now spinning, may 3
"I DON'T WANNA DIE IN NEW YORK" - SPICE, SPICE
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"Black Hills" - EVNTYD, Black Hills
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"Poison" - Daniel Allan, DLG., Overstimulated
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"Disco Crimson" - CQ, Communication, Cultural, Curiosity Quotient
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"Bluff" - Nico Play, Bluff
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"Light Blue" - Angel Du$t, Pretty Buff
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"Mercurial World" - Magdalena Bay, Mercurial World
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"Balloon" - Crumb, Ice Melt
Spotify | Apple Music
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Here be the first little bit of the new DP x DC AU I warned about earlier where Tim, due to his constant repeated attempts at cloning Bart & Kon, accidentally summons slightly eldritch Elle who is very interested in what he’s up to.
As always feel free to run with this as a prompt if yall find anything here interesting :D
*
Tim didn’t mean to summon her.
He’d been in the lab, staring at the data on the latest failed attempts at cloning Kon and Bart and feeling like he was cracking in two. Eyes burning, chest tight, world spinning out into shifting impossible shadows around him as his mind and body struggled to push him forward into another day without sleep. The hush of water in the tanks, his unsteady steps on the cement floor, the chill seeping into his bones.
He stumbled and swayed through the maze of the lab, numbers dripping like blood down the screen as he tried to stare at the figures. He needed to try again, needed to bring them back, in whatever capacity he could. This time would work. This time he’d get it right.
When he saw her, feet clumsy as he rounded a corner, he thought she was just another hallucination.
How could she be anything else?
Skin like a polished mirror, hair like the white-hot flash of lightning, eyes as green as the depths of the Lazarus Pits. She floated before a tank, spectral and strange with a long wisping tail that drifted off into nothingness in place of legs, body shifting and changing before his eyes in ways that bodies should not be able to. Outside of the eyes the face was…not there. An impression of the shapes that you’d expect to see in a human face, like the Question’s. Sometimes though the features defined, sharpened. Mirror bright skin crackling as faces took shape in the glass.
In the low light of the lab, he almost imaged one of those faces was Kon’s. Dimples and freckles and high cheek bones and the slant of a silhouette that haunted Tim’s dreams at night. A flicker of her lightining hair and it was gone. Smoothed back into soft blankness once more.
He watched from the of the aisle as she lifted too-long mirror shard fingers and rest them gently on the glass as she seemed to peer in at the lifeless body inside.
Attempt 76.
One of his tries with Bart. The organs hadn’t grown right during the age-up process. Tim had cried for that one as he had for all the others. As he had for Bart and Kon when they had died. As he still did as the fact that it was more maddened grief than hope that kept him pushing forward anyway.
He closed his eyes to the hallucination at the end of the aisle. Breathed deep and steady. It might be gone when he opened his eyes again. It might not be. It might be something - someone - else when he dares look next. He’d been through this time and time again over the days and weeks he’d been throwing himself at this agonizing wall. The only difference this time was the intricate strangeness, the total lack of recognition he had for the figure, baring the moment he almost saw Kon in its face.
Coffee. Maybe some harder stimulants, if he had any left. New data to review, new attempts to be made. He didn’t have time for the effects of sleep deprivation.
Tim opened his eyes.
He jerked back as he came face to face with himself, warped and strange and green in the reflective face of the being where it now hovered so close that if it breathed he would feel it upon his face.
She tilted her head at him, curious. Hands rose to cup his face, rest on his shoulders, wrap around his arms, cradle his hands. More hands than he’d seen before. More hands than he was able to truly comprehend, stomach souring as his eyes stung and strained in the attempt to look at the impossible warping of her body. Despite the glint of shattered glass that made up her fractured palms and splintered silver fingers, her hands were soft and warm where they curled around him. Almost human in the way they held him in place, the hold pleasantly firm.
He’d never had a doting elder aunt to pinch his cheeks and demand to get a look at him, but he imagined this might be what that felt like. The way the being shifted her head from side to side, his reflection warping in the curved reflection of the planes of her featureless face, added to the strange idea. His hallucinations didn’t normally touch him, though. And never so…kindly.
Tim felt his blood go cold as he realized it might not be a figment of his fracturing mind floating before him.
Swallowing nervously, he tried to shift backwards, to slip out of the many grasping hands before the softness turned sharp and began to cut into him. He felt something cool against the back of his legs, hair standing on end as static electricity built up on his skin where he brushed the trailing tail he hadn’t noticed her curl around him. The entity leaned in close, the depthless green of her glowing eyes consuming Tim’s entire field of vision, and he was flooded by the sudden, horrible awareness of being Known.
The world fell away from him, his stomach lurching with the sick-sweet feel of free fall that used to exhilarate him when he’d first become Robin and had flown from rooftops dangling by his grapple and his belief in the magic being Robin instilled in him. The lab, the equipment, the piles of data and desperate scribbles, the failed clones, Tim himself. All swept away in the flood of green and the roar of lightning and the cool press of glass.
He came to would could have been minutes or centuries later. Gasping and sick on the cold cement floor, shivering as he dry heaved. His mouth full of salt and copper and the burning crackle of ozone at the back of his throat.
For a moment, disoriented and dizzy, he thought it had all been a hallucination after all. Or some fractious dream visited upon him by his torn and tattered mind after he’d finally collapsed from exhaustion on the lab floor. That the entity truly had been just in his mind, a consequence of his refusal to rest until his work was done.
Then he felt the glass-cool fingers running through his hair, the warm hand rubbing at his back, heard the low murmurs of reassurance in a voice that was almost, almost human.
He spasmed as he tried to jerk away, hissing with the sharp sting of pins and needles dancing over every nerve. His limbs were heavy and clumsy, and he was crashing back to the cold floor under his own weight before he could even try and drag himself away. His breathing came in short, aching gasps as he tried to twist away, only managing to roll to his back to see the entity where it sat calmly looking down at him.
She had a face now. A solid, steady one that fit her in a way that made him think it must be her real one, though what that meant exactly he didn’t know. The glowing eyes had dimmed and shifted, more human looking with black pupils and white sclera. Button nose marked with silver-tarnish freckles that spread over her cheeks too. A mouth, with lips curled into an apologetic smile. Her hair, still shifting as if caught in a wind that wasn’t there, was still the bright white it’d been before, but the lighting of the locks had settled into faint crackles between the curls. Whatever she was, whatever she’d done to him, he could look at her without feeling like his mind might just crack in two.
“Wha-“ His voice cracked, painful and hoarse like he’d been screaming. Maybe he had been. Swallowing around the burn in his throat, he choked out a hissed, “What are you?”
Her head tilted in that curious slant again, more human features giving her a bright, youthful look as she peered down at him questioningly. “You summoned me, Little Gaffer, shouldn’t you know?”
*
Gaffer is a term used for a glass crafter, as well as light technicians for stage/movie productions.
I’m using it as the term for the person who creates a Clone, with the clone themselves being a Mirrorborn, and the person they are cloned from being called the clone’s Reflected.
Gaffer is probably a bit of a stretch for this, technically I think someone who makes mirrors would be called a Glazier (Glaziers are glassmakers) but I wasn’t vibing that as much. Besides I like the vibe of glass + light = mirror in a way.
Anyway, opening volley of a new AU where Tim ends up becoming like a warlock to Elle to get his loved ones back, while Elle is just having the time of her sorta eldritch little life watching this absolute mess of a human wreck shit and cause so much chaos even without the powers she starts giving him.
(Elle in this is both the God Queen of Clones/Mirrorborn as well as the Ancient of the Speedforce (which I’ve decided is called the Ever Onward in the Infinite Realms, because I literally can’t be stopped from trying to make normal DC things sound mystical because spooky Infinite Realms aesthetics haha)
Have a tiny bit more written for this, but don’t know how much I’ll end up writing for it with all the other projects I have currently lol, so if anyone is interested feel free to run with it as you so desire haha
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Midnight Pals: Whale tale
Daniel Kraus: Submitted for the approval of the midnight society, i call this the tale of the whale
Stephen King: sounds like a whale of a tale!
Kraus:
Kraus: yeah actually that's accurate
Kraus: it IS a whale of a tale if you think about it
Kraus: i'm gonna start using that
Kraus: its about a diver in seach of his dead father
Kraus: who gets swallowed by a whale
Kraus: which allows him to come to terms with things
Kraus: men would literally get eaten by a whale to avoid going to therapy
Kraus: so he gets eaten by a whale while he's looking for his father
King: looking for his father in a whale? haha who's his father, gepetto?
King: haha get it? cuz
Barker: steve shut up
Barker: you got lucky with that "whale of a tale" line, lightning's not gonna strike twice
King: hey clive that's not fair, you tell jokes all the time
Barker: yeah but mine are good
King: well gee
King: i guess i'm no good at whale jokes
King: more like a whaleFAIL
King: oh!!! and I'm back in the saddle!
Barker: no you're not steve
Kraus: so this guy gets eaten by a whale
Kraus: now he only has an hour to both resolve his childhood trauma and escape digestion
King: you know if i was swallowed by a whale, i think i could escape
King: i don't think it would be too hard
Kraus: oh you think you could escape from a whale? oh do you? how would you do that steve
King: i'd climb out the blowhole
King: i'm pretty sure that's how its done
Kraus: this isn't a cartoon steve!!
King: no no i'm pretty sure i saw it in a
King: uhh
King: documentary
Kraus: the inside of a whale is not just some big open space where the stomach connects to the blowhole!
Barker: no i'm pretty sure steve's right
Kraus: oh NOW you're on his side?
Barker: i'm always on the side of truth
Poe: clive don't be an instigator
Frank Belknap Long: hey i have a question
Long: is this vore?
Kraus:
Kraus:
Kraus: what?
Long: cuz i only like soft vore
Barker: fuckin coward
Dean Koontz: i don't like this story
Koontz: it makes me think about what if I got eaten by a whale!
Poe: daniel do you have anything more appropriate for dean
Kraus: i have this story about teddy bears
Poe: well that sounds lovely
Kraus: no
Kraus: it's not
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