a few minutes until he finally felt the unborn child move inside you. He held the tears covering his eyes. It was such an unreal moment. Henry pressed his forehead on you and kiss the exterior of his baby's home. The touch of his lips against your skin sending shivers down your body and you smiled. Seeing him be this happy filled your heart. You knew that whatever happens in life, he would always be there for the two of you. You made him move and you laid on the bed next to him, allowing him to keep a hand on your belly. He deserved to enjoy that moment as much as you did. - I've been thinking in baby names.- you said smirking - Really? Ok...let's hear them.- he encouraged you - If it's a girl, Katerina Simone. -you proposed - Ok, but... it doesn't rhyme with my last name.- he pointed out. - Oh, because Henry Willian Dalgliesh Cavill rhymes a lot.- you joked, laughing. Henry raised an eyebrow and gave you a judgy look- My doesn't rhyme either.- you informed him. - So it doesn't matter. Those are pretty names.- You affirmed him. - Alright, and what if it's a boy? Do you have a name in mind? - he wanted to know. -Oh, yeah.- you look at him, giving him a devilishly smile- Bruce.- you replied and laugh. - Are you serious?- he asked, laughing but a bit hurt. You chose the name of his character's rival for your baby. That was mean. - No, I'm just messing with you.- you admitted.- If it's a boy I thought about naming him - you paused and he was getting anxious- Geralt Clark. - you finally said and he looked at you with surprise. - Is this another joke? - he questioned suspiciously - Nope, I'm serious this time. I like Geralt, is a cute name and I've got the feeling that might be a popular name among kids his age. And Clark, well, I first I thought about Kal, but you already have a son named Kal and I didn't want to create any confusion, so I went for that one instead. - You didn't have to name them as my character, you're free to choose others.- he assured you. - I know, but I'm happy with those names and I know they meant a lot to you and I'm sure our son if it's a boy, will appreciate them. Henry looked at you with the biggest smile. After a long silence, just staring at each other, with one of his hands in your belly with yours, feeling the baby move, you finally spoke again. - Can I ask you a question? - you requested - Absolutely. - Do you... this is going to sound silly - you excused yourself- do you think that I'm attractive? I mean, with this huge belly. Do you think I'm sexy? - you questioned shyly. - Pfff.- he replied, making a gesture with his face as if he was surprised that you had to ask that- Let's say that if we would be together still, I'd have spent every free minute making love to you, instead of watching movies. You were lying on your back. You looked at the sealing while smiling. Henry moved the hand to your face, stroking it with the back of it. You turned your head to face him and give him an unspoken signal that he could kiss you and he did exactly that. His lips tasted so sweet. Gosh, you missed his touch so much. You giggled a lot while trying to have sex with your belly - on the side, you on top and he going down on you were the main poses you went for. After finishing, still naked, you fell asleep with him spooning you, keeping an arm around your belly, kissing your shoulders and the back of your head.

#henry cavill #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill fanfiction #henry cavill smut #smut #smut fiction #henry cavill one shot #demivampirew

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thelampofthemoment · 5 years

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Bruce hasn’t been Batman for 6 months when Alfred passes away peacefully in his sleep, he feels guilty for refusing to think about it coming after he started being mistaken for his father more often than not.

It’s been a year when Dick leaves on a mission to chase an organisation he believes to be connected to the Court of Owls through Europe. He goes MIA two weeks in and Cass takes up the mantel instead.

Steph isn’t there to see Tim start going by Nightwing because of the bullet that hits her brain whilst she’s fighting Two-Face and Scarecrow. Bruce can’t remember what they were arguing about the last time he saw her awake but he moves her to the manor after the coma becomes stable so he can tell her everyday how proud he’s always been.

Dick has been gone for 7 months when Tim gets hit by a car whilst in Bosnia searching for him or any kind of explanation for what happened. The doctor says he most likely died quickly after impact but Bruce doesn’t feel much relief.

Damian is 20 and taking on more and more responsibility at Wayne Enterprises when Jason comes to the manor to tell them about the stage 3 lung cancer. Bruce extends an offer to help him move back home but it’s declined.

Duke starts to cover extra areas of the city several times a weeks as well as his usual patrol route. It’s hard work and Bruce is positive he isnt getting enough sleep. When he tries to get between Deadshot and one of his targets, what’s meant to be a bullet for someone else goes straight into his femoral artery, sliding between armoured plates. Duke bleeds out two blocks away from where Bruce’s parents were killed.

Bruce can’t look at Damian without seeing his Father’s face so he lets him go on his mission to destroy the Lazarus pits left in the world. He falls silent when fighting his way through the League to the final one. Bruce only finds out that he succeeded 3 years later, when Talia informs him that Ra’s al Ghul is dead with no possibility of revival.

Jason is forced to retire from active patrols but he insists on working alongside Barbara in the Clocktower whenever he can. They convince him to attempt multiple types of treatment but eventually it’s Roy who finds him cold in his bed one morning. Bruce buries him next to his brothers.

Bruce sits down with Cass and Barbara when they decide that it’s time to let Steph go, with such extensive damage to her brain they’ve run out all hope that they’ll find a way for her to wake up. The two of them lock up the Manor and move to the Penthouse instead, its hallways were too quiet with just the two of them there.

Cass is without backup when what remains of Gotham’s rogues resend on downtown, Batwoman off world with the League and Batwing and Azazel uncontactable somewhere in the Middle East. Bruce watches with baited breath as she fights as hard as she can and returns them all to Arkham but the sheer volume of Joker Venom and Fear Gas alongside her injuries prove too much and not even the whip-smart girl who took over the clinic when Lesley died can do anything to save her.

Barbara starts to visit him less and less as time passes, he stands beside her during Jim Gordon’s funeral but that’s the last time he sees her. He decides he owes it to her not to go looking after digging up several plane tickets leaving a trail around the world. He doesn’t doubt that she could shake him if he tried.

Bruce Wayne is alone in the Penthouse when his heart gives out. The Joker and the majority of the other rogues are either in Arkham or haven’t been seen for years, disappearing along with the Batman. The Justice League is still in operation, Batwoman the only remaining Gothamite within their ranks. Bruce’s heart gives out and the Wayne line goes with it.

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mydeardeath · 4 years

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To belong with (4/8)

Whole series on tumblr (to belong series tag) or AO3

---

He woke up with a hell of a headache but at least he wasn't still in the alley. Lots of people would have loved to find him in this position. No, instead he was back in the manor, in his old room. Which wasn't much better. He would have preferred to be found by the outlaw. Unfortunately, Kori was in New York since Dick was here and Roy was in Asia. The only positive point was the plate of Alfred's cookies waiting for him on his bedside table with a glass of water. After swallowing it, he got up, going straight up to the cave, sure to find Bruce down there and the missing pieces of last night.

As expected, the old man was there but, more surprisingly, Dick and Damian were also present. The last was brooding in a corner, his jaw clenched and arms held against his chest. Jason turned to Dick, silently asking him what was going. But, by the look Dick gave him in return, it seemed the other didn't know much either. Then his big brother attention turned to Jason's sweets and he tried to reach for them. Jason quickly moved the plate out of his reach and went to stand beside Bruce, avoiding Dick pleading eyes. These were HIS baked goods, he wouldn't let anyone touch any of it. Focused on Dick, he hadn't noticed Bruce stealing one of his cookies and when he realized what had happened he turned an indignant look on his former mentor. Bruce didn't even spare him a glance, still bent over the computer. At least, it made Dick giggle a bit, breaking a bit of the heavy atmosphere.

Bruce suddenly turned to them apparently finished with whatever he had been doing when Jason arrived.

"Now, that you're all here we can begin. As you all know, yesterday dozens of people appeared all over Gotham through different breaches. Most of them were secured, they were all pretty disorientated and have yet to be interrogated. But, some of them have already been identified." Bruce showed a few documents on the screen. Some of the faces were familiar to him. He just couldn't remember why.

"They all have a common point. They're supposed to be dead. All presumed victims of robots attack six years ago." Jason felt Damian tense up behind him. "No bodies were ever found in the center of the attack so we can't be sure they were really here."

"Maybe the robots weren't here to kill, just to take people." Dick hypothesized.

"It's a far-fetched theory and we shouldn't rush into..." Bruce started only to be interrupted by Damian. "Tim may still be alive."

"Damian." Bruce sent his son a warning look, showing exactly what he thought of the idea.

"I think he's right." Every head turned to Jason, Bruce reproach dying in his throat. He hadn't expected Jason to side with Damian. "I thought I was just imagining things, but with what you said... I think it was really him. He was the one who knocked me out in that alley."

"Let's not make any hasty assumptions. We have to proceed with methods and not let our emotions..."

"I'm gonna get him" Damian cut him off once again, not waiting for an answer before making his way up the stairs.

"Damian !" Bruce yelled after him but his son completely ignored him.

***

Sometimes, Damian really wanted to hit his father in the face and demand he stops being so cold. He could see the irony here since he wasn't so fond of showing his emotions either, but this was about Tim. Bruce should be a least a bit more enthusiastic at the possibility that he was not dead as they had all thought. If there was a chance that Tim was alive and out there, he would find him and bring him home.

Damian called Barbara immediately after exiting the cave, waking her up. She started to complain at him for interrupting her well deserved sleep, saying it would better be important.

"Well, finding if Tim is really alive didn't seem to be a top priority for father. So, how important it is, depends entirely on you." Damian announced, his frustration evident in his voice.

Barbara sight but she listened when the boy explained the entire situation and what had led him to think that Tim might be back. Damian knew she most likely thought he was delusional and still hanging on flimsy hope. She didn't call him out on it and simply complied, using the eyes of every camera to look for Tim. He thanked her for at least trying because it didn't matter if she believed or not. What mattered was that she was helping him and that's all he was asking for. Plus it wouldn't be the first time one of them had come back from the dead. It wasn't impossible. Especially not in their family.

Damian started by checking every hospital and clinic for John Doe patients that had arrived last night. He had no trouble convincing the nurse to let him see with his own eyes every one of them. But, well, it wasn't hard when you were using the fact that you had lost your mate in the event of the robots attack and that you were hoping to find them back. Once again, it didn't matter if they believed that it was survivors of the attack that had reappeared or not, they all pitied him for losing his mate and didn't dare refuse him that.

Next, he went to all of Tim's old safehouses or any of the one the family had been using six years ago. He didn't get much result from it easier. The Drake mansion was also a dead end and Damian was running out of ideas.

Getting a bit desperate after checking Tim could have deemed safe, Damian decided to simply seek near Tim last known location. Fortunately, his father like to keep tabs on everything so he didn't have to call Jason to ask him where Tim had knocked him unconscious last night.

As he grew more and more frustrated as the hours ran by, Damian put on his Robin uniform despite the fact that it was still daytime and decided to pay a visit to every criminal hang out in case they were holding Tim.

He didn't get what he was looking for, but he did get to beat up some assholes and that help him feel better. Slightly.

***

All hope had left him by the end of the day. He had looked everywhere he could think of, in vain. There was no trace of Tim anywhere. He had called Barbara many times throughout the day, and he could hear the pity growing in her voice every time he did and she had nothing new to tell him. So he just turned off his phone to stop the constant buzzing of his father trying to contact him and went home.

He shed his clothes off on his way up to his room and plop down on the bed without bothering to take a shower. And for the second time in a day, he felt someone else's presence in the room. He hadn't thought they had anything left to discuss. He had made it pretty clear that he didn't care about supposedly being in danger and if that was really the case, he didn't need her protection. He hadn't needed her for years.

No dagger came to his throat this time. His opponent hadn't been waiting in a corner of his room this time but had been lying in his bed. In an instant, he felt their weight fell upon him and hands choking him. This was definitely not Talia.

He kicked them off him with a strong blow in the guts and send them rolling on the floor. Damian quickly got up and stood ready to fight. The intruder didn't waste any time to jump back on him, going for a nerf strike but he lacked the strength for it. His attacker seemed to have knowledge that a common thief would not have. But an assassin, especially one sent to kill him, shouldn't have been this weak. Because it made no doubt that Damian was stronger. In a matter of seconds, he had him in a headlock and was letting them struggle vainly against his hold.

He released them once they had stopped kicking. Damian went to turn the light on while the intruder was taking deep breaths, sitting on the floor. The man wasn't looking at him and most of his face was hidden behind his hair. Still, Damian could tell it was him.

"Tim" the name escaped his lips and the man raised his head towards him suddenly.

Damian fell to his knee in front of him and started to reach out to him with his hand. He stopped just before his face, not daring to touch him in fear he would disappear.

“Damian ?” Tim said softly, his voice barely more than a whisper. Damian let out a strangled laugh as his hand finally touched Tim.

“You came back.” Damian couldn't hide the wonder in his voice and he didn't care. This was Tim.

“Is this real ?” He asked Damian.

“I hope so. I missed you so much.” Damian answered honestly.

Tim apparently did too since he slammed his full body into Damian's and hung onto him as his life depended on him. Damian dared hugged him back. He could feel Tim's ribs under his fingers. The Omega had lost a lot of weight.

"Don't cry, Timothy," Damian told him, caressing his cheek.

"I'm not the only one crying here." He offered him a small smile.

"You were dead."

"I never died. One minute I was in Gotham fighting this waves of robots and the next I..." His voice broke down as his whole body started to shake.

"Shh, it's okay. I got you. You're home now." Damian soothed him.

Tim buried his face in Damian's neck, taking deep breaths of his scent. It helped him calm down and soon Tim was nodding off. He had probably been sleeping when Damian came home and their fight and talk must have wearied him out even more. Damian carried him to the bed, putting him gently under the sheets. He was ready to let the other man alone when Tim put his hand on his arm.

“Stay, please. I don't want to be alone." Tim pleaded.

"I'm not leaving you. I promise." Reassured, Tim went back to sleep, nestled against Damian.

#damitim #timdami #to belong series #part 12

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Psych 2: Lassie Come Home Easter Egg and Reference Guide

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

The following contains spoilers for Psych 2: Lassie Come Home.

As fun as 2017’s Psych: The Movie was, its 2020 sequel Psych 2: Lassie Come Home will likely supplant it in Psych-Os’ hearts, because it’s got 500% more Carlton Lassiter (Timothy Omundson). But how does it stack up to its predecessor in terms of Psych callbacks and pop culture homages? Using our Spencer powers of observation, we’ve tried to catch every recurring inside joke between Shawn (James Roday Rodriguez) and Gus (Dulé Hill), plus all the episodic-specific bits. It’s a feature-length Hitchcock homage, but it’s also the toughest Easter egg hunt of your life. C’mon, son!

Psych 2: Lassie Come Home Easter Eggs and References

The title is a reference to Lassie Come Home, the 1943 Lassie movie about the beloved dog making her way home from Scotland. A German-language remake came out early in 2020.

It’s always a treat to hear the Psych theme song “I Know, You Know,” performed by creator Steve Franks and his band The Friendly Indians.

Lassiter wakes up to Shawn and Gus hovering above him at the recovery clinic is a throwback to when they kidnapped him for his bachelor party in “Deez Nups” and he came to with them screaming “Surpriiise!”

Morrissey the rescue dog reprises his role from Psych: The Movie in being adorable, incredibly nosy, and oblivious to Shawn’s hissing commands.

Sarah Chalke’s nurse character Dolores is most likely a nod to San Francisco’s Mission Dolores church and cemetery, the location for Carlotta Valdes’ grave in Vertigo.

Right out the gate, Dolores is treated to the requisite Gus nickname: “My name is Shawn Spencer, and this is my partner Bill Poopingtons.” However, Shawn and Gus take a sidebar for a very meta argument about their ongoing bit (while fitting in another bit):

“Gus, don’t be the night your dad fell asleep inside your mom. We can’t just stop doing bits we’ve been doing for ten years. We have fans, they have expectations, there’ll be a huge backlash.”

“Shawn, we are two dumbasses, we do not have fans.”

Compromise: Gus gets right of refusal until they land on a nickname he prefers. And so:

Bill Poopingtons > All the Pips in One

Ding-Dong Ditch > Claude O’Dern > Big Poppa Pump > Lemon-a Lemon-a Lemon-a Liiime

Leggo My Eggo > Norman Brown Butter > Dijon Hounsou

Gus also calls himself Jermajesty, channeling some Jackson Five energy.

“Black Jello” was Gus’ nickname in their adult dodgeball league.

The Herschel House is likely a nod to Herschel Daugherty, who directed over two dozen episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents…

Gus and Shawn are still bickering over driving the drivers ed car, even if we don’t see it in the movie. They do manage to be just as bad at turning the right direction when riding a motorcycle together.

“Now I know this ‘goofy little white guy/sexy black dude’ routine the two of you have going like the back of my scrubs.” Sarah Chalke played Elliot on Scrubs, whose JD/Turk bromance walked so that Shawn/Gus could run.

Shawn calls Dolores “the nurse from Color of Night,” the 1994 Bruce Willis erotic mystery thriller that won a Golden Raspberry for Worst Picture.

The boys get Jamba Juice because you never turn down an opportunity for a Jamba.

Shawn likens Gus’ pubic hair to Eddie Murphy’s mustache in his 1987 stand-up film Raw.

Shawn offers the dismembered hand to Gus to “knuck it up softly,” per their penchant for fist-bumping.

They later do fist-bump outside the old Psych offices, but not before channeling Han Solo and Chewbacca in Star Wars: The Force Awakens: “Gus, we’re home.” “[Wookiee sound]”

Psych has become a French-themed cat café… for now, at least. It’s not an alternative universe from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, but the current subletter’s pop-up business. The proprietor (not the girl from Orphan) is played by Allison Miller, James Roday Rodriguez’s co-star in A Million Little Things.

“I am a psychic. He is a sympathetic pooper.” Poor Gus’ intestinal system gets called out again.

Henry’s (Corbin Bernsen) put-on voice gets compared to Tom Waits, Kathleen Turner, Harvey Fierstein, and Diedrich Bader.

Shawn neglected to tell his landlord that he’d moved, which tracks with his behavior in the series finale “The Break-Up.”

Henry reveals that in addition to telenovelas, he enjoys zeitgeist-y sobfests: “You left behind a slow cooker with a three-pound roast in it. You nearly This Is Us-ed the entire block.”

“This Is Us—Dad, why are you watching that show? They have the same show on ABC but newer”: Shawn’s shoutout to A Million Little Things.

Lassiter mistakes Reese Kessler, his supposed shooter, for country music singer Conway Twitty.

Lassiter’s to-do list includes “tape Galavant,” the short-lived musical comedy fantasy series created by Dan Fogelman (This Is Us), in which Timothy Omundson played King Richard. It also includes items poking fun at Lassiter’s crankiness (“yell at nature,” “chirping bird d-day plan”) and tenacity (“solve black dahlia”), and heartstring-tugging items (“pre-register for ironman” as in the triathlon). He also has written down Shawn’s S.E.I.Z.E. mantra from his short-lived career as Lassiter’s life coach in “S.E.I.Z.E. the Day”: Seize Eggs I don’t know Zebra Eighties.

Juliet (Maggie Lawson) lying to Shawn sounds strange, though not as strange as Lupita Nyong’o—the Tethered Lupita—in Jordan Peele’s Us.

Shawn’s “romantic dinner” for Jules is the menu from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (jelly beans, pretzels, buttered toast, popcorn, and ice cream sundaes) because it’s all they had at the gas station on the way home.

That prompts an iconic “C’mon, son!” from Gus.

Gus’ ringtone is “I’m Mr. Bootyman,” which is both Henry’s ringtone and the song featured in Buzz McNab’s bachelorette party stripper routine in “Deez Nups.”

Gus’ (technically Jules’) green snuggie bears a striking resemblance to official Psych contest merch.

Lassiter spotting mysterious bleeding figures out his window is an homage to Rear Window.

Richard Schiff (as Dr. Herschel) was Dulé Hill’s co-star in The West Wing.

Potterhead Gus wants to know if there are any people hiding in the pipes of the Herschel House, “speaking in their own tongue, perhaps Parsel.”

The Psych boys’ map of suspects briefly includes the Hell Hag from Gus’ dreams in “A Nightmare on State Street.”

Shawn has only been to Norway once with his brother-in-law Ewan O’Hara (John Cena), but they don’t talk about that… Maybe that’s where Psych: The Movie went after its cliffhanger ending?

Ova’s Norwegian song/chant toast at the Viking’s Ice Den is very similar to the Swedish toast in “Right Turn or Left for Dead.”

Ova’s violent son Per is first described as “the bearded Daryl Hannah.”

Shawn’s excuse to Detective Buzz McNab (Sage Brocklebank) for being in Santa Barbara is that he forgot a frisbee signed by German writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

Shawn’s first reaction to Jules potentially being pregnant: “You know the windows in the loft don’t even fully close, right? I’m gonna have to replace them, otherwise this is Baby’s Day Out all over again.” As Gus reassures him, he always did get worked up over John Hughes’ worst idea.

At the old Psych offices, Shawn pulls out the jousting lance from “100 Clues”—as well as a pineapple! He looks about to ask, “Should we cut this up for the road?” (his question during the pineapple’s first appearance in the pilot, plus at the end of Psych: The Movie) but stops himself.

When Lassie believes that fellow patient Mr. Wilkerson (Kadeem Hardison) has been walking around, Shawn and Gus have to go “full Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” to interrogate the supposedly catatonic patient.

Shoutout to Jessie Spano’s infamous “I’m so excited, I’m so excited, I’m so scared!” speed speech from Saved by the Bell.

If it’s not Scrubs, the boys are getting compared to Ren and Stimpy.

Mary Lightly (Jimmi Simpson) returns in another incredible, extra-hallucinatory look into Shawn’s brain… this time as a baby, since Shawn’s got fatherhood on the brain.

“We got jackaled!” Gus shouts upon learning that Wilkerson can walk—a reference to “hitting the jackal switch,” or going into stealth mode.

Shawn has always had a thing for singer Jewel, even after the Civil War movie (1999’s Ride with the Devil) and the Bollywood song.

Of course there’s a nasty dance when Shawn and Gus figure out who they think is behind everything.

Gus declares that “I am not going to let you shoot Shules’ baby!” only for the Chief (Kirsten Nelson) to ask, “What’s a Shules?” That’s the fans’ name for Shawn/Jules, a cute nod to a series OTP.

And of course, we can’t forget the fact that Jazmyn Simon, who plays Selene, is Dulé Hill’s real-life wife.

More than once, Shawn quotes The Handmaid’s Tale in reference to Gus and Selene’s baby: “Praise be” and “Blessed is the fruit.”

Dolores compliments Lassiter’s “chest of hair plentiful enough to wake all of Destiny’s Child.”

Shawn comes up with possible names for Gus’ child: Shaft, Shaftie, or D’Shaft—just like Gus’ nickname Sh’Dynasty (with a “God’s comma,” or apostrophe) from “Santabarbaratown.”

They also both coo “c’mon son” to Selene’s womb.

Selene’s proposal to Gus includes his negotiation that he and Shawn have adjacent homes with connecting pools, a callback to Shawn and Gus talking about their dream setup in “The Break-Up”; as well as Pluto! She asks, “Will you make me the happiest woman on this planet, on Eres, and Pluto?”

Shawn tells Juliet that “you’re my person,” the iconic Grey’s Anatomy line (though one would argue that Gus more accurately is his person).

When Lassiter stands (shut up, you’re crying) to meet Marlowe (Kristy Swanson), they place their palms together—like they did when he would visit her in jail, like they did at their wedding. My heart.

Join us on the Easter egg hunt—let us know what references we missed!

The post Psych 2: Lassie Come Home Easter Egg and Reference Guide appeared first on Den of Geek.

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spartanbunjase · 4 years

Text

Yesterday was Evil Author Day but I wasn’t in any state to participate. So, have some of my WIP today!! They are all Jason Todd centric and I can tell you now that only one of these is guaranteed to be completed as it’s a christmas gift for my little sister (Belfire on A03).

Cantains: domestic violence, soulmates, bad parenting, different pairings, angst, fluff, good parenting, drug addiciton and recovery, LGBT+ couples, straight couples, trans characters, torture, good siblings, happy, character death (only mentioned).

1: As Catherine lay on the floor in a small pool of her own blood she could only feel utterly helpless watching Willis’ belt land on her son again and again. She wanted to get to him, to curl protectively around Jason and keep him safe, but she was too injured and knew she could end up dead if she intervened. Being dead would just put Jason at Willis’ mercy more often. The man wasn’t the same as the one she’d fallen in love with during her time at Gotham Academy. He’d been funny, carefree, adventurous, and handsome. Now, consumed by alcohol and drugs, he was a monster. He ran with criminals and regularly used Catherine to pay off his debts. Their current argument had resulted from her coming home and finding Willis about to use Jason’s body as payment. It was something he’d never done before, she knew from the utter terror radiating off her son as she’d stepped into the room. It was something she refused to let Willis ever put her son through. To Catherine, he’d thrown away any claim to their sweet six year old boy the second he laid a hand on him when the boy was four. Eventually Willis grew tired and stormed out the flat, probably to apologise to the dealer and convince them to return once Catherine was out of the flat. She wasn’t going to give him that chance. She was done letting him hurt her or her son. Jason was her world, he was the reason she’d cleaned up her drug habit and gotten a job as a bus boy at their local diner. Dragging herself up so she was standing, Catherine carefully made her way over to her son. He was bleeding from the welts and wounds across his back while she could already see a black eye forming. Catherine bent down slowly and gave Jason’s shoulder a gentle shake. He gave a pained whimper but didn’t move until he could clearly see it was Catherine and not Willis. “Come on baby, we’re getting out of here.” Catherine’s heart broke further as she saw the resigned look on her son. She’d promised him they’d leave so often but they’d gone back, he was clearly unwilling to believe her any more now than all the times before. She helped him onto his feet and led him to the door. It was only once they were out on the street that he spoke, “where we going Mama?” Catherine hadn’t thought that far ahead but as she watched Sparky their dog helping support some of Jason’s weight it hit her like a bolt of lightning. “We’re going to your grandparents. They’ve never actually gotten to meet you and they can keep us safe.” She saw Jason’s hand hold tighter to Sparky’s fur as he kept his gaze on the pavement. “Don’t worry baby, they’ll take Sparky in too.” The odd trio eventually arrived at Doc Thompkins clinic. Catherine knew she couldn’t walk Jason all the way across the city to the affluent neighbourhoods and Leslie had been trying to convince her to leave Willis for years. She had no doubt that the woman would help her and her family escape him. Catherine pushed open the door and ushered her son and their dog through to the waiting room. A nurse looked like she was about to refuse the dog until she caught sight of Jason and Catherine. The kind woman immediately moved the trio to a clinic room and went to get Leslie. “Jason, Catherine, what can I do for you today?” The Todd family had known Leslie since his birth. Her free clinic had helped them through when they’d been unable to treat Jason during a multitude of childhood injuries and illnesses. More recent years had led to the clinic treating the results of Willis’ temper and Leslie trying to help the woman and young boy escape. Catherine let her eyes travel over the room, constantly vigilant and fearful of Willis finding them. Finally sure they were safe she let her gaze lock onto Leslie’s. She’d never met the woman’s eye before, always too afraid of what she’d see reflected back at her. “We need help. My parents live in Bristol and I’m hoping they’ll take us in. They never liked Willis so hopefully they’ll let me back home now they see I’m done with him for good. At the very least, I hope they take Jay.” She was met with a calm patience that was pure Leslie once the woman got what she wanted from a situation; and in this case she had. “Auntie L, Mama said I’m going to meet my abuelos but I’m scared.” He had moved slightly closer to Leslie as Catherine had spoken and gave her sleeve a gentle tug. “They won’t be like Willis will they?” His voice was so quiet that Leslie knew Catherine would have missed the question due to the distance between her and her son. She felt a sudden urge to wrap the small, undernourished boy up in her arms and never let harm come to him again.

****

2: There isn’t much Jason can remember from his time as Robin. He can remember being friends with a handful of the younger heroes; most of them have since kept their distance. Returning from thirteen months of torture (and being declared dead) with different morals than your mentor and arguing with them in the Halls of Justice will strain some friendships…even if it has been over a decade since he was found in the abandoned wing of Arkham by the kid who’d replaced him. A few however had stuck around, stayed by his side, and aided his journey through the turbulent recovery of PTSD. Billy Batson had been overjoyed to have his friend back, to have back the one person who understood the Gotham foster care system and how fucking backwards it all is. He’d been one of the first people to visit the manor on hearing of Jason’s rescue; cheating his way past Bruce and Alfred with his magic just to see his friend. He’d remained; understanding the argument for what it was, a damaged boy begging his father to save him from his nightmares. During those early months Jason hadn’t remembered him, but Billy never held it against him. He used it as a chance to rebuild, to start fresh. They’d both changed in those months and he understood what violence could do to even the best of people; and to Billy, Jason had always been one of the best. His brother, Dick, fell into that selection of memories for Jason where he knew they’d had good times together but only the feelings remained. Only the lingering scent of happiness, childish wonder, and excitement remained. The memories themselves had been burned, beaten, starved, and just generally tortured away. The man was seen as the perfect older brother by the other members of the caped community (and even by Gotham’s press). For Jason, in the past decade, he’d been anything but. He’d only ever tried to push the family’s moral standpoint onto a person who quickly (and easily) reverted into that same terrified, scarred boy they found under the asylum just from mentions of his captor. Dick focused on keeping the other new siblings safe and happy. If that meant ignoring the second oldest of the Wayne children; well then, all the better as far as he was concerned. The oldest of the Wayne children understood, and had even studied, PTSD. That meant shit all when it came to applying it in practice. When it came to applying all he’d learnt for his roles as Robin and Nightwing he fell short of the legacy he created. Within a year of Jason’s release from Joker, Dick had certainly lived up to his name. The relationship between the two was frostier than any suit Victor Fries required. For the teenager the family got back, got into the safety of his old room, it was as it had been when he’d first been given Robin. As he didn’t have the visual memories to go with the positive feelings he’d attached to his older brother during those first couple of week it became increasingly easy for Dick to trigger a panic attack, or as was more common between the two, an all-out violent attack. Jason’s dreams, even during his time under the old asylum, occasionally give him flashes of green light, of shapes seemingly made out of thin air glowing in neon green. He’s been told that Kyle Rayner used to be a friend. Two young heroes finding themselves in roles with previous occupants helping them to forge a friendship. He’d kept his distance when he’d heard his friend was back. He’d pushed him further away once he saw the lack of recognition in those bright blue eyes. In the end he went so far as to cut contact with the teen completely once he saw the drastic changes during the nearly explosive argument with Batman. For where one had risen up to become an Honour Guard within the Corps, the other had fallen to a murdering anti-hero. One person however, had never slipped his memories. One person had always managed to keep an steel grip on his limbic system. While the Joker had tried desperately, along with help from the other Arkham inmates, to wipe every ounce of hope from Jason he failed to realise one thing. He failed to realise just how far, just how deeply, hope ran for the second Robin. The one person who the clown never managed to taint or use against him, was the one person that only a few of the hero community knew he knew. When the lights in his cell would go out, Jason would dream of flowing blonde hair. When Harley would try to convince him that she and the clown were all he had left, Jason would let his heart fill with a snorting laugh never letting the sound past his lips. When each of Batman’s main enemies took turns on the six month anniversary, Jason drew from the strength sun-warmed hands that used to clasp his with while running through the fareground. When Joker finally showed Jason the photos to prove he’d been replaced, the teen filled his mind with blues and reds of the one person who’d never replace him. Who, as it turns out, was the only person who didn’t replace him. With everything the Joker did, with everything the Joker had left him to deal with upon his release, it was Kara Zor-El who gave everything and reminded him that his faith in her was justified. For months the Wayne family had struggled. They’d struggled to fit their second child back into the family. There was the unconscious violence that accompanied trying to wake him from his night terrors. Often resulting in wounds ranging from a simple punch to a stab. The deep-seated fear and hatred of most of Gotham’s Rogues made them tiptoe around him when talking about the family business. They refused to ask, to understand, just why he resented the middle son of the Wayne house but could tolerate Duke, Cassandra, and Damian. In the end, the only solution to be found actually found them. Kara had heard Jason’s night terror start one evening not long after returning from a space mission with the Titans and hearing the news of the second Robin being found. Relief had flooded through her to her very soul. For ten months she’d searched, scanned all of Gotham multiple times with her x-ray vision and listening for any sign of him. Unfortunately there was just too much lead in the city. Too much interference for her to find him before being summoned for a three month off-world mission. She’d never forgotten the sound of his heartbeat though; of the changes it would make when he was happy, nervous, or just itching for a good fight. That first night back on Earth; when she heard the sudden changes, the increase in pace, she tuned into the almost silent whimpers he was letting out. Kara flew the fastest she ever had, abandoning the mission de-brief she’d been ordered to, and tore through the Manor like a Bat out of Hell (or an Alien invading). The alarms had been blaring. Batman and the kids were pulled away from patrol, all racing home with worry clogging their chests for the elderly butler and damaged boy left alone. Each of them had expected great hordes of people intent on harming the two members of the Wayne family who were seen as the weakest. Instead they returned home to a grandfather silencing them all and making them watch the scene he had been taking in peacefully prior to their outlandish entrance. Kara had made it up to Jason’s room just as he’d started to scream and thrash about. His limbs were still in casts, much of his body still in bandages or dressings of some form as he’d only been free a handful of days. The shock of black hair and familiar heartbeat moved her faster still. Within the blink of an eye one scared but joyous teen had pulled the other distressed teen into her arms. Almost as soon as her overly warm hands came into contact with his sweat-damp skin, Jason’s eyes flew open. He cut off a scream as blazing ocean blue eyes met overjoyed sky blue. Sun golden blonde hair framing the face like a halo. The hope. The strength. The only love that he’d managed to hold onto for thirteen months was finally back in his reach and so he allowed his body to sink into the warm embrace. It was the first night that the family discovered just how close the two sixteen year olds really were. Dick had long suspected that they were friends. Bruce had always avoided commenting, refusing to admit that both of his children were close with Kryptonians (even if one was a clone). As they stood watching they saw how quickly Kara calmed their wayward bird. Her fingers never stopped carding through his hair as her other hand was clasped as tightly as he could manage due to the bulky cast and pain. She was rocking him slightly, quietly singing a Kryptonian nursery rhyme.

****

3: Everyone was born with a mark, a mark that matched in design and placement with the person you were meant to have a deep relationship with. Be that platonic or romantic. Everyone that is except Jason. His mother had always told him it just made him special, that he would form deep relationships with anyone special enough to be in his life. Instead he spent his life forging relationships only to have them ripped away. There was his mother losing her battle with cancer. His best friend getting caught up in one of Mad Hatter’s schemes and never making it out. Then there was the father he’d found one cold night in Crime Alley. Jason thought he’d finally found what his mother meant all those years ago. He now had a grandfather, who he spent countless hours cooking and debating literature with. He had a father who taught him how to fight beyond that of street fighting but also helped him laugh again. Best of all he now had a brother who would take him skiing and help him prank their adopted father. Alas it wasn’t to last. Each of those relationships was destroyed by the one who wished his soul mark matched Jason’s father. The Joker took Jason away from Bruce, from the family he’d found. A crowbar here. An explosion there. It all came crumbling down in the Magdala Valley. One quick resurrection, a few years training, and one failed attempt at revenge later found Jason finally managing to rebuild those bonds lost to him at fifteen. It was what led to him chasing a behemoth of a man through Gotham trying to save Deula Dent. She was the daughter of the Joker from another Earth and, although she was related to a version of the man who’d killed him, he wasn’t about to let her die. Unfortunately, he wasn’t successful but it did lead to a very interesting set of circumstances for the twenty-two year old. With Donna Troy, a woman he’d once considered a sister, and Kyle Rayner at his side he found himself travelling through the multi-verse. They’d been to countless versions of their own planet. They’d met evil versions of themselves and their mentors. They’d gotten caught in Victorian Gotham. They’d even ended up on multiple Earths where they were the opposite gender to how they presented. It had been a tiring journey. Jason had found himself having a small crush on the Green Lantern accompanying them. Flirty banter was met with fierce resistance. Kyle, for reasons Jason still didn’t understand, seemed convinced that he wanted Donna instead. Now Jason wasn’t picky. He was attracted to a person regardless of their gender, or even if they were human. To Kyle it just meant that Jason was even better placed to scoop Donna out from under him. As the trio, along with their Monitor Bob, landed on Earth-11 it became apparent that they’d ended up on another Earth where the genders were reversed. A fight was clearly happening and so they set off to help in the hopes that Ray Palmer may have been somewhere nearby. Jason’s combat boots pounded through the streets. His breath was coming harsher than usual as an unexpected pain was shooting up his left arm. It had started as soon as they’d breached the atmosphere. The only way he could describe it was as if someone was stabbing him between the radius and ulna over and over again. His arm was held protectively to his chest as nothing he’d done had relieved the pain. He’d twisted his wrist and shoulder around. Simple stretches had turned more and more complex. Nothing was working. A green construct lit up the sky, quickly being followed by the Lantern creating it. Jason’s gaze lingered on the woman in question and the pain subsided slightly. Kicking his body into action his legs pulled him towards the battle faster. “If you’re going to act like children then you’ll be treated as such.” The female Green Lantern said while scooping up some of the Amazon warriors. Jason will deny it to his dying day but that was the moment he felt his heart skip a beat and love start to bloom in his heart.

****

4: When the news of the massacre at Sanctuary broke throughout the hero community Jason felt horrifically guilty because he felt such relief. A few weeks before it all happened Roy had been speaking with Waylon about entering rehab. He’d been intending to go to Sanctuary as it was set up by the Trinity for all those in the community that needed help. However, the archer didn’t want to be in the middle of nowhere or too far away from Jason. The ginger archer had raced into Gotham two months prior to save the stupidly impulsive ass of a crime lord. As soon as he and Jason were back together they had a massive talk about how their relationship parted last time. It soon became clear that Jason’s own insecurities had wiggled their way so far into his brain that he pushed Roy away. Once they’d finished their talk they quickly fell into their old routine. The relationship was moving as if they’d never been apart for over a year. They were able to support each other but Jason was able to see that Roy needed more help than he could provide. As the case with Suzie Sue was drawing to a close they started to talk about Roy’s options. Sanctuary had been top of the list, until Roy realised just where it was located and more importantly how little was located around it. In the end, with the help of Oliver, they were able to get Roy into AtoT Centre in San Diego. When Oliver heard that Roy was struggling again he managed to step up and help. He knew that the level of help Roy would need was clearly above what he could provide if Jason was struggling to help him. With this in mind Oliver offered to foot the bill for any length of stay Roy needed, along with helping Jason rent a flat nearby. The AToT Centre were able to fit Roy into one of their San Diego drug rehab homes that house six patients. He agreed to a ninety day stay so long as Oliver refused to tell him the price. Jason agreed with Roy’s instance as he knew that if Roy found out that it was $65,000 for the initial thirty days and then $2,000 for every thirty after that he would have refused to go to such a highly rated place. They allowed Roy to keep his phone so he could be in contact with both Jason and Oliver, which settled all three men. Roy had been at the centre for fifteen days when the news of Sanctuary broke. He had received a text from Wally telling him that he was okay and had made it out. Unsure of what the text had meant he’d immediately phoned his ex-mentor and (trying again) father figure. The blonde archer had gently told his son how the patients at Sanctuary had been attacked and that the current suspects were Booster Gold and Harley Quinn. He also reassured Roy that Wally had managed to get away fast enough, running straight to his Aunt Iris in Central City.

****

5: There were a few things people could expect to find on the streets of Gotham. Bristol had people who spewed money and corruption all in the same breath. If you wanted to get your rocks off, or buy some, you’d head to the East End. Joker goons could be found roaming around Amusement Mile while a couple of the buildings around the Solomon Wayne courthouse were decorated in two halves both on the inside and the outside. One of the things that you wouldn’t expect to come across is a literal goldmine. Jason learnt all of this while he still had a home near Crime Alley. It’s something that has been drilled into him even more during his six years on the streets. So, it comes as a massive surprise to the fifteen-year-old when he finds The Batmobile parked in the alley. He had three tyres off when two shadows fell over him. Glancing up a jolt of freezing cold fear shot through the underweight teen. He’d slipped into a fighting stance naturally, his tyre iron held tightly in a white knuckled grip. When you grow up in the Narrows you have no choice but to always choose fight over flight. He’s shocked out of his fear by a deep throaty laugh. “The fuck?” Slips out before Jason can clamp his mouth shut. Of all the reactions to someone booting your tyres he’d never heard of someone laughing. “You’re a spunky one aren’t you.” Robin, now Jason’s had a chance to take in the recognisable costume, said with the same level of amusement in his tone as Batman’s laugh. He glanced over at his mentor and Jason took in the silent conversation they had. The Bat crouched in front of the small, dirty street kid. “You want hot food and a warm bed? If so, we know someone who owes us one.” Throwing up an eyebrow, Jason takes a step back. His stomach is desperately empty. His mind is fuzzy. His adrenaline from the theft is waning and he knows he can’t hold the tyre iron up much longer. “Ya wouldn’ wanna help some’n’ like me. I ain’t normal.” His thick accent makes them pause. If you weren’t raised in the area, then there is always a slight difficulty in translation. It’s made a bit more difficult for people to understand Jason as his Narrows accent is also intermingled with a Latinx twist from his Mámá. It was something he’d heard his whole life. Don’t mind Jason, he’s not all there. Don’t worry about the kid, he ain’t normal. Fucker, all I do for you and you can’t act like all the other boys. Jason knew, after hanging around with the same group of lads since he could walk, that most young boys dreamed of being Robin. They talked animatedly about how cool it must be to wear the red, yellow, and green while kicking the shit out of people. They all lusted after Batman and Robin’s sometimes partner Batgirl. None of the other teenage boys Jason grew up with wanted to be Batgirl. None of them dreamed about how empowering it must feel to pull on those four-inch, purple boots and not have them holding you back from doing the same things as Batman and Robin. “Well we’re not normal either.” Robin chuckles. “No normal people dress up like we do and fight crime.” Jason had to admit that the sidekick has a point. In the end his overwhelming need for sustenance crowds out any other nervousness he could be feeling, so he reluctantly agreed. Jason helped them put the wheels back on as best he could with his hands shaking. He could blame the cold. He could blame the hunger. He could blame the two heroes of Gotham helping him more than he was helping them. In actuality, the reason his hands were shaking was the knot of Narrows fuelled anxiety over the chance of them finding out just how abnormal he was. It takes Jason a week to figure out that Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson are Batman and Robin. He spends a few days coming up with a plan to get them both to admit it. Both men are underestimating how sneaky and clever the street kid can be so don’t see everything coming together until it’s at its conclusion. They both try to play it off. Try to pretend that Jason hasn’t guessed it all correctly. Try to pretend that Jason hadn’t caught them in the lie. In the end they tell him everything because Alfred cuffs them both upside the head. The trust both men show Jason in opening up about their pain. The very events that triggered their need for the mission, cements something in him. It solidifies the tentative strands of trust that was between them. The fact Dick was so willing to come to him when he woke up a few nights later with nightmares of falling so he had someone to sit and watch crappy 80’s movies with. The fact Bruce tells him exactly why the Batmobile was parked in Crime Alley that night, the significance of the date. It all goes towards helping Jason realise that maybe these three people are the very people he needs to talk to, to trust in. Even with all that swirling around his mind. Even with all the little ways they’re showing him they want to be his family. The fear engrained in him from years of his father and the other men around the Narrows keeps his mouth shut. He fights through each day, just as he always has; only now the fight is different. Whereas before his fight was for the basics needed to survive. The hunger. The cold. The general desperate need to make it to the next day. Now his fight is different. He has food. Warmth. Safety. He has people who check in on how he’s doing, how he’s feeling or settling in. He has people who care. Now the fight is to keep how he feels about his own body, mind, and soul from spilling over and corrupting one of the first good things this city ever gave him. The dark of night, when Jason knows for sure both Dick and Bruce are out and Alfred is in the cave, is the only time he lets his mind wander into the Fort Knox style vault he keeps his dreams of being more like Batgirl and less like Robin. It’s the only time he lets out the complicated rubber band ball of thoughts and anxieties to try and sift through them all. It’s the only time he willingly thinks about the two people who had started trying to help him untangle all he was feeling.

****

.It had been ten years since Jason returned to Gotham, ten years since Ra’s had dunked his lifeless body into the Lazarus pit to bring Jason screaming and clawing back into existence. In that time things had changed greatly, but not Gotham, Gotham remained the seething hub for all criminality in the country. Jason had long ago given up on ever thinking that Gotham could change, it just seemed to attract the worst of humanity or ever worse, spawn it. Still Jason vowed to continue fighting just on the off chance that Gotham might one day see the light.Jason flicked the butt of his cigarette into the fading light, a singular point of dulling light against the encroaching black of Gotham’s night. The almost permanent blare of police sirens echoed through the streets and up into the skies, only serving to remind Jason just how far they hadn’t come since he pulled on his first pair of green pixie boots. He clambered to his feet, resting his arm on the head of his favourite gargoyle and looked out over the city, wondering where the night would take him. Suddenly his com sparked into life. “Batgirl are you receiving?” Batman was a staple of Gotham now, one of its defining characteristics, even if his mission had failed on every aspect.Still Jason found it difficult to hear Batman speak, knowing that Bruce no longer held the mantle. Batman had fallen to Damian a few years back once Damian had aged into the role, filling the shoes of his father had left empty when he died. There had been a time before Bruce’s death that he and Jason stood apart from each other, separated by their moral compasses, but ultimately in Bruce’s final moments he had made up for all the bad blood between the two of them. Captured once again by the Joker, Jason had found himself in a similar situation to his first death, only this time the Batman arrived early.Bruce had beaten the joker to the ground whilst the bomb counted down, seconds remained when Bruce attached the grapnel line from the Batwing to Jason’s harness point and sent the Batwing soaring off into the sky. Fire and death consumed Bruce and the Joker, the more powerful nature of the bomb vaporising any trace of the hero and villain. When Jason came to in the Batcave he remembered Bruce attaching the cable to his waist and the words he spoke to him. “I’m sorry Jason but I won’t let him take you again. I know we’ve had our troubles, mostly because of my stubbornness, but know this now. I love you.” The family had accepted him back with open arms but Jason struggled to come to terms with his father’s death for quite some time.“I’m receiving Batspawn, I’ll be operational in twenty, see you at RV foxtrot.” Stephanie Brown may not be the first or the strongest Batgirl, but in Jason’s opinion she was the best. They had both come from similar backgrounds and had bonded over their shared life experience, add in to the mix that Jason aged differently that other humans thanks to his dip in the pit and they were roughly the same physical age now so they had unofficially made themselves siblings. Steph’s voice sounded different to Jason, he wasn’t hearing it over his com unit. He craned his neck round and sure enough there she was, stood silently behind him.“Why’d you always have to sneak up on me like that?” Jason mumbled grumpily. “Holy shit someone’s in a bad mood!” Jason had caught her off guard, their relationship a lot more playful that this current interaction. “Ahh fuck, it’s the eighteenth ain’t it?” Steph asked to which Jason simply nodded his head. Bruce’s anniversary always sucked for Jason but for some reason this year, their seventh without Bruce, was hitting Jason harder than before. Steph sidled up behind Jason and wrapped her arms around his chest, he rested his spare arm on top of hers, enjoying the warmth coming from her. “You wanna talk about it?” Steph asked gently as she released her arms and climbed around the other side of the gargoyle.Jason pulled out another cigarette and lit it in rapid succession. “Naa. Don’t even know what to say really.” As Jason exhaled a stream of smoke shot into the night air, the sky now more black than it was red. “Well why don’t you come with us on patrol tonight, we think we’ve got a lead on Pyg.” Jason simply pointed to a rooftop that was several stories lower than their current position, on top of it was the partially strung up body of a failed dollatron and next to it in a pool of his own blood and brain matter was Pyg. “Jason, did you?” Steph looked over at Jason and saw him waving around a sniper rifle that she hadn’t noticed before. “Okay then, well that throws my night wide open. Wanna go get something to eat, ya know, after getting changed?”Jason took a long drag on his cigarette, considering Steph’s idea. “Yeah alright, let’s just wait until Gordon’s boys turn up to collect the bodies.” Jason said flatly. “Cool, I’ll let Bats know we’re offline tonight.” Steph activated her com. “Batgirl to Batman, you receiving?” There was a moments silence before the channel sparked to life again. “Receiving.” Damian replied tersely. “No need to go ahead with the sting tonight, I’ve got eyes on Pyg and I don’t think he’d going to be hurting anyone else ever again.” Steph tried not to giggle but she knew how much Damian hated vague reports.“Goddamn it Batgirl, was this Red Hood again? He’s there with you now isn’t he? Hood what have you done; you know that isn’t how we do things. How many times did father have to tell you!” Jason pulled his helmet fully off and hit the power switch. “Fuck he sounds worse than Bruce did sometimes.” Jason quipped before taking a long drag on his cigarette then flicking it once more into the night. “Hey at least you don’t have to work directly with him, I’m stuck with the little brat!” Steph laughed but Jason knew she was serious. After Bruce’s death Damian had become even more zealot in his quest to become his father and claim his blood right, the cowl.“I’ve told you before, you’d be more than welcome on the Outlaws. Personally, I think Artemis would like it more than I would, she’s crushing on you hard dude.” Steph smiled and laughed, it was good to hear a more upbeat and jovial tone to her brother’s voice. “As tempting as working with my brother and finally getting myself a girlfriend is, I belong in Gotham. Besides, someone’s got to keep Damian in check since Alfred quit; although I don’t blame him.” Steph sighed then snapped into another chain of thought. “Oh Alfred sent me a message the other day, asked me to ask you about Dick?” Jason looked curiously at Steph, throw off by the bizarre question.“Why doesn’t he ask Dick himself, his number hasn’t changed?” Jason asked but Steph gave him that look that only younger sisters can give their older siblings. “You know you’re the only one from the family that he speaks to anymore. He even stopped sending birthday cards to Alfred last year. We’re all worried about him, this self-isolating behaviour can’t be good for him.” Steph now looked worried and Jason supposed he could understand why. Bruce’s death had hit Dick hard too and he’d left America all-together not long after the funeral. He now lived in Europe with Wally and their six adopted kids. He was happy but done with the lifestyle, shutting out all aspects and now, apparently, all the family bar Jason.“He’s okay, spoke to him today for an hour or so. He’s feeling pretty shit like me, but Wally’s got Iris looking after the kids and they’ve gone for a holiday out of the country together.” Steph smiled at hearing Dick was okay but was then distracted by movement on the other rooftop. Gordon, and handful of unis and the CSIs had arrived to cordon off and catalogue the scene. “Come on then.” Steph said to Jason, trying to be as upbeat as possible. “Let’s go eat!”

#Jason Todd #Batman #Batfam #Arkham Knight #Kara Danvers #DC fic #my writing

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fordarkisthesuede · 5 years

Text

The Tolls of Justice - Chapter 5

It's morning brunchtime in Atlanta, and I'm servin' up a big ol’ stack of Johnny cakes with a juice reduction on the side. B)

IMPORTANT SPOILER TAGS: past mention of abuse, mental illness, gun violence, bonding over trauma

Read on AO3 or continue below:

[Chapter 5: The Wheel Still Turns on the Upturned Chariot]

John was quite used to keeping an eye and an ear out for everything. Arkham had its share of nasty surprises in all its forms, and it paid to be well-prepared for anyone rounding the corner or prying their eyes into what they shouldn’t see.

It took him one week to learn St. Dymphna’s camera patterns. Two to learn the normal guard rotation. One-and-a-half to learn the layout.

He was not used to the impromptu schedules they seemed to make for him, however. It was like his doctor saw some psychologist’s note about how repeated structured tasks was supposed to help affirm that the patient’s reality was indeed everyone else’s reality, scratched it out with pen, tore it out of the book, and tossed it out of the window straight into the industrial-size shredder while they knocked back a beer.

Yesterday was supposed to be the day. Instead he was suddenly forced to see - more like wait around for - his Parole Officer and assigned social worker. Apparently he could not get away with saying he was adjusting fine - both of them grilled him so much after the hour of waiting a piece that he felt like he’d been seared to a fine medium-rare.

As much as it infuriated him and made him want to just grab them both by the collars to make it very clear he was ‘okay’, he’d barely hung on. He’d had to clench his toes as much as possible and try to channel Bruce’s enviable ability to keep calm under pressure as he actively stopped himself from clenching his teeth or saying something he’d regret. He knew - knew - a lifetime in Arkham and a small obituary list on his record would always make people question his intentions and sanity, but it didn’t make them any less annoying, and it didn’t do that...other part of him any favors.

It might have been tamer now, but it was still there, and with every new tightly-wound ball of aggravation it was fed he could feel it start to pace. It seemed to take more and more calm-time to get it to stop lately… Heck, he could feel it now, still but almost pressed against the inside of its cage like it was waiting for something to come close enough.

But he would have to deal with it later. Today was the day. He’d had to adjust his schedule, had to account for a few extra things, but here, in the early evening before the sun completely set and Officer Kane was busy doing his ‘personal call’ to the on-duty nurse downstairs, John could make his move.

He watched the camera in the hall as he counted by tapping his fingers against his thigh. It would turn the other way - indicated by the slight shift in the lens’ focus if he could see it - in twenty seconds. He was wedged tight in the corner underneath it, having slid there and made a show of opening and closing the door so it looked like someone had gone inside.

The felt the familiar anxious thrill in his legs and sides of his head, just like when he was sneaking around Arkham. It was brighter in St. Dymphna, and had less places to hide, but at least if he got caught John wouldn’t be thrown in the hole.

Of course, they could throw him back. They could lock him up and refuse to house him again later. They could-

John shook his head. He didn’t have time to be paranoid.

This was the time for action! For suspense! For catchy secret agent music!

He’d tapped to twenty, and the Secret Agent Man theme started to cycle in his head; he side-stepped carefully against the wall, just to make sure the camera couldn’t see him for the few steps it took to be out of the watchful eye’s range.

He walked on the sides of his feet rather than his heels, reducing the inevitable noise on the not-that-clean tile floor, and made for his target - the door halfway down the hall with the plate that read Officer Hank Kane, Parole.

John didn’t have long. Thankfully his office didn’t need any RFID card or fingerprint or anything like the more dangerous rooms in the place. Just a plain, old-fashioned lock.

And John had an old-fashioned method for unlocking.

Secret - aaagent maan, Secret - aaagent maan! He hummed to himself, sliding the lost-and-found credit card he’d been carrying around for a while into the gap between the door and the frame, and carefully angling it to wedge in-between the lock mechanism and begin to pry, bending the card out of shape. They’ve given you a number, he continued, wiggling the card’s edge into what should be the right angle and pushing, And taken away your naaame!

He pushed hard, and he twisted the knob at the same time as his finished the chorus - click.

John ducked inside the dim office and almost slammed the door shut just in time. The camera switched positions every thirty seconds - two more and he’d have to walk away like he wasn’t trying to break into the place and wait some more.

The place was just like it was yesterday, and couple have almost doubled as the Arkham Warden’s private office: a couple of slightly-peeling filing cabinets that held useless documents John didn’t need; a bookcase with a couple of ‘law’ books and far too much football paraphernalia for the Gotham Rogues alongside several pictures of the guy’s wife and kids; a pair of wooden chairs that John swore were deliberately designed to be uncomfortable; and a boring desk with the same thin-client PC and sleek monitor as everyone else had, and yet two more family pictures, one of which had a King Charles spaniel John wanted to kidnap on principle of it being way too cute.

The tune kept playing in the background of his thoughts as he took a seat in the much-more-comfortable office chair. He made sure not to touch the arms.

Password-locked. Just as he’d thought.

John had watched very carefully as Hank typed away yesterday. It was something clearly easy for the guy to remember, because unlike some of the doctors and other staff, he didn’t dawdle over the keys or tap them lightly as they waited for their hippocampus’ reflex to kick in. He’d done the same motions several times during his last visit, which likely meant he used the same password for everything. (Dr. Song seemed to use various complex ones, if her odd typing methods were anything to go by.)

Which was good news for John, because he wasn’t sure what the password was.

He had some good guesses. It was something easy to remember, so something somewhat personal with a series of numbers at the end…so an anniversary of something was pretty likely.

John had remembered the areas of the keyboard Hank had used: somewhere between one and four and eight and the dash sign on the top row; he’d had to use one finger to hold down the shift key for letter on the upper left, clearly not excelling at touch-typing; he was sure he hadn’t used the space or bottom row of letters, too. He had three tries to get it right before the account would get locked.

He took a moment to think.

Two distinct things in the guy’s otherwise very boring life was his family and football.

John knew the tricks to get into people’s protected FriendBook pages; he could try the anniversary of his marriage or birth of his kids, saved in a note on his phone.

Or he could look up the year the Gotham Rogues won last; it was before his time, he knew, because people wouldn’t stop hoping they’d go all the way every damn year.

Orrrr…

John flipped the keyboard over halfway with his palms. No sticky note there, unfortunately. He supposed he could poke around the desk a little more on the off-chance the guy had left it lying around carelessly like Bruce did with cash, but he was on limited time. He could risk looking and get his fingerprints all over the place, but why bother when he could just try to look it up?

Hm. Family, football, family, football…

John eyed the desk. The picture of the dog might as well have been taken by a professional photographer – it was all alone, as happy as could be, beaming up at the camera in a showy grassy yard with the perfect angle. The family portrait was a typical family photo with all the taste of Wonder Bread.

It was probably the dog, plus either the year it was adopted or the current one.

John mapped it out mentally on the keyboard. Woofles2019 seemed to fit pretty well with the pattern he remembered. It was worth a shot.

He put it in, waiting for the little wheel to finish spinning and give the ‘incorrect password’ message.

There was a soft da-ding, and John was looking right at the same outline of St. Dymphna holding the white lily to her chest that functioned as the clinic’s logo.

“Sheesh, why not just use password while you’re at it?” He snorted to himself.

John didn’t have too much time. He continued humming his little theme to himself to help count off.

He recognized the same enormous register of criminals that Bruce had access to back at the Batcave just sitting on the desktop. John was pretty sure Ian ‘Nito’ had done time for something, likely a drug habit if he’d left the facility after only a week.

At least it was a web-based registry rather than a whole program, so John could easily just delete the history there afterwards as long as he had the time. Well, if it would load fast enough…

John tapped his fingers on the mouse button gently, still keeping the rhythm as the page took it’s time to load. He wondered if Bruce ever had to deal with dumb inconveniences like this before he’d got the super-computer installed. There seemed be a few dozen guys (and non-guys, possibly) named Ian. A quick sort by crime, and the more timely Ian arrested that jumped out to John was Ian Coggs.

There was no ‘Ian Nito’ on file, but ‘Ian Coggs’ made John think of the word in-cog-nito.

It made John chuckle to himself. It was definitely the sort of thing John would do, if he were giving an alias with his own name. Well, if he could make a decent play on ‘John’ anyway. And he had decent makeup to cover his white-and-green tones.

The arrest photo taken several months ago was definitely the ‘Mr. Nito’ that John had seen, only the boring t-shirt Ian was wearing was covering up the tattoos more.

Ian Coggs, arrested for driving under the influence and possession of heroin. Notes included he had traces in his car indicating he might have had the intent to sell, but the charge didn’t stick, as there was no mass quantities in Ian’s car or apartment. He seemed to have served a short sentence and was ordered to check into a clinic.

Hmm… John took a picture of the screen with his phone, making sure to capture the last known address as clearly as possible.

John thought for a second – he could look up Ian’s patient file, too, now that he knew Ian’s full name. It was probably somewhere in some kind of share-drive.

The screen flickered, and a pop up informed him that the operating system was not licensed and please license it, would you? John rolled his eyes – a common issue with those sorts of old OS sitting on the network’s virtual machines. It was wonder they didn’t upgrade yet. The thing was practically a dinosaur.

He ignored it and did a quick search in the X-drive-marks-the-spot had Ian Coggs’ old data just sitting in a folder with his name on it. No handy doctor notes, of course, but there was a discharge form.

John skimmed it, interrupting his little background-tune with an intrigued hum. “Looks like Ian was moving to Bludhaven…”

He’d have to look up the new address later…

John was running out of time. He very quickly wiped away the last few bits of internet history on Hank’s machine and went back towards the door, counting the last couple of beats on his thigh. Three, two…

On one, John again became the ghost of Arkham’s hallways, silent and swift, leaving his tampering unnoticed as he closed the door behind him as softly as can be. Another successful heist on his mental tally; Arkham three, John…

He found himself stopping.

I’m not at Arkham anymore, he thought to himself. He blinked, staring straight down the hall.

Right. Right, it just…looked like the repainted Arkham, sometimes. Sneaking around like this just reminded him of it. That was all.

He resumed walking, clenching his hands and releasing them. He wished he had something else to touch for a bit. Just to make sure.

He reached the stairwell. He needed to get to the library on the second floor. It was open until lights-out at eleven and it was the best place he could get some privacy and a decent phone signal.

It was a short walk to the small room that smelt of overly stale cigarettes and books, with a hint of wood-polish underneath.

St. Dymphna wasn’t new. Arkham wasn’t either, not by a longshot, but at least it had a sizable selection in comparison, even if the tall metal bookcases were all kinds of dangerous. St. Dymphna had short cases, all in soft wood so no one would hurt themselves, all in a room about the size of Bruce’s master-bed-and-bath, half of which was occupied by un-squeaky tables and hushed conversations.

He casually weaseled his way towards the little stacks, pretending he belonged there as much as anyone else, and had a peek at his phone.

Four full bars – the best signal he could get.

Too bad his battery was at twelve percent.

John frowned down at the device, half wanting to break it on principle of it not behaving. He’d charged it just yesterday!

“Old fashioned way it is,” he muttered to himself.

Thankfully the reference section was always deserted. John knelt down and skimmed over the few little books of Gotham history – including one on crime statistics that probably should not be accessible to patients – and snatched the guide-to-the-state map book, feeling the weight and laminated paper cover in his hands.

John thumbed through the soft pages by flicking them like a deck of cards, and stopped right at Gotham.

He’d seen this same map before, years ago, when he was a very bored Arkham newbie who still didn’t know what Gotham was. It was a shiny thing, at the time, a beacon of freedom and mystery, a break from the madness and rust and rot of Arkham. It didn’t take long into cycling through the numerous news segments and headlines for John to realize it was a city with a criminal underbelly so obese that it was a wonder anyone could still be considered an honest citizen. It was fascinating, really, to go back as far as possible and learn just who and what had led to the then-current state of things. The power imbalances and shuffles of gangs, the creative ways people wanted to hurt each other, the things people did just to survive another day… He had hours of fun picking apart the reasoning and motives and predicting outcomes. It was a good thing to delve into when he was stuck without entertainment, which was often on his bad days.

John pulled out his phone and opened the picture he’d taken of Ian’s arrest entry: his old place was at 511 N. Blade Street, Apt. 1005.

He traced his finger around, and North Blade Street was deep in what everyone referred to as “the Cauldron”, and naturally above South Blade Street. What highly appropriate name for roads; the Cauldron was a hotspot for the more basic criminal activities and lower gangs.

Kind of far to travel to get to the humble area of the Eastern Docks, but that was only if he still lived there. He probably did, if he was hanging around town, even if it was just temporarily. He wouldn’t put it past him to just muscle his way back in, either.

He flipped to the Bludhaven page. Ian supposedly moved to 900 Wanda Way.

Wanda Way was tucked into a tiny corner, off another road, but… There was no nine-hundred address. Wanda Way had addresses in the four-hundreds.

A four and a nine were easy to misinterpret if not written clearly, and the forms were filled out by hand and stamped by an authority figure before being scanned-and-typed in… The only question was, was it done on purpose?

Wanda Way sounded too much like “wander away”, and clearly the guy liked puns on his name, so John had the feeling he’d chosen whatever place was there just to throw everyone off.

The guy was clearly smarter than he looked…

John hummed. Now he just had to get someone to look at Ian’s old place and shake him down.

“Hey, clown,” someone said quietly, poking him in the back of the head.

John felt a surge of annoyance quick-boil his blood. Couldn’t they see he was busy? He wanted to throw the map book at the offender and start teaching them some manners.

But he grit his teeth and clenched the map a little too hard instead, blinking hard once to help push the urge away. It was still there, but he couldn’t let it out. “What?” He growled, turning around.

Mickey stood there, somewhat bewildered by…well, maybe he was actually seeing the roiling violent urge in John’s eyes. Mickey almost looked sheepish, suddenly, drawing the offending hand he’d poked John’s head with to tuck under his arms lying on the shelf. “Just tryin’ to get your attention,” he muttered, staring at him somewhat innocently with his chestnut brown eyes.

John had softened somewhat, seeing as it was only Mickey and not some new asshole trying to pick a fight. “You could always try saying my name, next time, Mick’.”

“I tried twice. You didn’t answer.”

“Third time’s the charm,” John shrugged with a little titter. “Sorry,” he added, not feeling it at all, “I just tend to get absorbed in things. What ‘cha need from little ol’ me, Mick’?”

“Just wanted to know what you were doing,” he mumbled, not looking at him.

What a terrible liar. He probably got caught with his hand in the cookie jar somewhere and wanted escape. “Miiick’, what did you dooo?” He teased, putting a hand on his hip like he was a disappointed parent.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Mm-hm. Let me guess – you said something a little too bold to someone and now they’re trying to find you.”

Mickey might as well have been sweating bullets as he turned his head to look around. “Maybe.”

John chuckled. “Who did you piss off? ‘Firecracker’ Fred? Abdul? Abdul looks like he could fight well… Ooh, was it Harper?”

“No, none o’ them.” Mickey turned back, glancing back at the front door, and suddenly ducked to the ground like he’d been shot. John heard him crawling on the floor around the case, and John could barely contain his curiosity, so he poked his head up above the shelf to see who had entered.

It was another one of the handful of women staying at the place, scanning the room with a hoity-toity sort of anger. Karen McCarthy - addicted to miscellaneous pills, wine, and pretending she was better than everyone else. John had all of two interactions with her, and disliked both of them.

“Don’t let her see me,” Mickey pleaded from the floor. John sank back down and tried to read Mickey’s face. Why on Earth was he scared of a woman less than half his weight class? Mickey grabbed onto his arm, begging like his life was on the line.

John knew that look. He’d seen it for years in Arkham - Mickey was scared out of his mind. “What did you do?” John whispered. Mickey was friendly with Devi, and seemed to keep his hands to himself. But that didn’t mean he was innocent.

“I just said that her art needed work,” he answered, his voice starting to waver. “She just…flipped out.” Mickey breathing awkwardly. “She just started yellin’, and…” His naturally tanned skin was paling more, shaken by the thought of it. “Don’t tell her I’m here. Please. ”

John didn’t have to. Hell, he could fake it and just let Karen look around all day long as Mickey found new, more entertaining places to hide.

But Mickey was clearly rattled. He hated loud noises and seemed to put up a tough-guy front with everyone. The fact that he was so scared of a middle-aged woman yelling at him that he ran away to hide suggested he might have a trauma surrounding such a thing.

If their situations were reversed, there wouldn’t be any promise of an eventual life with Bruce that would hold John back if Mickey let him be forced to confront his own traumatic experiences again.

Besides, saving him was the hero thing to do. And John could never be Bruce – not exactly – but somehow John was his hero, and who was he to let Bruce down?

“Go a few rows down and duck close to the stack,” John advised quietly. “I’ll take care of it.”

Mickey looked a little more confident as he gave a stiff nod and snuck away.

John put the map book back casually and stood, stretching his arms and craning his back like he’d been there for a while. Making himself as obvious as possible.

Sure as Batman stalked the night, John only had to turn like he was going to leave when he found Karen in his personal space, her beady eyes narrowed in determined dislike. “Where’s Mickey?” She asked, her French-tipped index finger pointing at his chin. “You know where he is?”

“Y’know, the first question really drove the point home, Karen. There’s no need to ask twice.”

Karen was trying to stand tall. Sort of hard, since she was almost two whole heads shorter than him. “Don’t get smart with me, John. Have you seen him or not?”

John gave a dramatic laugh, like he actually found the idea funny. (It helped that she was trying so hard to be fierce when John had faced the scariest people imaginable on a nearly daily basis.) It seemed to get her attention; her shrewd eyes were watching him carefully and she looked a little confused. “In here? You’re kidding, right?”

“Why would I be?” She asked haughtily, clearly thinking he was insulting her.

“The guy can barely read a street sign! He’s so macho-illiterate I doubt he knows what a library even is,” John lied, thinking back to one of the more feral inhabitants at Arkham. Karen didn’t have to know he was talking about a different guy. “He’s probably hiding out in the men’s room by the fitness joing. It’s closer to home and he’ll think you won’t have the nerve to go in there.”

Karen clicked her tongue and looked even fiercer. “Oh, I won’t have to go in to give him a piece of my mind…”

Not that you have much to work with, John thought with all the bitterness he was brewing away inside.

“Thanks,” she said dismissively as she stormed away on her pointless little mission.

“No problem,” John said with a cheerful little wave, “you stupid jerk,” he added quietly, unable to hold it in. He didn’t care if she heard or not, but they were in a library, and raising his voice any more than he already did would be rude.

Once the offending lady was gone, John strolled over to Mickey’s hiding place, finding him with his arms around his knees. “She’s gone,” he said simply. Mickey was not standing to leave. He was staring at the shelves across from him with the same sort of vacant stare that John instantly recognized as dissociative. It wouldn’t be good to just leave him there. He knelt down and waved his hand in front of his eyes. “You home in there?”

“Huh?” Mickey came back to reality. “Sorry. I…” He clammed up for a moment. “I’m not good with women.”

“Ha! You and me both, Mick’,” John joked, nudging him slightly. “You get along with Devi just fine, though.”

“She’s different,” he muttered. “She’s not like…that.”

Talk about vague. Still, if John had any guess he’d bet on… “Abusive?”

Mickey drew in on himself a little. “Yeah. She’s calm. Doesn’t yell. Doesn’t belittle anyone. Doesn’t laugh at people for nothin’.”

Ah. That explained a few things. “Sheesh, I’m two out of three, there. It’s a wonder you talk to me.”

Mickey stared at him firmly. “You’re different, too,” he stated. “And you’ve been there.”

John was perplexed, for once. He hadn’t mentioned anything of his relationship with Harley to anyone, much less in a place Mickey could’ve heard.

“I keep thinkin’ I’ll wake up and be back there,” he explained, running a hand through his short crew-cut and staring at his worn tennis shoes. “In that house. Like nothing changed…”

Ohh, that’s what he’d meant when he said he ‘got’ why John didn’t want to go back to Arkham. Mickey had lived in an abusive place he was forced to call home for a long time.

John wasn’t going to pry further. He didn’t need to. Mickey had finally cracked open like the other eggs at Arkham, and John could see the yolk swimming in its translucent goo.

Mickey was clearly thinking about that trauma now, seeing as how it was at the forefront of everything. It’s wouldn’t be very good of John to leave him on his own now, even if Karen didn’t come back.

But could he risk letting Mickey in on the big mystery? Mickey wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box, but he paid attention enough. A different point of view wouldn’t hurt, either.

“Well sitting there thinking about it all night’s not going to do you any favors,” John said with a nudge on his shoulder. “Trust me, every doc’ I’ve ever had tells me that! Ha ha!” Dial it back; that was too light-hearted. “I know something that will get your mind off it - always works for me, anyway: puzzles. And I’ve got one upstairs I could use some help on.”

“…okay.” Mickey stood by himself, clearly intent on leaving now. “I’ll get Devi, too.”

“The more, the merrier,” John shrugged. “Don’t wait up, I’ve got to make a call first.”

Mickey blinked, apparently examining him for any trace of a lie, and seemed satisfied. “Thanks, John.”

Finally, some decent recognition. “You’re welcome.”

Mickey stuck his hands in his hoodie’s pockets and walked away without another word or gesture that would indicate he had anything else to say.

So John did what he came there to do: he pretended to be looking for something in the back rows until he seemed settled on something, and sank to the floor with his phone out.

He had to share his findings with Bruce. He couldn’t keep the knowledge of Ian Coggs’ name to himself for another day – he needed more information, but Bruce needed it even more, and surely he’d be ever-so-grateful that John had tossed a nice bundle of intel’ his way that Bruce would heap some praise onto him in beautiful voice of his.

John stared at his last message from Batman’s number.

Checking out Sionis’ place. Wish me luck.

John, of course, had wished him the best luck accompanied by ten heart emoticons. But that was last night, and there was no news on Roman Sionis suddenly being arrested or disappearing or anything like that today. So more than likely, Bruce was still looking for him...

He scrolled up a little. Apparently the guy whose charge-card was used to book the hotel room from the latest serial murder was claiming it was fraudulent charges. Naturally.

John looked at his contact list anyway. Calling Bruce on the job via his cell might interrupt him. He could try the ‘office’ - aka the Batcave - and see if he could catch him early and get him to do a tiny little search.

But he also didn’t want to bother him too much. Bruce had his plate piled high like he had the last clean one at a crowded buffet.

He could call Tiffany. She might be mad at Bruce - and somewhat rightfully so - but it didn’t mean she wouldn’t cooperate if he dangled the right bait.

Not to mention, Tiffany was less likely to be busy. He doubted they made up yet, so she probably wasn’t at the cave. He chose her cell, deciding that if she didn’t pick up, he’d try the cave next.

One...two… John gave a low little whistle as it continued to ring, the little theme song cycling back around again. Five...six…

Rustle, rustle. “...hello?”

“Hi-ya, Tiff’,” he greeted, listening for anything in the background to give away where she was, “What’cha doin’?”

“Well I was eating,” she answered somewhat grumpily, sounding like she had her mouth half-full. “You better have something good to interrupt my biryani.”

He could hear a slight hum, like a high-powered fan on a computer. There was no echo - she wasn’t in the cave. Likely at home. (Didn’t Bruce mention her sharing an apartment?) “Can you do me a teeensy favor?”

“What kind?” It wasn’t dismissive, but it wasn’t curious enough. Still, he could run with it.

“The firewall-breaching and record-lookup kind. I’d do it, but I don’t have the skills to break into records on a cell.” He tapped on his knee, choosing his next words carefully. “Which is why I’m asking you - you could break into BlackGate’s network with a screwdriver and one of those vendor-locked phones for kids.”

“I’ll have to add that to my bucket list,” she joked. A good sign. “What are you trying to break into?”

“Whatever’s at 400 Wanda Way in Bludhaven.”

Click-click-clack. “Haven’s Helping Hand?”

“Ooh-hoo, sounds legit.” Which meant Ian picked the place. He probably never set foot in it, but it was worth a look just to make sure.

“...so, what’s this for? You got a lead on our Chandis killer?”

“I wish,” John huffed, “but it is related to it. Our resident flying mammal is running around looking for B.M. and his lackeys and hasn’t had any luck; I think I’ve found one of them.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Well, since my friends here are working at places our main baddie has his sticky fingers in, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that mine was recently visited by someone who clearly takes orders from a boss; especially when I’m right down the street from the other little practices.”

“Wait, how’d you know Black Mask is involved with-?”

“Long story,” John interrupted casually, not wanting to delve into that, “Anyway, I also know the guy last lived at apartment 1105 at 511 North Blade Street. Since he’s definitely in Gotham there’s a chance he’d return to his old place.”

“Could be worth a look. Got a name?”

He couldn’t resist a good setup like that. “Why Tiff’, you know I’m called John,” he joked, giggling a little at how she must be pulling that annoyed face.

“...keep going like that and I’ll hang up on you.” She didn’t sound like she really meant it. John ticked off that little checkbox in his head.

“Okay, okay, sorry. It’s Ian Coggs - two ‘g’s.”

A bit of silence followed. John waited patiently, drumming his leg in the same rhythm as the old spy-show tune in his head.

“I’m surprised you’re not running to Bruce with this,” Tiffany mentioned.

“What, he’s not still out chasing the golden goose on top of our other two murderers’ shadows?” Of course he was. John felt it in his gut; Bruce was looking for anything, any shadow, any miniscule thing that might be a break.

“...probably.” It wasn’t quite a scoff - he could practically see her shrugging along like she was pretending very hard not to care.

“Besides, why wouldn’t I tell you? You were part of the team before me,” he said slyly.

Tiffany gave a little sputtering noise. “Doesn’t feel like it. If we swapped places, he’d let you do almost anything.”

That was a little true, but he wasn’t about to say that. He had the perfect opportunity sitting there and he wasn’t going to let it go. “Nah, he wouldn’t,” John answered, knowing there were several things he would absolutely not be allowed to do, “I mean, I might be ‘the adult’ but you’ve got more in the training department. And a better head on your shoulders; mine’s factory defective,” he finished with a giggle at his own joke.

She gave a sort of humph that he took to mean she was mildly amused. Bruce had done the same thing sometimes, with that little upturn in the corner of his lips. John wondered if it was something Tiffany had picked up from being around Bruce so often.

“Of course, you could always prove it to him,” John continued smoothly, pretending to be thinking it over, “If our guy coughs up enough, you’d practically be delivering B.M. on a silver platter.”

She was quiet; she was thinking it over. “You work near the docks; if he’s still in the Cauldron, it’d be a heck of a commute for him.”

“Hey, when the boss calls, you go anywhere.”

“True… I think it’s worth checking out.” John grinned and pumped his fist in triumph, tapping the floor with his shoes as much as he dared. Mission accomplished - he’d pulled the right strings, and now Tiffany was going to search the place for him! “Haven’s almost done cracking.”

John heard an annoying beep in his ear, souring his good mood a little; he pulled away, and sure enough the battery was at seven percent. “Hey, Tiff’, my battery’s dying and I get a pretty shitty signal everywhere else; you’ll have to text me what you find.”

“...it’s St. Dymphna, right? Which room are you in?”

Well, he didn’t expect that as a response. “Um, 308.”

“When’s lock-down?”

“Eleven...” He was pretty sure he knew what she was getting at. “There’s no fire escape or anything for you to land on, though.”

“But your window opens?”

“Yeah, a little...”

“Then it’s no problem. I can swing by in about an hour, hour and a half. I’ll be patrolling around there later anyway.”

“Well, uh, if that works for you…” He grinned to himself; a personal report, too? That could only mean he was growing on her, which meant more information on the goings-on, a happier Bruce, and one less stressful relationship for John to mull over.

Of course, she might just want to make sure he was behaving. Or seeing if she could gather any indication as to what he’d been up to and try to analyze him as much as he did everyone else… John shook the thought. Tiffany was a smart cookie, but she wasn’t on Iman or Bruce’s level of psychoanalysis. Even if she was trying to gather personal info’ on him, she wouldn’t know exactly what went on his head.

“See ya later, then, Tiff’,” he said simply, before remembering that Tiffany did not wear the same sort of armor that Bruce did, “And be careful; the guy packs heat on his right hip.”

“Thanks. Later.”

John hung up, feeling a sort of smug satisfaction. He’d be one step closer to delivering Black Mask to Batman’s doorstep and getting Dymphna cleared of any exploitive activity. And Black Mask himself would shed some light on whoever was pissed at him, solving the other puzzle that nagged at John’s already-messy mind.

Though, speaking of Dymphna and puzzles… John supposed it was time to get some other input.

*~*~*~*~*

“Look, it can’t be either of them, either,” John stressed, pointing to the map of Gotham he’d printed out a week ago on his wall, “Falcone’s dead, and when Maroni got shuffled off to the big house, half the city’s territory – these yellow flags – went up for grabs while their leftovers played follow-the-leader with a bunch of headless-”

“John,” Mickey interrupted, staring at him from John’s chair in the corner, “You’re doing it again.”

Devi flicked her butterfly knife open and closed from her spot on the floor, where she was sitting on several pillows she’d brought from her room. John likened it to chewing gum; just a little something to do to pass time. “He’s trying to say Macaroni and Fal-cone’s old running crews split up into their own groups, Mick’.”

“Then he should just say it,” Mickey muttered, crossing his arms and looking at his feet with an embarrassed scowl.

John resisted the urge to rub the bridge of his nose. “Devi, it’s Ma-roni.”

“I know what I said,” she smirked, flicking the knife open and closed again. “I like him better as a noodle.”

It was funny enough to make John chuckle, but it didn’t cool his temper. John was clearly not meant to be a teacher with how frustrated he was already getting. He didn’t know how Bruce had the patience for it. “Still. They’d normally be good contenders, but their groups are usually the kind to just get reabsorbed into other gangs, and our guy Black Mask-”

“Roman Sionis,” Devi stated, gesturing to the piece of paper John had taped up to the wall.

“- yes, him – likely picked most of the mafia’s less-loyal stragglers up. He’d provide the structure the need.” John circled the little areas he knew the loyalist parts were active in. “The ones who didn’t are a lot smaller in number now, probably still hovering around these little parts they used to haunt.”

“So what does this have to do with the ship?” Mickey asked, trying to follow John’s map marks. “You said that was Roman’s territory now.”

“That’s my point,” John huffed, deciding it was better to try and walk the annoyance out rather than say something he’d regret, “He’s got all this territory,” he gestured to the map as he made strides to their side of the room, “all these people under him, so why kill the informant? Why leave the drugs behind and make it so obvious that it was a hit when they could’ve just stolen the ship?”

“Woah, back up a sec’, hon’,” Devi interjected, leaning forward like she was interested. “You didn’t say anything about an informant.”

He didn’t? He could have sworn… Well, it didn’t matter. He’d explain it. “Ok, so – there’s five guys in the warehouse, right?” John held up his hand to gesture along, glimpsing the green nail polish still there. “Main guy, subordinate, two guards, and Muddy. Their van explodes – from the inside – and they all race out the one door with whatever firearms they have so they can escape. The shooter snipes the guards first, then the subordinate, but the de-facto leader gets the farthest away – the shooter had to get him in the leg first,” John emphasized with a gun motion at an invisible target’s leg, “then the chest. Muddy should’ve been out before the leader, but he’s captured instead.”

“So…Muddy planted the bomb?” Mickey asked.

“Yes!” John pointed at Mickey. “Exactly! He planted the bomb, he knew to leave last so he wouldn’t get shot up like the rest, and he knew when the ship was coming in!” He paced to them, thinking. “But that’s what I don’t get – if they had a guy on the inside high up enough on the chain that he was trusted with receiving that large a package, why did they kill him? Muddy could’ve provided all kinds of information in the long run - why rely on him for this one thing when he could’ve been their main plant in the whole operation? They could’ve found the Volto and Bauta heads and taken control of the area!” He smacked the map on the wall briefly, continuing to pace as his mind churned out everything he’d been mulling over. “And even if they were done with him, why not just leave him there with the rest?!”

Devi snapped her knife closed. “John-”

“Why make it an execution?! Why give him a gangster’s death twice?!”

“John.”

“And if it was all just revenge, why didn’t they wait until they could meet Black Mask personally to kill him, too?! Hell, blow his whole house up sky-fucking-h-!”

“JOHN.”

John suddenly found himself stopped in his tracks in the middle of the room with Devi’s hands on his shoulders.

“You’re ramblin’ again,” she said, smiling gently up at him and patting his shoulders. “Just take a breath, J’.”

He wasn’t rambling, he was just talking fast and trying to get all the thoughts out that had been piled in his brain for the past several days.

...but it wasn’t worth arguing over. Devi and Mickey didn’t have his sort of brain chemistry; they wouldn’t get it. It was easier to just ‘calm down’ even if it wasn’t necessary. It’s not like it would hurt.

John breathed in and out, clenching and unclenching his fists in time for several beats. Sure enough, he did feel calmer. Not that he wanted to, but...still.

“There ya go,” Devi soothed, patting him gently. “Better?”

“Yeah,” he lied. He wasn’t, he wanted to get it all out, just say everything that had been on his mind for the past several days. Wanted to just make them sit there, a captive audience, and ask everything even if he didn’t get an answer.

“Good. You’re onto somethin’.”

John blinked. “...I am?”

Mickey hummed to himself a little in thought. “I know why.”

John felt more confused. “Why what?”

“Why they didn’t wait to meet Black Mask. You said no one in his gang has seen his face - your guy has.” Mickey said with a little shrug.

Devi gave a little ooh. “Whaddya know, Mick’, we’re on the same page,” she said brightly with an impressed tilt of her head.

That would mean the killer knew Black Mask was Roman Sionis. “But why wouldn’t they just go directly to…” The second he said it aloud it clicked. It was why they left the drugs behind, why they drilled it home it was a hit – a herring in maraschino red. It wasn’t about strictly killing Roman, but eventually taking his place. “It’s an inside job.”

“Ya said it yourself, J’,” Devi shrugged, “Those gangs he picked up ain’t loyal. Besides, you crossed off everyone else.”

Of course. It wasn’t some rival gang, it was someone in his gang, leading them all to believe it was a rival to throw Black Mask off the scent! That stupid sign with the bodies was just another herring! John had been looking up the wrong thing for days, hunting for a shadow!

Ha ha ha ha ha!

He couldn’t help but laugh at himself. At the whole ridiculous thing. How utterly silly they’d been.

And he caught himself remembering that random laughter wasn’t something most people took kindly to a little too late. Devi was glancing between his eyes as if to guess if he was having a manic episode. Mickey was stock-still, watching him with something similar. “S-sorry,” he said, trying to cover the last bit, “It’s just funny how dumb I’ve been. I mean, really, really dumb.”

They looked a little more convinced.

John rubbed the back of his neck, trying to rub the awkward feeling away as he stared right back at Devi, trying to let her see how sane he was. “Really, I would’ve just kept going in circles without-”

John felt like everything in the world had slowed to a crawl: a dot of red rolled over Devi’s hair where her temple was, climbing up and disappearing like it had never been there in an instant.

It was like something in him woke up – he grabbed her shoulders and pushed her forward, hearing glass shatter before they even hit the hard tiled floor.

He felt the impact in his knees. Real.

Mickey tumbled out of the chair as Devi swore and John rolled away from her to force his back against the wall between them. He heard the thud of his shoulders hitting the wall. Real.

“What the hell-” she started, losing the rest as she spied the little hole in the wall where John’s head had been seconds ago. “Ohh, what the fuck.”

John was looking at the new shattered hole in the window, hearing his heart in his ears.

Someone shot at him. Someone had a laser scope and a long-range rifle. Someone was sitting out there, waiting for him to reappear, or waiting long enough to move positions and get him while they were sitting there.

“What do we do?” Mickey asked in a less-than-steady voice as he curled his legs to his chest. “What the fuck do we do?”

Devi shifted forward, looking like she was going to crawl for it. “We’re gettin’ the fuck out, that’s-”

John grabbed Devi’s arm and pulled her back with a hard yank. “NO!” She almost smacked back against the wall. “Look at the HOLE!” John gestured slightly to the bullet hole in the wall. “It’s lower than the entry one; they can see the floor!”

“Devi,” Mickey rushed, “You have a phone; you can call the cops!”

No, there was only one ofthose that could really be trusted -

“Are you kiddin’ me? You’ve seen how that shit goes! I’m black and John was tried insane – your half-Puerto Rican ass is the only one of us that can pass for one of their crowd! They’ll kill us just for sittin’ here!”

They could call Batman, but he was out chasing Black Mask, too far to -

“Well what the fuck are we supposed to do, then?” Mickey interjected too loudly, the sound breaking John’s already fragile grip on his temper.

“Will both of you just shut up and let me THINK?!” John shouted, slamming his fists on his bruised knees.

Silence settled in, but it felt like the thing inside of John was rattling the cage.

They felt it too, surely – the flight signal had been lit in their brains, but there was nowhere for them to go. John tapped his legs with his fingers one-by-one, feeling the material of his purple slacks as they made impact. Think, think, think – what do you know for sure, John?

There was nowhere to hide. Standing was out of the question. Crawling was just as deadly. They were all like carnival ducks stuck in their stall, brightly lit under a long fluorescent bulb, just waiting for the kid with the gun to aim just right.

They hadn’t been shot yet. Either the would-be killer was waiting for them, or changing position to the wall.

They couldn’t call out for help. Anyone who came in would be shot.

But they couldn’t stay there. If the shooter was smart, they would move after a bit to re-adjust.

So they’d have to throw him off.

John stared up at the long bulb, his mind whirling…

There was the obvious solution: one of them could risk running for the light-switch.

It was almost sickening how easily he could imagine either of them bleeding on the floor by the switch…

When he thought about it, he was used to being by himself, but he was never going to be used to being alone. With his psychosis’ voices blocked out through his anti-psychotics, he’d found he’d missed the constant company, even if they didn’t always make sense or play nice with his brain.

But here he was, with real every-day company again. The kind that did, in fact, play nice and make sense. The kind that didn’t play mind-games or threaten him or let him get too riled up just to see what he would do. The kind that wouldn’t try to kill Batman if the opportunity arose, or kill him if they thought it was necessary. They weren’t constant, but they were there, as real as he was – he could hear them breathing and feel their fear in the air.

He couldn’t treat them like they were just means to an end.

The looked at the large fluorescent bulb in the ceiling, wishing it would flicker for a few seconds like the old Arkham ones did, and felt his own lightbulb power on.

“I’ve got it!” He grinned triumphantly, slapping his legs and feeling the sweet sting it left, “We need to break the lightbulb!”

Devi shot a look at it, then at him. “With what?”

“Something hard enough to shatter the glass?” John suggested with a chuckle. He supposed they could toss her butterfly knife, but it might not be heavy enough; they’d have to hit the right point. “The chair would work.”

Mickey looked at the desk chair by his feet. He was clearly rattled, huddled in on himself and looking pale. “It’s kind of big.”

“Don’t tell me those biceps are for show,” John teased, poking his arm, “Even I can lift that.” Mickey didn’t seem convinced. “Look, Mick’, you’ve got the corner. There’s no way the shooter can see you. You just need to squat and flip it up like it’s a table,” John said, gesturing the up motion with his palms.

“Mick’,” Devi said, “he’s right. You’re closest.”

Mickey stared at them both, then at the chair, and sighed slowly through his nostrils. “I guess there’s worse ways to go,” he grumbled, pulling the chair towards him.

“You’ve got this,” John said, flashing him a thumb’s up.

Mickey sneered a bit, but he still squat down rigidly and flipped the chair up into the ceiling, hitting its mark – there was the tinkling crash of breaking glass and a buzz of shorted electricity, and John instinctively covered his head as glass rained down and the chair clattered to the floor.

When he looked back up, they were all sitting in the dark. It was almost like being back in the Old Five Point’s office, where he had hidden while the Agency poked their noses in places they shouldn’t have been.

But that was the old John. New John wasn’t scared. Angry, of course, but he was almost…

Thrilled.

Yes… Toeing the line of danger, on a rescue mission for himself and his friends…

John giggled, feeling ridiculous by how excited he was during such risky business. “Good job, Mickey. Got it in one.”

Glass shattered and a vwoop noise followed as the shooter fired again, causing Devi to push closer to him with a shout. The shot was a little closer to the edge of the dim light coming in through the window. A red dot disappeared, as if the shooter was turning the scope on and off.

A warning - they could still see in, they weren’t going anywhere.

Like hell they weren’t.

“Mickey, can you hand me my phone?” John asked politely. Mickey pulled it down by the cord, as if he thought the shooter could see it sitting there out of view of the window, and shoved it into John’s waiting hand. “Thaaank you!”

Tiffany was already on her way there - he could just tell her to hurry up. Or send that nice drone with the laser attachment.

John tapped his foot along with the rings. It was only three this time before Tiffany picked up, and she was clearly outside somewhere, because he could hear the wind rush by.

“Hey, how far away are you?” He asked quickly, keeping his eye on the window for any glimpse of the laser sight.

“A -” the voice cut off - “minutes. Why-”

“Okay, I can barely hear you, so long story short, I’m being shot at from someone on the building opposite me and would really appreciate some help.”

He could barely hear her over the wind and occasional break in the line. He was pretty sure it sounded like a surprised “what” and then something unintelligible.

“Yeah, so I still can’t hear you. I don’t know what they look like but I’m guessing they’re on the roof, the shots are angled down.”

Another shot came through the glass, closer to the corner.

“Aaand that’s our queue to leave! Hurry, okay?!”

John hung up, knowing she’d be there fast enough, but wondering if she’d be smart enough to hit them from behind or not. Unless they had a watchguard, which they could, depending on who they were…

There was no time for thinking about that. It was time to get out before the shooter decided to move enough so they could see them in the dim streetlamp.

They definitely couldn’t just run across. The pile of glass in the middle of the floor was a hazard on top of the fact they’d be seen. They couldn’t get around the little desk, either, since it was likely visible; they’d have to press flush against the wall to go under the window.

Or...they had to completely shroud themselves in darkness.

“None of you happen to have a stapler or somethin’, do ya?” Devi asked, holding something in her lap. “I’m tryin’ to think of how we can pin this to the window….”

John was impressed for a moment, having been thinking of somehow getting the sheet from his bed or the dresser to do it, but the feeling gave way to something more like a sinking stone plummeting to the bottom of his stomach.

She had been sitting on the blanket Bruce had gotten him when he was still in Arkham. It was the first thing he’d given him when he’d been put away; a green cashmere blend so soft that John almost wondered if it wasn’t made from clouds.

John yanked it out of her hands and clutched it to himself. “You were sitting on it?”

“The floor’s cold,” Devi stated plainly, not intimidated in the slightest. “Besides, you borrow my blanket when you sit in my room.”

That was true. He couldn’t resist covering himself in something as wild as neon-orange leopard with little skulls, even if it was only for a bit. But Bruce didn’t give that to her, she didn’t clutch it around her shoulders when she wanted to remember getting it, the cute look on Bruce’s face, the utter satisfaction John felt as he got under it for the first time and thought how finally, it was warm in Arkham…

He gripped it, telling himself that Bruce could buy a hundred more in as many colors and weights as John wanted when he got out. Enough to make the biggest blanket fort possible over the biggest mountain of blankets possible.

There was no stapler or anything handy, and he couldn’t shove them in the corners of the window… But someone could hold it.

John squinted at the window. He could stretch his arm across and cover it like a curtain; the pane and exterior walls were thick enough not to be pierced with bullets.

The chair was still on the floor. He was surprised no one had come running yet, with all the noise… There was a doctor underneath his room, gone for the day, naturally… But surely one of his neighbors might have heard.

Unless they just thought he was throwing a fit and didn’t want to get involved… Fine time for them to be ignoring him.

John rolled the blanket into a thin tube and swept it over the floor, pushing the shards of glass towards the chair as much as he could, flinching as another bullet pierced the wall.

He pulled the leg of the chair towards him by his foot, moving it slowly at first just to angle it right, and then yanked it towards him as another gunshot came through. Just as he thought, they were definitely targeting motion.

“Mickey, you’re gonna have to move.”

The burlier man eyed the chair warily. “I’m not standing up on that.”

John scowled as he stood to his full height, an urge to kick him only outweighed by the knowledge that one wrong move could hurt them both far worse. “For Pete’s sake, just move over next to Devi and stop acting like you’re going to die if you twitch out of line! I’m trying to save you, here!”

Mickey frowned, opening his mouth to retort, but closed it just as soon as he’d started, settling on just glaring back and doing as he was told, shuffling as John stepped over him to the corner.

“Now, don’t move until I tell you,” he emphasized, wagging a finger at both of them, “and when you do, crawl close to the floor.”

Once he stood (somewhat wobbly) on the chair by the corner, just barely out of sight of the window, John stretched out his hand in front of him, draping the blanket over it like he was pulling out the edge of a cape to do a dramatic reveal.

Pieces of glass wedged themselves in his bare arm. He could feel blood dribble out, feel the sting of cut flesh, feel a little spike in adrenaline and a familiar stir in his core that sent a tingle in his head…

Things looked clearer, somehow. His vision was always twenty-twenty, but somehow things felt sharper, and not just because little edges were digging into him. Without thinking, he knew all this, what he was feeling right now, was all very real.

He adjusted it to cover his arm with a little less glass-digging-into-skin, and upon draping it just right, it felt like he was almost a magician, covering the trick box from the audience’s view as the assistant did the rest.

“Ladies and Gentleman, the disappearing bullets trick!” John joked as he quickly shoved his arm over the top pane of the window.

It was just long enough to cover it completely, and there came a wonderful hush in the audience.

He could feel his heart in his ribs, pounding away like it was counting off beats, waiting, waiting, waiting…

Crash!

Crash-crash-crash-crash-!

Beams of light appeared one by one like tiny spotlights as the window. John barely flinched as he counted off the sounds.

At the count of ten, it went quiet.

John waited a beat, then two, and grinned wider. “And, ohh-ho, they’re gone!” John chuckled, “What a maroon... Okay, now you guys can go.”

“...what about you?” Devi asked, not moving.

“Just go,” John brushed off, not wanting to think about possible magazine refills, “Watch the glass.”

There were no more words, just the little thuds and occasional little crunch of glass telling them they were crawling as fast as possible. John held the blanket steady, thinking as he hoped the shooter didn’t decide to pack an extra magazine.

He could he risk peeking out across the way? Was the shooter keeping a few rounds in the chamber, waiting for his face to appear? Had they given up?

He might not see anything, but if he did, he would know at least the vague height of whoever was standing on the building three or four car-lengths away with a rifle, intent on killing him for whatever reason they had.

The door opened, letting in more light from the hallway, and Devi was the first to sneak through. John spied shiny spots of blood on her arms before she disappeared from view.

Mickey scrambled out after her, similar dots visible on his palms as he stood up.

John let the blanket fall to the floor as he heard them both call out for help. The noise faded into the background as he carefully took his phone out of his pocket. The little binocular lens clipped over the camera with a plastic snap, and John breathed in, smelling copper and the spring air of May, and slid his phone’s lens over the edge of the window, zooming in further on the building in the distance.

At first, he didn’t see anything. The camera was great, but it wasn’t exactly made for night use, even with the adjustments he made to the settings. Just black on a dark building, barely lit by the streetlamp.

But he moved it around a little, trying to get the exact angle the shooter must have been at, and he saw it.

A figure in the distance, barely seen at first, just a dark shape.

And then he spotted the drone with a spotlight, flashing over the figure’s back, and John pressed the record button just in time.

The figure whirled around with their long rifle in hand and smacked the drone right out of the air and to the floor, and seemed to hit it again, a flash of light showing off their silhouette again. One more smash seemed to satisfy them, but John could see them suddenly perk up straight, as if they heard something, and then they were gone, a black blob disappearing into the night with a whirl of a…

No. Not a cape. It was as if they were wearing a long coat.

He kept watching, almost hoping he’d see them come back so he could get a proper look at their face, but instead, he saw a figure glide down to the roof, too sleek to be Batman, and seem to rush to check if the shooter was still nearby, a second drone flying from their hip to scout ahead.

“John Doe?” A voice called from the hallway, light but smokey from years of tobacco use. An orderly - Todd something-or-other. “Are you still in there?”

“Yeah,” he called back, tucking his phone back in his pocket, “I am.”

“Keep away from the window. Police are on their way. I’m staying right outside this door, you just keep talking to me.”

“You don’t need to,” John answered, hopping off the chair and stumbling slightly, crunching over bits of broken glass here and there. “The guy’s already gone.” He pulled down the pages he’d taped to his wall, not wanting anyone to start thinking he was spreading some kind of conspiracy theory, and lingered on the piece he’d written ‘Ian Coggs’ visited Stitched Up Alt.’ on.

Something wasn’t right. The way Ian had looked at him that day, like he hadn’t expected him to be there. He seemed to have reported seeing him to Black Mask, but why would they go after him? Why would they care?

What was one mentally ill guy with a forgotten past to a guy like Roman Sionis?

*~*~*~*~*

John wasn’t sure what he had expected to happen after an incident like getting shot at by a sniper in the middle of the night, but he didn’t expect to be stuck waiting in St. Dymphna’s medical center. Devi and Mickey seemed adamant about not straying too far from him, despite the lengths the active officers on duty seemed to go to, shoving John in a corner bed as the nurse picked out the glass from his arm and they attempted to ask him questions while he repeatedly told them he wouldn’t talk until his lawyer arrived.

And good ol’ Reggie had practically come running on his short, square legs. He probably smelled a lawsuit waiting to happen. That, or Batman had ‘a talk’ with him about responding to anything to do with John as fast as possible after the whole thing with Dr. Crane.

John suspected it was a combination of both.

He was expecting Bruce, though, who hadn’t shown up yet. He didn’t mind if Batman didn’t make an appearance, but what felt like half an hour into the vocal probing, he found himself really, really wanting some comfort. There was only so many distasteful looks and thinly-veiled remarks he could take, even if they weren’t all directed at him.

“I told you, I’m not movin’,” Devi repeated for the third time, sitting quite still against the back of her own bed several spots over. She had the same sort of gauze bandage as him, only she had them on both arms, and some plasters under her short sweatpants where little glass pieces had stuck to her knees.

“If you’re sure,” Dr. Farms seemed to sigh, “Your sister said she’d be on the way. We’ll keep an orderly at the door in case there’s any trouble.”

Devi snorted. “These two aren’t trouble,” she said with a shrug. “I’m not wearing this t-shirt for nothin’, you know.” She gestured to the word ‘kickass’ spelled there in glittery cursive.

Reggie was quick-reading over the statement John had made, the end of his pen trailing underneath. John had left out the part of him using his phone, of course. He wanted to just grab it out from under his pillow and call Bruce himself. “And this is all correct?” Reggie asksed, tapping the fountain pen at the end of the pad of paper.

“Yup.” John swung his legs slightly over the edge of the thin mattress, gently digging his fingers into the fabric. He couldn’t do it too hard, or it’d attract attention.

“You counted fourteen shots?”

“Yuup.”

“...and how did you know when you could let the other two leave?”

“When no more shots came through. Isn’t that obvious?”

“Hm.” Reggie tapped the cap end of the pen against the paper. “This is acceptable.”

John couldn’t back the question burning in his head. The one he didn’t want a bad answer to. “So...what happens now?”

“Standard police procedure, they’ll investigate, ask follow-up questions - the usual,” Reggie answered, “As for your continuing treatment, I believe they’re still figuring out where you’ll be staying until the police clear this up.”

“What?!” Devi leaned forward, a few of her long thin braids falling over her shoulder. “You mean he’s not stayin’ here?”

“He can’t stay in an active crime scene,” the lawyer went on in his no-nonsense voice, “Especially not when he might have been the intended victim.”

“But he’s the reason Mick’ and I are even alive!”

“That doesn’t factor into the decision,” Reggie answered coolly.

“I don’t care,” Devi slid off her bed and joined John’s, crossing her arms and giving Reggie the stink eye, “I’m not lettin’ him go to one of those shitty state homes.”

“I’m afraid that’s not up to you. It’s up to St. Dymphna and the G.C.P.D.”

Them? They had a say in this?

No. No, no, no. He knew what they were going to do. What they wanted to do. He felt his lip twitch backwards and his stomach seize as something white hot hit him.

“I’m not going back to Arkham,” John said with all the restraint on the furious being under his skin he could.

Reggie’s fingers had twitched in a flinch, and he cast a look at John. “I’ll give this to Officer Hutton and remind him of that.”

Devi watched him go with a scrutinizing squint. “You doin’ okay, there, John?”

“Ha, no!” John answered honestly, finding no need to restrain his feelings any more. He felt the other end of the mattress sink; Mickey had sat down on his other side. “Just got shot at, interrogated unnecessarily, and now…” He crossed his arms, wanting to feel something remotely comfortable as the boiling point in his started to wind down to a simmer. “I’d rather have faced that sniper with nothing but a paperclip than go back to Arkham.”

Devi put her arm around his back, pulling him into a bit of a side hug. “I’ll kick their asses if anyone tries to put you in there.”

Mickey gave a chuckle. “Ditto.” He gave John a small smirk. “They’re gonna shuffle us ‘round to who-knows-where, but I’ll be damned if I let them throw you back. Not after you saved me twice in one day.”

John felt more of his anger ebbing away. He felt more grateful than anything, but there was that nice warm feeling that came with people doing genuinely nice things for him. “I’m sorry I yelled at you guys earlier.”

Mickey shrugged. “Better than losing my head.”

“Apology accepted. But it’s no big deal,” Devi said with a knowing little smile, “I’ve looked the devil in the eyes while only wearing a thong. It’s gonna take a lot more than that for you to get under my skin.”

John felt a giggle pass over him. “Better not let a doctor hear that - they’ve got scalpels.”

“That’s awful,” Mickey said with a shake of his head.

“Speakin’ of doctors,” Devi muttered, pulling out something from her pocket and sliding it into John’s palm, “Here.”

It was her butterfly knife. John had almost forgotten how oddly nice it felt to hold one. Light, dangerous, dexterous… The rainbow sheen on the metal was cute, but the fact that she was willing to just hand it to him, all trustworthy-like, was what made him smile, and made that warm feeling grow. “You’re giving this to me?”

“Doesn’t matter where you end up - Gothamites are bound to try somethin’ with you,” Devi said with a little shrug. “Besides, you could always pick a lock with it and run away, if you had to.”

“Run away to where?” John chuckled, “Bruce’s place is pretty far from all the funny farms.”

Mickey gave a short hum of thought and pulled a card out of his wallet. “Here.”

A key card for the Lucky Hotel.

“Better than nothin’.”

“You guys…” John almost felt like he was tearing up. No, scratch that, he was. “You guys are the best.” He put both gifts away (in separate pockets, of course) and laid back to grab his phone from under the pillow. The cops were all discussing matters amongst themselves, not even glancing their way. “You know what this calls for?” He pulled the camera app up and threw his arms around both of their shoulders. “A group shot!”

“Ooh, hold on,” Devi shifted, tilting her head just right for the camera angle, and smiled. “Okay, that’s better.”

Mickey shook his head, an amused smile on his square face. “I knew you two were crazy.”

“Ha ha, like you aren’t?” John ribbed. “Smile!”

A little click, and John thought it was one of the best he’d taken. Definitely one for the album.

And then, in the moment of silence afterwards, John heard it: the instantly recognizable voice that wove in and out of his dreams, good and bad, real and unreal.

Bruce passed through the thin wall of police and doctors with the unmistakable stride of Batman, the sight hitting John like a jolt to the heart. Confidence, determination, power – it all came through in his steps, as reassuring and steady as the sunrise. It didn’t matter if he was in street clothes or bearing a five-o’clock shadow, it was Bruce’s Batman politely telling the doctor in his ‘fuck you’ voice that he wasn’t letting him stay there a minute longer.

John felt a hand push on his back, and barely heard to little ‘go ahead’ Devi whispered to him.

He didn’t care what was in his way. He didn’t stop moving until he was right in Dr. Song and Bruce’s space, not taking his eyes off Bruce for a moment.

“John,” Dr. Song said with a slight cough, forcing his focus over to her, “Bruce has offered to take temporary guardianship of you while the state goes through its’ investigation. As you’re a ward of the state in our care, you don’t have to say-”

“Yes,” John said, noticing Bruce looking him over like he was thinking of possible injuries, “I’m saying yes.”

Dr. Song seemed to have expected that. “Your lawyer and his are talking, but I made it quite clear that your current treatment is to be followed to the letter. I still want you to report for our scheduled therapy, and you’ll still have to make the appointments set by Mr. Casselli and Officer Kane.”

“That’s fine.”

“Medicine has to be taken strictly by our current regime.”

“Of course.”

“Work hours will still have to be met, if possible.”

“Makes sense.” Dr. Song looked like she was trying to find any reason John wouldn’t agree with. “Really, doc’, you act like I’m not going to come back,” John said with a light chuckle, “I kind of need that certificate of sanity, you know.”

“I just want to make sure you know what you’re getting in to.”

Oh, believe me, I know, John thought to himself, not daring to say it aloud. “I’m sure I can handle it,” he said, sounding as confident as half of him felt.

She seemed a little more at ease. “I’ll draft up the prescriptions.”

The second she was turned away, John trapped Bruce in his arms, intent on feeling the warmth radiate from beneath his plain white button down into his chest, and suddenly felt more…vulnerable than before. He knew he was safe – he was with Bruce – but when Bruce lightly held him back and said ‘it’s okay’ in that soothing, meaningful voice, the little walls in John collapsed, and he found himself clinging onto him for life and falling for him all over again.

*~*~*~*~*

Notes:

Congratulations, John, you officially made two new friends!!! °˖ ✧◝(○ ヮ ○)◜✧˖ ° I’m so proud of you!!!

Thank you all for your continuing support!!! *.⋆( ˘̴͈́ ॢ꒵ॢ ˘̴͈̀ )⋆.* I hope you can feel my love radiate from the screen!

As you can tell, I had a heck of a time with this chapter. Sure, it’s almost a full week later than previously thought, but look how much stuff happened! It wasn’t originally planned to be this long - but hey, John needs to bond with people, so damn it, I’m gonna write it and make it believable! I had fun making use of the “camera feature” here and adding in investigation choices and a new time-out feature. And I had loooots of fun bringing out our vigilante!Joker in John throughout! I hope I did our boy justice! I reconsidered and rewrote a lot, but I’m pretty dang happy with how much I’ve laid out so far and what this chapter’s accomplished. Especially the little things I’ve hidden in here… Heheheheehheeh!

Next time we’ll return with Bruce, who seems to have a full colony living in his house as two sides of the mystery start to come together… See you in (hopefully) two weeks!

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ailelie · 5 years

Text

Like a Bad Penny (not!fic, crack treated seriously; Damian is Stephanie’s Dad)

This is over 2.5k of not!fic going more or less scene-by-scene of how I’d write the Stephanie-is-Damian’s-Daughter fic I first mentioned here. This is crack treated seriously. This is not written as fic. This is written as an in-depth, first draft description of a fic, scene-by-scene, with a few rare moments of dialogue. It involve an OC who is the daughter of an old and off retconned out rogue, the Penny Plunderer or Joe Coyne. Of course Coyne named his daughter Penny.

This is Steph/Tim. And would inevitably be followed by a half-dozen ficlets focusing on the weird father-daughter relationship between Steph and Damian.

---

“I’m just saying—knowing Penelope was Joe Coyne’s daughter would have helped us solve this a lot sooner.”

Tim and Bruce are in the Batcave after a case. The giant penny is prominent in the background. The case involved an Arkham breakout of Joe Coyne and Zachary Gate. Gate is still focused on eliminating the founding families of Gotham. The villains always seem one step ahead until the Bats realize that a new engineer at Wayne Enterprises, Penelope Finger, has been feeding the villains information and providing them with weapons. When caught, Penelope talks about how her father had turned his greatest failure into the cornerstone of his success. He taught her to always learn something from failure. She points out a pair of pennies on the table and chides the heroes that they should pay more attention to the things they think are useless. She moves one of the pennies, completing a circuit embedded in the table, and causing an explosion. She escapes in the confusion.

Penelope’s thing is about how people overlook the terrible potential of the mundane and undervalued. Her inventing prowess focuses on using the seemingly useless and unexpected with great creativity. While Batman and co. focused on Gate, Penelope and her father quietly stole the materials she needed to finish making a time machine.

Gate and the others are recaptured, but Penelope and her father remain at liberty. Penelope finishes her time machine. Joe Coyne, though he helped with the thefts, wants to use the time machine to change the past. His time in Arkham really did rehabilitate him. Penelope, however, for reasons unknown, was aware each time the timeline changed. She remembers the timelines where her father almost ceased to even exist and blames the Justice League, but mostly Batman since he captured her father in the very first place and then had the gall to forget him.

It eventually gets revealed that the Batman Beyond universe exists through her machinations. She either helped the Joker get his three uninterrupted weeks with Tim or provided the microchip, for example.

But all of that is late reveal stuff. At this stage in the game, the Bats think she helped Gate to buy herself time to get her dad somewhere safe and out of the way.

Bruce goes to bed and advises Tim to go rest as well. Tim, instead, sits at the Batcomputer and starts writing a program to identify familial relationships among the DNA samples saved in the computer’s memory, as well as a secondary program to ensure this doesn’t lock the computer up like tea aboard the Heart of Gold in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

A few days later, Tim is using the Batcomputer for one his cases while Bruce runs tests on a new drug growing in popularity in Gotham. By this point Tim has grown slightly annoyed with his own program as it so far has identified relationships such as Bruce and Damian, Ra’s and Damian, etc. When yet another Damian alert pops up, he almost closes it without read it. Except Bruce tells him to wait.

Then Tim pays attention and realizes what it says: a paternal match between Damian Wayne and Stephanie Brown.

“Run that again,” Bruce orders.

Tim minimizes his case files and pulls up Damian and Stephanie’s DNA profiles. Time drags as they wait, but the answer is unchanged. A paternal match.

“Could the DNA files be corrupted?” Tim asks.

“I’ll call them in.”

This leads to Stephanie and Damian in the Cave. Tim and Bruce each conduct their own paternity tests, just to be absolutely certain. Hours pass. Damian and Stephanie’s patience dwindles.

“Father, I demand you explain what is happening right now.”

“Seriously, you’re both acting super weird.”

“Maybe we should just show them,” Tim says, looking at Bruce.

“Show us what, Tim?”

“Show them. I’ll be right back.”

Tim sighs, glaring at Bruce’s back. “This.”

Stephanie and Damian are still ranting in disbelief when Bruce returns with a strange device that he explains he took from the Flash. He asks Stephanie to step aside and he runs the device around her. The readings are faint, but enough to confirm his suspicions

“Stephanie is from the future.”

No one takes this particularly well. Tim chases after Steph when she bolts.

Tim and Steph have a cute conversation about this changing nothing, which ends with Stephanie starting to find the humor in the situation.

“Damian is my dad. Wait, Tim, you realize what this means? You’re dating Damian’s daughter.” She laughs, then her eyes widen. “Your brother Damian’s daughter. I’m dating my uncle! This horror show’s got levels.”

Tim buries his face in his palm. “Please stop.”

On a lighter note, she also gives him an envelope of purple glitter and tells him “happy 18th.” He tries to toss the glitter out, she refuses to let him and tells him it is punishment. “On my birthday? For what?”

“I’ll think of something.”

Meanwhile, Bruce uses the very faint readings from the device to pinpoint from when in the future Stephanie came. Damian is training and occasionally ranting in the background. He alternates between anger and nascent protectiveness.

“Brown can’t be a Wayne. She’s not worthy of our name. There must have been a mistake. She can barely hold her own. Could you imagine what Mother would think of her?” He stops, in sudden alarm. “The League cannot find out about her. They’d destroy her.”

The readings on Stephanie were too faint to pinpoint an exact year. With help from the Justice League, Bruce gets a device to allow time travel. He decides to travel to the last possible year in the range he determined, deciding that it is far better to return after her disappearance than it is before her existence.

Tim, Stephanie, and Damian join him.

Dick, Jason, Duke, and Cass stay to hold down the fort in Gotham.

Here the narrative splits. One of the four in the present time discovers the case Tim pushed aside when the paternity alert popped up. The case is cold and involves a string of strange thefts that took place while they were trying to re-capture Zachary Gate. Investigating these thefts eventually leads the present-time crew to realize that Penelope has built a time travel device of her own and has been using it.

The future time crew finds out that the Batfamily is no more. Batman was last seen five years ago. Terry McGinnis is, at this point, three years old.

“Is this the darkest timeline?” Steph asks quietly reading Tim’s wiki page over his shoulder. Older Tim is in Communications. Damian, Jason, and Cass are all missing. Dick is in Bludhaven, though Nightwing appearances are increasingly rare. Bruce is alone. Leslie Thompkins is still operating her clinic and they decide to start by talking with her.

Leslie fills them in, not just on Stephanie, but Tim’s time as J.J. (which, they realize with horror, is not too far into their future) and Damian’s recent arguments with Bruce. After Damian’s daughter, Isra Wayne, disappeared from the hospital, Damian’s marriage fell apart and he blamed Bruce for not being able to find Isra. Last Leslie heard, Damian was off looking for someone who could help. She also tells them about Bruce’s heart attack and retirement.

Instead of going to old!Bruce next, they track down Dick. Dick, at least, hasn’t completely given up Nightwing yet and may have more connections that can help them. By this point, Damian has decided to call Stephanie “Isra” and nothing else. This is what gets overheard by older!Damian who is also in Bludhaven to visit with Dick.

Older!Damian is investigating a break in at Cadmus (he’s been promised access to various tools to help him find his daughter if he helps them find the thief; Damian hasn’t completely joined up with his grandfather yet, but he is wavering) and wants to consult with Dick. When he hears younger!Damian use the name “Isra” he shadows the group. He is nearly caught by Bruce, but manages to escape.

Once older!Damian confirms that Stephanie is Isra, he calls in a favor from his mother. Talia arranges a diversion and older!Damian abducts Stephanie.

Dick is furious. He points out the ways better infrastructure could have made the attack impossible or, at least, more difficult. “When do we stop cleaning up messes and start preventing them from happening in the first place?” he demands.

They regroup at Dick’s. Dick, Damian, and Bruce bounce ideas off each other and Dick tries to contact older!Damian to no avail. Tim, needing to stay busy, looks through Dick’s open cases. One of them—a break-in at a Cadmus Lab in Bludhaven—piques his interest because it is very similar a string of thefts he’d been investigating in Gotham. He starts searching for similar cases. Damian is the first to realize the shift in Tim’s energy and calls him out on it.

Tim startles and then explains—he thinks whoever broke into the Cadmus Lab is the same person who kidnapped Stephanie (“Isra,” Dick and Damian correct) as a baby.

They re-break into the lab to do their own investigation. During the investigation Bruce notices a dropped penny. Dick doesn’t understand the significance at all. But Tim does. It was the sort of thing one would overlook. Less a clue than a taunt. They don’t say anything to the others yet.

Scene-jump over older!Damian and Stephanie. Damian is in awe of his daughter. He can’t believe how old she is, nor how much she resembles her mother. He tells her about her mom, how they met, how they played chess together, the wedding, Isra’s birth, and the terror of losing her. They talk and he asks her to remain, but she can’t.

She tells him about her life in his past, about her childhood, career as Spoiler, friendships, and relationship with Tim. She asks him to let her go.

He agrees on one condition—he goes with her.

When the others return to Dick’s from the Lab, older!Damian and Stephanie are waiting for them. Quick reunion. Bruce and younger!Damian are surprised by older!Damian. Tim shares the Lab information with Stephanie and she starts helping him crack through it. She asks about the envelope of glitter. She takes a pinch and throws it on older!Damian as punishment for abducting her.

Ultimately Stephanie is the one who finds Penelope’s true target—a microchip that can overwrite a person, creating a clone. Stephanie wonders if the chip was used for Joker Junior. Tim and older!Dick & Damian dismiss that. That was just brainwashing. Bruce, however, gets it—crimes hidden within crimes. Tim looks sick and the two future people questioning, so Bruce explains about Penelope.

Older!Dick and Damian both blanche. Older!Damian shows a picture of his ex-wife, Penelope. (Stephanie’d never met the woman in the past and so did not recognize her). Tim realizes she must have used her father to abduct Isra (he uses Isra for baby!Steph and Stephanie for his!Steph). Then she blames Damian for the abduction, divorces him, and disappears.

And she may be involved with Tim and the Joker.

“If I hadn’t created that program, if we hadn’t figured out that Damian and Stephanie are related—” Tim trails off and gestures around the room. “This would have been our future.”

“It won’t be,” Bruce promises.

“We have to go back,” Stephanie says. “We have to stop her.”

Bruce agrees and he sets up the device to create their portal home.

Older!Damian quietly squeezes Dick’s shoulder and says “good-bye” before rushing through the portal too quickly to be stopped.

“I lost her once,” he says on the other, “I refuse to lose her again.”

When the others say having two Damians is too confusing, older!Damian offers to go as “Ian Head” instead. He has the fake ID and passport to go with the identity.

(Later Ian will adopt Stephanie. Even though, as she’ll point out, she is turning 18 in a month or two and doesn’t need to be adopted. He uses paternity as proof. And the old, long forgotten news articles about the hospital lying about Crystal Brown’s baby being stillborn resurface. Stephanie keeps her first name, but changes her middle name to “Isra” partially for Ian, partially to explain he and Damian call her that. There are long arguments about whether she’ll keep “Brown” or change to “Head.” Connections are made. Media goes wild.

Talia notices the surname and that Ian’s name is just the last three letters of Damian’s. She will be stopping by for answers. But that’s in the future and not yet).

The present!time crew explains about what they’ve been doing. They tracked the thefts, concluded time travel device, and figured out it was Penelope. They have an idea for where she might be as well.

Before anyone can act on that information, though, alarms ring. The Joker is free.

They have to catch him. Someone needs to stay with Tim at all times, too. Of everything that went wrong in the future, Joker Junior was the start. It ends up being Ian who watches out for Tim. Unbeknownst to the others, however, Ian wants Tim captured. He’s hoping if he follows the Joker, he’ll be able to see Penelope. (Has this Penelope met him yet? Is Isra in her past or future?) He needs to confront her, to get answers.

So Tim is captured and Ian follows. Tim is still in his suit and tied up, rather than strapped down. Penelope arrives and Ian breaks in. His break-in diverts attention from Tim, leaving him tied up insteadof strapped down). Ian confronts Penelope, but is caught by the Joker who scolds him for being in the wrong time. Penelope and the Joker realize that the rest of the Bats might know where they are, so they need to move.

Tim finds the envelope of glitter. He has to hope that Penelope will be too wrapped up in the larger scheme to notice. He doesn’t drop a ton; just enough that he hopes Stephanie will notice.

Stephanie does.

It takes a few days, but they do find Tim and Ian. Penelope is not with them. The Joker is. A big battle ensues. Tim and Ian are rescued. And then Tim is there with a gun in his hand. And some things repeat no matter what. He shoots above the Joker instead, freeing something precariously attached. It falls and knocks the Joker out. Batman ties the Joker up and calls the authorities.

In the distance, watching, Penelope pulls out the microchip she never did give the Joker after Ian’s interruption.

And then it all epilogue. A birthday party for Tim. Ian bonding with Jason of all people. The adoption. And Ian breaking into Arkham and very quietly killing the Joker in his cell. Nothing personal, but his little girl cares about Tim and the Joker had hurt him. And, more importantly, it was time to take one of Penelope’s chess pieces from her.

And then the end.

#batman #not!fic #stephanie brown #damian wayne #tim drake #fic i want to read

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lopithecusfanfiction · 5 years

Text

A Life So Changed: Chapter Sixty-Five

Author: Lopithecus Pairing: Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne Rating: Explicit Word Count: 2517 Alternate: AO3, fanfiction.net Author's Note: Look who's back baby!! The long awaited update. I’m not even going to try and come up with an excuse as to why this took so long. I’m sure I’ve already said them enough as it is. But! I do kind of feel like I'm getting back into the writing groove so here's hoping! ^_^

Bruce lies in bed, on his side, staring at the empty spot beside him. Since passing out in the nursery, Bruce hasn’t seen Clark for four days. He knows the Kryptonian is at the Fortress, Clark does call him multiple times in the day, and he also knows Clark is keeping a close ear out on him, but it doesn’t stop Bruce from worrying. It doesn’t stop Bruce from feeling lonely.

He glides a hand over his stomach, wishing he would be able to fall asleep but no matter how tired he is, he can’t seem to manage such a task. So he lies there, wide awake, and missing his mate.

*~~~*

Bruce sits in Leslie’s waiting room with Tim by his side, waiting for his turn to be called in. There are a lot of people here today and he is sure he’ll end up being called in late. Bruce checks the time on his watch for the fifth time since arriving at the clinic. At this rate, they’ll have to reschedule. Bruce has another appointment to get to in just over an hour and he doesn’t want to miss it.

“Are you sure you’re up to doing all this today, Bruce?” Tim asks. The teenager hasn’t stopped bouncing his leg anxiously since they arrived.

“I’m sure,” he answers.

Tim shakes his head, looking around the room. “You could have just called her.”

“No,” Bruce says. Leslie finally comes back out, sending her patient off and then gesturing towards him to follow her. Bruce stands, continuing. “I need to hear this in person. Stay here.”

He follows Leslie to a room in the back, far from the waiting room so no one has the chance of even overhear their conversation. Once the door is shut, she gets down to business. “So, how has your pain been?”

Bruce shrugs, sitting down on the edge of the examination bed slowly, one hand supporting his bulging stomach. “It comes and goes. I’ve fainted again since the last time I was here.”

“And what about any more dissociations?” Leslie asks as she jots things down on her clipboard.

Bruce shakes his head. “Not since I came here the first time.”

Leslie nods at him, looking up. “How’s your pain today?”

“Right now?” Bruce shifts, feels the spike of pain go up his back. “About a five. It mostly hurts when I move right now.”

“And dizzy spells?”

“Those… are a lot more frequent.” Bruce rubs at his head. “Same with the headaches. They kind of… correspond with each other now.”

Leslie continues writing. “What about nausea? Are you throwing up a lot?”

Bruce, again, shakes his head. “Not really. I threw up the last time I fainted but not since then. The nausea, however, is there. I’m honestly kind of afraid I’m not eating enough.” He bites his bottom lip, wondering if he should continue. “I went through this phase once, Leslie, in which I didn’t eat nearly enough to sustain me and the baby. It wreaked havoc on my system and I got it under control but, in hindsight, now I realize that what was causing me to not eat back then were basically the symptoms I’m having now. Just, now they are just more intense and more of them. The thing is, Leslie, is that I can’t seem to get it under control again.”

“When was the last time you ate?” she asks, eyebrows furrowing in concern.

Bruce thinks about it. “Lunch.” She raises an eyebrow, waiting for Bruce to elaborate. “Day before yesterday. I’ve been too nauseous to eat since. I-I-I keep feeling like I’m going to throw up. I’ve tried, Leslie.”

Leslie is nodding, sympathy radiating from her eyes. “I believe you, Bruce.”

Bruce rubs at his eyes, feeling his head getting light. “I can’t do that again. What I did before when I wasn’t eating. I can’t get there again.”

“Have you tried anti-nausea medication?”

“No,” Bruce replies. “It was suggested to me by my doctor but only if it persisted. With all the other symptoms and since I was still managing to eat when I drank ginger tea to settle my stomach, I didn’t bring it up again with him. But now the tea isn’t working.”

“I can prescribe you some medicine for it then.” Leslie jots another thing down on her paper.

“Leslie,” she looks up, “there’s actually one thing in particular I came here for.” He shrugs. “Well, to ask you actually.” One of Leslie’s eyebrows rises in question. “Can I survive a C-section?”

She stares at him, for a long time, studying and thinking. Then, with a frown, she says, “I very highly doubt it.” Bruce’s heart sinks. “Bruce, you are extremely weak right now. You wouldn’t survive childbirth let alone surgery.”

Bruce bows his head, takes a deep breath to compose himself, and then looks back up at her. “What about, Lara? Would she survive it?”

“And avoid the strain of childbirth being put on her?” Leslie inquires. “It’s possible but I can’t guarantee it.”

Bruce nods, thinking it over. If it’s the only card they have to play… “It’s good enough for me to keep it as an option,” he says out loud and then hops off the bed. “I have to go, Leslie. I have an appointment with my OB doctor.”

“You know,” Leslies leads him out, “you could just come to me primarily.”

“I know,” Bruce says. “But let’s be honest, Leslie. You aren’t a specialist in pregnancies. And besides, I can’t let my OB doctor get suspicious.”

“Well,” Leslie pats him on the shoulder and continues in a whisper, “I don’t think any doctor would be a specialist in your kind of pregnancy.” She smiles, loving and warm.

Bruce smiles back. “Thank you, Leslie.”

“You take care of yourself, Bruce. And if anything changes-”

“I’ll come straight to you,” he finishes before her. He leans down, pecks her cheek in goodbye, and then ushers Tim along.

Bruce gets behind the wheel when they arrive at the car, starting it up right away, and leaving to his next appointment. The silence is almost deafening until Tim speaks, loud in the quietness of the vehicle. “So? How’d it go?”

“As well as expected,” Bruce answers, side eyeing the omega. “Tim?” The teenager hums to let Bruce know he’s listening. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

Bruce takes a deep breath, focusing on the road. “For the fact that you can’t have biological kids with Conner.”

Tim is frowning, turning away to look out the passenger side window. “It fine. It…” The omega shakes his head minutely. “We can always adopt. There’s…” Bruce can tell Tim is trying hard to keep it together, to stay strong. “There’s no difference.”

Now Bruce is frowning, turning into the hospital parking lot. “The love you feel for them is no different but there’s still… there’s still a difference between biological and adopted.”

“Bruce,” Tim is looking at him now but Bruce refuses to look back as he parks the car. “I of all people have no problem with adopting. Hell, I probably would have done so anyway whether I could have my own or not.” The young teenager shrugs. “Plus, there’s always artificial insemination.”

They sit there in the silence once more, Bruce’s hands clutching the steering wheel and Tim facing him. Bruce doesn’t really know what to say, feels like he might have said something wrong but isn’t sure what. Finally, he settles on, “I don’t love Lara anymore than I love you, Tim.”

“I know, Bruce.” Tim pats him on the shoulder and then opens his door. “We better get going.”

When they get into the hospital and his exam begins, everything goes smoothly until they get to the ultrasound. “The baby’s heartbeat sounds a little… slow,” Doctor Harty tells him. “I must stress to you, Mister Wayne, how important these visits are. We’re definitely going to want to monitor this and make sure everything is going smoothly.” He prints out a picture of the ultrasound image and then starts cleaning Bruce’s stomach off. “I want you to start coming at least once a week if not more if things start to worsen.” Doctor Harty looks at his chart. “You’re blood pressure is high and combined with your baby’s heart rate being slightly slower than average is concerning.”

“I understand, Doctor,” Bruce tells him.

“Get plenty of rest, Mister Wayne.” Doctor Harty pats his knee as Bruce pulls his shirt down. “Don’t strain yourself and try to keep stress to a minimum.”

“I will.” Bruce gets off the bed.

“I’ll see you next week then,” Doctor Harty says, handing him the ultrasound picture. With one last smile, he leaves the room.

Tim is studying him from his seat in the corner. “You good?”

Bruce doesn’t answer right away, lost in thought. He knew he wasn’t doing good and he knew Lara was struggling but having proof of his daughter struggling to stay alive, having to listen to the slow beat of her heart, albeit not by much, is troublesome. “I’m good,” he finally tells Tim and they walk out, leaving the hospital to get to the car. When they arrive, they both are surprised to see Clark leaning against the vehicle, arms crossed.

When Clark sees them, he pushes off and gives the two a sheepish smile. “Hey.”

“Hey, Clark!” Tim says enthusiastically, handing the Kryptonian the ultrasound picture. Clark gazes at it fondly. “What are you doing here?”

The alpha looks up from the photo, smiling warmly at Tim. “I was wondering if I could borrow this handsome man for a little while?”

Tim looks between them, falling into an awkward shuffle. “Yeah, sure, I’ll, um, call Alfred to come pick me up.” The omega then walks a few paces away, pulling out his cellphone.

Clark chuckles after the young teenager, amusement coloring his laugh. When done, he holds the photo up. “She looks good.”

“Her heartbeat is slow.”

Clark’s smile turns into a frown. “I know.”

Anger rises in Bruce’s chest, the hurt of not seeing his mate for days on end coming to the forefront. “You knew and you didn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

With a growl, Bruce pushes past Clark and gets into the passenger side of the car, knowing Clark won’t let him drive. Clark gets in behind the wheel and they drive out of the parking lot with silence hanging over them. It’s not until they are in another parking lot, overlooking a park, that Clark speaks again. “It’s sunny today. I thought we could take a little walk. If you feel well enough too, that is. Maybe some fresh air will do you some good.”

Bruce doesn’t want to but he doesn’t protest, angrily opening his door and storming out as best he can in his current condition. He hears Clark sigh heavily as the Kryptonian follows him out, catching up with a short jog. “Bruce, wait!” He grabs a hold of Bruce’s shoulder and Bruce stops in his track, close to a bench just in case he needs to sit down. The wind blows on his face slightly. It feels good.

“What?” Bruce asks, terse. He’s not really in the mood for Clark’s excuses as to why he’s been so distant.

“Listen,” Clark starts. “I know you’re mad at me for being away for so long but I was hoping we could talk about something important.”

“Oh?” Bruce comments, sarcasm leaking into his words. “Have you found a way to save Lara’s life?”

Clark’s lips grow thin, the alpha contemplating his words. “...No but-”

Bruce turns to leave. “Then we have nothing to talk about.”

“Bruce, please, I need you to just listen to me. This is important.”

Shaking his head, Bruce stops, annoyed at Clark but mostly frustrated at himself for even falling for Clark’s tone of desperation. He twists again, facing the Kryptonian. “What?” he snaps.

Clark studies him, looks at him closely and then takes a hesitant step forward. “I would really love to have you not pissed at me when we have this conversation.”

With a tired sigh and a roll of his eyes, Bruce pushes his anger and hurt to the back of his mind, storing his emotions away for the time being. “Fine. What’s so important to talk about?”

He sees Clark swallow hard before speaking. “I want to bite you.”

Bruce blinks at the alpha, mind trying to play catch up with what Clark had just said. It’s not something Bruce had been expecting to come out of Clark’s mouth. “What?”

“I want to bite you. Become official mates with the whole shebang. A bond.”

“You’re joking.”

Clark’s eyebrows knit together. “No, I’m not.”

Bruce shakes his head, his own eyebrows furrowing together in puzzlement. “Well, the answer is no, Clark. I’m not letting you bite me.”

“Why not?” The Kryptonian asks, confusion showing on his face.

Bruce softens. “Do you know how much it hurts to lose a bond from death, Clark?” Clark face turns painful, though the alpha tries to hide it. “If we can’t save Lara, then you’ll have to experience the pain of losing that bond with her. I’m not going to add mine too.”

“But-”

“Clark, listen to me. Losing someone... losing someone you are bonded to from them dying, is one of the most painful things we, as humans, have to go through,” Bruce explains. “When Jason died, it felt like my whole world was falling apart, it felt like I was dying. I’m not going to let you go through that pain with my death.”

“You’re not going to die, Bruce,” Clark insists.

“Yes I am!” Bruce doesn’t mean to yell, looks around to make sure no one heard him. He takes a quick, deep breath, regains control. “Yes, I am, Clark. I am dying. I am going to die and if I can help it, you aren’t going to feel that any more than you already have to from the normal grieving process.”

Clark shakes his head, takes another step towards him, hands out as if to take Bruce’s. “It’s my life, Bruce, isn’t that my decision to make?”

Bruce weighs that in his head, chews on his cheek. Finally, “No.”

“No?”

“It’s my body, Clark,” Bruce says. “I’m not letting you bite me.”

Bruce has hurt him, he can tell by the slight frown of Clark’s lips and shine of Clark’s eyes, but the truth is always painful. Clark lowers his hands and bites his bottom lip. They stare at one another for a long time, listening to the bird songs that come with the beginning of Spring. The wind blows again, ruffling both of their hairs. Clark starts walking, past Bruce.

“I’ll bring you home,” the alpha says, voice void of any emotions and not looking at him.

Bruce stands there for a few more seconds, trying to push the heaviness in his chest back down and swallow the lump in his throat away, before finally turning and following Clark back to the car.

A/N: Just as a reminder to all of you, no matter how long it takes me to update this fic, I will never abandon it. This will be completed at some point, even if it takes me forever to get there.

#DC Comics #SuperBat #Superman #Batman #Clark Kent #Kal El #Bruce Wayne #A Life So Changed #My Fanfiction

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