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smokeybrand · 3 years

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The Cape and The Cowl

A friend of mine posted a meme questioning who would win a fight between Doctor Doom and Batman. My gut reaction is to say it’s real bad for Bruce but, as i thought about it more and more, i kind of feel like its not so cut-and-dry. There is a lot of nuance that needs to be considered between the two characters rather than just a “smash the action figured together” scenario. Of course, there is the surface stuff like how would they interact generally? What would the catalyst be in order to incite said conflict? Why would Doom even see Bruce as a threat? If you think about it objectively, an all things are even, to Vic, Batman is just a crazy person losing his are on crime in a raggedy ass city. Victor von Doom is a the reagent of an entire country with a GDP that rivals some superpowers in the MCU. Like, the USA has diplomatic relations with a blip in Eastern Europe, because Doom has the military power to wreck he US in open aggression. Latveria will lose in a prolonged conflict, that’s just a question of resources, but that little country would absolutely inflict upon the US in a slow bleed. Imagine the War on Terror but with competent leadership and actual, discipline, military strategy. Why the f*ck would Doom care what the f*ck is going on out in Jersey? More than that. the similarities between the two characters is staggering.

We all know the origin of Batman. We’ve seen that sh*t how many times now? It’s like getting a new Spider-Man joint and having to watch Uncle Ben die all over again. It’s trite at this point but so essential to the character, we need a refresher every time Bats shows up onscreen. That trauma informs everything he is, as it would if you watched your parents gunned down in cold blood as a child, and then laid with their still warm corpses for however long until the police came. What a lot of people don’t know is the origin of Doctor Doom. Being a villain, Doom rarely gets his motivations explored outside of some megalomaniac Dr. No type f*ckery. However, Victor von Doom is a person. He started out life as a happy kid and learned to be Doctor Doom, just like Bruce learned to be Batman. Doom is actually a refugee. True, Doom was born an aristocrat, but Latveria was overthrown when he was still young so he was never able to be raised in that level of opulence. His mom was also murdered before he was ten years old. Just like Bruce, Doom experienced a horrific truth that would color his world perspective for the rest of his life. Doom would eventually find his way to the US as he was brilliant. Like, unheard of intelligent and it would be his exposure to the US lifestyle, after years of conflict and struggle, which would make him realize how easy life could be if someone just did what was necessary. And then Reed happened.

Reed Richards was, is, a fulcrum in Vic’s life. They have a relationship similar to Batman an Superman but the opposite. Whereas Batman values Clark’s perspective because it helps him keep perspective, Vic finds Reed to be absurd. He sees Reed for who e is and doesn’t understand why no one else can. Reed Richards is a reckless, excitable, short-sighted, glory-hog. He is. If you read the character with any semblance of realism, you’d see that. Ho many times has Sue comments on how she and the rest of his family, take a backseat to science? How many times has Reed, himself, sacrificed a relationship or to, in service to the solution of an equation? Doom saw all of that in college. Reed represents the structural issues of the world and it frustrates Vic to no end. In some continuities, the genesis of Vic going full Doom rest on an accident Reed commits because of that shortsightedness. It goes a long way to checking Reeds ego and he does become a better person for it, but it was at the cost of scarring Vic for life, both physically and mentally. Yet another example of the system, ruining Doom’s life.

Bruce, after his trauma, has kept a strong support system. First and foremost, since day one, he had Alfred. Doom had no one. Bruce then built a family, adopting all of the children and surrounding himself with love. Doom’s one true love died and was dragged down to hell. We know this because he punches out Mephisto whenever he can. Also, his mom is down there, too. Bruce eventually met Diana and Kal, becoming fast friends and life long confidants. Outside of Catwoman, I think Diana makes for the perfect romantic partner of Bruce and that is shown in several continuities. Reed just reinforced Doom’s disgust with the machinations of the world, eventually further degrading Doom’s tenuous hold of his ability to trust in others, by psychically maiming him. The negative impact Reed had on Doom’s life is f*cking profound, man. I’m not saying Doom should have taken it as far as he did, but it’s hard to argue against trying to kill a dude who had ruined years of your work, destroyed you reputation, and physically maimed you forever. That doesn’t seem wholly outrageous to me. I think it’s called justifiable homicide? The only reason Doom stopped trying to murder Reed is because Valeria was born. Valeria became the first person Doom felt real affection for, since the death of his wife. I think Morgan le Fay could be another, but that might have just been a time-space booty call. Valeria Richards and her relationship with he Uncle Doom, is what gave Vic the strength to be better. Bruce had that love his entire life, even immediately after his darkest day. Doom went decades without it.

Up until Valeria was born, all Doom had was his time spent as a destitute street rat, struggling to survive, to inform him about life and the world at large. That brazen cruelty for sure emotionally crippled him in a lot of ways, I'm not even going to start to defend his arrogance or superiority complex, but trauma does that. That's why i think Bats would eventually come around. They've both seen the absolute worst of the world and, in a lot of ways, go about righting those wrongs in the same way. If you pay attention, and the writer is worth their salt, you'd see that Latveria is an autocratic socialist paradise. Latverians are among the most literate, healthy, and happy people in the 616. Jobs are plentiful and crime is almost non-existent. Mans even cured cancer, which he made available to the world, if those people choose to make the trip to Latveria for treatment. The world of 616, at large, likes to paint Vic as this evil despot but, if you interview a laymen of Latveria, they’ll sing his praises. Most people forget that, before Doom returned for his birthright, Latveria was a whole ass occupied state. Think the relationship between Israel and Palestine. Latveria was basically falling into doorknobs for Symkaria and pretending that they weren’t in an abusive relationship. Doom showed up and changed all that. It was a bloody f*cking conflict, for sure, and i am certain Vic committed war crimes, but the end result was a free Latveria with a strong international presence. Doom is a hero to those people but a villain to other nations because of how he rose to power and, more importantly, how independent he made hi country from the world system. Doom did what was necessary to free his people, a march too far for Bruce and that’s why Gotham is the way that it is.

People who don’t know the character like to paint Vic as ego-maniacal villain, and that was valid when comics were just "hero smash bad guy", but we've grown beyond that. Every pop culture interpretation of Doom, outside of the comics, has him as this stoic, arrogant, asshole, dictator bu that’s just not an accurate portrayal of how Doom is in a modern capacity. Vic is definitely an autocrat but he’s no dictator. He can be cruel at times to specific individuals but he is generally benevolent to his people. He doesn’t portray himself as a strongman but he does let it be known he’ll nuke anyone or anything if it means furthering his overall goals which, currently, is the safety and security of Latveria. His country isn’t a police state and his people are free to do as they please but their is a line, just like everywhere else in the world. Doom just has a shorter one and enforces that with extreme prejudice. I’m not going to sit here and say everything is great in Latveria, it’s definitely not, but it ain’t so hot in 616 America either. How many Civil Wars have they had? What about that whole tidbit with Hydra Cap? There is nuance and gray nowadays, areas that both Bats and Doom comfortably call home. Batman is, objectively, not a pure hero. He is, at best, a chivalric anti-hero and similarly, Doom is more of an anti-villain than the mustache twirling, boogeyman, mastermind pop media portrays him to be. Batman and Doom are basically the same person, with the same motivations, only Doom is willing to go much, much, further than Bruce; A difference in method you an attribute to their respective upbringings.

If Doom had the same support system as Bruce, he’d create miracles. We’ve seen glimpses of that throughout the years. Dooms last run culminated with him essentially obliterating an entire universe where he had the support necessary to build a proper utopia. Our Doom couldn’t fathom the choices made by this variant Doom because of how broken he is. If Bruce was alone in his formative years like Victor, he’d commit atrocities. We’ve seen glimpses of that over they years, too. There are various narratives that explore just such a tragic turn of events, explored in the Death Metal series of books. Dawnbreaker immediately comes to mind. Bruce and victor are the same side of the same coins. It's literally a crap shoot as to which side of the alignment chart either leans. And as if to inform my point further, we just recently had Joker War. That book went a long way to exposing the absolute necessity of raw force, in order to properly “save”Gotham. Joker was able to completely dismantle that entire city by attacking the machinery put in lace to make it run. He effectively proved that The Batman was part of the problem and would never be the solution because Bruce doesn’t go far enough. He puts out fires but never address the sparks which start those blazes. He doesn’t go far enough. He never will. His code won’t allow him to. But Doom can. Doom did. Honestly, if you really want to keep it real, what is Bruce's endgame? What does a healthy Gotham City look like? It looks a lot like f*cking Latveria.

So to answer this question outright, i don’t think they even fight. The way this hypothetical was set up had three rounds: the first being a standard donnybrook, the second being prep time, and the last being god mode. To be perfectly honest with you, it wouldn't make it past the first round. If i had to say, with pedestrian or normie level understanding of he characters, Doom sweeps all categories. For Round one, Doom’s armor trumps all of Batman’s gadgets. For Round Two, Doom has more resources at his fingertips for prep. For Round The God Emperor Doom exists. He created several realities and killed a few Beyonders. Batman sat in a chair which gave him access to all the wisdom in the multiverse, and realized there were three Jokers. Doom all the way. My informed opinion as someone who adores both these character more than most would have me think there wouldn’t even be a conflict to begin with. I think they’d investigate the inciting catalyst, meet in person with intent to attack if necessary, size each other up until one of them made the proposal to just talk, they'd converse, and the fight would end with both of them walking away from each other with begrudging respect. Doom would admire Bruce's will and Bruce would understand the necessity of Doom's position in the world because, if you can make it make sense, Bruce will usually agree. Batman, for all of his shortcomings, is not naive to the world. He’s seen the same darkness as Doom. Doom, for all of his pompous arrogance, understands the struggle to maintain faith in those around you, even if that noble aspiration is misplaced. Bruce is one bad day away from Doom and Doom is a decades worth of days from being Bruce. They mirror each other and i think they’d see that, taking each other as cautionary tales before becoming collaborators. I don’t see them ever really becoming friends but i don't think they’d ever be true enemies.

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dumbkiri · 4 years

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Fate Changes Final

Parts: [1, 2, 3, 4 ,5, Here ]

Summary: Not every star-crossed couple has to have a tragedy end like Romeo and Juliet. The end of [Name]’s note proves that.

Pairing: Jason Todd x Female! Reader

Genre: Fluff? Slight angst?

Word Count: 2.1 k, 6 pages (pretty short)

Warning(s): NONE..for once lol

A few days later…

“I get why you’re doing it,” Dick walked up from behind [Name], staring up at her Batsuit in a glass enclosure, “although, I will miss you on the field. Nobody really fights like you do.

”[Name] scoffed with a smirk on her face, “Do you ever get bored of complimenting people? Is that a skill others can acquire? I’m very interested.” She turns around with her arms crossed over her chest. Her [e.color] eyes had lost their color. Dick would describe it as a thin film of sadness covering her bright [e.color] hues.

“If you are interested, I can give you lessons on how to ‘woo’ people.” Dick placed his hands on his hips and smiled down at [Name].

“Now that you mentioned it, I’m not a simp,” [Name] laughed at Dick’s funny reaction. Her childish laughter echoed in the cold Batcave.

“I’ll ignore that for now,” Dick’s smile faded away when he redirected his gaze to the enclosure. He never imagined that she would retire from being Batgirl. She didn’t stop fighting crime when Jason died. His death only fueled her. Even after death, Jason was still her motivation. “So what’re you going to do now?”

[Name] sighed and uncrossed her arms and followed Dick’s own pose. She leaned on one leg and rubbed the back of her neck tiredly, “Actually, that’s what I was going to discuss with you guys.”

Dick awaited her response in anticipation.

“I, uh, got a job as a kindergarten teacher, it’s something I always dreamed of-- well at least, w--when...whatever I don’t have to explain. This is embarrassing enough for me.” [Name] stopped sputtering and ignored the incredulous look she was receiving from her best friend.

“I can’t believe it!” Dick exclaimed and hunched over from laughter. He held his sides and his body shook with happiness. He straightened up and noticed the deathly glare from the female. He wiped the tears from the corner of his eyes and breathed out, “Wow! The Brave Cardinal is now a kindergarten teacher? I just can’t believe you go from fighting thugs to caring for younglings.”

[Name] turned her back on Dick and huffed, “Laugh it up, but I want to live a normal life.”

She faced him with a determined look and pointed at herself with a newfound confidence, “I am going to live a normal life and have a normal job. I’ll start a normal family and have normal problems. If I want that then I need to retire being Batgirl.”[Name]’s eyes connected with Dick’s, “And I hope you guys, are fine with that?”

Dick smiled at [Name] with kindness and with hope, “Of course, all that we ask of you is give us a visit from time to time. Alfred would love some normalcy in his life.”

“I can manage that,” [Name] giggled and raised her arm up, her hand in a fist. Dick formed his hand into a fist as well and they both bumped their closed hands together,

“See you soon, Dick Grayson.”

“See you soon, [Name] [L.Name].”

Three Years Later…

Bruce held the bundle of joy carefully in his arms. He stared at the baby girl with wide eyes as his arms adjusted to a comfortable position. Then he looked up at the mother of the child.

“Why are you staring at me like that? It’s embarrassing…” [Name] looked away from Bruce with a blush. Her hands fumbling with each other.

Dick jumped up in excitement while Tim choked on his coffee when they saw The Bruce Wayne holding a child no older than two years old. Dick ran over to Bruce with the biggest smile on his face. He reached out to the baby girl, but Bruce pulled away.

“Dick, I just got the chance to hold her,” Bruce muttered.

Dick’s shoulders slumped and he backed away to give [Name] a bone crushing hug. He lifted her off the floor and spun her around. The two of them laughed at the happy situation. Dick finally set [Name] down and asked his questions. “This was the surprise?! How come you didn’t tell us sooner? Where is Henry, I thought he was going to be here too?”

[Name] chuckled, “Henry had some business with his employees and told me to introduce you all to the new family member.” Her [e.color] eyes looked over to her baby girl. Alfred was helping Tim hold the baby, but Tim was stiff as a statue.

[Name] looked back at Dick and announced loud enough for everyone to hear, “Her name is [D.Name] Martha Davis. We had trouble with her middle name, but then we thought of Bruce."

The older woman looked at her mentor with a kind smile, "Henry and I wouldn't have met if you didn't introduce us together. We are so grateful that you did because you guys granted my wish."

"And what was that?" Tim asked, holding on [D.Name] carefully. He was lolling her to sleep without even noticing it.

[D.Name]'s [e.color] eyes watched her mother with a certain shine in them. Her [h.color] hair was fluffy and short. People said she was the spitting image of [Name] and the mother couldn't deny.

[Name] placed her hands on her hips and walked closer to her family, "A normal life."

……

There's so many things I want to say to you. So many apologies. So many acceptances. I know that moving out of Gotham was something unexpected for you and I knew the news devastated you. I was also feeling the same way.

We never really got the chance to love each other right. I think we missed those chances. But I'll never forget the fleeting moments between us. They were nice while they lasted, right?

I missed that Christmas night when Bruce held an event at the manor. You had to attend because you were his ward and you invited me as your date. Everyone was dancing and I remember when you walked up to me with that goofy smile on your face. You asked me if I wanted to dance with you. I declined and your smile just disappeared.

So later that night before I left the manor, I went into your room to surprise you. I hope you remember this night as much as I do. You opened your door and oh god, you were so surprised. I still remember that funny look on your face. Makes me laugh every time I think about it.

I asked you if you wanted to dance with me and you happily agreed. You didn't hesitate at all. So you started up the music on your favorite station and what would be our song, Fly Me to The Moon, played. You held me so close that I could smell the faint cologne you had put on earlier. You smelled like chocolate and mint.

I know you did because all you ate at the party was chocolate and the mint? I still have no idea why mint. We danced almost all night and I ended up staying the night. You let me sleep in your bed even though there were plenty of other guests rooms. You just wouldn't let me go and I wasn't complaining.

That's when I found out you were Robin and Bruce was Batman. Then for some reason, there was a push. Like someone was telling me to join you two. Fight the bad guys. Bring justice. Enforce fear. You two were the dynamic duo in my eyes. You had this incredible chemistry that I longed for with somebody. That I wanted in a family.

So I ended up being Batgirl. Those were the days. Fighting crime with Batman and Robin. I thought I was dreaming for some time. But once I got a punch to my face, I knew the pain was real. That I wasn't dreaming.

You protected me on those patrols. You fought for me. You took bullets for me. Knife wounds. Bruises. You did everything in your power to make sure I was safe. That I would come back.

I wished I did the same for you. I wasn't there for you in your time of need. I didn't read your letters for weeks because my life in Metropolis was so consuming. I didn't do what you did for me. My guilt consumed me so much that I forgot how to be me.

I returned to Gotham, but like you said I was too late. I came into the manor with my belongings and Alfred told me Bruce was searching for you. That you ran away to go kill Joker. I waited all night in the living quarters for you to come back home. Bruce returned with nothing. He couldn't find you.

Then we got a video. I never felt so disgusted with myself. I never felt so hurt watching you be near that maniac. Joker, he was all fun and games. He brainwashed you till the point where you were going to tell him who Batman was.

I jumped at the sound of the gunshot. I cried at the sound of your body dropping. I fell to my knees at the sound of Joker laughing.

My heart broke so much that it was beyond repair. I did what I did best after your death. I took out all my anger and frustration on the vermin in Gotham. I took out all my shame and guilt on me. I was keeping watch on Harvey Dent one night and I got a call from Alfred. He was speaking so fast that I couldn't understand him.

All I got in that sentence was Joker, your name, kill and Batman. Our mentor was going to kill Joker. I sat on the roof for a minute thinking, 'Finally, finally Batman is getting rid of the stupid clown.' He deserved to die. The Joker was nothing, but the darkness in Gotham City. But then I came back to my senses.

I know, you hate him. You have a damn good reason to. I hate him as well, but we can't dictate who dies and when. We don't have the authority to plan or think how a person should die. So I ran.

I ran. I jumped. I rolled. I stopped.

Batman had Joker in his hands. A tight grip on his neck and if Bruce squeezed any harder, he would have killed the deranged clown. I watched on scared. The man who taught us the one important rule was going to break it. He was going to break the rule.

"We are no better than them!"

That's what I shouted. That's what got Bruce to release Joker. I was relieved that I stopped him from crossing that line. Because once you do, you can't ever go back.

I'm sure you heard that Joker died. It wasn't a gruesome death, no. It was a sickness that got him. And I think it's ironic. Joker was a plague in Gotham City. And he died from an illness. He died.

I lived on for months always dreaming of you. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw you. You were my everything. You were my protector. You were my Romeo. And I was your Juliet.

Our paths have never touched. Yes, we held hands. We kissed. We hugged. But we never were on the same page. And that is what breaks my heart. We were star-crossed lovers.

Joker was the one to separate us. He was our outside force. Another reason why I hate him so much. He took you away from me.

But our love doesn't have to end. Our story doesn't have to end like Romeo and Juliet. I'm not saying we can be lovers. I already said we missed those chances. But what I am saying is that we can still be in each other's lives.

And I want you to meet somebody. It's been a long time since we last talked. It's been three years? I heard from Dick that you're coming around lately which is great. I often come back to the manor as well.

I live in Gotham now, close by Wayne Manor for various reasons. The main reason was because of my daughter. She's two years old and if you saw her, is basically, she's the spitting image of me. I want you to meet her.

It sounds selfish. I know. But you're still a part of my family. You will always be a part of my family.

I want you to know I love you, Jason Todd. I'll always love you no matter what. And in an alternate universe, I hope that our fate changes.

Your Juliet, [Name] Davis

------

“Hey can you slow down a bit? It’s difficult to run in a dress!”

“I told you that we were going outside! It’s not my fault you don’t listen!”

A teenage girl huffed after the male in front of her. His midnight black hair soaking in the sun. His red shirt and black pants showing off his built body. She watched as he stepped over a creek with ease and he turned around just in time to help her hop over it.

He held her hand gently and smiled at her, “The dress does look good on you though.”

[Name] blushed and lost her footing. Her body ended up bumping into the boy and they fell onto the flower bed. “Oh, Jason! I’m so sorry about that! These shoes aren’t good with grip and-”

“My god, [Name], do you talk this much when you’re this flustered?” Jason chuckled and reached a tentative hand toward her face. She leaned into his palm and sighed in content while he stared at her.

“Jason, what are you thinking about?” [Name] questioned staring at the male with worried [e.color] eyes. She adjusted her body on top of him where she sat on his lap still facing him.

The teenage boy sat up with his hand remaining on her delicate face. His blue eyes reflected the bright blue sky. “I just, I’m glad we’re together. I was afraid that you’d reject me and that your parents would refuse my courting toward you.”

[Name] grabbed his hand and traced circles on his palm. “Yeah, I’m glad too. I don’t know what I would do if we didn’t have each other.”

Jason smiled and whispered, “I love you, [Name].”

She heard his words and stared at him with wide eyes. Then she made the first move. She moved forward and pressed her lips against his own soft ones. [Name] pulled away and noticed the pink tint on his cheeks.

“Can we do that again?” Jason asked and before he could get another kiss, [Name] stood up and brushed her dress. Then she started running toward the castle where Jason was crowned prince.

“Only if you can catch me, your majesty!” [Name] laughed running ahead.

Jason had this familiar goofy smile on his face and he jumped to his feet. He proclaimed, “Oh I will and when I do, you won’t regret it!”

And in an alternate universe, I hope that our fate changes.

......

TAGGED Fated Changers: @anotherfan07 @httpfandxms @greyxdaze @zalladane @iwriteaboutstuff @cutiepoo16 @kaylinfayezink @thescottpack @izzieg3987 @loxbbg @seymoourr @terralupa @backstagepaige @downtownbabyyeah @http-used-eraser @laggyphone @osejn @realityshifter111 @ishanequa @ryryryleigh @fvckthebatboys

#Jason Todd #jason todd x reader #jason todd imagine #alternate universe #dc #dc universe #dceu #arkham knight #x reader #red hood #red hood x reader #red hood imagine #batfam imagine #fate changes #ending

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cetaceans-pls · 4 years

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A Piña Colada, Heavy On The Piñas (Bru&Jay)

Charity commission for @setsailslash who is both charitable and a massive enabler. Thank you for being kind as you empower the neurotic middle-aged man within me

Through costumed vigilanteism, Hawaiian shirts, and corned beef dinners, Jason and Bruce rebuild a relationship one day at the beach at a time.

Batman - All Media Types, Bruce Wayne & Jason Todd

On AO3 here.

Charity comm info here.

And away we goooooooo.

It doesn’t happen often, that Batman needs to work a case outside of Gotham for long enough a stretch that Bruce Wayne has to announce an impromptu vacation and actually follow through with it. There are whispers that human traffickers in the Caribbean have decided to crawl up the East Coast, with Gotham now a hotspot of terrible activity, and after months of trying to put the fear of Batman into the gangs with little abatement, it’s time for a vacation right at the source. Things are getting tumultuous, and time’s of the essence. If he doesn’t step in now, he won’t be able to for months, probably, and that settles it.

Bruce Wayne is going to be in the Bahamas, baby, and Batman’s going to be busy in Cuba while they’re down there.

As has become tradition by now, any longish-term work trip abroad means that someone has to come with him. You almost die of three gunshot wounds and a side of dysentery one time in Zambia while hunting meta-animal poachers, and suddenly you aren’t allowed to travel internationally without a chaperone. If the villains of the city could see him now, oh.

(He still hares off on missions that are far, far too dangerous for any of his brood, despite their vehement protests about how he defines their competencies and his need for support, but that is one of the many, many hills Bruce would be happy to die on.)

Bruce clears his schedule for a good two weeks and sends a memo off to the League, before pulling up the family chat group up on the mainframe. The single most secure and heavily-encrypted messaging service in the world, more impenetrable even than the system outfitted for the Justice League, and the five most recent messages have Dick spamming eggplants and Damian growing increasingly incoherent with rage while maintaining perfect punctuation.

It’s in response to a photoshoot Bruce did earlier in the year for a charity event. He’s mostly naked and it’s mostly tasteful, right up until Dick drops the eggplants, but better to get phallic symbols from his children than from the spam his corporate Twitter gets, probably.

Maybe.

Time to recruit a chaperone; it’s only 3 in the morning, he imagines everyone’s awake, except for Alfred. Alfred never goes on his trips with him, anyways, so it doesn’t really matter.

(Tim had said it was like how countries don’t let their presidents and vice presidents fly in the same plane; losing one is unbearable, losing both is apocalyptic. Bruce thinks it’s terribly flattering to be the vice to Alfred’s stoic leadership, even if he would never say it.)

B: One week trip to Cuba to look into the Contreras trafficking ring. Pick amongst yourselves who will be joining me.

Every single time he lives in the vain hope that all of them will have a serious discussion to figure out schedules and weigh the merits and demerits of their skill sets against what’s needed for the mission at hand.

Every single time, the person who accompanies him is the person who replies first.

Bruce is completely and utterly unsurprised to see Stephanie, Tim, Dick, Cass, and Damian typing, even though Damian at least should have been asleep hours ago.

Bruce is surprised by who’s first past the post.

J(ustin) T(imberlake): FIRST FUCKERS

That is, indeed, a first.

Maintaining his calm is touch and go for a minute there, but peace comes back, eventually, along with the absolute revelation that Jason has willingly chosen to accompany him for the next two weeks. He would think it was an emergency signal, a call for help, but Jason hadn’t used the monkey-with-its-hands-over-its-mouth picture, so.

It’s so idiotic, they’ve been somewhat reconciled for years at this point, but in the dark of the cave Bruce cannot resist the giddy, hysterical smile that takes him by the mouth.

They plan to take the private jet to the Bahamas, and a couple of hours before departure Bruce takes great care to be seen having lunch obnoxiously at a luxury hotel. He’s kitted out in a Hawaiian shirt and flipflops despite the grey miserable snow decorating the streets of Gotham, all for maximum annoyingness. According to their agreement, Jason will be squirreling himself aboard the jet as the pilot; he’s likely already there. Bruce, meanwhile, jovially requests a takeaway neapolitan baked Alaska despite the fact that:

Le Chevalier does not do takeout

The concept of a baked Alaska is probably offensive enough for the head pastry chef to consider ritual disembowelment to preserve her honour

Ice cream is far, far too pedestrian for such an establishment

For better or for worse, billionaires do tend to get their way, and after tipping the wait staff four times their monthly income to see them through the near future, Bruce wades through dirty snow to get to Alfred and the car waiting to take him to the airport.

It might have been meant as an insult, that his dessert order is in a beautiful glass container wrapped up in aluminium foil to look like a crinkly swan from a dodgy buffet, but he mostly just thinks it’s charming.

He hopes Jason will, too.

“You took your sweet ass time.”

Bruce doesn’t dignify that with a response, placing the ice cream-laden swan on Jason’s lap. He looks painfully normal in a crisp white shirt and dark slacks, hair neatly tucked under a pilot’s cap. Not for the first time, nor for the last, Bruce wonders what it would have been like to successfully raise a single child to be happy and normal. If Damian or Tim called him tomorrow and said they wanted to become accountants, even his experienced investigative mind can’t predict how he’d react.

“It’s dessert,” he says, instead of talking about accountants. “It’s good to see you, Jason.”

Jason squints at him, before tipping his jaunty little hat. “Welcome aboard, Master Wayne. It’s a pleasure to have you flying with us.” He’s pitch-perfect as a courteous pilot, though the feral does come out a little when he rips the swan’s head off and eats the ice cream meringue like it’s a hamburger, held in his hands and staining his pristine white gloves.

Bruce is very proud of himself. An entire 3 minutes already, and they haven’t argued yet. “Thank you for agreeing to help on this mission,” he says with studied casualness as Jason bites off a hearty chunk and makes a pleased sound when he hits ice cream. He doesn’t ask why are you here , because Alfred taught him better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Collaboration is an important part in crime-fighting, and-”

Jason’s laughing, and Jason’s definitely laughing at him, but that is still not them screaming at each other, so it’s still a win. “Old man, I’ve been up to my literal goddamn eyeballs in cocaine cleaning out the Escabedos this past month, the universe owes me a break. Nothin’ like crippling a trafficking ring, you know how it goes.”

It can’t be helped; Bruce’s eyes drop to Jason’s legs, as he tries to figure out if the slim cut is capable of hiding a couple of Jerichos. Jason catches him doing it, and his grin turns into a bright show of teeth. “If you’re looking for my friends, they’re stowed in cargo. C’mon, Bruce, as if I’m gonna roll through security with thigh holsters.”

The slacks hide no guns, but there are distinct lines where the fabric draws taut across Jason’s thighs. Bruce quirks an eyebrow.

“Loaded thigh holsters,” Jason corrects himself, rolling his eyes. “Now go and have a seat, I’m gonna lose my fuckin’ mind if I don’t have a welcome drink in a hollowed-out pineapple in like 5 hours.”

That’s all right; Bruce has a box full of rubber bullets that fit perfectly into any of Jason’s top 3 preferred guns. He’s got a whole host of techniques to counteract Jason’s less savoury habits, and the baked Alaska is merely the start of it. When Batman puts his mind to trying to kill with kindness, it’s a fearsome sight, and Bruce is putting everything on the line for this trip to both 1. Address the kidnapping and distribution of Cuban doctors into the world of black market medicine, and 2. Get Jason sweet enough on him that Bruce can extract a promise for weekly dinners home at the Manor.

It’s a big task, but he’s got the Caribbean and the family chat group on his side; Bruce feels closer to invulnerable than usual, as he nods brusquely at Jason and leaves the cockpit.

He’s brought plenty of reading material for the flight; a solid fifth of it are notes on Jason’s likes, dislikes, and peccadilloes. As the jet begins to taxi, Bruce neatly writes down ‘Welcome drink in pineapple (alcoholic?)’ in the Like column, and takes a moment to appreciate this littlest of little victories.

They separate on arrival, Jason disappearing with the ground crew, Bruce going through the rigmarole of being very loud and very attention-grabbing in the airport terminal. It’s all been cleverly planned; after the flight, they would get some time to themselves. Jason can head straight to the beach villa, if he wished, while Bruce will be going around Nassau like a very visible, very good-natured, concussed idiot.

By the time they meet up for dinner, the sky’s gone dark, Jason’s gone a deep glossy brown, and Bruce is nursing the standard headache he gets when he has to pretend he enjoys being a billionaire playboy. Bruce had considered splurging on a fancy seafood dinner for their first night here, but Jason isn’t and has never been the type to be moved by money, so instead he comes back to the villa with a bag full of corned beef and conch stew.

Jason takes a look at the selection, and snorts. “Did you for real not get us any rice or fries or anything?” He peels the lid off the stew before the answer comes, and is slurping it right from the lip like it’s a glass of milk.

Bruce is horrified but also a little amused. It’s likely a rite of passage for a lot of parents, learning to buy separate servings so that when your children inevitably grubby up the food, you still have a plate to turn to. He goes at his own meal with as much dignity as an exceedingly bendy plastic spoon can afford.

It’s delicious, and sitting on the darkened balcony nibbling on a worryingly tough bit of conch while his dead-not dead son guzzles soup like a garbage disposal come to life, Bruce feels exceedingly human and quietly, deeply happy.

Maybe Jason hadn’t been the only one who had needed a bit of a break. There are some crises that are hard even for (especially for) the Batman.

He melts into the feeling and just listens as Jason, who seems to be in an unusually chatty mood, talks about all the little things that he had filled the evening with: how the Caribbean felt on his ankles then his knees then the whole of him, the taste of soursop ice cream on a hot day, and the absolutely atrocious carving of a monkey made of coconut that he’s bought for Damian.

Bruce can’t remember the last time he’s heard Jason sound this casually at peace with anything; it must have been many, many years ago, when Jason was in the dreamlike sweet spot between being newly-adopted and so sure that it was all a cruel joke, and when he was Robin and the desire to make the world just and fair had him baring his fangs. He knows he did wrong by Jason, but it really would be nice if he could figure out where it was he had misstepped, instead of just when.

All children should be able to sit on a beach with their parent and almost choke on beef when they start laughing so hard a bit of it goes down the wrong pipe as they recount Dick’s latest quest to be Tinder’s most popular ass shot.

“Dick’s great loves are his family, being a good man in a bad world, and the entire region of his body between his nipples and his knees,” Bruce says, mostly an honest observation of his eldest, which makes Jason choke in earnest now, wheezing and laughing and potentially dying of corned beef.

It’s one of the better dinners Bruce has had.

Nips2Knees: Okay there’s no need to go changing usernames just because you two are having a great bonding experience!!

Nips2Knees: What is this even supposed to mean?! Alfred’s gonna shame me next time I show up for breakfast Jay honest to God

A few hours after that , and the Batwing is skimming the waters breaking against the sea walls of Malecón, Havana. People are still up and about despite it being the wrong side of midnight, but the jet is also a submersible, so as soon as Bruce and Jason have clambered across the low barrier the entire ship just quietly, ominously sinks into the water.

“That’s never gonna not be creepy,” Jason says, shuddering theatrically in the warm breeze of the late night.

“You never used to have a problem with the sea,” Bruce hears himself saying, and wonders why his brain hadn’t seen fit to stop that dumb little observation.

Miracle of miracles, Jason just shrugs. “There’re just a hell of a lot of ways to drown, what can I say?” He tugs his leather jacket to sit more neatly on his shoulders, looking strange and a little alien for a whole host of reasons. The white streak, the imposing build, the strange luminescence of his green eyes, just.

Jason Todd is a magnet for attention, which Bruce is glad for right now because it gives him an excuse to very carefully not think about if rebirth in the Pit counts as a drowning, and if blood flooding the lungs counts as a drowning, and if-

He fixes his wig, fusses with his fake, full beard. “Your disguise isn’t exactly Havana at night, Jay.” Leather jacket, linen shorts, a neon pink shirt. When a breeze comes by and the pant legs flutter, the gun holsters flicker in and out of sight.

They’re loaded, clearly, and not with rubber bullets either despite Bruce’s considerable efforts.

It’s as smooth a deflection as Bruce will manage. The hook lands, and Jason is even polite enough to give a nibble as he takes a once-over of Bruce’s look for the evening. “Rich comin’ from you, B, you got a dead possum on the head and the chin, and you kinda look like a depressed middle-aged man who’s gonna go home to Nantucket and splurge on a top-end sit-down lawnmower ‘stead of communicatin’ your mid-life crisis to your wife Nancy.”

Bruce self-consciously pats his padded belly, a paunch disguising enough tech and weaponry to topple most democracies. “This is top-quality virgin hair,” he defends his costume. “The Batman can’t be seen here, but what is yet another depressed man past his prime? It’s the perfect disguise.”

He can’t remember that he’s ever worn socks underneath sandals before, and this much moustache is making him want to sneeze, but a loud oversized Hawaiian shirt smoothes over the wicked angles of grappling hooks and batarangs like magic made of bad taste. It’s better than a pair of glasses, for god’s sake.

Instead of railing against Bruce’s definition of ‘a perfect disguise’, Jason just stares at him for a long while, dead-eyed and silent. “B….. B, I need you to be honest with me right now, this is some life or death shit right here. Is that, for the love of literal Christ, a wig made of your own damn hair, you absolute fuckin’ weirdo?”

“Of course. Who else’s would it be?”

Some seabirds startle when Jason shrieks with laughter, and Bruce looks around to make sure they haven’t given away their position, even if the area is pretty deserted.

“You’re a fucking leather-face cosplaying virgin , B, god, you’re killing me right now, I literally know how that’s like.”

“ Jason!” Bruce scolds him, aghast at he’s not even sure what.

Tim D: Is everything okay why is Bruce called the Virgin now

Tim D: I can go pick you guys up but one of you is gonna have to do this art history paper instead

Tim D: This better not be you two getting high I was grounded for 2 months the last time somebody in my school smoked a joint and you two are off your heads in Cuba smfh

Havana’s architecturally the stuff of dreams, if you dream of human flight powered by cables and grappling guns and dapper scarves taking the place of aerodynamic capes. Absolutely stunning buildings, built low and sturdy and pretty, festooned in ornate decorations and art deco carvings that jut out like they’re begging for a hook and a swinging man.

Bruce’s clothes are double-sided, with the outside looking as pedestrian as possible while the inner lining is really the ghost of Ghillie suit futures. Where couples make out by the sea at two AM, he’s just an amiable foreign man trotting around with socks that go up to almost his knees. When he needs to get altitude or go a little invisible, it’s a little bit of indignity in an alley somewhere, and he’s off as he hopes he remembered to turn out both socks this time.

Jason’s patrolling the docks, on assignment to trace the exit route the smugglers are taking. Bruce is reasonably sure nobody’s going to die tonight; Jason’s trigger happy tendencies are tightly correlated to the annual income after tax of the perpetrator at hand, with some allowances made for the power dynamic between the criminal and the victim. With enough time, Bruce thinks that he could come up with an excellent formula that describes Jason’s prescription of murder, but for now he’s pretty sure desperate men trying to survive by way of smuggling other men isn’t going to be a death sentence.

The kingpins in Gotham though, oh, that’s going to be a Mess.

Bruce is generally opposed to imposing justice by way of death. It’s hard to put into words exactly why that is, but it has a lot to do with lines that shouldn’t be crossed. Jason’s a lot like Diana like that; he looks at context and background and history and class, the story of a person’s life, and when he pulls the trigger, it’s with the weight of his convictions behind him. He’s the antithesis to the sort of killer Bruce would be; somebody with a checklist for a brain, and if a person passes the critical mass of allowable crime, they’ll be put down.

They’ll all be put down, whatever their motivations, whatever their stories.

He mostly wants Jason to stop killing because he worries that some trick of not-quite-genetics is going to kick into gear, and Jason’s going to become as bad as Bruce, and then where will they be?

It’s pretty standard night-time musings; it’s not the first time Bruce has thought about how not a god nor any meta-human could ever compel him to formulate a kill switch for his children. It’s not even the first time he’s done it in the shadow of a massive bronze bell in a cathedral, really. It’s a first time with a beard, though, so never let anyone say that he didn’t try new things.

A man in a crisp white linen suit cuts across the plaza in front of them, like a glowbug in the humid darkness of a Cuban night. Bruce squints, and yes, it’s Orian Contreras, right down to his glossy moustache and his leather loafers, the man to turn to if your underground fighting ring or brothel needs some illicit medicine men.

Luck’s in the air tonight; Bruce had thought it would take days of tailing the small fry before he would even clap eyes on Orian, but here we are.

The Vedado district is filled with terrible, no good, horrific crime against Bat-approved architecture. All glass and steel and the absence of cornices and sticky-out drainpipes, god. The similarity to downtown Metropolis is absolutely appalling. Orian, at least, has the makings of a classic Gotham villain, because he arranges to meet in the Colón cemetery on a moonlit night, where mausoleums and sturdy granite Jesuses are as plentiful as the streetlights are rare.

Bruce is sat on the shoulder of a particularly fearsome avenging angel who’s threatening the entire eastern quadrant of the cemetery, and the amplifier hanging around her thumb helps him listen in on Orian’s important and extremely dull meeting a few hundred feet away. Logistics, even the logistics of human trafficking, are a lot more boring than one would tend to expect.

One of Orian’s men is talking about the diesel cost per square foot of shipping container when a shadow alights on the angel’s other shoulder. A slip of pink is still visible around the hips, but Jason looks surprisingly well-camouflaged just from zipping up his jacket and sitting in the odd-angled way the youths tend to, breaking his silhouette and his shadow.

“Anythin’ good, B?”

Everything that’s being said is being recorded, Bruce reminds himself when his first instinct is to go shush. Nagging Jason for shirking the docks to come by is only legitimate after he’s checked the status of Jason’s progress.

A second taken to double-think things through is an hour saved of being angry with each other.

So Bruce just shakes his head. “A list of names of crooked export officers, some plans around next month’s shipment. No mention of the big players, or where they’re getting the doctors.”

There’s a sharp crack of a tupperware being opened, and suddenly there’s roasted corn being waved in front of Bruce’s nose. He isn’t hungry, but he takes it anyways. He’s forgotten what the metabolism of someone in their twenties is like; it vaguely reminds him of when Dick had first become Nightwing, and had kept kit-kats stuffed down his temperature-controlled gauntlets. Where in his costume Jason had managed to keep takeaway, Bruce can’t even guess.

“We-ll, it’s all quiet on the docks. Can you imagine, a legit work-life balance, with no poor underpaid dockhand unloading shit at fuck AM? Crazy. And there’s just less crime overall, too. I only needed to beat up like two muggers in the past four hours.” There’s a crisp crunching noise from where Jason’s sat; it sounds like a taco of some sort. “Got a list of ships that routinely go to ‘Canada’, allegedly, which’re probably our best lead for transport.”

“Good work, Jason.”

Jason doesn’t immediately reply, and they just settle in silence for a while. Somebody is politely asking why they couldn’t hold these meetings in their offices, or at least at a restaurant or something, and Orian starts what can only be a 20-minute diatribe into how he has standards , and how suspicious it would be to have twelve men sitting around a table whispering very quietly in the middle of a restaurant, you idiot , etc., etc., etc.

Gone to the place where Bruce is not quite part of the world, a meditative state that’s somewhat restive but leaves him ready to roll into action at the slightest provocation, he startles more than he would like to admit when Jason leaps off his perch to land with the barest of thuds on the plinth bearing their angel.

He looks down, at his son.

Jason looks around, at this little township of the long dead. “I know some really amazing poets got buried here, so I’m gonna go for a walk and pay my respects to my fellow dead. You got shit under control here?”

Bruce nods, astonished that Jason took the effort to seek him out, and is taking even more effort to check in with him. Their villain is at this point talking about how money didn’t grow on trees, and how they were supposed to be a professional outfit. The Cuban accent is lilting and sounds half-a-step away from song at the best of times; it’s a little bit of a shock to the system to hear a crime lord sing-song his way through complaining about service tax. It lends an air to the unrealness of the night, and as Jason disappears into the maze of tombstones, Bruce tries to take a guess about who he’s going to go visit.

Dulce María’s buried here, he remembers that from his deep-dive into Cuban history and culture. Her name had been familiar; he had seen some of her works on Jason’s bookshelf way back when. He had remembered her the way he remembers the things Jason likes to read and Tim’s preferred brand of rechargeable AAA batteries; he remembers because they’re important to someone important to him.

There’s a poem she had written, and it had stuck in his memory after he had consumed every bit of writing in Jason’s room in those early days of burning grief.

The corpse of a pond is the mirror:

It’s a ghost

Of a living water that shone one day,

Free in the world, lukewarm, suntanned.

Does Jason know that he has always been and always will be the pond, Bruce wonders. Will Jason ever realise that the corpse and the ghost is always, always Bruce, literal death notwithstanding.

It’s heavy thinking for this late into the night, so Bruce tucks the thought away, and returns to the cold corn given to him by a warm son.

PennyOne: @TheVirginBrucie Master Bruce I fully appreciate your concern for my wellbeing in these sickly times, and I do understand that I am at somewhat higher risk with my age, but if you do not stop making all the electrical appliances in the kitchen spritz me with disinfectant if I so much as look at them, I will be very cross with you.

St. Ephie: Yo Alfie supplexed the coffee machine when the hidden nozzle got him right in the eyes B you better watch yo back

Days two, three, and four pass by in much the same way. Jason goes out to enjoy the beach and hoard weird gifts for people, and Bruce sleeps by whichever window lets in the sound of the ocean best. They have dinner together, which feels a little more miraculous day by day, and then they take the Batwing to Cuba in the deep dark night.

It’s surprisingly restive and productive. Day three is when Bruce finds out that the Contreras recruiting campaign involves having crooked Ministry of Health officials going to medical schools and recruiting junior doctors for ‘service abroad’, ostensibly as part of the important Cuban tradition of exporting skilled doctors in times of great need. Nowadays doctors and nurses are needed more urgently than ever, and a lot of doctors are saying ‘yes’ out of a sense of duty and a wary respect of an official in uniform.

He has a list of people who have accepted bribes and done the dirty, and figuring out what to do with it is still a bit of a concern. Handing it over to the authorities is difficult when he’s not familiar with the police here and won’t be able to hold the crooks or the system accountable once he leaves. They don’t have a Cuban League member, which is a tremendous oversight, so it may come down to getting the Martian Manhunter to come by and put the fear of something into the criminals as a deterrent while they recruit somebody for the region.

Orian appears to have kowtowed somewhat to the requests of his underlings, because on night five of this mission Bruce finds himself with a Cuba Libre, light on the rum, on the rooftop of Hotel Inglaterra. Jason’s not with him tonight, away with the Batwing to a city a couple hundred miles away that they suspect is the target of a lot of the recruiting effort.

It’s a little lonely.

He’s two tables away from where the team are meeting up, sat on a comfy sofa and the very image of a beleaguered father waiting for his family to come up after him. A few days into the trip and the beard is now starting to look a little worse for wear without Alfred’s tender loving care, but it does help sell the image of somebody at that stage of their holiday where they look both quite relaxed and very downtrodden.

Today they’re discussing pushing up the shipment date, because the underground scene is all well and good but black market hospitals with an endless supply of doctors is a goddamn cash cow at the moment, on account of a global pandemic and everything. Bruce had bugged all the seats on the rooftop terrace when he’d arrived a couple of hours earlier, bumbling from end to end while ooh-ing and aah-ing as he took pictures of the city lights. They’ve got a few real estate properties that they are thinking about converting into illegitimate hospitals for the rich and the desperate, and Bruce absent-mindedly sends off the locations for all these condemned buildings to Lucius so that Wayne enterprises may step in.

If the buildings are in reasonable shape, that’s extra beds for the sick and for those helping the sick, so it’s a win-win, really. After a long, long career as the Bat of Gotham, it’s sometimes such a stupid relief when a problem shows up that Bruce can actually solve with just money.

It’s halfway through a heated battle on the importance of buying air conditioning units (“It snowed in Massachusetts just last week, Nicolás, use your brain ,”) that a text pops up in the family chat.

J(ustin) T(imberlake): Doesn’t look like the smugglers have a presence here, but look at this

J(ustin) T(imberlake):

J(ustin) T(imberlake): I didn’t know flamingos existed past sundown wtf

Damian Wayne: FATHER what is THIS I must DEMAND that we acquire THESE FLAMINGOS for the MISSION.

It’s a funny feeling, to almost get motion sickness at how Damian’s texts hit peaks and valleys over the course of getting his point across, but Bruce will be absolutely damned before he brings in yet another ill-advised animal to the menagerie haunting the Manor and Alfred’s dreams.

He’s partway through composing a long, winding explanation on how the Manor didn’t have the resources to keep a flock of flamingos healthy, the numerous legalities involved in the importation of wild animals, the embargo on Cuban goods, and a dozen other reasons furnished with references, before a soft click catches his attention.

Bruce looks out the corner of his eye, and sees that the meeting must have hit a snag while he hadn’t been paying attention, and now three of the five men had their hands suspiciously tucked under their jackets, right at their waists.

The bug is pretty damn high-tech but it’s not any sharper than a human’s ears, which would imply that the man with the slicked-back dark hair closest to it is the one who’s got his finger on the trigger.

Shoot-outs aren’t common in Cuba, all things considered, but if things go south here there are a hell of a lot of tourists and staff and people just enjoying a night out here that could so easily become collateral.

Time for plan B.

Bruce presses down hard on where the belly button would be on a chubbier man, and imagines he can hear the hiss of the smoke bombs expelling their non-toxic wares from where they’re tucked into plant pots under smoke detectors.

Over at the round table discussion, there’s increasing heat in their whispered argument, but it’s thankfully cut short when the fire alarm finally starts squealing.

Bruce obligingly follows the instructions of the staff, hustling along quickly so he can get changed and scale up the back of the hotel to tail the gang. If they’re planning to ship out the ‘goods’ soon, then they must be holding the doctors somewhere.

It’ll be a good job well done if Bruce can liberate them before he nails Orian to a wall, he thinks, as they head out from the Old Town and back to Verdado, home of shitty buildings.

They might even wrap up quickly enough that they can have a week or so just being in the Bahamas; it’s an excuse to see what he can do to shore up the islands for a more turbulent future. He’s been remiss in educating himself on the development of island economies. It’s definitely not an excuse to get more time with Jason, or at least not entirely just an excuse.

Bruce stalks them all the way to the poorer side of town, to a warehouse where heavy-duty locks on the windows and doors would prevent entrance and exit. Promising, promising. He lockpicks his way in and hides near the rafters, as gelled-hair-man goes to unlock a shipping container, and drags a young man out by his arm.

He’s close enough to make out the words; they aren’t good ones.

“So you’re the rat that’s figured out how to leave its cage, yes?” Orian drawls in standard villainy, coming in close to take the boy by the chin. “Do you know what we do when little rats like you try to hurt our important work?”

Once again, a lot of hands go to waists, and the poor, poor boy shudders and shakes and does not break his gaze . “If I am a rat,” the kid says, voice high and terrified and unbelievable steadfast, “you are a rabid dog, you bastard.”

Style points for spitting right in Orian’s eyes, thinks Bruce.

Points rescinded for getting on the nerves of a trigger-happy crimelord, thinks Bruce, as he pushes off and swoops down as vengeance dressed like a dad-bod on vacation.

He really should have listened when Alfred said that sir should consider at least a bulletproof vest under the Hawaiian shirts, please.

Jason’s still splashing around the Laguna de Leche trying to take a picture of the flamingoes that is so cute that Dami has enough motivation to badger the great Bat of Gotham into bring home a screaming shitting pink bird in the Batwing, when the call comes through on the comms.

“‘Lo, what’s up?” he answers, squatting awkwardly to get a close-up of a sleeping flamingo’s face. An absolute moneyshot, baby.

“Jason,” and it’s Cass, terse and urgent and unhappy.

Jason’s got no idea what’s going on, but it’s easy for the hindbrain to infer; Alfred not being on the comms means he’s prepping the med bay, which means an injury. This time of the night, it’s always one Bat or Bird at home with Alfred while everyone else spreads out like the good version of a plague to blanket Gotham, so that’s why Cass is there. Jason’s the one being called, which means he’s the one closest to the crisis.

It’s Bruce, it’s got to be (stupid fucking ) Bruce. Jason’s racing for the Batwing before he thinks to even answer.

“Hit me.”

“No comms contact. Injury, bad injury. Alfred says, bleed out. Jason, help .”

There’s swamp mud on the shiny surface of the ‘wing, and there’ll be more on the interior because it’s not exactly the time to stomp around on the Welcome Mat to clean his boots. “I’m gonna go fetch, Cass, so don’t worry, okay?”

God love her, Cass actually sounds reassured. “Thank you,” she says, careful and sweet as anything. “Location sent, Jay. See you at home?”

“See you in a bit, kid.”

God actually fucking damn all modern aeronautic engineers for never seeing fit to give jets some fucking accelerator pedals. It’s hard to take your aggression and stress out on a vehicle when all the thrusters are fucking hand-held.

God extra fucking damn Bruce McBatman Wayne, for having Jason over as back-up and refusing be backed the hell up.

Bruce’s location comes up, along with his oxygen level and pulse, and god only knows how Alfred sneaked a sensor onto a man so pro-secrecy he gets his flu shots undercover.

It’s Colón cemetery, of fucking course it’s the cemetery, no one can ever say that Bruce isn’t the marquis of modern melodrama, and Jason decides it’s acceptable if he just screams the whole 200 miles back to Havana. This is his penance, for being strung out on coffee at 3 AM and spontaneously deciding to try and reconcile harder with his father.

If the man has the cheek to die, Jason’s going to legitimately lose his fucking mind (again).

Bruce looks down, and sees his son.

Jason is cursing up an absolute storm, blue enough to potentially rouse the mothers buried here who will tut at him and go “Language, young man!”. What a sight that would be, an undead legion of parents scolding a dead-now-alive vigilante man in front of a different man cosplaying middle-aged normalcy on its deathbed.

Wild. Bruce laughs, and then wheezes. Blood loss does a number on your breathing, just one of those things that he doesn’t often need to think about. Does a number on your ability to think normal things too, but he’s like that even when most of his blood is inside his body, so Bruce would hate to make excuses.

“What the fuck is wrong you, there are like a bajillion hospitals you could have gone to while undercover, why are you always like this?” Jason is doing that scream-whispering thing, that skill learned by all night-time vigilantes, as he rips off Bruce’s shirt to survey the damage.

It’s not particularly pretty. Taking out half a dozen armed men in the full suit wouldn’t be enough to make him break a sweat, usually, but dressed like a casual dad with his centre of gravity a little off from the equipment strapped to his belly, it was a little harder.

Add to that trying to incapacitate without killing or even seriously injuring anyone while weaving in between gunfire as he kept the kid from getting shot, and all in all it’s a downright miracle that Bruce only has three through-and-throughs in shoulder, gut, and thigh, and maybe three cracked ribs. He eventually managed to subdue Orian and his men, cuffing them in an empty container to be dealt with later. He had also released all the prisoners while sluggishly bleeding out all over, and had barely been able to escape their confused gratitude.

Their usual rendezvous point is by the seawall in Malecón, but the cemetery was closer and more convenient for a dying man, you see. When he had ascertained that he had lost enough blood that he legitimately would pass out and bleed to death before he could get help, he had finally given up and called the Cave.

Alfred, damn him, had somehow already known that things had gotten out of hand. Bruce is willing to bet the beard wig is bugged, which is an intriguing bit of imaginative engineering, but even complimenting Alfred on his ingenuity hadn’t preserved him from being chewed out while Cassandra interjected occasionally with quiet calls of his name.

Black spots have been dancing in his sight for a while now, but he’s happy they’re around the edges and don’t obscure Jason. “I like your shirt,” he manages to groan out.

Jason doesn’t even pause for breath in his tirade, as he pulls out a nasty little switchblade from his boot and proceeds to tear his pretty lime-green shirt into absolute shreds. “Jesus, I don’t even get to keep this shirt, and for what? Dumbass bleeding out, didn’t even bring any first aid for a goddamn mission.” The blood-clotting powders that hide in little sugar sachets come out, poured liberally into the latest holes in Bruce’s body, and they froth a soft pink before they start to plug him up. “Why in the hell didn’t you call me in before you went full Rambo, you idiot? I thought I was here to be your goddamn backup. Was it so important to keep me and my guns away from your toys, B, that you’re happy to die in a fuckin’ cemetery just to keep shit quiet?”

It is, Bruce notes with some distant satisfaction, a new record. It took them 5 full days before Jason lost his temper with him. His heart is full, even if his veins are not.

He pats Jason on the cheek, as Jason wraps padding to his ribs and immobilises the arm on his bad side with a sling. Oh, that rum and Coke has gone straight to his head. “Just recon,” he murmurs, a little stern so that Jason doesn’t pick up any bad vigilante habits from him. “To find where the kids are kept.” Breathing hurts, moving hurts, talking hurts. “Warehouse, left tracer there. They were about to shoot one of the kids.” Another breath, a cough, some bloody saliva dribbling at the corners of his lips. Pity, Bruce had grown questionably fond of his loud overshirts. “No time to do anything. Kid was mouthy, got on their nerves.”

Bruce smiles, or tries to, and hopes the pink teeth aren’t too off-putting. “Reminded me of you. Wanted to save him.”

That’s the important part, the message he absolutely needed to pass to Jason because whatever goes on with bullets and bad guys and the Outlaws and the Pit, to Bruce all things Jason and Jason-adjacent are important and good and always, always deserve to be saved and protected.

He doesn’t think he gets his point across, worries a little that this might be a self-centered way of structuring his relationship with a man who’s no longer happy to be his son, but it’s the whole truth of the matter.

On God, on the angel at whose feet he’s huddled together, on every good thing Bruce has ever managed to do either as a billionaire or a Bat, the most important things of all the important things in the world is that Bruce is always going to try-try-try for his family.

They have a moment that might be tender but is definitely quiet, Jason slack-jawed and tense, Bruce loose-limbed and punchdrunk. There’s a lot of noise over the comms right now, it’s too much to parse, but Bruce in his head thinks he’s wrapped this up quite nicely. He probably won’t die tonight, and if he does it won’t even hurt too much. As far as missions abroad go, this has to count as an out-and-out success.

Jason very pointedly isn’t looking at him when he finally continues with his triage, and isn’t particularly gentle though he is incredibly careful as he fireman hoists Bruce into the Batwing, whose paintjob will need a touch up from where it’s scraped up against the tops of the more ambitious mausoleums.

Putting on the seatbelt felt a lot like getting his ribs broken all over again, but that’s not really enough pain to make Bruce groan, which is nice. The air-conditioning and the seat cushions in the jet are also very nice.

He’s most of the way to being unconscious before Jason’s done with pre-flight checks and radioed PennyOne to forewarn their arrival.

It probably is just his subconscious letting him hear what he wants to hear, when Jason’s voice floats towards him to let him know that “You literal dumbfuck, ever think that sometimes I want to save your ass too?”

It’s a nice dream.

When Bruce wakes up, he’s on the cot in the med bay, and someone’s been conscientious enough to turn on the heating in the mattress. It feels sublime against the inherent chill of the cave, and he feels surprisingly sharp and chipper despite the close-ish dance with death. He’s hooked up to all sorts of machines, which is pretty standard Alfred, and a bag of blood transfusing back into him hangs from the side.

If the own-hair wig had tickled Jason, what must he think of Bruce’s own-blood bag?

Keeping as quiet as he can, Bruce sits up. The family had a habit of piling up in and around the med bay whenever someone was injured seriously enough to be unconscious, and it heartens him like nothing else to see the mess of sleeping children. Damian is curled up a corner, head pillowed against what looks like a shaved coconut, and Cassandra is tucked on top of a cabinet, back pressed to the wall. Dick and Tim have staked out the sole sofa in the room, and while they both would never accept it as gospel truth, they’re both snoring lightly with their heads tipped back. Stephanie’s face is unseeable, sleeping sitting up in a hard plastic chair with her mane of hair covering most of her face.

It’s a picture of chaotic peace.

“Hello, Jason,” he calls to the son he can’t see.

Right on cue, there’s the sound of boots trying to be somewhat quiet on concrete, and Jason appears from behind him. “How’d you figure I hadn’t just abandoned you?”

Bruce shrugs. “I didn’t. I just hoped.” He cranes his neck to try and look back at Jason, but it tugs on his ribs something awful. He gives up, and goes back to trying to keep them talking. “Nothing short of sedation would have everyone here asleep at the same time. I assume Alfred had a hand in this?”

“You’d guess right.” Jason appears and hops up onto the bed, crowding Bruce in the narrow space. “You’ve been out cold for three days now, and Alfred dosed up their pancakes but good this morning. Cass is just taking a nap, though, and you know me, I need a hell of a lot more ‘n that to take me out.”

Bruce does in fact know. It’s alarming that Jason is immune to any of Alfred’s numerous League-sourced concoctions. At least part of them are magic, because half of the people in this room have gone through training so brutal they’re immune to most Earthly interventions.

Jason’s got one up on everyone there. The Lazarus Pit gives a random assortment of questionable gifts along with life, it appears. At least he got to enjoy the pancakes.

“How are things in Havana?”

“Tim and Dick went in and shut it all down. Apparently Nightwing’s got contacts with some higher-ups in the Cuban policing and judiciary system, which I’m gonna assume is because his ass makes him mad popular on LinkedIn, and Orian’s crew got picked up. We cut off the snake’s head.”

Bruce knows Jason well enough to know what’s coming. It’s not going to be anything good, but there’s something there, in having Jason drop this clear of a hint.

“And Orian?”

Jason just grins at him, a vision in a leather jacket over a fluorescent orange t-shirt that just says Morón , paired with weathered grey leggings. He looks vicious and unstoppably kind. “Like I said. Snake’s head got cut off.”

Bruce shuts his eyes, and breathes. It’s that formula, yes, about income disparity and the misuse of a position of power, preying on the goodwill of people too good to get out of the way.

Orian was a snake, and if it were up to Bruce, all of his men would have been put down too, so.

Bruce groans, and massages his closed eyes to stave off a headache. “I really wish I had a hollowed-out pineapple full of something really alcoholic, right now.”

The tension that had held Jason taut and ready for a fight upon his admission of casual murder disperses, quietly and all of a sudden, and it’s so palpable Bruce wants to groan again.

“See, I had a think about that, and I have some ideas,” Jason tells him, and even without looking Bruce knows what that toothy grin looks like. There’s the warm weight of a hand resting just ever so gently on his hip, there is quite possibly a lot of affection in the air.

He finds himself smiling right back, and it’s a good, good feeling.

(And that is how the whole family ends up joining Bruce on a weeklong holiday in the Bahamas, with long, sundrenched days on the beach and some quality parkour in Cuba in the nights.

Bruce gets three straight days of everyone in the family razzing him for being the only of them, Alfred’s lily-white ass included, to have gotten legitimately, hideously sunburned.)

(It’s the best vacation he’s had in entire lifetimes.)

A/N: On God there is nothing I like better than a bit too much depressing introspection clad in bright patterns somewhere warm and humid aaaah.

Also this is not explicitly stated anywhere but 100% all the kids have to wear Black Bat style masks with built in respirators, and everyone’s got fanny packs filled with testing kits so that they can drop them around like candy.

This is how proactive vigilanteism stopped an epidemic from KO-ing asylums and penitentiaries in Gotham you heard it here first.

#jason todd #bruce wayne #batman #charity commission #despite the s in the name #i hadn't realised until i was doing this that #the bahamas were more than one island #hope y'all enjoy the topical sprinkling of covid-19 lore #sure looking forward to when mankind buries these important lessons #under capitalism come urgh june or something #whale writing

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renaroo · 4 years

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The Ghosts You Leave

Disclaimer: Batman and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics Warnings: mentions of canon death and lonely teenagers talking to spirits Rating: T Synopsis: There is a game that is played around the cave that is difficult to explain. The game is that, in the most exasperated hours of stress, when the things that have happened on Gotham streets are too hard to express, they begin to compare notes. They compare what they have done and what they have seen.

A/N: So, in the 90s and 2000s you could not go many issues into a Batbook without someone hallucinating and casually talking to someone’s ghost and that always felt like such a weird convention in comics that went unremarked upon. Especially if you were uninitiated to it, I don’t know what you’d think about Jason’s ghost just doing cartwheels and cheering on Tim Drake. So. Here’s a fic lol

Cassandra Cain has spoken to ghosts before.

There is a game that is played around the cave that is difficult to explain. At least, it’s more difficult to explain than most of the others are willing to put the effort toward. The game is that, in the most exasperated hours of stress, when the things that have happened on Gotham streets are too hard to express, they begin to compare notes. They compare what they have done and what they have seen.

There isn’t supposed to be a winner in these kind of games, but there always is one regardless.

“Demons,” Damian remarks. He’s receiving stitches from Alfred who is curt in his actions and silent as stone. “Child stuff, really. Certainly you lot would know.”

“Honest to god,” Tim adds in the dead of night. He still has a concussions from the previous night, isn’t allowed back out. “He’s Frankenstein. Well. I suppose book accurate it’s Frankenstein’s monster. But who’s book accurate anymore?”

“Witch boy,” Stephanie chuckles, still combing out a sewer substance from her hair that is unspeakable. It’s only after what felt like hours of intently hosing and dabbing it out of the gash in her forearm. “I don’t know if that’s the right term. Warlock or something right? But if he calls himself — ba-dum-dum —“

“This meta, right, and he looks right into your soul,” Duke says lowly. There is a haunted gauntness to his face as he traces old scars. “And when you look back, something’s put there… but it’s not new. No, I guess it’s not put there. He lets something out of you and it’s already there.”

No matter how it’s said, with jest or quiet contemplation, Cassandra sees the tiredness in her friends and siblings’ eyes. It’s not an age that matches them, it’s infinitely older and more worn. She is overwhelmed with empathy for their plights.

But she is still a teenage girl, and there is a moving desire inside of her that wishes to participate as well.

“I talk to them,” she says, pulling at the already torn fabric of her newest suit. It’s cut with a blade that did not reach her flesh due to speed and flexibility she easily dismisses in the moment.

There are four pairs of eyes drawn to her as she speaks. It’s both what she wanted and not at all at the same time.

“Talk to who, Cass?” Stephanie presses with genuine curiosity.

“You,” Cassandra says without hesitation. “You had died.” She paused, then added with some accusation, “And left me.” With a breath, she eases back into sitting. “Then you came back. We talked. You told me what I needed.”

Stephanie bristles in place. This is not a time she likes to speak on, not a moment she likes to remember. But even as she opens her mouth and utters a noise, nothing can come out, it seems. It’s hard to talk about dying, especially when you’re the one doing it.

“Yeah? Well, after that whole dying thing with Shiva, I was the one talking to you! And I’ll have you know, you were a total chatterbox while in that coma!” Stephanie defends. “What was I supposed to do with that pressure? Not fight one of Shiva’s minions and defend your dead honor?”

“I didn’t get honor,” Cass counters.

“Well, after being a badass that night I have plenty to share, so I’ll lend you some of mine!” Stephanie responds with a smirk and wink.

The boys were in complete silence, looking at the two of them like they were foreign bodies floating over the stoop in the cave. Even Alfred had raised an eyebrow, gathered his medical supplies, and carried along without comment. Which seemed to say more than anything the rest of them had said the whole night.

“That’s weird, dude,” Duke broke the silence.

“I used to talk to Jason,” Tim announced, out of sync with Duke’s message. “I mean, before he was… back. I did it all the time. I would spend hours after patrol just… here in the cave. Bruce gone. And I’d look at his case and just… ask the tough questions. Look for inspiration… wonder if I was doing the right thing.”

Cassandra curled her nose slightly at this. “You… asked Jason?”

“He was very supportive,” Tim defended. “Gave great advice… made me feel… okay with what I’m doing. Like it was really making a difference.” He sniffed and rubbed at his nose with the back of his glove. “Imagine the shellshock of going from that to… well. Multiple decapitation attempts.”

Duke refocused his concerned energy toward Tim, which immediately made the third Robin prickly.

“He’s gotten…. He’s still Jason but he’s not tried to kill me since the batarang thing,” Tim argues the unvoiced words.

The heaviness of it hangs in the air as Duke and Damian seem to look between the three of them.

“I… may have spoken to my ancestors,” Damian finally acknowledges. After a betrayed look from Duke, however, he is quick to amend, “I didn’t see them wearing a sheet and saying boo, Thomas, it’s simply in the sense that… Well, with the Year of Blood and all that, there is a lot I have witnessed and my witness… is expected. It’s not hallucination.”

Cassandra frowns at this distinction. She doesn’t shift in discomfort like Stephanie or grow red in her ears like Tim, but she searches Damian’s features. It’s difficult, even with her keen understanding of body and movement, to determine what he is trying to distinguish between their cases.

“I don’t know what you guys saw or talked to,” Duke says finally. “On my tough nights, I talked to the other Robins. And now… I’ve still got Riko or Izzy or… Well, I talk to you, Cass. About… the stuff we’ve been doing together.”

Taken aback, Cassandra nods. She has not spoken to any ghostly figures lately, not since the Outsiders.

It isn’t something she’s noticed before now. But it is curious.

“That is because you are not lonely, Master Duke,” Alfred speaks up, surprising everyone from his corner in the medical bay as he cleans tools and restocks dressings. “And unfortunately, this is lonely business… when one chooses to make it so.”

The teens glance back to each other as the butler continues his work. They’re silent again, but in each other’s companies.

After all, it had not been long since each of them had uttered the immortal phrase for Alfred in that very cave.

#batfic #writing #Cassandra Cain #Damian Wayne #Stephanie Brown #Tim Drake #Duke Thomas #Alfred Pennyworth

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dcarevu · 5 years

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Batman TAS: Moon of the Wolf

“If it’s a fight you’re looking for, try starting one with me!”

Episode: 43 Robin: No Writer: Len Wein Director: Dick Sebast Animator: Akom Airdate: November 11, 1992 Grade: B

This is perhaps one of the more infamous episodes of Batman TAS, being grouped with episodes like I’ve Got Batman in My Basement on several “worst” lists I’ve seen. But I don’t know, I didn’t think it was that bad the first time I saw it, and I don’t think it’s that bad now. Not a classic episode by any means, but it held my and Char’s attention, giving us some excitement and a pretty cool-looking villain. I can’t speak for everyone, but I think the werewolf-factor may directly affect people’s opinions, even though we’ve seen very similar through Tybrus and Man-Bat. If we can accept a giant cat-like creature created in a laboratory and a human-sized bat that flies around and turns back into a human, why is a werewolf suddenly just too much to believe? Probably because of how the story presents all this, which we will get into in just a second, but I did want to drop the bomb that I like this one, and all the complaints I have are pretty light.

So when the title card drops, we get some weird electric guitar that sounds like no other music the series has played. Think along the lines of The Last Laugh with how foreign that hip hop felt at the time. But now we’re more than 40 episodes in, and we’re so used to the orchestral stuff. On top of the werewolf, a lot of people seem to have a problem with the instrument choice, and I think that the episode could have gotten around it if the electric guitar was slowly inducted, reaching its most intense during the climax. That would have given us a little time to get used to it. Even though I like it, it was jarring to hear right away, right after the theme song we get to see every time.

After the title card, we start out at the Gotham zoo. Umm.. Okay. We’re starting at the zoo again? For the second episode in a row? The zoo really isn’t that interesting of a Batman location in my opinion. If I were writing this show, that would be a last resort setting. Y’know, not only is this the second episode in a row to start at the zoo, but it’s also the second episode in a row that deals with a human-sized creature of the night like this. Was this because of the time of year? Were these originally both planned for an October release? They must have had animals on the brain. Anyway, at the zoo a security guard’s dog starts going a little crazy, and a werewolf pops out from the shrubbery. This werewolf is incredibly awesome-looking, with gross slobber, these glowing eyes, and a very high intimidation factor. The werewolf gives the guard a hard time, but then Batman arrives on the scene, kicking the thing away. Batman does not typically pop up this early without some setup, so jumping into this type of action was a nice change of pace, even if other aspects we have seen recently. Batman fights off the werewolf, but it eventually gets away of course, because we’re still early in the episode. Going back to the Batcave, Batman tells Alfred that he fought a mugger wearing a werewolf mask. Looking at the creature, it’s pretty evident that this is no costume (or at least, no costume that your average mugger would likely be able to afford to run around and get into fights in), but more importantly, I don’t know why Batman doesn’t just assume that the creature is what it is. Bringing up Tyger, Tiger again, he just fought a humanoid-animal. It’s already been established that this kind of thing can happen in this world. Let’s move on from this! Batman notices some wolf fur on his gloves, and he actually ends up testing it, revealing it to be legitimate wolf-fur. But Batman thinks that it could just be an incredibly expensive costume. Look, guys, superheroes get brain-farts too. “What if that guy wasn’t wearing a mask?” Oh, I don’t know, I guess it would be exactly like what you’ve already experienced!

We get to see the identity of the werewolf as it arrives at this little shanty, and it turns out to be some guy named Anthony Romulus. The person in charge of him, forcing him to do his bidding, is Dr Milo, someone we saw in Cat Scratch Fever. He was honestly the last villain I ever expected to see again, and had no memory of him showing up here. Um. Welcome back, Milo? Dr Milo is a smug son-of-a-gun, and is using Anthony to…well, I think he’s just using him for money, as far as I can tell, and for doing his errands and chores (like killing the security guard). I don’t know why he wanted the security guard dead, because the security guard had no idea who he was anyway, but maybe he’s just tying up loose ends. Anthony explains (after turning back into a human) that Batman got in the way of the mission, and Dr Milo arranges a plan to get rid of the caped crusader before trying to deal with anything else. The plan is for Anthony (who is a star-athlete with plenty of money) to announce that he’s doubling up on a donation to a charity if Batman receives the check. We get a little more chatter on this in another scene where Bruce Wayne is shown to be working out with Anthony at the gym. I found this part to be fairly unnecessary, but it was harmless enough. Funny, though, how some of these characters that we’ve never seen before are all of a sudden shown to know Bruce when it’s their episode to become the villain. I like how they handled Two-Face much more, establishing him before the tragic episode. Now knowing about the check, Batman shows up to Anthony’s and is knocked out with gas. Dr Milo takes his utility belt and chains him down in this open area, which is to act like an arena where he will be torn apart by Anthony’s wolf-form (I’d love to know why these criminals always take his belt before taking his mask, by the way). While Batman is still unconscious, we get some exposition on why Anthony is the creature that he is through flashback, and this flashback is a bit confusing. There is a moment where is fakes you out because the flashback Dr. Milo starts narrating, and then it goes back to the present Dr. Milo. This makes it a little harder to follow in one watch, but I think Char and I handled it okay. Anthony’s werewolf origin is okay, but I did find myself questioning a few things. Not necessarily the writers, but the characters. Like, Anthony, why were you so quick to drink that substance which would ultimately transform you? Dr Milo said it hadn’t been tested. It could have immediately killed you. And for what, some gold medals? This puts a bad taste in our mouths over this character because of his willingness to cheat to succeed. He has his face in cereal commercials, being exposed to tons of people around the country and acting as a role-model to many of them, but he’s a filthy, rotten cheater. I also have to question Dr Milo. His plan is insane. Tricking someone to drink a solution that turns them into a werewolf so you can then control them by dangling the antidote in front of their face, getting free work and cash from it? I mean, whatever works for you, but there’s gotta be something a bit more inconspicuous. Throughout this, it’s hard to tell who to cheer for, but I think that at this point, Anthony has learned his lesson. It’s obvious that he finds Dr Milo’s work reprehensible. Dr Milo has absolutely zero redeeming qualities.

Shout out to the director (the show does little Easter eggs like this all the time, keep your eye out!)

Anthony changes into the wolf once the moon comes out (Milo’s scientific explanations never explain how the hell this works) and attacks Milo, throwing him through the wall of the shanty. Damn! Batman, before being attacked, comes to and finds a pin on the ground, using it to pick the locks that are keeping him restrained. I hope Milo provided that on purpose, and for the sake of me liking this episode, that’s what I’m gonna imagine. Otherwise, that is just way too convenient (and allows the writer to dance around Batman actually finding a clever solution). Now free, Batman and Anthony have a fight which moves to a rooftop where they are visible to the Gotham police force, being led by Bullock. It’s a really intense battle, and I couldn’t help but get into it. Oh, I’m aware that this episode is all style and very little substance, but hey, if it works it works. Not every episode needs to make me question morality and life itself. Just give me some dumb action every now and then with an awesome soundtrack and spooky vibes. Unfortunately, the fight comes to a close when Anthony is struck by lightning, and falls into the water below. Pretty stupid way to close out.

Oh, a highlight that I forgot to mention is when Bullock is interrogating the zoo security guard about the missing timberwolves. He pushes the dude right up against the cage, and we can see their jaws snapping, clearly getting agitated by the ruckus. “I want the truth before I decide to feed ya to your furry friends here.” Apparently the term “furry friends” can sound intimidating as hell if it comes with a slick accent like Bullock’s. Not only does Bullock get this moment, but when Batman and Anthony are on top of the roof, Bullock yells at the officers to not fire, and to let Batman handle the situation. This may have been to avoid conflict considering that, well, it’s a scary god damn werewolf which could easily eat all of them if it wanted, but I also like to think that after 40-ish episodes, Bullock develops the tiniest hint of faith in Batman. He’ll probably always be the cocky, sleazy oaf that we’ve known from the start, but it’s nice to see a little bit of development from such an unlikely episode. And that’s not worth nothing.

Oddly, looking back, Batman was never clued in on the entire steroid-situation like we were. I don’t even know if Batman figured out the identity of the werewolf. What an odd feeling. I don’t want to call it an oversight on the writing side of things, but this must be the first time that Batman just didn’t solve the mystery. Huh. Maybe Dr Milo is right, then, and he’ll get away scot-free. Then again, Batman is pretty smart. There are sure to be all kinds of clues lurking within that shanty.

I know I complained a lot, but that’s mostly because the logic was certainly not all there. I don’t grade these episodes based on anything but my enjoyment-level, though, so…

Char’s grade: B

Next time: Day of the Samurai Full episode list here!

#dcau #dc animated universe #moon of the wolf #btas #batman tas #batman the animated series #werewolf #halloween #batman #wolfman

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