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#Obsessed with this version of Jason
betterthanbatman1 · 6 months
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Jason Todd Red Beanie appreciation post
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kosalus · 2 years
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crown him with many crowns.
get the print here
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punkeropercyjackson · 4 months
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@ Y'all 'Percy has a thing for blondes😏' and 'Omg Walker is blonde that means Percy IS Nico's type now XD' weirdos liking and reblogging my posts:Don't make me tap my title
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sadiewayne · 17 days
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jason todd is a folklore/evermore girly and i will die on this hill
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enobariasteeth · 7 months
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hedonistbyheart · 10 months
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*Minding my own business scrolling twitter*
*Sudden Ai no kusabi clip*
Oh hi boys! it’s been literal decades since I last saw you guys. Guess this randomising of the feed is good for something after all.
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sirtaliesin · 9 months
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Justice League Dark (2017)
Screenshots part 13
part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
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what if i wrote a fix it for countdown where jason ACTUALLY goes through some of the character development that they were so clearly building up to....what if......
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toast-on-dandelioms · 4 months
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Just Another Neglected Story
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Part 3
You can find part 1 and part 2 here!
(For this part I am using they/them to talk about reader/you, but if you know a way to talk about reader without using you or they/them please tell me!)
Months passed and Spider was now famous amongst Gotham, known for stopping small gangs that bothered the neighbourhood but also helped them go back to school or find a job.
Spider was mostly famous for not immediately sending people to jail like most vigilantes, they helped if they could and didn't immediately fight and hurt people.
And Batman liked it, he wanted to know who was the person behind the mask, and to finally meet the famous Spider so his kids will stop fangirl over them.
Plus, by the video footage found by Oracle, it seemed like Spider was very good at fighting and quickly capturing with a type of web shooter, with the webs that dissolved in an hour or two.
Bruce was more interested as days passed by but his information about Spider didn't increase, since Oracle could only find so much by asking and no one knew much about the vigilante except generic stuff that almost anyone knew.
His sons were also interested in Spider, as they saw the vigilante as someone similar to them by seeing them fight to their moves when swinging by with a web shooter.
It was like a mini version of them and it amazed them.
Dick was amazed at how good Spider was in gymnastics like him, giving him the need to go with them and just practice together since his brothers were flexible but not like him.
But Spider was, they were almost similar to Dick which fueled his interest even more. He wanted to practice tricks that he did in the circus with them.
He could finally bond with a shared interest with someone and not seem weird.
Jason was interested at how good they were at fighting and sometimes using a gun if the enemy had one.
He saw how quick they were at disarming someone with a gun and using it against them, even if they were slightly injured to which he would always pay a visit to the person who hurt them in prison.
After all, they don't deserve to live if they dare to hurt Spider, even if it was just a scratch.
Tim was interested to their gadgets and especially how they could walk on walls, wanting to know everything about them and see if they use gadgets like them and Batman or if they're a metahuman.
He saw how strong they were, especially when they held a bus full of children that was almost falling off a bridge, while Superman was fighting a supervillain and couldn't come to their aid immediately.
Even though he found out who was Batman as a kid, Spider was a cryptic for him. Even with the help of Oracle he couldn't find anything useful.
And it was starting to drive him insane from the need of knowing everything about them.
And last, but not least.
Damian saw them being an inexperienced fighter but a resourceful one, seeing how they used the walls and everything they could find as a weapon if it helped.
He wanted to spar with them once, having the strange need to help them improve and also show off how good he was at fighting, wanting to be praised by them.
He didn't even know why since he never needed any praise from any of his brothers or his father, but he desired to be praised by that person.
The funny thing is that not one of them knew the real voice of Spider, as the vigilante used a voice modulator to sound different and distorted in the recordings that Oracle sent them regularly.
But even without knowing their real voice, the obsession that all of the batfam had just kept growing.
All of them wanted two to three things when they're gonna finally meet Spider for the first time:
• wanting to hear their real voice
• seeing who is hiding behind the mask
• recruit them to work with them as a vigilante and maybe even live with them at the Mansion.
But alas, whenever they tried to get to them, when they were done dealing with anything, the vigilante was always gone or immediately walked away using the walls.
To which Batman and all his sons tried different methods but the vigilante was always ready, avoiding their attemps to talk and never even giving them a word.
Usually small vigilantes, in the eyes of Batman, were always so eager to be acknowledged by such famous vigilante like him, but Spider was different.
Spider hated the attention they were getting and it was obvious, even though the mask didn't really make it see but their movements clearly showed frustration.
Or at least, they hated the attention they got from the batfam. Especially Batman and Damian, they avoided them the most.
Plus the middle finger they always did whenever they knew a security camera was on them was the cherry on top. It's like they knew that Batman was watching them and wanted to told him to fuck off.
But spiders can't hide forever can they? After some time, everything gets found.
And that's what happened that fateful night for the Batfamily, as they finally managed to locate where Spider usually hang out.
It was a bit difficult since Spider always moves after a week or two, maybe less if found out but this time they made sure to be more ninja-like.
They also got the help from Duke with his ability, just to make sure it was the right spot from seeing what happened in the past hours of the day.
Batman, even though he didn't want to, also asked for Superman's help, just to make sure he could catch Spider if they tried to escape.
He preferred to have all bases covered, just to be safe than sorry. Even though it did hurt his pride to ask Superman for help.
They all waited in the dark, knowing Spider usually comes to relax after a few hours of patrolling and helping around the streets.
Batman made the signal to stay silent when he heard the noise of the webs sticking to something and slinging around, waiting in silence with everyone with anticipation.
He stared in silence when Spider landed on the roof of the building, making a small noise when he saw Spider starting to take off the mask.
(Now it's reader/your pov now)
You stopped when your spider senses tingled, making you look around suspiciously and letting go of the hem of your mask.
You noticed many figures on the dark parts of the rooftop thanks to your heightened sight (?) and sighed, activating the voice modulator in your mask, doing that just to not give them any leads to your civilian identity.
You didn't know if they were enemies that were mad that you sent them to prison or someone they knew, so your guard was already high.
You stared at the dark parts before using your webs to capture one, thinking it was gonna be a criminal wrapped around your webs but just imagine the surprise when you saw that it was Red Robin.
You immediately knew what was going on, especially when you saw Superman flying towards you so you raised your hands in defeat, knowing you couldn't possibly fight against trained vigilantes, plus Batman and Superman.
You got down and freed Red Robin from your webs, using a pair of scissors you had in your bag pack that you always carry around in case you accidentally hit someone innocent with your webs.
You got up after finally finishing freeing Red Robin from the webs you wrapped him into, patting him on the hair out of habit of doing that with small kids you accidentally wrap in your webs.
You never hurt any kids, it's just that they accidentally got trapped in the webs and you had to free them and calm them down.
You looked up to see Batman in front of you, a bit creeped out at how silent he was since even your heightened hearing couldn't hear him. It was like he floated like Superman, but you knew that didn't happen.
You glared at him, a bit glad that your mask couldn't show your expressions, so they couldn't read them and use your own emotions against you.
You refused to give him or any of his sons something to use as leverage to manipulate you or making you think they actually wanted to spend time with you.
You started to get annoyed at the silence, especially since you just wanted them to go away, so you just started the annoying conversation that you hoped to avoid.
You also knew what they wanted, it was obvious since not one of them even called out your name so you knew they didn't know who you were behind the mask.
They were interested in Spider, the formidable vigilante and not interested in (Y/N), the forgotten child of Bruce Wayne.
"What do you want Batman? I don't think I am a criminal, so why are you bothering me?" you ask annoyed, the voice modulator making your voice distorted, so that it didn't even sound close to your real voice.
It was a nice add that you had to make, knowing that people would try to find out your real identity and usually voices are a clue, so modifying your voice with a device was the best thing to do.
Even though you never talked much when you were in your civilian clothes, but it's better to be safe than sorry.
Batman stared at you with the usual scowl that Batman always has, also showing no emotions.
He then started talking in his gruff, you don't really know how to describe his voice, but you knew it sounded completely different from when he's Bruce Wayne.
But the hatred and annoyance that bubbled up when you heard his voice was immense, having to take all your control to not punch him in the face.
The only thing you were glad about is that he was someone that immediately gets to the point, not wanting to stay even five more minutes with him and his so called 'batfamily'.
"I want you to join me and the Robins, your strenght, fighting skills and your intelligence when you use the objects and space as an advantage would be extremely helpful when fighting villains like Joker" he started, stopping with a confused expression when he heard laughter.
He looked down and saw you laughing, even though it sounded wrong and distorted thanks to the modulator. You almost kneeled down from how much you were laughing at his proposal.
He didn't know what he said to make you laugh so he waited for you to calm down, looking at Nightwing and Red Hood to see if they knew why you were laughing.
You stopped after a bit and just looked at Batman with no emotion, not that the mask showed it.
Your voice also came out with no emotion, like you didn't even care about Batman and his proposal. "I shall refuse this proposal Batman, I am not strong enough to fight villains like the Joker. I am more interested in helping people with small problems and small thefts since the police will do nothing to help them."
You grabbed your backpack that you left on the ground and got ready to leave, stopping to look at Batman and the other robins/vigilantes with him.
"Please don't follow me, I do not want to be bothered by you trying to convince me to join a team. I work alone" and left, using the buildings to swing around the city to get to another rooftop to use as a place to relax.
(End of your pov)
What you didn't know was that when you left, the other vigilantes glared at Batman, since he didn't try to butter you up and manipulate you.
Plus, Damian was glaring at Tim for having the privilege of being patted on the head by Spider in person. He wanted to be petted too, he wanted to be acknowledged by Spider.
Dick was glaring at Bruce and actually started an argument with him, trying to understand why he didn't even try to use one of his many manipulation tactics to have Spider join them.
Superman just stayed on the sidelines, a bit surprised that someone hated Batman, since he always saw people admiring the man.
Except Hal, usually he says it without anyone asking that he hates Batman. But he doesn't count.
Well he left after a bit of watching Dick, Jason and Bruce arguing, following Spider and finding them on another rooftop.
He looked away when he saw that Spider didn't have their mask on, not wanting to see their real identity without their permission.
He also made a loud noise so Spider could notice him and put their mask back on. He looked after a bit and was glad that he didn't accidentally had a face reveal without permission.
He landed next to Spider and stayed silent for a bit, noticing how smaller and skinnier Spider was compared to Red Robin or even just Robin.
He hummed when he understood that Spider wouldn't start the conversation and looked at them with a smile.
"Sorry to bother you, I'm not here to ask you to join Batman or even the Justice League" he started, a bit surprised when he saw Spider relax a bit.
It was a strange sight, seeing that someone doesn't want to join the Justice League but he wouldn't judge. Everyone has their reasons and he can't change everyone's mind.
Spider looked at him, curious about what he wanted if not to scout them in the Justice League. They were also amazed at how Superman looked in real life, since Spider always saw him on TV or on the newspaper and never met him face to face.
Superman smiled at Spider, floating down and standing next to them on the rooftop of the building "want to grab something to eat and talk? I just want to know why you want to be a vigilante".
Spider just kept looking at him before nodding and walking on the side of the building nonchalantly, knowing Superman was following them.
They stopped at a hotdog stand, still walking on the side of another building and tapped the shoulder of the worker, scaring the poor man that was working there.
Superman immediately apologized about scaring the poor man when the man shrieked and let a hotdog fall from his hands, glaring at Spider who was obviously laughing silently by the way they trembled with their hands over their mouth.
He quickly paid for the food and apologised again for how he and Spider scared the poor man, wishing a good evening before following Spider to the rooftop while holding two hotdogs.
He stood on the rooftop and gave one to Spider, turning away to let them eat without worrying about their identity. He ate and waited until Spider gave him the ok, not wanting to lose their trust and make himself hated like Batman.
He turned around when he heard Spider tell him it was ok to do so, sitting down next to them and staying silent before starting the conversation.
(Red: Superman; Purple: Spider/You)
"Why don't you want to join the Justice League or Batman's team?"
"I work alone, having someone helping me is bothersome and a nuisance"
Superman just looked at the teen, a bit in shock by the way the voice modulator changed their voice so much but especially by how similar they were to Batman in his early days in the Justice League.
It was like seeing a teen clone of Batman, but wearing a more bright suit than the original one. But this time, the theme was spiders and not bats.
He didn't say anything about it tho, not wanting Spider to also hate him. He got up after a bit of them being in silence, knowing he had to go home.
"Well, it was nice to talk to you , hope we can do this again kid" he said, patting Spider on the head before flying away and going back to his family.
(Now it's going back to reader/you pov)
You stared at where Superman left, a bit confused as to why he was interested in you.
You did know that you started to get popular in Gotham, especially when you saw merch of you in small stores.
And yes, you bought something small. It was adorable and you couldn't resist it. No one would judge you, you saw Bruce wearing his own merch or having something with the signature bat symbol.
You shook your head and grabbed your backpack, making one last round to check that everyone was ok before leaving to go back to the manor.
You walked on the side of the villa, making sure to avoid any windows before sneaking inside your room.
You did have a close call when someone suddenly opened their window and smacked your arm, making you give out a small noise since it hurt a bit.
But you thanked whoever was out there that didn't hate you because the one who opened the window was a sleep deprived Tim Drake that just ignored the noise and went back to work.
You sighed in relief when you finally got in your room and took off the voice modulator since it covered most of your mouth and nose, making it a bit annoying to wear at times but you didn't complain.
You almost let out a scream when you finally noticed Alfred sitting on your bed but managed to contain yourself, not wanting to attract anyone to your room and see you wearing Spider's suit.
You took off your mask, knowing it was useless to try and hide your vigilante persona to him, a bit embarrassed that you followed the same path that your legal guardian currently walks on.
You looked down, thinking that Alfred was disappointed or angry that you were also a vigilante, waiting in silence for one of his lectures before flinching when you suddenly felt his hand on your head.
You looked up at him, confused as to why he wasn't angry but just his look of love and adoration he had for you, something you only saw in your mother eyes made you start to shake.
Years of neglect and loneliness just surfaced, making you start to slowly cry and cover your face, trying to hide the fact that you were crying.
But just by hearing Alfred whisper "it's ok, it's just me here, you can let it out" made you break down in tears, full on sobbing and bawling on his chest as you just couldn't hold it in anymore.
You didn't even know why you were crying, but after years of being ignored or hurt by the people you were supposed to call family, watching them enjoy a nice dinner all together without you and especially seeing them being a family while you were just left in the sidelines to never be acknowledged made you finally break.
You cried until you fell asleep in Alfred's arms, you didn't even move when he picked you up like it was nothing and put you in bed.
You also didn't know about the grim look in his face that he had while looking at you, and after he silently left the room you possibly couldn't know the next word he said.
What were those words?
"Maybe it's time I should get involved in this matter, I'm sorry (Y/N) but I can't stand by and watch you become your father. I shall help this family see your worth."
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And this is the end for part 3! I managed to finish it in time for new year! If you have questions just ask and I will answer them!
Oh and please stop asking me to tag you, just comment it on the posts and I will tag you! (Oh and if I didn't tag you, it's not because I forgot but because sometimes it doesn't let me tag people)
Tag list
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@ratchetprime211
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laxxarian · 2 months
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Mr. Lancer actually owns a school in Gotham back in the years but due to the crime rate, he moved to Amity Park. Still a teacher in a humble school.
He just really likes to teach his students, if he were a ghost, teaching is his obsession.
And like his life depended on it to a point where he actually created a half-assed sympathetic backstory of him crossdressing as a woman but dubbed it as his sister.
And it works like a charm, no one found out, not even Danny so when he heard a request from Danny that there's a person out there who always wanted to go to college and see if Lancer could get that person admitted, Lancer agreed.
The person in question was Jason Todd.
He recognize the man.
Lancer wasn't fooled by the "Oh, my names Peter Jay." act. He's been fooled once, he doesn't wanna be fooled twice.
But, Lancer knows to pretend, fine, anything for his new student to learn comfortably in his school then shall so be it.
Jason moves to Amity Park since it's more peaceful, Danny even suggests the move so that Jason doesn't have to worry about attacks everyday.
)-(
Jason and Danny only know their civilian identities, not the hero versions of themselves so when Jason sees Danny always somehow getting beaten up and wrecked more often than not, he starts to get worried.
Jason doesn't know about ghosts and Phantom so when he sees them in action, he itched to fight but Mr. Lancer told Jason not to worry since they were only playing and that was how ghosts tend to communicate.
Jason was told of the history between the ghosts and Amity Park and the hero.
Jason noticed that everyone here doesn't seem to do any crime, the opposite of Gotham. Even the past rogues are now redeemed and this play fighting was safely done to the sky where no one gets hurt, and when they do crash, the ghosts help to fix it or go intangible not to destroy everything.
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thebiggerbear · 4 months
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Dean Winchester x Reader - Prompt Response - "Sleep. I'll keep you safe."
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Summary: When Sam calls to tell you that Dean is gone, you can't accept it. Not until you visit the offline Bunker and see for yourself. ...But is he really gone?
Pairing: Dean Winchester x Female!Reader; Dean Winchester x Huntress!Female!Reader
A/N: Prompt from @thelonelyempath. I had this idea for a scene in my head that took place during 15x20 with the reader and Sam & then from there it just kind of wrote itself, including the semi-twist. Hope it's okay.
There is a song mentioned in here ("Is This Love" by Whitesnake) which is a sort of homage/dedication/thank you. I read this Dean x Reader fic a long time ago (I can't remember the name of the fic or the author right now, I'm sorry!) but they used the song for some Dean/Reader time in the Impala and I had never heard the song before so I checked it out. I have become obsessed with it. It's so perfect, not only for Dean but in general as an 80s love rock ballad. So thank you to that author whoever you are!
This is meant to take place between mid-15x20 and Dean's foray in The Winchesters (pre-series).
Unbeta'd so all mistakes are mine.
Dividers by @firefly-graphics
Warnings: angst; mentions of character death; mentions of implied sex
Word Count: 12k+
Dean Taglist: @heartlessdelusions; @nancymcl; @brightlilith
"Sleep. I'll keep you safe."
Soldier Boy version | Beau version | Jenny version | Tom version | Jason version | Anael version | SDV Alex version
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You sat on the corner of the bed in your motel room, numb, your phone next to you, having been forgotten long ago. 
It couldn’t be true. It wasn’t. You refused to believe it. How was Dean just gone? On a simple hunt? How?
Sam had called you to give you the news. You could hear the breaks in his voice as he relayed what happened, sounding as if he had been crying just a few minutes before. Vampires. Who were mute. A gang of them run by a vampire named Jenny they had faced off with years ago. On a hunt with John. She had gotten away and they thought she was gone for good. Apparently not.
You were frozen, in shock, unable to process what he was telling you. 
“Y/N?”
“I… I need to see him,” you whispered.
Sam was quiet for a moment before he forced out, “I gave him a hunter’s funeral.”
You shut your eyes in pain. “What?” You could feel your throat tightening as well as your chest.
“I’m sorry, Y/N, but I had to. I couldn’t…” You heard him take a breath. “I couldn’t make the long drive with… I just couldn’t.” You could hear those breaks again and you should have been hurting for him, that not only did he have to watch his brother die but he’d had to burn him alone. But right then you got angry and you couldn’t help snapping at him.
“Why would you burn his body, Sam? You know we need his body to bring him back!”
“Y/N, he didn’t want to be brought back.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Yeah, I do. He told me right before he died. As long as I was going to be okay,” Another break. “He was done.”
A tear rolled down your cheek and regret immediately consumed you. You knew Sam was telling you the truth. Dean making sure Sam would be okay as he was dying clinched it for you. Sam had always been his main concern. You started mentally berating yourself then. If only you hadn’t let fear stop you, you could have given him something to live for, to fight for. He would have let Sam call for help, call Jack, something. He would have made sure he somehow made it home, just like he always did. But you didn’t and now, he was gone. Truly and irrevocably gone.
Another tear slipped down your cheek and you quickly wiped it away. “I have to go, Sam.”
“Y/N, I—”
You ended the call and tossed the phone onto the bed. You weren’t trying to be heartless. Sam was obviously struggling and you should be there for him. That’s what Dean would want, you knew that. The two of you being there for each other, helping one another, you looking after his little brother while he looked out for you. But you just…couldn’t.
Why hadn’t you called Dean? After everything that went down with Chuck and Jack? Why hadn’t you reached out? You owed him that at the very least. So why hadn’t you?
You knew the answer to that. You were scared and like a coward, you’d told yourself it wouldn’t have made a difference. It wouldn’t have changed anything. But a part of you knew it would and that scared you just as much.
You thought back to the last time you’d seen him, right after he and Sam went to try to get Amara on board against Chuck. He was still reeling with the news that Cas had told him before he’d left, that Jack was going to sacrifice himself to kill Chuck. He cared about Jack, more than he let on, even though the kid had accidentally killed Mary. Jack was family to him and he was having a serious moment of doubt. If Jack’s plan would work; if he should let it happen; if he should tell Sam; if Chuck hadn’t been right, he would win in the end. He was so beyond tired of that: Chuck winning. He didn’t want to sacrifice Jack but if they could be free of Chuck and have a chance… 
He was torn up about it and he’d called you, asked you where you were, then begged you to come to the Bunker when he found out you were only an hour or so away. You hadn’t wanted to, you could hear the desperation in his voice and you knew all too well what would happen if you went. You were still hurting and you didn’t know if you could survive that. 
You didn’t bother telling him that the reason you were an hour outside of town was because you’d temporarily settled there, not sure where to go or what to do. Sure, you took on hunts here and there, but ultimately you were lost. Ever since Dean broke things off with you because he couldn’t tell what was real anymore versus what had been Chuck all along. The breakup had hurt, of course, but that caused pain in you that you weren’t really sure you would ever come back from. Him thinking everything between you might not be real? After you’d given him everything you could because you deeply loved him? In your heart, you knew it was real, but when you had said this to him, he’d simply responded with “I don’t” in his typical detached way he adopted whenever he had made up his mind that he had to do something for the greater good, no matter how hard it might be. You thought he had already broken your heart, but it shattered right then in your chest.
Since it was Dean, though, and he never begged, you went. And sure enough, what you worried would happen, happened. One minute, you’d been wiping the rare tears he let fall around you, and the next minute, he was kissing you and gently pushing you back onto his bed. You could feel the desperation in his movements, his touches, the way his lips trailed over your skin. Shockingly, he took his time with you, and it only hit you halfway through that this was his real goodbye. It wasn’t guaranteed that Billie’s plan would work but he hoped it would. And if it did, then that meant he and Sam would finally be free and they could hang it up if they wanted to, do something else with their lives and move on. And that possible future didn’t include you. 
You’d silently cried then, holding onto Dean as he moved and moaned into your ear. When he pulled back to kiss you, your cheeks were free of any tear tracks and you kissed him back. You wondered how on earth he couldn’t feel that this was very real between you as you moved your hips to meet his in a tender rhythm as he held you in his lap, his green eyes staring into yours as he held you close. Sex was sex but this right here, this right in between you right then that he refused to put a name to, it was beyond real. You knew he could feel it just as much as you could…so why was he still hellbent on throwing it (and you) away?
A little while later, you had laid there, with his head on your chest, running your fingers through his hair in soothing strokes, his body still entangled with yours, staring up at the ceiling as you both were still trying to catch your breath. Your heart spoke for you before you could stop it. “I love you,” you whispered, meaning it with every fiber of your being.
It shocked the hell out of you and made something warm and fluttery happen inside your chest when he sleepily murmured to your skin, “Love y’too. Don’go.” You ended up chalking it up to him being in a post-sex sleep daze though, not knowing what he was really saying or even really having heard you correctly. That or he only meant for the night because the very next morning, things went back to how they were.
Dean seemed surprised when he woke up to find you next to him, scrolling through the news feed on your phone for any new cases. You’d given him a warm smile. “Hey, sleepyhead,” you teased.
Instead of smiling back, though, he cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair. “Hey.” You could see that familiar detached expression settle on his features and you knew he was regretting the night before. He had been drinking by the time you got there, sure, but he hadn’t been inebriated. He was incredibly lucid by the time he made a move on you so try as he might, this couldn’t be chalked up to a drunken mistake.
You could literally feel that wall going back up and you gave one last ditch effort to keep him from shutting you back out, even laying a hand over his. “Dean, don’t—”
He pulled away from you and got out of bed, quickly slipping on his Scooby Doo boxers and jeans that he grabbed from the floor. You might have smiled seeing the familiar underwear that you hated but secretly loved if you weren’t hurting so much. “I’m hungry. You hungry?” He asked, slipping a black t-shirt over his head. “I’ll go see if Sam’s cooking anything up. I need a serious cup of coffee. You just…” He glanced back at you, seeing you holding the sheet tightly to your chest as you watched him, compulsively swallowing when he saw your eyes glistening. “You, uh, just come out when you’re ready.” He then made his way out of the room, closing the door behind him and never looking back. 
You sat back against the headboard, dissolving into a fit of tears and quiet sobs. You knew you should have never come. Once you were able to breathe without fresh tears welling up, you got yourself cleaned up and redressed. You splashed some water on your face and you took a deep breath before leaving the room. You were near the bunker stairs when Sam called out to you.
“Hey! Y/N!” 
He was coming over to you, a big smile on his face. He was pleased to see you.
“Hey,” you greeted back just as warmly, forcing a smile.
He gave you a quick hug and you could see Jack a little ways behind him, giving you a smile and wave. “I didn’t know you were here. We were just about to have breakfast. Why don’t you join us?”       
“Oh, I…”
You were saved from having to make an excuse when Dean appeared next to Jack, his expression severe and cold all at the same time. “She’s got a hunt she’s heading out for. Possible vamp nest in Duluth. Right, Y/N?”
Just when you thought he couldn’t hurt you even more, there he went proving you wrong. “Right,” you agreed quietly. You turned a wan smile onto Sam. “I’ll take a raincheck.”
“Duluth?” Sam glanced from his brother to you. “Maybe we can give you a hand on this one.”
“We can’t,” Dean stated firmly. He gave his brother a look and Sam’s brows furrowed before realization played upon his features and his jaw tightened. He turned apologetic hazel eyes onto you. “Donna’s up that way. If she needs a hand, she can call her,” Dean added.
You felt sick to your stomach. Obviously, you weren’t heading to Duluth or anywhere near Minnesota but the way he dismissed you so casually…the pain was overwhelming. The smile you kept on Sam turned into more of a grimace. “I appreciate the offer, Sam, but I’m good. Like your brother said, I can call Donna if I need anything. Don’t worry. Thanks, though.” You squeezed his arm and then turned to make your way up the stairs.
“Best of luck,” Dean gruffed out. You turned to see pure ice staring back at you. 
You pressed your lips together to keep from falling apart right there, from demanding why Dean had obviously only called you for sex and a pick-me-up when there plenty of women in Lebanon that could do that for him, from begging him to wake up and see you were right in front of him and that what you had was very much real before it was too late. Instead, you continued climbing the stairs. 
“Keep us updated and give us a call if you need anything,” Sam called after you.
“Will do,” you forced out.
“Good luck,” Jack offered.
When you reached the top, you glanced once more at Dean. His expression hadn’t changed one bit. The green gaze staring back at you was cold, hard. You let out a huff and shook your head, turning to open the door and close it behind you. That had been the very last time you saw him.
After that, you went back to the motel you had been renting a room in, packed up, and headed across state lines. You ignored Dean’s calls but took Sam’s. 
Apparently, at some point, you had vanished when Chuck disappeared everyone. You had no idea until Donna filled you in. That explained the several missed calls from both Sam and Dean and the voicemails they left. Both had sounded desperate, especially Dean. 
“Please, Y/N. I know you’re pissed at me and I get it but please call me back. Or call Sam. I don’t care. Just as long as we know you’re still with us and that you’re okay.” His tone sounded rough around the edges but considering the context Sam gave you when you did call him (there was no way you were calling Dean, especially not now), you realized they were just desperate to get in touch with anyone, having lost Cas and being the only three forms of life left on the planet.
Dean was right, you were angry. Angry that he’d used you that night, angry that he’d broken your heart in the first place. He had pursued you before you got together, not the other way around. By the time you let your guard down enough to let him in and things kicked off between you, he was deep in. Or so he’d said. By the time he ended things, you were deep in yourself. Now…now you were in even deeper thanks to him, so deep you were pretty sure Dean would haunt you the rest of your life no matter how you tried to shut him out of your heart.
Another tear rolled down your cheek. Though, you’d never meant the word haunt literally.
You wiped your face with your sleeve and let out an aggravated breath before getting to your feet. You grabbed your coat, your emergency bag, your hunting bag, and the car keys from the table near the door. You locked up and got into the car you only used for hunts and grocery trips now, starting it and backing out of the driveway. 
It’s not that you doubted what Sam had told you or Sam himself, but you needed to see things for yourself. You turned the car in the direction that would lead you to Kansas.
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You opened the door to the Bunker, seeing nothing but darkness greeting you, the clanking of the door being the only sound to echo in the large chamber. That was strange. They never shut it down when they left for hunts. You hit the lights and hearing a loud thrumming sound, you watched as they came back on, one by one. You had your own key since you were also a Legacy. You’d never been more thankful for that fact when you arrived to find the Bunker locked down, no Sam in sight.
You shut the door behind you and dropped your bags near the table. You bit your lip to keep your eyes from welling up when you noticed an unfinished chess game on the table, most likely one that Dean and Cas had been engaged in, but now neither of them would be back to complete it. Instead, you focused on the matter at hand. You pulled your gun out and an angel blade, slipping the latter into your coat pocket in case you needed it. In the other pocket, you slipped a flask of holy water and a small piece of iron bar you could wield if need be. In your gun sat silver bullets; you couldn’t be too careful nowadays. Especially if the word was out to the world of the supernatural that Dean Winchester was gone and only Sam was left now, alone. 
You slowly made your way down the stairs, listening intently for any other noises you might hear. All that you could make out besides your footsteps was the low hum of electricity that was commonplace for the old bunker. You cleared the library, the hallways, the kitchen, the shower room, the infirmary, the Dean Cave where you’d been forced to watch The Lost Boys and slasher films more times than you cared to count (you had dug your teeth into your bottom lip to keep from crying when you saw the DVD cover of Tombstone left near the TV), every single room in the place until you came to the one that made a lump form in your throat. You swallowed it back down and forced yourself to focus, raising your gun that much higher. You opened the door and hit the lights, scanning every which way. The room was clear.
You lowered your gun and made your way inside, the lump in your throat back again. Your eyes roamed over the hastily made bed; the empty dog bowls on the floor (which made your brows furrow in confusion slightly); the messy desk; the empty beer bottles on the table; the headphones on the nightstand; the shotguns on the wall; the books scattered about; the load of laundry sitting off to the right in a corner. Memories washed over you and your eyes began to sting as tears welled up. 
You’d walked into the room to find Dean jamming out on his bed, listening to music through the headphones he’d insisted on buying on your last trip. You huffed out a laugh and dropped the laundry basket of folded clothes onto the bed, garnering his attention. 
He opened his eyes and glanced up to find you smiling at him. 
“What are you listening to?”
He held one of the phones away from his ear and you could hear some serious strumming of heavy metal guitar coming out of it. “Huh?”
“I said, what are you listening to?” You asked a little louder.
“What?” He nearly yelled.
You picked up the top item from your pile, his Scooby Doo underthings, and playfully tossed it at him. It landed squarely on his chest and he immediately jumped up as if it had burned him, his cheeks turning redder by the second as he threw the headphones onto the bed.
“You did my laundry?” He asked in horror.
Amazing. You two had explored every single inch of each other time and time again, been sort of rooming together for the past month, but he was embarrassed that you washed his dirty underwear?
You shrugged and began to place his folded clothes on the bed. “I had room in the washer so I figured I’d grab yours, too. You’re welcome.”
“You washed our clothes together?” He sounded genuinely surprised.
You gasped and gave him a mock look of horror. “Oh no, not together.” You tossed a pair of jeans over at him and he caught it in time. “I used detergent, fabric softener, dryer sheets, and everything,” you teased. “But putting it away is where I draw the line, pal. That’s on you.” You pointed to the neat pile sitting on the bed before moving over to the door to head to the room you kept your things in down the hall. 
Arms wrapped around you from behind, stopping your trek, and Dean murmured into your ear, “You washed my clothes for me?”
“And folded, too,” you pointed out. “Don’t forget that.”
“Mmm, what else can I get you to do for me?” He grabbed the basket from you and placed it down before gripping your hips and moving in to kiss your neck.
“Hey, I’m not your maid. I had room in the washer, that was it. Don’t get used to this,” you laughed before digging your teeth into your lip when you felt his tongue on a particular part of your skin. 
“What if I want to get used to this?” He moved up to your jaw line.
“I’d say you’re SOL. Unless…”
“Unless?” He hummed near your lips.
“Unless you finally let me tidy up this room a little.”
His head shot up, frowning down at you. “What? Why, what’s wrong with how it is now?”
“Well,” You wrapped your arms around his neck. “Some of these papers on the desk need organizing, the books can be put in a stack on the table over there, these empty beer bottles can be thrown out, the shotguns you have near the bed can be put away…”
“There’s nothing wrong with anything you just mentioned,” he grumbled.
“Oh, really? So the other night when you were doing that thing—”
“That thing you really like,” he interrupted, smirking cockily at you.
You had to keep from rolling your eyes and smirking yourself. “When I moved, I knocked into the shotgun and it fell. It almost went off. You remember that?”
“Nothing happened or went off, well, except you.” His smirk got even bigger. “You remember that?”
This time you gently swatted at his shoulder. “Dean.”
He heard the warning in your no-nonsense tone and laughed, leaning in to kiss you. “Alright,” he whispered to your lips. “I’ll put the shotguns up out of the way. But everything else stays.”
You huffed out an exasperated breath. One of these days when he wasn’t looking, you swore you’d do as exactly as you’d suggested. Clear out the empty bottles and stack the books at the very least. 
“Hey, it’s all about compromise, right? Speaking of that,” He turned you around in his arms and you were once again facing the laundry basket he’d left on the floor. “Find a space and keep some of ‘em in here.”
A pleasant shock ran through you. “Are you sure?” You whispered.
He slowly turned you back around and gently cupped your chin. “Yeah, sweetheart, I’m sure. You’re practically sleeping in here every night, anyway. I’d rather you not have to put back on the same clothes from the night before or walk naked down to your room. Then again, naked…”
You glared up at him, making him chuckle and brush his lips against yours. “I just didn’t want to crowd you,” you admitted after a moment. “It’s your space. If I’m in here too much, I can—”
 “I want you here.” You gazed into his green eyes, unsure, but all you saw staring back at you was softness with a glint of earnestness. He was telling you the truth; he really wanted you to stay. 
“Okay,” you agreed with a shy smile.
He beamed at you and then picked you up, making you gasp loudly and wrap your legs around his waist. “Not that you’re gonna be needing them right now.”
You shook your head and kissed him as he walked you both towards the bed. When he had you on it, you could hear the music coming from the forgotten headphones. “Is that…Whitesnake?”
Dean smirked down at you. “Uh huh. One sec.” He reached over, quickly clicked something on his phone, and the music suddenly changed. You smiled when a familiar song started up.
“Really?”
“What? It’s our song.”
You framed his face with your hands, looking up at him affectionately. “Dean Winchester, secretly sentimental and sensitive guy extraordinaire,” you teased him.
“Shut up,” he mumbled. “I’m not any of that crap. It’s the first song we made good use of Baby’s backseat to, that’s all. Now that you’re staying in here, we gotta celebrate.”
Romantic. You rolled your eyes but smiled. “Like I said, sentimental.” You pulled him down to you and kissed him sweetly. Needless to say, he had been right; you hadn’t needed your clothes for a little while.
You took in a ragged breath, your fingers gently touching over the papers on his desk. While you hated the empty beer bottles and you didn’t want to end up possibly shot with a salt round during a passionate moment of sex, you really hadn’t minded how he had things. You knew this was the first home he and Sam ever really had. He could keep things messy or disorganized if he wanted to; he had more than earned the right. It might sound silly to someone else but he deserved to experience living in a home, mess and all, like everyone did at some point in their lives. Not only did he not have a place to do that since he’d been four years old, he’d never felt comfortably settled in anywhere ever to be able to do it. You remembered him and Sam telling you how long it had taken Dean to settle into this room, to think of the Bunker as not just theirs but home. You’d kick the crap out of anyone who tried to take that away from him, and you would be the last person to try to do it yourself. You still thanked him when he hung the shotguns up on the wall; you were beyond grateful. That time, he was the one who went off and quite happily.
A sob nearly tore its way out of your chest when you saw his handwriting on one of the papers. Your fingertips traced each letter. How could he really be gone?
You ran your fingers over an open file, wondering what he had been looking at, when you heard the clicking of nails on the floor behind you. You spun, lifting your gun, to find Sam standing in the doorway, watching you with wide eyes as a dog appeared beside him. That must have been what you’d heard. You lowered the gun and let out a relieved breath. “What are you doing here?”
You winced internally at your question. He had every right to be here, this was his home. You were the intruder.
“The monitoring system we set up… I was alerted that someone was in the Bunker. I locked it down and I know only he and I had the keys, so I didn’t know if…” You watched as he compulsively swallowed.
You turned back to the desk. “I get that. Where were you, by the way? Why did you lock it down?” He didn’t answer for a moment when you glanced over your shoulder at him, seeing his gaze glued to the ground. “Sam?”
His eyes flicked up to yours and he swallowed again. “I was on my way to Austin. For a case. But then…” He gestured towards you. “I turned around and headed back to see.” You noticed he didn’t mention why he had locked the Bunker down but then again, he didn’t really need to. Who else would be coming here now that Dean, Cas, and Jack were gone? Mary was gone as well as most of the other hunters you’d worked with over the past couple of years. Apocalypse World Bobby was still up in Minnesota somewhere. Apocalypse World Charlie and Stevie had moved East, choosing to retire after what happened with Chuck temporarily disappearing everyone. Garth and Bess still lived in their home with their family. Jody and the girls had their own operation up in Sioux Falls with Donna lending a hand every now and then. And you…well, you never told Sam where you were. 
You gave him a slow nod and dropped your eyes back down to the desk, running your fingers over the pages of an open lore book Dean had been reading. It was probably ridiculous but you thought maybe you could somehow still feel him here (though you did not want him to be a ghost), that perhaps by touch or sight or smell even that you could somehow connect to what his last days had been like. You wondered if he somehow knew deep down or if he hadn’t seen it coming. Even though he had always told you that he didn’t see a good ending for himself down the road, that he was forever bound to this life, you knew he also secretly fantasized about his life going in a different direction, one he’d included you in once upon a time. You then wondered if there was a girl somewhere who was either waiting for a phone call she would never get or was crying her eyes out because Sam had given her the news like he had you. It hurt to think that maybe he had found someone that he envisioned another future with instead of you, with someone he knew without a shadow of a doubt that Chuck hadn’t inserted into his life as a manipulation or a story device. Someone that he didn’t question what he had with them, if it was real. Though at the same time, you hoped he found a little piece of happiness. You still loved him enough to want that for him.
You briefly closed your eyes in pain when you remembered that last night you spent with him, telling him you loved him. You truly meant it and even though he hurt you again and again, you still did. You forced the thought away and instead chose to focus on the open book in front of you. “What was he working on?” You choked out, quietly clearing your throat once you heard how rough your voice sounded.
You turned the page, seeing mentions of witches and vampires, when you realized Sam never answered you. You glanced back at him, arching your brows in question.
Sam’s eyes were wide and laser focused on your body, his mouth hanging open. Shit.
You should’ve known that despite the dark clothing you were wearing, the long black coat you were sporting, turning away from him, that you wouldn’t be able to hide your secret much longer. Truthfully, it wasn’t even something you’d thought about when you set out for the bunker. Had Sam been here when you arrived, he probably would have seen it then.
You turned towards the younger Winchester and Sam’s eyes flickered up to you. “Are you…?”
“Yes, Sam.”
Sam closed his mouth and swallowed, glancing back and forth between you and your protruding belly. You read the clear question in his eyes that he was burning to ask.  
“You’re going to be an uncle.”
Except the few times he’d been close to death, you’d never seen Sam look so pale.
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You and Sam sat on the edge of Dean’s bed, Miracle (as you’d come to find out was the dog’s name) laid at your feet, his head on his paws.
“How?” Sam finally asked you.
You snorted in amusement. “You know how.”
“No, I mean… Why didn’t you tell Dean? Did you tell Dean? Because he didn’t tell me and I don’t think that’s something he wouldn’t have told me.”
You wet your lips with your tongue, feeling the heavy weight of guilt and sadness wrap around you once more. “No. I didn’t tell him,” you whispered. It was now the biggest regret of your life, right before the second biggest one of you walking out of the bunker the morning you’d last seen him and not fighting harder to get him to let you back in.
“Were you ever going to?”
Your eyes snapped to Sam at the judgment clear as day in his tone and they narrowed. “No, I wasn’t. He made it pretty clear he wanted nothing more to do with me or anything related to me. So, no, Sam, I wasn’t,” you snapped.
He pressed his lips into a thin line and looked down at his lap.
You turned your gaze forward again, taking a breath to tamp down the familiar anger and resentment that you’d worked so hard to try to let go of. After a moment, you rubbed at your forehead. “Yes,” you muttered. “I don’t know. I think so…”
Sam stayed quiet and let you sort through your thoughts which you were grateful for. You’d been caught completely off guard by the pregnancy yourself. When you found out, you thought back to how you unwisely didn’t take your usual precautions and since you and Dean had broken up long before that, you hadn’t been too concerned with maintaining your birth control. 
You’d thought over your options. Bringing a kid into the hunting lifestyle was the worst thing you could do to it. Dean and Sam were living proof. Their mom herself had known it which was why she tried to get out when she married their dad. Not to mention, it would make you vulnerable in your line of work and the kid would always be in danger, always have a target on its back. Plus, you were pretty sure that even if you told Dean, he’d be less than thrilled. He always told you he didn’t want kids, for the very reasons you were now facing. And did you really want to bring a kid into the world that Chuck was about to end, only to have a father who was dismissive of it, or even hated it? You didn’t think Dean would be capable, he’d been great with Jack and Ben after all, but this was different. This kid would have his blood, his genes, would look like him somewhat. Sure, he had that in Emma once and that had torn him up, but this would also be different. This was for the long haul. And that’s only if he even wanted to be in this kid’s life. Which he might opt not to. How could you do that to your child? So you considered choosing to end the pregnancy, which would have been a true mercy given everything stacked against it before it would be born, but eventually you decided otherwise. 
You’d heard the baby’s heartbeat on a checkup while you were still mulling it over, and that was it. Dean wanted to know if what you had was real or not? Here it was, its little heart thumping away deep within your body. After that visit, you’d decided the hell with it. You were someone who believed everything happened for a reason, well before things with Chuck went bad though you still operated on this age-old belief most of the time. You were having a kid, one who would be half of you and half of Dean, the love of your life for all intents and purposes. Though it had hurt when he dismissed you that morning, perhaps this had been the reason why he called you out of the blue, wanting you to come to him, and why you went despite knowing what would most likely happen and how much pain it would cause you.
So you made a decision to start pulling out of hunting. Donna rented her family cabin in Hibbing to you. Bobby hadn’t been back since Mary died so it was sitting empty and unused. You hid the pregnancy as best you could but ultimately, once the first trimester was over and you had popped, you couldn’t hide it anymore. Donna found out though she never knew who the father was. She didn’t pry which you appreciated. When she called you to warn you that Billie was making people disappear left and right, a familiar fear clawed at your chest. Not only fear for your child but also the fear of what if Dean found out about it. That was the only thing that kept you from offering to come down to Kansas to help. 
“We’re going into some place warded to protect us. You should do the same. I can send you pictures of the sigils they’re using.”
“Okay, thanks. Are you sure you’re going to be alright?”
“Yeah, don’t you worry. We’ll figure this out. You just stay safe in the cabin. You and…well, you know.”
You appreciated her staying discreet when you heard Sam’s voice in the background. “I will. Thanks, D.”
“You betcha. Talk soon.”
You hung up and Donna did indeed send you the pictures. You did your best with what you had but it didn’t matter in the end. The last thing you remembered was painting a sigil on the window and then everything went black. The next thing you knew, you were back at the window, your finger extended towards the glass, the half-finished sigil staring back at you. You noticed the sun was in a different position in the sky than it had been and you immediately grabbed your cell phone. Two days had passed. How? 
It hit you then what happened and you dropped the phone with a cry, immediately grabbing at your stomach. You ran for the machine Jody had shipped to you after Donna told her. At the time you’d been annoyed, but right now, you couldn’t be happier at the sheriff knowing about your pregnancy once your baby’s heartbeat echoed throughout the bedroom. You let out a huge sigh of relief, rubbing your belly affectionately. “We had quite a scare there, didn’t we, kiddo?”
It dawned on you then that while you had vanished, you were back, baby and all. Did that mean everyone else was back, too? You went back downstairs for your cell phone and immediately called Donna. Yep, everyone was back, they had all disappeared, and it wasn’t Billie but Chuck who had done it. You asked after Dean and Sam and that was when she told you about Cas and then Jack. You knew both brothers would be devastated, especially Dean, and you considered breaking your radio silence to call him. However, you chickened out at the last second and called Sam instead to check in.
It’s not that a part of you didn’t want to tell Dean he was going to be a father, it was that you were scared of what would happen when you did. Originally, you had feared that he would turn his back on you completely, more importantly on his kid, but now you were worried that maybe it would be the exact opposite. While you would be happy for him to be actively involved in your child’s life as its dad, you also knew Dean. He would try to resume things between you, make it work for the kid’s sake. Just look at how long he tried to make it work with Lisa for Ben’s sake. Not that he didn’t love her and he ended up leaving to protect them, but even Lisa knew his heart wasn’t in it. While that had been for different reasons involving hunting and Sam’s reappearance in his life, he still tried to make it work. But as he’d told you, the family thing didn’t work for him, and besides he already had a family with Sam, Cas, and Jack. You hadn’t missed how he didn’t include you in that group; you supposed you should’ve known then. 
You didn’t want him to fake wanting to be with you just to give your kid some semblance of a family life that Dean himself hadn’t really had. You didn’t know if you could take him forcing himself to kiss you goodnight before turning his back on you every single night. Or forcing a smile when he’d come home after a long day and you were the first thing he saw when he stepped inside. It was a ridiculous fear to have, you knew that, and you should be stronger than this — you were stronger than this. Not to mention, you knew you were being selfish and not at all fair to your baby or Dean. But the images kept replaying over and over in your mind, making you flinch, and you told yourself you’d tell him the next day. The next day turned into next week, then the next month. Before you knew it, you were in your third trimester and you were getting a call from his younger brother to inform you of his untimely death.
Maybe that’s really why you raced down here from Hibbing. Maybe that’s why you wanted to see for yourself that he was gone. Not only to confirm that the man who had your heart was gone for good, but also so you could tell him, hoping he might hear it wherever he now was. Or maybe by some act of mercy Jack could relay it to him, wherever Jack was. It was cowardly, you were a coward, and you hated yourself for it. You knew you should have told Dean months ago, after you found out that he and Sam had beaten Chuck, Jack was in charge of the universe now, and the world was not coming to an end anytime soon. Regardless, you couldn’t turn back the clock.
A tear escaped that you quickly wiped away, not caring if Sam saw or not. “You know, when you first told me about Dean, I considered a demon deal.”
Sam’s head snapped up. “No! That’s not what he would want! No!”
You held out a placating hand. “I know. I’m not going to do that.” He seemed to deflate slightly in relief. “I can’t, anyway.” You motioned to your bulging stomach. “I couldn’t do that to my kid. Only be around for 10 years and then poof, I’m gone? Even if it had Dean, if Dean wanted it that is, it’s still terrible to do that to a kid.” You winced slightly when you realized you were saying this to Sam Winchester of all people.
“Dean would’ve wanted it,” he assured you quietly.
You grimaced and dropped your gaze down to the dog who was staring up at you. “Maybe.” You reached down to pet his head. 
Sam placed a gentle hand on your shoulder. “He would’ve.”
You stayed quiet for a moment, thinking over his words, when you murmured, “Is there any way to get him back?”
Sam let you go and his hazel eyes began to shimmer. “No,” he choked out. “I, uh, checked with Jack and he said it was his time. So…no.”
“What?” You snapped, getting to your feet. “After everything you’ve done for that kid? He just—”
Sam got to his feet, tenderly cradling your shoulders. “I know. I didn’t want to hear it either but…Jack’s right.” Your jaw dropped, ready to let some f-bombs fly (which you usually tried to avoid since the baby could now hear you), when Sam’s hands moved up to your face, trying to get you to listen. “He was ready to go. Jack confirmed it. Dean’s in Heaven and he’s at peace.”
Tears were on the edge of falling when you heard that. “He’s in Heaven?”
Sam nodded, a tear making its way down his cheek. “Yeah. He is.”
If Dean was in Heaven…well, then that was some consolation at least. Just when he thought he’d never make it there thanks to his being a demon for a short stint, being killed by a Hell Hound, and everything that had occurred over the years — even some of the things he’d done. But that also meant he was gone, for good this time. It was confirmed; he wasn’t coming back. It hit you like a freight train and it punched a huge hole in your chest. You felt as if you were falling, falling, and would never stop. Dean was…gone. “Then he’s…”
“He’s gone,” Sam confirmed. “He’s not coming back.”
Your knees buckled and you nearly fell, Sam thankfully having caught you. You heard a wailing sound but you had no idea where it was coming from until you felt it ripping its way out of your body. Sam gingerly picked you up in his arms and moved you onto the bed. You were violently sobbing and you barely noticed Sam holding you, gently rocking you back and forth, his own tears falling into your hair. Miracle had jumped up and laid next to you, whining quietly and trying to shove his head under your hands, rubbing his body carefully against your belly. 
There was no way. No way that this was real. This had to be a nightmare. But when you heard Sam sniffle above you, choking out, “It’s going to be okay, Y/N. I promise, it’s going to be okay,” you knew that it wasn’t. Memories of Dean’s face, his laugh, his smiles, his touch, his scent, the way he looked at you when you’d both been happy together, his kisses, the way he felt like home in a way that no other person or place ever could, the way he made you feel safe — all of it smashed over you like a tidal wave and it didn’t let up. Dean Winchester, the man you’d loved with all of your heart, the man whose child you now carried inside of you, was gone. And there was nothing you could do to bring him back.
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Dean had just pulled the Impala over at a beautiful spot, where you could see nature’s beauty for miles. He rested back against Baby and marveled at it all. There was even a double rainbow that showed up and Dean chuckled, knowing that had to be Jack’s doing considering there hadn’t been any rain. Then he wondered if it did rain at all. How did things like that work up here anyhow?
He was still enjoying the view when Jack popped in next to him. 
“There he is.” Dean grinned and went to give him a hug before he thought better of it. “Am I still allowed to…you know?”
Jack smiled. “Of course. I like hugs.”
Dean laughed and embraced him tightly. “Thanks, kid. For everything you did up here, I mean. Bobby told me.” He pulled back, clapping his shoulder in thanks. “So, where’s Cas?”
“He’ll be along shortly but first, I need to show you something.”
Dean’s brows furrowed but he shrugged. “Okay.”
Jack placed a hand on Dean’s shoulder and next thing Dean knew, he was back in his old room at the Bunker. “Whoa,” he whispered, thinking Jack and Cas had built the Bunker just for him. He would be able to wait for Sam here, in his home. He hoped the TV in the Dean Cave worked and that he still had access to his music. Baby’s radio had worked so he had high hopes. He was about to thank Jack when his eyes suddenly caught sight of someone in his bed. Well, two someones. 
He glanced towards Jack who gave him a subtle nod, silently encouraging him to get closer. Dean shot him a confused look but did move closer. When he caught sight of you, his heart dropped into his stomach. Even being dead, he felt the same exact thing he felt the last time he had seen you. You were the one who got away, or more appropriately, the one he pushed away. 
Sure, he’d been confused when he found out everything in his life was a lie when Chuck revealed himself to be a giant dick, but he did love you. He had such trouble reconciling the two: what he knew to be true and what his mind was telling him. No other romantic relationship had worked out for him, all two of them prior to you, and now he knew why. Chuck liked him better on his own, being the guy with no strings attached and rolling through town to save the girl, kill the monsters, get thanked, and move on his way. The only other person Chuck liked having in the Impala regularly was Sam. You, well, you he hadn’t seen coming and after the Big Bad Chuck reveal, he had to wonder why. 
He had never meant to hurt you, though he couldn’t seem to stop from doing it. If things weren’t real between you all of this time, he didn’t want to keep pretending like they were. That wasn’t fair to either of you and he certainly didn’t want to continue stringing you along when his heart was no longer in it like it used to be. So he let you go, as painful as it was and as wrong as it felt, he did the right thing by you. Then that night he’d called you out of the blue, he’d been torn up about Cas’ revelations about Jack’s actual role in Billie’s plan, how badly he wanted Chuck gone, and how while he didn’t want to sacrifice the kid, he wanted his and Sam’s freedom more. Without thinking, he’d picked up the phone and dialed you. He shocked himself when he asked you to come over after hearing you weren’t that far away, and you shocked him even more when you agreed. 
Dean hadn’t planned for you two to be intimate, but once you were there, right in front of him, it hit him hard how much he missed you, missed what you had together. So he made a move and you let him. He’d put everything he had, everything he felt but couldn’t tell you, into this stolen moment in time between you. And then the next morning, he thought it had all been a dream until he turned his head and saw you laying there, hair adorably disheveled, sheet covering you, doing something on your phone. It briefly reminded him of the many mornings he’d woken to find you in this exact same position, already up after a wild night, searching for cases. He wanted to bask in the comfort and familiarity for a moment longer, but when you turned and smiled at him, greeting him like you always had, he started kicking himself internally. He didn’t want you to think that this meant things would change when he knew they wouldn’t. He was being unfair to you and it wasn’t right. He’d been a selfish bastard and now he had to go into dick mode which would hurt you again. And sure enough, he knew he did when he saw your face fall as he easily dismissed you, not once but twice. He winced at the memory; he certainly didn’t blame you for not taking his calls or returning his voicemails after that.
The truth was that while he had initially been confused about his feelings for you and their validity, he knew he cared deeply about you and the most important thing was keeping you safe. He didn’t want you involved in the Chuck showdown, which is why he rudely dismissed you that morning, making up an excuse of a case in Duluth, something he knew you’d go along with. After watching you leave, as the door closed behind you, his heart fell into his stomach and he felt about three inches tall. He hated hurting you, hated pushing you away, but he knew it was for the best. You needed to be safe; not a target for Chuck.
After Chuck had been defeated and Jack took over, Dean realized in those months that he’d been a grade A idiot when it came to you. Sure, he’d been a cold dick, but he also had been a complete dumbass. He still loved you and he missed the hell out of you. What you had together had been something special that he stupidly threw away. There were quite a few nights after quite a few drinks, he’d picked up his phone and hovered over your number but he never actually called it. How could he even think of asking you to forgive him and give him another chance? After everything he’d said and done? He truly was a selfish bastard. 
When he didn’t call, he then switched over to all of the photos and videos he had taken of you and both of you together. As he heard your laughter, saw both of your smiles, watched how you looked at him and the affection you’d shown him, he continued drowning his sorrows. He wanted so much to talk to you, to apologize and explain, and ask if he could come see you, but he never let himself ask. He didn’t deserve it; he knew that. 
Now, here you were, asleep on his bed, Miracle curled up next to you. Staring down at you, he wondered how the hell he had ever let you go. And now, he’d never get to hold you again, feel your touch, or even share a conversation with you ever again. Even though Dean was at peace with his fate, regret languished within his chest the more he studied your face. He reached out to brush some hair back over your face but sadness overwhelmed him when he realized he couldn’t even do that small simple touch. Not anymore.
Dean’s eyes narrowed when he noticed an arm curled around you, almost protectively, pinning you to another body. His gaze traveled up that arm to find his younger brother, asleep right behind you. That surprised him but he quickly put two and two together. You must have gone to the Bunker when Sam called you to tell you the news and here you were, in Dean’s room, asleep on his bed with his dog. And while he didn’t begrudge you or his little brother some comfort you both might need, he didn’t like the look of that embrace or that Sam’s face was buried into the back of your neck.
Dean glanced back down at the arm, seeing Miracle staring right up at him. He couldn’t help but smile at the canine who had been his companion for months before he died. “Hey, boy,” he whispered, not sure if he would be heard or not but not wanting to startle you if he was. “How are you?”
Miracle didn’t seem to react at first, not until he got up and moved closer, wagging his tail. Dean went to try to pet the dog, hoping he could at least touch the animal, but he never got that far. His eyes zeroed in on just what Miracle’s body had been blocking.
His wide eyes flicked up to you, to Sam, back to you, and back to your fairly large and round stomach. The hell with being heard and possibly scaring you two. He glanced back to find Jack watching him. “What the hell is going on here, Jack?”
“They’re sleeping.”
“I’m aware of that,” he growled. “But what—”
Just then, Cas popped in next to Jack. When the angel saw Dean, he offered a soft smile. Dean felt himself relax slightly and a part of him wanted to go hug the angel but another part of him was nervous to. Plus, he really wanted to know what the hell was going on. He shifted his eyes towards Jack, his jaw tightening. “What the hell are you showing me?”
Cas glanced towards the bed, realization lighting his features, before he turned to Jack as well.
“The present,” Jack simply answered.
Dean cursed under his breath, not caring that both Cas and Jack could hear him. “The present of what? Because from where I’m standing, it seems like some time has passed.” He gestured towards your stomach. He tried not to be angry with you or Sammy, he really did, but dammit, his brother knew how he felt about you! Him dying didn’t change that! Besides, Sam had something going with Eileen last he knew, whatever happened to that?
“What you’re seeing is a few days after your death.”
Surprise ran through Dean at that revelation. So, this wasn’t some screwed up future scene he was witnessing? His eyes roamed over you, coming to rest once again on your stomach. You were very pregnant, looking as if you might be ready to pop any day now, he wasn’t sure. But one thing was clear; there was no way the baby was Sam’s. Sam wouldn’t have been able to keep that secret from him that long and he just didn’t see you or Sam going behind his back like that while he was alive. You were pissed at him, maybe even hated him, but you would never do that to him. Nor would Sam. The only answer was that you had found someone else and you were starting a family with them. Now he understood your radio silence even more. You might currently be sad at the news of his death, awash in memories in his room to where you’d fallen asleep on his bed and Sam had to comfort you, but you had truly moved on. That burned him even more. While he was happy if you were happy, knowing you’d found someone who wouldn’t break your heart and would treat you better than he ever could, a part of him was saddened by this knowledge. He knew you were too good for him, that you deserved better, but to see it confirmed in such a way, well, it was heartbreaking.
“So if she’s… Then she’s…” He couldn’t even put it into words; it hurt too much.
Jack clasped Dean’s shoulder. “The child is yours, Dean.”
Dean wasn’t alive anymore but if he had been, his heart would have stopped. He turned to Jack, shocked. “What?”
“You’re going to be a father,” Jack supplied, letting him go.
“But…how?” Dean’s gaze fell on you once more.
Cas suddenly appeared on his other side. “You don’t remember how you conceived the child?”
“What? No, I just…”
“Dean,” Jack called. 
When he turned to look at the new God, the latter held up a glowing finger to him that almost reminded him of that movie E.T. “What are you gonna do with that? Check my temperature?” Speaking of E.T., hadn’t that been one of the last movies picked for movie night before the Chuck showdown?
Jack smiled and touched the finger to his forehead. Within seconds, Dean was reliving every single moment between you two:
…When you’d met. 
…When he decided he’d liked you while you decided you didn’t like him too much.
…His constant flirting and trying to win you over.
…Your begrudging friendship that then grew into something more.
…Your relationship.
…Your breakup.
…All of the times you’d been in pain because of him.
…That last night.
…The next morning. 
Then the memories shifted to yours from after that morning: 
…You finding out about the pregnancy a couple of months later.
…Your hemming and hawing over calling him to tell him.
…Your fears.
…When you’d vanished with everyone else.
…Your panic upon your reappearance.
…The time you spent getting ready to retire from hunting and set up a normal life in Hibbing while preparing for the baby.
…The call from Sam with the news of his death.
…Your regret at not telling him about his child and your drive down here.
…Your conversation with Sam.
…Your collapsing in grief at finally realizing that he was gone and not coming back.
All of it that led to the scene he was witnessing now. He felt everything you felt, heard every thought, saw every tear, every smile. 
By the time Jack pulled away, Dean’s eyes were wet. He wasn’t sure how he was able to produce tears as a dead man but he did. Not only did he feel how deeply he’d hurt you, but he also felt just how deeply you loved him. He already knew he’d been an idiot when it came to you, but he really had no clue before this just how incredibly stupid he’d been. It had always been real between you. That hadn’t been Chuck. Not by a long shot.
Dean discreetly wiped his eyes. “Send me back.” His tone was firm and he wasn’t really asking.
“I’m sorry, Dean, but your time on Earth is up.”
Dean turned a menacing glare onto Jack. New God or not, he didn’t care. “She’s having my kid and she needs me. They both need me. Sam, too. After everything I’ve done for this world, you owe me.” Jack stared him down, unbothered by the taller man’s attempt to make demands. “Now I appreciate the Fixer Upper: Heaven Edition, I really do, but I should be with them. I deserve a shot at this and you know it.”
Jack mused on that for a moment before staring up at Dean sadly. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that.”
Dean scoffed. “Then why bother showing me any of this? Why bother telling me that it’s my kid she’s about to have? What’s the point, dammit?”
“You were afraid that you had left nothing behind of value, except Sam and your beloved car. Afraid that your life hadn’t amounted to anything in the end. No matter how many people you saved, no matter how many connections you made, no matter what good you did. ” Jack gestured towards you. “It did amount to something. You are leaving behind something, something important. A legacy,” Jack gestured to your stomach. “A family,” he waved his hand over you and Sam. 
Dean’s jaw clenched and he ignored the stinging in the corner of his eyes. “So this was just to show me what I can never have. The girl, the kid, the life…that’s just aces,” he muttered.
“No, Dean,” Cas spoke up. “What Jack is trying to explain is—”
“--your life amounted to more than you thought it had,” Jack finished.
Dean watched as Miracle went back and curled up against your belly once more, his head on his paws as he watched the scene in front of him. The corner of Dean’s lips tipped up into a smile. It was almost as if the dog knew it was his kid in there. And he was determined to protect it in Dean’s absence. His smile faded though when he thought of how he wouldn’t be able to see his kid, at all. He’d had enough of this. “That’s great. Appreciate the pep talk, fellas. Now, if you could send me back so I can actually raise my legacy and take care of my family, that’d be much appreciated.”
Jack and Cas exchanged a glance. Dean knew he wasn’t winning this one but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep trying. “It’s not your time yet,” Jack answered cryptically.
Dean’s head snapped in his direction. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that now your time is in Heaven, not Earth. And it’s best if you return to it.” Before Jack could snap his fingers, Dean held up a hand.
“Whoa, wait! That’s it? You’re not even gonna let me stick around to see what I’m gonna have?”
Jack smiled once more. “You’re going to have a son. A strong, healthy son.”
Dean reeled from that information. “A son?” He choked out.
Jack gave him a happy nod and held his fingers up again.
“Wait, wait! I’m serious, Jack. Why can’t I stick around?”
“You know what happens to ghosts, Dean. Besides, you’ve already been admitted to Heaven.”
“But you can do something about that, right? Like bring me back?” When Jack didn’t respond, Dean became desperate. “At least let me check in on them every now and then or something! You’re telling me you can’t even do that? You’re freaking God!”
Jack’s smile faded. “You’re not an angel, Dean.”
“No,” Cas interrupted. “But I am.” Cas stretched out his wings that were a lot brighter than Dean remembered. If he wasn’t dead, he was pretty sure he would at they very least be blinded from the brightness right about now. “I can take him back when he’s ready and I can escort him on any future visits.”
Dean was shocked but also beyond grateful at Cas’ offer. While they hadn’t spoken yet about how things were left between them before The Empty took away the angel, he couldn’t imagine it would be easy for Cas to watch as he pined over someone else, as he watched his kid grow, but Dean was grateful all the same. 
Jack appeared to think this over before meeting Cas’ intent gaze. “You will make sure to bring him back each time.” At Cas’ nod, Jack gave him a knowing yet affectionate smile. “I expect you to keep to the rules during these visits.”
“Of course,” Cas agreed.
Jack then glanced over at Dean. “If you’re worried about her and your child, you don’t need to be. Sam is going to watch over them.” Dean’s eyes widened slightly and his head snapped in your direction, his eyes shifting to Sam’s arm around you.
“What the hell does that mean?” He demanded.
“It means that your family is going to be safe. They’re going to stick together. Sam is going to help Y/N raise your son. He won’t allow any harm to come to them.” 
His jaw tightened, thinking it should be his arm over you, him behind you, him helping you raise your kid, you two together. He should be the one to take his son fishing, teach him about girls when he got older, show him how to keep Baby going, be the father his old man had the potential to be but minus a few things. He’d do whatever it took to keep the kid out of hunting, to give him a shot at a full happy life. He’d give up hunting himself in order to make it happen. And you…if you’d take him back, he’d never leave your side. Hell, he’d marry you if you let him. After Jack had caught him up to speed on everything you went through, everything you had felt and were feeling, he’d spend the rest of his life making it up to you, letting you know every single day just how much he loved you, if only you’d let him. If only Jack would allow him to come back. It felt beyond wrong that he wasn’t there and Sam was stepping into his place. Sam shouldn’t have to; he should be able to go and build his own family with Eileen or whoever, get married, have a couple of kids, buy a house, get out of hunting and go back to school — do whatever he wanted with his life. Not this.
“Dean.”
His eyes slowly lifted to Jack’s, who was a lot closer now than he had been before. He laid a reassuring hand on the man’s shoulder. “It’s as it should be. After you died, Sam was lost. She’s going to need help when the child is born.” He stared at Dean meaningfully. “They all need this.”
Dean’s gaze briefly roamed over the three of you on the bed before landing on Jack again. He thought back to his cryptic words from before. “Will I ever meet my kid? Get to see her again? Outside of Heaven?”
Jack’s expression didn’t change nor did he say anything but he squeezed his shoulder. That was the only response Dean was going to get apparently. 
Dean huffed a snort and shook his head.
“I told you, Dean. There would be no more meddling with the world from on high. I will not repeat Chuck’s mistakes. Everything is as it should be.”
Dean’s jaw clenched and he dropped his gaze. No, everything wasn’t as it should be. He made up his mind then to talk to Bobby when he got back. There had to be something he could do to get back to Earth, to get back to you and Sam and the baby…to get back to you all. If he couldn’t convince Jack to send him back, he’d find some other way.
Jack released him as Cas came to stand next to Dean. “I’ll see you back in Heaven.” He then looked at Cas. “Not too long.”
Cas gave him a nod and like that, Jack disappeared, leaving the angel and the hunter alone. Dean wasn’t thinking about how that might have set them up to talk about Cas’ last words to him before dying; right now, his focus was on you.
“Cas, please…can I touch her?”
“Dean…”
“Please,” he begged. “Just one last time. I’m not gonna get to be with her or raise my kid. I just want to touch her one last time. Please, Cas.”
Cas thought it over and then moved closer to the bed, leaning down to place two fingers against your forehead. Dean’s brows furrowed when he noticed a golden glow appear from the touch. “Whoa, whoa, Cas. What are you doing?”
“I’m giving you what you asked for. Y/N’s a light sleeper, like all of you hunters. If she wakes up, she could think she’s being attacked by a ghost or some other entity. I doubt you want that.” He pulled away and gave Dean a look.
“No,” Dean quietly agreed. Cas moved away to make room to let him in. Dean gingerly sat on the bed, about to touch you when he glanced up at the angel, unsure. Cas gave him a nod and Dean turned to gently run the backs of his fingers down your cheek. He felt your warm and soft skin this time when he came into contact with you and he let out a small breath of relief, sadness filling his chest. 
“I’m so sorry, Y/N. Had I known, I would’ve…” He supposed it didn’t really matter what he would’ve done. “I should’ve been there. You shouldn’t have had to go through all this alone. I should be there with you now, ready to help you take care of the kid. I…” He tenderly moved your hair behind your ear. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I never wanted to hurt you, but I had to keep you safe. I didn’t want you to become a target for Chuck. And I never should’ve…” He could feel a familiar stinging at the corners of his eyes and he wasn’t surprised that his voice was a bit gruffer when he next spoke. “I knew what we had was real. I know I questioned it for a second there but I always knew. That’s why it was so important to me that you were safe. But it doesn’t make what I did and said okay. And I’m sorry for that.” He ran his fingers lightly over your lips, wishing he could kiss you one last time, feeling you kissing him back. “I love you,” he whispered, a single tear falling down his cheek that he hastily wiped away. He stroked the apple of your cheek tenderly with his thumb. “And I always will.”
Not really wanting to pull away from you but knowing he was on a time clock, he reluctantly moved his fingers away from your face and laid his hand on your belly. He couldn’t feel anything except the taut skin underneath his fingertips, but it was enough to make him smile. “Being that you’re my kid, you’re probably going to give your mom a run for her money. Try not to make her too crazy, huh?” He let out a watery sounding laugh. “I’m sorry I can’t be there but your Uncle Sammy is going to make sure you and your mom are taken care of. Okay? He’s going to show you how to toss a ball around, help you with your homework, all that stuff. Just do me a favor, though. Don’t let him feed you kale the whole time and don’t let him get you into his true crime podcasts. The guy is a classic nerd, don’t let him turn you into one, too.” His smile slowly faded. “Saying all that, he’s one of the best guys I've ever known and I know he’ll be good to you, be good to your mom. So cut him some slack when you get older, alright?” He rubbed his thumb in gentle circles. “Take care of your mom for me. I’ll be watching over both of you. I hope I get to meet you someday.” Unable to resist, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to your stomach before sitting up and coming face to face with Miracle. The dog quietly whined and Dean gave him one last good head scratch. “You look out for them, okay buddy?” The dog whined again and Dean patted him.
“Dean,” Cas gently called.
Dean nodded and slowly got to his feet. His eyes shifted to Sam who was sound asleep, giving him a soft smile. “Thanks for taking care of them, Sammy,” he whispered. He didn’t vocalize that it was only temporary, that he was hell bent and determined to find a way to get back. His eyes then landed on you and he reached out to you one last time, trailing a fingertip along the dried tear tracks on your cheek. “Cas, can we just stay until they wake up?”
“Dean, Jack said—”
“I know what Jack said,” Dean snapped, glancing back at the angel whose parted lips pressed into a thin line. Dean immediately felt sorry for snapping at him; it wasn’t Cas’ fault and he wasn’t angry with him. He softened his tone. “I just want to be here when she wakes up. That’s all.” Cas seemed to be wrestling with his request. “Please, Cas,” he begged. “I just want to see her like this, awake.” He was slightly embarrassed at admitting that to his best friend but he wasn’t sure when he’d be allowed to visit again (and what he might be able to figure out to get himself back or how long it would take), and he had the strongest urge to see you up and about, walking around, pregnant with his kid. Not to mention he wanted to hear your voice one last time. “Please,” he whispered in a broken plea.
Cas stared at him for a moment before giving him a nod. “But after she wakes, we go back.”
“Thank you, Cas.” He meant it. While he highly doubted Cas would get into any real trouble on his behalf, he knew how difficult it must be for the angel to unwillingly push against Jack’s rules.  Dean turned back to you, carefully sitting down next to you, caressing your face. “Sleep, sweetheart. I’ll keep you safe,” he murmured. He also made you a silent promise: he would do whatever it took to get back to you. His eyes briefly roamed to your stomach. To get back to both of you. Fate and the universe and all that crap be damned.
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phoenixkaptain · 2 months
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DC is so silly because none of them can agree on what Batman’s motivation actually is.
Like, does this guy only care about Gotham City? Is he obsessed with keeping this one specific city safe? Is obsessed to the point that he’s willing to risk other people’s lives in the pursuit of justice?
Or, does he care about other people? Alfred, Dick, Jason, Tim, Damian, even Selina. Is he obsessed with keeping his loved ones safe? Is he obsessed with keeping Gotham safe because he wants the people in Gotham to be safe?
Does he train Robin out of a desire for a soldier or a need to cling to a thread of humanity? Does he keep Alfred employed primarily because Alfred is good at keeping secrets or because he trusts Alfred to keep his secrets? Does he ever love any of the women he dates, Selina included, or does he see them as another part of his disguise?
What is Batman’s motivation? What is he feeling at any given time in a story? What keeps him going when the nights drag on endlessly? What makes him get out of bed? What makes him take care of himself so that he can take care of it? Is it Gotham, or is it the people in Gotham?
And honestly, the answer is all of the above. The writers don’t agree on the answer, so the answer is that all apply. Batman would die for Gotham, Batman would die for Robin, Batman would die for Alfred. Batman wants to protect Gotham more than anything. Batman finds that he wants to protect Robin and Alfred and those he loves even more than Gotham. Batman views Robin as a soldier to be kept at arm’s length. Batman views Robin as his son and loves him like a father would.
It affects everything that Batman touches, this inconclusive motivation. Batman views the Justice League as his friends, his family even. Batman never gets close to any members of the Justice League because he only views them as associates and nothing more.
Batman can be conceivably anything. His motivation can become anything. Because his motivation is set up and reset and reset and reset- his motivation, what he cares about, it can be basically whatever you want. Whatever the writers want.
And this is why you have people hate Batman because he’s cold and uncaring and nigh abusive. You have people who love Batman because he thaws for those he loves and is kind and caring. You have people who like Batman because he’s good with children. You have people who like Batman because he’s awkward and doesn’t even know how to hold a child.
All of these versions have been portrayed, and sometimes multiple versions are portrayed in the same comic line. Batman lets Robin tease him and misses Robin when they’re apart, but he also gets mad at Robin for something that he has to know isn’t Robin’s fault. Batman is cold and distant to Robin but also says he trusts Robin as much as he trusts himself. Batman doesn’t know what Tim’s family life is like because he doesn’t feel it’s important, as long as it doesn’t affect Tim’s work, and he also asks Tim to tell him about his family’s situation because he sees himself in Tim and wants to offer comfort.
These are all Batman, but are also not Batman. Because the writers want you to view Batman as whatever they’re portraying him as in that one specific comic. What is Batman like? Well, it depends on the comic issue, not the comic series.
I like to focus on Bruce having interests and cares outside of Gotham alone. I like writing him as having friends he trusts and kids he loves. Because this is more interesting to me than the Bruce who is cold and uncaring. But, I also understand that this isn’t the only way he’s portrayed. This is the way I perceive him, the way I read all of his comics and the reason why I can make excuses for his actions that others find objectionable or unforgivable.
My way of reading Bruce isn’t the right or wrong way to do so, because there is no wrong way to read Bruce’s character. He’s genuinely been portrayed as just about all the versions you can find. And of course people exaggerate, they worsen him or (in my case) make him better. Which isn’t wrong either.
Batman is both a loving and a distant father. Batman both cares only for Gotham and has interests beyond Gotham. Batman has no friends and a few close friends. Batman is serious and dark and brooding and Batman is silly and playful and pretending to be emotionless. The writers don’t agree, the fans don’t agree, no one agrees so Batman is a nebulous character of clear motives only when it suits the narrative he’s engaged in.
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feartoxinjelloshot · 4 months
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clipsverse SWAP AU! for fun! character elaboration under the cut because it gets kind of wordy:
selina's deal is pretty straightforward: she has the typical “saw parents die as a child" backstory, but she’s obviously not a millionare so she’s operating out of some kind of condemned underground parking lot... somewhere. authentic gotham grunge i guess. she’s a functioning alcoholic and i am obsessed with her. she's a hardboiled detective like batman, but tends to be a bit more cynical - sort of like if rorschach from watchmen was a normal person and also didn't hate sex. firefly is her "guy in the chair" similar to what alfred is to batman in canon, minus the surrogate parent part, obviously. public opinion is pretty split on if the bat is a man or a woman under there. i don't really have swap ideas for the robins ironed out, but i'm thinking that cass and stephanie are her robin and red hood equivalents (cass being dick, stephanie being jason). cass would have an allblack bird theme going on, so she might be "crow" or "blackbird" instead of robin. dunno what stephanie's red hood rendition is like. purple hood? i'll figure it out eventually.
bruce’s parents are alive, but he has a terrible relationship with them and with his own wealth so he mitigates the guilt complex by dressing up as a cat to steal and redistribute resources to people who actually need it. he could probably do that in daylight but there is something very wrong with him. i don't think his dumb slutty playboy persona is entirely genuine even without his parents' deaths, but he does lean into it more and incorporate parts of it into his vigilante persona over time. i think this version of bruce is just generally very lonely under the surface. he tries to be normal in his daytime life and he's very bad at it - theft aside, in a certain sense being the cat(man? woman?) is his own break for freedom; he felt a need to plunge himself far into the deep end of what normal society calls a 'freak'. ...writing it out like this, we're probably lucky he didn't start killing people. fortunately batman isn't really that kind of guy in any universe.
meanwhile on the other side of the rails: ivy! her deal is slightly unformed right now due to the fact that the hatter and the joker also swap places in this au - so the hatter is a dangerous, evil mastermind intent on controlling gotham to suit their whims, and the joker is... just a harmless silly little guy. yeah. i don't have swap-hatter's exact personality ironed out yet, so detailing his and ivy's dynamic would be difficult, but i can say that while she is his loyal second-in-command at his table of advisors, she is also plotting against him. ivy is a consistent loner in both mainline cv and here, and while she doesn't have the same tumultuous, antagonistic, emotional relationship with him as harley does with the joker, she is also frankly not interested in being his number one until the end of time. she wants to do it herself and she wants to do it right. this is an ivy who, in lieu of her own world-altering gift, is scraping tooth and nail to successfully supersede the most powerful entity she can her her hands on. the hatter is blissfully unaware of this - we can't all be perfect.
harley, for her part, is very tame in comparison. she mirrors ivy's canonical backstory pretty closely: an esteemed scientist studying stem cell relations who was denied funding, mocked, and forced to experiment on herself to prove a point, unwittingly connecting herself to a worldwide hive-mind of plantlife. this version of harley, while still dressed as a scientist, is far more surface-level emotionally volatile than mainline ivy, more impulsive and irrational, and probably willing to lean much farther into the classic poison ivy reputation as a villainous seductress, to varying degrees of honesty and success. it takes ivy an incredible degree of patience and control to maintain the mental and physical balance she strikes with the green, and this version of harley has far less of both. she lets it use her body as a conduit of earthly rage and she lets the poison infect her skin and organs until mottled and decaying. she's not unhappy, but she's not exactly stable, either.
jonathan is a mysterious, faux-sleazy lounge singer who lost his left arm to a snake bite infection as a child and thereafter became obsessed with the symbolism of the balance of life via games, tricks and questions - winning and losing, birth and death, etc. the ouroboros is a common symbol in his theatrics. he possesses a certain degree of social confidence that the mainline jonathan has never quite been capable of - while he doesn't have the same fervent need for attention as edward, he takes a compulsory delight in the mental influence he achieves on small crowds and will employ many avenues to get ahold of it. he's certainly not outgoing: he keeps almost entirely to himself offstage, uninterested in fame outside of his show persona. unlike mainline jonathan who views the scarecrow as a genuine self-inflicted diety, this jon sees his persona as more of a mantle or responsibility that he must take on in order to discover new truths about the world. like his canon counterpart he is asexual and uninterested in sex, but i imagine that he has less qualms about leading people on as an act to get what he wants from them. he's not terribly famous in his singing career, but he's become a bit of an underground legend for his resolute 1920s-inspired style and occasional genuine debonair charm.
edward in comparison is not nearly as ritualistically compelled as mainline scarecrow, but he’s far less cagey about his own machinations and his mental relationship to them: he lives in a tricked-out barn somewhere on the far outskirts of gotham, and he spends his time as a propmaster creating elaborate saw-trap-esque haunted houses and escape rooms to invoke panic in his “guests”. he wanders the halls of his own houses along with the guests, repairing and tinkering, or just scaring the shit out of them. he also makes a genuine living by making and selling cosplay props and other related objects online; he's developed a bit of an internet presence through this channel, though he's not as fixated on it as the mainline riddler would be. he still craves spectacle and attention, but he's more of a "quality over quantity" guy according to his own standards and is rarely happy with the work he creates, hence the endless roundabout of creation and reinvention.
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gatorbites-imagines · 5 months
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Can i request the continuation of jason todd and dick grayson yandere ask? Maybe add in smut aswell. (Don't force yourself!, Take a good care of yourself 💗)
-🥚 anon
Yandere Jason Todd x speedster male reader x Yandere Dick Grayson
Part 2
Headcanons
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Imagine sitting in a spinny chair petting a cat like a bond villain. I have wanted to write a part two for this for a while. Instead of reader just dating his og universes version of them, what if reader was dating multiple people 👀? Cuz you cant imagine the kid of Thawne being a nice person.
Ill refer to readers original universe as OG verse, and the yandere universe as yan verse cuz its easier to understand.
Part 1 can be found here
In part 1 yan Dick and Jason has pretty much abandoned their former dimension in smithereens after having wiped out the entire justice league, as they tried to stop them from crossing dimensions and tearing a hole in reality itself to find you.
So, when Yan Dick and Jason appear in your OG dimension, different procedures set up by the league notify them about the tear in reality and how unstable it is. They’d rush there and find two bloody and battered versions of Dick and Jason, and thinking they fled some battle or a doomed timeline, they bring them to the tower.
When Jason and Dick wake up, they immediately fall back on the many tricks they had been taught under their batman, who was apparently even better at lying than OG batman, as they believe them when they claim their home dimension was destroyed and they have nowhere to go.
It takes a while to work Yan Dick and Jason into the league and their hero roster, but they never suspect them of being anything less than heroes and stable. They start calling them Rick and Jay since it gets confusing with multiple people named the same thing.
They don’t drop hints that they know you, but they do try to figure out where you are and what you are doing at all times, but its harder than they thought it would be. Who would have thought trying to track a guy that can cross dimensions and time at will would be so difficult.
Rick almost bursts a blood vessel when he hears some of the younger OG league members talking about how “Mach 10 has been dating multiple people at once”, and Jay wants to curl up into a ball and disappear and tear himself apart.
Their obsession finally starts showing through the cracks as they use league resources to find you and stalk you. More and more cracks appear in their masks and fake personalities, as they see you going on dates with other people.
Jericho, Jamie Reyes, Roy Harper, Garth, Kyle Rayner, the list went on. You seemed to be dating multiple people at once, at the same time, as you used your powers to be in multiple places at once.
You weren’t a good person, so you hadn’t even felt bad when Jamie had cried finding out you were cheating on him with multiple people, you just shrugged and asked him what he had expected from Thawnes offspring.
It was common knowledge amongst the younger league members that you were down to a roll in the sheets with most, but there wasn’t a loyal bone in your body, and you could easily turn on whoever you were dating at the time if it was part of a plan.
Of course. Rick and Jay never saw you as the problem. How could you be? You were perfect, you were everything that mattered in the multiverse, and you could do no wrong. It had to be your partners that were the issue, they had to be neglecting your needs and leaving you having to resort to finding different ways to meet them.
OG justice league knew Rick and Jay had some issues, but they had always blamed it on coming from a dimension that had been destroyed by some unknown evil. But as time passed, they started to think that maybe the backstory they had been given wasn’t true.
It came to a head when one day Rick almost gutted Roy after he and Jay had followed you around Coast city, where you had met up with Roy and the two of you had gone on a date, ending with you two back in Roy’s apartment.
Rick and Jay were both cracking as they saw others put their grubby disgusting hands all over you and just doing whatever they wanted. Whenever they heard others insult you, they felt like repeating what they had done in their original universe.
After Rick attacked Roy, he was placed on probation. Jay was more subtle about his plans, as he wasn’t as blinded by rage as Rick and was more fueled by not feeling like he was good enough and blaming himself.
People didn’t even put two and two together for a while when your non league admirers started going missing, only to be found much later dead in many different ways. There was no way to tie the murders together, but it was clear there was a pattern, but no one could figure out what it was.
The league finally discovered just what type of people Jay and Rick were when you one day wandered into the tower. Maybe the league needed your help with something involving the speedforce, or the negative speedforce.
But the moment the two yanderes saw you, it was like they became completely different people, the masks they had been wearing for months shattered as they almost stumbled over each other to get to you first.
You just saw in your seat grinning to yourself as they clambered into your lap, vile threats of what he could do to anyone who touched to passing Ricks lips, as Jay warbled out apologies and begs for you to love him and appreciate him.
The league wasn’t sure what to do, but their suspicions only grew. It got to the point where they somehow track down the dimension the Yans originally come from, to see what really happened. Imagine their horror when they learn Rick and Jay killed all of them out of obsession fueled love for you.
But when they finally figured out the truth, Rick and Jay fully dropped their roles and started chasing you around like lovesick puppies again, butchering anyone who got in their way.
The league could lock them up, but they had also seen what happened when they were separated from you, and as long as they were around you and an had no reason to lash out, they seemed fine for the most part.
You had moments where you would peace out to different dimensions, especially when Rick and Jay started foiling all your attempts to mess around with other people, Rick always exploding in rage and Jay breaking down in tears and wails of misery.
Again, you were never a good person, and they annoyed you sometimes, but it was kinda cute to have them begging for scraps of your attention even as the league tried again and again to capture them and lock them away.
Rick and Jay never find a way to lock you away, you are just too powerful. But they at some point stumble across ways to make themselves stronger so they can keep up. Like making themselves speedsters, or developing gear to follow and track you, they come up with something.
But you learn an easy way to distract them is by piling attention on them for a while, get them comfortable, then you can peace out when they get on your nerves.
Jay is always easier to trick than Rick, as Jay is always aching for any tiny piece of attention and love youll give him, his knees always buckling when you kiss him or hold him, words almost akin to worship always tumbling out from between his lips towards you.
Rick is harder to trick, as hes always suspicious and angry, but an easy way is to dominate him in some way, like tying him up and then leaving him there, leaving him to get out on his own, or get help from Jay if he needs it.
All in all, the league is scared and cautious, but knows they wont be an active threat to the league as long as they have you. And your relationship with your yanderes is nowhere near healthy, with you only loving them like someone would love a pet or a toy, and them loving you way too much.
But what can someone expect from the offspring of Thawne, and two extremely unstable Bats.
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thethingsweneversaid · 9 months
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Am I crazy or did I just crack the mystery of the monologue scene????
Why did they lose against Vecna in season 4? What were they missing?
They lost the race against time. Time was obviously significant this season (The grandfather clock, Vecna's obsession with time, the UD being frozen in time). The time was simply up, they were too late. Who’s to blame? Mike Wheeler. 
Okay, let me explain, haha.
Throughout the whole series we all know Mike being late, or almost late to things is recurring. Every season in fact. S1: Mike’s campaign was too long, and he tried to get the party to stay past their curfew. S2: Mike was trying to get in contact with El on his walkie, almost making him late to the arcade. S3: Mike was almost late to the cinema because he was with El, making them almost miss the beginning of the movie. S4: Mike was reading El’s letter, almost making him and Nancy late for school... He begins every season with a race against time. Also worth noting that El was the reason for him being late in s2, s3 and s4. Also ALSO worth noting that in season 1, Mike begs his parents to let the party stay longer. The campaign took two weeks to plan! They need to finish it. He has no rush. While in all the other seasons (when he was late because of El), we get a "Shit! Shit! I'm going to be late"-version of Mike. He's stressed out and rushed. Not sure where I'm going with this last point, but I'm sure it means something and that it'll make sense in s5. The point is, Mike gets distracted by El.
Now for the monologue. This time, it's not Mike getting distracted by El. It's him distracting El.
Jason was obviously a key reason for them being too late as well. The scenes switch between Lucas fighting him and Mike’s monologue, comparing the two. Jason destroys Max’s walkman, destroying her connection to Lucas and the world outside her mind. Mike tries to get El to wake up by lifting her out of the freezer, taking off her glasses, Will shoves the radio away. They’re trying to get her out of Max’s mind and into the real world again. But El doesn't want to wake up. She is ready to fight for Max. The boys obviously tried to help because who knows what would’ve happened if they didn’t? They thought El was dying. When Mike begins his monologue, El looked away from Max and up “towards Mike’s voice”. She was listening to him now. Getting distracted. El continuously tells people throughout the series to be quiet when going into her “trance”. People talking distracts her, and she needs to concentrate. Mike also reminds the audience of the importance of the sensory deprivation tank. "It helps her calm down and focus on her powers". With Mike removing all the aids that help her concentrate (the glasses, the tank, the radio), while also talking to her, we can only assume that now, El isn’t only fighting to save Max, but also to stay in Max’s mind, further slowing her down.
At the end of the monologue, Mike reminds her she has to fight, and El’s eyes snap back to Max. That’s when she breaks loose from the vines. Whether you think El believes what Mike is saying and utilizes his loving words for strength or not, it’s still a distraction. I’ve seen a lot of people say that they felt impatient while watching this scene. Like «get on with it! Vecna is literally killing Max RIGHT NOW». And we're probably right to feel impatient! That's probably what the writers were going for! The audience was supposed to feel like that. El lost valuable time because of it. Mike is making them late this time too.
Will is also kinda to blame in this (I don't blame any of them, it's just an unfortunate set of events and they all did what they thought was best, but you get what I mean) Because in a way, Mike is distracted too. Distracted from the truth. That happened when Will lied to him in the van, disguising his own feelings for Mike, using El as a distraction for Mike to focus on instead. Will's guiding Mike towards a lie. He convinced Mike that El was feeling a certain way, which she WAS NOT. (For example: "You make her feel like she’s not a mistake at all, like she’s better for being different." cue Mike and El’s fight where she accuses him of thinking she’s a monster too, like everyone else.) (This also contrasts Will singling Mike out as the only person that doesn't treat him differently in season 2 in that scene with Will and Jonathan.) Mike doesn’t make El feel the way Will portrayed it in the van, though Mike is led to believe that she does.
Therefore, making the feelings that was the foundation for the monologue a lie. Both to Mike and El. It isn’t authentic. This doesn't apply to them. which brings me to my next point. 
 "A paladin swears to uphold justice and righteousness, to stand with the good things of the world against the encroaching darkness, and to hunt the forces of evil wherever they lurk. Different paladins focus on various aspects of the cause of righteousness (honesty=righteousness and honor for Mike), but all are bound by the oaths (promises, “friends don’t lie”) that grant them power to do their sacred work. Oaths, honor, and rigid rules define a paladin's everyday actions. Breaking these oaths (by lying) means their deity will revoke their powers."
This is why his monologue didn’t work. It was a lie (And Mike knowingly or unknowingly portrayed that lie to El). Without his honesty, Mike the paladin loses his powers. He couldn’t save them. 
Will’s selfless attempt to save their relationship sadly turned out to be counter-productive in every way, hindering all of them from seeing the truth. Will was also the one that told Mike not to stop, when in reality, maybe stopping and letting El be was exactly what he should've done. He's the heart. But he's Will's heart. That's what Will would've wanted Mike to do, seeing as Mike has saved him/snapped him out of his episodes multiple times by speaking to him: Of course Will thinks that's the right thing to do! Mike's doing what Will would've needed, not El.
It adds a new layer to El being upset with Mike in the cabin by the end of s4, because it isn't as simple as "she knows Mike is lying" or "She's just upset because they lost". She's upset because once again Mike doesn't trust that she knows her own limits (This being a huge reason for conflict in s3 between El/Mike/Max.) Mike worries because he cares of course, but it isn't what El needs ("Mike, I need you to trust me.") When Mike tries to help her, she fails. But she "redeems herself" when she's making her own decision, without outside influences other than love for her friends. She pushes her limits further than ever before, bringing Max back to life, trusting herself and her powers, without Mike knowing.
Mike is the heart, yes. The problem was - the heart was in the wrong place. They all got it wrong this time. They got confused and misunderstood each other. That’s why they lost. In the next season, I believe Mike and El are going to realize that they’ve both been focusing on the wrong things, and that is how they’re going to win. Still using love as their weapon - just a different kind of love that’s not distracting them from what they really need, not slowing them down. El coming fully into her own, reaching her full potential and using her powers the way she knows best, with the support of her loved ones making her stronger - not under the influence of Mike trying to stop her out of worry. And Mike’s heart being in the right place. With Will. 
I've seen other people talk about this next part, but I'm adding it in because it further proves the point.
Another indication that proves to me that at least SOME of the monologue is a blatant lie is the Romeo and Juliet parallel, with the word "Montague" spelled out behind Mike, and the "love at first sight"-refrence. "I knew right then and there, in that moment, that I loved you." That. is. a. lie. and there's just no going around it. Romeo and Juliet's romance wasn't actually real love, just infatuation. The Duffers also said they don't believe in love at first sight. For them to use that trope wouldn't just be wierd and cliché, but also contradicts everything we were shown in season 1. Are we just supposed to believe that Mike loved her, decpite them showing us otherwise?
More on the Romeo and Juliet thing in this post.
Conclusion: The Duffers are geniuses I’m never getting over this show.
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gunebuggiesprompts · 10 months
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Anyways, so Danny is actually kinda a literal star (this may be because his obsession is space or his the Ancient of Space). After millions of years, he is finally close to his (final) death and tries to find a nice place to do a version of a supernova. He has been helping people and exploring space for almost the entirety of his life, and he is ready to rest. That was until he found a small boy who had recently died wrong and ended up in the Infinite Realms as a halfa. The way too young boy, or Robin as the kid remembers, reminds Danny a lot of him when he first started out as a halfa (which at this point he is either a full on ghost or his human side is immortal). He knows he shouldn't be around him being so close to death, but he can't help but take in the little bird, helping him much like he wished he was helped when he was young.
They become very close, Jason Robin finally getting the parent figure he always longed for. Danny told himself he couldn't shouldn't get attached, but he ends up loving his little star much more than he's ever loved anybody (familial wise of course), and he's helped a lot of kids/people in those millions of years.
Eventually, though, Danny's time has come, and he doesn't know how to tell his starlight that he has to go. So when the young bird begins to be pulled back into his universe, the living realm calling for Robin once more, Danny lets him go even when the boy begs to stay. It's hard, but Danny knows it's for the best.
Jason returns to his universe as the much older version of himself, having grown since he'd died. He doesn't remember anything from his time in the Infinite Realms, but he can feel something missing, something he was longing for. The feeling drives him absolutely nuts, and he becomes more enraged than he has ever felt, and he doesn't know why. He blames it on coming back wrong, on the failure that was supposed to be his father (Bruce), of how he died so young because of how naive he was.
Though he'll never truly know that it's his ghost half grieving for somebody he no longer remembers. Somebody who he loved and who loved him back. The man he called father and spent all his time with, learning the mystifying ways of being a half ghost. The man who rambled about space, making him beg to go see it so he could see the beauty himself.
The star who shone so bright that the darkness he felt vanished, bringing a new galaxy of happiness he's never felt.
But now that the star was gone, the darkness had returned, its grim shadows bringing the worst in Jason as he unknowingly grieved.
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