Sorta sequel of this post (where Bruce is happy that Damian has totally and completely normal human friends). You don't have to read that one to get this one tho lol.
Slight Trigger Warning: minor description of injuries and blood, including injuries to ears and scalp. It's quick and not much detail on the injuries themselves, but I wanted to give a heads up.
Tim always thought his friend group was the most unhinged in the family.
Not anymore.
His friends at least had enough of a sense of self preservation to book it when Bruce caught them doing something they shouldn't and leveled them with A Look.
Tim's pretty sure Damian's friends call god a bitch to his face everyday and give him a wedgie in a Denny's parking at least twice a week. He's positive he saw them roast one of the League's S tier world ending threats to the point of tears last weekend. The footage was too badly corrupted to prove it, but he knows what he saw.
All of which to say, he's shouldn't be surprised when Bruce levels little Elle Nightingale and her cousin Billy Batson with his patented "You Are In So Much Trouble" BatDad Face (TM) and the little hellions just grin back at him, entirely unaffected. Shouldn't be but still is because holy fuck even Jason will still back off when Bruce levels him with that look. And these kids had the gaul to ask Bruce if they could go get ice cream after they were done here.
Bruce blinks first. It feels like an omen for the ends times.
Tim can't blame him though, you can’t look into the heart of insanity and chaos like that for too long without risking losing something in the process. Steph was right, they really are nightmare demons sent to feed on their fear and uncertainty.
Billy swipes a smear of blood away from his busted nose with the sleeve of his torn and dirty shirt. Elle's teeth are pink and red from blood - Tim isn't sure if it's better or worse that it's not her blood. Jon was bouncing between fussing over Damian - who Superboy had been mostly able to keep from joining the fight and thus probably saved a couple of lives - and casting worried looks at his two bloody friends as they stood lined up in front of Bruce. At least one of them had enough sense to be wary of that look.
Tim would say that Jon was the well behaved one of the bunch - and worryingly enough he might be - but he'd heard him yelling give em the chair at one of the two scrappers as he and Bruce came running over so he knows it's only the fact that a punch from even a baby Kryptonian would have killed a person that kept the littest Kent out of the fight rather than any idea that the fight itself was wrong. All four children look ruthlessly proud of each other.
The ones the hellions were fighting - a couple of guys Tim's age who had been stupid enough to try and bully Damian at all, let alone in front of his pack of feral raccoons - looked like they'd gone several rounds with Killer Croc before being thrown around by Bane and run over by a car. They deserved it- assholes - but they still looked rough.
One was bleeding from several bite wounds Elle had inflicted on him, earlobes a mess from where the little girl had torn his earrings out, both eyes blackened and swollen to the point he couldn't open them anymore. The other had a large red and bleeding bald spot from where Billy had ripped a good chunk of hair out, nose completely shattered- likely in retaliation for what had been done to Billy's - and elbow hanging at an odd angle. Tim's not sure which one of them had the chair - thankfully one of those fabric folding ones and not something more solid - broken over them, or which hellspawn had taken Jon's suggestion to heart, but either way he could see the twisted up remains of the item in question laying not too far away.
At least the EMTs were ushering the two weeping teens away into ambulances so they could get taken care of. Tim's pretty sure Elle and Billie would try and get a few more hits in otherwise and knowing them he doesn't doubt that at least one of the cops that had shown up on the scene would end up losing a finger or two in the process. Which normally Tim would be fine with - he has files on all of these guys and they deserve way worse than what a couple twelve year olds could do to them - but in this case he's already having a hard time convincing the officers that it's just a matter of some kids defending one of their friends from a couple of bullies.
Ugh. Some people just didn't understand children and it really showed. It was a public park, kids were gonna be kids. Just a normal childhood scrap. The real problem were the highschoolers who tried to start shit with a group of little kids.
Sure the hellions were feral and unhinged enough to be unbothered by Bruce trying to chide them about starting fights instead of getting an adult to help, but at the end of the day playground scuffles will happen and the kids were just defending themselves. Cops should be thankful that BL wasn't able to join them for the day or someone would have ended up shoved into a cooler or something.
Eh, whatever. He got them to drop the assault charges - which were ridiculous, Elle & Billie were normal twelve year olds getting into a fight, it wasn't like it was Damian with all his training and skills - and Bruce had given up on trying to be disapproving of them not reporting the attempted bullying to him instead of handling it themselves. Probably because at the end of the day he was a little proud of the little shits for defending Damian and standing up against some bullies. And really Tim was too. They might be vicious little hellspawns sent there to torment them all, but they were good kids at the end of the day and they cared about Damian enough to throw down with guys twice their size.
Tim pulled up a list of the nearest ice cream places on his phone, Bruce was totally going to cave on that front and even if he didn't Tim was willing to use his executive Big Brother privileges to get them ice cream anyway. He isn’t going to need to though. Jon had thrown his puppy dog eyes into the mix on that front and Tim knows from experience how much a kryptonian looking hopeful could get away with when it came to this family. Hell, Kon had probably taught his little brother that face for these exact kinds of situations because of how effective it was.
"I'm still going to have to tell Jazz about this." Bruce said as they shuffled off towards the restrooms to try and get everyone cleaned up, a parting shot to make up for his failure to cow them earlier.
"Please don't tell her! She’s gonna make us read articles about conflict resolution again!"
"B come on that's no fair! You said we did good not letting those assholes get away with their bullying shit!"
"Language!"
Huh, Tim thought with a grin. Maybe the little demons weren't as terrifyingly unstoppable as he thought.
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Troublesome Tangmere and 249 Squadron Reliable Rebecca!
In an ideal world, we could've had a story where Tangmere causes good old Sundrian Confusion and Delay and then promptly eats shit.
Rebecca as 249 Squadron wasn't my idea, but it's been ingrained into my head nonetheless. I like the idea of a Rebecca that spent most of her life in scrapyards and storage and then still coming out singing- quite literally! But the trauma of it is still very much there, just... lingering. I imagine 'What Rebecca Does' was one of those moments where her anxiety and self doubt got the better of her- she only spent a short while on rails, and while she did pull expresses like The Night Ferry back on the mainland, here on Sodor it seemed that everyone is much more.... experienced and worldly and cool, and most of all, they got modifications and rebuilds to work around their design flaws while Rebecca is still very much an unrebuilt bulleid pacific. Poor girl's not sure what she can really do, after all these years and with her mechanical problems. This isn't even getting into when she WAS in service- her family was fine, and quite loving actually- and the ex SR engines were a decent sort! Everyone else, however...
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Something that always breaks my heart is how during the House of Hades Nico is described as smiling and grinning actually pretty often, but later on in his pov he mentions that it's hard for him to do that, or really emote as a general.
Which means my poor most specialest little boy in the whole world Nico di Angelo was constantly going out of his way to mask and smile at the rest of The Seven even though he didn't know them basically at all.
And he had also just gone through literal hell while everybody except his sister was super rude to him the entire time.
And the whole time they are all just thinking about how he looks creepy when frowning but that they prefer that because his smile is even creepier.
They are all so mean to him whyyyyy
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I’m a straight guy and let me tell you, there is no way in hell that I would ever act around my friends or friend the way John and Paul act around each other. They were so clearly inside each other it’s insane that most mainstream people or journalists don’t see that
right?? i feel like the narratives are slowly changing (as we saw a bit with the reporting on now & then) and i do think once paul dies people will probably be more open about speculating. but truly it’s wild how dismissive people are about it when the more you learn about them, the more you HAVE to question it really - they were insane! straight men (especially in britain) may take the piss in that way about mates sometimes but err not THAT much 😭 really, i think you only need to look at john and paul post-break up and see the deep level of hurt and love there to realise that it went so much deeper.
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I feel that I don’t know enough about this to make this anything more than a joke, but potentially is Tim’s inability to age…Bart’s fault?
Like, the theory is that the rest of the Core Four are all lightning rods for Bart, right? So technically he has some control over their aging.
And Bart…Bart is forever giving off indications that he’s not too interested in growing up. Now I REALLY haven’t read that much of what’s come out recently, but I’ve read a good chunk of Young Justice 2019 and Bart was the ONLY one of the Core Four who wasn’t at least ATTEMPTING to try and show some ‘I’m over 18’ markers in recent(ish) appearances. Cassie and Tim have both made noises about going to university/being around people their age at university. Kon had a whole fake wife and kid over in Gemworld. But Bart’s just chilling.
Also last time Bart grew up to be an adult that was a very bad time for him and we would all like to forget it (RIP Flash!Bart) and he immediately deaged himself after that back to late teens with his friends.
So is the stickiness of the Core Four still defaulting to “seventeen-ish” when anyone isn’t paying attention, even though Cassie and Tim have been that age since at LEAST 2006/2007 and thus by any form of normal comic book time should be 20-21 now, due to Bart just…not wanting to deal with being an adult yet? He’s just a little guy! And if he’s still just a little guy so are his friends!
(Also nobody tell Kon about this theory because he will be really sad and they all went through quite a lot back in 2000 to let him age past 16, the idea he’s been age-frozen again is not something he needs on top of all his other traumas).
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Caught up to the fic!! Absolutely fascinated by all the queer/punk/poc history here, since I don't know much myself. Very sweet chapter as well.
Unrelated question - mostly - but why is it common fanon to depict Noir as the more scarred up of various spiderpeople? Naturally everyone has their fair share of fights, though the only we see sustaining any marks is Peter B and his misaligned nose. Personally, I've taken it as Noir Peter not healing as cleanly due to it being Spider God stuff over Weird Radioactive Healing Factor stuff. Thoughts?
thank you so much!! i’m glad you liked it, & hope the ending was satisfying for ya <3
short answer: hot
long answer, plus a map of my idea of noir’s scars: under readmore :)
i’m not a devout spidey comic/movie fan or a doctor. this is based on conjecture and minimal research!
when i came up with my unmasked noir ideas, i wasn’t influenced by fanon—i hadn’t seen any other fan art, not even when itsv came out. but i can think of a good few reasons that scarred noir is a popular headcanon: evidence of what he’s been through makes him feel more tangible/relatable, the visual difference enhances his thematic individuality as distinct from other spider-people (especially other Peter Parkers), self-consciousness can explain why he doesn’t take off his mask in itsv even around other spiders.
all perfectly valid and interesting reasons! but the first two reasons are doylist and the last one is missing a crucial question: why does he have scars? unless a wound is severe, gets infected, or gets lucky, it won’t usually scar. facial injuries especially need to be really bad to leave a mark. and of course most if not all other spider-people have the healing factor. so what gives??
i like the spider god’s curse influences healing factor idea; it opens up some nice angsty possibilities regarding an inability to Be “Fixed;” no matter how much he tries, he can’t erase/forget what’s happened to him. but i also enjoy the bandaging someone up after a fight genre of fic, and am annoyingly pedantic, so my personal working theory is that the healing factor is not a doctor with ten plus years of experience and an accurate understanding of human anatomy. when a bone really badly breaks, it has to be reset or it’ll heal wrong. to me, the healing factor doesn’t know what ‘right’ is, only ‘fast’ and ‘effective.’ it’s an accelerant, not a substitute for medicine.
so let’s establish the baseline. modern spideys either receive modern medical attention or the injury is superficial enough that they don’t require it. even poverty-stricken peter parkers get rushed to the hospital, because fictional doctors Don’t Care About The Money and/or peter is dolled up in spider gear and who’s going to ignore a visibly beat-up celebrity hero?? plus i honestly believed peter b’s nose was just genetics or smthn. my nose is misaligned and it’s never been broken to my knowledge
to compare, noir lives in 1933 and, far as i can tell, doesn’t rlly garner the same fame and respect from the public as modern spideys do. in the 30s, medicine was meh (they had x-rays but didn’t rlly consider radiation much of a threat, penicillin was still in its infancy, polio was a huge threat, etc) but was also, more importantly, far too expensive for most people suffering during the Great Depression. whatever treatment noir receives after a fight, if any, would look way different from ours. that means his healing factor, which can’t differentiate scars from normal skin or a misaligned bone from a whole one, would be inefficiently assisted or left alone. it would leave its history behind.
on the infectious disease side of things, it’s probably much easier for even noir to recover from less physical ailments like the flu and pneumonia—spider healing factor likely remembers and codes for immunity better than regular immune systems—but without modern drug therapies he’d still be worse for wear, ie internal scarring. mans would have a shorter-than-average parker lifespan if not for the pseudo-immortality of the Spider God
anyway. all this to say, here’s my personal map of parker’s scars. crop tank and daisy dukes to keep tumblr off my ass <3
(tbh this is more for my reference than anyone else’s, i’m sick of looking through my art of Just His Forearms to keep my details consistent, but maybe someone will find it interesting lol)
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