#actually what i thought of first was this between bruce and babs except it goes both ways | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bigskydreaming · 3 years

Note

IGN’s recent Bat-focused article (Batman: What Does Red Hood Need to Do to Get A Good Story?) praises fanfic writers and also is an amazing critique of how stagnant Jason has become under recent DC management and I’m so surprised at how good it is and how well thought out the solutions were

Hmmm. I just looked it up and I mean, I’m not trying to start anything but I both agree and disagree? Like, it makes some points for sure, I mean, its not like its saying things that I haven’t said a thousand times about Dick, like.....these characters need to be allowed access to a full range of emotions, both good and bad, in order to be fully fleshed out, so I mean yes on that premise alone I absolutely agree this is as true for Jason as it is for Dick or anyone else.

Tbh my only real criticism of the piece is it thinks Jason exists in a particular predicament the other characters aren’t in as well. And that I just don’t agree with, like they kinda lost me a bit with their first paragraph:

His complexities and moral ambiguity make him a compelling and distinct character among his more strait-laced Robin-brothers. Sadly, the character has seen little growth since his rage-filled reintroduction into comics. The ‘former Robin becomes a villain’ idea was enough for DC to coast on for a while but since rejoining the heroes, Red Hood has done little else.

First off, this may just be me being pedantic but I’m ALWAYS going to go fetch a grain of salt before continuing reading anything that pits Jason against his brothers in a war of his moral ambiguity against their strait-lacedness. Because to me, that’s just a fundamentally shallow view of the Batfam that caters to the idea that they each must have their own distinct niche in order to be fully viable individual characters, when a) no, and b) they don’t fit neatly into the niches people keep trying to slot them into and it never ends well for anybody.

Like Jason is morally ambiguous in a lot of ways too, yes, but umm, even if we assume that the writer is only speaking of Dick, Tim and Damian, we’re talking a guy who beat the Joker to death with his bare hands and has ten assassins and mercenaries on his speed dial and who co-led the Outsiders, a guy who was deeply immersed in weighing the pros and cons of getting revenge for his father by getting Captain Boomerang killed and is forever being DMed by Ra’s because he’s convinced he can get Tim to say He Has Some Points Actually, and the kid who was an assassin with a body count by age ten and who has struggled constantly ever since his debut to define his OWN personal view of morality that is not wholly predicated on what he was taught by any single individual.

And this is a big part of where I part ways with the article, because I think it falls into the same trap that a lot of people do by believing fanfic is inherently better by doing the same thing from just a different angle. Fanfic CAN be better than the canon, I absolutely believe that, I believe it is at times, but to do so, it has to like, BE BETTER. It has to do things differently, and not just paint a slightly different veneer over the same things. Like, pedantic though it might be, I outlined the above issue because its a mode of thinking the canon absolutely falls into again and again, and just like the writer of that article themselves, like....I think fandom as a whole is no different?

Like, yes there are great stories about Jason out there, some writers have done great and interesting things with him, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a huge trend in fandom of doing the exact same thing I see here.....which is honestly a huge part of the exact same problem the article is decrying canon for......LIMITING Jason (and all the Batfam) by reducing them and their stories to finite niches as a way of spotlighting them as different from their siblings.....except they’re not that different! And that’s okay! They don’t have to be! Families can have lots in common, families DO have lots in common due to like.....shared variables during their formative years.

I mean Jason was heavily influenced by environmental factors in how and where he grew up before he ever met Batman, but like the article goes into itself, he was no less influenced by Bruce himself as his father figure.....which is something he absolutely has in common with his siblings, thus its not hard at all to see how his siblings could have similar complexities and moral struggles that stem from trying to reconcile Bruce’s influence with the many other things and people that have influenced their childhoods.

And similarly, while the article is dead-on about Jason’s stagnancy....this is something that applies in equal measure to the rest of his family, because they’re all facing the same issues in terms of how DC views and utilizes them, and fandom as much as it likes to condemn DC for doing just that....frequently does the same thing. Like, Jason’s stuck in canon, absolutely......but Dick keeps being popped out into his own microcosm to experience a couple years of stories that essentially turn him into completely different characters isolated from every communal part of his character’s history, and then ERASE everything that’s happened at the end of each of these stories and reset him to square one.....and that’s just a different kind of stagnancy that again, still never allows for actual character progression or development. Tim has LITERALLY been regressed back to Robin, like a hard reset that’s its own kind of stagnancy and Damian has had years of character development upended just to kick him back to where he started, effectively strip away all the connections he’s developed at least in any meaningful way, etc.....and the same holds true for Babs and Cass and Steph and even Bruce himself IMO, in a lot of ways.

Its absolutely a problem, but its a problem that extends far beyond just Jason even if he is a great example of it. And its also a problem that extends into fic itself, and that’s why I don’t agree with a lot of the conclusions that article draws beyond just the fundamental “these characters need to be allowed access to a full range of emotions.”

Yes. That. That right there, THAT I think is crucial, but I think that writer needed to widen the scope a little to take in the full impact of what that actually MEANS for the characters....so as to not accidentally repeat the same problem they’re being critical of by essentially arguing for a full range of emotions for Jason....while still defining or viewing Jason through a finite lens of “the more morally ambiguous Bat character, at least as compared to his brothers.”

Because its that last part that’s so detrimental, because it seems like such a little thing at first, until you realize that essentially its just putting a ceiling, a cap on how far those full ranges of emotions can be expressed. Like the problem with Dick Grayson in canon and fanon is NOT that he can’t be written with a full range of emotions.....its that his character absolutely can encompass a wide range of opinions and viewpoints and emotional stances from “I don’t believe in killing as a first option” to “I absolutely can, will, and have beaten a damn clown to death for joking about murdering my brother”.....and he can still walk away as Dick Grayson after expressing both those things, because his character is big enough to include them both. HE’S not limited as a character, its canon writers and fandom writers that both heap artificial limitations of their OWN on him, say that his character is so defined in such a specific way that there’s no way for the latter expression of his character to actually be IN character.....and the fatal flaw here is fully fleshed out characters are never just one thing. They don’t fit in niches anymore than people do, and notice the problems we all run into when we try and pigeon hole people as being just one thing, like humans can’t be contradictory or act against their own self-interest or be hypocritical or evolve or even regress past prior viewpoints....basically, any time you try and sum up a human being in one line, no matter how accurate that description is, there’s still SOME things that are going to be left out of that picture.

Now, these things don’t always have to matter that much, like if I look at a serial killer and say that’s a serial killer, like, I might be leaving out of the picture that once he helped an old lady across the street and didn’t kill her and he doesn’t even know why, and I for one, simply do not care that I leave that out of the picture. Its irrelevant to the big picture for me. I can acknowledge that it adds a smidgen of nuance to that particular picture and then go yeah but also I don’t care, nuance denied.

But in terms of fictional characters, these things that get left in the discard pile when we try and sum up characters as just one thing, like, they can be hugely significant, because characters unlike real people, are simply WHAT WE MAKE OF THEM. That stuff that’s been left out of the big picture look at that character because its stuff most people to DEFINE what that character looks like have deemed irrelevant....its still there, and still perfectly relevant for anyone who wants to pick that stuff up and make something of it, use it to change the overall picture or even just point to ways and places that picture can absolutely encompass and include these other elements and STILL fundamentally be that same picture, that same character.

And this isn’t to say that characters can never be written out of character, its to say that usually IMO what ACTUALLY makes the difference between something being out of character and something just being an unexpected but still valid character choice is just.....how these things are executed. The latter is when writers make the effort to JUSTIFY their character choice, to sell audiences on why and how this is absolutely something this character would do, to take them on a journey of what led the character to making this choice and let them see how those steps actually line up, that’s an actual journey that character might take. The former is when writers just don’t bother and are just like, well here’s a thing that character did, and you know it was in character because well that’s the character and that’s what I wrote them doing lol, what more do you want. No. Yawn. Next.

But the trick is if you’re going to try and make a character a SPECTRUM of emotions and choices rather than just a same datapoint recurring over and over again endlessly, a literal sticking point that never advances, never progresses, never changes......you have to actually give that character free range to utilize that spectrum of emotions and choices.....not just confine them to accessing all those possibilities but ONLY within a narrowly defined niche that is its own kind of limitation.

A character can START from a logline, absolutely. Can BEGIN in a narrative niche as a way to INTRODUCE them as seemingly different from their surroundings or their peers when they do not yet have the backstory, the evidence of past stories and character choices readers can use to interpret their actions or guess their choices.....but narrative niches, IMO, are meant to have a shelf life, an expiration date. They’re a seed for characters to grow FROM, to grow PAST, not return to over and over again.....because that’s when a niche just becomes another house that stagnancy built.

Anyway, thanks for the thoughts and the article mention.....it was an interesting exploration of thoughts for me even if I didn’t ultimately agree with a lot of what was already said....still a worthwhile read though I think and I mean hey, its cool if you still agree with it more even if I don’t, lol. This is just my take.

14 notes · View notes

amazingflyingdick · 4 years

Text

right here.

WHO: Dick Grayson @amazingflyingdick, Jason Todd @thatsjasonfkntodd, and mentions of Barbara Gordon @the-orxcle. WHERE: A random alleyway. WHEN: June 30th, 2020. WHAT: After receiving a text from Babs, Jason goes to check on Dick and comes across a disturbing scene.

Jason: The last thing he wanted to do was leave Roy alone, and he’d had a mind to keep arguing with Babs until she’d told him the name given. Dick’s sudden silence over the comms immediately took on a more sinister feeling. Roy would just have to be alright for a little while. Jason told him he was going out, that it shouldn’t be long, but didn’t give details beyond that. He didn’t know what the fuck was happening and it wasn’t the time to lay out a bunch of speculation.

He didn’t take his mask or any of the armor, but he grabbed his twin pistols and the Kris dagger and stored all three in his jacket. Hopefully he wouldn’t need them. Hopefully he’d be rolling up on Dick putting a band aid on some kid’s knee, get a lecture for being in public and armed, and be able to go back to Roy’s apartment. Hopefully, hopefully.

It was only a couple of blocks, Babs had given him the location, and it didn’t take him long to skip roofs until he got over there. He didn’t see anything at first. There was no NOVA patrol, no agents. Hell, there weren’t even civilians. When he abandoned height advantage to get his feet on the ground, he ended up seeing the blood before he saw his brother. The dark red seeping into concrete sidewalk was a too-familiar sight in his life. With a whispered Fuck, he followed the line of it until he saw Dick leaned against the side of a dumpster.

The fabric of his jeans scrubbed against the concrete as he got down beside him. “Dick...hey, hey man, I need you to answer me.” He swallowed the bile in his throat and ignored the rising panic. Shallow wounds bled a lot, more than they should. Might just be that. Dick: The scraping sound Jason's jeans made on the ground made Dick react. He wasn't sure what happened, not really, but the ringing in his head was loud and persistent and he was tired. It wouldn't be the first time he'd worked past his scheduled shift, but there was no reason he should still be here. The bar was dark and he couldn't hear anyone, couldn't see anyone except...

"Jay?" His mouth felt like it was filled with cotton. He felt something warm and wet on his cheek and he reached up to follow the trail back up to the side of his left eye. Even with gloves on, he felt the hole. The bullet went straight through and out the back of his head, the projectile embedded in the brick just a few inches above his head. He'd been kneeling when he was shot. "I think I cut myself. What time is it? Does Bruce know you're in Bludhaven?" The matter-of-fact, concerned tone was so utterly normal and completely displaced in a dark, blood-soaked alley.

The buzzing in his ears was getting louder. Dick winced and pushed to his feet, barely leaning against the wall before pressing his hand against his head. Blood had already soaked the back of his hair and uniform. He had the vague understanding that something was wrong but he didn't know what it was, but his mind jumped between what he was seeing and strange, disconnected memories that were part hallucination. "Think you can go get me the first aid kit, Little Wing? It's in the back, under the sink. I'm okay, I just have to patch myself up." Jason: Jason felt his throat go tight as he saw just where the blood was coming from. It was too dark where they were for him to see the wound itself, but it was clear that the source of all the bleeding was the back of his head. That coupled with the delirium, or maybe he was full on hallucinating, had Jason reaching out for him as soon as Dick stood up.

“I think it’s a little bigger than a cut, dude. Why don’t you...why don’t we sit back down for a minute...” They all knew field medicine, basic first aid, things that would keep them alive until they got actual medical care at the Batcave or the hospital or somewhere. Jason had a first aid kit on him, but it was small, the most basic of basics. There was gauze, though, and he had to do something to stop the bleeding. “Let me check you out. You can’t reach it yourself.”

Once he had the space to do it, Jason shifted until he was at Dick’s side instead of in front of him. He reached up with one hand, ready to feel for a cut. What he got instead was unmistakably a gunshot wound. As soon as he touched it, he jerked his hand away like he’d been burned and felt a trickle of cold go all the way through him. Fuckfuckfuckfuck.

He yanked the whole roll of gauze out and the tape with it. Before he even got started, he sent Babs a single line of text.

Send medical.

Dick: Dick did stop when Jason reached out, confused, but when he brought his hand away from his head he could see it was wet. It looked black in the dim lighting of the alley. He looked down at the blood on the pavement, already congealing, and thought there was no way he could even have that much blood in his body. It couldn't all be his.

"What happened? Was there a fight?" Something happened, something bad. That was something even he could reason out, despite being more and more distracted by the ringing in his head. It was giving him a headache. "Just a head wound. They bleed a lot, remember? Pretty sure I still have that scab from the train." That had been more than ten years ago. Dick's mind was jumping back and forth. One minute he knew he was in an alley in Star City, but the next he was just as convinced that this was Bludhaven. Jason was fourteen. Bruce was going to be mad at him for letting him in the bar at all, even if it were closed.

Jason's hasty movements made him reach over and calmly pick up the tape. He was already tearing off a piece for him by the time Jason finished with the text. When he set the roll down and saw that just his hand left it soaked in blood, he had a sinking feeling in his chest. "Jason." His sudden change in tone, urgent, with an edge of fear, made it obvious that he was back in Star City. Suddenly he was talking fast, eager to get the information out before there wasn't time. He could barely focus. "The kid I found, he said his name was Gary Kemp. The NOVA agent. I don't know who shot me, but..." He paused, blinking, and reached up to touch the wound even if it meant getting in the way of any first aid Jason was rendering. "Oh no." He was shot in the head? Dick laughed softly. "Now I have to come up with something better to say just in case my last words end up being about NOVA." Jason: As soon as he pressed gauze to the wound, it was soaked through with blood. He packed more onto it for both sides, and taped it down even though it meant pressing it to Dick’s hair. It wasn’t going to help for long. Jason’s hand was shaking a little as he held the second piece of it in place even after the tape. He only let it go when Dick suddenly snapped back into reality and the franticness of that did nothing to quell the dread pooling in his stomach.

“Fuck off with that,” he said immediately, not for a second letting that thought linger. “Babs has got help on the way. Me and Steph aren’t accepting new members of the club right now, so you’re going to have to live. Admissions are closed.” Jason moved to get Dick leaning back against the front of the dumpster, even though that was a horrible place to be. He didn’t want to move him to find anywhere better. Dick: Even through the haze of the strange pinging in his head and the slow creep of pain, Dick noticed Jason's hand shaking. He did shift back to lean against the dumpster, but reached up to put his hand on Jason's arm before he could move back. Normally he would have said nothing, he would have let Jason have that peace of mind, but there was so much blood. It was getting harder to breathe and he felt as if his head were burning from the inside. The pain made him want to move, but he settled for twisting his fingers in Jason's jacket. "Don't do that."

He didn't want to die in front of Jason. The thought made him feel cold. But even his unwavering optimism couldn't deny the reality of what he was facing. This wasn't something he was guaranteed to survive, let alone walk away from unscathed. There were so many things he could say and even wanted to say, but he didn't want to wrap his head around it. He thought about his family and how their last memories of him were that disastrous dinner, he'd never have the chance to make it up to them. He thought about Slade and hated that he would prove his cynicism correct by dying here, like this, even though it was because of his own actions.

Jason was here, he claimed not to care about the past, but suddenly Dick had to make sure. He had to talk. "I wanted more time. With you. To be your brother." It was a strange way to word how he felt, but it was difficult to explain it properly. "Also, please don't let anyone put me in the Lazarus Pit." Jason: It was funny, in a way that wasn’t actually funny at all, that he’d seen so much death in his life but so little of it had been accompanied by the burden of actually saying goodbye to anyone. His father had died across the city. His mother had been gone by the time he was on the bathroom floor. It didn’t make them any less dead or make it less real, but he’d dealt mostly with the aftermath and not the process. There had been close calls and very near misses with other people, but none so close as a bullet to the head and blood in an alley.

Jason closed his eyes. He had to. He could feel the irritating burn of tears and he needed it to go the fuck away. “Come on, Dickie. You’re not leaving me here to deal with everyone’s dumb bullshit without you. I didn’t sign up for that. That’s your job.”

Life had never been fair. He’d learned that by the time he could walk and talk. Life was a bitch that you had to figure out how to survive and twist into something you could stand. He hadn’t always managed to do that, and he still wasn’t great at it, but it had felt like a few things were getting better, like he’d been able to right some of the wrongs that he’d held onto for so long. Unfair didn’t begin to cover it if it was just going to be over that fast. “I need you here,” he said without realizing it until the words were out, even though they’d barely been a whisper. They all did, but they weren’t all sitting there in a pool of Dick’s blood to say it. Just him. Dick: "You're better at it than you think." It didn't matter how many times he blinked. Jason was still blurry. Eventually Dick gave up trying to bring him into focus and kept his eyes closed. It made his head feel better and he could focus on staying conscious until the ambulance got there. It made him feel as if that gave him some control over the outcome of this, or at least gave him a better chance, because this wasn't how he wanted things to end. Not when he'd finally turned so many things around for the better. And not before he had time to repair the relationships he'd strained. Jason being left to handle Tim and Damian didn't alarm him, not really, because he knew that beyond Jason's hostility he still had the desire to connect with them. "They look up to you."

He heard the words beyond the roaring in his ears. Dick hadn't settled comfortably into the thought of death, but he'd recognized the very real possibility of it, but then... maybe he just wouldn't let it be an option. This was one more bullet he'd take and come back from. It might not bode well that it was a bullet to the head, but he could still feel all of his fingers and toes. He still knew his own name. He could still see, even if his vision was messed up. Jason should have found him already dead, but he didn't. If he were lucky enough to survive the initial shot, then he wasn't going to let himself die in an alleyway just because he got too complacent. "I'm here. I'm not giving up that easily." Dick wanted to smile, but he knew his mouth was full of blood and he could feel it moving down his throat. It wouldn't have the reassuring effect he wanted. "Just keep talking. About anything. Tell me something about you I don't already know." It was something he normally would have done, but he was finding it more difficult to keep his voice even. His body felt cold and even his voice shook from it. Every few seconds he thought he heard the ambulance in the distance, but it was that persistent ringing nose he couldn't get out of his head.

Jason: “Yeah well, they shouldn’t.” He didn’t elaborate. It wasn’t the moment for that. There had been times when he was willing to step in for the family, when he’d helped because they’d asked or needed it, but he was still struggling with the idea of being a more permanent part of it even if that had been kind of happening on its own. He didn’t want to really consider the idea of someone, least of all him trying to fill even half the role that Dick did. He’d spent so much of his life being resentful of it and it just wasn’t his to take. It wasn’t anyone’s.

The risk of Dick nodding off if they just sat there seemed too great, even as Jason struggled to think of one single thing to tell him. Something popped into his head in a few moments and he told the story before he had a chance to talk himself out of it. He’d thought about it a couple of other times, but there had never been a reason to bring it up.

“I saw you perform in the circus once. My dad lifted some tickets off a guy in the parking lot and got us in.” It was one of the few ‘normal’ memories that he had of Willis. What passed for normal, anyway. “I was probably six. I thought the animals would be the best part, but then you guys showed up. The Flying Graysons.” Jason swallowed and leaned back against the trashcan, listening for an ambulance he didn’t hear yet. “It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I thought you...” he let out a short sigh, embarrassed to actually be admitting it after so long, “I wanted to be you so badly that night. I’d never been as happy as you looked.” Dick: Dick shook his head. "Doesn't matter." They would regardless. He wanted to tell Jason that it meant something that they looked up to him for who he was, rather than an image that didn't exist, a standard that was more competition than admiration, but he had a feeling it wouldn't make much of a difference. It was a burden that he understood. It had been on his shoulders because he knew, after what happened to Jason, that they would need someone who wasn't Bruce. Dick never set out to project some golden standard and he would have denied it, if confronted, because he placed value on authenticity. It didn't occur to him that not doing things or holding back parts of himself was creating a false image of perfection. He'd been so wrapped up in what he needed to do or give that it was automatic to breeze over everything with ease or nonchalance.

It took years and a chain of events for everything to break down. For him to get here. Now he was finally getting some sort of footing, even if it were shaky. Even though he heard Jason, it took longer than usual for him to understand what it was he was saying. When it started to sink in he quickly opened his eyes so he could try to look at him. He was still blurry, but it hadn't gotten worse. "You were at... Haly's?" It took a beat longer than it should for the word to come to him. He didn't like that, but he tried not to linger on it. If Jason were six, it meant he'd been eight. It couldn't have been long before the murders. Jason wanting to be him just because he'd been happy was devastating. "I was," he finally whispered. His lips felt wet and he reached up, confused to find a strange mixture of blood and tears. "I wish I could be him." Dick's voice was getting more slurred, but he still seemed determined to speak, to keep talking, "Now? You've been that happy. Haven't you?" Jason: Jason could tell that Dick was struggling to talk, even though he was still doing it, and he was genuinely afraid to look at him. He already knew what he was going to see. Sure enough, when he made himself turn his head, he saw the dark shadow of blood between his lips and the unnatural paleness of his face. The gauze he’d put against the bullet wound was so dark with blood that it looked almost the same shade as his hair. Jason curled his hand into a fist at his side, scraping his knuckles against the rough cement, and made himself keep talking.

“Yeah. Haly’s. The old man thought he did me a big favor with that one.” And he had, in his own fucked up way. The only reason Willis had to steal circus tickets, of all things, was to take Jason. He’d still been a drunk asshole, but not every minute of every day. “I...don’t know,” he admitted, a little surprised by his own answer. “Maybe.” He should probably know if the answer was yes, though, right? He should know if he’d been that happy. Every good thing in his life always seemed to be weighed down by something else, though, and it had always been that way. “You looked free,” he added. “I guess we both want to be him now. Don’t think I’d look good in the leotard though.” He didn’t laugh even as he made the joke. Dick: Free. It was an interesting word to use. If Dick were fully capable of analyzing it he would have, but it somehow meant something in a way he didn't have to fully understand. Not right now, at least. It mattered more than Jason was telling him this now when he hadn't ever said a word about it before. Dick had no idea that Jason saw him at the circus. None at all. It was almost a relief knowing that he'd seen him before the worst day of his life.

Even though he'd been happy since, there was no denying that he'd never been as happy as he was that day in the circus. That was a different world. And even though Jason's answer made him sad, he wasn't willing to believe that he couldn't be that happy one day. "When this is over, we should go." Haly's Circus was still around, but it was back east somewhere. Dick didn't keep up with them. It was easier to keep his distance. "Don't think we can be him," he said quietly. The ringing in his head was a low buzz, but the world was getting dimmer and he closed his eyes again. He didn't want to lose consciousness now. It felt too soon, like he wasn't done saying what he needed to say, but he was struggling to articulate it. "That's what I want. For you, I mean. To be happy. Free. Do whatever you need to do to get it." Jason: When this is over. Jason clung to that a little too hard. “Yeah...yeah, sure, we’ll go. Road trip.” He would have never agreed to it under any other circumstance, and if Dick remembered it when he recovered he was going to vehemently deny that it had ever been said. But for those first few months at Wayne Manor, he’d wanted a brother like that. A family like that. He’d never got it, none of them did. They got something else entirely, and a road trip meant fighting crime across borders.

He sat up straighter as he heard what he was positive was finally an ambulance. It was still a few blocks away, maybe it wasn’t even coming to them, but he was sure he heard it. “That’s a tall order, Grayson. Nobody’s free.” Least of all him. “I’ll work on the other one.” He was trying. He’d been trying for years to get to something besides just bitterness and anger. It wasn’t always successful, and usually when it was he found some way to sabotage it.

He could hear Dick’s words sort of slurring together. With his jaw clenched so tightly it hurt, Jason reached out and put a hand on Dick’s shoulder to keep him sitting up. “Just a couple more minutes. Hang on.” Please. Dick: The agreement brought him an absurd amount of relief. Dick nodded, his grip on Jason's arm loosening even though he didn't release him completely. That tight grip was keeping him present and he needed it. He needed to stay present and not let himself get confused about where and when they were. Not again.

"Maybe not," he agreed, the heaviness in his tone more honest than it'd ever been. "But we can get close." He doubted he would ever be completely free. Part of him would always feel indebted to Bruce and the rest of his family, at least in some small ways, and that was a connection he wouldn't willingly sever even for his own sake. That Jason was willing to try and be happy was what he needed to hear and he nodded, slumping against the dumpster and finally letting himself relax. In the distance he thought he heard an ambulance, but he wasn't sure.

Jason's hand on his shoulder kept him upright. Dick took a shallow breath and heard it rattle in his throat. "Please don't go." It was a struggle to get the words out and he knew they were selfish, but he couldn't help the request and it came from somewhere deep, unconscious, and his fingers twisted in Jason's sleeve as if he needed reminding that he was still there. Jason: He’d had to stamp down the urge to try again and stop the bleeding himself. There was nothing he could do, physically, and even though he knew that it was hard not to sit there and think that Dick was dying right next to him and he wasn’t trying to do more, find some way to make it better even if that was impossible. It seemed like keeping him awake was more important.

“Maybe we can.” He didn’t believe it. The second they’d put on the Robin suit, the very instant they’d let themselves become part of Bruce’s life and Batman’s ‘legacy,’ they’d thrown out freedom. It was the price paid. Freedom came with not knowing how ugly all the ugly parts of the world really were. Jason had never had that and Dick had lost it. There wasn’t any going back.

He fought not to close his eyes again. The idea of opening them to see Dick having faded away was too much. “Still right here,” he muttered. He moved his other hand on top of Dick’s, trying to ignore the fact that both of them had blood on them. It was impossible not to.

The ambulance sirens were closer. Jason heard them one street over, but couldn’t see the lights yet. He was going to have to get up so they could find them and know where to go, but he’d wait those last few moments. Dick: Even though part of him knew Jason was right, knew everything changed for them the day they donned the mantle of Robin, Dick still wanted to believe that their future was more malleable. He didn't want to be held down by the past. It was one thing that might make him different than the others: his unwavering belief that things could be better, even when they were at their most dire.

Like right now. Part of him knew that he was hovering at a dangerous level, right on the edge of something - and he didn't know what that something was, but he was trying to resist the pull to give into it. It would be easier to let himself fade into unconsciousness. There was almost a comfort in not feeling any more pain.

He thought he heard the ambulance, but he wasn't sure and it wasn't worth ruining the moment to ask. His grip on Jason's hand tightened, almost desperately, and he was barely aware of the other intruding voices once the EMS crew arrived and took over. He didn't want to lose the grip he had on Jason's hand, or arm, or whatever he could touch that was concrete and kept him in the present. The second he was pulled away and the contact was lost, he gave into the cool, comforting blackness, even though he didn't see it as giving it. It was simply the respite he needed before he returned full force to fight.

#c: discord #dick grayson #jason todd #injury tw #blood tw #death mention tw

34 notes · View notes

princessozera · 3 years

Text

Not OM, I just wanted to post here the first ever fic I actually wrote and published

I WOULD LIKE TO SAY AS A DISCLAIMER EVEN THOUGH I PUBLISHED IT LAST YEAR (2 years ago?) I WAS ACTUALLY YOUNGER WHEN I WROTE THIS. I DO NOT SIMP FOR DAMIAN LIKE THAT ANYMORE, HE IS MY SON.

The Only Exception

(Aged up/Older Damian Wayne x OC)

The seats are filled, the air is comforting, music and perfume floating in the air. Today Rosella Anderson is to be wed to Damian Wayne. But, weddings never quite go according to plan. Talia and Ra's Al Ghul have made it clear they don't like her, on multiple occasions. But with no less than 50 trained fighters and investigators on both sides of the aisle, nothing can interrupt or ruin her special day...... Right?

Chapter 1: Getting Married Today

"Come on, suck it in!"

"I HAVEN'T EVEN EATEN TODAY!" I whined as Alice yanked the ribbons on my corset tighter.

"WATCH IT!" Crystal swats away Alice's hands and undoes the ribbons a bit. "Suffocate her and she doesn't make it down the aisle, pack her like a sausage and my hours of makeup will have gone to waste!" She huffed and finish tying the ribbons, satisfied that they weren't too tight.

"I don't think I ever really appreciated the amount of work it takes to make curly hair not be frizzy," Barbra Gordon says between sips of champagne, lounging on the hotel bed.

"That's why I don't do my hair that often," I laugh, sitting on an ottoman so Alice can put my veil on and Crystal can help me put on my garter. My maid of honor, Cassandra Cain, came over and tried to feed me some fruit slices. I tried to argue, but I couldn't hold my own as she stared me down. I let her feed me some cantaloupe slices until she was satisfied and went off to finish getting ready.

"You really are a queen today!" Stephanie laughed as she walked around the room again, holding a video recorder. I tried to hide my face, but she grabbed my hand and swung it around. "A beautiful princess for Gotham's own prince! Tell us, your majesty, how are you feeling, about to be married off to Gotham's richest stone statue?" The girls laughed but I just shook my head at her. "Me, Tim, and Dick are making a documentary for you two. Any words for the lucky man? Anything you want to say to your future self, your family, your future kids? " Whistles and laughs went around the room and I couldn't help but blush.

"Well, let's take this one step at a time," I laughed to hide my own embarrassment. "Damian," I started, looking directly into the camera, "I don't believe in love at first sight, but damn did we square up on first sight. Not many people can say they had a full on MMA fight with their future spouse within minutes of meeting them. Yet, after that whole fiasco was solved, you've never been anything but gentle with me. People always said we wouldn't last; lava and ice. Water and a drought. Incompatible. But you were the first to look past who I had to be, to see who I was trying to be. You brought me a family, and I like to think I've brought you some serenity. I don't believe in destiny, and I'm not too sure about fate, but I believe in us. I believe that I'll fight for you until the end of time because you'd do the same for me. Because you are my home, and there's no place I'd rather be." I get choked up, wanting nothing more than to have him in my arms right now. I missed him like hell, even though it's only been 2 days since I've seen him.

"This isn't the time to start reciting your wedding vows silly," Cass said and I couldn't help but giggle. She wipes away the tears that I hadn't felt form, making sure to not mess with my mascara. Stephanie sighs happily and puts the camcorder down, reaching over to hug me.

"I'm so glad I get to be your sister," she whispered to me, and I hugged back tighter. We both jerked in surprise at the knock at the door. I immediately reached for my bag, looking for my well-worn notebook, but Cass's hand steadied me. Barbra got up, fixed her dress and went over to the door.

"Who is-" She stiffens up immediately, hand pulling back from the handle. "It's Talia." Stephanie immediately got in front of me, and I grabbed Cass's hand as she reached for her own bag, searching for her gun. I'd never told my friends about Talia, but they took the hint found their way to their respective bags, throwing knives and whips at the ready. Truthfully, I was finding it a little hard to breathe and I doubt it was the dress. The knock came again, more insistent, but no one moved.

"It's your call Rose," Barbra said, her eyes never leaving the door.

"Let her in," I tug on Cass's arm and she helps me stand up. "If she wanted me offed, she would have gotten someone else to do it. Or at least she wouldn't have knocked." Crystal and Alice look between all of us in alarm and decide to take the window as Stephanie goes to back up Babs by the door. The door opens, and there stands Talia, as beautiful and regal as ever. She glances over everyone before finally meeting my eyes.

"Lady Al Ghul, please come in. To what do I owe the pleasure?" I said, fidgeting with my dress. She steps in, nodding to Babs and Stephanie.

"I'd like to have a word with you before the ceremony," She says, running her hand along the wet counter cluttered with makeup. "Alone," She said with a pointed look when no one moved. That harsh edge was enough to get everyone to cover or flank me again. She didn't respond to this, simply staring at me. I put my hand on each girl's back, one by one.

"Go, I'll be fine. We'll be right here," Babs stares me down, but I nod back. She caves and starts to leave; Alice, Crystal and eventually Stephanie following behind, after she grabs something off the bed. Cass refused to move.

"Do I need to remind you that you can barely move your waist in that monstrous dress? She'd get to you before any of us were the wiser," She whispered in my ear, holding my arm pretty tightly. I wormed my way out of her grasp and grabbed the worn notebook from my bag.

"I promise, it'll be fine. Anyways, I forgot there were 2 more things I needed to do," I flipped through the pages quickly, finding what I needed and handing it to her. "If you could please take care of it? You should be done by the time we're done talking and we can head to the venue." Cass read through it quickly, then looked at me again. She gave a curt nod and walked out as well.

"We'll be right outside," Babs says pointedly before closing the door. Talia and I stood in silence for a moment, before she slowly stalked towards me until she was less than 6 feet away.

"Lady Al-"

"Your still not worthy of my son." oop. Right to the point, as always. Can't say it didn't hurt.

"You're a commoner, a nobody. No title, no land, not even superior health to your name. You failed classes in high school, went to college on scholarships, and couldn't land a proper role in your field until a year in. Failure, after pitfall, after failure." JESUS CHRIST THIS LADY DID HER RESEARCH. My face burned in humiliation, but nothing I could say now would justify everything she just listed out. "And yet... Damian loves you."

"I may not like you, but I know how I raised him, and Bruce has done a good job of bringing up a boy worth more than the names he was born into. Wayne. Al Ghul. Damian. I will have faith in his choice, he is not a stupid boy. Foolish and stubborn yes, but not stupid. If he thinks you are worthy, there may be hope for you yet." holy shit, no way, is this actually happening? I'm too stunned to say anything, just grateful that my mouth isn't hanging open.

"When you return from your honeymoon I expect you to face me in a formal duel and undergo training as necessary," she puts her hands on her hips, challenging me to argue with her, but I was so happy I had to restrain myself from hugging her.

"It would be an honor to battle you Lady Al Ghul," I say, finding my tongue, stifling my giddiness with a bow, and a hand over my chest.

"Talia is also acceptable." She says with a nod, taking another step forward and adjusting the skirt of my dress and finally my veil before turning starting to walk back to the door. "My father and I will also be in attendance to this event, but if you ever wish to gain even an ounce of his approval, you'll need to do another more traditional ceremony at a later date." My heart swelled, and for a second, I legitimately thought I was going to break down crying. This was better than anything I could have prepared for. I couldn't just let her walk out like that.

"Damian'll be elated!" I yelled out to keep my voice from cracking. Talia stops, and I gush on. "I know you haven't had the easiest of relationships, with conflicting ideology and all, but he really does love you, and Ra's, even if he doesn't say it. He looks up to you guys and wants to make you proud. You being here will mean the world to him." I force myself to stop talking before I say something weird or bad. Talia turns back to me, walks up swiftly, and hugs me. I'm stiff in surprise, but manage to hug her back before she gives me one last nod and walks out. Everyone runs back in the second Talia is out.

"Are you ok? Are you hurt anywhere?" Babs immediately grabs my arms and starts inspecting me up and down for any sign of injury.

"Don't cry don't cry!" Alice pleads with me, fanning my face to prevent the tears from falling.

"Talia hugged her, check her back and skirt for anything weird," I look over to Stephanie, who was staring down at her camcorder. Had she left that hidden on the bed? I didn't even notice. But it was so sweet. I could show Damian later all the sweet words his mother said about him.

"Jesus, you're so teary today," Cass mumbles as she does her own inspection of my dress. When she's done, she sees my tears are of joy, so she hugs me. "Your journal's impressive," she says handing back my heart covered notebook. I'm still choked up and trying not to bawl in relief so once everyone was satisfied that I wasn't going to drop dead in the middle of the aisle, they sat me down so I could calm down while they finished up. I collected myself, the extremity of these emotions leaving me exhausted. I drifted off with the warm glow of my friend's laughter and love filling the air.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

"No way, you did not fall asleep!"

"Get up get up get up!"

"Cass, I'm fully warning you right now. If she falls asleep at the ceremony like this, I'm throwing my bouquet at her head"

"You might have to beat Stephanie to it," Cass giggles, as she gently shakes me awake. I take a second to reorient myself, blinking the drowsiness out of my eyes, and stretching.

"Ooh, we could coordinate it though!" Stephanie perks up, "if she falls asleep; Alice and Crystal, take your flowers and make it rain, and then Babs, Cass and I hit her in the head. Guaranteed it'll wake her up!" We all laugh and I get up, taking a minute to appreciate my beautiful friends. It was a debated choice, but the deep purple fit everyone perfectly. We did have to make a few adjustments to Stephanie's overall look though, to keep her from looking too similar to her alter ego, Spoiler. Bouquet in every pair of hands, key cards in garter wallets and phones on silent, we made our way down to the venue.

"We're only running 10 minutes behind, it couldn't be helped," Babs tries to calm my nerves as I all but start jumping in the elevator. Cass also had to put a hand on my waist to pull me back when I almost ran to my place. She escorted me around to the side doors; the girls and I were coming in from the right, Damian and his groomsmen were coming in from the left. He had wanted to avoid any issue of who should walk him down the aisle; I thought it was cute how he couldn't choose between Dick and Bruce. Cass and I were slow dancing to calm my nerves when the rest of the girls came back.

"Pianist and minister are ready" -Babs

"Decorations are gorgeous and on point, everyone is in their seat and there are no fussy children" -Alice

"Lights, audio and AC are perfect and photographers are also ready" - Crystal.

I nodded, yes, everything was going smoothly. Of course, I had used everything I had when planning this. I was floating on cloud nine, simply nodding along when Babs spoke up.

"Has anyone seen Stephanie?" she asks, grip tightening on her bouquet. No one knew so we all just waited around for 5 minutes, everyone starting to get fidgety. Stephanie came back, 10 minutes later, looking a little out of breath and a bit pale, even under her makeup.

"Ok so there's a situation,- the guys are running late but it's okay they're o their way, they'll be here in 20 minutes!" Stephanie sped through the second half of her sentence when she saw that I was going to panic. I breathed out in relief and nodded, satisfied.

"I'll make the announcement, Dick probably went overboard trying to do his hair again," Babs snickered and headed into the ceremony hall. We played a light game of ninja as we waited to hear from the guys, but I soon became hyper-aware of time passing. I don't have the best perception of time, I don't even have a good memory, but I caught the looks my bridesmaids were giving each other.

The questioning looks.

The worry.

I let myself get kicked out of the next round and walked a little ways off, pulling my phone out and calling the number I knew by heart, ignoring the time that read that I was now almost 40 minutes late to my own wedding. The phone rang 3 times, and I turned away from my girls who were really getting into this game, rooting for Cass or Alice to win.

"Damian!" I sighed in relief when the line clicked. "hey, how much longer do you think you guys will be in traffic? If it's going to be another while, I can have it arranged so snacks and drinks are handed out so no one gets restless. I could also give the pianist a break, he's been playing the same chorus on repeat for the last half hour-" I let my voice trail off as I was met by a stone wall of silence. Not even a joke from Dick or Tim or Duke. I waited him out, after a minute of silence, Damian spoke up.

"I'm sorry beloved, I can't do this."

"What?" I asked, but my voice was so thin and breathy I doubt he heard me.

"I can't go through with this. This marriage, this wedding. It's all a joke. Who even cares about this mess? It's all so... stupid. Pointless." not a hint of hesitation, voice more ruthless than I had ever heard it. No. No way. was he serious!? I struggled to find my words, I shook with the pure effort of breathing normally even though I felt like I was having an actual heart attack; tight chest, palpitations, the whole 9 yards. Tremors ran through my body and I finally managed to choke out "Damian-"

"Goodbye Rosella" the line clicked off and I take a shuddering breath.

"Rose?" Cass says, gently putting a hand on my shoulder.

"He's not coming."

"What?"

"He's not coming!" I shriek, clutching my waist to stop my stomach from churning but to no avail; at least I didn't have much of lunch to throw up.

"What do you mean he's not coming!" Babs demands, yelling from where she was

"shit"

We all turn and there stands Jason, looking uncomfortable as hell and very much like he didn't want to be here. That confirmed it for everyone. Alice, Crystal, and Babs started yelling questions at Jason. Stephanie pulled out her own phone and started dialing a bunch of numbers but it seemed like no one was answering. Cass tried to speak with me, but my ears were ringing, it all sounded like white noise. And I felt cold. but hot. but freezing. I raise my hand and draw everyone's attention, all becoming deadly silent.

"Alice, Crystal. please go tell the pianist, the minister, and the photographer. Give them my email so I can settle up the charges later. Stephanie and Cass, please go see if we can keep the party reservations for tonight. Everyone else should enjoy them, even if there is no.... Barbra, could you please break the news that I... we..." everything got really blurry for a second and the floor rushed up to meet me, but I caught myself on the table before I could pass out completely.

Not here, not in front of them. Don't put them through a breakdown.

Everyone was fussing, but I couldn't stand here for another second. "Go. I just want to be alone. Please. go. GO!" I yelled and they all dispersed, shooting me worried looks. Cass gave me a long hug before she decided I needed a moment alone.

"Don't move from here." She instructed me. "Go get the guys," she demanded to Jason before going off. Jason looked at me sadly, trying to find the right words to say.

"Rose-"

"Please leave." he walked away without another word. Once I was sure he was out of earshot, I ran with everything I had out of the hallway.

Pardon me is everybody there

because if everybody's there id like to thank you all for coming to the wedding

I appreciate you going even more

I mean you must have had better things to do.

Thank you all for the gifts and the flowers,

Thank you all, now it's back to the showers

but I guess I'm not getting married today

The perfume is suffocating, overly sweet, fake as plastic, thick as sugar. I can't breathe, but I don't need air to run. Don't stop, move. Move. Move. The ribbons are strangling me. The garter is cutting off my circulation. Gloves are hurting me. High heels, weak ankles. My rolls of fat spilling out of the dress. rolls and rolls and rolls and rolls and rolls. can't stand. can't wait, I throw open the door to the stairs and take them in 3s.

Listen, everybody,

look, I don't know what you're waiting for.

A wedding. What's a wedding?

It's a prehistoric ritual

Where everybody promises fidelity forever,

Which is maybe the most horrifying word I ever heard of,

Which is followed by a honeymoon, where suddenly he'll realize

He's saddled with a nut, and want to kill me, which he should.

Thanks a bunch, but I'm not getting married

I scream as my veil gets caught in the handrail, yanking my head back, falling down a couple of stairs. No question, I rip it off. It stings, it hurts, bobby pins forcefully ripped out. The shoes go too, heels are stupid, why are they so tall. Tall and tall and make my knees wobbly. The taller they are the harder they fall. Up the stairs, 3 at a time, legs on fire. Don't stop, don't stop, hike the dress up and keep running all the way to the 50th floor.

Go have lunch, 'cause I'm not getting married

You've been grand, but I'm not getting married

Don't just stand there, I'm not getting married

But I'm not getting married today.

I slam open the hotel room door, to hell with neighbors. Suffocating, burning, melting heat. I rip off the gloves, scream as I can't get the ribbons out of my dress. I scream, jump, squirm and throw myself around until it finally comes off.

He didn't come. shut up.

He didn't want to. SHUT THE HELL UP

I felt everything to an extreme degree. Too much. Why am I breathing so heavily? Why am I sweating bullets!? I throw my hair up in a ponytail, yank the garter off, tripping over my own two feet. My phone falls next to my head and the only thing I can think to do is to throw it into the toilet. I grab my honeymoon bag- no, my emergency bag that happened to have cute clothes instead of food, and switch into my leggings and a t-shirt. It's all I had. It's all I could ask for.

Go! Can't you go?

Why is nobody listening?

Goodbye! Go and cry

At another person's wake.

If you're quick, for a kick

You could pick up a christening

But please, on my knees,

There's a human life at stake!

I'm parkouring down the stairs, jumping entire sections, falling on knees, but ignoring the pain to jump again. Emergency phone in one hand, I order the uber, start the bank transaction, even though I have to read everything 10 times for it to make sense. What do? where go? don't know. not here. One bad jump and I collapsed entirely, but as I scrambled to throw everything back in my bag, I see the plane tickets. yes. away. out. not here. leave.

Go! Can't you go?

Look, you know I adore you all

But why watch me die

Like Eliza on the ice?

Look, perhaps I'll collapse

In the apse right before you all

So take back the cake

Burn the shoes, and boil the rice

Out of the stairway, but slammed into a wall. Around the corner, Alice and Babs and Crystal and Jason and Stephanie and Cass and Bruce and Selina and Duke and Tim and Dick and Alfred.

Remember when you first met them? He swore he'd protect you but that they'd love you. please stop! I begged myself, think of anything, anything but him. anything but this. Get out, then we can cry, but not here, not now. I watched them split up, so I hid behind a corner farther back. Steph and Cass took up the stairs. Everyone else was gone so I ran out the back door. Out of the hotel, away from the perfume, away from the flowers, the candles, the dresses. From them. And by some small miracle, the car was already here. I jump in, only taking a second to notice that it was, in fact, an uber.

"Hello, ma'am! How are-"

"Please! Just go!" my voice breaks and the tears start up again. I brush them aside furiously/ doing everything in my power not to start sobbing, but he listens to me and speeds off.

BECAUSE I'M NOT GETTING MARRIED TODAY

(A twist on this song that actually inspired this whole fic)

Chapter 2: On The Run

I'm going to kill him

Why didn't he show up?

How fucking dare he

Was it something I did?

I was nervous too bitch; I drank a shot of tequila and sucked it up!

Was it something HE did? Was Talia lying? Did Ra's kidnap Damian? Why did the boys wait to tell us? Did Stephanie know that something was up? Do any of them even-

"Ughhhh," I groaned audibly as my thoughts and emotions started to run together. It had been a while since anything left me this.... discombobulated. Exhausted. A mess. I'd almost forgotten how awfully I reacted to being overwhelmed and out of control. The uber driver shot me a curious look but didn't say anything. Keep it together Rosella. Just, go home and.. I flinched, chagrined at my own stupidity. "Get somewhere safe" I amended under my breath, "and then you can have as big of a breakdown as you want. Just, be a stone again. Close it all out. Suppress the fire, drown the noise." I rubbed my eyes, the dry burn giving me the weirdest throbbing headache.

The ride to the airport was stiff, to say the least. My driver kept trying to talk to me, but my responses were so dry he gave up. He didn't question the extra stop at the bank, even while he waited outside for half an hour while I verified with tellers inside that I was, in fact, the owner of the account and that I was draining it.

Erase your tracks. You were never here. Are you even alive?

Still, we got to the airport as quickly as I could have hoped for and made sure to give him a large tip for his troubles. I walked through the airport, undoubtedly looking like some pompous bitch with only a stone face and backpack, my actual suitcase left behind in my whirlwind out. I only had some snacks, a Nintendo ds, some stationary things, deodorant, and a toothbrush. I hadn't even remembered to grab my disposable water bottle, toothpaste, or hair brush before leaving. Whatever.

It was almost flawless. I bypassed the checked bag lines, slid right through TSA (bless you TSA Pre-check), although I did get some looks when they checked my bag. I guess overall I looked like I should be getting on a school bus instead. I sat down at a cafe and pulled out the tickets, 2 first class tickets to Malaga, Spain.

I'd set up our honeymoon as a complete surprise to Damian. Bruce and the boys had worked so hard to help me clear out a whole month from his schedule. I'd gone through hell and back to make sure all of my project managers could handle any situation that could happen either in making or transporting our different projects out... We were supposed to be jumping cities for a month in Europe. Cities with small populations, so we could avoid drawing attention, but full of gorgeous architecture and delicious food for me; significant art history and cultural relevance for Damian.

It's going to be a technical nightmare to cancel all of those reservations and getting the tickets switched and sold. Do people even actually do that? But I have to, I don't know where I'm going but I don't want any of them to tra- SHIT. My head snaps up and one quick look around tells me I'm already too late. I spot 5 cameras easily.

I grab my things and head over to a gift shop. I grab bunches of clothes and accessories off of the shelves, hurrying off to pay and doing my best to avoid cameras now as I sneak off into the restroom. I throw on some atrocious sundress, flats, and a baseball cap, flipping my hair twice in an attempt to make it look like a pixie cut. For a second I consider actually finding something sharp to hack my hair off.

I need you to not be a social breakdown cliche for a minute, it took you years to properly grow those curls out. Please don't waste my efforts. Yeah, it's for the better, I look like Dora the Explorer with short hair anyway. Tim wouldn't sell me out to Damian, right? LMAOO he bailed at the wedding you really think he wants to hunt you down?? Or what if Tim wants to find me? Or anyone else? Damian's pretty good at following people. Even then, Babs, Cass, Roy are competent hackers, any of them could find my data and track me down... Are any of them even on my side?... I couldn't help but let out a whimper. I pursed my lips, placing my hands on the cold sink to calm myself. What's my plan anyways? I can't go to any of the cities in Europe where I already have reservations. Too easy. I could go to the Netherlands...

"But Damian knows where I lived there, because of the time we visited my friends," I sigh out loud, facepalming. "But not entirely a bad idea..." I say as I start flipping through the different cities I've lived through. Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Croatia, Portugal, Malta, Romania, Hungary, Austria, are all out. We'd either been there or they were part of the honeymoon plan. I didn't want any reminder of him.

Actually, all of Europe is out. I've raved about it too much. We've been too many places, we both had too many ties scattered throughout Europe. I can't speak Russian, Talia and Ra's have connections all across the middle east, and the north half of Africa. Jason and Cass had some unexplainable ties across north and south america. With every city I named, I hated myself more for talking so much. For trusting him with these memories.

Honeysuckle kisses on cotton candy memories.

shut up.

Isn't there ANYWHERE I've lived and worked that my big mouth hadn't mentioned? As I was starting to get desperate and the headache started acting up again, I found actually ecstatic relief. That would be actually literally perfect. God bless my forgetful memory. The apartment I'd never sold. The country I actively avoided talking about because Damian would get jealous.

I snuck out of the bathrooms and headed over to customer service. I had to work my way past a large group of people. Overhearing snippets of conversation, apparently, their flight is somewhere between delayed or canceled. Inspiration hit me. Give the ticket to someone here. Send them to Spain, let them stay at the hotel. He could follow a cold lead. This would give me enough time to go to one country and get a ticket to where I actually wanted to go.

I look around the group. Too many were in pair or more. Some looked very buisness-y type. There! A girl who looked like a backpacker was chilling, glancing through her phone. You're going to sound absolutely mental. I approach her nevertheless. I pitched her my idea, but she was rightfully skeptical. I swallowed my pride and told her a cold version of the truth.

"My fiancee left me at the altar. I'm going to Mongolia. I don't want his ticket, I don't want the hotel. Either take it or I'll give it to someone else. Or let it go to waste. I don't care. I don't want it. I'll even pay the name change charge." The anger in my voice came out clear, and by another miracle, she accepted it. We walked over to the help desk and I spoke with the dude behind the counter. He seemed hesitant at first, but he gave me a double take when he checked my reservations. With a brighter smile, he got me on the first flight he could to Mongolia.

"Will that be for both tickets Mrs.Wayne?" He asked cheerfully before reeling back, caught off guard by my watering eyes.

"Anderson. And no," I managed to spit out. I signaled for the girl from earlier to come closer. "I'm transferring the other ticket to her, we need to get the name changed." He looked uncertain but went ahead. If he was accommodating before, I could tell he was bending over backwards now to get everything situated. I could see his concentration as he tried to bypass things without having to question me again.

"Umm, your profile says you've actually been to Belgium before, how was it?" he asked, trying to lighten the mood.

"Beautiful and quaint. Great place to relax and enjoy nature if that's your thing. I'd recommend Lithuania too, or Leinchestein." I say, trying to keep a light tone. He nodded happily, seeming to take my recommendations seriously before handing the girl the new plane tickets. We thanked him and headed off on our respective paths, the girl taking a minute to hug me.

" I hope you can heal soon, and wish you a bright future" she whispered to me. I hugged back, trying not to cry again. She bought me a bag of peach gummy rings and left me at my terminal. I dropped some calls out to friends, blessed that they all decided to take one or more of the reservations around Europe I'd had. I kept the details to a minimum but they figured out pretty quickly not to mention me to Damian if they happened to see him. Some small part of me, thankfully more aware than the rest had the foresight to call some utility companies and get everything at my apartment working again.

The help desk attendant worked miracles, my nonstop flight boarded less than an hour later and I had managed to keep a first class seat. I sat down and started doodling nonsense in my journal, blasting music in my headphones. But around 6 hours into this 19-hour flight, exhaustion overcame me and I drifted off to sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Beloved," Damian sighed as he wrapped his arms around my waist. "It's almost 11, we need to get out of bed," he murmured into my hair.

"Nooooooo" I whined, stretching further into the sunlight. The doors were ajar, a nice breeze keeping us cool. I snuggled into him. "We're on a vacation, orders from Bruce. And on vacation, you can stay in bed all day."

"But there might be monsters nearby-" He said mysteriously, catching my attention.

"I didn't get reports of any- AH!" I scream as Damian proceeds to tickle me. "No! Sto-" I try to gasp out between laughing. I manage to fight him, tumbling out of bed. He laughed at me as I tried to untangle myself from the blankets.

"That's a dirty trick Wayne!" I gasp, trying to catch my breath. I grab a pillow and chuck it at him, but he just catches it and throws it back. We have a small impromptu pillow war before he taps out after a good hit knocks him onto the balcony. "BOW TO MY PROWESS!" I jokingly declare, jumping up and down on the ottoman. Damian runs over and sweeps me down.

"Please. Don't. Fall. And. Break. Your. Head" He accentuates every word with a kiss, making me giggle. He lets me go and takes the bathroom to shower first. I head out into the kitchen, humming to myself. I grab some of the fruit we bought yesterday and start making a fruit bowl. I'm halfway through cutting the Jicama when Damian's arms are around my waist again.

"What are you doing?" He asks, resting his chin on my shoulder. Before I could answer, his grip around me tightened. "Be careful!" He whispered harshly, putting his hands over mine. "Your knife skills could use some work, you could have cut your finger off like that!" He scolded me but I scoffed.

"Haven't lost a finger yet"

"No, but you did set your oven on fire. THREE TIMES" He elbowed my side and I pouted.

"Excuse you, that 2nd time wasn't my fault, remember? Dick broke into my place and fell asleep making fish sticks," I retaliated, squirming out of his grip and started making some sandwiches for lunch.

"I really should improve the security at your apartment," Damian says as he finished cutting up the Jicama and strawberries, plating them and dropping them off at the table.

"As if that would stop every vigilante from the northern hemisphere from breaking in," I snorted, bringing over the sandwiches. We ate in peace, letting the soft instrumental music from the radio fill the silence.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I sigh happily, turning in my chair, reaching out for Damian's hand. The second I touched the cold seat next to me, my body freezes too. "Damian?" I muttered drowsily, sitting up straight. His bag isn't under his chair. Why am I wearing a dress? Why are my leggings rolled up? I start to panic, breathing rapidly and trying to blink away the tears in my eyes. It's enough to pull me awake and I remember what happened.

"Oh... oh" I hiccup and bite my lip, looking back out the window into the starry night. The tears start falling, but I'm being quiet so I let them. My skin itches. My neck, my wrists, under my eyes. I start scratching, trying to ignore my memories. The trip to Italy, our joint project to improve the villain resistance of the infrastructure of Gotham, the charity events we attended.

"Ma'am?" I look up, a stewardess in the aisle leaning over. I wipe my eyes, catching the furious red color my wrists had become, before turning to her. "Uh, you missed your meal earlier and I was wondering if there was anything I could get you?" She looked uncomfortable now, glancing between my red eyes, red nose, and now red wrists and presumably red neck. I glanced over the menu she handed me, ordering a full meal. She dropped the food off and scurried away, not meeting my eyes.

The meal was laid out beautifully; tomato soup, grilled cheese and grilled chicken with a slice of cheesecake. Yet, I couldn't seem to muster the strength to eat. It didn't really seem appetizing, and I wasn't hungry.

The last time you ate was over 10 HOURS ago, and that wasn't even a full meal. C'mon, one bite. I picked up the fork, but simply twirled it in my hand, watching the metal catch the light. You'll get a raging headache if you don't eat soon. Might get that deep vein thrombosis. I take a bite of the chicken, tasting nothing despite its obvious layer of seasoning. I swallowed it with half a glass of water. It felt thick, heavy, almost like swallowing a rock. But I had to eat. When I didn't immediately throw up, I set up my phone to play a cache of 65 action movies to distract myself and started eating bit by bit. I could tell I was drinking a ridiculous amount of water, but the stewardess replaced my glass without it ever going entirely empty so I didn't really notice how much I had downed. She cleared my tray when I was done, and I just kept watching movies. Whenever I thought I was going to fall asleep, I'd crank the volume up, scroll forward to fight scenes and take a drink of sprite. I was about 4 movies in when I threw off my headphones, whimpering with how severe my headache had gotten despite eating and drinking water.

"Good morning passengers, it is 10 pm and we're about to start our final descent so if you could all please put up your trays and turn off the wifi in your electronics, we'll be landing shortly." Not gonna lie, the time zone jump threw me for a minute, I had taken a second to figure out how we made the flight in 8 hours instead of 19. I shoved everything into my bag, forcing the zipper closed. I wanted to put on some rock or pop punk songs, “Battle On!” seeming weirdly appealing, even though I hadn't heard it in a while. I felt a vein in my neck twitch, so I settled on music from the swan lake instead.

The second we touched down I was up. I only had my backpack so I was able to squeeze by people, ignoring protests and complaints to get off the plane. Off the plane, past the luggage claim, I was going down the escalator when I spotted them. Advika was talking to Zay, looking mad as hell, but she noticed me first. She ran over and almost tackled me to hug me, Zay taking my bag. "Princessa, baby girl, I'm so sorry." She cries into my hair, "I didn't think he was an asshole, oh god, how could he do that to you!"

"We have the plane ready to go," Zay says, joining in on the hug. I let Advika cling to me as we make our way to the opposite side of the airport. Once we're in a more private area, Advika speaks up again.

"I'm going to kill him. How fucking dare he!" She squeezed my hand, and now started pulling me towards the airplane.

"Isn't that Rosella's line?" Zay prods before looking back at me. "But in all seriousness, we will absolutely end him, just say the word. Don't even say it, blink morse code, ASL, anything." I keep my mouth shut and let Advika continue to rave about the different ways she'll end Damian; financially, socially, whatever I wanted. We went out onto the runway and I couldn't help but chuckle.

"The company jet? Isn't that a bit much?" I say as Zay escorts us in, before heading to the back.

"The boss said it's okay. Nearly bit my head off when I called to ask but said it was ok. You did help establish our company in the foreign market," Advika takes a seat but gestures for me to lay down on the couch. "No offense mi princessa, but you look like a fucking mess. Please take a nap."

"I don't know if I can do that," I say, letting out a long sigh. Zay comes back, handing Advika a small purse and laying a platter of cheese and crackers on the table across from us. He sets up instrumental music, from “Carmen” if I'm not mistaken, as Advika takes my hat off and starts combing my hair. I lay back into her, letting her brush out my hair, counting her impeccable pattern. 2 squirts from a spray bottle to moisten my hair, 10 brush strokes. 2 then 10 then 2 then 10. My eyes started feeling heavy so I forced myself to take a deep breath and sit up. The motion made her accidentally yank my hair and woke me a bit. As she apologized I alternated my breathing patterns to try to stay awake, noticing for the first time that we were already in the air.

"Please, just go to sleep," Advika begged, grabbing my hands and forcing me to look at her. I stared at her for a moment before answering.

"I did... on the plane. I dreamed of him. The disorientation of waking up made me think I was on my way to my honeymoon," I let out a bitter laugh and she flinches, looking over to Zay, unsure what to say.

"You look pale," Zay interjects. He comes over to me, placing a hand on my head and then my neck. He doesn't comment on the marks, but he and Advika share a look. "Change your clothes, drink some water, then these, we don't want you getting sick." He puts 2 pills in my hands before going off to find me some water.

"Yeah, getting sick is the absolute worst thing that can happen to me right now. How silly of me," I roll my eyes and Advika snorts, trying to mask her laughter. I leave the Nyquil pills on the couch and get changed. I come back and take the pills, leaning into Advika again so she can continue to play with my hair. She spoke about anything and everything, filling the silence with her happy chatter. Undoubtedly, she was trying to distract my conscious so if I did dream again, it wouldn't be about him. It worked, her happy banter following me into my dreamless slumber.

-------------------

I awoke to Zay gently shaking me, thankfully a lot less disoriented than last time. I gather up my things, helping myself to the bottles of water they had around. I ignore the bandages wrapped around my wrist, but the one on my throat was quickly starting to freak me out. Advika seemed to sense my discomfort, immediately coming over and cutting the bandages off.

"Sorry, your skin seemed a bit raw so we wrapped it up," she explains calmly, alternating to rubbing her hand up and down my arm to soothe me.

"S'ok," I mumble, taking my bag from Zay.

"We called you a cab -it got here a couple of minutes ago-, but you're more than welcome to stay with either of us back in Mongolia. Neha and Juniper also moved here ya know, I'm sure she'd-" I cut Zay off with a shake of my head, and follow him out of the plane.

"I just really want to be alone for a while, ya know?" As alone as I can be with my differing opinions yelling at me and my endless train of thought that does NOT SHUT UP. Zay nodded but Advika grabbed my arm before I could hail the cab closer to the plane.

"I know you want to be alone- and you absolutely do need some time alone, this is going to be a lot to process- but...." She hesitated, biting her lip. "I know how you can get Ro. don't even try to argue with me on this. Please, take some time, but do not hesitate to call me or anyone else." Would this be a bad time to throw up? That's one way to diverge the conversation. Advika held me but I wouldn't meet her eyes. "You know what? If you don't check in with me in a week I will track you down and drag you to live with me. I'm not joking. Do you understand" I want to protest, but then I remember she didn't even have my phone number. Game on. I agree and they both give me a hug before I board the cab.

"Good morning"

"Good morning, where should I take you?" ah. another thing that I hadn't thought of. Without even bothering to check my bag, I knew I didn't have my keys. But I knew someone who might. I give the cab driver an address and I pull out my phone. But I can't even ask because I don't remember her number. I sigh, hoping things hadn't changed as much as I thought.

We're in downtown Seoul before I can start properly stressing myself with the "what ifs". Had she moved? What if she didn't have the key? Would she yell at me for arriving at... Almost 3 am? I decided to do the math to distract myself, reworking the math on how a 4-hour flight turned into a 5-hour flight for a solid 10 minutes before I realized that I had not taken another time zone into play. Small miracles were on my side today. Yesterday? Tomorrow? Whatever the fuck day it is. Since it was so early, there wasn't much in the way of traffic, and the doorman was the same one that had been here when I lived her for however long it was. I explained to him that I was here to see Hong and after some reluctance, he let me in.

Up the elevator to the fifth door, doors opening to crisp air, reminiscent of fall. Exactly 30 steps forward to a door with 4 pastel sierra sunset decorations on the door. I knock, timidly at first as to not wake the neighbors. In 5 minutes, again, a little louder. I did this for an hour before I gave up and simply stood there with my head on the door.

"Hong. Hooooonnnngggggg" I whined quietly. Wow, thank goodness it's so early, everyone would think you're a creeper. lmaooo just imagine getting arrested your first day back. I whined into the door, contemplating just sleeping out here.

"Rosella?" a soft voice came from behind me. I turn to see Hong with Geo's arm around her. There were 2 more people behind her but I barely had the awareness to nod as a greeting. "What are you doing here? Wasn't yesterday your-" She stops, noticing that my lip had begun to tremble.

"Rosella-" she comes over and wraps her arms around me, hiding my face from view of the others. Someone unlocks the door and she drags me inside. The sequins on her dress start to itch, but I continue to hug her. Once I'm ready to let go, she sits me down and goes to change her outfit while Geo sits with me. in awkward silence for a while.

"Rose, what happened?" He eventually asks, sliding over a glass of ice water. "I thought your wedding was yesterday. Wasn't your honeymoon suppose to be in Europe?" I couldn't seem to muster the strength to answer, simply staring at him and sighing.

"You have no tact," Hong comments, combing back in her usual floral pjs. She flops down next to me, placing her hand on mine. "You don't have to tell us now, but I would like for you to tell us eventually." I can't help but smile, she always has a soothing air to her. It's impossible to be mad or upset near her. " I have some clothes you can borrow; I have friends over today so you'll have to take the couch, but you can have the guest room tomorrow." I shake my head, forcing myself to pull away from her motherly touch.

"I could never impose on you, I was just wondering if you have my spare key? I really want to go home." I let my voice crack at the end, hoping she wouldn't push for me to stay here. Geo looked at me like I was crazy, staring particularly long at my single backpack.

"Okay. Geo, could you get her key? It's in the top dresser with a purple tip," Hong nods to him and he leaves. " I do feel the need to remind you that you pretty much purged the place when you left. I don't remember the last time I visited either, so its probably super dusty too."

"I'll make do for tonight. I'll go to the store tomorrow for food and cleaning supplies, ok?"

"You'd better, you forgetful dip stick," Geo grunts as he hands me the key. "Actually, we could probably find somewhere open rn. We could swing by and-"

"I was actually going to walk home it's a nice night and-"

"Absolutely not." Hong interrupted me, sounding her top tier forceful. "I know you've been through some shit in the last 48 hours but I'm not going to let you commit suicide by stupidity!" I took a minute to process this, for a second I thought I was back in Gotham.

"It's not far... I only have my backpack and the crime rates here aren't even that high Hong. You know I took mi-"

"Yes yes, I know about your MMA history, but I draw the line. I don't know how much the others have let you get away with but you are not walking alone at night!" I don't fight her, letting her drag me to her car, Geo driving. We're at my complex within minutes.

"Take care of yourself Rosie." Hong says, giving me a half hug through the car window, Geo simply putting a hand on my head. "I'll come to check up on you- and if you don't answer the door I'll call the cops" she threatened before letting go.

"Thank you, seriously, this is so great that you had my key, and for dropping me off." I hesitate before heading up. "If you don't mind me asking, how long have you two been dating?" Geo's blush was extremely visible against his skin, even in the shadows.

"It's that obvious huh? We've been together for about 5 months," Hong replied, blushing as well.

"I always thought you two would look cute together," I said, this time with a genuine smile. I wave them off and opt to take the stairs up. I opened the door to my apartment.

It's freezing, dust dancing in the waning moonlight. I set my bag down, pulling out another change of clothing from what I had bought at the airport. I threw it into the bathroom before heading over to my emergency closet. Never though the emergency stash would be used like this. Maybe we shouldn't use it? Earth shattering heartbreak is too an emergency, fuck off. I'll restock it anyways. I pull out some towels and bath supplies. I get in the shower, letting the steaming hot water run over me.

Since when have I not been able to feel my fingers? I ask myself, flexing them one by one. It's like the stakeout in Boston that one winter, Dick brought us hot chocolate-

No. Don't even. Dust! This place is messy and I want to properly disinfect it- unconsciously increasing the pressure with my loofah- I'll need Lysol, tide pods, scrubs, dish rags. Probably should buy more plates too. Damian always had a peculiar adoration for matching cutlery sets, when he bought me some ramen bowls-

OW OW OW OW OW OW OW! I jerk up, my hand immediately going to my upper spine. I breathe in too quickly, taking in some water. I pull open the curtain and lean over the tub, cough and sputtering, trying to catch my breath.

"What- the- fuck-" I manage to gasp out. I was sitting down in the tub, I guess I had fallen asleep???? I shake the drowsiness off, turning off the water and getting out. Despite, or maybe because of, my broken sleep this last day I was still exhausted once I had gotten changed and my heartbeat had slowed down. I looked to my room door, but collapsed on the sofa, letting the musty leather suffocate me to sleep as my bones sunk into the couch.

Chapter 3: Safehouse

I awoke the same way I fell asleep.

Suffocating.

I wanted to get up, find a tissue to blow my nose, but every muscle in me ached a million ways. Did I fall off the empire state building while I was asleep? Did some cannibal beat me with a meat tenderizer for hours and just leave me on this couch? Holy FUCK.

Even twisting my face away from the couch so I could get some fresh air strained my neck. Every joint felt dislocated, limbs lifeless like a broken marionette. The dust. Allergies. I can't breathe...

Can't breathe

Suffocating! DIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIE- I panic, throwing myself off the couch. Landing on the ground actually didn't cause any more pain. I laid there for a minute, mentally trying to put my joints back in their sockets. It isn't a large enough distraction, and I'm soon hyper-aware of everything. My skin was burning where the sunlight touched, the dust in the air was so heavy I could have sworn I lost my vision again. I could hear the meaningless hustle of cars and people outside on the sidewalk, but worst of all was my pounding heartbeat in my ears.

THUMP-THUMP THUMP-THUMP THUMP-THUMP

I forced myself to get up, groaning as all my muscles pinched as they got back into place. I made a lot of unnecessary noise as I cleaned up my mess from last night. Throwing the shower caddy under the sink, flipping my backpack and letting everything fall out, slamming my dirty clothes into a pile in a corner. And I couldn't help but look around every couple of minutes, not entirely understanding where I was. Trying and failing to compensate for the noises that usually find me when I wake up. When I threw open the balcony windows, I realized I was still waiting to hear another window slide open and a soft "I'm home", even though it was well past noon.

How wild would it be if he actually went on parole after all that? Would a fight have broken out? Would it have been like the whole Owls mishap again?

Get your head out of your ass, they're his family; blood is thicker than water.

Blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

He's been helping and fighting alongside them much longer than you have you dip. I storm into the kitchen, only grunting as I smash my hip against the counter. I set out 4 pages of stationary in front of me and made lists; food, clothes, furniture, extra. I took my papers and started walking around, jotting notes of what I needed. Talking to fill the void.

"More toilet paper, hand soap, towels," I hum under my breath, not really checking the cabinets. "As for clothes I should-" my voice caught when I walked into the bedroom. It was freezing. I reflexively bit my lip, eyes watering. Instead of goosebumps, this cold sat in my stomach. The same cold in my hands, from the airplane seat, returned- lacing up my arms, down my stomach and legs. Stabbing my heart and restricting my lungs.

I'm alone.

"I should buy like 4 interchangeable outfits," the whimper barely sounded through the silent tears. I shut the door tight, almost running back to the living room. I sat just outside the ring of light, hunching over my paper. "Jeans, underwear, toothpasTE-" I sniffled but my vision only got blurrier.

"BoOKcASes, a bEd, mayBE a BeAr," my heart squeezed every time my voice broke, and in seconds I couldn't write on the soaked paper. The hiccups were my only air, snot streaking my trembling chin.

"What did I do? What. diD. I DOOO?" I sobbed, wailing into my hands. I curled around a leg of the coffee table, letting its corners cut into my stomach. Wailing until I was dry heaving, scratching my eyes to get rid of these acidic tears, blowing my nose with my shirt- moist blotches sticking to my skin. "Day- Damian" I cried to myself until I passed out again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Afternoons spent silently reading with each other

Matching outfits for galas, some he designed himself, just for me

Our home downtown- bought to have some peace and quiet from his family. Although half the time they broke in, the other half we ended up back in the manor.

Traveling for work, for fun, for missions he didn't think were dangerous.

Sparring with Jason and Cass.

Jason showing me a hundred new bands when I got him into new music genres, trying to help each other find less aggressive ways to vent. Giving him the cream to completely erase the J from his cheek was different, the first time I saw him cry. He understood that blood family wasn't always loyal, and that I didn't mean it when I'd punch or insult someone to hide softer feelings.

Cass just vibing, understanding me and letting me get close. She was always the first to come help me when I was hurt, I became the person she could cry to. The way her face lit up when we were just able to chill a whole night, singing, watching movies and simply understanding each other on a fundamental level.

Barbra growing aggravated as she tried to teach me how to do more with technology than just googling things. Her forgiving my stupidity after I built her a new computer.

The long talks I had with Dick. Anything and everything. The first time hurt, when I called him out. He was giddy and chipper, dramatic as ever but when he caught me staring and stopped for long enough to look back, the pain in his eyes was clear as day. He had just broken up with Kory after all. He didn't need to lie, he didn't need to lighten the mood, he just needed to be honest. But once he could smile honestly again, I couldn't help but remember that he was the one who found out about me and Damian first. He'd been there to spy on our first date, hiding it from Bruce. He was the first to take me out for ice cream then subtly threaten my life if I harmed Damian, the first to swing by for spontaneous days out. To get to know me, to see if I was right for Damian.

Stephanie, Tim and I bonding over teasing and pranking Damian.

Tim and I being forced into caffeine and sleep interventions. Coffee and Coke. And then the beautiful irony of us falling asleep halfway through, especially after I taught him how to sleep with his eyes open.

Cooking with Alfred, learning his famous cookie recipes. Showing him more authentic Hispanic recipes, and him comforting me and being the first to compliment me after I was duped into cooking for the ENTIRE family.

Philosophical and political discussions with Bruce. Talks about war and power, cultural similarities and their origins. Talks about Damian as a child to mess with him. Opening up about paranoia, fear of losing loved ones, the controversies of being "too much" for some people. He understood, sometimes the ultimate sacrifices had to be made in a second. He understood because he was the same. We'd give up our lives before anyone else.

It's all gone.

So much of my past, and now, my whole future.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

it's cold. i stripped off my shirt and blew my nose.

blood. eww, it's hot. i hold my shirt to my nose, crawling under the table, balling up until i could feel all 4 legs pressing into me.

tuneless humming, watching the room light up until my eyes burn.

I have to pee.

I wash my hands, the water making me aware of my bone dry mouth. My tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. I let the water pour through my fingers for another minute before walking away, laying back under the coffee table.

long grains. shades of brown. like dead grass. my fingers run over the million tiny bumps watching the wood fade from a blurry brown to a million tiny wooden grains.

My hair is on fire. The sun reaches it from under the table.

There are people in the hallway. They're as loud as the cars outside.

the ac is running. i start humming to drown it out.

i'm melting. i force my eyes to blink but they continue to burn.

I can't breathe. I stagger to the bathroom and after a few minutes of moving my jaw up and down, my mouth manages to open. I swig some water before throwing some on my face. fever? headache at least. I grab a towel to wipe my face, fumbling back into the hall. fuck was i looking directly at the sun? there is only one place colder than the sun. i walk to my bedroom, the cold imperceptible to me now.

but the second i put my eyes directly onto the empty bed frame, i could almost hear them sizzle. it exhausted me. I hadn't realized how hot my face was until i laid it on the floor. like a refreshing bath, calming. i just focused on my heat being transferred to the floor, unaware that I was falling asleep again.

((The writing for the last chapter is intentionally like that, I was attempting to write Rose being in a type of disassociated kind of state; where you aren't aware of time passing, noting seems real, even things in your immediate vicinity. Knowing that you should be doing something, drinking water, changing clothes, listening to music, ANYTHING-but still not doing it. The capitalization/simple sentences and repetition on the latter part was intentional. ))

#I dont know #i guess i wanted to see how/if my writing's changed #YES THIS IS WHERE I GOT THE THING FOR DIAVOLO'S DADS LETTER I REALLY LIKED IT SO I REUSED IT #I couldnt come up with a nice transitory chapter about Rose's friends coming to check on her/ reminding her that she's her own person/#coming back to gotham #BUT THEY DEF DONT GET BACK TOGETHER #not obey me!#NOT OBEY ME #Not OM!#Ozera nonsense

4 notes · View notes

sqoiler · 4 years

Note

⭐

time slip! i’m gonna do what i did for spoilerverse and put the whole fic under the cut and comment on it. have fun :)

for a while now, maybe even a few years, i’ve been thinking about how steph started being robin at the oldest age (besides maybe duke) and how perhaps, if the robins got together, she would be looked to as the leader as she’s the oldest, and how surreal that would be for her as robin, who probably knows/suspects bruce is only keeping her as bait for tim, who probably realizes that she has low amounts of experience and such. i just thought it’d be interesting, and one day i actually sat down and wrote the thing.

There is a time vortex, and a malfunction, and in the end there are six people on top of the Wayne Enterprises building.

They look at each other in shock and take in the matching outfits, the red and yellow and green. All of them have some idea what’s going on, who they’re seeing, except the youngest (who is really the oldest).

don’t remember what i was thinking when i decided not to explicitly name the robins in this fic, besides the fact that when i write i distinguish between someone being in costume vs not in costume by using their codename or real name

“Wait,” he says, his eyes wide. “There are more Robins?”

i think baby dick was too startled to be pissed, but if he were older he would’ve been angry about there being more robins...it is his mantel, after all

“There must’ve been something that altered time,” says the third Robin, who is clever. He is not yet wearing the red and black costume of mourning, and when he looks at the group around him, he only knows the second and first Robins by name. “It’s the only explanation.”

if tim HAD known steph, he never would’ve let her be in charge. also i think he would’ve been angry that she was robin.

“Of course,” the fifth Robin huffs, exasperated. Unlike his brother, he recognizes everyone except the sixth, and he wishes he didn’t. Under his mask, his eyes rocket skyward. “Just my luck to be stuck with you imbeciles.”

“Awfully judgemental, aren’t you?” the third Robin notes.

“I have a 4.0 GPA,” the second Robin says. “I don’t think I’m stupid.”

All of the Robins stare at him. This is unexpected.

@ bruce post-jason’s death: talk about your son more!!! tim and steph know NOTHING about him and all damian & duke know is red hood!

“Okay, I’ll admit I don’t know what’s going on,” the sixth Robin says. “I’m barely even a real Robin, I’ve only met Batman like...twice.”

“Why are you in the costume, then?” the fourth Robin asks, her arms crossed. She’s afraid, a little, and nervous to be in the presence of all these other Robins. She doesn’t like that she’s the only girl.

“It’s complicated,” the sixth Robin says. The other Robin accepts that at face value.

“How do we know the order?” the second Robin asks. “I mean, I know I’m second, and he’s first.” He points at the first Robin. “And apparently, after us you guys put on some real pants.”

“It’s a traditional acrobatic outfit,” the first Robin protests, and the second says, “I know, I’m just yanking your chain.”

“I’m the third,” the third says.

“I’m next,” the fourth says, tossing her ponytail and trying to be brave. She knows the first and third Robins, although not this young.

“I suppose I am forced to admit I am not the last Robin,” the fifth one says, glaring at the sixth, who shrugs and says, “Again, I’m not like, a real Robin.”

“What purpose did that exercise serve?” the fifth Robin hisses.

“Well, we need a leader,” the second Robin says. “But I guess it doesn’t matter who’s technically oldest, just who’s actually oldest.”

imagine if they asked dick to be in charge cause he’s “technically” oldest. he’s eleven.

“Why should the oldest--” the fifth Robin starts to protest, but all of these Robins are young, and to young people, the oldest is in charge.

They look at each other.

“Don’t look at me,” the sixth Robin says.

“I’m eleven,” the first Robin says. The fifth blinks.

“I’m twelve,” he admits, staring at his mentor as if just realizing that the first Robin is a child.

“Thirteen,” the third says. “But I’m almost fourteen.”

“And I’m actually fourteen,” the second Robin admits easily. The ones after him wince at this casual admittance of his age, at the reveal of this ticking time bomb they know will go off only too soon.

😬

The fourth Robin’s eyes widen. Oh no, she thinks. Oh no.

The others are looking at her expectantly, and she clears her throat.

“I’m sixteen,” she whispers, her voice hollow, and the others nod.

“I’m only fifteen, anyway,” the sixth Robin says, evidently relieved, and the second one says, “Girl Robin is in charge, then.”

“I beg of you to reconsider,” the fifth Robin says, and something in the way his voice snarls makes the fourth Robin’s fists clench. She looks around at them, determined. They are all looking to her.

steph: freaked out but always determined to annoy damian, even when she doesn’t know him yet

“Fine,” she says. “I’ll be in charge. Our first order of business is to figure out who’s timeline we’re really in. The easiest way would be to ask Oracle.”

“Who’s Oracle?” the first Robin asks, eyes wide.

“Don’t worry about that,” the fourth Robin says. “Everyone who can, try to get in touch.”

She touches her own ear, and the third and fifth mimic the gesture.

duke doesn’t have a comm yet, otherwise he also would’ve called oracle, because i do what i want with canon, and that includes keeping babs as oracle

Oracle does not answer any of them.

“Okay,” the fourth Robin says. “Let’s find a newspaper. What year is it?”

She points to the first Robin.

“2005,” he says. She points to the second.

“2012,” he says.

“2014,” the third Robin says.

“2017,” the fifth says.

“2018,” the sixth says. The fourth nods.

“Alright,” she says. “And I’m from 2015. Everyone remember? Okay. Let’s go find a newspaper.”

i didn’t want to go into it, but i feel like both tim and damian might’ve freaked out, since they both just found out that the person who is robin right after them is robin literally next year, so something *happens* to them to make them not robin. luckily for tim and damian in specific, but it’s not death or injury preventing either of them from being robin, and in fact damian is STILL robin when duke becomes robin.

They leap from the rooftop together. The fourth Robin watches the sixth, since he said he’s new, but he has a grapple, and he can use it. They don’t go straight down, just away from Wayne Towers, and towards somewhere they can be inconspicuous. The fourth Robin is aware that she’s in the lead, and she realizes they could just go back to the Manor, that would solve their problem of what year it was.

But no, instead she casts her gaze instinctively to the spot in the sky where the signal gleams, and it’s not there. She falters and stops at the next rooftop.

i feel like when you’re patroling under the bat, you like to look at the batsignal. makes u feel safe.

“This isn’t a newspaper,” the fifth Robin snarks once everyone else has stopped.

“Was the signal on?” she asks, and the others exchange a look. “Answer me!”

“Yes,” the third says.

“Yes,” the second says.

“Yes,” the sixth says.

“Yes,” the first says.

“Yes,” the fifth admits.

“Look,” the fourth says, and she points at the sky where the signal isn’t. “Someone turned it off. No matter what year we’re in, someone turned it off.”

The others exchange looks, although none of them know each other, not as Robin, anyway. The fourth Robin remembers that she does know the third Robin, but she thinks she’s the only exception.

“We’re going to GCPD,” she says. “We have to see why they turned the signal off.”

“What about the newspapers?” the first Robin asks. “We still don’t know what year it is.”

“If the person who messed with time turned off the signal, than we can confront them,” the fourth Robin says.

“There could be a newspaper on the way, anyway,” the second Robin reasons.

“Or something else to clue us in,” the third says.

“Exactly,” the fourth Robin says. “Let’s go.”

Surprisingly, the others don’t really argue, and the fourth Robin leads the way.

In front of the Batsignal, there are six shapes. They are standing in a perfect circle, the same distance apart. One is shorter than the others. The fourth Robin squints at them from her spot behind the signal, the others crowded around her.

“Which is which?” the sixth Robin whispers.

The fourth Robin gets up and goes to the back of the signal. The others follow her, even the stubborn fifth Robin.

She signals, and the second Robin flips the switch and turns the light on.

The six Batmen turn, five dropping into a matching fighting position and the sixth into a different one.

batman!dick, watching the bruces drop into the same fighting stance: hahaha what the fuck

“You all had better be time-displaced Batmen, otherwise we’re gonna be really mad ,” the fourth Robin calls, flipping herself up to stand on top of the signal. The second and third Robins point the light at the Batmen instead of the sky.

in my head, whatever the robins were doing with the signals was super badass. don’t know if that came across too well, though.

“Spoiler?” the Batman who seems to be in charge says. He must be the oldest, although the fourth Robin thinks it’s weird that he would call her Spoiler when she’s not that anymore.

robin!steph thinks she’s given up spoiler forever, which i think is kind of sad, somehow. of course, she also hasn’t thought about the fact that she’s obviously not robin in the future, so she must be *someone*, but maybe she thinks in the future she’s dead? i don’t know.

“Wrong,” she says, crossing her arms. She’s behind the light, and they can’t see her. “Boys, be ready.”

“How many are there?” in-charge Batman says.

“Six,” another Batman says. Even from here, the fourth Robin can tell he’s a younger one. “There’s six of us, why wouldn’t there be six of them.”

“Chum,” a different Batman says, holding out his hand. “Come here.” The fourth Robin hears movement behind her and she holds out a hand.

this batman speaking is dick’s batman. he’s the only one who’s 100% sure of which sidekick of his is in the shadows, because he only has one sidekick.

“We don’t know that this isn’t a trick,” she says. “How do we know you’re who you say you are?”

“Do you want your secret identities?” the different-Batman says. The other Batmen glare at him.

“Come on, Rob,” the third Robin says. “We should be able to identify our own Batmen.”

we always hear dick or tim being called “rob”, and there was something about the idea of steph being called it that i thought was really cute.

“The Batmen could certainly identify their own Robins,” the second Robin says. The fourth Robin sees four of the six Batmen flinch at the sound of his voice. “I mean, come on, we all have different costumes.”

batman #1: who is speaking

batman #2: oh yay, jason!

batman #3 & 4: oh my god my son...alive again

batman #5 & 6: oh a BABY......an infant......................untouched by death...

“Ours are the same,” the first says, gesturing at the second. The fourth Robin looks away from them and back to the Batmen.

“I already know my Batman,” the fifth Robin drawls. “I am fairly sure this isn’t a trick.”

damian honey that’s cheating yours is the only batman that’s not bruce. speaking of that, though, how are you, emotionally? to you your dad is dead and look, there’s five of him, one of them confirming that your father will return from the dead!

“Are you saying there’s six Robins back there?” the different-Batman says, sounding like he might laugh. There’s something familiar about him, the fourth Robin decides. Definitely not Bruce, but familiar.

should batman!dick remember this encounter, and as a matter of fact should bruces’ 2-6 remember this encounter? yes. do they? absolutely not.

“Hm,” one of the Batmen says.

“There’s more than one Robin?” a Batman asks, and the fourth Robin knows which one that is.

bruce #1: what the fuucckkk

“I mean, they seem time-displaced,” she says, and the fifth Robin scoffs.

“To hell with this,” he says, and he breaks out of the gaggle below the signal and steps into the light, heading straight for the different-Batman.

“Language,” the different-Batman says, laughing for real this time, and the fourth Robin wonders why he would be different but the sixth Batman is still Bruce.

“Fine,” she says. “Find your Batman, or whatever.”

The others listen to her, and leave the shadows. One of the Batmen puts his hand on the sixth Robin’s shoulder and guides him away. The first Batman permits the first Robin to hug him.

The various Batman stare at the second Robin, except the one who claims him as the correct time. The second Robin doesn’t seem to notice.

The last two Batmen stare at the third Robin, and the fourth feels a little sick. They’re only one year different, after all, and she knows she wasn’t the first choice of a Robin.

She jumps from the signal but stays near it, watching their showdown and staying by herself.

“What’s going on?” the sixth Robin asks her, dragging his Batman behind him.

“He hates me,” she says, gesturing.

“I mean….you’re Robin, aren’t you? He probably doesn’t hate you,” the sixth Robin says.

“I made him make me Robin,” the fourth Robin says. “He didn’t chose me.”

“He doesn’t hate you,” the sixth Batman says unexpectedly. “I had a lot of issues, back then.”

“And you don’t still?” the fourth Robin asks him, raising her eyebrow.

“A fair point,” the sixth Batman says, and Robin’s mouth drops. He never agrees with her! “Close your mouth, Robin.”

this single conversation was probably more validating for steph than her entire robin run. because bruce kinda sucks.

She does, and she looks back at the Tim Trio. The third Robin seems to have claimed his Batman, and the other one is kind of watching her talk to the sixth Batman and Robin.

“You were always one of the best,” the sixth Batman says, his voice soft and weirdly tender.

LET!! BRUCE!! COMPLIMENT!! STEPH!!!

“Better than Tim?” she asks instead of addressing that, grinning.

“Go to your own Batman,” the sixth Batman says.

“That’s not a no,” the fourth Robin sing-songs, but she listens anyway, and goes over to the only Batman by himself.

“Fifth Batman is staring at second Robin still,” she says. “Embarrassing.”

“Actually, he’s looking at you,” her Batman says, and when the fourth Robin turns to see if that’s true, the fifth Batman has changed his gaze to look at the first Robin, instead. Some dots attempt to connect in Robin’s head, but she ignores them because that makes no sense.

steph knows cass should be batman instead of dick, but she refuses to think about the implications of dick, of all people, being batman.

“Sure he was,” she says instead. “Whatever. Let’s go home.”

dick was, indeed, looking at steph. he knows her currently as batgirl and never saw her as robin....he noticed that she was in charge and was kind of puzzling things out, regarding his opinion of her.

The sixth Batman is in charge of the Batmen, since he’s oldest, and the Robins follow their Batmen. The Time-Turner is from 2018, but accidentally transported them all back to 2005. He apologizes profusely upon seeing six Batmen and Robins, and everyone goes back home.

tbh i got to this paragraph and was like “wait fuck how did the time travel happen” and then i very quickly made a villain and very quickly brought them home. you’ll notice, when i write, i do my very best to avoid writing fight scenes.

After Steph’s shower, she goes out into the cave in leggings and a t-shirt so someone can drive her back home.

“Why don’t you stay tonight,” Bruce says, also freshly showered, and Steph blinks after him. He only lets her stay if she’s injured!

“Sure!” she says, and she follows him up into the Manor and to the hall with all the bedrooms. Before she goes into the guest room that she always uses, he clears his throat.

“What you did today,” Bruce starts. “I mean. You were in charge?”

“Yes,” she says slowly. “They wanted the oldest to be in charge. It was Jason’s idea.”

Bruce flinches at the mention of his dead son, and then reaches out a hand to put on her shoulder.

“I’m...proud of you,” he says, his voice a little strangled, and she stares at him, wide-eyed, until he releases her and goes to his own room, shutting the door firmly behind him.

[screams]

gonna be real with you guys, i wrote...half? more than half? of this fic but in batman!dick’s perspective, cause i thought it’d be #neat to read. sad thing is, i don’t remember what doc i started writing it on, and i don’t remember why i stopped, though i must’ve had a reason.

#long post

10 notes · View notes

redhoodsrobin · 6 years

Text

I like giving really extended author’s notes (or ‘director’s commentary’ if you will) about my fics, but since AO3 is hardly the place for adding those, ehm, guess it’s gonna be bonus content for the tumblr crowd?

Now chapter 3 of No Shadow Falls is up, I just really want to ramble a bit about the thought process behind it. Do people give spoiler warnings for their own fics? If so, consider this it. Please read ch3 first, just in case :’)

So this is that UTRH/Court of Owls mashup fic I mentioned a while back! The premise I wanted to do was basically ‘What if the Court caught wind of Robin!Jason being led into a trap by the Joker & saw a chance to get a new Talon’. Combine this with a little of ‘what if Bruce never found Jason’s body but still presumed him dead bc of the explosion and copious amounts of blood at the scene etc (even though he secretly keeps looking for him still) à la Arkham Knight’ and voilà, here we are.

Considering the fact this fic’s setting is contemporary, I actually imagine Joker would’ve recorded video evidence of him beating up Jason to taunt Batman with too... Hmm, maybe I should re-label this a UTRH/CoO/Arkham Knight mashup instead...

Did I mention that if you’re here for romance, you better strap in for the long haul? Because this is gonna take a while, alright

Prologue

Can you tell I like being poetic? Or that I enjoy parallel & contrasting sentence structures?

first & last paragraphs (the ’beginning’ & ‘end’) include ‘a boy’ & ‘a bat’

‘how the story goes’ vs the later ‘NOT how this story goes’

second & second-to-last paragraphs both start with ‘you see’

3rd & 4th paragraph start with ‘maybe’

the structural halfway point is between the 3rd & 4th paragraph, so between ‘an end (death)’ & ‘a start (resurrection)’

in those same paragraphs: ‘in flame and fire with ice building in his gut’ versus ‘in liquid and ice with fire running through his veins’

Yes, the prologue is from Jason’s POV through his death and resurrection

Chapter 1

The working title for this chapter was ‘Something In The Water (...it’s bodies)’ though I changed the location the body was found in the end.

That stream of consciousness that serves as the intro paragraph(s) is supposed to reflect the opening narration of the Court of Owls storyline, wherein Bruce muses over the Gotham Gazette's 'Gotham is...' column.

Also let me tell you I knew from the start I wanted to do a UTRH retelling but with Talons, and I still somehow forgot Dick’s leg was in a brace during the original UTRH story until I went back to fact-check.

[announcer voice] All names of the victims/CoO members are purely made up, canon can bite me because I don’t care much for the turn the CoO story took after a while but that’s a rant for another day

‘Dick is getting precariously close to the end of his rope’, get it?? foreshadowing that the victim was gonna be found hung up under the bridge? eh?? I like to think I’m funny when I’m not

Chapter 2

I re-wrote this entire chapter from scratch (except for the last 'night’) because I hated the first draft so much

Guys, I love Babs-as-Oracle. Dunno if I can do her justice, but please know I love her.

I don’t think this detail matters if you don’t know much about comics canon: Tim and Cass did stay in Blüdhaven for a while in the past, but they’re mostly back in Gotham now. They still have a hideout in the Blüd and drop by to visit Dick/avoid Bruce every so often, and Cass also spends a lot of time with Babs (& Steph, again, I’ll mention her at some point. so many characters to juggle, christ. I’m gonna level with y’all, I just do NOT want to deal with the War Games storyline in this fic, so don’t expect me to reference it)

Talon did, in fact, use a crude version of Batman’s grapple hooks to get the body up on the bridge. Why display it in the first place? See ch3: as a provocation to both Batman and Nightwing in specific, because Jason is a dramatic lil’ shit no matter what universe you put him in

The Talons in canon seem to have more weapons that fit their fighting style, but I went for the combination of grappling line + (throwing) knives for now because Jason actually does use a knife in UTRH. I might make him use guns, at some point, but for now it’ll be the usual improvised bat-gadgets like flashbangs, smoke bombs etc, plus knives

And thus starts our story of Talon messing with Dick

Chapter 3

The ‘Such Terrible Hungers’ chapter title is taken from the same poem as the main story title (’No Shadow Falls’), namely, Louise Erdrich’s “The King of Owls”. For obvious reasons.

This chapter, I re-wrote about fifteen times. I wanted to cry in frustration.

Anyway, yay, more Jason POV! (in my weird quasi-poetic format)

[insert obligated identity crisis because he was forced into a role he never wanted but it’s now useful to his cause]

Points I want to single out:

Whenever I use text in italics+brackets, it’s some form of unbidden thought coming to Jason’s mind

Drinking game: spot the references to how Bruce failed to find Jason/the Owls (”a detective who cannot find what he is looking for“) or how nobody seems to want Jason bc he’s Jason, they just want him as a substitute for Dick

This is also why Talon doesn't want to be caught, he wants to be found. Small but significant difference

There’s an underlying theme of ‘stories’ in my quasi-poetic chapters, so I really wanted to incorporate the classic ‘Once upon a time, there was...’ ‘One day, ...’ structure of fairy tales/bedtime stories. Lest we forget the CoO also had a nursery rhyme dedicated to them

“Talon never spilled his secrets but oh, how the Owls would have laughed if they had known.” >>>> the Owls ovbs interrogated ‘Robin’ (Jason) while he was in captivity, but they didn’t get much info from him. I’ll mention the details in some later chapter!

Yes, I do the ‘Night-Wing’ ‘Gray-Son’ spelling thing on purpose to show that Jason’s mind isn’t all alright at this point

The switching between ‘the Gray Son’ & ‘Gray-Son’ is also on purpose to show the cracks in Jason’s conditioning/the Owls’ failure to brainwash him fully

I try to keep most of Jason’s core characteristics intact - his focus on victims + helping them, his disdain of Batman’s methods - but I’m going to have to change some bits to fit the Talon narrative I think. We’ll see how it works out...

That being said, he’s mostly gonna be messing with Dick because he’s petty and bitter, but it turns out to be more fun than he thought it would be. After all, our boy severly lacks human interaction & Dick is a relatively expressive person (the polar oposite of the Owls’ haughty/better-than-thou/distant demeanor & even Batman’s carefully controlled reactions)

Bonus scrapped story element: at one point I had the idea to have Talon be as good as mute because of a particularly brutal blow (from the crowbar) injuring his throat/vocal chords. I couldn’t think of a way to incorporate it on top of everything else though, so that remains an idea for another time...

(Seriously though, Jason and Cass silently bonding over speech issues, sign me up. Especially bc Jason loves literature and Cass is into theater it seems, you can do so much with that)

#eve.fic #i still haven't refered to Jason by his actual name in-fic but I assume all my readers figured out by now he's Talon #addendum: nsf #fic: nsf

5 notes · View notes

wildlyleftlight · 6 years

Text

Home for the Holidays

Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays ♫ ‘Cause no matter how far away you roam ♫ When you pine for the sunshine of a friendly gaze ♫ For the holidays you can’t beat home sweet home! ♫

Dick Grayson listens to the familiar, slow-flame drawl of Perry Como emitting from the sidewalk speakers inexpertly hidden along the salt-stippled avenue of shops. He drops from the curb without a hop to his step and shoves one of his gloveless hands into the front pocket of his jeans. It isn’t cold enough for him to see the huff of his breath on the air, but it is early enough in the morning that he wouldn’t be out here if not for the giant travel mug of coffee resolutely grasped in his other hand.

The Blüdhaven strip mall is safe and dead at this hour on a Tuesday, which lends a qualifying moroseness to the airing age-old Christmas melody. He hears the refrain chase him, tinnily, all the way to his car, and he fingers the cell phone in his pocket. He wonders about calling Babs, but even though she isn’t strictly out on the streets with them, she’s just as much in on the nightlife too, and it’d be a sin to wake her this early only for a maudlin earful.

Four days ago, he’d gotten into another fight with Bruce. Four days later, he can’t let it go. Because he – Dick Grayson – went and picked a fight with Bruce Wayne two weeks before actual Christmas just so that Bruce wouldn’t because Bruce always did. Dick has worn Batman’s cowl and Dick has filled Batman’s boots, but never before has he so badly misstepped into his father’s shoes.

Ever since his juvenile abdication from all things Bruce Wayne, and even though Bruce and he are more or less civil with each other now, the holidays have a way of stirring Dick’s mercurial temper to a melancholy cocktail of nostalgia and the bitter aftertaste of knowing he’d lost those formative years – those family traditions – completely independent of Bruce’s crimes of passion. There’s irony somewhere in that, he guesses, and a double-dose of it, but Dick is nothing if not sentimental. He has the tendency to chalk up the past to self-blame, whether or not it actually was Bruce who had fanned the fitful flames of Dick’s anger. Still, it had always been Robin’s duty to counterbalance the Batman, to be the yin to his yang and negate Batman’s darkness for him with a simpering buoyancy. So every time he’s stormed out just because of Bruce being Bruce, the fault lay indisputably with Dick. It has to.

By the time he arrives back at his apartment, Dick’s travel mug is empty and his mood is half-full. He disentangles himself from his scarf with quick tugs of his hand. The tightness around his throat does not yield.

“Sweet Jesus, Dickless,” he hears Jason say, “you have failed me for the last time.”

“What did I do now?” Dick asks very amiably, shoving away all pensive introspection as he enters his kitchen to find all three of his little brothers glued to their cell phones. There is still a prevailing stress in his eyes, a dejected slouch in the incline of his shoulders where they lean so he can peer over Jason’s head. Nothing is more important to him than his family, but lately he’s realizing more and more that his family isn’t all he wants; he wants for his family to want him right back. He looks past his brother’s large, scarred fingers that are frantically tapping away at Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.

“You have no pears in your Market Box. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph Stalin– don’t you know that pears are the hardest to come by?”

“Sorry, Jaybird. I don’t play much anymore.” Dick tosses his jacket over the straight back of Jason’s – his – chair. “I’m tapped out; my loan is up to one hundred and fifty thousand Bells,” and, even as he says this, Dick pulls his phone from his pocket, logs into the game, and presses at the screen a few times. “I have seven pears. There you go. I put them up for twenty Bells, just for you.”

“–Acquired,” interjects Damian, with spectacular self-satisfaction, at the same time Jason goes, “–One hundred and fifty thousand Bells? How the hell– Dami, you fruit-thieving little shit,” he growls, in the same breath, “–did you get yourself in so steep?”

“I’m on, like, the fifth loan, I think. And it’s for one hundred and fifty thousand.”

“You mean you actually pay them off? What is wrong with you?”

“It’s a game about debt,” Tim peaceably inserts, without looking up. His fingers flit across his phone screen as deftly as they do his remote hacking device. “Paying off your loans is virtually the only thing you’re supposed to do, Jason.”

“No, it’s a game about making a freaking killer-sweet pad, with all the things. Did you get it, Dicky?”

“Those pears will be the building blocks of my empire, Todd.” Damian, again. Smugly, again.

“Fuck your empire. Apollo wants his pears. I will never get that zipper shirt,” mourns Jason, not quite sincerely enough to muster tears.

“Yeah, I got it,” Dick answers when he is finally allowed the chance to. He holds up the gift card. “But I’m still not sure why you see fit to get Bruce a Starbucks gift card for Christmas. Doesn’t it seem a little… I dunno… bourgeois?”

“Spoken like a true trust fund baby. Shut up,” Jason adds, shutting down the argument toward which he’s riling Dick. “And anyway, Batman is by the people, for the people.”

“I’m just saying. I-am-vengeance grappling to an LED marquee and paying for a Venti Mocha Frapp, with a gift card?”

“You don’t know Batman the way I do.” Well, that was true. Each of the Robins knew Batman differently from the others. “He loves that shit. Ask Alfred. They’re opening a Starbucks by the precinct and Bruce will flip his wig when he finds out.”

Dick shrugs neutrally, noncommittally, and allows Jason to steamroll over his shameful flare of jealousy. There is ice in his chest, scaling his clavicles, and he ignores the nagging familiarity of it just like he ignores the familiarity by which Jason speaks of Bruce. “Little D, the lady at Suncoast says that you can design your own PopSocket for Al. Through the website.”

“Hand me your laptop, Grayson,” demands Damian, without more than a second’s thought. “I will investigate.”

“Okay, but,” he warns, “if you need to use your own editor, I haven’t got Photoshop on here.”

“Tt.”

“I can get you Photoshop, Dick.”

“Because you’re a pirate, Timmy,” scoffs Jason, “and Dick is a trust fund b–”

“Or maybe, Jason, I’m not a trust fund baby and that’s why I don’t own Adobe anything,” Dick shoots back, using his full name now. He’s nettled by the tone being used on him, for a topic that is so sore with him. The ice bracketing his heart suddenly thaws into a puddling sob of frustration, which goes angrily suppressed. He knows how flammable his own temper is, which colors him all the more upset, enough to turn away from Jason so that he is facing and simultaneously avoiding Tim’s stare.

Tim sees how Dick’s eyes are flashing dichotomously – an electric blue set in a face schooled of any outward expression – and intervenes before Jason can bring up the point of that ubiquitous knife pressed between them: that at least Dick had actually gotten to live to his age of majority. “Did you pick up gift tags?”

Dick throws out a sideways glance, barely the formality of miffed scrutiny in the stillness of tundra. “Yes, I got gift tags. Because we’re all so hopelessly impaired–”

“Drake, your camper is cliché.”

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year. And I’m trying to complete all of the Christmas Event Challenges.”

“That’s all that’s inside it; Christmas crap,” pipes in Jason, “except for– what is that?”

“It’s a slipper rack.”

“Okay. Damian, I’m gonna have to go with you’re wrong on this one. Tim’s camper is so Tim.”

“This is card stock. Why would they stick stickers on card stock?” Tim gripes from where he’s meticulously, conspicuously peeling something off of the backing of the gift card.

“…” And Dick takes the few long moments of sibling banter for what they are: a breathing spell. He collects himself, cards his unruly black hair into tufts, and compartmentalizes.

When dealing with Jason Todd, taking anything personally was taking tinder to kindle. Jason knew Dick, and Dick knew better; it’d never been about himself. Maybe when he was younger he’d thought so, but the eldest had long since come to learn that Jason’s best defense was his best offense; barreling heart-first into things, to disarm or to destroy, because he’d grab at anything if it belonged to him – and his brothers, Jason finally ascertained, were his brothers. On less malevolent days of the week, not unlike ordinary sibling rivalry, Jason’s possessiveness usually manifested itself by way of teasing just this side of too-fierce. In sharper, more extenuated circumstances, he cut to the quick, navigating the veritable minefield of responsiveness and gut feeling and leaps before looks. In a civilian, Jason’s behavior was the very antithesis of vigilanteism. In a younger brother, it was arrested development. Which makes sense, because he’d died a child, and every time Dick is reminded of that it is harrowing pain, and it is thankfulness, softening the edges all around the insults Jason’s whetted to the hilt, that his brother is alive.

After a self-possessed sniff – in farewell to his pride, he convinces himself – Dick rests his palm on Tim and gives his bedhead a good tousle. In a smoothly paved voice, he asks, “‘You still workin’ out? Rerack?’”

Damian Wayne barks a laugh, and immediately Jason jumps on the bandwagon. “‘How’s it going, brosephine?’”

“‘We don’t always have to talk about training, you know. There’s plenty of other stuff goin’ on!’” Dick, quoting from their favorite, the jock type animal. Who happens to also be a bird named Jay.

“‘Like…um… You know… How ‘bout that weather?’” supplies Jason.

Dick dissolves into laughter. Gasps, “‘Did you know that just talking about your muscles can make them bigger and stronger?’”

“I hate you both.”

“‘Sue me! Rerack!’”

Dami enters the fray. “‘How’s it going, Drake? Training like a madwoman?’”

Jason stops short. “Demonbird, you play as a female character?”

Damian colors. “The videogame is not gender-specific with its dialogue.”

“Isn’t it?” Dick considers, curiously.

“How would you know?” challenges Jason – who does play as a female character – as he squares his broad shoulders and tilts his chair onto its back two legs.

“Jason, how do you not know what Damian’s character looks like,” Tim asks. Don’t you see it wandering all over your world?”

“We’re not friends.”

“We are so, Todd!” And the beat where Damian’s accent lands is given an irregular emphasis.

“Fine. How in blazes would I know if we’re friends? I cannot even begin to fathom the nickname you chose for yourself. And I have a bazillion names on my friends list, ninety percent of which is in Kanji.”

“…Is it?” Dick, still stumped and not following the tangent of conversation at all.

“‘Macmoo,’” Tim offers, taking a sip from his empty coffee mug.

“Alright, kiddies. Giddyap,” Jason says, and really pronounces it that way. He stretches himself to his full height, and then some – easily six feet four on his toes for the assuaging pop! of his back. His arms arch up and he towers over the fridge. “Go get dressed, Cretin,” he orders lovingly and gives his littlest brother, who barely comes up to the bottom of his chest, a fond forward shove toward the bathroom. “I’m starving to death.”

As his sibs depart the kitchen, Dick angles himself for a fast escape to the dishwasher, but Jason steps in front of him, purposefully overbearing. “Uh-uh. You too, Dicky.”

“Jay, I’m already good to go.” He indicates his faded jeans, his windbreaker that’s fallen from the chair during Jason’s see-saw sitting. “Besides,” Dick japes, lamely, “you don’t get to tell me what to do; I’m the big brother.”

Jason opens his mouth to say one thing, closes it, then reopens it to say something different. “You have a funny memory.” Jason sighs, puffs up his cheeks, then sighs again. “It’s reticulated.”

“Like it’s a giraffe’s ass?”

“Like it’s circling around the same platitudes over and over and getting shakier every time it has to.”

Dick falls silent, but he doesn’t withdraw his gaze from Jason. He looks measuringly at his brother for a time, beyond teal eyes and need-to-know bases, beyond, even, shared pasts and shared costumes and shared fathers. Rain was cobalt, like the grooves in his irises reflecting at least an alchemic silver lining if not his brother’s whole love.

Raking up the quiet, Jason speaks, “Trust fund baby? Seriously, that’s what got under your skin? Which of the implications was worse? That you were a snob or that you were a Wayne. Or weren’t a Wayne, as it goes.”

“Both! Neither. It was you wanting to hurt me because of it,” Dick snaps, instantly pissed off again. He ignores the tension line at one corner of his brother’s mouth, breaking it apart in his mind and scattering it to pieces. It’s only flesh, after all.

“Fuck you, Dick,” Jason says, in a low voice. His pulse is hammering. Common courtesy dictates he not raise his voice inside of doors and out of anger. “Not everybody has to love you all of the time. You didn’t for me. You aren’t for Bruce.”

“I do love Bruce.” He’s a father to me, as much as you are a brother to me, he doesn’t say.

“Then why don’t you tell him that and stop dragging me down the roads of your guilty conscience.”

For the gravid space of a breath, it really seems like Dick is going to lose his temper and explode into dynamite violence. Then he winces, as if going against a great backlash. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take any of this out on you.”

“That’s exactly what I mean, Dick.” No moniker for his name this time. “Forget about walking on eggshells; you are an emotional rhino in a china shop.” Jason fumbles a cigarette to his lips. “Except the china shop is holiday hullabaloo.” He fishes for his lighter, mumbling something about how his skinny ninny brother is a rhino, and can he believe this.

“I just miss knowing that I can’t lose my family at even the best of times. Don’t smoke in here.”

And because Jason’s feeling generous, he obeys, but he doesn’t remove the stick from his mouth. He rolls it with his tongue, longingly, between the borders of his lips. Nicotine is his sunrise; his lips, the horizon.

It is then that Tim and Damian file back into the room.

“I thought we were going for brunch,” says Dick in a flat voice, nonplussed when Tim, wearing a tasteful burgundy button-up, makes his way to the coffee pot for a second mug. Damian is wearing black slacks that look as though they’d been recently pressed by Alfred.

“That, too,” Jason remarks, in an offhand way. “But first you’re getting your Christmas present early, Dickface. Now go change. I’m cashing in on a few favors for this one.”

It isn’t until they are all four crammed into Jason’s beat-up ‘93 Mazda – with Dick wisely refraining from asking if it’s a stolen vehicle – that Jason spills the beans, reveals that they’re going to get their picture taken together, but doesn’t point out that Dick hasn’t hung a single portrait on a single wall of his apartment in any of the years that he’s lived there because Dick won’t hang anything if he can’t hang a picture of his family, and that’s why Jason’s taking them to the seedy studio of an even seedier acquaintance to get this done.

“You mean… You guys didn’t stay over just because Alfred cleared you out so he could wrap presents for under the tree?”

“Cripes no. Don’t ask stupid questions. You know how many rooms are in the Manor and you know how resourceful Alfred can be. We came because I rallied the troops.”

And Dick is moved to tears. His eyes are hot and runny, even after he adjusts the sticking vent in the dashboard. In the rearview mirror he watches Damian glaring balefully out of the window, but Dick knows by Damian’s acquiescent silence that the littlest bird isn’t actually bothered in the least. Dick sees Tim’s tired reflection but knows by the tall mug Tim’s holding that he doesn’t mind trying.

Dick scrubs his face with his knuckles. “You know, Jay, you don’t have to start a fight with me every time you want to make me feel better.” He raises both hands in a gesture of truce to ward off Jason’s dark scowl. “Though I appreciate the effort!”

“I wouldn’t have to if you didn’t always make it so hard for yourself. Self-saboteur. Quit flattering yourself. And anyway… It kinda wasn’t completely your fault. I was being… well… you-ish.”

Dick chuckles but wetly, in pieces over this whole being loved thing, and leans his head wordlessly against the passenger-side window.

After a few miles, he is distracted by a murmur coming from Jason – not so much by the sound as by the gravitas of the timbre applied to meet Dick halfway. It’s another Animal Crossing quote, of all things, and considering that Tim had formulated a calculation for the minimum mandatory animal conversations Jason was likely to play through in a given day, it isn’t at all surprising to Dick that Jason can recite verbatim:

“‘Everything you hold dear is under attack, and they’re going to do whatever they can to take it away.’” There is a considering lull – and Dick’s smile is lopsided and peaking – before Jason gives him a hard look. “‘It’s you…versus the ants.’”

Dick sits up straight. He reaches for a knob and clicks on the radio. It is Perry Como again, crooning the classic. Dick turns it up.

“Thank you, Little Wing.”

“Merry Christmas, Big Bird.”

Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays ♫ ‘Cause no matter how far away you roam ♫ If you wanna be happy in a million ways ♫ For the holidays you can’t beat home sweet home! ♫

#dick grayson #jason todd #batfamily #batfic #batfamily feels #tim drake #damian wayne #batboys #batfam #dick grayson has the holiday blues #too many animal crossing references #angst #fluff

57 notes · View notes

lopithecusfanfiction · 7 years

Text

A Life So Changed: Chapter Forty-One

Author: Lopithecus Pairing: Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne Rating: Explicit Word Count: 3937 Alternate: AO3, fanfiction.net Author's Note: N/A

Chapter Forty-One:

Bruce wakes up with a start. The room is completely dark and when Bruce looks over at the clock, it reads three o’clock in the morning. He had fallen asleep on top of the covers and despite the heat of the room, he is shivering slightly. At least his headache has thankfully dulled down to a minor ache. With a small groan, Bruce sits up and gets out of bed, walking over to his walk-in closet and pulling out a sweatshirt. He slips it on and then makes his way out of his room.

The Manor is quiet and dark, something he relishes for the moment. It means everyone is either asleep or in their rooms. Martha and Jonathan would be asleep by now. Barbara might be awake but with Kara here as well, the two mates might already have fallen asleep together. Tim and Kon are most likely awake still, even if Kon doesn’t want to be. Tim will keep the alpha up just on the fact that Tim won’t be able to sleep. Jason is a tossup whether he is asleep or not. The alpha’s sleeping patterns, from what Bruce has observed, is quite unpredictable. So are Damian’s. Bruce wonders if the kid is up and taking his anger out by drawing a picture in his sketchbook or slashing up another pillow.

With a long sigh, Bruce continues down the hallway only to stop by Dick’s bedroom door. There’s light shining out from the bottom of it. Trying to not be too hasty about it, he turns towards the door and knocks gently. There’s a muffled hum from inside, indicating that Bruce can enter. He slowly opens the door, walking in. Dick is by his bed, unpacking dirty clothes onto his bed in a disorganized fashion. He doesn’t look up when Bruce closes the door quietly behind himself.

Bruce approaches the bed. “When did you get back?”

Dick lifts a hand and rubs at a bruise on his chin. “An hour ago, maybe? I heard from Jason that the in-laws are here.”

“They’re not in-laws,” Bruce corrects, scrutinizing the black and blue on Dick’s face.

Dick shrugs, looking up at him as he throws a pair of Superman boxers on top of the pile. “They will be in the future so you might as well call them that now.” The young beta goes back to pulling clothes out. Bruce watches the pile grow. The kid really was planning on staying gone forever. He took all his clothes with him and now the pile just keeps getting bigger the more clothes Dick pulls out.

“Why are you putting all your clothes in one pile?” Bruce walks up to the pile and starts digging clothes out of it, feeling compelled to do so. “Not all of them are dirty. You were gone for what? A week?”

Dick is watching him and when Bruce looks up at the beta, Dick looks confused. “What are you doing?”

Bruce looks down at his hands, holding a pair of socks with small little Nightwing symbols on them. “Taking out the clean clothes.”

Dick snatches up the socks, throwing them to the floor. “You don’t know what I wore. Stop that.”

Bruce turns away from the clothes, ignoring his need to sort them. “Sorry.”

“Jeez, you’re turning more and more into a parent as the days go by.”

Bruce glares at his first son. “Funny.” Dick stifles a laugh. Bruce eyes Dick as the beta continues to pull clothes out. “What’s with the bruise?”

“Oh this?” Dick points to his chin. “I finally told Kori what has been going on.” Bruce nods, understanding. “As you can probably guess, it didn’t go very well.” He rubs at it again. “It didn’t look this bad earlier but Jason punched me once he saw me.” Dick shrugs, closing the suitcase. There were still clothes in it. He chuckles. “I actually thought Jason was going to make me submit to him but nah, he didn’t. Just told me to fix things and that the Kents are here and being jerks to you.” The beta laughs again. “I’m actually more afraid to see Damian than I was Jason though. Damian can be scary for a little squirt.”

Bruce smirks. “He’ll probably end up being an alpha.”

“Now that’s scary,” Dick jokes, smiling at Bruce. Bruce huffs a small laugh and sits down on the edge of the bed. “Do you think you’ll be able to work things out with Kori?”

Dick’s smile disappears and he sits down next to Bruce. “Probably not.” He shrugs again. “I’m hoping.”

“And Wally?”

“We’ve… talked more.”

“And?”

Dick sighs, looking down at his lap. “He’s getting the abortion.” Bruce nods, looking down at his own lap. His stomach blocks some of his view and he can’t help but place a protective hand on it. Dick notices. “It’s not that we don’t…” Another sigh. “I don’t think love is necessarily the right word but…” Dick rubs a hand down his face. “I don’t know how to describe it.”

Again, Bruce nods. “I get it.” Dick’s lips thin. “Love… is complicated Dick. I don’t doubt that either of you love the baby or whatever feeling it is, I don’t know how to describe it either, but I do understand that feeling and it’s hard, but sometimes one has to make the hard decisions.”

Dick nods slowly. His hands are tightly balled into fists on his knees. “We’re both not ready Bruce. We’re not ready to be parents.” Dick finally looks at him and there are tears in his eyes. “You had practice; with me, Jason, Tim, and Damian. Wally and I… we’re twenty-one Bruce. We’re too young.”

“Dick, I want you and Wally to know that if you two do change your mind, I will help with the baby. With any resources that Wally might need or any help. I’m sure Alfred would be willing to babysit. Or even if Wally needs help buying things for the baby. Anything.”

Dick’s small smile is back and Bruce is glad about that. “I have my own money, you know, Bruce.”

Bruce chuckles. “I know. I just want to be a good grandfather.”

Dick huffs but his smile soon wanes again. “I think he’s pretty set on not having it.”

“What about adoption?”

“And let a baby with super powers on the loose?” Dick shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

Bruce frowns. “Maybe Iris will adopt the baby. Or, you know, I could.”

Dick laughs then, loud and shoulders shaking. “You? You have to focus on your own baby,” Dick says between breaths. When the beta finally settles, he wipes at his eyes. “And I don’t think Iris will want to adopt the baby with Barry being… gone and all.”

“Then maybe someone else in the League will or the Titans.”

“Bruce,” Dick places a hand on Bruce’s shoulder. “He’s getting the abortion.”

Bruce looks away from his son, back down to his own baby bump. “He might regret it.”

“Would you have?” Dick asks.

“At the time?” He shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so. Now? Yes.”

Dick frowns and looks off into the room. “We talked about it a lot, weighing the options.”

“Dick-”

“When you were making the decision, how did you feel?” Dick interrupts.

Bruce pauses, thinking back many months ago. “I… was scared. Not certain what to do. When I decided to get an abortion, I wondered if it was the right decision. Obviously in the end I couldn’t do it. Dick, I was... “He doesn’t know how to explain it to the young beta. The emotional pain Bruce had felt. The torment and indecision that was going on inside of him. The way he felt in the hospital room, waiting for the doctor to start the procedure. The sheer panic he felt when the doctor had started. “Being on that table to get it done… it was…” He clears his throat and removes his hand from his stomach. He somehow feels like he is betraying his baby by just talking about what he almost went through with. “It was one of the most painful things I have ever had to go through.” He looks over at Dick but Dick isn’t looking at him. “Emotionally. Wally… he’s going to grieve Dick, as are you. It’s not an easy thing to do.” He pauses again, swallowing. “Dick, if Wally gets there and then changes his mind, don’t be mad at him. Getting rid of something that is a part of you… it… it’s almost unbearable.”

Dick is nodding, still not making eye contact. Bruce can see the glistening of tears on his cheeks but Bruce says nothing. Dick sniffles and wipes the wetness away. “Yeah… yeah I won’t.” The beta takes a deep breath. “You know, I was thinking the other day how similar our situations are. How much of a fucking hypocrite I am. While our situations are similar, Bruce, they’re also not. You and Clark had a one night stand. Wally and I, it had been going on for months. Clark slept with you because of your heat. Wally came to me to help with his heat and I stupidly agreed because he’s my best friend. I never even gave Kori a thought. I never even gave the fact that I’m not an alpha a thought. I thought I would just be helping a friend a few times until he could deal with them on his own again. But Wally was having a hard time, I think he was feeling lonely, and so it kept going. You and Clark, it stopped after that one heat.” Dick sniffles again and Bruce reaches over to the nightstand where a box of tissues is. He hands them over to the beta but Dick ignores it. “Clark had told Lois about the cheating and the baby as soon as he found out. I kept if from Kori for weeks.”

“Dick-”

“Don’t make excuses for me, please. I know what Wally and I did was wrong. I know keeping it from Kori was wrong. I know.” Dick finally takes a tissue but all he does is tear it up into tiny pieces, each one falling to the floor. “The thing that is the same the most, besides the baby, is both Clark and I lost the love of our lives. Except Clark loves you and you love him. I love Kori and not Wally and Wally doesn’t love me.” Dick gets up from the bed abruptly to break the awkward conversation. “I have to finish unpacking.”

Watching Dick unpacking again, Bruce feels the sting in his chest from Dick mentioning Clark losing the love of his life. Self-doubt makes its way to the surface. Is he not the love of Clark’s life? Is it still Lois? Clark had said he will always love Lois. Does that mean he loves Lois more than him? Would he rather be with Lois than him? Are Clark’s parents correct, and Clark is just picking him for second best because of the baby?

“Bruce?” Bruce’s head snaps up and he looks at Dick. Dick’s eyebrows are scrunched in concern. “Are you okay?”

Bruce shakes his head to clear it, closing his eyes and forcing a chuckle. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just a bit tired.”

“Did you want to go back to bed?”

“No, I’m fine,” Bruce lies.

Dick watches him for a few seconds before turning away and scrubbing at his forehead with a hand. “Bruce, this whole thing with Wally was only meant to be a short term thing. It was meant to help him because he… he… he said he was having problems with his heat. That’s what he told me.” Dick’s shoulders droop and Bruce tries to concentrate on what the beta is saying instead of his own worries about Clark. “Or he was lonely during them… I don’t know. It was some kind of problem. But nothing else was supposed to happen Bruce.” The beta throws his hands out. “All of this, it… God, this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Bruce sighs and stands. “Have you thought that maybe there’s more to this than you think? At least for Wally?”

Dick grabs his suitcase again and opens it. He rummages through it but doesn’t pull anything out. “Meaning?”

“I just mean, Clark and I, though our situations are vastly different as you said, they’re still the same in ways. I love Clark, have for a long time, you know this.”

“What does that have to do with Wally?” Dick asks, finally pulling out another pair of boxers, this time with a Batman symbol. Dick’s face turns bright red and the beta quickly shoves them under the pile of clothes. Dick clears his throat and continues. “He doesn’t love me like you love Clark.”

“Are you sure?” Bruce asks.

Dick looks at him with one eyebrow raised. “Of course, I’m sure.”

“Dick, just think about it. He asked you to help him with his heats even though you’re not an alpha. Why?” Dick shrugs. “I loved Clark for a long time and when my heat started, I wanted him.”

“Because he was in the room with you,” Dick reasons.

“Yes, but at the time, heat or no heat, I was glad it was him. If Wally-”

“No Bruce,” Dick retorts. “It’s not the same. The reason why he didn’t go to some random alpha is because I’m his best friend.”

Bruce silently sighs and heads to the door, figuring it’s probably best to let Dick stew with what Bruce is telling him. “And Clark has always been my best friend too. That wasn’t the reason why I wanted him Dick. Friendship and love are very closely connected.” He leaves, not missing the thinning of Dick’s lips in contemplation.

He heads back to his room slowly. Bruce is glad he just had a civil conversation with Dick. He can already feel the bond between them strengthening again. It will still take a long time before it is fully restored, but they are on the right path and it makes Bruce content to know that. With a small, satisfied smile playing at his lips, he opens his door to his bedroom and steps in only to stop short. Sitting there on his bed is Jason. He quietly shuts the door behind himself.

Jason stands. “Hey, I was wondering if we could talk.”

Bruce glances at the time. “At four in the morning?”

Jason shrugs. “I was awake.”

Bruce huffs and heads to the bathroom. His headache is starting to get bad again and he would like to try and stave it off before it continues to worsen. “I’m assuming this is about Roy?” He pulls out the Tylenol and swallows two with some tap water.

Jason watches him, arms crossed and leaning on the doorframe. “You said I could.”

“I did.” Bruce exits the bathroom and returns to his bedroom, sitting down on his bed.

Jason follows. “Can I?” Bruce gestures for Jason to continue. Jason sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Why don’t you tell me what made you want to talk to me now,” Bruce prompts.

Jason looks to the floor and shuffles his feet. He shrugs. “I was just thinking, you know? With the Kents being here and then seeing… do you know Dick is back?” Bruce nods. “Yeah, and then seeing him again and knowing about his whole situation with Wally. It just got me thinking.”

“About?”

Another shrug and sigh. Jason takes his hands out of his pockets and sits next to Bruce. “Roy. The future. Family. All that happy stuff to think about.” Bruce says nothing to this, knowing how Jason feels about family. “Roy, he… he’s been contacting me on and off. Never when I initiate it. I don’t know if he’s avoiding me because he’s scared about the fact that I like him and he likes me back or if he is scared about the fact that I like him and he doesn’t like me back.”

“You mean love.” Jason eyes him. “It’s okay to say it Jason.”

Jason huffs a laugh. “I don’t think I’m quite there yet Old Man.” Jason shifts his weight and clasps his hands together, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his thighs. “You want to know when I found out I was gay?”

Bruce looks at his son, the alpha avoiding eye contact. He follows Jason’s gaze to a spot on the carpet. “Okay.”

Jason chuckles, most likely from the memory. “You remember when you first introduced me to Superman?”

Bruce nods. “I don’t even think you were presenting as an alpha yet.”

“I wasn’t,” Jason says. His hands flex a little. “I was a late bloomer into puberty. Fourteen-year-old boy, not even having presented as anything yet, meeting the greatest superhero in the world. You remember what happened the next day?”

“I remember you were almost as bad as Dick was when it came to your little crush on him.” Jason laughs, deep and guttural. “I bought you so much Superman merchandise the day after you met him.” Bruce eyes Jason. “I thought it was harmless because you weren’t presenting as anything yet.”

“It was at the time,” Jason says.

“Then you couldn’t have known yet.”

“Yeah,” the alpha says softly, watching his own hands now. “Except when I finally presented as an alpha, the crush didn’t go away. I never told you, but there were a lot of nights that I would jack off to the thought of him.”

Bruce eyes his bare feet. “And I still didn’t need to know that.”

Jason laughs again and it makes Bruce smile. It’s not a sound he hears too often. “My point is, is that’s when I found out I was gay. I mean, fuck Bruce, Superman’s probably every omega’s, beta’s, and gay or bisexual alpha’s masturbatory fantasy. It really shouldn’t surprise you that it was mine too.”

“No, I suppose not. Pretty positive he was Dick’s as well.”

“Dickie bird?” Jason chuckles. “There’s no question about it.” They both laugh but it soon dies down. “Then I died. Then I came back. For a while there I wasn’t even interested in screwing around with anyone. No alpha, no omega, not even a fucking beta. I was just angry and hurt. Then Roy came along and it was like he sparked something in me. When I started living with him and he would bring an omega around, it wouldn’t be the omega’s scent that would turn me on when the two were having sex in the other room. It would be Roy’s.” Jason looks at Bruce. “I kept it from him for years, like you did with Clark, but then I found you, hurt and pregnant, and I just… I don’t know Bruce. For some reason that one event, bringing you back to our hideout and taking care of you, it made it unbearable keeping it from him. Because there have been many times in which I’ve had to stitch him up or he has had to stitch me up, and doing the same to you made me think about that and I… I couldn’t keep it a secret anymore. So, I told him. And I ran away.” Jason pauses and Bruce stays silent. He’s afraid if he tries to say something, Jason will lose his confidence in confiding in him. “I ran away and came to live with you. I ran away from my problems.”

“It seems to run in the family,” Bruce mumbles.

Jason huffs at Bruce’s comment. “I’ve been trying to talk to him but whenever I initiate a conversation he doesn’t get back to me. He’s never alone with me anymore either. It’s like he’s afraid I’m going to jump his bones at any moment.” Jason tsks. “Like that’ll ever happen.” The alpha’s hands turn into fists, knuckles white. “Now he only initiates the conversations and it’s safe stuff, like mission talk or weapons or something along the lines of our nightly jobs.” A growl emanates from deep within Jason’s throat and Bruce places a protective hand on his stomach. “He’s a fucking asshole.” Jason notices Bruce’s hand and bows his head slightly in a small submission. “Sorry.”

Bruce forces himself to take his hand off his baby bump. “It’s okay.” He looks at his son who has now stopped submitting. “Listen Jason, maybe Roy isn’t meaning to be an asshole. Maybe he’s just as confused as you are. Has he ever been with any other alpha?”

“Not that I know of,” Jason replies, sitting back on his hands. The alpha tilts his head back and looks at the ceiling.

“So, if he is in fact interested in you, then he’s probably scared because it’s all new to him. Maybe he has never admitted to himself that he is also attracted to alphas.”

Jason shrugs. “Maybe. I just wish he would talk to me. Even if we don’t talk about how I or he feels. I just want to be his friend again.”

Bruce frowns. “Try giving him a little more time, Jason. Give him space but also keep reaching out to him. Look how long it took Clark to finally realize he loves me.”

“I don’t want to wait years.” Jason tries to hide the desperation in his voice but there is no hiding it from Bruce.

Bruce frowns more. “Then you stop waiting and move on. Only wait for as long as you can Jason. Don’t push yourself any more than that.” Bruce looks to his lap. “You’ll only end up hurt and miserable.”

He sees Jason nod from the corners of his eyes. “How did you wait so long?”

Bruce chuckles. “I buried myself in work. Plus, I’m a patient man. But even I got tired of waiting after a while.”

“Oliver?”

Bruce nods once. “Oliver.”

“And in the end, it still paid off for you.” Jason brings a hand up and wipes at his face. The alpha looks tired. “What if it never does for me?”

Bruce clasps Jason’s shoulder. “It will. Even if it’s not with Roy.”

Jason looks at him and there is an emotion that Bruce can’t read in his eyes. Jason pushes forward from his hands and gets up off the bed. He pats Bruce’s shoulder twice and then makes his way to the bedroom door. “Thanks, Old Man.” The alpha smiles at him, small and timid. “It helped… surprisingly.”

“If you ever need to talk more Jason, my door is open.”

Jason sucks on his cheek and nods briefly. He opens the door. “Goodnight.” Then he’s gone, door shutting behind him with a low click.

Bruce smiles small after his son, once more happy by the outcome of another conversation. Tonight has been good for those apparently. Now only if he could go and see Clark and talk to him as well. To make up for their small fight. Bruce sighs. He knows that’s not going to happen tonight. Clark will be at the fortress and sleeping. He won’t call the Kryptonian over this early in the morning.

Bruce looks over at the clock. It’s already four thirty. With a yawn, he lies back down onto his bed, burying his head into the pillow. His headache is still getting worse but with some more sleep, it will hopefully go away.

However, Bruce doesn’t get any, his mind too preoccupied with thoughts of Clark and the love of the alpha’s life.

A/N: Thanks for reading!!

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

12 notes · View notes

bigskydreaming · 4 years

Note

I'm having a worse than usual day, so my go to moodlift method is making up headcanons for Dick that don't involve superheroing. You know, the romantic hero, the 'most eligible bachelor' aspect.. gets the focus. Because hey plenty of us had a crush on him growing up. Just for fun, I wanna ask you, do you think he's a slow burn romance kinda guy or intense fiery passionate romance from the get go kinda guy? One more, the age old question, is HE an ass guy or a tiddy guy? Imo he's a thigh guy..

Sorry you’re having a crap day, and uh, hope this didn’t end up not fun, I got lost in the headcanoning and character analysis and zigged and zagged per usual, so……I do not trust my ability to tell, overall. LMAO. But good question, made me think!

I think it depends on the person. I feel like Dick is capable of both, that sometimes feelings just creep up on him for someone over time, but other times he’s just drawn to someone instantly. For me, Babs and Kory is the proof - the instant crush on Babs from day one is more of a Reboot introduction to their dynamic…..in various older continuities, she was more a rival at first. Even as he advocated for Bruce to help train her and not stop her from being Batgirl at sometimes, he still very much was competitive with her, that sort of thing. You could argue it was the schoolboy kinda crush, that idea of a boy pulling the pigtails of a girl he likes because he doesn’t know how to admit he likes her or even realizes himself that he does. But personally, I find that explanation doesn’t really fit Dick, as its more fitting to someone who lacked his early maturity.

The thing is, a lot of people tend to focus on some of Dick’s more immature behaviors and actions, as a grown man and back when he was Robin with the puns and seeming innocence, and just see it as innocence and immaturity…..but I’ve always seen it as a coping mechanism. Dick grew up fast at a very early age, as much as Bruce himself did - they just coped with it in very different ways. People emphasize that Bruce took him in partly to keep Dick from turning out like he did, but they often forget at the same time that Bruce also took Dick in because he empathized with him, saw himself and his own tragedy reflected in Dick’s. Life-altering events had already happened to Dick before he ever set foot in Wayne Manor…..and Dick was altered. He was painfully aware of how cruel life could be, how serious things were, before Bruce ever actually had any ability to halt that realization from ever touching Dick.

The difference between Bruce and Dick and how they turned out, is that with Bruce’s support in those early years, Dick willfully clung to as much of his childhood as was left to him, even if at times it was the ‘fake it until you make it’ mentality. Many of his more immature behaviors are IMO a spiteful defiance of life’s attempt to make him grow up before he should have had to….and Bruce encouraged these things, IMO. He gave Dick the support and shelter, the buffer that allowed Dick to act immature even in the face of gravely serious and dark issues, because quite frankly, Dick cracking puns even while they were face to face with a life-threatening danger is probably a healthier coping mechanism than any Bruce had at the same age, at least in Bruce’s eyes if nothing else.

But my point is, Dick’s youthful optimism and cheeriness even in the darkest parts of growing up Robin in Gotham City….none of that existed because Dick was truly childish and immature as befitted his actual age, thanks to Bruce taking him in and guiding him to turn out better than he did or whatever that line of thought might look like…..rather, it existed because Dick made the willful and deliberate choice to act as much the child as he could for as long as he could…..and I think that in the early years when things were really good between them and they were largely on the same page, Bruce recognized this choice for what it was, this defiance to the cards life had dealt Dick, and he encouraged and defended Dick’s ability to make this choice and act this way.

But you can’t see the kind of things all the Robins saw and actually be as immature and goofy as Dick acted as Robin, untouched by all of that. Dick was right there in the thick of it all along. How can you avoid being touched by Gotham’s darkness, seeing Gotham’s darkness, when you’re punching it right in the face, you know? You can’t. But what you can do, if you choose to, and which is what Dick chose to do….is not give it the satisfaction of knowing it touched you. The real testament of how mature Dick was or not as a young crime-fighting Robin, how aware he was or not of the grim realities of life, was not in how he acted when face to face with villains and criminals, but rather, how he acted when face to face with their victims. THAT’S where the reality of Dick’s maturity shined through, even LONG before he met Barbara in any canon.

Which is how this tangent brings us back to topic, lol….a schoolboy crush being the explanation for some of Dick’s earlier pettiness with Barbara and their rivalry at times, like, just doesn’t track with Dick’s actual maturity, IMO. The actual more likely explanation as I see it is that Dick did genuinely clash with her at times, in the very early years, that his initial attitudes were a confused mish-mash of feeling threatened by her and her possibly getting between him and Bruce, the partnership that was in all but name his unique form of father-son bonding time….but also at the same time still being Dick Grayson and feeling compelled to do the right thing and respect and thus defend her being given the same chance and training he’d been given, to do what they both felt needed doing, that they were driven to do.

So I don’t think he and Babs were instant friends, and I don’t think she was his instant crush….I think it was slowburn with her, he gradually grew to develop feelings for her over time, as his respect for her mind and capabilities grew to outweigh whatever conflicting emotions he felt about her being around, and then eventually blossomed into actual love.

Then in contrast, you have Kory. And I think Dick was instantly attracted to her from the get-go, and their relationship was the very epitome of intense passionate romance and all the ups and downs that go along with it, as befits too of the most primal and passionate people in the DC universe. Dick was drawn to her pretty much from day one, and Kory was as well, and it wasn’t an opposites attract thing so much as two beings resonating on the same wavelength, even if at times from different parts of the same spectrum.

Because here’s the thing about Dick that I think links the two kinds of relationships and makes them both fitting for him…..he is very much a creature of instincts. He goes with his gut, he responds to things on an automatic and visceral level. But at the same time, the other truth about Dick is that his mind is no less exceptional than anyone else’s in the Batfamily, and his instincts are guided by a hell of a lot more intellect and processing power than most peoples’ are. He’s been trained from the time he could walk, even long before he met Bruce, to have exceptional situational awareness, to adapt to changes in his environment and predicaments with a moment’s notice, to take in every possible relevant detail at a glance when the stakes are literally those of leaping off a high trapeze. Dick trusts his instincts, because Dick’s instincts are exceptional, and with reason.

And this applies to every part of his life, not just the superhero parts. So when Dick feels drawn to someone like Kory, I think he trusts his gut and goes with it….he might not necessarily even know yet on a conscious level why he’s attracted to them and they’re someone he could really fall for and have a relationship with, he just knows that he does feel that way, and trusts that its for a reason. And then at the same time, with someone like Barbara, he likely had those same instincts about her, leading to the times he defends her to Bruce even though he might have clashed with her just minutes before, but he knows there’s a reason for him to do that, act that way, even if it takes much longer for that to transition from a mere possibility of actual compatibility to conscious feelings of actual attraction and love.

Its all instinct to him either way….but the person he’s instinctively reacting to has the definitive role in whether or not its slowburn or instant passionate attraction….because the other deep truth about him that I feel is relevant here is that Dick feeds off other people, their energy, what they show him and give him to work with….and his instinct is usually to meet them in kind, give the same energy back, unless say, he makes the conscious decision to override his instincts and power through an antagonistic reception and try and forge a positive bond, like with building his sibling dynamic and mentorship of Damian.

But in regards to his romances, as I said, I think the same instincts might be in play with both Barbara and Kory, but it played out very differently because Babs wasn’t initially drawn to him, not in that way at least. She wasn’t putting forth a romantic energy, and so it took awhile for Dick’s own romantic feelings to emerge and for them to finally be reciprocated in time. In contrast, it was hot and fiery from day one with Kory, because Kory was drawn to him from day one as much as Dick was to her, so there was nothing to slow down or stop those instincts from transforming into attraction and romantic feelings from the second he felt them.

As to the rest of your ask, lololol, sorry to be a cop out, but I don’t think there is a specific physical draw for Dick. I’ve always headcanoned him as bi, which is a bit of projection on my part, sure, but also I just genuinely don’t think gender or even physicality at all has anything to do with what draws to a person, or makes him attracted to them. Yeah, sure, I think he absolutely has physical attributes he loves and might put forth as their best attribute for any partner he’s with, but I think its different with each person because Dick is all about individuality….not just with himself and his own independence, but just….people aren’t interchangeable for him. At any level, I think.

Every person who’s important to him is uniquely distinct in his mind, and I think with his romantic partners, this results in him liking something distinct about them physically, that separates them in his mind from any other partners he’s had. Because I don’t think its physical appearance that’s Dick’s primary source of attraction with his partners….he’s attracted to them first, and then he settles on something physical that’s uniquely attractive to him as well, that’s different in his mind from anyone else.

Because I think the thing that draws Dick to people in all forms of his relationships, but is particularly true and evident in his romantic partners…..is Dick is both drawn and attracted to competence, skill, power, intellect….all the things that make someone hardy. Durable. A survivor in the context of the world of superheroics that he lives in, specifically.

He’s drawn to people he feels he’s less likely to lose. And he’s attracted to people that this is equally true of, and even moreso, to the degree where he doesn’t feel any need to protect them….not because he doesn’t want to, but because it isn’t relevant. He feels and trusts that they’re more than capable of protecting themselves just as well if not better than he ever could.

And he knows better than anyone that nothing’s a guarantee, and even as he surrounds himself with family and friends and romantic partners that all have in common the fact that they’re incredibly skilled, capable and powerful…enduring…..he still knows that doesn’t mean he can’t lose them, that he won’t lose them. And thus IMO they all wind up in distinct categories in his mind.

His family, he’d kill for. His friends, he’d die for. And his romantic partners, the thing that makes him attracted to them, rather than just drawn to them, are those that he has no doubt would kick his ass for ever presuming to do either of those things for them, because they’re more than capable of taking care of themselves, thanks ever so much. He’s attracted to people he feels safe around, in the sense that he’s not always on guard, always worried about losing them, because he trusts in their ability to endure, survive, and thrive. And that he also can relax around, in the sense that he’s not always feeling like its on him to protect them, defend them, that he has to be always to be on guard or watching out for…because its not his job to protect them and it doesn’t have to be, because there’s nothing he can do for them that they can’t do for themselves and wouldn’t prefer to be left to them. And thus with them he can just…be.

Dick Grayson IMO is attracted to one type of person and one type only: his equals in body, mind and spirit. The ones he can stand beside and not feel dwarfed by or lost in their shadow, and at the same time never have to look back to make sure they’re following him because he knows they’re right there next to him keeping up. He’s attracted to those who challenge him, intellectually, emotionally, that he respects on every level, but who respect him on every level too…..with this part being especially key, and the problem he’s had in his canon relationships - they ONLY fall apart on his end of things, make him lose faith in the relationship, when he feels disrespected, that they’re not valuing him or his capabilities or contributions.

Dick KNOWS his own worth, which is why he’s such a unique blend of confidence and insecurity….he can weather a whole society of people looking down on him because he knows their opinion doesn’t mean shit to him, but still be stricken with insecurity when he feels someone whose opinion he DOES value, like a romantic partner, family or friend, seems to question his worth or what he’s capable of.

Dick and Kory are my preferred canon relationship because when they’re ALLOWED to work without editorial mandate to break them up or keep them apart, they embody this most fully for me. Because Kory is massively more powerful than Dick, but never regarded Dick as anything other than her equal in the field in spite of that. There was no question that they both regarded each other as fellow warrior spirits that they trusted to have their back in battle above all others. Kory and Dick work so well for me, because with everything else I said kept in mind, they SHOULDN’T work, not as total equals, and yet they DO. There SHOULD be a power imbalance there, and yet there never was. Not one that was felt, anyway, and not one that was ever in any way responsible for any of their romantic problems. Their issues were disagreements born of competing ideologies….but that both felt equally strongly about. Or issues of trust but only that were externally imposed by brainwashing and shapeshifting and bad shitty writing and editorial mandate that I’ll be ranting about on my deathbed.

BUT I DIGRESS.

Anyway, enough rhapsodizing about Dick and Kory, lol, like that’s anything new. I mean, I could insert rhapsodizing about the potential for Dick and Kyle based on all of the above and other reasons, but that’s nothing new either. And also, whoops, this got super fucking long.

OH UNKNOWABLE UNIVERSE, WHO COULD HAVE FORESEEN SUCH A THING.

23 notes · View notes

bigskydreaming · 4 years

Note

Ok, but how would you writte a court of owls and a dick grayson fanfic, focusing on the abduction too, after all the traumas that being destained to be a talon could carry with?, just imagine dick noticing his family could have known this, and then boom, someway the court makes his way to dick core, bat fam have to fighthim, but focusing in all those conflicts and not only the fights

LOL I have a few different Court of Owls’ ideas running through my head at any given time, but for various reasons, some of which I can’t even identify, they almost always tend to be AUs of some kind, where I also play around with different takes on the family dynamics or how the family comes together in the first place. I have no clue why that particular plot point, the Court, tends to pair itself with unorthodox Batfam takes in my head, tbh. It just does.

As an example, the one I’ve come back to the most often and most recently when fiddling around with various WIPs when the chaos of my life these days allows for it, lol.....its called “Where Last We Left Off” and it goes AU from general pre Flashpoint comic book continuity when Dick is still Robin, around fourteen or so. Long enough into his time living with Bruce that they’ve reached a point of considering each other father and son, even if neither is saying as such yet, and past the point where the Titans first formed and and even after Kory first came to Earth, so Dick has well established friendships with Garth, Roy, Wally, Donna, Lilith and Kory at least.

So in it, I set up an initial prelude and then there’s a time skip to five years later, where all the actual fic takes place. My premise is basically that Batman has been operating in Gotham for about seven years by the prelude, Batman and Robin about four or five, and its only in the last couple of years that Batman’s started coordinating more consistently and officially with other heroes as a member of the Justice League. And the point of departure happens when the Court uncovers Batman and Robin’s secret identities while trying to rid themselves of Batman’s interference in their operations even though he’s not aware of them just yet. When they realize that Robin is none other than their intended Gray Son, they decide to try and kill two birds with one stone.

Cue Dick’s abduction, but with a twist. Rather than make him a Talon and subject him to the Talonization process or whatever that’s called, and employ brainwashing or mind control techniques to control him, they make themselves known to Bruce as the ones who took Dick, give him a taste of what the Talons are capable of and make sure he gets a good look at the changes to their physiologies and mental states, and then they make their demands. They won’t subject Dick to any of that.....so long as Bruce agrees to hang up his cape and cowl, and cease all vigilantism and contact with other heroes. They give him forty eight hours to make his decision, and leave him with the body of one of their Talons to ‘study’...in essence, making both an example of how little they care for their tools and think nothing of disposing of one, and to give Bruce more information than he really wants at the moment of all the kinds of things that Talon was subjected to in the ‘making’ of him.

Unable to find a hint of where they took Dick before the deadline, even when Bruce calls in Clark, Barry and a few others for help searching, Bruce ultimately agrees to their demands and ceases all activity as Batman in exchange for the occasional proof of life demonstrating that the Court are holding up their end of the bargain. If they see even a hint of vigilantism or working with other heroes, they warn, they’ll have no further use for Dick except as just another of their Talons.

Heartsick and with no real idea how to spend his days at first, or inclination to put much thought into coming up with ideas for that, as well as refusing to even speak with Clark and the others, let alone Dick’s friends, at the risk of that being overseen or heard and deemed ‘working with other heroes,’ Bruce ultimately funnels most of his time and energy into charity works and projects mostly born of idle ideas he remembers Dick mentioning every now and then, when complaining about how stupid the way certain things worked or skewering various flaws in the typical upper class reasonings of people he was expected to converse with at various galas....and then venting to Bruce all the way home.

Eventually, Bruce meets Jason in a different way than in canon, but still takes him in. Not to replace Dick of course, or because he’s given up on him (if he ever did that, after all, there’d be no reason for him not to go back out as Batman). But rather just because he has to do something, and the thought of caring for Jason and trying to be for him what he was for Dick, or at least hoped he’d been, it sparks the first real motivation he’s had since the abduction. The one thing he can’t bring himself to regret is taking Dick in, even as he blames himself for thinking so selfishly, since if he hadn’t done that, this would never have happened to Dick (not knowing yet that the Court was always intent on getting their hooks into Dick whether he was in the equation or not). But the point is, he can’t honestly say he wishes he’d never taken Dick in, even as selfish as he feels for that, so he doesn’t let his misgivings keep him from following his instincts with Jason, telling himself it’ll be different since he’s not Batman anymore. (Bottom line being his choice with Jason is still about Jason, not just as a proxy for Dick or anything).

Not all that long after, different events than canon result in him taking Tim in as well (with Tim not aware of his past as Batman at this point in this AU, since I’m positing that Dick was abducted before Tim happened to see Robin doing the flip that let him connect the necessary dots there). And not long after that, Bruce takes in Duke as well, and then finally, about a year before the five year time skip to present day, he takes in Cassandra, due to Barbara’s influence.

Babs has one of the bigger divergences in this AU, as I’m switching things around a little specifically to set Dick’s abduction at just before Babs becomes Batgirl. So she’s not really one of his friends at this point in life, and she sets out to become Batgirl pretty much right after Bruce hangs up the cape. Unable to even confront Batgirl as himself, lest the Court see that as an attempted return to vigilantism, but paranoid that they might view Batgirl as his attempt to work via a proxy, Bruce does a most un-Brucely thing....he anonymously tips off the Commissioner about his daughter’s vigilantism, and Jim Gordon puts a stop to that by unapologetically even playing the guilt trip card to keep his daughter from risking her life night after night. So Batgirl retires almost as soon as she begins, but that doesn’t mean Babs is out of the game by a longshot.

A big part of the reason for that divergence is I’ve always felt that Babs was going to become Oracle one way or another, no matter what road she took there, and although I love her as Batgirl, I don’t view it as fundamentally essential to her overall character as other early personas of other superheroes are. And despite the Bat theme, Barbara has never been dependent on Bruce either for guidance or resources, let alone validation......so I wanted to play around with what happens if you cut the Batgirl portion of Barbara’s life out of the picture completely.

So basically, she just starts becoming Oracle even earlier. She promised her dad she wouldn’t risk her life on the streets in a cape and a mask. She made no such promises about putting her computer skills to use for the greater good, in whatever ways she deems most efficient. Which ultimately leads to her working as a superhero information broker for a growing number of vigilantes who have no idea their cyber eyes and ears isn’t even quite of legal drinking age just yet, and from there, forming the Birds of Prey as satellite agents for missions she directs them towards in a Charlie’s Angels kind of way, where she’s just the voice on the radio so to speak. One of those missions results in Dinah, Helena and a couple others crossing paths with Cassandra, who returns with them to the States. She’s still just a teenager though, younger than when she first crossed paths with the Batfam in canon, only about thirteen here. And the Birds don’t think any of them themselves have the kind of home and stability they all agree she deserves, so they ask the ever mysterious Oracle if she knows of anyone....not realizing just yet that said Oracle is barely a decade older than Cassandra herself at this point. But the Oracle knows all...so she has an idea.

Bruce, being the Walking Guilt Complex that he is, felt shitty about interfering in her attempts at vigilantism even as much as he believes he made the right choice there. So after he adopts Jason, he contrived an excuse to hire Barbara in specific to be Jason’s tutor and catch him up to speed before he went back to school, so he’d have reason to allow Babs to become a regular presence at the Manor, and an excuse for him to help her out any way she might need or want. Not that she ever took him up on this, which frustrates him to no end, cuz can’t a billionaire just assuage his guilt complex in peace already, damn. But regardless, between Jason, Tim and Duke, she’s become a regular fixture at Wayne Manor over the years, even though for the opposite reasons as Bruce initially ‘hired’ her. After all, all three boys are basically geniuses in their own respective fashions, so its not like they need tutoring in the conventional sense once they caught up to speed in whatever ways they needed.

Rather, Babs is their tutor specifically in the areas of ‘making sure they don’t get so bored with their schooling, they turn to blowing things up and/or world domination as a hobby’. Basically, an overachieving perfectionist know-it-all hired to help three overachieving perfectionist know-it-all kids reach their full academic potential unhindered by their conventional schooling, which at this point is basically just something that Bruce insists on so the boys get regular social interaction, while Babs concocts their actual curriculums that actually interest them and they do on their own time.

Anyway, so while seeking a placement for Cass that Babs thinks is deserving of her, she ultimately thinks of Bruce, and calls in that favor, albeit in a most unconventional sense. Babs doesn’t know Bruce was Batman at this point either, given how effectively he covered his tracks when he hung up the cape and how pointedly he’s kept away from all vigilantism since....but she knows each of his three boys have very different backgrounds and had trouble adjusting at first because of various issues...all of which Bruce spared no expense in addressing, more in terms of his own direct focus and parenting rather than fiscally. He’s a good dad, here, a great dad, since he’s basically poured all the energy and drive he once devoted to vigilantism to what he now feels he should have focused it on instead....being the father he wished he’d been to Dick and wasn’t going to make the mistake of not being now.

All of which makes Babs think that he might not only be willing to take in Cassandra, but that he might be the best one for her. And so after a lot of cloak and dagger obscurity that would be completely unnecessary if all the parties in question knew all the relevant information about each other, Cassandra ends up at Wayne Manor too.

All of this is essentially backstory for the in between time between the prelude and the actual fic, unveiled and doled out via information conveyed in the present day. But where the actual fic begins, Bruce is committed to being Superdad to Jason, Tim, Duke and Cass, none of whom know he was Batman or the true nature of what happened to their mysterious elder brother who according to the news and what little Bruce and Alfred are willing to say, was abducted years ago with no attempt made to seek a ransom and no idea who did it or why.

Meanwhile, the kids have their own secrets, as Cass has been sneaking out into the city at night and stopping petty crimes and running into some girl in a purple hoodie who calls herself Spoiler. Tim’s preoccupied with a longtime personal quest of his....figure out who the elusive Oracle, all-knowing master of the cyberways is, and in doing so perhaps win their approval and mentorship. And Duke’s metahuman abilities have recently begun manifesting, and Jason ends up helping him test them and figure out what all he can do (after Jason catches Duke in the act of practicing his ghost vision and Duke has to convince him he’s not crazy and nobody needs to tell Bruce).

And that in turn leads to Duke exploring the house with aid of his powers, trying to learn more about the mysterious missing eldest, and Jason distracting him every five seconds by whispering “what do you see now,” because Jason has also long been endlessly entranced by the mystery of Dick Grayson, and also, Jason has no chill.

With all of the above being the dynamic in existence in ‘present day’....when Dick escapes the Court and returns home.

So the story itself is all about Dick trying to deal with the aftermath of everything that happened to him while the Court’s hostage, and everything that didn’t happen to him and that he missed out on, coming in at the eleventh hour to a family that’s now almost fully formed all in his absence....with a seat at the table that’s been reserved for him the whole time, but with him uncertain as to where and how he fits in all of this.

All while being as cryptic about things as possible, because the one and only thing he and Bruce seem able to agree on, after their bittersweet reunion that doesn’t go how either of them ever imagined it....is to keep the other kids out of all this by any means necessary. Upon learning that Bruce hasn’t been Batman in years and the others know nothing about any of this, Dick’s firm on believing they should keep it that way as he doesn’t even know them yet, but he does know he isn’t willing to risk anything like what happened to him happening to any other child, related to him or not. And Bruce is perhaps too willing to accommodate Dick on this because he still feels this is all his fault, and telling the others everything would mean admitting to them what a terrible father he once was.

Which, he wasn’t, is the thing. One of the many things Dick’s struggling to reconcile now, because just like in the comics, Dick’s early years with Bruce were good more often than they were bad. He realizes upon seeing how easily the other kids interact with Bruce in a parent and child way that this is something he’s envious of, and in hindsight wanted even before he was kidnapped, but now he doesn’t know how to voice that or his fear that that Bruce would only be willing to offer that to him now out of guilt, that if he’d really wanted that kind of relationship with Dick, they would have had it before he disappeared.

Add to that the fact that Dick can’t make up his mind whether he’s grateful and touched that Bruce gave up being Batman just for the chance it might keep him safe from the fate of the Court’s Talons.....because sometimes, Dick resents it deeply...or not resents, per se, but more that he didn’t know the specifics of what was going on in the outside world beyond where the Court kept him, or that they’d made Bruce give up being Batman....so finding that out upon escaping is messing with his head more than he expected, and now he can’t help but feel aware of all the people over the years that could have been helped by Batman but weren’t, because of Dick. Basically, the Son of the Walking Guilt Complex, aka Walking Guilt Complex Jr., is blaming himself and his getting kidnapped, for being the reason Bruce isn’t a superhero anymore.

Meanwhile, it was not a good idea to keep all of this hush hush, if for no other reason than that its impossible to recover from a life-changing ordeal like this at home, when that home is filled with four other people you and two others are all committed to keeping the full details of what happened a secret from. Its not at all the homecoming Dick was picturing and had dreamed of, and he catches himself at times feeling resentful of the others for being there at all, before feeling guilty because the truth is he really is glad that Bruce took them all in and has been good for them, that he still found a way to help people and be true to himself even without being Batman.

There’s other stuff involved too, like the fact that Dick is still keeping things from even Bruce, like everything that happened to him in the Court, because a) he doesn’t want to talk about it, b) he’s afraid of the guilt spiral it’ll send Bruce into, to know that all this time he’d done everything he could to keep Dick safe by giving the Court no reason to break their word....when they never actually made any promise not to try and break Dick by methods not part of their usual Talon process, and c) he doesn’t want to talk about it.

And of course, all his old friends and teammates desperately want to see him and reconnect with him, which he fluctuates between wishing it was easier to explain who they were and have them around without risking their own identities with his new siblings.....and being grateful that keeping the Big Secret from said siblings meant they could only be around so much (like Clark and Diana, etc, who now simply would not be kept away period)....because like with Bruce, Dick is having trouble coming to terms with how much they’ve all changed while he was gone and how much he’s changed, and what this means for them all and how they even FIT now, if they even do at all.

All of which ultimately builds to Dick sneaking out at night to return to vigilantism himself, which makes Bruce throw an epic freakout when he finds out because he only just got Dick back and is not about to risk losing him again. And with Dick trying to convey that he NEEDS this, now perhaps even more than he ever did before, because its the only thing he knows, the only thing that feels familiar, feels right at this point, while everything else is confusing as hell. And even more than that, he needs it in order to feel like the last five years haven’t cost him everything, that they haven’t...’ruined’ him, because what’s the point of him even being home if he’s just as lost and confused as ever and he can’t even save people, do the one thing that’s always made all the shit he’s ever been through feel worthwhile, like it means something?

He needs it, he can’t give this up forever just because something terrible happened one time, that probably would have happened in some form even if he hadn’t been a hero, given what he found out from the Court about his family line. And he’s not wrong to feel that way, is the problem, much like its a problem that Bruce isn’t wrong to feel that if nothing else, its too soon for Dick to be doing this again, and he hasn’t remotely handled any of the many issues weighing on him and the trauma he’s still unwilling to address.

And it doesn’t help that all the while, Bruce has been wrestling with his own uncertainty as to whether to go back to being Batman now that Dick’s safe again and the combined might of the Justice League and Titans have followed his escape route back to the Court and come down on it with extreme zeal. Or whether he even wants to, anymore, if he can justify the risks it includes while now a father in truth not just to Dick but four other kids too (and yes, Damian exists in this AU, he’s just not here yet). He doesn’t want to leave any of his kids without a father, and even more than that, he doesn’t want any of the others following in his and Dick’s footsteps, which also plays a factor in freaking out at Dick’s quick return to a mask.

But he can’t deny that he does miss it too, and more importantly, he misses the way he and Dick used to understand each other without a word, in perfect sync as they swung over the city together. He can’t help but feel like it would be so much easier for him and Dick to understand each other, communicate with each other, if they were back on the same page even if just for one night for old time’s sake. And also he worries about Dick maybe growing to resent his siblings if he feels like they’re the only reason he won’t go back to being Batman, he won’t let there ever be a Batman and Robin again....which then startles him into worrying that on some level he’s afraid of growing to resent his other kids for being the reason not to do that. And around and around and around it goes.

And then the other kids figure it out in their own ways and everything really blows up.

And its hard and messy and painful and nothing short or easily fixed. And there are no good choices or easy choices or right choices. Just a lot of good people trying to make the most good come out of the most bad, and not a clue what that actually means or looks like, let alone how to go about it.

Ultimately, its Dick at age 19, coming of age in the most unconventional of ways, trying to figure out who he is and who he wants to be after everything that’s happened, and dragging his whole family along for the ride as they’re all forced to ask the same question and then compare notes and hope that even if they’re not all on the same page, they’re all at least somewhere to be found in the same book.

Its about how you can’t go home again....even when home is exactly where you left it, and everything looks exactly the same but everything is different and nothing and no one will ever be the same ever again.

But that doesn’t mean the trek isn’t worth making, because sometimes the only way to make it forward to who you want to be now....is to first go back to where you last were when last you trusted who you were and what you wanted. So you can make your peace with leaving that road untraveled before finding your new direction and setting forth on that road instead.

*Shrugs* So yeah, that’s my ideal Court of Owls related fic. “Where Last We Left Off.”

Not quite the kind of fic you were describing, lol, but I do seem to insist on being unconventional with my takes, lmao.

57 notes · View notes