#ch: batgirl

[batfamilycentral]

Cassandra Cain in Batgirl (2000-2006), art by Damion Scott, Phil Noto, Rick Leonardi and Alé Garza. - requested by anonymous.

#dcedit #comicedit #batmanedit #batfamedit #dcmultiverse #comiceditblog #asianincomics #comicswomen #dcladies #thebatmandaily #cassandra cain #batgirl #batfamily #batfam #batman #ch: cassandra cain #c: batgirl #comic #graphic #mine #mine: comic #mine: graphic #by jessica

[dcmultiverse]

Dick Grayson in ‘There's No Ivy In Team’ from Harley Quinn.

“Gotham City. Demons are rising up. Criminals breathe in the shadow. Blood paints the streets like graffiti. My home needs Nightwing.”

#dcedit #dcauedit #harley quinn #harley quinn the animated series #batman #nightwing #robin #poison ivy #batgirl #ch: dick grayson #ch: barbara gordon #ch: damian wayne #ch: bruce wayne #ch: pamela isley #a: harley quinn #animated #gif #mine #by jus

[leoleolovesdc]

When it comes to Cass and language I like to think that even though she eventually learned how to speak and write and has to use it on a daily basis that is obviously not her preferred method of communication. Cass only had to start grappling with the concept of verbal language at 17 and so she’d developed her own kind of communication, esp w the people she’s most comfortable with she’d use a mix of gestures, facial expressions, body language and simple words; things that she’s most used to and could use to express herself more freely.

Her friends and family having to deal with her being mostly non-verbal would also force them to get better at interpreting and using facial expressions and body language to express themselves, also making it easier for Cass to understand them back.

#smt abt cass joining a family and instead of having to change and adapt to them they have to learn how to be the most welcoming to her #smt abt this kid permanently changing how they see communication and human interaction #god. i love cass #i like to think that the wayne manor is atually pretty quiet #not because the kids arent there or dont communicate w each other but bc they dont need words to chat. argue or get their point across to ea #ch other #cass cain #cassandra cain #batgirl #batfamily #batfam #black bat #dc #dc comics #orphan #orphan dc #comics #batman

[pegasussomnus]

The lack of existence of, one-sidedness and toxicity of Tim and Steph's current "friendship"

So after Tim's UL thing many people are acting like he and Steph have now transitioned into "platonic besties" or something. Aside from the fact they have NEVER had this dynamic at all throughout their histoy, this write up will explain why the current 'friendship' of Tim and Steph after UL is pretty non-existant, one-sided and frankly kind of toxic.

The first thing to note which is what people use as "proof. Tim introducing Steph to Bernard.

People talk about how 'cute' or 'a sign of trust' it is, but they seem to be overlooking one crucial fact. Tim did it without even asking Steph first or telling her they would be meeting him.

Let's be honest introducing your ex to your new partner without telling your ex is a selfish move as while you may be over your ex, your ex may not be over you and it might be hard for them to see you with someone else so quickly, especially in this case as Tim just apologized for treating her badly via ghosting her and being a jerk to her. The fact the whole time Tim was planning to introduce her to Bernard even before he talked with Stephanie shows he was planning it without taking her into consideration at all and not giving her her own space to properly deal with things.

When Kyle Rayner met with Donna while with Jade after he and Donna's relationship ended on bad terms due to her ghosting him (it was because her son died BTW) and more or less ending the relationship in a way that hurt him a lot, he properly gave Donna a space to deal with it and didn't include Jade in it as he knew Donna as someone he loved a lot even if it was over needed his undivided attention here to deal with loose ends. He told Jade this before going to talk to Donna even.

So Tim comes off as incredibly selfish and unintentionally manipulative as he did this right after laying a lot on her with the apology, telling her why he ghosted her, and in public, doesn't give her really time to process things and puts pressure on her to just take it as a bad reaction in public would be bad but also after Tim laid this on her and they reconciled might alienate them even further which Stephanie didn't want as was shown by her attempts to mend things in UL and how much it hurt her.

And Tim not even bothering to even really ask her how she is doing or for her full perspective before doing this was also conceited as again he was ghosting her for a long time. All she did was just reiterate what we and the audience already know and he in the past has pushed Stephanie to express her feelings to him and be frank, so not even doing so and being satsified with her just saying what he already knew felt self-centered.

Not to mention Stephanie's entire reaction made her look like she has no self-respect as Tim:

A. dumped her without a reason

B. Acted like an asshole to her when she tried to help him

C, ghosted her

D. lied that she was ghosting him

E. Only apologized after he met her by accident (where he wished he wasn't there) and her life was in danger

F. Introduced her to his new BF after all this without asking her first while she is still getting over him as Batgirls annual showed

Like aside from clearly using her as a prop it is so bizarre. Introducing your ex to your new partner after all this and in the manner Tim did comes across as flaunting and Steph just taking it is so weird. Like knowing that she still isn't over him and combined with her normally low self-esteem (which Tim knows about) it makes it look like Steph feeling pressured (not necessarily by anyone in particular but by herself) to act supportive because she feels obligated to. Like the fact she hasn't even brought up she still isn't over him to Tim and just acted the way she does further makes it look like this, which again provides a pretty one sided dynamic that comes across as toxic.

This brings into how subsequent interactions again show Steph being this ultra supportive cheerleader but Tim not reciprocating anything really.

Like in issue 4 of Tim's solo, Steph ask's if things are okay with Bernard (of course she does will get to that later) and Tim doesn't even really reply and just moves things back to the case. In fact their interactions throughtout the issue are completely dry and strictly business related. Compared to when he interacted with Dick in issue 5 and opened up about his insecurities in branching out or Kate in issue 8 about the times they've bonded and other things, him being so dry with Steph feels odd. They have him say he "trust Steph and Cass" the most but everything is just business related and this "trust" is only vigilante wise it seems. Like he doesn't even ask Stephanie how she is doing or what's going on in her life. Given issue 2 Tim says he's worried about "ruining things like with Steph" or how in isuse 3 Tim claims he "loves that she's the most unpredictable person" (which was a pretty lackluster description/summation of her compared to how he summed up Dick as the "coolest person he knows" and Damian as his "brother" which fully captures what they mean to him. This description of Steph seems only like something vigilante related which is where her unpredictability comes from and again only an aspect of it) him treating her so drly and professional is just odd when he is more open with Kate than her and again like a friendly work acquaintance at best, which shows he is still keeping her at a distance.

Not to mention how in issue 8 we later see  Stephanie literally dancing over him and Bernard being together in the montage of him recounting he and Kate's bonding moments involving the Batfamily. it is implied this took place not too long after the whole introduction to Bernard which again was pretty bizarre for the reasons I said above. so her doing this after the whole thing again makes her look like she has no self-respect.

This ties into how Tim only seems to involve her in his life when it comes to Bernard/how the author only uses her as. Like the only non-vigilante thing she ask's about is Bernard in issue 4 and in that montage of issue 8 the ONLY time Stephanie shows up in his interactions with the Batfamily in this issue is with Bernard while, Dick who is the closest to Tim apart from Steph shows in two montages, but for Steph it's only this one. Like when moving on his boat in the montage with Dick, he asked Kate, Barbara, and Darcy over Steph for help despite it being a supposed important step in his life. Like he'll include her with Bernard related stuff but other important stuff he'll go to people who are less closer to him for? It makes Tim look like he's using her to validate his new relationship and Steph going along with it makes her just a pushover

It doesn't help how Tim in other instances says/thinks some questionable things about her and their history. Like in issue 1 he thinks about how he was 'settling' before Bernard and how Stephanie would hate his boat after thinking about how much he likes it there and what it represents to him in terms of branching. Like Stephanie was giving her own thought box and HATE was emphaszied while the other Batfamily were grouped together and no emphasis on their reaction and they seemed more like light hearted sentiments/commentary/jabs at their reactions especially with the use of the word hate which is pretty strong and how it was emphasized.

There was also how in DC YJ when "Batman" and "Wonder Girl" in the fake world said Tim should get back with Steph, in that stupid scene, they did so in a way that makes it look like Steph only likes Tim for his vigilante identity via saying she would want him back if he was Batman like she's hero equivalent of a girl who wants to date the most popular jock and painting her as shallow yet Tim doesn't defend her or even care about the slight against her.

Their is also way he talks about her to Connor in DC Pride 2023. Like in the Pride Special Tim claims says she was "everything he ever wanted and more" yet aside from saying he was settling before Bernard, here he says he was really avoiding her because she was a reminder of a past of letting other people define him and he was invested in the relationship on to avoid examining himslef on purpose......

only mentioning how she was a reminder of a past he wanted to avoid and only in a negative connotation and how hard it was for him to be around her and not the fact of how he hurt her in then process and not how she became supportive of him (really shows how Steph in supporting Tim being bi is just used to shill Timber) when he talked how supportive Bruce was when we haven't seen it and he wasn't to the extent Steph was (who he also didn't treat badly and also mentioned as part of letting people define him though weird how he didn't have trouble being around him, but it just shows how they are framing Steph as the 'closeted' past or a barrier to bi Tim....) makes Tim look unappreciative of her and incredibly self-centered.

And like the final point is how Tim again hasn't shown any kind of support for her at all or even tried to be there for her in any way. Like even his 'talk' with her in the Pride Special was all about him. So the lack of support and the way he is still keeping her at a distance makes him look really self-absorded. It makes their 'friendship' all give and no take.

TLD DR: Tim and Steph's current 'friendship' is basically non-existant, one-sided and comes off as kind of toxic due to Tim coming across as self-centered and Steph like a pushoever with no self-respect

#tim drake #tim drake robin #dc #batman #robin #dc comics #stephanie brown #stephanie brown spoiler #timsteph

[havendance]

Hot Girl Shit (The Feminine Urge to Die Young)

(a.k.a Live Fast Die Young Redux)

AO3

Fandom: Batman

Featured Characters/relationships: Cassandra Cain & Claire Clover (Gotham Girl)

Wordcount: 6100

Summary:

Cassandra and Claire are both living lives with an expiration date when they meet. Claire has powers that burn time off her life with every use. Cassandra has a death match with Lady Shiva scheduled, one that she knows she will not win. In the brief period their time overlaps, a friendship blooms.

I am back on my niche-fic posting shtick! I am getting so much writing done while procrastinating on Batman for Dummies Ch 3. I have inserted Claire Clover and the "I am Gotham" arc from Batman (2016) into the post-crisis continuity roughly post-Officer Down for purposes of throwing these girls together. Enjoy.

(Thank you to @creetchure for betaing this for me!)

Excerpt:

Gotham is sluggish in the late summer heat. Warm, even at night. Humid from the bay. It doesn’t bother Cass, though she misses the breeze on her face. She wears the mask; it clings to her face like a second skin: warm, soft, already slightly damp from sweat. A second skin, a better face.

The last time she went out, Cass didn’t wear a mask. A mistake, Batman said. She could have hurt Barbara. Might still hurt Barbara, if the people who saw her make the right connections. Cass doesn’t want to hurt Barbara. She has her own cave to go back to now. Far away. Alone. It’s safer that way.

She is out now, in Gotham, an itch under her skin. She trained earlier, but it didn’t help. She needs to be out, needs to help. Gotham is slow tonight. Quiet. Too quiet. It itches.

Batgirl runs from rooftop to rooftop, searching, but still: Gotham is too quiet. Too still. There’s no one out, no one to fight. Maybe it’s the heat.

She stops on a rooftop, listens to the city around her. Gotham is never completely quiet; something is always moving. It is the same tonight, but calm. Maybe she should go back, train some more. Maybe this will be a wasted night. 

But no. Sirens wail past. She sees flickering light on the horizon, smells smoke. A fire.

Batgirl runs.

The firemen beat her there. It’s an apartment building, burning quickly. Too quickly, the water not doing much to slow its devouring progress. All around are people: watchers and residents gathered around in their pajamas, smelling of smoke, some more than others. There are fire trucks, ambulances. Some people shout orders. Babies cry. Everyone is talking.

It’s too much. Dozens of voices blend together into one single mass of unknowable language. It reminds her of before, when everything was that unknowable mass.

The burning building gives an ominous creak. The shouting intensifies as firefighters begin to pull back. 

A single voice, screaming and crying rises over the cacophony. Cass listens. 

“—my daughter!” the woman is saying. “My daughter, she’s still in there. Please, someone! She needs help!”

There. There’s the woman. “Where?” Cass asks.

For a moment the woman is shocked. She looks at the bat emblazoned on Cass’s chest. Recognition sparks in her eyes. “The third floor,” she says. “Will you—”

Batgirl is already gone, running towards the fire. Everyone else is running away. They shout at her. She doesn’t listen.

She can feel the heat through her suit: burning fire. She is close, almost in and then—

A rush of air. She is… in the air. Someone is holding her. She strikes on instinct. She wants them off her. She wants them to let her go.

“Hey!” the person says. The voice is young, a girl. “I don’t want to drop you.”

Cass looks. They are high up. Flying. The drop is survivable, probably. She has her grapple, but: the girl didn’t drop her. She couldn’t break her grip. Cass stills.

“Good,” the girl says. “I’ll set you down in a second.”

They land on a rooftop. It’s away from the fire. Too far.

“I know you’re—” the girl starts to say.

“Bring me back,” Cass says.

“The building’s about to collapse! It’s dangerous.”

“No,” she says. “Inside, there’s a girl. I need to—”

The girl inhales, nervous. “Where?” she says, turning back to look. Then, before Cass can answer. “I see, I’ll get them, wait here.”

“Wait—” Cass starts to say, but the girl is gone, flown off. She’s not human— metahuman. Batman warned her about metahumans. The girl is wearing a blue and grey costume, a cape. Cass is curious. She waits.

The building collapses in a fiery blaze. A minute later, the girl returns.

“I got them both out in time,” she says. “They’re okay.”

Both. That means there were two. Cass only knew about one. “How?”

“Ultra vision to see them and then speed and flight to get them out.”

“You stopped me,” Cass accuses.

The girl looks apologetic. “I’m invulnerable. You would’ve died. You’re Batgirl, right?”

Cass nods.

“I’m Gotham Girl. At least, I was. I don’t know if I’m going to keep being her. I mean— I don’t know.”

She’s fidgeting: nervous, uncertain. Cass could surprise her; she sees the weakness in her form. It would be easy to exploit, except… speed, flight, maybe strength. Part of her still itches to try. Instead, Cass asks “You know… Batman?”

She nods. “He’s helping me out.”

An ally then.

“Can… can I ask you something?” Gotham girl asks.

Cass shrugs. She waits.

“Were you scared— running into the fire?”

“No.”

“You could’ve died.”

Cass shrugs. “There was… someone to save. Nobody dies.”

“Oh,” Gotham Girls says. She looks like she has more questions. Cass doesn’t want to answer them. She turns to leave.

“Wait.”

Cass pauses on the edge of the roof. 

“Can I— I mean, see you around?”

Cass shrugs and jumps off the roof.

Continue reading on AO3!

#cassandra cain #claire clover #batgirl #gotham girl #live fast die young #my fic #havendance writes #carthago delenda est #dc #bats + birds + affiliated

[that1emowitch]

Villain - Chapter 5: Breakout Band

Summary:

Dick teams up with Roy, Harley, and Ivy to break Jason out of Arkham.

TW: Death, Violence, Flashbacks, Blood, and Swearing. lemme know if I missed anything!

Chapter links: Ch. 1, Ch. 2, Ch.3, Ch. 4, Ch. 5, Ch.6

POV of Dick Grayson, approximately thirty minutes after the last chapter because that’s how much time I wrote this in after uploading chapter 5.

I’m sitting on the roof of the manor, thinking. Why would Bruce do this? Why now, of all times? When I’d finally gotten my little brother back?

I can feel tears form in my eyes. Jason must be so scared right now, he must think he’s all alone again…

A hot tear runs down my cheek as I bite my lip. 

“You always cried too much,” A familiar voice pipes up from behind me. Wiping my eyes, I turn around to see my old friend Roy Harper climbing onto the roof. Smiling slightly, I got up to give him a hug.

He wraps his arm around me and whispers, “He’ll be okay, Dickie, he’s the strongest person I know.”

Then why do you sound like you’re trying to convince yourself?

Pulling away, he sits down beside me, his green eyes meeting mine. “So, why’d you call me, of all people, to help? Why not, like, Superboy or someone?”

“Because you’re not just my friend, you’re Jay’s friend too. He trusts you.”

“Yeah, friend .” His smile fades slightly. My eyebrows furrow, but I decide not to pry.

“Well, I was going to call Star too, but she’s off-world with her sister, and I have no idea how to contact Artemis or Bizarro.” I shrugged. “But it’s okay, we’ve got a pretty good team here.”

Roy raises an eyebrow. “Just you and me? We’re gonna break into Arkham, one of the most heavy-security prisons, all by ourselves?”

I laugh a little. “Well, rogues break in and out of that place on the regular! Which is exactly why we’re gonna ask one of them for help!”

“Wait, what? ” Roy’s confused. “Do you even trust them? Why would a rogue help us? If anything they’d be happy Red Hood’s locked away for good—”

“Chill, Roy,” I smile. “We’re asking an ex-rogue for help. Harley Quinn! She’s broken out of that place about a billion times, surely she knows her way around there. Plus, she went straight-ish over the past few years, she was even batgirl for a few days.”

Roy snorts. “Straight-ish? Isn’t she dating that plant chick?”

“You know what I meant!” I slap him playfully on the arm. “Now come on, we gotta go find her.”

“So you want me to risk my life, help you break into a heavily secure facility, go to the cell right by my crazy ex’s, break out your baby brother, kill a couple guards, get Hood out, break a few hundred laws, and bring him back to you, when I’m finally starting to gain the police’s trust?!” Harley Quinn questions us with a pointed stare.

“Well, yeah,” I mumble, “Except for the killing guards part. Plus, Arsenal and I will be helping you.”

She stares at us for a few more seconds before answering, “HELL YEAH! ‘Course Aunty Harley’ll help you, birdie!”

“Harls, think about this,” Ivy spoke up from the corner. “What if you get caught?”

“We won’t get caught,” Roy answered for her. “It’s a simple in and out mission. Little to no damage, if possible.”

“Well, that won’t be possible,” Harley says. “The only way in is to break the walls down.” She turns to look at her girlfriend.

Ivy stares back at her for a second before realising what she’s talking about. “No. No. Absolutely not. No way!” She replies sternly.

Harley jumps off the table she’s sitting on and clings to Ivy, making her best puppy dog eyes and giving a pout. “Pwease, baby?”

Ivy gazes into her eyes like a lovestruck simp before finally looking away and huffing. “Fine. I’ll use my plants to break through the walls.”

“Yay!” Harley spins around excitedly. I smile at her gratefully. “Ooh, we need a team name! What about Breakout Band?”

“We are not calling ourselves Breeakout Band!” Ivy tries to say, but Roy speaks over her, hyping Harley up.

“WHOO! BREAKOUT BAND!!!” He yells as Herley cheers.

“Great, now we can start planning!” I say, pulling out a map of Arkham Asylum.

We’re coming, Jay, I think, hoping he can somehow magically hear me. Just hang on for a bit.

#jason todd #ao3 fanfic #dick grayson #jayroy #tim drake #timbern #roy harper #bernard dowd #red hood #robin #nightwing

[troythings]

important psa regarding a dc comics fan artist

to any of my followers and especially people who like dc/wonder woman/teen titans, youve probably heard of g|**-ch*n or seen her work, she draws animated inspired art. i really wouldn't call it that since it's most likely tracing, whatever. but a lot of her stuff sexualizes women and especially underage girls (supergirl, batgirl, starfire, raven, the list goes on). and boys. she's apparently also one of those perverted degenerates who sexualize the de-aged wonder woman from the JLU episode "kids stuff" and has also applied this art style to other female heroines that weren't in the episode.

gee, she sounds very dedicated to her "art." anyone else seeing a pattern?

if you look at her accounts here you can see her complain about being reported on dA for this kind of thing, as well as reblogging weird shit like "as anime gets older, the girls get younger" and "dating women is like squaring numbers. if they're under 13, just do them in your head."

want proof?

"but lolis aren't children, they're just drawings!" cope and seethe pedo, because at the end of the day, lolis are drawings of people that have underage bodies.

"but it's not hurting anyone because it's not real!" shut up. you hurt children just by mere reason of your existence. get out of our spaces.

i say this as someone who was unfortunate enough to be exposed to her art as a young girl online and then realized what she was later on. i tried to see if other people had the same concerns, but couldn't find any. someone has to do it, so im posting this as a psa here. it is not acceptable or okay to sexualize kids in a comics/ animated medium that can be found by younger viewers. don't repost her art, don’t share it around or give her a platform. do not give that waste of oxygen another second of your attention.

because really there's only one group of people that like that kind of art. she might make "normal" drawings, but that doesn't detract from what kind of sicko she is. don't let any of that fool you, and trust your gut if you see something questionable online.

#dc comics #justice league #justice league unlimited #detective comics #tw pedophila mention #not a shitpost #donna troy #wonder girl #wonder woman #troia #koriandr #starfire #rachel roth #anti lolicon #anti grooming

[silverwhiteraven]

Burrito^Squared: A [Debug Teaser] CYOA MariBat Vote Fic - Ch. 1

[ Author's Note: While I work on setting up the first chapter of the official MariBat Vote Fic, I decided, with the encouragement of the fandom on Discord, to test out how to work Polls into a written story on Tumblr. I chose what I endearingly call "The Bottom of the Barrel" to do this with! AKA, the lowest voted answers of the 4 Set-Up Polls. I hope you all enjoy what has been born from the ashes of Daminette's win <3 ]

Chapter 1 - A Hero's Game

Capture the flag. A simple game of two teams, two goals, and two lines of defense, each facing off against the other. The more members put into the offence, the weaker the deffence. The stronger the deffence, the less offence one could provide. But no mix of defence and offence could possibly hold against an all-out attack by a strategic mastermind with a one-track mind! Especially a hungry one on a time crunch who knows her flags have no offensive capabilities.

Batgirl sped through the streetlamp lit streets of Metropolis, every available computer system on her person and her scooter out, open, and running like some kind of crazed Pokemon Go player on a never ending hunt. Which wasn’t all that inaccurate of a description.

“Come on, come on, that last one has to be here somewhere!”

She fretted aloud as the wind whipped around her, eyes on her screens more than on the street ahead. It might have been a miracle that she hasn’t gotten into any accidents after all the time she has done this, or it could have simply been the skill of an obsessed teenager. She didn’t have time to figure that out, though.

The communicator on her wrist beeped and she held it up to her face like it was her last hope. “Bumblebee! Please please PLEASE tell me you found it!”

There was a pause, before a timid voice came through. “Well…Do you want the bad news first…?”

“Noooo-! Please, the Metropolis HackCon is tomorrow! I can’t lose this competition to that sad little puppy-eyed rich brat again!” She bemoaned. That Tim Drake kid may not have been as odl or as skilled as her, but he had more resources than Barbra Gordon originally had access to. That has since changed, but who knows what might have changed for him, too. She didn’t want to think about it.

“You know i’m not much of a hacker, Batgirl,” Bumblebee replied apologetically. “I do more of the mechanical aspects than the programming side of things. It’s why I had so much trouble with making my suit… Besides, what kind of convention sets up a competition that takes place before the actual event? How do they keep track of cheating, or maintain their servers, or- or- or ensure the safely of their participants!? Do you really have to be going all over the city just to find these Flags? It doesn’t seem right…”

“Oh psh, you worry too much, Bee! This Con is hosted by none other than Lex Luthor this year!” She revealed excitedly, getting a squawk from Bumblebee, who couldnt comprehend how her friend was excited about something held by a suspected Supervillain. “They say the top prize gets a college scholarship and guaranteed internship upon graduation! I’ve been trying to win that myself for years now- Darn Drake kid keeps mocking me by donating the scholarship to the second and third placers.”

“Wait, so you don’t actually need-?”

“It’s the principle of it, Bumblebee! The principle!” Batgirl declared loudly, before ending the communication.

“Batgirl…? Batgirl? Oh, she hug up. But, I didnt even get to tell her the good news…”

Soon enough, Batgirl reached her limit and ended her hunt for the last Flag. Stashing her scooter in a narrow and dark alley, she grappled up to a highrise rooftop and flopped down, defeated and feeling like a dried up starfish.

“What kind of Capture the Flag game is also this much of a Treasure Hunt??” She groaned. “It used to just be held at the HackCon, sitting at computers and digging through the servers of the Convention Center an connected Hotels! How did that Luthor guy get so many businesses around Metropilis to participate like this…? Ugh, I don’t care! I wish he would at least give us hints!”

A few moments passed, as Batgirl grumbled to herself, complaining and going over what she knew so far so she could try to find a lead hidden within her own brain.

Then the crunch of rooftop gravel had her looking up, or as relatively up as she can while laying flat on her back. A head of blond hair looms just behind her, a familiar bucket of food obscuring the face. “Tough time?” a sympathetic voice asked.

#Barbara Gordon x Adrien Agreste #AdriBabs #mlb x dc #maribat #choose your own adventure #vote fic

[vermillioncrown]

eh, it doesn't really read as sanctimonious. makes sense. do you do anything in particular to develop the internal worldview of characters and how they "tick", besides writing interactions? do you keep character profiles or anything of the like? have a good day, and thanks for answering the first ask :)

okay good, it might have sounded a little "touch grass" for a minute there...

=

hmm...i don't do formal "character building exercises" or the like. even those character questions tire me out.

but yeah i keep notes. example of older notes that have little points of character development or relevant parts of them popping up per chapter, vs the overall notes above the timeline (tim and jason were harder to nail down so i needed notes vs dick):

or as @rozaceous has laughed at me... tallies and excel sheets, but those are so spoilery it's not even funny, but it'll be very funny to show when we get there bc. yeah.

not organized like a profile, but the main drive to write is something about this character sticks out at you (if fandom-related), thus let yourself imagine whatever scenario about that character with that salient point as a start.

example: dick grayson accidental child acquisition bc he's the one nice enough for a "child" to approach + looks old enough + plausible reason to be away from oversight -> build out connection to his job, history, where he is in canon, current connections. and i didn't figure out everything since ch 1; it's like peeling an onion lol. and as long as you don't overdo what you depict, you always have room to reveal and develop more

(example, i didn't think too hard on his relationship w bruce, tim, and jason until i had to. but the room i left in how it was only about his interactions with korvin + him being someone mission focused out of necessity and habit means you don't have to constantly sadboi introspect)

(another thing is...people usually don't introspect too deep if they're decisive and take action a lot. they can't afford to. and people don't completely know themselves, so it's okay to be wrong, as long as their wrong answer leads to a logical wrong conclusion)

(or you're writing someone completely bonkers and loose, then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but they still have their internal logic)

i balance between "lol wouldn't it be funny/sad/emotional if..." and vetting for the blorbo in question to connect it back to their canon. because the first part drives the desire to write, and the second makes the what-if have impact imo.

(you can kinda see that process happen simultaneously when i answer au what-ifs--unless something got posed where the central conceit was too far removed from the original point of the divergence)

when i don't need to iron out details i usually don't note it down, because i can always refer back to my previous bits or it's very obvious to me from the canon. if it's a difficult aspect to nail down, i take notes and keep them as an example to refer to.

i also walk a fine line between depicting idiosyncrasies vs flanderization. people are creatures of habit, right? but it's too easy to use that as a way to easily make characters distinguishable that it's like an overwrought performance rather than one of many traits in a complex individual. i keep habits in mind bc they're usually easy enough to remember by the time i'm writing out a whole thing vs note taking.

e.g. i wonder if you notice that in dick in my chapters doesn't swear much until he's under duress? he's very controlled, very practiced in keeping the mood light, such that it's just part of his internal narration.

Vs. babs, i have her more readily to be sharp and swear bc that's indicative of someone who's less outward facing on the daily compared to dick (she's only 2-3 years out from her injury and becoming oracle, and you need to imagine how someone who used to be so able as to be batgirl would feel to lose use of her legs. even if she does eventually accept her new state of being, it still sucks to say the least)

he's also an adult with a job (haha real life example), so his immediate concerns are very different from tim's as a comparison point.

=

there's not a hard formula. just take notes as you think (notepad, phone, computer), use the fun of blorbos and fandom to motivate you, and don't be afraid to revise and correct yourself. and don't let organization paralyze you (don't let perfect be the enemy of good).

uh...the easiest things for me to keep in mind are: vocab (internal and external voice), initiative (active/reactive or passive person), and mindset focus (do they introspect more or spend more time observing others)? -> and then i build out from there

and when you finally write something, read it out loud to yourself. make different voices. it's pretty easy to find when someone will say a thing vs if no one on their life would say that vs only an anime character would say that

#inquiry #Anonymous #writing #verm is helping #or whatever ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #but this only works for the type of fic/narrative i do #if you're doing more artsy or thematic writing characters don't need to be that fleshed out bc that's not the point #i am sorry man...my entire life i've been used as the ''why tf did this person do that???'' vent board #so i'm a senior person knower. filth reader. #going back to establish a methodology for this when i'm not studied in lit or writing or psych is 🥴🥴🥴 #final piece of advice is examining what you consider as implicit ''default'' for a person #and this isn't in a woke way. we all have biases. #so knowing that means you can recognize if you're reskinning your defaults somewhere it wouldn't make sense

[batfamilycentral]

Stephanie Brown in Batgirls Vol. 1 (2022), art by Jorge Corona.

#dcedit #comicedit #batfamedit #comiceditblog #dcladies #dcmultiverse #thebatmandaily #comicswomen #stephanie brown #batgirls #batfamily #batfam #ch: stephanie brown #c: batgirls #comic #graphic #mine #mine: comic #mine: graphic #by jessica

[dcmultiverse]

Barbara Gordon, Damian Wayne and Dick Grayson in Harley Quinn Season 3 

#dcedit #dcauedit #harley quinn #harley quinn the animated series #dick grayson #barbara gordon #damian wayne #nightwing #robin #batgirl #ch: dick grayson #ch: barbara gordon #ch: damian wayne #a: harley quinn #animated #gif #mine #by jus

[ayamari-no-goshi]

Chasing Shadows (4)

AO3 -> ch. 1, last, next

Fandoms: Danny Phantom (DP) / DC universe

Summary:  THIS IS A CROSSOVER. As Bruce Wayne begins to slowly recover from the loss of his son, two  separate mysteries open up old wounds. Who is the unknown leaving clues  hinting at a return to Gotham, and who is the phantom pretending to be  his lost son? Is it just a coincidence they’re active in Gotham at the  same time? Or are they connected?  

Warnings: rated T for violence, mentions of death, and questionable mental health

Parings: none

Notes: originally uploaded to AO3. Cross-posted to tumblr

What was the point in having a rich civilian persona when it held no power outside of Gotham? He had tried so hard to get the help Gotham needed from the federal government as Bruce Wayne, but it was not good enough. Those who listened to him believed he was just an airhead who didn’t know right from left. He had failed, and the city was shut off from the outside world.

When he returned to his city, he found nothing but anarchy. His associates where helping the best they could, but they were stretched too thin.

Barbara was doing the best she could to help them gather the needed information, but most of the technology she previously used was down, forcing her to use older and slower methods. While still effective, it slowed how effectively they could act in the city. She also lost her mother to Joker but continued to soldier on. She even weathered the two attacks on the Clock Tower. Bruce secretly thanked the security measures he put in place and Barbara enhanced for such events.

Then there was Huntress. Helena Bettinelli, a child born into the Bertinelli crime family, had entered the scene not long before the destruction of Gotham. There were already tense relations between them due to her willingness to kill, but during Bruce’s absence, she donned the identity of Batgirl and even moonlighted as Batman a few times to keep the illusion he was still in the city. However, she had taken a territory in Gotham, and potentially made the situation worse as other rogues and criminals followed suit.

At one point, she even allied herself with William Pettit in his attempt to do whatever it took to survive the chaos and trapped Dick and Barbara. While she thankfully came to her senses before harm to come to either of them, it proved to Bruce that Helena was too much of a wild card to trust. Allowing her to stay in the city was a difficult decision to make, but they needed the help. He would evaluate her actions again when things began to settle.

He was also introduced to Cassandra Cain, who had become Barbara’s trusted eyes on the street while he was away. At first, he didn’t know what to make of the young woman. She had been trained as an assassin and was unable to speak or read, but her ability to read body language and intention bordered on superhuman. Barbara trusted her and even gifted her the mantle of Batgirl, and that hadn’t been done lightly. So, Bruce decided to give her a chance, and he found himself growing fond of her.

Then there was Phantom. Dick had given a hesitant recap of the conversation he had with the meta as well as his known sightings in the city. How had Phantom known? There had been no known leak of their information, but that didn’t account for information the rogues might have, especially the Joker. There were hints over the years that some of them possibly knew Bruce’s identity, so it was possible with the right incentive one of them shared what they knew.

Bruce wasn’t certain which rouge could have provided that information. Phantom’s information was too specific. Was it possible he’d been around far longer than anyone of them suspected? His skill set could have allowed him to come into the cave without detection. He would have to investigate further, but luckily, the meta continued to be a helpful figure.

Outside the turmoil of the vigilantes of Gotham, the rogues made life a living hell for the citizens who were trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. The territorial wars took their toll on everyone involved and even tore the police force in half. So many more were killed in the crosshairs.

The “famous nobody” was silent through this time. They found no evidence of his brand of clues or manipulation, but there were occasional whispers of a man in a red helmet moving in and around Crime Alley. While the criminals seemed scared of him, the few reports that came from civilians reported him as protecting women and children. It was a strange contrast from his last known sighting.

Eventually, it was not the terf wars or Batman’s help that finally brought Gotham back from the brink. No, it was Lex Luthor who pulled the strings to rebuild and reopen the city. The price? His tendrils gripped more of the city than Bruce ever thought possible.

…

Yet, in the wake of Gotham emerging from the ashes, Bruce found contentment he hadn’t known in a long time. While there was still a long way to go in returning his city to how it was prior to the earthquake, he found himself at the head of a growing family. Sure Tim, Cass, and now Stephanie weren’t officially his, they were a welcome addition. And because Dick believed it was his duty to check in and mentor the younger ones, he was coming around more.

There was life surrounding him again, and he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it. Jason’s death nearly destroyed him and what was left of his family, but these children had slowly put back together the broken pieces of his life without him realizing it.

Strangely, Phantom wasn’t appearing as often as he once had. His appearances and quips had become a part of his life as much as any of the children. The others had been briefed to keep an eye out for him, but the few times he’d been spotted since Gotham reopened had only been when Bruce was alone in the field.

Stephanie complained about never getting a chance to meet him. That was until Phantom appeared behind her during a particularly tense recon mission. It had taken Tim putting a hand over her mouth to prevent her from screaming. Although the meta couldn’t hide his smile at her reaction, he had shown himself to warn them about the trap Firefly was about to spring on them. He had been hired by the Falcones to stop them.

“Phantom! Wait, where have you been?” Tim questioned as the meta’s form flickered strangely as he glanced around. It was the first time Bruce had seen him so unsure of his surroundings. “Are you in danger?”

The teen shook his head, “You haven’t needed me as much as before.” He opened his mouth to say more but stopped mid-word and as his form flickered more intensely. It was an unusual reaction from him as he rarely allowed himself to appear nervous in their presence. “I’ve… I’ve been hearing rumors. B, someone is planning to dismantle you and everything you stand for from the ground up. Be careful.”

“Do you know who it is?” Bruce agreed with Tim’s assessment. The meta’s behavior suggested he came to warn that at great risk to himself.

“No.” He wouldn’t meet Bruce’s gaze and fidgeted as he spoke. There was something about this man that the Phantom knew and was afraid to say. Was it possible this was the person he was working for?

“What about the rumors?”

This time Phantom looked at him. “They call him Hush. I don’t know anything about him other than he’s setting up what he calls a game. A lot of people are interested in getting involved.”

“What about you?” When Phantom stared at Stephanie, she shifted uncomfortably. “I mean, if you’re in trouble, we can help you.”

A bitter chuckle escaped the meta as he began to fade. “Don’t worry about me. If you forgot,” as he appeared to take a step forward, his form vanished entirely, “I’m already dead.”

Bruce was ready to track him this time. Switching to his thermal view before Phantom completely vanished, he caught the meta’s heat signature slide through the walkway they were on before vanishing somewhere below them. That helped explain how he could disappear so thoroughly. They knew he could phase through objects, but this confirmed he used that ability to quickly get away from them.

They still needed to find a way to track him as they had no idea where he hid from them. It was also the first time he’d openly suggested any connections. Was Hush the person he was working for? That didn’t seem right. Phantom hadn’t seemed worried about naming him, so perhaps it was someone else who was in direct contact with this Hush.

It was rare to get such a good tip before a criminal made a move. Once he handled the current situation, he would return to the Cave and begin his research. If he was lucky, he might be able to halt whatever was being planned before anyone got hurt.

…

Tim had gotten careless, and as a result, it let him get captured. The man had wrapped his arm around his throat and was squeezing just enough to make it difficult to breathe and even more difficult to escape. He wanted him docile for some reason.

Was this Hush? Bruce had tried and failed to use the tip Phantom gave him to attempt to find and stop the criminal before anything happened. Now, they were racing against the clock to find the man. Phantom was correct that a lot of people had gotten involved with Hush, and there had been so many false leads.

He needed to pay attention to his surroundings. The man who had him spoke with a gruff voice, but his words were mostly muffled by the bandages on his face. However, he could catch hints of a Gotham accent.

“Stay still, Replacement,” the man hissed as he pulled him towards a certain part of the graveyard where Bruce had just stopped Scarecrow. Tim could see the glint of a blade in his hand. “We wouldn’t want you to get unnecessarily hurt. I just need to talk to the Bat.”

A couple agonizingly slow minutes later, Tim heard the slight sound of Bruce’s boots. He’d arrived.

Although his captor kept an arm around his neck, Tim could feel the man shift. “You care about this imposter… pretender…” the man’s voice was further damped by the rain which started sometime during the altercation with Scarecrow.

“Let the boy go.” There was no room for negotiation in that voice. Bruce wouldn’t take lightly to having another one of his Robins be injured.

“Why?” The man almost sounded amused. Weird. It was like the concept of Batman caring for someone was strange to him. “Why should I give him the chance you never gave me?”

There was a pause before Bruce spoke again. “Who are you?”

“The World’s Greatest Detective and you still haven’t figured it out?” Tim had just enough time to glance up to see the man use his knife to cut the bandages off of his face. Dark hair with a white streak was all he could make out before the man adjusted his grip on him and put the knife to his neck. “Life’s just a game, Batman… and this time, you lose.”

Bruce didn’t move immediately. Although there wasn’t an obvious expression on the man’s face, there were slight tells in how his jaw and shoulders tensed that suggested he was shaken. He recognized this man.

“I know what you’re doing. You’re thinking about when I died.” The man stated as an irritated growl crept into his voice. “How there’s blood on your hands because you couldn’t get there in time to stop the Joker from killing me.”

What did the man say? The Joker killed him? Who…? He couldn’t think about that with the knife putting pressure on his throat.

“Keeping silent. Gathering your thoughts. Hoping to rattle your opponent.” The man almost sounded bored. “I’ll make it simple for you. You’ve got to get to me before I slit this pretender’s throat. Tell me, Batman. You let one Robin die. Want to go for two?”

“I’ve got you.” Tim barely had time to register the echoing whisper before an icy chill washed over him. Moments later, he found himself wheezing on the ground with Phantom protectively standing between him and his previous captor. He could feel the sensation of blood running down his skin. The knife had cut him.

An amused chuckle escaped the man, who Tim could finally get a better look at him. While his eyes were covered with a domino mask, his features seemed unsettlingly familiar. Not sure why, he glanced at the disturbed grave he stood over. “Here lies Jason Todd.”

Icy chills crawled down his back. It… it couldn’t be. Jason was dead. He’d been killed by the Joker years ago. No one had disturbed the grave until now. Bruce would have known. He couldn’t be standing there, years older. Tim heard or maybe sensed his heartbeat when he was trapped. Whoever that was, he was alive.

Jason had been Robin. His Robin. He was a hero. He wouldn’t have tried to hurt him. He wouldn’t try to hurt Bruce.

Phantom shifted uncomfortably in front of him. Was he uncomfortable in the presence of the double? They still hadn’t determined whether or not the meta was Jason’s ghost or not, but compared to the man in front of him, Phantom lined up more with who he knew Jason to be.

“Ah, the little ghost. I’ve heard about you,” the double sneered. “Go ahead, take the replacement bird.” He made a shoeing motion with his hand as his attention returned to Bruce. “You know, I’m almost impressed. You managed to get a dead child to join your crusade. Did you decide that was a better option than letting another one die?”

“W-wait…!” Tim tried to move as Bruce lunged at the man and their battle began.

“Don’t try to move,” Catwoman warned as she approached from his side and placed a compress on his neck. He nearly forgot she was also in the area because she and Bruce were giving a relationship a go. Her presence had been a major distraction recently. “That’s a nasty cut.”

“Didn’t know you cared.”

“I don’t, but he’d be even more difficult to deal with then he is now if something happened to you.” She wasn’t wrong.

After taking the compress from her, Tim turned his attention to the battle raging in front of them. Whoever the man who looked like Jason was well trained, and his movements were a strange conglomeration of Dick’s, Bruce’s, and others he couldn’t quite place. Bruce must have sensed the similarities too as he fought as he was more on the defensive compared to most of his fights.

As the man lured Bruce towards the church, he noticed Selena was about to follow them. That wasn’t a good thing. “You have to let him do this alone,” he warned as he grabbed her arm.

“I don’t ‘have’ to do anything. Particularly when it comes from you.” Yeah, she wasn’t happy with him. Good, the feeling was mutual.

“Just listen to me, please. The entire time I’ve been Robin, every lesson, every move that Batman has taught me, is intended to keep what happened to Jason from happening to me.” When she didn’t try pulling way, he continued. “No matter what he says, Jason’s death still haunts him. Why else would he keep Jason’s costume so prominently in the cave?”

Selena pulled her arm out of his grasp. “Then you should know better than anyone, kid, what he’s like when he’s angry. And what about you,” her attention turned to Phantom, who seemed focused on the church, “do you plan on interfering even more than you have? Your presence is tearing him apart!”

He turned slightly and studied her for a moment before speaking. “I came because he,” Phantom gestured towards him, “was in danger.” His form began to intensely flicker as his gaze moved to the disturbed grave.

Crap. He was going to disappear again. If there was any chance at tracking him, he needed to attempt to put a tracker on him now. “Phantom, wait!” he took a chance and reached in an attempt to grab his cape. Instead of passing through it, his hand found solid material similar to his own cape.

Both he and Phantom momentarily shared a look of shock as his form seemed to solidify before Phantom’s gaze turned back to the grave. “No one's in it.”

“Empty? What… what do you mean?” He couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. He needed to get this tracker on the cape. Seconds. That’s all he had to do this, but he still momentarily froze in place as dread creeped into the pit of his stomach.

The meta’s cape slipped, not out of his hand, but through it, as he turned to look him in the eyes. His form began to fade. “The grave. The body's gone.”

“And just what would you know about that?” Selena hissed as she rushed forward to take a swipe at him. Instead of making contact, she harmless passed through him right before he faded entirely. Shivering, she turned back to where the meta had stood. “I feel like I was doused in a bucket of ice water. What is that thing?”

“You mean Phantom?” Tim moved passed her to stand in front of the grave. He hadn’t known this was here. Jason’s official grave was in a different cemetery. Was this the correct one? Bruce was paranoid enough to move a grave to a secret location. “We don’t know.”

The grave had been disturbed, that much was obvious. However, with the rain, any physical trace evidence would have long since been washed away. Not wanting to risk disturbing it any longer, he followed Bruce to the top of the church while Selena checked the area for anyone else.

…

The mystery of Hush was finally resolved. Phantom had been correct in that many people had both willingly and unwillingly helped Hush and by proxy, the Riddler, attempt to take him down. While he had his troubles with Thomas Elliot when they were growing up, Bruce never suspected that he’d end up being one of Batman’s many enemies. He had questions for the man, but none of them could be answered. Harvey Dent had shot him when he attempted to kill James Gordon. During the altercation, Elliot fell into the bay, and, as of now, they hadn’t found his body.

On top of losing a childhood friend, Selena decided to end their relationship. He couldn’t blame her. Until Gotham didn’t need him anymore, he would never be able to put her first. Even though he understood, he still mourned her loss.

Then there Clayface who attempted to take on the appearance of an adult version of his son. He hated the reminder of the pain that his son never would be an adult, but Hush and, the true mastermind, the Riddler tried to make it seem like Jason had risen from the grave. They even managed to get a hold of Lazarus Pit ash to strengthen the idea, but while that stunt was unforgivable, they did something worse. They took Jason’s body.

His son was no longer resting peacefully. He was gone, and he had no idea where he could be. And to make things worse, the various sensors were never triggered making it difficult to determine when they made off with him. Strangely, Nygma acted as if he had no idea anyone had touched that grave, even after being threatened. Why would he continue to deny it? Who was he protecting? Or was it possible he hadn’t known? More trips were needed to be able to confirm the truth of the situation.

In the meantime, he was reeling from the press conference that afternoon. Somehow the tabloids got wind the grave was disturbed which set off a police investigation. Bruce had to act as if the call he received from the GCPD was how he found out and answer the questions those vultures posed to him about what happened. He hated dealing with them, but it was necessary to keep up his civilian persona.

But he knew there was more to it. There was a man who asked if he just moved the grave to forget about Jason, and then referred to Tim as a replacement. The wording was too specific. When it got a rise out of Bruce, the man removed his hat to reveal someone who looked exactly the same as Clayface had when he was impersonating Jason. And the smile he gave told Bruce he was well aware of the similarity.

Due to the crowd, Bruce couldn’t risk going after him, and he managed to vanish from sight sometime during the conference. He asked Barbra to check the security footage of the surrounding area for the man. While they weren’t able to find when he entered the area, she was able to find one camera who caught him as he walked away from the conference. It was clear from two fingered salute he gave the camera, he allowed himself to be caught on film. Whoever he was, he knew Bruce would check the camera and had knowledge on how to avoid the others in the area.

He needed to talk to Phantom as it was likely whomever he worked for is how he found out about Hush. However, they still didn’t know where he went. Tim’s attempt to place a tracker on Phantom failed. It never left the area around Jason’s grave, putting them back at square one. Since he was going to check the area for any clue as to where his son might have gone before he returned to Arkham to question the Riddler, he was going to check for it. He didn’t particularly like Bat-tech being in an area where people would be snooping around.

…

Shortly after nightfall, Bruce entered the cemetery as it began raining again. He needed to get in search for what he needed and leave, but as soon as he reached his son’s grave, he paused in his steps. The gnawing pain of regret and the hollow ache of grief rooted him in place as he stared at the still exposed lid of the casket. At least that hadn’t been damaged. There was no sign of sun bleaching either meaning it had only been uncovered recently.

After reminding himself why he was there, he went to work. While it had been raining the previous night, the rain had continued on and off throughout the day which prevented him from gaining any information from footprints which had been left. So, he turned his attention to anything that might have been left behind, including marks on the sides of the casket. Either the rain washed everything away, or nothing had ever been there. He didn’t know which was more frustrating.

“Don’t worry, Jason,” he said softly as he touched the tombstone after placing the clue in his belt. “I’ll get you back.”

“Are you sure returning him will make him or you happy?”

If it hadn’t been for his training, Bruce would have jumped at the echoed voice. Instead, he spun around to find Phantom sitting on a nearby headstone apparently unaffected by the rain. His head was tilted in curiosity, but his tense shoulders suggested unease.

“And what would you know of it?” Bruce snapped as he took a step towards the meta. He tried to stay civil with the boy and owed him for helping Tim, but he was not going to tolerate this brand of taunting, not right now.

The teen didn’t answer him immediately. Instead, his gaze wandered over the graveyard. “There are a lot of restless souls here. The constant fights keep disturbing them.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“In the past, people used to do a lot of elaborate things to try to keep the dead, either in body or soul, from returning,” he explained as he brought his left knee up and rested his chin on it. “That was especially true for people who died unexpectedly, especially murder victims. And sometimes, even those weren’t enough. Is that better?”

His voice was almost expectant. Was he trying to imply that Jason’s spirit hadn’t been at rest since… since before all of this started? No, he refused to allow himself to consider that. The spiritual world was something he had no part in. He was grounded in the material world and what could be properly measured and recorded. Phantom could interact with them, and unless magic was involved, other ghosts like Deadman couldn’t without possession. Therefore, he couldn't be a ghost.

“Enough stalling,” he warned as he took a step towards the meta. “Do you know where my son, where Jason, is?”

The meta straightened as he let his leg drop. “I don’t.” His voice was even, and he seemed sure of his answer.

“Do you know who took him?” He moved closer.

“No.” There was no wavering in his tone, and he didn’t look away.

Bruce stopped moving when he was a couple yards away from the meta. “Do you know how long ago it happened?”

There was a slight hum as he glanced skyward for a moment before returning his attention to Bruce. “Exactly? No, but it has been at least two years.”

“Two years?” That was impossible. His son couldn’t have been missing for that long without him knowing. Whomever took him would have sent him some sort of evidence. Unless… unless that’s why the “famous nobody” was sending him clues. He took Jason and had been displeased at how long it took him to find out. But why? Was he someone who knew Jason personally and knew what happened?

While it wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility, part of the theory rested on whether Phantom told him the truth. He hadn’t given any tells suggesting a lie, but they were certain Phantom was working for this individual. As a result, it was likely information he received from him was either misleading or completely incorrect.

There were too many factors at play, and Phantom’s presence in this entire thing muddled things further. Why did he continue to both help and taunt them?

“What do you want from us, from me?” The anger that was steadily building gave way into what suspiciously sounded like desperation as Phantom’s form began to flicker. “If I can find my son and lay him to rest, will you finally stop haunting me?”

“It’ll depend on what you do when you find him.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Instead of answering him, the teen tossed a small object at him. Instinctively catching it, Bruce realized it was the tracker. “Thought you wanted that back.” A small, pitying smile appeared as he glanced towards Jason’s grave. His form vanished.

As Bruce switched to his thermal imaging, Phantom’s voice seemed to come right next to his left ear. “I’ll give you a hint.” He spun around and caught sight of the meta pulling back. Smart. He knew he’d gotten too close. “You should check the inside of the coffin.” The teen then, for lack of a better word, dove into the ground.

Bruce tapped the ground gently. Solid with no signs of a concealed door. He wouldn’t be able to follow the teen. Should the try the tracker again later? Or would they need to get more creative? Trapping him would probably be the best option, but he was becoming more and more reluctant to try it again.

Deciding to follow the lead for now, Bruce made the painful decision to open the casket. Radioing Alfred to silence the alarms when the sounded, he lifted the lid to find a wax-coated pomegranate. What in the world was it doing there?

Examining it again, he nearly dropped it as realization hit him. It was another clue. Pomegranates were considered one of the foods of the dead, and the next stop in "The Odyssey" was a place where men were lured to their deaths by songs promising to fulfill their greatest desires. The only way to safely bypass the island of the Sirens was to place wax or another similar substance in the ears to block out the sound.

What was Bruce’s greatest want right now? It was to get his son back. He had heard the Siren’s call.

===========

Notes:

Tim and Selena are extremely antagonistic towards each other in Hush (comic version). Tim doesn't trust her, and she doesn't seem to like his presence. I almost forgot about that until I re-read it for this fic. It could be possessiveness. I don't think Tim and Selena knew each other well at that time, but I could be wrong. That's a rabbit hole I don't want to go down right now. I've already spent too much time trying to figure out DC's timeline.

I just have this idea that Jason could have antagonized Bruce more in Hush by calling in a tip that someone took his body and that causes police investigation plus press conference. Then, if he wants to be extra spiteful, pretend to be a reporter to ask Bruce uncomfortable questions. It is also accompanied by Jason wearing the traditional reporter jacket and fedora. You don't understand how badly I need this in my life.

So, the next stop, the island of the Sirens. Wax is the most obvious part of the clue, but there's a little more to it. That'll be explained next chapter. This one started getting too long

#Danny Phantom #dp #dp x dc #danny phantom crossover #Chasing Shadows #DP au #Odyssey AU

[redhoodedangel]

Batman: Arkham Echo - Ch.3: Cauldron of Bats

I don’t normally post a lot about stuff that are more personal projects. Normally I would post this on my alternate blog, CiphenWriter21. However, given how many people who are Batman fans or who are fellow writers and fans of the Arkham Series. If you want to check out ‘Batman: Arkham Echo’, the fanfic is currently on my Wattpad, CiphensNarrative, and is currently a work in progress.

Warnings ⚠️: mentions of attempted sexual assault, violence and murder, one mention of original character(s) here (this is a BatFam chapter; she is shown in a photo)

~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~

Gotham was never short on criminal activity, unsolved mysteries or domestic terrorism. The city that many considered their home was also seen as another man’s playground. One person’s workplace could be another’s primary target or testing ground for experiments. One couple’s apartment can become a flaming inferno within a matter of minutes or even seconds. A double murder could occur in an alley somewhere and the only survivor could be an eight-year-old boy.

A young boy who would grow into a man with a sense of justice and his own moral code…

A man who would become a symbol, a seeker for reform and a firm believer in hope and giving others something to believe…

Standing atop of a gargoyle on a tower, a figure looked down at the darkened city below. Pointed animalistic ears protrude menacingly from the face-concealing cowl, coming from the sides and the top of his head. A long dark cape bellowed swiftly into the brisk late winter breeze behind him, complimenting the black bat symbol on his warm gray chestplate. His armored boots pressed into the stone of the decorative stone beast. Given the amount of shadow obscuring the rest of his otherwise disguised face, his eyes looked like endless voids of ivory. To a cowardly criminal, he appeared to be a living shadow, a deadly denizen of the night.

This was Gotham’s emblem of hope and justice, a talented and inquisitive detective, the Dark Knight himself… Batman.

After listening to the GCPD police radio, he learned that a dead man was discovered in an alleyway. Apparently, he had appeared to be killed during a supposed altercation. A squad of officers was on their way to the crime scene to investigate and identify the victim and the motive. Batgirl and Robin were on the move to the location, the same way as him.

Grappling and gliding from building to building, Batman was able to get to the scene in record-breaking time. The police squad had just pulled up and were cuffing one of the men at the scene. The GCPD commissioner, Jim Gordon, steps out of his vehicle and out towards the crime scene, a cup of coffee in his hand. Everyone was getting the scene ready as one officer began putting yellow ‘Caution’ tape up. As this was happening, Batgirl and Robin landed at the far end of the alley.

“Jim…” Batman said evenly to the commissioner as his eyes scanned the walls of the buildings.

“Batman…” Gordon replied back with a similar cool tone.

“Commissioner…” Robin greeted warmly, his voice reassuring and ever laid-back.

“Robin… Batgirl…”

“What happened here, Jim?” Batman asked, hoping to find an explanation as soon as possible.

“Two sex offenders… one’s dead, the other has a dislocated jaw and broken teeth. My guess is as good as yours.” The commissioner explained before taking a swig of his coffee. Batman trekked over to the crime scene, looking for any clues or evidence.

“Their intended target fought back?” Batgirl questioned, curiosity peaked at the possibility of an offense gone wrong.

“That’s our working theory. But, we’re also keeping an eye out for potential conflicts relating to other crimes that Tom and Jerry here have on their records.” Jim stated, a gurney carrying the bagged body of the dead man wheeling by.

Meanwhile, Batman was analyzing the evidence he had found. The DNA from the blood samples of both victims belong to Devin Fryer and Simon Halls, two sex offenders originating from Gotham. Both were documented in the GCPD’s records, as well as profiles at Blackgate and Arkham Asylum. Other offenses included, but were not limited to, drug trafficking, robbery and murder.

Additional evidence shows that Fryer and Halls were attempting to corner a girl. A fact that was confirmed by the presence of a woman’s size seven-and-a-half boot print in a pile of wet sand near the dumpster. When he scanned the body of Fryer, he had severe trauma to the top of his head. Judging by the blood splatter by the garbage disposal, the brick wall was the point of impact. But, that wasn’t all…

Fryer had a red irritation mark around his neck, almost like a rope burn. This wound was likely made from a piece of cloth, such as a coat sleeve or a scarf. The item was also used to slam the victim’s head into the wall, as well as to give Halls his injuries. Shortly after, Halls was knocked unconscious by another force. However, Batman couldn’t identify who was behind it.

‘Either the girl was defending herself and didn’t know her own strength or she was that willing and ready to kill.’ The bat thought, doing a once-over of the evidence. He wanted to make sure he didn’t miss a single thing

“Is there any security footage we could look over? Maybe we find their target that way,” Robin said, looking at the cameras on the electrical poles.

“That’s a negative. Most of the cameras around this part of town are broken and haven’t been replaced in years. Mayor has been trying to get new ones installed, but the budget won’t cover it. Our best bet is the living victim, though I don’t think he will cooperate,” Gordon explained, pointing at the delinquent in the nearby police car.

Barbara, from under her Batgirl cowl, glared at the criminal, sitting in the backseat of the law enforcement vehicle. Her temperament was steadily swelling to the surface, the only thing holding her back was her shared sense of morality with Batman and Robin. She couldn’t believe that this man and his dead buddy tried to take advantage of a young girl. Sure, they were unsuccessful, their target not being a pushover and defending herself. But, it still disgusted her that these criminals only see women as objects for their own pleasure. She was lucky that she had male friends and family who respect and treat her like a person.

“Maybe, we need to give him some incentive…” Batgirl whispered, her tone taking on a serious and foreboding guise.

The second Bat and the accompanying bird moved over to the cop car holding the perp. Robin knocked on the guarding officer, pointing towards their new convicted prisoner. The officer then nodded, rolling down the backseat window to allow the duo to interrogate Halls.

“Mr. Halls…” Robin called as he walked up to the open window next to Batgirl. Simon looked up at the two vigilantes, his eyes bearing the smallest glint of fear and confusion. His tone of voice, however, contradicted his true feelings that his gaze provided insight into.

“What do you want?” he growled bitterly and painfully through his damaged mouth and broken teeth.

“The girl you and your buddy tried to jump… what did she look like?” Robin asked with a direct snap of his tongue.

“Why the hell should I tell you?”

“Well, I don’t think you want to be ripped from the car and interrogated by the big one. Might end up worsening that cocky and confident mouth and jaw of yours. And I don’t think you want another fractured bone or an expensive hospital bill. So, if you tell us now, you can avoid adding insult to injury… quite literally,” Batgirl added, her voice even with something that could be interpreted as bordering near venomous.

Halls’ eyes widened as he glanced between the two young vigilantes, trying to determine if they were serious. Their eyes gave off an intense aura of silent rage and determination. He then looked at the officer at the wheel, who did nothing but nod. When that confirmation was made clear, he submitted to the fact that he was backed into a corner.

“Alright. She was around sixteen or seventeen…”

Of course, they went after someone that young, Batgirl thought bitterly.

“Her skin was tanned, I think. Brown hair an’ eyes. She wore all black and had glasses on. She used her scarf ta’ strangle Devin! She then tried ta’ come ‘fter me… her eyes… It was like watchin’ hellfire blaze! I’d never been scared like that before in my life! The Bat’s the only one who could’ve compared!” Halls admitted, his face expressing fear and anxiety of what had happened.

Batgirl fell silent upon hearing the description of the men’s assailant. There was something about the mental image she came up with that didn’t sit well with her. Some part of her felt as if she knew the person they were giving details about. She just didn’t know why or how. It was something in her mind’s eye she couldn’t figure out… something she had missed… something she had overlooked…

“Did you get anything from the witness?” came the brooding tone of Batman. He stood behind her and Robin, waiting for the information he needed.

“Yep. More than enough for a police sketch,” Robin chimed, his laid-back aura returning tenfold.

“Good. The GCPD should be able to find them and get some answers. I need you two on patrol, keeping an eye out for anything.” Batman instructed, grabbing his grapple gun. He pointed it upwards at a nearby building and pulled towards the rooftop and disappeared among the skyline. Shortly after, the Boy Wonder and Young Bat grappled onto a nearby rooftop for scouting.

“Hey, Barb… about this new case…” Tim suddenly spoke as they landed flawlessly on the rooftop.

“What’s up?” Barbara asked simply, standing up and examining the rooftop for anything unusual.

“When the perp was giving the description of the girl they targeted, you looked like you saw a ghost. What’s going on?”

The silence that filled the air around the young duo was thick and could’ve been pierced by a bullet. Batgirl began to find a way to best explain what was going through her head. She searched and scoured for words and phrases to lay down what she was feeling and thinking about. She looked for ways to best translate her anxieties and suspicions to her fellow partner. She wondered if what she was about to say would come back to bite her.

“Before… Before I came to the crime scene, I was doing some grocery shopping. As I was leaving, my bags broke from beneath. A teenage girl approached me and offered me one of her reusable bags. She even helped me clean up my mess. This girl… she looked exactly like how the perp described. Down to the black clothing and glasses…”

Robin’s eyes widened ever so slightly, attempting to process what Batgirl had just said. However, as quickly as his shock came, Robin immediately sought logic, “Barb, it’s probably just a coincidence. Gotham is huge and a mixed bag, meaning the runaway victim could be anyone. Plenty of women fit the description we got.”

“You’re probably right. But, I just hope she’s okay and that she doesn’t get into too much trouble. I mean, it was self-defense. For all we know, she probably didn’t realize that she had killed him or that he died at all.” Barbara answered, her worries clear as the water from the ocean.

“Well, nearly getting assaulted like that… gets the adrenaline pumping…”

“Yeah. Back to patrol, did Batman tell you if we were looking for anyone in particular?”

“Other than Joker, no. We’ve been trying to capture him since you and I attempted to on Valentine’s Day. And Harley hasn’t been cooperating with the GCPD.” Robin stated, the memory leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. Batigirl was no different as she had fallen silent, recalling how she and Tim had to rescue her father, Jim Gordon, and his team of officers without Batman’s help. Joker had ambushed them at the GCPD, pairs and trios of officers locked in elaborate traps and unfinished theme park rides to test if she was worthy of her mantle. It was taxing and an experience she didn’t want to go through a second time. However, last month’s trial wasn’t the only burden on her mind…

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

Wayne Manor stood proudly upon the hill it was built and over the nearby trees. Its dark wooden exterior with gothic finishes gleaming from the early light of the moon. Its sprawling cemetery was a monument to previous generations of Wayne who lived in the lavish home. The lights within were warm and beaming through the wide array of windows lining the floors of the mansion. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, no strange shadows or sudden rustling of the bushes. That was until the firm silhouette of a man passed by the rightmost windows of the manor.

Within the spacious adobe, a lone man in a suit with salt and pepper hair was tidying and dusting the hallways. He dusted the portrait frames and the various tables with assortments of vases and other priceless antiques. The dust and grime collected like a light sheen of snow or an extra skin on the wood. However, with the feather duster, it all got whisked away into the air or onto the ground below. However, as he moved further down the hallway to clean, he became more wary as he got close to a particular set of doors.

As the doors came into his field of vision, he swallowed the aching lump in his throat. His eyes gleamed with a dampness that indicated sorrow or guilt, but it never spilled over. His heart pounded and his throat throbbed and swelled from the lump that had been forming within. As he took a deep breath in before releasing it, he clasped one of the doors’ knobs and turned it counterclockwise. With a faint exhalation of air, he pushed the door open. A wave of sights and scents hit the man like a crashing wave on the sea. As he walked in, the sentimental value of the opened room only got him to feel worse.

Shelves and shelves of books lined the left and back walls of the bedroom. Occasional nick-nacks and collectibles separated the books by genre, publication year or name of the author. The bed was untouched and neatly made, no sign of a person having rested on the mattress in a long time. Not a single wrinkle in the blankets and sheets, while the pillow has no divots that matched the shape and size of a head. The wooden desk was collecting dust, the laptop on top becoming one with the snowy fibers and the desk. Other than the slowly formulating sheen of gray, the bedroom was spotless and in order. Unusual until the man realized that this room had belonged to a studious teenage boy who never had a safe space to call his own.

Clutching the duster in his hand, he got to work freeing this abandoned room of its cloudy prison. He started with the large, nearly endless bookcase, dust and specks dancing in the air as he brushed the woodwork. He was delicate and methodical as he cleaned and polished the now newly touched room. He swiped his duster over the head of the bed and the matching nightstand. Fluff and fibers invaded the air before gracing the floor that was still relatively coated in dust bunnies.

As he walked past the wardrobe, he felt that one of the doors was partially open as his arm lightly grazed it. He heard the scrapping of something metallic on wood and the sound of a metal lock hitting and splintering wood. Turning back to the dresser, he looked at the skewed door and walked up to the dresser. Placing his hand on the door’s knob, he slowly pulled it open with grace and respect. The person who once lived in this room and ran through the halls and gardens on the estate was no longer among the living of the manor after all…

Despite being slow and methodical, the mystery object in the closet came tumbling out. It hit the floor with a wooden and metallic crashing sound that reverberated harshly at the man’s feet. Scraps and squares of glossy paper fell from the open lid of the fallen chest, leaving a collage of white leading out. Some of the papers appeared to have something printed or pressed on them. However, the older gentleman was too focused on the mess he had unintentionally made to focus on that, softly proclaiming with a British tone, “Oh, dear lord…”

Getting on his knees, he turned the chest back into its proper position, open lid now closed and the top facing up. He then placed his focus on the pieces of paper and getting them back into the chest. It wasn’t until he touched the paper that he realized that they weren’t original strips of paper. The glossy texture and the colors forming figures and locations were Polaraids. Most, if not, all of them have the same people in them and the various activities they did together. One was a boy that he recognized, his dark hair and blue eyes ingrained into his brain. Yet, the brunette girl standing front and center in his arms wasn’t ringing any bells and raising any unwanted alarms. But, judging by the smile on the boy’s face, she was someone of great importance to him.

‘A potential acquaintance from outside the manor and the youth academy, perhaps…’ he pondered whilst holding the photo.

“Alfred…” A voice came through the silence of his thoughts. The tiniest earpiece blinked with a red light within the cavity of the man, Alfred’s, ear. He then pressed down on the blinking red light and began to speak, “Yes, sir?”

“Are you in the Batcave?” The rough voice of Batman came through Alfred's earpiece.

“No, sir. I’m currently in the manor, doing some light spring cleaning…” He didn’t specify where in the home he was. He knew mentioning it would bring back painful memories and feelings of guilt.

“I’m on my way to the Batcave. I need to use the Batcomputer to look through the evidence I gathered from the crime scene.”

“I will meet you down there, sir.”

Looking around the room, Alfred smiled sadly at the now more clean but still dormant room. Once more, the painful lump began to swell up in his throat. So many memories and so many regrets were linked to this room and the person who once called it theirs. Now, all that Alfred could hope for was that said person was in a better place, no longer suffering and in pain.

Maybe he found his way towards a better life…a better beginning… maybe somewhere he can call ‘home’, wherever that may be…

~~~~~~~

Oh, Alfred… if only…

#jason todd #batman #dc comics #jason peter todd #arkham knight #arkhamverse #red hood #dc universe #batman arkham knight #batman fanfiction #batman arkham series #oc x canon #original character #jason todd x oc

[kittymaine]

Two Weeks Notice Ch.3

// Summary: There’s an alien invasion and Damian and Jason are the unlikely team that are going to stop it. //

When an alien invasion force made landfall off the coast of Delaware, nobody had been expecting it. Jason sure hadn’t been. He had been sleeping off a brutal fight with a literal vampire the night before when his phone woke him up with a laundry list of emergency alerts from Babs.

Most of that day was a blur to Jason. He remembered suiting up in his room before he left, pulling tactical armor over top of aching bruises and blood spotted gauze pads. He remembered speeding through midday traffic out of Gotham, following Babs’ direction to avoid the roadblocks and reach the rendezvous point she directed him to.

The rendezvous point was just an intersection of streets in a small Delaware town, the streets empty and quiet due to lockdown. When he got there, he was met with Steph, Cass, Damian and Blue Beetle. He barely had a chance to greet the girls before Black Canary was striding up to them and giving their marching orders.

Steph and Cass were teamed together and sent to one location, and he and Damian to another. Blue Beetle was teamed with Black Canary to head to another point to reconvene with some other Justice League members to form a strike team. The bats were being asked to hold some strategic points along the beach, but otherwise weren’t being asked to do anything too exciting. Since none of them except Duke were metahumans, their skill set wasn’t considered to be very valuable in the fight.

Regardless, Jason was on edge as he drove toward the coast, Damian riding his own bike by his side. He was extremely aware that Damian was only fourteen (fifteen, maybe?) and that made him the adult in their little team up. If anything happened to Damian, it would surely be his ass that the whole family would roast alive for it. He hated to admit it to himself, but he had just started to enjoy the company of Babs and her Batgirls, and he really didn’t want to fuck it up.

Damian was tense and quiet the whole ride there. It was the first time Damian had seen Jason since the meeting, but he barely acknowledged him.

It was barely a week before Halloween, so there weren’t any tourists on the beach when the aliens had landed. Even so, the beach looked like a bloodbath. Sprays of blood and bodies were dotted here and there on the cold beige sand. On the street facing the beach, cars were turned over and smashed, some still smoking quietly into an overcast gray sky.

The invasion was very literal, with a few small ships landed at different points along the beach where squads of aliens explored into human towns and villages. On top of that, the bug like aliens were taking no chances and shooting at basically anything that moved. The beach was a tough place to try and hold them back, considering how open and flat it was.

Jason motioned Damian into an abandoned car before trying to engage the enemy, and drove over the dunes and up onto the beach before flipping the car and using it as cover to try and halt the aliens’ advancement up into the town. Unfortunately, that meant they were pretty effectively pinned down as they traded shots with the aliens.

What followed was a terrifying and exhausting battle of inches.

Jason had brought a duffle bag full of ammo and a few supplemental weapons in case of a jam, but Damian only had the batarangs he could hold in his belt and ran out within minutes. Jason had handed some back up pistols to Damian and ignored the surprised expression on the kid’s face. He was League trained, just like Jason. He knew that Talia would have trained Damian on every conceivable weapon, including firearms. Damian didn’t disappoint, either. It took him a second to adjust to the rubber bullets, but once he did, he was almost as good a shot as Jason.

Unfortunately, rubber bullets didn’t do much when the other team were firing lasers that could turn sand into glass.

“We are going to die, if we stay here,” Damian grunted as he ducked just a bare second before a blue flash of light cut through where his head just was.

“If we fall back, we risk some of them splitting off and heading into town,” Jason grunted as he shot blindly over the edge of the car to try and push the three aliens advancing on their position back.

“They must have some short distance warp technology in their spaceship,” Damian said as he peeked out around the edge of their cover to take a quick look at the ship he was talking about. It was shaped sort of like a minivan with rockets attached to where you might expect the back tires to be, and had an almost clown car quality as alien after alien piled out of it as they took out the ones that ventured into their line of sight.

“If we can destroy their ship or whatever is inside the ship that is allowing them to teleport to our planet, we could free ourselves up to help elsewhere,” Damian continued.

“Leaving cover is risky,” Jason said doubtfully, peeking out himself over the top to see that the three aliens had dived behind a bank of sand and were scrabbling at each other like they were trying to dare each other to advance first.

“I’m sure you have something in that bag of yours that can help sew a little chaos,” Damian suggested with a cocky smirk.

It was the first expression Jason had seen on the kid that wasn’t just blank professionalism or a grimace of effort. It was hard to say no to such a mischievous look from such a serious kid.

Jason snorted and ducked down to dig through a side pocket on his bag. “Yeah, I guess I do,” he sighed, holding up a handful of flash bangs. He armed them and took another look over the car to see if the aliens had moved, and almost ate a laser to the face for it. “Just close your eyes and ears, but still be ready. It’s hard to anticipate how these things will affect extraterrestrials,” Jason explained as he deftly chucked three flash bangs in a strategic line between them and the aliens.

Damian already had his earplugs in, so Jason shoved his own in his ears quickly and held up his fingers to count down to detonation.

Even behind cover and with earplugs in, the sound of all three flash bangs detonating so close together was nearly deafening and everything in their sight was cast into sharp contrast for a few seconds, their eyes no longer able to differentiate any nuance between light and shadow. Jason could barely hear the painful screech of inhuman voices screaming in pain over the faint ringing in his ears.

As soon as color began to seep back into his vision, Jason gave the hand signal to move out. Both Jason and Damian dodged around the car they had been using for cover and charged across the sand toward the spaceship. Jason took a moment to glance over at the small dune the aliens had been using for cover and saw sprays of blue that looked like maybe the flash bangs had maybe done more damage than he was expecting. But, he wasn’t about to pause and check. He’d much rather that than their enemies being okay and getting shot full of holes as a result.

They reached the ship after a few seconds of running painfully slowly, the sand pulling at their feet with every step. When they finally clambered onto the craft, it was mercifully empty. In fact, the inside of the ship was completely empty, with no seats or levers or anything sticking out of the walls. Instead, the walls, floors and ceilings were covered in markings, symbols, lines and shapes.

“Ugh, aliens,” Jason grunted, looking around the ship for anything that looked like a ‘DON’T TOUCH SELF DETONATION SEQUENCE HERE’ sign.

“We must find a way of turning off their warp point or, failing that, we must destroy the ship,” Damian bit out, scanning across the iconography littering the walls just as frantically as Jason.

“Easier said than done,” Jason muttered, not looking up from the series of symbols he was inspecting.

Suddenly, a wash of blue light spilled across the walls of the ship. Jason’s head snapped up just in time to see Damian snatch his hand away from a set of glowing symbols, a large circle under his feet shining in eerie blue light and steadily bathing him in strange dancing blue particles.

“Damian!” Jason shouted, crossing the ship in a few short steps and taking him by the upper arms.

He meant to yank Damian back out of the circle, but the second he touched him, it felt like his whole body both froze up and went immaterial. He could feel himself, everything that composed him, shaking apart like atoms in an ion storm. Everything that made him who he was scattering, disconnecting, freeing itself from the creature that called itself Jason Todd. He could only look mutely at Damian’s stricken expression and reflect that in the laundry list of all his fuck-ups, this had to be the hands down all time worst one. Not only did he let Bruce’s son disintegrate himself in an alien spaceship, but he was being disintegrated too.

He felt himself stretch. He could still feel his feet in his steel toed boots on strange alien metal, but he could also feel the sterile coldness of space on his collar bones, the wetness of clouds on his left elbow, the brush of feathers against his right hip. Jason also felt Damian, really felt him in a way he had never felt anyone before. He felt his child soft skin, and the pull of old scars on his back, and the ache of a broken bone in his leg that didn’t set right. He felt it all from the inside, Damian’s feelings mixed up with his own. Jason felt Damian’s emotions, the way fear sat familiar in his chest alongside a well-worn resignation to death. That cut Jason terribly deep. Jason knew intellectually that he had probably seen more death in his short life than thirty normal people combined. But, Damian was still a child, and the way that he so quickly gave up and resigned himself to death filled Jason equally with rage and despair.

And then they were coalescing, pulled back together, atoms stretched across miles like a rubber band that refused to break, finally snapping back. Jason had a panicked second to fear that they would come back together, a terrible accident that would result in a body with too many limbs and too many faces and too many thoughts. But, it was only a flash of a thought and then his body was back together just as it always had been and he and Damian were crashing to the floor in an unfamiliar place.

Jason still had his hand wrapped around Damian’s upper arm and used it to tuck him into the protection of his chest before they hit the ground. The chattering of panicked aliens immediately sounded out around them, and Jason sat up with his guns already hot.

Jason only saw the room they were in with his peripheral vision, but he got the impression that they were in a huge hangar like room with steps like bleachers all covered in the same circles that Damian and Jason had just appeared in. They were surrounded by the same bug aliens they had been fighting on the beach, little knots of them gathered here and there near the various circles.

In close quarters, fighting the aliens was a lot easier, but also more dangerous. Luckily, they had the element of surprise on their side, causing the aliens to panic and fire wildly. Jason and Damian were both skilled, but things were tilted greatly out of their favor. They fought out of the big room that they had found themselves in and down hallways randomly until they could get to a room that seemed empty and hidden where they could catch their breath.

“Fuck, where are we?” Jason gasped, trying to catch his breath while also keeping an eye on the hallway they had just exited.

“We must be on the mothership,” Damian responded. He sounded tense, but at least he wasn’t out of breath. “The ship must have only been able to let them travel back and forth to the mothership.”

“Makes sense,” Jason said as he took a moment to eject the magazine on his handguns and check what he had left. There was practically nothing, so he snapped them shut and stuck them back into their holsters. He would be better off with his hands free. “So, now we just need to figure out how to get the hell off this thing.”

“Perhaps not,” Damian said. He pinned Jason with an irritated look when Jason snorted in disagreement. “Father’s team will be trying to infiltrate the mothership to disable the invasion at the source. But, we are already here. We can end the attack now and avoid any further bloodshed.”

“Damian,” Jason snapped, not quite able to fathom how much of a bad idea that was. “We are alone, with no backup, no one knows we’re up here, and I’m out of bullets! How the hell do you propose we even do such a thing?”

“Simple, of course,” Damian sniffed, tilting his head up in a move that would have communicated superiority if his hands weren’t clutching his katana in a white knuckled grip. “We find the bridge and take control of it.”

“Jesus, kid,” Jason sighed, running a weary hand over his face. Not only was that plan reckless, it was dangerous. They weren’t metahumans like everyone else involved in the fight against the invading force. They were highly trained, yes, but both he and Damian were ultimately just normal people. It would only take one lucky shot for one of them to be killed or injured so badly they could no longer escape. Damian was only fourteen, so maybe this made sense to him, but Jason had to be the adult in this situation. “There is no way that we are doing that. We catch our breath, then we’re heading right back to that teleporter room and catching a ride back to Earth. That’s it.”

“If you are too cowardly to take advantage of this opportunity, then I will do it myself,” Damian snapped, his chin tilting even higher. The leather of his gloves creaked, he was holding onto the hilt of his sword so tight.

“There is no fucking world where you go running around an alien spaceship with only a shitty ninja sword, just like there’s no world where I make that run with you,” Jason growled, feigning an anger he could barely summon up. It had been hours since he had arrived at the rendezvous point. He was exhausted and the adrenaline from the teleportation had worn off, leaving him shaky and tense.

Damian narrowed his eyes and loosened his stance, shaking his arms out from their tense grip.

“Good, now let’s-” Jason didn’t get to finish what he was saying, because Damian knocked his legs out from under him with a vicious kick and took off down the hallway in the opposite direction of the room they had just come from.

Jason squawked indignantly as he fell back into the wall, taken completely off guard and flailing as he tried to recover his balance. “You little shit!” Jason shouted once he gained his feet and took off after Damian, his anger reigniting like a familiar lighter in his hand, spurring him forward through his exhaustion, his heavy boots ringing out loudly on the unusual metal of the alien deck.

It took a few minutes before he caught up with Damian. The kid was fast as shit. It almost made Jason miss the days when he was five foot nothing and barely a hundred pounds. But, Damian eventually got snagged up in a narrow hallway with a bunch of panicking aliens that wouldn’t stop laying down suppressing fire. Damian was pinned down behind a column, unable to move forward or retreat without risking taking fire.

“Hey, assholes!” Jason shouted before lobbing a grenade down the hallway and rolling toward’s Damian’s hiding spot. He tucked a stunned Damian against his chest and covered his ears with his hands, a few seconds before a huge concussive blast rocked the hallway, sending them both to the floor.

“You had a grenade this whole time?” Damian groaned, weakly pushing Jason off him as he tried to climb to his feet. Even with his helmet protecting his ears, Damian’s words were muffled, so it took a few seconds for Jason to determine what he said.

“They’re not exactly a non-lethal option, but I think we’re past that now,” Jason grimaced, hoping that this wouldn’t get back to Bruce. Hopefully invasive alien species weren’t included in his no kill rules. Jason really didn’t want to get run out of town again.

Damian struggled to his feet. He looked distinctly unsteady, the first visible sign of weakness Jason had seen since this whole thing started. “They were guarding something important here. We need to press forward and determine what.”

“No,” Jason said, over enunciating the word. “We need to retreat and get back to the transporter room. This is a fucking suicide mission.”

“We are uniquely positioned to end this invasion before anyone else is hurt,” Damian said fiercely, even as Jason watched his small fingers tremble around his katana. “No one else can get through their shielding. We have the element of surprise on our side, as well. But, the longer we dither here, the more we lose the upper hand.”

“Damian,” Jason choked out, struggling to his feet with a hand on the wall to help him keep his balance. “You are a child,” he bit out. “And I am responsible for your safety while we’re on this mission-”

“I AM NEVER SAFE!” Damian screeched, his chin wobbling dangerously, his shrill voice bouncing off the wall and making him sound even louder. Damian breathed heavily through his nose, his chest heaving with the effort to take in air. “My life and my safety have never been guaranteed,” he gasped. “There is only honor and the mission. So don’t try to treat me like a civilian,” he sneered, a thin facade of disgust pasted over his still trembling mouth.

Jason was frozen in the wake of Damian’s words. He thought vaguely that his heart might be broken, but the pain felt far away. His ears were still ringing, but he didn’t think it was from the grenade anymore.

Putting a pacifying hand up, Jason swallowed a few times before saying, “That … is really fucked up,” through a tight throat. “And, we are going to talk about that shit later.”

Damian sucked his teeth, but seemed to settle at Jason’s response. He wondered briefly what kind of response he had been expecting, but had to shove the thought away lest he start to cry right there on an alien mothership, probably minutes from his own death.

Jason sighed heavily, trying to think around the imploding star that used to be the heart in his chest and the ringing headache from being so near the grenade when it went off and the cramping of his own exhausted muscles.

“This is such a fucked plan,” Jason muttered, realizing he really had no choice. He couldn’t fight Damian and the aliens at the same time. Not without dooming himself or Damian to a certain death.

Damian, sensing the folding of his nerve, stood up straighter, hope spreading across his face.

“We can do it, Todd! I am confident in our ability,” Damian snapped out, standing at perfect attention and with a little furrow in his brow that just made Jason’s heart hurt more.

“Okay, okay. Whatever. I get it. I want to go on record again to say I think this is a bad idea, but I probably couldn’t find the way back to the teleporter room anyway. So, whatever, bridge it is.”

Damian nodded decisively, his pleasure practically beaming from him. “Then we should move swiftly to take advantage of the opening you have provided,” he said and without a backward look stormed down the hall now stained with char and splattered with alien blood.

Jason sighed heavily, but followed. What choice did he have?

Damian was right that the aliens Jason had blown up had been guarding something, because of course he was. As they continued to push forward, they ran into more resistance. Luckily for them, the further they progressed, the more panicked and disorganized the aliens were. Damian was an extremely skilled and well-trained fighter, but firefights were Jason’s specialty. With the two of them working together, they were able to push through two more blockades before they reached a big door, wider than the others.

“There’s something important here,” Damian muttered, examining every seam and panel beside the door.

“Definitely. But how do we get in?” Jason grumbled, using the alien rifle he had stolen to sight down the hallways and make sure they weren’t going to be shot at while they stood out in the open.

Damian tried poking and caressing all the little symbols carved along the edge of the big door. While some of them lit up, none of them opened the door. Jason kept his eye on the corridor behind them, anxiously watching for more reinforcements.

“Ah!” Damian exclaimed after a few minutes. He pointed excitedly at a glowing outline on the wall. “I think this is a hand scanner. Help me pull one of them up here,” he said, running for the nearest unconscious (or maybe dead, not that Jason was really paying attention anymore) alien and grabbing them under their armpits. Jason ran over and pulled the alien out of Damian’s grip, dragging him over to the wall. Damian slapped its hand against the silhouette of the three fingered appendage.

The alien hand outline flashed red for a second, but then nothing happened. Damian and Jason looked at each other in doubt for a second. But, before either of them could say anything, a loud clang sounded from the door and steadily the two sides began to pull apart with a heavy rumble of machinery.

Jason dropped the alien unceremoniously to the ground, it’s body making a dull thump noise as it hit the floor. “That’ll work,” he said with a grin. He raised his rifle and carefully peeked around the doorway and into the next room.

What he found inside was not the bridge, but it was quickly apparent why the aliens had been so desperate to protect it.

Though it looked like no engine Jason had ever seen before, there was no other way to interpret it. In the center of the huge vaulted room is a glowing blue cylinder so big that there’s only room for a few catwalks around the sides. A clear case encloses the cylinder on all sides and on the right side of the room are a number of smaller clear walled rooms that looked suspiciously like blast walls.

“Well, shit,” Jason breathed as he took it all in.

“What?” Damian snapped, appearing at his elbow and taking a moment to scan over what Jason was seeing. “Hmph. Well, we can still stop the ship from here.”

“Yeah, but probably not without blowing ourselves up as well,” Jason grumbled, stepping further into the room.

“Do you have any more of those grenades?” Damian asked with a raised eyebrow.

Jason looked over at him with an exasperated expression, but he did produce one more grenade from inside his jacket. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”

♥♦♣♠

When Jason swam back to consciousness, he was no longer in a strange alien spaceship surrounded by strange metal and glowing runes. Instead, he was pretty sure he was looking at the roof of a tent flapping gently above him in undulating waves. Jason took a deep breath and tried to take stock of himself. He remembered finding the engine room and then concocting some kind of crazy plan with Damian to chuck his last grenade at the engine and then try to hide in one of those little side rooms. But, anything after throwing the grenade was just a big blank.

He knew he should be hurting, but he couldn’t really feel anything. Jason could distantly feel pain all over, but it was distant, as if it was happening in the next room over or something. This compared with the rough sheet he could feel tucked around his chest made it pretty clear that he must be in a field hospital or something like it.

He tried to sit up, but quickly fell back to the cot he was laying on when the room spun in dizzy circles as he tried.

“Jason,” a husky familiar voice said. A steadying hand came down on his shoulder. “Hey, don’t try to move. You’ll just make yourself throw up.”

Jason squinted through eyes that felt like they were full of sand and made out the blurry silhouette of Dick standing over him. He couldn’t make out his expression through the domino mask, but his voice sounded exhausted.

“Where-” is Damian? Jason tried to ask, but his throat constricted painfully, sending him into a coughing fit.

Dick pressed a straw to his lips once he caught his breath. The lukewarm water tasted heavenly on his parched throat.

“Damian is okay,” Dick answered Jason’s unfinished question. “He made it out with only a few cuts and bruises. The Batgirls are taking him back to Gotham.”

Jason relaxed fully into the bed at that. Damian had lived. He was safe. He was heading home with Steph and Cass, two very capable people that he liked and trusted. Babs would take care of the rest.

“Jason, what were you thinking?” Dick asked, sounding wrecked. “You could have got him killed! Hell, it’s a miracle you both didn’t die.”

“Wasn’t thinking,” Jason mumbled. “Was thinking I was almost out of bullets. Was thinking it was taking too long. Was thinking I couldn’t let the kid run on ahead without me.”

There was shuffling from the side of the bed, but Jason didn’t open his eyes to see what Dick was doing.

“Dammit, Jason,” he mumbled, and his voice sounded distinctly wet in the quiet hubbub of the hospital. “I can’t lose anyone else. I really can’t.”

“Dick,” Jason sighed. Whatever meds they gave him must have been fading, because his head started pounding. 

“I mean it,” Dick cried, the tears clear in his voice. “Tim left, Damian left. Damian is back, but I can tell that he already has one foot out the door. He’s looking for any excuse to leave us all behind. And, you’re just the same. I know that any day you’ll leave with the other outlaws and never come back,” Dick sobbed. Jason squeezed his eyes against his own throbbing headache. “And it will just be me. Alone. Alone with Bruce and that huge empty house full of ghosts. I can’t take it, Jason!”

Jason reached out blindly with his right hand until he felt Dick’s hair under his calloused fingers. He followed the curve of his head to his shoulder and felt it shaking in his grip. “Don’t cry,” Jason gritted out. He was embarrassed to realize his own voice was thick with emotion. He pulled on Dick’s shoulder until he tilted forward and Jason felt Dick’s face press into his ribs.

They stayed like that for a while, Dick shaking into Jason’s side even if he didn’t make a sound, and Jason trying to let the tension bleed out of his body. Slowly, the pain in his head started to ebb, and he was able to breathe a little easier. It was quiet and slow for a few minutes at least.

Until someone yanked the curtain separating Jason from the rest of the field hospital back with a loud jangle of metal rings. Dick leaped back from Jason like he had been caught doing something he would get in trouble for later. Jason’s eyes shot open to the vision of Batman in all his terrifying glory, backlit by the clean white light of the hospital. His suit was scratched and singed and splattered with blue alien blood, and his jaw was clenched so hard it looked like it was chiseled from marble.

“B?” Dick choked out, his voice still showing a significant amount of emotion for a bat. Bruce acted like he didn’t hear him and held himself so still he was practically vibrating.

Bruce took one step closer to Jason’s bed and pulled the curtain back behind him with another loud jangle that set Jason’s headache screaming.

“Dick,” Bruce gritted out between teeth so clenched he could barely move his jaw. “Leave.”

“B, this isn’t the time,” Dick said, his voice calm and pacifying, all indication of his previous emotions gone just like that. Dick slowly stood and put his hands out in a gesture of surrender, even as he put himself between Jason and Bruce. “Jason has a very severe concussion. He’s not in any shape-”

Even though Jason was watching, he didn’t really see what happened next. Bruce moved that fast. One second, Dick was talking to Bruce as gently and carefully as he would a jumper. The next second, the curtain was torn off it’s metal hooks and Dick was laying spread eagle on the ground and Bruce was hauling Jason out of the bed by his throat.

Jason could hear people yelling from all around him, but he couldn’t spare any thought for them as he focused what little attention he could scrape together on the threat in front of him. To consider Bruce anything other than a dire threat at that moment would have been the height of idiocy.

He was still fully suited up as the Bat fully equipped with all his armor and preferred weapons, while Jason felt fairly sure that he was completely nude underneath the thin hospital gown he was wearing. Hell, he was pretty sure he had a catheter and IV still connected to him. And Bruce’s face, what he could see of it, was twisted in rage, every one of his clean white teeth on display as he snarled in Jason’s face.

“If I EVER,” Bruce was yelling, his voice incredibly loud in what was previously a quiet tent, spittle flying from his mouth onto Jason’s face, “so much as LOOK AT Damian again-”

“B, stop!” Dick had gotten up and was trying to physically pry Bruce off of Jason, but Jason knew that it would be practically impossible to do so. Not without hurting Jason in the process, anyway. “You’re out of control! You-”

Like swatting a fly, Bruce flung out one hand and smacked Dick down hard. If Dick had been expecting the hit, it never would have landed. But, he hadn’t. Even in this rage, Dick must have trusted Bruce. Maybe that made him naive, but Jason suspected that was what made Dick so good, even while it hurt him.

“I will put you in a hole so deep and so dark that no one will ever find you,” Bruce was still talking, still threatening Jason, but he could feel himself going away. The pain in his head was incredible, the fear pounding in his chest was almost worse, and he was rapidly losing the struggle to keep breathing against Bruce’s tightening fingers. This was too much, so close to losing Damian and so soon after seeing Dick break down for the first time ever, this was too much too fast for Jason, and he could feel himself checking out.

Jason was quickly leaving the building, Bruce’s voice fading into so much roaring water against the rocks, his body growing numb and far away and inconsequential. For a little while, he could pretend that this was happening to someone else.

Jason wasn’t sure how long the shouting went on for, but he suspected it wasn’t very long, before a flash of red flickered past his eyes and Bruce disappeared. Jason dropped like a bag of bricks and probably would have cracked his head on the frame of his cot if Superman wasn’t suddenly there to catch his fall.

He looked just the same as Jason remembered him from his childhood. His hair still had that silly little curl in the front and his arms still felt like marble even though they handled him like spun sugar. His handsome features were twisted with sorrow and pain. Jason remembered that expression too. He would make some offhand comment about what it was like living on the streets or with his mom when she was really doing bad, and that face would come out. It used to make teenage Jason so mad. Like, why look so hurt over it? It wasn’t like Clark could have done anything about his situation. And, if he could, then maybe he deserved to be hurt over it.

Clark was saying something to Jason, but he still couldn’t hear anything going on around him. It was just ‘wah wah wah’ like the adults in Peanuts. That was pretty funny, so he started to laugh. But that must have been the wrong response, because that made Clark look really scared.

Then, Clark was gone and Dick was there instead. Dick’s voice came in a little better. He wrapped something around Jason and rubbed at his arms, and Jason leaned into him. What he really wanted was Bizarro. Bizarro would be kind and sit with Jason and tell him funny stories until Jason came back. Jason didn’t really know Dick and didn’t really want to know Dick, but between him and Clark, Dick was definitely the preferable option.

Steadily, Jason came back to his body. Dick knew what he was doing, and luckily his presence didn’t fuck with Jason too bad, so he was able to do all the right things to bring Jason back.

When Jason’s hearing finally came all the way back, Dick was talking about canned herring for some reason. Jason must have made some noise of exasperation, because Dick cut off his story and immediately focused back in on Jason.

“Hey, can you hear me? Jason?” Dick asked, his fingers digging into Jason’s shoulder.

He shrugged his hand off. “Can hear you fine,” Jason mumbled, his lips still feeling numb and his words slurred.

“Dr. Skadi needs to scan your head again, after all that,” he explained evenly. Jason stared into the blank white lenses of Dick’s domino and hated that stupid mask viscerally. It was hard to tell what expression he was making from just the set of his mouth. “I’m just going to get you into the wheelchair and-”

“He hit,” Jason stumbled, the words feeling like they were shuffled around in his head and he couldn’t find the one he needed. He took hold of Dick’s arm and tried again, “He hit?” the last word still wouldn’t come.

The expression on Dick’s face was definitely sorrow, Jason could tell even with the domino mask.

“What B did was wrong, Jason,” he said quietly, mournfully. “Nobody is going to side with him on this one. He won’t get near you again. The League will watch him, and I’ll watch him if I have too.”

“No,” Jason grunted, shaking his head for a second before the spiking pain in his head reminded him that his brains were currently barely congealed pudding and shaking the bowl around was just going to scramble it more.

Dick grimaced and held his head still with both hands, while Jason grimaced through the pain.

“No,” Jason gritted out. “He hit you,” he emphasized.

Dick was silent, but his hands shook where they still held Jason’s head on either side.

“He,” Jason struggled. The pain was subsiding, but his words weren’t being any more obedient than they’d been before. “How many. Times?” he asked, stumbling through a different way to phrase what he wanted to know.

The shaking got worse, and Jason has to gently move Dick’s hands off his face, so he wouldn’t shake up his head more than it already had been. Dick’s mouth, still the only way he could gauge his expression, was trembling. Trying not to think about it too much, Jason reached out and pulled Dick’s head to rest on his shoulder.

Dick cried and even if it was quiet, Jason could still hear him. He could feel the tears once they wore through the adhesive on the bottom of his mask drip onto his bare shoulder. He could feel how desperately Dick’s fingers pressed into his back.

Jason thought about how this was his big brother, crying because his foster father had hit him, crying because his foster father might have hit him a lot. He thought about Bruce punching him in that interrogation room and tagging him in the throat with a batarang and any number of other times he had put him down in the name of fighting the good fight. He thought about Tim walking dazed and gaunt through a field of bare trees in Pennsylvania. Jason thought about Damian sitting at that meeting in his pajamas and not looking at anyone while his father raged and broke things in the other room.

He thought to himself that this was still too much. It was too big. And his brain was basically spaghetti. He would give himself a break and not think about it too much for right now.

Because, he had enough on his plate just then. He had to get up and get into a wheelchair with Dick’s help and get pushed into what looked like a cleared out gift shop so that he could get another brain scan in a high-tech and expensive looking machine and then wait through having his IV reattached and the popped stitches on his back redone. Through it all, Dick stayed with him, even if he was tired and even if he was still leaking tears every few minutes, and that wasn’t nothing. It meant a lot more than take out left at his door and stalking over rooftops.

#jason todd #red hood #batfam #damian wayne #robin #dick grayson #nightwing #fanfiction #aliens #the aliens die guys sorry #physical abuse #child soldiers #medical procedures #concussion #guns #grenades #life down on the farm #two weeks notice #kittywrites

[acaiyatree]

the way i'm taking ch uck dixon's take on babs' height + her being around 5"7 - 5"11 around the time batgirl: year one released is that babs had a Major Growth spurt somewhere down the line

#is it possible???? idk #but honestly. idc #as long as i understand what's going on i'm fine w anything #dc #dc comics #barbara gordon

[a-large-orange-cat]

new fic time! cassandra cain my absolute darling.

this fic is titled the journey & the destination (are the same). ch 1 is up now!

there are a lot of steps in between being a weapon and being a person. bruce isn't the best at teaching this, but luckily he's got a protégé or five to help out.

cassandra cain becomes batgirl. batgirl becomes cass.

The first time Cassandra speaks to Batman, it's in the language David Cain taught her. The way bodies speak is simple. Cassandra watches Bruce Wayne go, and thinks that people are not. She goes back to Barbara. "I want," she says, and stops. She doesn't know the words for what she wants. There's a story Cassandra heard once, about a boy made out of wood. He wanted something like this, too.

#cassandra cain #batgirl #bruce wayne #batman #stephanie brown #barbara gordon #dick grayson #jason todd #Tim Drake #nightwing #batfam #fic