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writing-blog-iguess · 3 years

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Stories

Summery: Everyone has a life a past before they become someone else. Some people flaunt it and others keep their past to themselves. The boys discover something about their mom, and now all they want is to hear about what she was like before she married Bruce Wayne.

Warning: mistakes probably. Like one swear word.

A/N: This is more of an introduction more then anything. I want each story of Batmom with different people as there own chapter and not cramped into one big fic. This is also my first Batman fic so feedback with welcome! And let me know who you'd want to see!

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The second she walked into the manor, she took off her shoes with a sigh of relief. With the intent of a shower and some sleep, she eagerly made her way up the stairs. But luck wasn’t on her side when she heard Alfred call her name.

Sighing, she turned around and looked down as the butler walked into the hallway. “Yes Alfred?”

“I’m afraid the boys are in need of your assistance tonight,” he said, giving her a worried look. There were days where she wished she wasn’t a doctor. And long nights like tonight was one of them. But she wouldn’t change it even if she wanted to.

“Which one was hurt tonight?” she asked, as she walked down the stairs.

“Jason,” he answered, taking her coat. She gave him a smile as thanks. “But the others might need looking at as well.”

Heaving a sigh, she walked around Alfred and made her way to the Batcave. As she walked down the stairs, she heard her kids bickering over something. She didn’t have enough energy to care at the moment, so she tuned them out.

“Alright, who’s first?” she asked as she came closer to the med-bay area.

“Jason,” Bruce answered without looking up from the bat-computer. But he did take her hand and kissed the back of it when she walked past him.

“Thanks for putting me first Bruce,” Jason snarked.

“You’re the one that got shot.”

“In the shoulder!” he exclaimed. She gave a pointed look at Jason; he’s shoulders sagged and went to sit down. Nodding, she got to work as the boys continued to talk about their night of patrol.

“So, who’s the unfortunate soul tonight?” she asked, as she set up her supplies she needed.

“Joker and Harley,” Tim answered, sitting down in one of the other cots. His brothers soon followed, sighing in relief of finally sitting down.

Her hands stilled on Jason’s arm at the answer. No one seemed to notice though, all too preoccupied with their conversation. Taking a deep breath, she began to work on cleaning Jason’s wound.

“I can’t believe she got a shot in,” Jason grumbled, hissing at the sting on his arm. “I didn’t see her coming until it was too late. I should have seen it, but I don’t know what happened.”

“You underestimated her is what happened,” Bruce pointed out.

“I did not! I don’t know how I could have!” he exclaimed, pulling a face as she began stitching up the bullet wound. “She’s Joker's girl, it should have been easy.”

“But you’ve fought her before, Todd. You know what she’s capable of,” Damian mused.

“But still…”

“She’s more than just Joker’s girl,” she broke in, “and if that’s all you think about her, then you don’t know her.”

“And you do, Ma?” Jason asked, not seeing the warning look Bruce was giving him. He took his mother’s silence as an answer and continued, “that’s what she is to everyone in Gotham.”

“Well, then Gotham doesn’t know shit,” she huffed out, ignoring everyone's surprised looks. “And Gotham and everyone else seem to forget that Harley and the ‘villains of Gotham,’” she said that in a mocking tone. Jason winced as she tugged on the thread a little too harshly, but she didn’t pay much attention to it. “That they were people before becoming who they are.”

“Mom?” Tim called, realizing how sore the subject was for her. But she paid him no mind as she continued to stitch up Jason’s wound, and continued talking.

“And that some of them were victims. Sure, there are some who went down the bad path, I’ll give you that. But if it wasn’t for Joker,” she spat the name like it was a poison for her. And in some ways, it was. “Gotham wouldn’t be what it is today.”

“You can’t blame Joker for that, Mom. Gotham’s been always like this,” Dick pointed out.

“No, but I can.”

“But blaming the Joker for bringing out the villains is like blaming Batman.” Tim’s statement made her freeze as she just realized what she was talking about. She narrowed her eyes and finished off tying the stitches and stood.

“Ask Alfred if you need stitches or whatever, I’m going to bed.” With that, she ignored everyone’s, especially Bruce’s, worried gaze and left the cave.

“I’ve never seen Ummi so upset before,” Damian voiced.

“What’s wrong with her?” Jason asked, turning back to Bruce who was rubbing his face. “Bruce?”

“She knew Quinn before she became Harley,” Bruce answered, standing and making his way to the dressing rooms.

“Has to be more than that,” Dick mused, “she became heated about it.”

“That’s because she almost married Harley.”

“What?” came from all four boys, but Bruce was already gone.

A little while later, Bruce found her in an old room that used to be hers. Walking into the room, he sighed as he looked at the mess around the room. It must have been bad judging by the mess.

“Was I not worth it?” she asked, bringing Bruce’s attention to her. He found her curled up on the bed, and he could imagine she started crying after she destroyed her room. “Did I do something wrong for someone to leave me like that?”

“No, honey,” Bruce answered as he walked over to her. He bent down, maneuvered his hands underneath her knees and neck, and lifted her up. “You did nothing wrong.”

“Then why does it feel like it?” she sniffed, nestling her head in his neck as he walked out of the room and towards theirs.

“I wish I could tell you,” Bruce whispered. They’ve had this conversation occasionally. And he never knew what to say to make her feel better. But the day after, she was herself again and everything was okay.

Bruce understood the heartbreak of leaving someone behind, he understood how she felt loving someone only for them to leave. And if Bruce was honest, he was a little jealous that she still loved Harley after everything.

But he always squashed it, knowing she loved him just as much, if not more.

“I miss her,” she whispered, into his neck.

“I know.”

When he walked into their room, he set her down on the bed and moved towards the bathroom, getting the bath ready. As the tub was filling with water, Bruce moved back to the bedroom and rummaged around until he found your favourite pajama's.

After her bath, she curled into Bruce, lightly tracing shapes on his chest. Bruce ran his fingers through her hair and she leaned into his touch.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, “I wasn’t blaming you for what happened with Harley.”

“I know. But if I recall correctly, there was a time you did,” he said, and she winced burying her face into his shirt.

“I was angry and I took it out on the wrong person. I’m sorry,” she said as her mind went back to that day they had the fight.

“I know, and I��ve forgiven you for it.” Silence fell between the two of them, but it didn’t last long when the door was thrown open. She lifted your head to see Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian standing there.

“You were going to marry Harley Quinn?” Dick all but shouted in disbelief. She hummed, dropping her head back down. The boys rushed into the room and jumped on the bed, crowded the two of them. “But you loved Bruce!”

“That is a story for a different day,” she mumbled out.

“How’d you meet?” Tim asked instead of pushing for the story. “Are there anyone else you knew before they became villains?”

“Med school and yes.”

“Who?” Damien asked.

She squinted her eyes as she thought. “…most of them maybe?”

They gawked at her, waiting for her to elaborate. When it became apparent that she wasn’t, the four of them bombarded her with questions, all talking over her.

“Okay that’s enough,” Bruce voiced out, and they became quiet. She patted his chest, and moved around so she was looking at her sons.

“I used to work for Penguin in his club back in school, I needed help with an assignment, so I found Nygma. Ivy was a patient of mine when I started residency. Dent was a friend and so was Selina. I also went to school with Crane. I was friends with Nora Fries, that’s how I knew Mr. Freeze.”

“What about the Joker?” Jason asked.

“No,” she stated, voice firm. Everyone shared a look, confirming that their mother was not the biggest fan of the Joker. She softened a little and offered her a smile before saying, “it’s been a long night. How about, when I feel up for it, I’ll tell you all about my friendships?”

They lit up, each giving her a kiss and rushed out the door. Talking to one another as they tried to figure out which story they wanted to hear first.

“Are you sure you’re up for that?” Bruce asked, as she snuggled into him again. She let out a yawn and nodded.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” she answered. “I just wonder who they’re going to ask for first.”

#bruce wayne x reader #batman x reader #fem!reader #batfam #batfamily #bruce wayne imagines #batfamily imagine #bruce wayne #batman #jason todd #red hood #dick grayson #nightwing #alfred #tim drake #red robin #damian wayne #robin #adventures of batmom

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liquid-luck-00 · 3 years

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Where There Is Change

Overprotection

@maribat-bdbwm

First *** Previous *** Next

~~~~~~~~~~

One week.

One week without her brother is all it took to break her patience.

No, she didn’t break away from her story with the press release that happened literally two days after she started school.

No, what finally broke her was what the students did to her brother, specifically this group of five that were intentionally seeking out places she was that in order to talk about her family.

Sure, she understood why they talked about Damian, he is Gotham's Ice Prince, the person you do not want to get on the bad side of.

But moments that she wasn’t with him, people spoke awfully about him. And mostly about how he was born as a bastard child.

She pretty much assumes that when she’s not around they speak the same about her.

Both of them were conceived without his knowledge, until years later. Sure, it hurts to hear them talk about her dad like that.

But she also understands it to an extent.

Brucie Wayne, is an act he puts up. Brucie Wayne is a playboy the longer someone plays the playboy people, will come to the conclusion of him having several unknown children.

However, she also knows Brucie Wayne is a cover for her father, in the past twenty years or so since the time he pretty much became Batman, Brucie Wayne has been a cover. So much so that even the media plays into.

But what she can’t stand are the remarks her 'peers' make about her little brother, about all her siblings.

The remarks that, she is technically the older biological child. But that she still deserves a chair in the company. She is so mad that they are dismissing all of Tim's work he's put into the company. That they are dismissing her brothers just because she is the first-born biological child, that she should be the next C.E.O. People talk over him as if he isn’t there.

They talk about Jason, how he is the troubled child. That he ruins their father's name.

That Dick is just a novelty for Bruce. The first child he decide to adopt. That he’s no more than that, Bruce Wayne’s first ward.

She hates that they call Cassandra a basket case because she won’t talk.

Or how Duke is yet another charity case, simply because of his skin color.

They forget about her because she looks so American, so white, so European.

They forget that she is part Chinese, because she has such big blue eyes, fair skin, and dark black hair just like her father.

---

So back to school.

Damian was on assignment with the Teen Titans, so she was going to school alone. They said something about Damian getting an awful constant 103 fever, they didn’t want to risk anyone else to catch what he had.

So, she did what she usually did, she went outside like usual during lunch. When all of a sudden, the group of five kids in her year 'seemed' to be strolling past.

She thinks it’s still hasn’t sunk in that there’s a new Wayne. Or that they know but want to haze her. Because they are openly bashing her little brother.

"I’m sorry, but what did you just say." She stood up and looked at them.

"Well not that it’s any of your business, but Damian is such a menace, he is practically a terrorist." One of the boys started.

"Have you seen how angry he gets, I swear he could blow up the school, and he’ll still get let back in." A girl butt in.

"He’s already been expelled twice, but they keep letting him back in because he’s Bruce Wayne’s son." The final boy spoke rolling his eyes and she lost it.

She grabbed him, pulled him towards her, gave him a quick punch in the nose. Forcing him to reel back stumbling away from her.

"Let’s get one thing straight." She spoke, hands clenched in fists. "My baby brother isn’t a terrorist. He may be a menace, but he’s not a terrorist. Can any of you actually tell me the reasons why he got expelled."

Silence, pure silence was heard from the entire group.

"No, you can’t. Because like you said it’s none of your goddamn fucking business." At this point her French accent was slipping into her words, because she was getting really mad. She had to physically dig her nails into her palms to stop her magic from exploding.

"So why don’t you all just mind your own fucking business and maybe pay attention who you’re talking about, around who."

The entire group turned and ran, their tails between their legs and they scrambled to get away from her. She may have been known as the approachable Wayne between the two twins, but they messed with her brother. And they really didn’t know what they were talking about.

As soon as, the bell rang to end lunch her name came across the intercom. She grabbed her things and walked to the office knowing full well what was about to happen.

What she didn’t expect that out of all the people that would have been called the person who showed up was Jason.

If she had to cover the ever-growing grin on her face, or else the adults may have figured out that this was the wrong brother to call.

"We are so sorry to have called you today Mr. Todd-Wayne, but we have to discuss your sister’s behavior." The principal spoke as both of them sat down.

"Ok I'll hear you out, but after you explain what happened she will. And neither of you guys can interrupt the other got it. So, go." He pointed at the principle.

"Your sister has been accused of physical assault of another student."

"Is this true?" He turned to her.

"Yes." She answered.

"Why?" Jason asked as he rubbed his hands down his face.

She knows he has a shit eating grin that was slowly going to be spreading across his face, because his aura was almost giddy.

"You see they’ve not only been talking shit about Damian but Tim, Duke, Cass, Dick, and even you. If you want, I have several forms of video tape and audio proof if you’d like to see those."

"But let’s get back on point. We believe that you may have broken his nose."

"Okay, but I am not going to apologize, seeing as I was protecting my little brother, who is not here to defend himself."

She looked over to her brother and the ass had a shit eating grin plastered across his face.

"Why don’t I sign my sister out for the rest of the day, you know what, what about the whole

week, because I'm assuming suspension is an option?"

The principal however didn’t know how to react to Jason, so he absentmindedly pushed a stack of papers towards Jason and pointing to where he was to sign and initial. And then allowed them to leave.

"We’re not telling Bruce, are we?" She asked quietly.

"Not unless you want to deal with that right now?"

"No."

"Then let’s see how far we can get from Gotham."

"Yes please." She enthusiastically nodded her head, as they left the city.

~~~~~~~~~~

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#mbdbwm2021 #bio!dad bruce wayne #maribat #dc x miraculous #dc x mlb #miraculous x dc #mlb x dc #mdcu marinette #mdcu jason todd #mention of #mdcu damian wayne

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thebookwormfairy · 3 years

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Maribat Winx Club Part 3

Part 1

Part 2

Masterlist

Marinette *panicing*: This doesn't make any sense. How can we be family? I was born on Earth! My parents were born on Earth! I'm an Earthling!

Damian gently grabbing Marinette by the shoulder: Angel I know this is a difficult time for you right now, but we need to focus of the mission right now, okay? Let's grab the miraculous and get back to Alfea, then we can all freak out about you and Jason being related there. Okay, Angel?

Marinette: Okay

Jason: Okay! We can have a big freak out party together with your parents, Bruce, and Alfred. Can't forget the brothers and our friends either! We can all have a mental breakdown together!

Marinette: Sounds fun!

Jason went over the the chest and opens it revealing a pair of red and black Polk a dot earrings

Jason: It looks like the Ladybug earrings. Let's head home guys.

As the fairies and specialists press the buttons to head home they all had one thought in their minds

If Marinette and Jason were family what did that mean for their quest for the Miraculous?

After a nice long freak out session between everybody over the apparent relation between Jason and Marinette they gathered in Ms. Faragonda's office to tell her what they had learned on Miracul

Faragonda: Then it seems what I feared has come to pass. I must call Bruce, Alfred, and the rest of the old Miraculous holders

Jason: Wait why?

Marinette: You used to be a Miraculous holder?

Faragonda: all questions will be answered in due time once everybody is here

Faragonda sent out the call to the surviving ex miraculous holders who came right away

Alfred, Fu, and Mariam gathered in Faragonda's office along with Bruce and Jon's dad Clark who was in charge of the Justice League, a group that formed to keep peace in the magix dimensions after the fall of Miracul

Faragonda: Thank you for joining us. As you know the Miraculous have resurfaced and with them the Dark Coven

Fu: We have heard of the attacks we have also heard of the brave students who are working the gather them. *Fu gestures the the young fairies and specialists* I assume these are those brave students

Dick raising his hand: I'm actually a teacher

Alfred: Yes Master Dick and we're all very proud of you

Dick now resembles and happy golden retriever

Faragonda: Yes these are the young people who have been gathering the Miraculous. So far they've found 5 Miraculous, the Fox, the Turtle, the Rabbit, the Mouse, and most importantly the Ladybug

Mariam: That's wonderful! If only we had the Black Cat and a member of the royal family then we could use them to pull the rest of the Miraculous to them

Faragonda: We might have 2 members of the royal family with us in this room. Jason and Marinette can you please stand up here with me

Jason and Marinette stood side by side in front of the crowd of adults

Faragonda: We've been working under the assumption that Jason was just a lucky citizen of Miracul that was able to escape it's destruction, but the Miraculous call out to him. And Marinette gained her Enchantix by saving Jason's life that means their family. I've had this feeling for a long time. Look closely at these two, who do they remind you of?

Alfred was nodding his head looking at the two as if he's seeing them in a new light

Miriam gasped, covering her mouth and tears weld up in her eyes

Fu was the one to put everybody thoughts into words

Fu: They look so much like Queen Clarisse and King Roland

Faragonda: We've been living under the assumption that the Dark Ones were smart enough to get rid of the royal heirs before the attack, but what if they weren't. What if young Prince Jason took his sister Princess Marinette to the portal room and was able to escape the planet but got separated along the way. One ending up in Gotham the other on Earth.

Alfred: That would explain a lot. When Master Jason first joined us at the Manor he use to have terrible nightmares about failing to protect somebody

Fu: To bad we don't also have the ring of the Black Cat then they could call forth the rest of the Miraculous using the Miraculous box

Miriam: But the box was lost along with Miracul

Faragonda: But we might be able to find it if we also had the Black Cat

Marinette: Is the Ring of of Black Cat black with a green paw print on it?

Fu: Yes it is. How did you know that Marinette?

Marinette was hesitant, but the voice inside her head said it was alright to show them the ring

Marinette reaching into her pocket: Last year during our final exam I was assigned Miracul as the dead planet I had to bring back. During the test i head a voice call me into a cave where I found this. The voice told me to keep it hidden and not to let anybody know that I had it

Marinette pulled out the ring from her pocket showing it to the people in the room

Fu: That is indeed the Black Cat Miraculous

Jason: Why didn't you tell us about it soon Marinette?

Marinette: I was scared what it meant if the Miraculous was really calling to me as well. If that means my parents weren't really my parents. If that somehow changed my relationship with them.

Fu walked over to the girl that reminded him so much of his dear friends and put a hand on her shoulder

Fu: Marinette I may not know you or your family, but if your parents took you in and raised you for the last 16 years then you finding out that you are adopted will have no change on the relationship you have with them. Unless you let it effect it

Faragonda: It is time for you two to claim you birthright as the wielders of the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous

Jason and Marinette stared at eachother thinking over what Faragonda had just said

Marinette: But what if you're wrong? Didn't you say that anybody who wasn't the royal family or the Dark Coven would die if they but on the Miraculous

Faragonda: I'm not wrong. I've already seen you use the power of the Black Cat once before during the Scarecrow's attack on the school

Jason grabbing the Ladybug earrings: I'm in if you are Pixie Pop

Marinette tightened her grip on the ring: Let's do it or die trying

Adrien: Wow wow wow, there is no reason for either of you to die

Damian: Yeah I have to agree with Agreste let's try to not kill my girlfriend, Todd.

Jason with one earring already in: Yeah yeah yeah, don't worry Demon Spawn. I'm not going to lose my sister again.

As Jason slipped the last earring onto his ear and Marinette place the ring on her finger to balls of light came put of the jewelry and floated in front of the reunited siblings

The one in front of Jason formed into a ladybug looking creature and the one in front of Marinette formed into what looked like a small cat

Plagg stretching: Aahg finally! You know kid you could have put my miraculous on a long time ago. Your my kitten you got to get a little bit more curious then that

Marinette: Oh I'm sorry...

Plagg: Plagg Kwami of Destruction you got any cheese?

Marinette: Not on me but I'm sure we can go to the kitchen after this

Plagg: It'll have to do

Plagg flew over Marinette and landing on her head and looked every bit like an old house cat lounging on their owner

While this was happening Jason was meeting his own Kwami

Tikki: Hello Jason! I'm Tikki the kwami of creation! I remember you when you were just a little boy! You used to love chasing us around!

Jason: I remember you! You were my mom's kwami!

Tikki: Clarisse was a great Ladybug, but I know you'll do her proud!

Bruce didn't want to interrupt the found family's moment but they need to get this meeting back on track

Bruce: Since Jason and Marinette can wield the Miraculous does that mean they can summon the rest of the Miraculous right now

Fu shook his head: They would need the Miraculous box to do that and sadly we know for certain is in the hands of the Dark Coven

Marinette: But we can choose new wielders of the Miraculous right?

Alfred: That is correct

Jason: But we don't have enough Miraculous for everyone

Alya: Don't worry about that!

Rose: Yeah we all have Enchantix

Alix: This Dark Coven members have no chance against us in those forms

Juleka nodded her head in agreement

Marinette: Then let's give them to the Specialists. I love you guys but you don't have the same protections as the fairies. You'll be safer with the Miraculous

Jon: You guys don't have to worry about us we're Specialist. We are train to go into dangerous situations like this

The other boys go to agree with Jon, but Jason interrupts them

Jason: She's right boys, but we'll need to find 1 more so each of you can get one

Fu: If you two transform using the miraculous you'll be able to focus on a certain Miraculous and track it. I suggest the Dragon Miraculous it's one of the most powerful, besides the Cat and Ladybug

Jason: Let's do this Marinette

Marinette: Let's find that Miraculous

Tikki: Great! Jason all you have to do is say Spots On

Plagg: Kitten all you have to say is claws out

Jason: Tikki Spots On!

Marinette: Plagg Claws Out!

Jason now work what looked like the classic prince outfit with a red and black color scheme

While Marinette wore a tea length Princess Dress with a Black and Green color scheme with black cat ears on top of her head and black lace fingerless gloves covering her palms

Damian stared at his stunning girlfriend

Adrien was watching him with a smug smile

Adrien: Damian you might want to wipe that dwell off your chin

Damian quickly wiped his face only to find no dwell

Damian glaring at Adrien: Shut Up!

Jon: Don't tell him to shut up

Adrien: Yeah don't tell me to shut up

Marinette: I got it! It's like I can see the Miraculous itself!

Jason: Yeah it's on Salerios hidden in the royal garden

Clark: The League will call a head to the King and get him to allow us access

Bruce: We leave in an hour

And before the day was up the fairies and the Specialists had the Dragon Miraculous in their hands

Jason: Awesome with the Miraculous we have and you fairies' Enchantix the Dark Coven ont stand a chance

Tikki: And if you get the rest of the Miraculous and the Miraculous Box we can restore Miracul to it's former glory

Adrien: That'll mean you'll be a real life princess Marinette

Alya: With all the responsibilities that comes with it!

Alix: Like meetings with royals fron other planets and-

As her friends discussed Marinette's future everything really hit Marinette

It finally sunk in that her whole life was a lie

What if she wouldn't be able to see her parents any more

What if she couldn't be with Damian any more

What if she destroyed her planet like the Dark Coven did

Marinette: Hey guys I'm going to turn in for the day

Damian frowning: Are you okay Angel?

Marinette: Yeah I just need some rest after this hectic day

Jason: Are you sure Pixie Pop?

Marinette: Yeah I'm sure Goodnight

When Marinette went to her room she didn't feel any better

She knew what she had to do so she wrote a note to let her friends knew she was okay and headed to the portal room

Marinette stood in front of her parents backery gathering courage for what she was about to do

Tom and Sabine was closing for the night when their daughter rushed into the store

Tom: Marinette?

Sabine: What are you doing here sweetheart

Marinette couldn't help it and blurted out what she had learned

Marinette: I know I'm adopted!

@t1dwarrior-of-earth @clumsy-owl-4178 @vgirl-10123 @aestheticnpoetic @toodaloo-kangaroo @animegirlweeb @k-poplunardreams @our-preciousss @razzledazzle247 @justafanwarrior @kanamexzeroyaoifangirl @eve-v0lution @fusser90 @dast218

#maribat #daminette #damian x marinette #big brother Jason #winx club au #winx club

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repentantsky · 3 years

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5 Companies That Have Too Much Hype Around Them

Look, we all love our favorite games with a passion, and to an extent that’s fine, but when that passion becomes obsession and that obsession becomes forgetting our own moral compass for the sake of entertainment, it does feel like it’s gone too far. It’s one thing to love what a company releases, it’s completely another to ignore every problem they’ve ever had. Not all of the companies on this list have done horribly un-ethical things, but they’ve at least been anti-consumer, and the fact that people don’t question that enough has led to them sometimes, making horrible mistakes. I am RepentantSky, I love making lists that trash on things that are popular, and these are 5 companies, that have too much hype around them.

5. Nintendo

Already I can hear people getting angry, and in a way I get it. Nintendo is for many people the place where they either begin to play games, or the place they go to keep on playing them when everything else let’s them down, and of course, they put an end to the flipping video game crash of 1983, and no one else will ever be able to claim that from them. That’s all wonderful, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be critical of them. I’ve talked about a number of things they’ve done wrong before, so let me quickly run down the list of some of their anti-consumer practices. They, charge too much for remasters and ports, they don’t drop prices in games, they used to charge for fixing Joy-Cons and now completely deny it’s a problem for legal reasons, despite everyone pretty much having experienced drift, they haven’t been good at getting stock for their items in at least 20 years, and oh yeah, they sell all the content for a remake for $115 on the 3DS, the system and the fans that helped them get by while the Wii U was massively underperforming, all while handing owners of the, at the time, unproven Switch, free content. Nintendo has a tendency to still think like a toy company, and they even used that idea to present the Nintendo Entertainment System as a toy instead of a console when they first game to the West with it, but they aren’t a toy company, their a gaming company that also sells toys, just like everyone else. I get they’ve done amazing things, I own over 150 physical handheld games from them, and a ton of digital games besides, but when they start charging twice what they are worth for SD cards, while releasing games that absolutely won’t fit on the limited space of the Switch, and they simply don’t care when costumers complain, it’s time to at least question their motives.

4. Bethesda

Boy I used to really rip on this company back when I posted lists on Facebook, but I haven’t done it in a while, so let’s do it again. Bethesda has absolutely spent at least the last 10 years lying to people, Todd Howard, has become famous for it, but I think I might have been the only person who wasn’t shocked when Fallout 76 was the disaster that it was. There were so many things wrong with that game, that I don’t even have time to go over every little thing, but lying, you know the thing that will get another company on this list very soon, was a big thing they did with the game. They promised at one point that they weren’t ever going to charge for items in the game that gave in-game benefits, and they did, allowing ammo and other items to be bought with real money for a time, they promised new, specialized servers if you paid for a yearly service that was way too expensive, and that wasn’t true because people found proof of things missing from what would have been a freshly made, private server, and there’s no excuse for that, games in early access do that correctly, and they aren’t, at least supposedly, even finished yet. I wish I could say that’s all they’ve done, but they also bullied an indie developer over their game Prey, a game they may have bullied the original developer for so they could get cheaper, but we’ll never know because they refused to comment on that when asked, they also refused to update their outdated game engine for years, which caused something they spent over a decade fixing, games releasing with glitches, some of them game breaking. Yet somehow, they have such a fan base that those who love their games will claim the glitches are just part of the charm. That kind of fierce loyalty led to Fallout 76, and even though we make jokes about it even now, the horse DLC from way back in the day, was an indication of everything they’ve done, including trying to charge for mods made for free, meant to be consumed for free, twice. Bethesda is a bad company and they do not care.

3. Activision/Blizzard

You know one of the worst things Nintendo does that I didn’t really mention directly in the first entry, is limit the amount of time a product is available, instead of just letting it be there for consumption as long as it’s selling (that was what the toy company reference was about if it wasn’t clear). However, Activision/Blizzard are the Kings of doing this, as they not only limited things while they were in control of Destiny 2 to the point where you pretty much had to use real money to get everything, and never mind everything else they did to it, because we’d be here all day going through it all, but they also don’t support games as a service titles long enough for dedicated fans. Crash Team Racing Nitro fueled, is a prime example of this. People weren’t done with that game, and when fans thought for even a split second that an update was going to come to fix an issue, their hype (mine to) was so explosive, it was almost like we were getting a new game, but then nothing happened, because they didn’t care. A lot of companies that do yearly release titles as a service have this problem and nothing exemplified that more for Activision, than Skylanders, a series originally made off the back of Spyro, who didn’t even wait for a year to release new games, as technically between October 21st and November 20th of the year the first game came out, they released three of them, and I’m not even kidding. Two of them, were mobile games! You might have thought I was going to go after Call of Duty, for this, but that horse has been beaten to ground, somehow, more than Skylanders was. They also, for whatever reason, released each expansion on different generations console generations, at different months throughout Fall, like somehow the season of Fall, they needed a release every month, if not two, and so off they went. I didn’t even get into Blizzard, but all I need to say is “Blitzchung” and all the memories will likely come flooding back. There’s also the fact that in two separate years, after gaining massive profits, they dropped hundreds of employees, and hired more than they’d let go, but I guess that doesn’t really matter to some of you, because when they did it this year, with so little warning, most employees found out via the news articles about it, but we all made such a little stink this time around, it didn’t create any media buzz, so I guess that doesn’t matter, you’d all rather play flipping World of Warcraft, like better MMO’s don’t exist.

2. CD Projekt Red

I know this one comes off a little more fresh in the mind, and they technically only lied about one game, but man, what a series of lies it was. Also, let’s be honest, one major game, does not a great developer always make. CDPR’s previous two Witcher games did exactly what the author of the books thought they would, and that was almost nothing in terms of making a serious impact, and the reason is, they are kind of bad. They aren’t the worst games out there, but there is a good reason why The Witcher 1 and 2 haven’t been ported and/or remastered, despite how important they are to the story of Witcher 3, and that’s because they both suck. Cyperpunk 2077, was in a lot of ways, them just going back to being the developer they were before, the BIG ONE happened. They lied about nearly everything in regards to the game, including how the main platforms where consumers were going to buy it, were actually running well. I made those references to Witcher 1 and 2 for a reason, although if I’m being honest, they actually look better than Cyberpunk did on day 0, and that’s completely unacceptable. The budget for CDPR was basically nothing for Witcher 1 and 2 combined to what Cyberpunk got, but they were so focused on the PC versions because PC ran the game better, somehow (like maybe because they didn’t try with consoles) and they missed glitches that were so bad, the game felt like it was still in beta, if not alpha upon release. The fact that they’ve only released eleven games in twenty-three years, and only two of them didn’t have The Witcher on them, should have told us all we need to know, and yet the game, even after returns, which was another massive screw-job that led to Cyberpunk being removed from the PlayStation store, still sold Sixteen million units, all because of hype, and because apparently, some people don’t care if they’re lied to. Do you want to know what the other game they released is besides a Witcher title? It was flipping Saints Row 2, a fun game, but also one that’s too goofy for it’s own good, and yet suddenly makes Cyberpunk’s release, make sense, because it was all a massive joke, and a parody of good, well running, open world games. CDPR needs to seriously do something, anything different, and never release a game in this poor of a state ever again.

1. Ubisoft

I put Ubisoft at number one for a damn good reason, and that reason is, that everyone seems to hate the company, but loves their games, and I don’t know why. They haven’t been the overall worst company on this list, although they are pretty bad, but the major problem they have, and have had for at least a decade is that none of their games have any identity, they are literally all the same game, with different coats of paint. Sure, an occasional gem sneaks through like Assassin’s Creed IV, but all of the rest of their games have the same visual style (although ACII does seem to be the base for which they create their art let’s be honest), the shooting mechanics they have in all the games that have guns, all feel exactly the same, which is something even Call of Duty manages to avoid most years (guess I took a shot at them anyways) and yet somehow, someway, I keep seeing people getting excited for their releases, and it doesn’t make any sense. Sure, they throw a celebrity actor in from time to time, and the artistic style they use does look pretty cool, but everything is always the same with them, every single time, no matter what it is, and they still keep making money. It doesn’t really make sense either, because a lot of developers do make games that are very similar feeling, see the Life is Strange team or much as well all loved them, Telltale Games, but at least those titles told extremely interesting stories, and developed their mechanics at least a little, which is something most companies do just on principal, but not Ubisoft. They throw out a few Tom Clancy games every time they talk about what their releasing, the Trials and AC games are still mostly a yearly experience, and I’ll say it again, their entire list of releases since at least 2013, the year the previous generation kicked off, have pretty much all been the same. It would be nice if they made more games like Child of Light, but despite the fact that their games will likely never be as popular as Call of Duty, they keep churning out same-y shooters hoping that one day, maybe just one day, they’ll create their own CoD, and it’s just not gonna happen. The saddest part of all is that when they announce something different, something fans have wanted for years, we get The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake, which was literally delayed because fans said they wouldn’t buy it unless some actual effort was put into making it, why is this company so popular that it can keep doing this, someone please explain it to me.

And that’s my list, can you think of any other companies that are too hyped? Let me know in the notes below, hit me up with a follow if you like my content, and give me a reblog, I’d really appreciate it. Have a wonderful life!

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vikingpoteto · 3 years

Text

we don’t have to dance (to the beat of their songs)

Chapter 6 on AO3

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Relationships: (Gen) Tim Drake & Jason Todd

Tags: Battle for the Cowl, Alternate Canon, Adopted Sibling Relationship, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Mental Health Issues, Past Child Neglect, Domestic Fluff, Canon is not valid I am, and I want them to be friends goddamnit

Summary: In the middle of their battle, Jason asks Tim to leave the nest and be his Robin. Tim decides it's not a bad idea, after all.

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Normalcy.

Tim doesn’t quite know what that concept entails. Once, it meant taking care of himself in a big house, making sure no one knew how much time he actually spent alone. Another time, it meant solving problems, training hard and answering questions, juggling a double life. Then, leading a team of people who trusted him and whom he failed time and time again. Finally, for a brief period of time, normalcy was running against time to solve an impossible puzzle and being a triple agent.

And now… now he isn’t sure anymore.

It’s a sunny Saturday morning when he wakes up and squints at the window. He wonders how beaten he must’ve been to forget to close the blinds. He scratches his belly and sniffles because less than a few hours ago Ivy freaking bombed a warehouse with allergenic pollen, which was really uncool of her. She didn’t even bother to give them a heads up. She did apologize and gave them an antidote before they parted ways, but… still. Tim wonders if it was less effective on him because… you know.

He lifts his shirt enough to check on the scar. It’s healing well, in spite of everything. He doesn’t bother changing out of his sleeping clothes before going upstairs. Judging by the sun outside, it can’t be later than 11 am, which means…

Ah, yes. Just like he expected: normalcy now means getting out of bed late in the weekend and being greeted by the strong scent of tea, because Jason is a heathen. When Tim stumbles his way to the kitchen, he finds the now familiar sight of Jason in his favorite green hoodie, a mug of tea in his hand, and his nose buried in a heavy looking novel.

“Morning,” Tim mumbles, already searching the cabinets for coffee.

“Food,” Jason orders in lieu of a greeting.

Tim mouths the word food while pulling a face, but obediently grabs a piece of toast from the table. Bickering with Jason over mundane things is part of his routine now, but there are certain things the older boy is absolutely inflexible about. Part of normalcy now means knowing Jason will leave food for Tim and fighting him on whether he wants to eat is pointless. Tim bites into the toast as he prepares his coffee.

“Ivy’s thing worked for you?” Jason asks without raising his gaze from his book.

“Hm-hum,” Tim nods. He’s still sniffling, but it’s true that he felt instantaneous relief when he swallowed the antidote last night. “You good too?”

“Yeah. Still, I can’t believe you just took it when she handed it to you,” Jason puts down his book and glares at Tim.

Tim sits on the counter and shrugs. “If she wanted to kill us, she could’ve left us coughing our lungs out like the rest of the guys in the warehouse.”

“You have trust issues in the most fucked up way, kid.”

“Hey, I happen to trust people who deserve trust,” Tim protests. “It’s not like I would take something from the Penguin. Ivy is pretty chill if you’re not littering or dumping waste in rivers.”

“You have a crush on her or something?” Jason teases.

Tim rolls his eyes but focuses on chewing his toast rather than giving him an answer. Jason takes that as he wants, and snickers, like the idiot he is.

This is normalcy now. Having breakfast in the old kitchen and talking about mundane crap - or at least mundane for them - and it feels… Odd. Tim can’t quite explain it. It isn’t like eating alone in Drake manor. It isn’t like making a mess in Titans Tower - the closest place he ever had to a home - because even there he felt like he had to set an example somehow, to keep everyone in check. It isn’t like awkwardly joining Alfred in the morning, still feeling like Bruce only thought he had to adopt him considering the circumstances.

All in all, this new normalcy doesn’t feel like any Tim had felt before. He doesn’t dislike it.

“I’m probably going to finish the adjustments to your computer system today,” Tim informs him. “I can’t believe we’re finally leaving the stone age.”

“Shut up,” Jason tosses another piece of toast at him. “Also you can stop calling it mine. I hate it and I don’t know how to use it after everything you did to it. The computer is all yours.”

Tim catches the toast and grins around his first bite. “Ooh, look at me, I’m Red Hood, I’m tough and scary, but technology is cursed, Alan Turing was a witch-”

Jason stands. Tim is sure he’s about to either mess up his hair or put Tim in a headlock until he begs for forgiveness, even though he can see the hint of a smile twisting Jason’s lips upwards. Before a wrestling match starts, however, Jason freezes.

“Do you hear that?” he whispers.

Tim listens. He can hear nothing other than distant sirens. Burnley isn’t one of the worst districts in Gotham, but they’re too close to Crime Alley. These streets don’t get a lot of traffic. Not this early in the day, anyway.

Rather than explaining himself, Jason visibly shifts into Red Hood: his shoulders square up and he sets his jaw in a challenging scowl.

“Someone just parked on our driveway.”

Tim’s eyes widen. Could it be that they’ve been found out already? He made sure that the henchmen they got were too distracted by Ivy to notice them, but perhaps he had missed something. Part of him wants to go upstairs and grab his staff - even if that would be a stupid thing to do because he can’t exactly fight Dick into forgetting he lied to him.

Tim follows Jason to the entrance as he is, in his stupid oversized Superboy sweater and with toast crumbles all over his pants. He hadn’t even had his coffee. He peeks through the boards on the window and his stomach drops.

“It isn’t Dick,” he says. “It’s worse.”

Jason reads the worry in Tim’s eyes and lets out a curse. Technically, all the doors to the house are sealed. The only entrance is a block away and it leads to the basement/Red Hood bunker. Jason, however, seems to forget that and grabs the door handle angrily. Tim cringes when he hears the sound of frail wood being ripped because it means Jason’s strength is out of control - which means he’s getting near pit rage.

“How the fuck did you find us?” he barks from the porch.

Barbara Gordon is still adjusting herself in her wheelchair. The icy glare she gives Jason shows that she isn’t impressed by his fury.

Foreseeing disaster, Tim rushes out to put himself between Jason and Barbara. “It’s fine, let me talk to her!”

Jason glares at him. Although there’s a prominent vein pulsing on his brow and there’s definitely a hint of green in his eyes, he grits his teeth and stops. Tim sighs in relief before turning to Babs:

“Damian saw us, didn’t he?” he asks.

“What the hell does the brat have to do with this?” Jason hisses.

“Logic,” Tim shrugs. “I’ve been taking care of our digital trail. If Babs knows about us, it means one of the heroes under her watch saw us. Cass is in Hong Kong. Steph and Dick would’ve confronted us right away. The only option left is Damian.”

Jason groans and his eyes have mostly returned to their usual shade of brown. Tim had somehow annoyed him into calming down, which is a skill he’s getting better at every day. Tim smiles a little.

“Well,” Barbara says, her voice sharp. “You thought no one was going to notice two extra vigilantes running around?”

“Not forever, no,” Tim admits, trying to sound apologetic. "We wanted to be left on our own for as long as we could, though. We don’t need external interference.”

At that, Barbara looks scandalized. “Absolutely wrong. Get me a freaking ramp or get down here, Timothy, I’m going to beat the crap out of you.”

Jason lets out an annoyed huff, to which Tim glares at him. He has no business getting mad at Barbara for threatening them when he promises to beat Tim up at least three times a day. Five, if it’s not a school day.

“Why don’t we postpone the violence,” Tim suggests, his eyes not leaving Jason’s, “and just… have a chat? Inside? Jason just made tea.”

An annoyed grunt is all the response Jason gives him before making his way back inside. He doesn’t slam the door behind him, which is as good as a yes. Tim rolls his eyes before climbing down the steps to help Barbara up the porch.

“By the way, how did you find our address?” he asks.

“Tim, please,” she huffs. “After I saw the footage from Damian’s bodycam, all I had to do was track your online footprint. You think I couldn’t notice the upgrades you’ve been making?”

That’s fair, and Tim should’ve predicted that possibility. Granted, if no one had seen them, Barbara wouldn’t know there was something to track.

He pushes her wheelchair to the living room where Jason is waiting for them. The older boy is sitting on their crappy couch with his knees spread out and his fingers steepled. It would’ve been an impressive crime lord pose to welcome someone if his green hoodie wasn’t sprinkled with toast crumbs.

Not that Barbara is that easy to intimidate.

“So what the hell happened?” She demands. “You left that night and went to meet the guy that almost killed you and two of your brothers?”

That stings. Barbara wasn’t there that night. Tim wonders if things would’ve been any different if she had been. Would she have listened to his theory or just called him crazy as Dick and Cassie had?

Well. All in all, he knew Barbara would always be there for Dick first. He never blamed her for that, because her partnership with Dick was far deeper than any impact Tim could’ve made in her life. He takes a seat by Jason’s side, farther from her.

“Damian also tried to kill me,” Tim reminds her. “And Dick fired me right after Jason offered me a job. Between the attempted murder and no job, and the same but with a gig...”

She takes off her glasses and pinches the bridge of her nose.

“That freaking idiot,” she mutters to herself. Then, raising her gaze to meet Tim’s: “He didn’t mean to fire you.”

Tim clenches his teeth. “It sure seemed like it when I woke up and saw Damian wearing my old costume,” he snaps.

He feels Jason whipping his head towards him, and he curses himself. He had never revealed the gritty details of his dismissal for a reason. He reminds himself that Dick gave him Robin and it was his right to take it away, he has no reason to be this angry. That only serves to make him more bitter, though.

“I’m not saying Dick wasn’t stupid,” Barbara continues, her brow furrowing. “I already had some words with him about it. It doesn’t mean it was okay for you to just vanish for months, Tim. And then you’re back and you don’t talk to anyone. Not even Steph? Me?”

“Oh, fuck right off,” Jason snaps.

Barbara goes stiff. Tim groans, because now he has to push his anger further away to be able to stop the two of them. Before he can say anything, Jason continues:

“You’re talking as if I fucking kidnapped him. You know damn well how capable he is,” he barks. “The kid made a choice. I swear to fuck, everyone‘s a critic…”

Barbara opens her mouth but closes it again without saying anything. She presses her lips into a tight line. It isn’t often you see Oracle at a loss for words. For the first time, she looks at Jason without any animosity, her thoughts bare in her eyes. Unlike the boys, Barbara doesn’t play games. She doesn’t hide her emotions on purpose. The longing in her eyes is almost palpable, as though she’s seeing a dear relative she lost a long time ago, and she can’t reach them.

“What are you two thinking?” She asks. “What are you doing?”

“What we do best,” Tim says simply. “Vigilante work.”

“You told Dick you retired,” Barbara points out. “Then you ghosted him. He keeps waiting for you to come back.”

“He likes to do that,” Jason says. Now his voice is barely a whisper. “He says he’ll be there if you need him. Who says we need him, though?”

Barbara hesitates. “I told… Never mind. Just… I’m glad you’re back, Tim. And I’m glad you’re not dead again, Jason.”

Tim smiles. Jason looks like he wants to glance around to make sure she’s not talking to someone else. When it becomes clear she isn’t, he somehow looks even more uncomfortable.

“So,” he starts. “What now?”

“We fight for Tim’s custody, obviously,” Barbara smiles.

The peaceful moment ends when Tim and Jason start protesting out loud over one another. Barbara giggles at the cacophony of half-words, something along the lines of fuck off, not a child get your own damn kid responsible for myself-

“I’m joking!” She shouts to be heard over their complaints. “Jesus, you boys get riled up so easily.”

“I’m not a boy,” Tim and Jason say at the same time.

They glare at each other. Barbara rolls her eyes.

“Now,” she continues as though they didn’t interrupt her, “let me see your work, Tim. I’m going to give you guys a free upgrade.”

“Like hell you are,” Jason says. “How do we know you’re not spying on us for Dick?”

She arches an eyebrow. “Funny. I thought you two were fighting rogues, not Batman. Why would Dick want to spy on you?”

“Because he’s a meddler and he doesn’t trust me,” Jason states as though it’s a fact.

“To be fair, you did try to kill Tim. And Damian. And Dick,” she retorts. Before Jason can say anything back, she raises a hand to ask for patience. “It doesn’t matter to me, though. Barbara Gordon is Dick Grayson’s best friend and partner. Oracle, however, is an ally to anyone trying to protect Gotham. I’ll help you two like I help Batman, the Birds of Prey, and even Batgirl.”

Jason frowns. “I thought Cassandra was in Hong Kong.”

“Well,” Tim scratches his own nape, feeling suddenly guilty. “Actually… there might be a new Batgirl in town.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t trying to hide it!” Tim says. “I swear it just slipped my mind with everything else I had to report!”

Jason looks like he wants to grab a cushion and smother Tim to death. Before he can do as much, Barbara clears her throat loudly and says:

“Anyway… Support. I don’t talk about the vigilantes under my watch. Not to Batgirl. Not to Batman.”

Jason crosses his arms and leans back against the couch, his brow furrowed. Tim fights the urge to pat away the crumbs from his hoodie and waits patiently. Technically, this is Jason’s operation and he’s the one calling the shots. Tim has his own opinions, but in the end, a sidekick is supposed to follow orders.

Then Jason turns to Tim. “Replacement?”

He… does he want Tim’s opinion?

“I trust Barbara,” Tim says without hesitation. “And having Oracle’s help is going to be a game-changer.”

Jason considers that for a moment. It’s clear that he isn’t happy about the conclusions he’s drawing but, in the end, he sighs in defeat.

“Fine,” Jason says. “But if you tattle about what we’re doing, you’re gonna regret it.”

“Why, gee, Jason, how kind of you to allow me to help you guys,” Barbara snaps.

The two of them start bickering, but Tim tunes them out for a moment. It isn’t like Bruce and Dick never asked him for his opinion. They did. A lot. He simply hadn’t expected Jason to do the same. And so openly too. Bruce liked to pretend Tim’s input was but a piece to a puzzle he was assembling by himself. It seems like Jason isn’t above taking Tim’s words at face value and explicitly showing that he was part of the decision making.

It’s… nice. Not quite like being a sidekick, but not like having a whole team depending on him alone. Tim decides he likes this.

“Alright, alright, enough,” he says, standing up. “Come on, Babs, let me show you our office. Do you want some tea?”

“Anything but Earl Grey,” she says, allowing Tim to push her wheelchair towards the kitchen. “Don’t tell Alfred.”

“Wha… Does that make me the cook?” Jason complains.

Tim gives him a pointed look. “Do you wanna help her with the computer instead?”

Jason starts grumbling and cursing under his breath, but he still starts looking for something in the cupboards.

Unlike the Batcave, the secret entrance to the basement isn’t very fancy: just a couple of tiles that can be removed and a ladder. Tim helps Barbara out of her chair and she climbs down on her own. He has to admire her core strength. A little juggling with the folded chair later, he joins her and helps her to the seat again.

As soon as she’s comfortable, rather than rolling straight to the computer, she wraps her arms around Tim a little tighter. Surprised, but not much, he hugs her back.

“I missed you,” she whispers. “I’m so, so glad you’re back.”

Tim squeezes her. He always loved Barbara’s hugs. He doesn’t say anything, though, because he doesn’t think he can. There’s a knot in his throat stopping any sound from coming out. He tightens the embrace a little more and hopes she knows what he means without him needing to say anything.

Barbara pulls back first, her expression somber. “Jason looks better.”

“He is,” Tim assures.

“Still… I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I do,” Tim says and there’s not a hint of doubt in his voice. “I… I guess I understand why he did what he did. And Jason is a hero too, Babs. I didn’t forget that, even if some of you did.”

She presses her lips into a tight line and at first, Tim thinks it’s due to the implied accusation. Then something clicks, and he thinks it must’ve been because he referred to the Batfamily as ‘some of you’. For a while, he refused to think of himself as an outsider - he was Timothy Wayne after all - but, at some point, it seems like he started accepting he might not be one of them anymore. It still stings.

However, he also realizes he can live with that. Maybe it’s because of how easy it’d been to get used to Jason, to this new normalcy that feels truly normal after so little time. Tim may have left, but it isn’t Red Robin and them. It’s us and them. And, if everything goes according to his plans, they’re soon going to be at least on the same side.

For now, it’s enough.

There was a time in Tim’s life when he didn’t mind making small talk. His mother drilled into his head that he was supposed to be pleasant and polite and that there’d be consequences if he embarrassed his father in front of his associates. Timothy could lose a whole week of his allowance for chewing with his mouth open during a business dinner. It was more about the inconvenience of being scolded than the punishment, really, but Tim learned pretty fast that being sociable and polite was easier.

It’s been a long time, though. Tim’s lost his touch. Or so it feels when he’s unable to shake off one of his annoying classmates.

“...and then you could totally join us this weekend for the tennis tournament,” she says.

Tim refrains from sighing. He thought all of his classmates had been warned not to mingle with that Drake kid. Even if he was Bruce Wayne’s newest charity case, he slept through most of the classes and talked back to the teachers. Unfortunately, Laney Gonzalez didn’t get the memo.

“I don’t think I should,” Tim says tiredly. “I’m not great at any sports, really.”

“Pff, like I’d believe you!” Laney chuckles and latches onto his arm, squeezing his biceps. “You think we can’t tell how muscular you are under this hideous uniform?”

For fuck’s sake. “No, really,” he tries again, gently prying his arm away with an awkward chuckle. “I’m not good at that sort of thing.”

Go to school, Tim, Jason said. You need an education, Tim. Why doesn’t Jason get an education? Then he could hang back after class, even though there are better things to do because Laney freaking Gonzalez decided it was a good idea to make friends with the weird kid. Tim’s attempts to reach the gates seem to go unnoticed by the girl.

“Come on, Tim,” she insists. “You never join us when we do class stuff. It’ll be fun. You don’t have to play or anything, just… hang out a bit?”

What is a polite way to say I’d rather get into a fistfight with Killer Croc , Tim wonders?

He’s about to make up a family emergency - is she going to notice that his phone didn’t buzz at all? - when he notices a small commotion near the exit. A group of students is eyeing the street curiously, and even the ones leaving are taking another glance at… something. Worried, he lets Laney’s speech about friendships in high school fly over his head, and he moves a bit faster. If something big happened while he was in history class, he’s going to freaking kill…

Jason.

Tim stops dead on his tracks because the thing his fellow schoolmates keep glancing at is none other than Jason Todd himself in all of his glory. He’s leaning against the biggest motorcycle Tim had ever seen and wearing his favorite black leather jacket. Tim is already considering the fastest way to kill himself even before Jason’s face splits into a wicked grin and he opens his arms.

“Timbers! Fancy seeing you here!” He says, no , shouts.

Kids in and out of the schoolyard follow Jason’s gaze and find Tim burying his face in his hands.

“Uh…” Laney is now keeping her distance for once. “You know him?”

Tim is already stomping towards Jason.

“What are you doing here?” He hisses.

Still smiling, Jason hands him a yellow helmet. “Picking you up. Not happy to see me?”

“What if Dick sees you?” Tim protests.

Behind him, someone gasps. Tim turns around and curses when he realizes Laney followed him and thought it was okay to listen to a private conversation.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I should’ve noticed it! For the record, I wasn’t hitting on you, if that’s why you kept refusing. I really just want to be friends.”

Jason looks vaguely amused.

Tim frowns. “What?”

“That’s your boyfriend, I assume?”

“No!” Tim hears himself shouting. “He’s my brother!”

Laney has dark skin, but Tim still notices the way her cheeks go a shade darker. “Oh gosh, is that right? I’m so sorry! I didn’t know you had any brothers other than Dick and Damian!”

Tim wants to die so bad.

“Actually,” Jason says, voice soft, dropping an arm around Tim’s shoulders, “I’m a bit of a family secret, so don’t go tweeting Vicki Vale about it, will you? We’ll know if you babble.”

Scratch that. He doesn’t want to die. He wants to kill Jason.

Laney nods hurriedly and makes a hushed promise to keep the secret. She mumbles something about texting Tim later - Tim is sure that she doesn’t have his number - and half-jogs away from them, her ponytail bobbing behind her. Well, that takes care of that. Laney Gonzalez is probably never going to speak to him again.

He turns around and punches Jason’s arm. “What the fuck was that?”

“I have a lead on that case from last night,” Jason hops on the bike. “Get on, loser, we’re going crime fighting.”

“We had a plan. You think Dick won’t notice you’re picking me up from school?” Tim complains. He’s already climbing the bike behind Jason, though.

“Tim, what did I tell you about plans again?”

Tim sighs as he puts the helmet on. He rests his forehead against Jason’s back as though he doesn’t even have the strength to sit up straight anymore. Make a plan. The plan goes wrong. Throw it away.

“Besides, Barbara knows. The Gremlin knows. It’s just a matter of time before we have Bitchard and Brat Girl on our asses.”

He starts the bike before Tim is ready, but Tim makes a point of looping his arms around his waist and swallowing a startled yelp when they go from zero to very fast.

It isn’t until they’re several blocks away from Gotham Academy that Tim fully understands what he’d just done. He told a random classmate he had an extra brother. He told her Jason was his brother. He briefly considers letting go of Jason’s waist and letting himself fall into the asphalt.

“Shit,” he mutters to himself. “I’m sorry.”

Jason eyes back briefly before turning his attention back to the street. Between the helmet and the speed, Tim didn’t catch even a glance of his expression, but he can picture it just fine. It’s been barely three weeks since they started living together, but this is normal for him now. He knows Jason’s mildly intrigued face just as well as his own.

“For what?” Jason asks.

“For saying you’re my brother. I panicked.”

Again, he remembers the early days at Wayne manor. Bruce had sworn off adoptions and Tim could only stay after he promised that wouldn’t be an issue. Hell, Tim tried to keep his word even after his dad died, and yet…

Jason mumbles something that gets lost over the wind.

“What?”

“I said whatever, man!” Jason snaps. “I don’t think adoption expires after death. Technically we are brothers.”

Tim doesn’t say anything. He should know better than to keep making the same mistake.

But isn’t going after Jason a recurrent mistake in itself anyway?

“It’s better like this, to be honest,” Jason says. “It’d be weird to be living with a random minor, I guess.”

It’s basically an automatic response at this point: “You’re two years older than me.”

“I’m legally an adult. You’re not,” Jason reminds him.

“You’re legally dead, actually,” Tim points.

Jason barks out a burst of laughter. “Look at you, Timmy, saying such mean things. Am I a bad influence on you?”

“Now, that tone is creepy. Drop it or I’ll make us crash. You know I have no regard for my own safety.”

Tim is definitely doing that talking without thinking thing again.

“Ugh, don’t I know it,” Jason groans. “Should’ve considered that before taking a fucking kamikaze as my partner.”

Tim perks up. “Hey…!”

“You’re not allowed to name yourself Kamikaze,” Jason cuts him off. “First, that would probably be racist, and second, because you’re not naming yourself after suicidal pilots. You chose Red Robin. No takesie backsies.”

“Fine, mom,” Tim pouts.

Jason speeds up and Tim takes that as his cue to pretend the purr of the engine is too loud for them to talk.

For once in his life, Tim decides to really throw the plan away and see where this goes. This is just his new routine and Tim is nothing if not adaptable.

The case should be simple enough: someone had destroyed an underground casino and killed the bosses responsible for keeping the place running. All of the workers had been spared. They would consider it an everyday case if the same thing hadn’t happened again somewhere near the Narrows. The two places didn’t have anything in common other than the business they ran - gambling, prostitution… the works.

Tim spent hours thinking of a personal motive and so far he had discarded personal vendetta and random coincidence. The methods didn’t match one of the rogues they knew and, although he didn’t say it out loud, Tim feared they had another Red Hood like vigilante in their hands.

When Red Hood and Red Robin come out that night, they’re following one of Hood’s hunches.

“I still think I could’ve done this alone,” Red mumbles.

“I still think I could’ve done this alone,” Hood mocks in a high-pitched voice.

Red Robin glares at him and, even in the dirty dark alley, Hood doesn’t miss it. He sighs.

“Do you trust Oracle or not?” He sighs.

“Of course I do,” the boy mumbles. “Still, it would be more efficient…”

“To split up and have each of us cover a place. We’ve been over this. Oracle said she’d make sure the other place is closed for the night. If I’m right - and I usually am - our guy is gonna attack here.”

Red rolls his eyes but decides not to argue any further. He’s pretty sure this is punishment for forcing Hood to accept Oracle’s help, by keeping him close and refusing to let him do part of the job alone. Alas. Let Hood be petty for now. He’ll learn soon enough that having Oracle backing you up is too good of an opportunity to pass up.

However, now that he thinks about it, Red Robin hasn’t done anything big alone since his debut. Patrolling and stopping random muggins is one thing, but the attack on Black Mask’s warehouses? The bust of the big drug traffic operation at the harbor? This odd murder case? In all of these high profile cases, Hood demanded that he and Red Robin attacked together.

He makes a mental note to think about the possible meaning of that later. Right now he has to focus on finding suspicious activity, which is surprisingly hard. Once they’re at the strategic point Red Robin picked and getting set for the stakeout, Hood seems to have similar thoughts, because he comments:

“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, huh?”

Red sighs. “We’re not breaking into their office. We can’t risk spooking the murderer.”

The older boy shrugs and they settle down to wait.

This is a part of the job Red Robin was oddly fond of. There’s something about just sitting on a roof and waiting that is calming to him. He loved the adventure and solving mysteries and fighting bad guys and the thrill. That being said, there was something satisfying about taking your time and waiting to act. Just them too high up to be seen, the only witnesses being the cold night air and the certainty that they’re doing something good and saving innocents.

Tim wondered if it was fucked up of him to love this so much. He’s been in contact with the ugliest parts of humanity since he was a little boy, after all. After Cissie retired, he thought about it a lot. Like Cissie, he didn’t have special powers. He was just another boy that got himself into a crazy situation. Why couldn’t he be just another civilian, unaware of Gotham’s nightlife? Enjoy school, as Jason wanted him to? Live a long life, maybe die of old age?

Tim likes to think that the fact that he loves this so much means that he was made for this life.

“What do you think we’re facing tonight?” He asks.

Red Hood starts talking and Red Robin listens to him. Unlike Tim, Jason is all about instinct and passion. Whereas Tim collects clues and puts together theories, Jason understands the reasoning behind them and comes up with hunches that Tim couldn’t dream of. Red Robin loves to hear his hypothesis because it’s almost like having a book read out loud to you, and an enjoyable one at that.

He’s almost satisfied, all things considered.

Hood suddenly stops talking. As fast as lightning, he reaches into his holster and, before Red Robin even thinks of stopping him, Red Hood stands and points his gun at something - no, someone - right behind them. He pulls the trigger.

Red Robin opens his mouth in horror, but, rather than a lifeless body dropping to the ground he watches the invader dodge the bullet as though it’s nothing, almost gracefully. He reaches for his staff, but the invader is already running towards them again and Hood is getting about to take another shot. The invader’s cape flies behind them, dropping from their head and revealing... a familiar face.

Hood’s finger is already on the trigger and Red realizes this time she’ll have no time to dodge. Without thinking twice, he jumps between Red Hood and the woman.

“ TIMOTHY !” Hood barks, pointing the gun upwards.

“I know her!” Red Robin shouts at one of them. Maybe at both of them. “I know her! She’s my friend!”

The woman’s stopped as well. She’s looking at them with her head tilted to the side. Without minding Hood behind him, Red Robin faces her and takes in her appearance. She’s still bald. Still rocking all the scars - maybe she even has new ones? - and she’s still dressed like a grunge-rock singer from the late 90’s. He’d recognize her anywhere.

“Pru?” He confirms. “Prudence Wood?”

Her shoulders relax when she hears his voice. She reaches for something in her pocket - Hood gets tense again behind him - but all she grabs is a piece of paper. It’s crumpled and a bit dirty, as though she’s been walking around with it in her pocket for a while.

Without hesitation, Red takes it from her unresisting fingers and reads the words someone - presumably Pru herself - had hurriedly scribbled:

I knew this would get your attention, the paper says, I’m here to warn you. The Head of the Demon is coming after you.

And, just like that, Tim’s frail normalcy is gone.

#poteto writing #jason todd #red hood #tim drake #red robin #red bros #batfam #ay yo i'm back on my bullshit

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xmalereader · 4 years

Text

Jason Todd X Male Reader

|| Masterlist ||

@theplacewhererobindied

Request: Male!reader/Jason Todd? They met during one patrol where R saves Jay (being just like Jay)&they become friends immediately. Then R stays at Jay's place a lot, wears Jay's clothes to batfamdinners (Batfam notices this), they go out for food and when they come across the Batfam whenever they're patrolling together, Jay&R are always teasing the other, get into each personal space. One day Dick asks how long they've been together & they realise they're in love and they kiss in the rain *-*

Warnings: Kissing, fluff, flirting

Jason and Y/n have been close friends for as long as they can remember, the two knew each other even before Bruce Wayne adopted Jason into the family. He was there when he received the knews about Jasons death and the news to when he came back to life and was reversing the rules that Batman had set. It took Jason a couple of months to recover and to start following the regular rules that were set down in the batfamily. Y/n always stayed by Jason’s side, that he actually had the guts to dress up as one of the bat members and patrol with Jason. He was always afraid of losing him.

They would follow each other around every time they patrolled together and would sometimes crack up jokes or even tease one another. Things were going well until Jason started to invite him over at his place, they would stay up all night either talking or watching a movie, sometimes they would cuddle in bed but that didn’t seem to give off any weird vibes between the two. They were so close that Jason would offer his clothes to y/n and he would walk around the manor wearing Jason’s oversized clothes as he either goes to the bathroom or to just walk around the gardens outside.

Dick was the first one to notice this, he noticed how close both y/n and Jason were when they would hang out together or just talk to each other. He was able to sense the teasing tone in there voices every time they spoke, sometimes y/n would tease Jason so hard that he would put him into a flustered state that shocked Dick the most since Jason was always a closed up guy and only spoke rudely to others but when it came to Y/n he spoke about him like he was his boyfriend. Soon, another question popped up in his mind, Are they dating??

Dick didn’t know what to think, it’s not like he was against people who liked the same sex it was just that it was a bit unbelieveable for him to think that Jason was actually dating someone that opened him up. Usually him and Damian would try to open him up but it always ended in a fight between Jason and Damian since they were always arguing with each other.

Tim on the other hand wasn’t as useful, he was always locked up drowning himself in coffee and focusing on his cases...felt like he didn’t even live with them.

As the months go by, both Jason’s and y/n’s relationship has grown stronger. One night they were out on patrol and keeping an eye out for anything dangerous. Y/n was sitting on the edge of the roof as he kicked his legs and hums to himself,

“Where is my little robin?” Y/n sang out softly as he continues to hum and stare out into the distance.

“Little robin? You and Damian dating or something?” He is startled by Jasons voice. He leans back to tilt his head backwards to see Jason standing behind him. “Nope, Damian is too sassy for me and I was talking about you. We always patrol together and yet somehow you ended up coming late, again.” He reminds his red hood as he stands up and giggled.

Y/n jumps down to Jason’s side, smiling as he wraps his arm around Jason’s arm and smirks at him. “Your never late, so tell me. Why were you late?” He asks and pulls his arms away and placed them on his hips. Jason could only laugh and shake his head. “I was just in the bat cave doing some research that Tim asked me to do.” He answers back. “Hm, that’s odd. Tim doesn’t usually ask for help.” Said y/n as he placed a finger under his chin and shrugs. “Well at least you were being a good brother and helping him out.”

The younger male turns around to proceed there patrol. He sits again and lets his legs swing back and forth and hums his little song again.

Jason could only stare at the back of Y/n’s head, he was slowly frowning from under his mask as he continued to watch the other sing to himself. Jason and Y/n have been friend for as long as he can remember and he really cared about him but lately his feelings for y/n have been changing. Yeah, he liked him as a friend but there were times when he would just want to grab his face and kiss him so hard that he wouldn’t even forget who kissed him but he was afraid.

Jason wasn’t afraid of anything but losing y/n was one of his biggest fears. He always doubted himself on confessing so he kept those feelings bottled up and far away.

Shaking his head he walks over to sit next to y/n, smiling a little as he glanced at him. He turns back to look at the city and just sits there and waits for anything to happen.

The two remained silent for part of the night, no crimes have happened so far and Jason was grateful. He didn’t feel like dealing with anyone right now since he was too busy staring at y/n. Before they could call it a night it started to rain, y/n raised a brow and held his hand out to feel the drops land on his hand. “It’s probably going to rain harder soon so we should head back and report to Batman.” He says. Glancing over to Jason only to see him staring at him. “What?” He says.

Jason slowly approaches y/n, he lifts his hands up to remove his mask. Y/n steps back a little in confusion. “Jason what-?” He opens his mouth but is cut off by Jason handing him his helmet. Y/n takes it and looks down at it, tilting his head. “What is this for exactly?” He questions. Tilting his head back up to see Jason staring down at him with a nervous look. “I just want you to hold it for a while and maybe use it to hit me.”

“Hit you? Jason, why would I hit you with this?”

“Because who knows if what I’m about to do is acceptable to you.”

“Jason-“

Jason placed a hand against y/n’s cheek and pulls him into a kiss. The kiss was moist since it was pouring down rain but it was nice and warm. Jason’s lips were soft and warm. Y/n lets out a small moan as he lets the helmet slip from his hands, hearing it land on the pavement he wraps his arms around Jason’s neck and deepens the kiss.

The two remained in the rain kissing for a good several minutes, this was how there first kiss was. Standing on top of a rooftop late at night and kissing in the rain.

That was four years ago.

Now that they have been dating for four years they have also been staying over at each other’s place. They continued to patrol together until y/n was the first one to retire from being a vigilant. He has recently gotten a job at an art studio and had become a teacher, he tried to balance work and hero nights a few times bit it always ended up with him waking up late and grading assignement were always late too. He even got to a point where he had to drink coffee every morning and he didn’t want to end up like Tim.

He remembers approaching Bruce and telling him that he was retiring, he gave his reasons and apologized. Feeling a bit guilty for leaving the team but Bruce was able to understand and still welcomed him into the family. He even invited him to have dinner with them tonight at the manor. Y/n couldn’t refuse the offer.

So, here he was sitting across from Jason as he eats dinner with the rest of the family.

“Can’t believe your leaving me, I thought we were friends!” Tim says out dramatically as he stabs into his spaghetti and whimpers. Y/n only laughs and shakes his head. “I’m not leaving you guys, I just cant focus with both work and patrol. But, I’ll still be around to visit. We all know that Jason cant live without me.” He teased as he sends the skunk head a wink.

Jason hides his blushing face and clears his throat, “I don’t know what you are talking about.” He mumbled back and shoves food into his mouth to keep himself from talking.

Dick raised a brow and clears his throat. “Hey y/n, got any hot dates recently? I’ve got a friend who’s needing a date for Saturday.” He offers, he noticed the small glare on Jason’s face.

Y/n swallows his food and shakes his head. “I’ve already have someone.”

“You’ve got a girlfriend?” Damian asks this time as he smirks at him.

Y/n chuckled, “boyfriend,” he corrects. “Thanks for the offer Dick but I don’t think my boyfriend would approve of that.” He turns to face Jason. “Ain’t that right skunk head?”

Everyone’s heads turn to Jason.

“That’s right, so Dick stop hooking him up with dates when he already has a boyfriend.”

Dick only stares with a smirk. “I knew it! I knew you two were dating!”

“Wait there dating?” Tim.

“Who would want to date him?” Damian.

“Wait, Jason can date?” Bruce.

Y/n’s stared at them in shock, “you guys didn’t know that we were dating? I thought it was obvious...” he says shyly and stared down at his plate of food and pushed a meatball around.

“I knew!” Said dick.

“How long have you guys been dating?” Damian asks this Time as he eats some spaghetti.

“....four years..”

Bruce chokes on his water and coughs violently as Damian gags on his food and spits it out. While Dick’s mouth was wide open in shock and Tim was slowly processing everything.

“Four years?!” Damian shouts out as he stands up from his seat.

“What? You jealous, demon spawn?” Jason grins at his little brother as he twirled his fork around on his fingers.

“You wish.” Damian hissed out and glared.

“It’s not a big deal...?” Y/n shrugs as Damian slams his hands on the table.

“It’s a huge deal! Jason can’t be dating the most intelligent and attractive person in this family!”

“Ohhh, coming out moment.” Says Tim with an evil grin.

Damian blushed, “I’m not gay, drake!” He shouts back as the two began to argue and toss garlic bread at each other. As Bruce sits in his seat, sighing at the two youngest kids he has. “I don’t mind that Jason is dating y/n, just a little surprised but as long as they both treat each other well than I am fine with that.”

Y/n, Jason, and Dick were to only ones who heard Bruce since both Damian and Tim were still fighting.

Y/n smiles at Bruce and nods his head in agreement. “We treat each other well.”

Once all of that was settled both Damian and Tim were have a war with the bread sticks. “Kids these days.” Says Dick. “tell me about it.” Y/n says as he watched the rivalry against the siblings.

‘What-?! Jason put that bread stick down!!”

#male reader #dc imagien #dc imagine #jason todd x male reader #batfamily #imagine #male x male #bruce wayne x male reader #damian wayne x male reader #dick grayson x male reader #tim drake x male reader #w

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blackfemmecharacterdependency · 3 years

Text

16. Faith in Grace

She had been working on her artwork again. The first time she got interested in it was whenever she was in the institution. Prior to that, whenever she wanted art, she had gotten it from The Apex, namely 808. So, that was who she “turned to,” while making her therapeutic artwork. She became a muse of sorts, even if it had only been for a time, and even if Grace didn’t even realize it at the time.

Whenever she was locked up, she had been asked about her goals. It was a really bizarre question and it took her and her psychiatrist a long time to even get her to the point of comprehending just what the woman was asking. Basically, she wanted to know what Grace wanted out of her treatment, her life, and herself. At the time, all Grace wanted was to take care of her Apex family. So, her goal was, “To go home,” and whatever that entailed was what she was willing to do.

Her parents were there frequently, having every possible visit that they could have with her. She was awkward every time, barely remembering the days when she wanted their attention so much that she had literally risked her entire life just to be noticed. She felt so stupid now. The only way for her to NOT feel stupid was to try to forget that girl ever existed. Whoever she was when she was 10 and left these people, she certainly was not by the time she was 18, and that kid had been beaten to death, as far as she was concerned. She wasn’t trying to ever revive her. RIP to Grace Monroe, but I’m different.

Still, she felt for the Monroes. She herself had personally lost two kids, right before her own eyes, and several others out of sight. She knew that it was hard for them, maybe even as hard, if not harder for them as it was for her, looking at them. She tried not to be angry with them for never finding her, for giving up, moving on, and letting her rot away on the streets. She blamed them for having to watch herself burn and to come through the fire as someone whose face seemed unfamiliar to herself and whose hands were so drenched in blood that she seriously wondered if they would ever be clean. But… getting along with these, now, complete strangers was part of the proof that she was growing, and ready for release. It took her a couple of years to convince anybody - her parents, her doctors, hell, herself that she was capable of doing anything besides play acting as a person and getting violently angry when nobody was convinced.

Her doctor asked, “What do you think keeps you from showing your real feelings?”

“Showing my real feelings is why I’m HERE and not with my family.”

“Your family comes to see you all of the time and you never seem to really want to engage with them.”

“Ugh. Not the Monroes. The Apex!”

“Do you want to talk more about them?”

Grace had been avoiding it. She worried that no matter WHAT this woman said, the police would storm through the abandoned train or the warehouse and take all of them away, separate them and never let them see each other again. But, maybe if she was careful, and didn’t give away any clues, that wouldn’t happen. She DID want to talk about them. She thought about them every waking moment. “They were my kids. I was their leader. I’m responsible for them, and now, 747 has to take care of them. He’s good for a few days, maybe, and it’s a really big maybe, a few weeks… But, for how long I’ve been away from them… For all I know, 152 has to take care of them… and I don’t know if he has the stomach. Maybe 1K will step in. Just maybe… but… I’m not there, so I can’t know for sure. Somebody could be murdering one of them right now, for all I know. Every time I try to sleep, I see their blood spilling. I wake up with it on my hands…” She hugged herself, crying now. “There was nothing left of Hazel to even hold. It wasn’t like with Todd. Todd’s face was gone, but I got to hug him, to apologize. Hazel was… there were remains, but it was like… saying goodbye to… to… wreckage. Human wreckage. Other people killed them, but MY hands were supposed to be holding theirs. They weren’t supposed to die. They weren’t supposed to have to hurt that way.”

“There are a lot of things that happen that feel like they aren’t supposed to.Some can argue that nothing is supposed to happen. That things happen as a result of millions of other threads and that none of them can be foreseen by those that they happen to. You say that you were meant to protect these kids, but you couldn’t have been there for each and every one of them every moment of every day. One of the most human things in the world is to expect more of ourselves than humanly possible, and those expectations are magnified in childhood. Whenever you consider all of the chronic trauma you were going through, and add all of these elements into your development, you should treat yourself with the same gentleness that you intend to treat your kids. If you could give them anything at all right now, what would it be?”

“I can’t give them anything…” Grace said, helplessly.

“Imagine it this way… If you had all the power in the world, all the money, all the access to everything good and right, what would you do for them?”

“Oh! I would put them up in nice places to live - with warm beds and complete meals. They wouldn’t have to steal or break into somewhere for that. They’d have it everyday. Food, clothing, shelter… That seems like the kind of stuff that should be free to all kids, no matter who they are. So, I’d probably see who I can talk to about making it so that it’s illegal not to feed and clothe and shelter kids. I mean… They say it IS illegal, but it's not /illegal/ illegal. Like, sure, if you’re not giving that stuff to your kid and somebody calls the kiddie people on you and they come in and see that the kids don’t have it, after they’ve told you a few times to get your act together, they’ll take the kids and put them somewhere where they’ll have the stuff, but it’s like cheap stuff and in a place with a bunch of strangers and stuff. And if the parents CAN’T give the kids that stuff… They shouldn’t have to go live in a kiddie prison. Lot of those Apex kids came from group homes and stuff because their parents lost them. From how they explain the system to me, it didn’t sound like programs were really there to help them at all - just to maybe stop people from hurting them, IF anybody even noticed. Some of the kids… nobody did notice and they left home on their own, wound up getting taken. That's not fair. There should never be remedial action for taking care of kids. From the moment that they’re born, whether or not their parents can afford it, they should be given everything that they need.”

“You want your kids to have needs. Is there anything else?”

“Of course! There’s loads else. They get sick and we try to figure out the meds. I’d make sure that they can see real doctors and get real meds. Make sure that they get real help for ailments and stuff. And then there’s the ones that still have dreams. They still wanna do cool stuff with their lives one day. 808 wanted to be an artist and go to France. I’d make sure that she got to do that, and stuff like that. I don’t know! There’s like a thousand kids! I can’t tell you every single thing that they need in one little sitting!”

“That’s okay. To sum it up, it sounds to me that if you had nothing holding you back, what you would be willing to give them all is everything that they need to live their best lives and in addition to that, the things that would make them happy.”

“Yeah,” Grace said. ‘ Obviously,’ she thought.

“I want to challenge you to do something.”

“I love a challenge.”

“I want to challenge you to give everything that you have the power to give, and give all of that to yourself.”

“What.”

“Everything that you need? Accept it. Everything that you want? Embrace it. Take the power and the resources that being here allows you and treat yourself, with those, like you would one of your kids.”

Grace struggled with this. Sure, she had been known to be very self absorbed and even egotistical to a huge degree, but the fact of the matter was that her kids were her responsibility… But… She guessed… Now, SHE was her responsibility. What the hell did she even “want,” now. Books.

Grace had always been an avid reader, and whenever she was kidnapped, that didn’t go away. Sure, it was a couple of years before she was able to read regularly, but she would definitely always gather up books from those book donation bins when she was at the warehouse and she stole so many books over the years from stores, stands, and even the library, that she could confidently say that she read everyday for at least the past 6 years. It was the only way that she had to do things. She had been a little behind on the Internet, since she wasn’t really allowed on it by herself whenever she was taken, and by the time she was the leader, they were able to get into public libraries whenever something serious came up and they didn’t know what to do (and if you’re wondering, the reason that they didn’t think to look up their parents or things like that was because Grace was the oldest… and it definitely didn’t occur to her that you could find people on that thing. She wasn’t even fully cognizant of what social media even was). The concept of “You can find anything on the internet,” in her mind meant articles about what to do when a kid is allergic to beestings and has been stung, or pictures of turtles and cats, She felt so STUPID now…

Reading was a good escape for a while, but after a few weeks, she began to lose focus a lot, or rather, she would be focusing on a lot of different things. The fact that she was nurturing herself while her kids were still out there alone, every kid’s face, what they must be thinking after having seen her pummel Bugle with a bat.. “Reading isn’t working!” she complained. Nobody had told her that she had to read, nor that reading would “work” to help her with her feelings. She had desired to read.

So, the psychiatrist confirmed, “Would you like to try another activity besides reading?”

She nodded, aggressively and nodded her head. That was when her parents paid for art classes. She was able to have one on one, supervised lessons and they of course, chose the finest that they could afford, for the situation… and they doubled the pay. Grace didn’t love learning, but new experiences brought her joy.

She was trying to recreate symbols that 808 had created in her graffiti and doodles. She would try to remember how the girl had drawn names together, or made a pattern out of their numbers, or even the general structure of how she made faces. She couldn’t… but she had begun drawing now, getting why it had been so effective in taming 808. It wasn’t that it was necessarily calming - in fact, for Grace, drawing often had an opposite effect of calm, but it was… distracting.

She didn’t think about all of the different things that her brain would rush through whenever she was set on trying to create something. She drew odd pictures of Hazel being a turtle, transforming, or hiding out in her shell, waiting for the dangers to go away before she peeked out. She drew her as a girl, enjoying life with the Apex, being happy and perfect. She drew her as an angel. She wondered… Did she make it to some other place, or was her legacy simply a cautionary tale for street kids? ‘Don’t trust strangers or run away from home. You might wind up in a gang and get crushed by a train.’ Or was there more to life, and if there was, what was out there?

Grace had never thought about that before. Her first 10 years were all about appearance and reputation. Growing up seeing her mother on magazine covers, many of which were immortalized in frames in their home, she aimed for beauty and poise. Her mother’s walk always reminded her of a melody, as the woman was performing, even when there was not a camera in sight. Her walk was a strut down the runway and her speech was a charming interlude to an neverending ball, filled to capacity with important people.

In the home, Grace realized that she couldn’t remember how her mother looked. She had forgotten her father’s face ages ago, but she would steal mirrors whenever she was younger and if she looked in one, for a while, she would see her mother. They had the same face. As she grew up, she still looked into mirrors, but her mother’s face had faded. Her own face had faded. Did she ever look like the woman that she used to call “Mom?” Did she always look like this girl in the mirror?

A thing about the latter numbers - they came a little bit later and a little more stretched apart. The couple of years that the first 500 were brought in, they’d come from a variety of places and situations. Any addict with a jones might have traded their kid for cash, any gang member trying to get street cred might have handed over some unattended kid that they found in the park to a steward in exchange for a weapon or something to sell and build on. The first 500 had been more organized of an operation, as far as secrecy and hiding, but it had been kind of erratic and messy in handling business. The first 500 had been hard to figure out how to feed and house and keep under control.

But, the first 500 had gotten this little bit of information from the stewards about the first 100.

According to the stewards, the first 100 were hard to control and hard to hide, so they had taken all of the ones that they couldn’t control and disfigured them. Harder to fight back when you only had one hand. Harder to talk back when you didn’t have a tongue. Harder to run away when your legs had been broken. Of course, they were too young to know that damaging kids in such a way made them virtually useless, so the fear of being cut or broken was enough for many of them. For those it wasn't, there were the vanishing tales. The first 100, even the ones who had been good and smart, along with those disfigured and virtually useless had to be sold off quick for a pending raid. They were sold to some foreign business man and what happened to them beyond that was up to the steward telling the tale’s discretion.

Grace had heard that those with any use were put to work and that the useless ones were locked in a freezer and used as meat to feed the worker children. It was a scary thought whenever she first heard it. But. As she got older, she thought it was inspirational. Either you have use and you use your skills to further things, or you’re useless and will be discarded, replaced, or eaten. It made her mindful of figuring out what good the kids were for (much like the steward who took the money and ran told her) - with her gifts, she was worth more to the stewards than some of the other kids.

So, whenever kids came in, any after 500, when it was a slow business of getting new kids and more of an industry of maintaining the child slaves that they had, Grace was usually the one trying to assess them and appraise them. She would take those with value under her wings and keep them close, and help them navigate. The ones that she didn’t do this with, she tried not to think about how hard their journey might be… where they might wind up… in the belly of a beast or at the bottom of the river. Alexandria was one of those kids… not the ones that she took under her wing… one of the ones she expected to wind up in the river.

First off, she didn’t pay attention. She didn’t listen. She didn’t assimilate or adjust. She was always trying to run away. The stories of getting maimed didn’t scare her. The thought of being eaten didn’t move her. But, the idea of spending the rest of her life in the warehouse, unable to draw and paint and make things beautiful or feel things that she enjoyed… 808 preferred the idea of death. She also preferred the practice of self preservation. It befuddled the others.

Because before her, both things weren’t optional. Who chooses both themselves and death? Who chooses not to listen, but also to protect themselves? Who would come to a place like this and try to both make the best of it, and also to do everything in their power to make it difficult? 808. That was who.

“What do we make of the new girl?” Xander wondered.

“She’s really scared,” Heath said. “She’s like 747 was. We need to help her.”

Grace shook her head, “I don’t think she can be helped. She’s gonna be fish food before too long, and I don’t want her to drag any of you down with her whenever she gets tossed out.”

“You thought the same things about 7,” Heath reminded her. Xander gasped. “And now, he’s the most helpful kid here.”

Grace shrugged her shoulders. “You’re free to check. If it turns out that I’m wrong, I’ll eat crow. But, I’m positive, that girl is not one of us.” She wondered how 808 was, when they were apart, more than anybody else. She was Xander’s girlfriend, so maybe she was helping him to hold things together out there. But, what if she wasn’t? What if something happened to her, or to them, or to him? Were they gonna see Hazel and Todd again? Were they gonna just be dead and gone and haunting her dreams for the rest of her life?

“When people die, do they go to a good place?” She asked, drawing sketches of the Apex, in her own developing style.

“There are a lot of different perspectives about it.”

“What’s yours?”

“It isn’t actually something that is professional to discuss with you, but I assure you, whatever your perspective is, I wouldn’t judge you or try to lean you in a different direction, so long as your perspective isn’t harming anyone.”

“Do they have books about it?”

“Millions of them.”

“I need some. Do we have some in the library?”

“We have various subjects. Next library visit, we can ask them for something that you might be looking for.”

Grace began to study religion and philosophy a lot. She began to research psychology and sociology in her busy time. She began to take proper classes again and try to revisit her love of foreign languages and dance. She started… relaxing into the idea that she might be able to do more to help the Apex if she was better, herself, and if she didn’t get better as a person, then she would put her street smarts to work and get better as a hustler, so she could get the hell out of there and back to her family.

A few key things happened whenever she was into her studies and training herself to act like a normal person… She began to attend mass at the chapel - this institution was affiliated with a hospital, affiliated with a church. She hadn’t ever in her life thought about rebirth or resurrection or restoration. She had never thought about salvation. But, it sounded interesting. Not the parts about self sacrifice and worshiping God… but the parts about repenting from old ways, and becoming a new creature, a new person, washed clean and living with purpose. That all sounded like nice stuff and the chaplain was pretty sweet, so she liked to use this, too, as a distraction.

The other thing was that she was given, by this sweet chaplain, a comprehensive book of saints. She began drawing her friends as saints, each and every one of them, but never herself. Something didn’t feel right about that. Somebody else had to declare you a saint. A church or whatever, but like… for her own artwork, anybody she chose could be a saint, who would stop her?

“Joan of Arc killed people!” she said, excitedly. “She led troops! She was a soldier, a fighter, a leader. She was fighting for her people, against oppressors… against monsters…”

“You seem to be enjoying your book. Do you identify with or maybe even look up to Joan of Arc?”

“I identify!” She cheered. “But, what’s even more interesting… She flipped through the pages, which had been tagged, and notated, the whole book through, is that she claimed to have been counselled by Catherine of Alexandria, who, while not a warrior in her day was a leader, a scholar, and one badass bitch. She was so eloquent and confident and fearless. Imagine that - not fearing death, for what you believe in? And IF, IF she DID counsel Joan of Arc, she also believed in retribution. She believed in battle. She believed in bloodshed, if it was right…”

Her life was changed. She didn’t get any visits from saints, or have any visions, but she suddenly felt like she knew who she was, who she had to become, and what she needed to do. No… it didn’t occur to her to start killing aggressors or to avenge the Apex… that was already inside of her, and she had killed before and wasn’t hesitant of doing so again. What this did was give her faith in something that she wasn’t sure that she really had before… herself. A woman on a mission with a belief, a brain and bravery could change the world and make history, and she was such a woman. After she was released, she changed her name and started this new life, this uncertain mission.

First and foremost, she would lead the Apex to society, get their needs met - food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, etc. She would not have called herself a saint, but she did change her name to St. Catherine, so… yeah, she would… a little bit. Who was going to stop her?

It made her think of 808, though. She wasn’t around whenever Grace went looking for them. She had moved on. The last Sunny knew of, Tuba had offered her a place, but she promised to get word to her that Grace was back. Grace went to find her, to apologize to Tuba, and explain why she felt she had to do what she did, to look at Bugle, but she felt no need to apologize to her. She wouldn’t have comprehended it anyway. 808 had a tattoo, by then. Grace didn’t know what it was supposed to be, at first, but noticed it was a lit ball bomb. Cute. She was only 16, but Grace imagined that she probably did that to herself. Tuba was far more understanding than expected. She had already heard the full story, What Bugle had done to Hazel… it was understandable how Grace had reacted. But, whenever she invited 808 to come along with her, because she knew of a place where they could have all their needs met and be free, Alexandria laughed in her face, “Grace… I AM free. I’m the free-est that I’ve ever been. No thanks to you. You, who left us and went and got yourself all cleaned up and fancy.” She picked up one of Grace’s locs, “My, how your hair has grown…”

Grace sighed and pulled something out of her backpack, “I was thinking about what you said that you wanted to do. You wanted to go be an artist, in France…” I’ve been looking into it and I found an art school in France. You can make a portfolio and we can…”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” She looked at Alexandria’s expression. She looked furious. She looked like she wanted to hurt her. “You vanished for a year, got yourself taken care of, and you think that you get to just come back here and just dangle some childhood dream of mine in my face and what, I’ll just throw my arms around you and take you back? You never wanted me anyway. You never felt like I was one of you. Why are you here?”

Grace twisted the printout in her hands, “I… was wrong. You were one of us. You were always somebody that I leaned on, 808…”

“ I NEVER reclaimed my number, you just always insisted that I do!

Nobody calls me that shit anymore!” She hissed.

“Alexandria,” Grace said. She looked down at the ground. The thought that she wouldn’t be received with love by everybody never crossed her mind. She presumed that they all would be just as happy to see her as she was to get back to them, and it had been a long, LONG time since she hadn’t seen 808 as one of them. Alexandria… “If you ever changed your mind about the school, I have a scholarship with your name on it.” She extended the papers and Alexandria snatched them from her hand and tossed them aside. “ I thought about you a lot whenever I was in there. I took some art classes to try to get as good as you, but it didn’t pan out,” she laughed nervously, sadly. Alexandria softened, She wasn’t sure WHY she was so mad at Grace. Grace had always held her close to her side, even though she had a feeling that she didn’t like her as much as the others, she trusted her and seeing Grace sad caused a very visceral reaction inside of her. Grace pulled out a rolled up canvas and handed it to her, “My best work… It’s you, but as Joan of Arc.” Alexandria accepted that a little more gently than she did the papers, and as Grace walked away, she unrolled it and cried, for the first time in a while, definitely since Grace hadn’t been around, but maybe longer than that, much longer.

“Grace!” The woman turned and Alexandria rolled the artwork back up, “It’s beautiful. It’s really nice. Your style is amazing.” Grace bit her lip and shrugged her shoulders, but her eyes looked a little less sad, and Alexandria felt such a rush, from just that one moment of effecting Grace Monroe. SHE had moved Grace. She… mattered to her… She watched her go and cried harder. She never did make it to that art school, but she was able to take the scholarship money and open her tattoo shop whenever she finished her apprenticeship, so… she… did in a way feel like she owed Grace, whenever she next called upon her, and the way that Grace would light up when she saw her and treat her like an equal, some of the time… it was better than dopamine. It was… enough to keep her in that web that Grace spun, whether she intended to or not.

It was why, even though she knew Grace was upset with them all, it gave her butterflies to know that Grace wanted her to check on her, to come see about her. She wouldn’t do it, Grace was too upset and she didn’t want to have to face her after what she had done… but she did love that feeling it gave her when she knew that Grace cared. That she mattered to Grace.

That simp O was right about it that night. She… had an effect on people, on Alexandria. She wouldn’t go by to see her, but she did send her a piece of artwork with a fancy scripted note that read, “I’m sorry,” on the top

Grace unrolled the canvas and saw the image of herself, painted as a saint. Catherine of Alexandria, and it read: Grace St. Catherine. Grace opened the card and written in Alexandria’s handwriting was a question, “Did you know that Catherine mentored Joan of Arc?” and on the back, “Of course you did. Show off.” But, Grace read it in Alexandria’s voice and knew just the smartass inflection that sent it from a pissy declaration into a show of her jaded affection. She turned to Simon and said, “Alexandria finally checked in with me! Look at what she made me!” She was very excited and awestruck. “She’s so talented. So talented. Always was.” Simon had to listen to her gush about how Alexandria and Xander used to splice their names together when they tagged places, how they were Xan and Xan and called their ship name Xannax and other… things… that he not only didn’t care about but hated to hear. He didn’t like them. He would get along with them for her benefit, but those were not his allies. He definitely would use them for what he needed - to get all of this Date Night shit out of the way and in the read view mirror, so that he could FINALLY have Grace all to himself and she wouldn;t have to worry about this mission that almost got her killed for a bunch of ingrates who not only would rip the two of them apart if they could, would resort to trickery to do so, and the worst sin in his mind… leave her to die…

“I made you something too!” he interrupted, jealous and frustrated by all of this tenfold forgiveness that she granted them. To his extreme pleasure, her smile grew and her face brightened. “Well, I’m in the process of it, but I think it’s gonna be great. I think you’ll love it.”

She smiled softly and booped his nose, “I’m sure I will,” she said. She had taken the hint. He was feeling some kind of way about her excitement over Alexandria’s gift. She didn’t think it was necessarily jealousy so much as the fact that Alexandria had done him a huge disservice by creating that fake art that sent him back down this downward spiral, and that was one of the main reasons why Grace wasn’t going to fault him too much for his… possessive ways right now. They had a lot of other things that they could focus on and work through. He was trying to live without her and thanks to her own, he had failed at that. She wasn’t going to forget that when dealing with him, nor could she forget that they were the reason that they had been apart in the first place. 49 whole days, according to Simon. It felt longer - to both of them, but he felt at least entitled to that much time for him to have her to himself without them, and she was in no condition to entertain, anyway, so she found that not only agreeable, but a relief. His intensity whenever she spoke too fondly about her friends was troubling, but at the time, she didn’t feel like she was in any position to articulate her unease without disrespecting this huge life change that he was going through. She had been a murderer for years. Simon had only just done this and it was on the heels of a long, lonely winter. She just… didn’t have the heart to address some shit like that right now. Anyways, Valentine’s Day was soon approaching… technically, it had almost been a year since they noticed each other. It should be a good one. She was going through her own things too, but… she wanted to focus on the good things.

17. Where the Heart Is

#AU Infinity Train #Infinity Train #Nesha Fanfiction #Infinity Train Fanfiction #fics #People Watching

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scandalsavagefanfic · 4 years

Note

For the prompt thingy, please! JayDick is my jam but we all know Jay’s our bisexual icon so my hope is for JayKara OR JayRose, the idea being the Batfamily and the SO’s fam finds out about the relationship/RECENT MARRIAGE via a group text. ;)

HI! I bet you guys all thought I’d moved on and wasn’t going to finish!

I have not!

So welcome back to the 50 Fics/500 Folowers Celebratory Prompt-A-Thon fills!

It was very hard to choose between Rose and Kara but I have another prompt for the one so...

Pearl - Read on Ao3

Words: 1015

Rating: G

—————————————————————

Don't forget to take off your ring.

Seven little innocent, innocuous words.

And they’ve ruined Jason’s life.

Bruce and Clark are arguing in hushed tones off in the corner. Fingers jab in angry, red faces and they both look like they’re three seconds away from trying to take the other’s head off.

Meanwhile, Jason’s left to fend of the flock of birds and their annoying partners.

By himself.

He’s going to kill her when she finally shows her stupid, gorgeous face.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell us.” Dick is all but pouting.

“Of course he didn’t mention it,” Damian says like he knows everything. “Father is furious. But I’m much more interested in why she would debase herself with the likes of you, Todd.”

Jason rolls his eyes.

Tim, who has put himself bodily in Conner’s way for all the good it will do if the irate clone wants to come at Jason, just raises his eyebrows.

“What made you—“

“What was it like?” Jon interrupts Tim, vibrating like a coked up puppy. “Was it romantic? Were there candles? What did you dance to? Oh! Oh! Did she wear a white dress?! DO YOU HAVE PICTURES OF IT?”

Jason just blinks at the kid, rapid fire questions making it hard to figure out where to start.

Except that everyone is staring at him now. Even Conner’s expression has gone curious. Bruce and Clark have paused their conversation and inched closer.

Mentally, Jason cycles back through the questions, trying to find the one everyone has fixated on.

Uh oh. It’s gonna be hard to answer without getting others in trouble.

“Um... yes?” Jason responds then kicks himself. Stupid honest answers, being put on the spot like that.

“Wait a minute,” Clark says, moving back toward the group, Bruce following close. “She did? You had... like a real ceremony?”

“Just the two of you?” Bruce growls.

Christ. Jason knows he looks like a deer caught in the headlights. He gulps.

“No,” Tim answers for him, eyes full of a humor no one else seems to feel. “You have to have witnesses.”

That comment prompts an outburst of indignant and offended exclamations and accusations. They’ve all turned toward each other as everyone tries to figure out who knew and didn’t snitch.

He shakes his head at them.

Then, without a hint of warning, a soft voice whispers in his ear, “What’s going on?”

The only reason Jason doesn’t jump is because he’s used to it.

Instead he huffs and refuses to look at her. “You sent that text to the group,” he explains, watching the continued chaos, waiting for them to notice the newcomer.

“Which text? I’ve sent a bunch in the last couple hours.”

Now he does give her his attention. It’s still hard to stay focused; she still takes his breath away. Damian’s words float across his mind and Jason finds it difficult to argue with his logic when he’s looking up into soft, sky blue eyes that hover above him.

Why is Kara with him? What does fucking Supergirl see in Jason Todd?

Why on Earth or Krypton did she marry him?

“The reminder to take off my ring.”

She stares at him for a second. Then snorts. “Whoops.”

Jason can’t help it. Her amusement is contagious and he finds himself grinning back.

“Hey!”

Everyone is staring at them again. They look far less amused than Jason and Kara.

“Well?” Dick asks.

Jason and Kara exchange a look.

“Well what?” She says, putting her hands on her hips.

“Who was at your wedding?” Bruce all but snarls. His tone earns him an angry look from Clark.

“And do you have pictures?” Jon adds, still overly excited and not put off by everyone else’s horror. “I want to see how beautiful you looked!”

“Oh,” Kara says, like she was expecting something harder. “Ma and Pa were there.”

Clark’s eyes go wide and his jaw drops. He looks utterly scandalized and betrayed. Jason almost laughs. But Kara chooses that moment to elbow him in the side.

“Right. Uh, Alfred was there too.”

The silence that descends is oppressive. Bruce’s face is carefully blank. Dick’s expression mirrors Clark’s. Damian looks upset and Tim has frozen.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Clark finally asks. He sounds... hurt.

Literally every single head turns toward Bruce.

The man looks at each of them. Then grunts a hrm, strides to a shelf in the corner, and returns.

“Congratulations,” he says, infuriating smirk playing on his lips as he thrusts a small box—meticulously wrapped in white and silver paper with a professional looking silver ribbon—into Jason’s arms.

Jason scowls. “I fucking told you,” he snaps at Kara.

She just smiles and shrugs. “Open it.”

Once it’s open, Jason’s throat immediately goes tight and he’s gritting his teeth to keep the water welling in his eyes from falling. He knows what it is, the significance. He doesn’t have to ask.

But Kara hears his pulse ratchet up. “Jason?”

“I... Bruce, I—“

“When I found out, I had a set made for all of you,” Bruce explains taking the paper so the others can see the pearl cufflinks flanking a platinum necklace with a single pearl.

“Bruce... are those your mother’s pearls?” Dick asks quietly, reverently.

The older man nods, eyes fixed on Jason’s. “My father gave them to my mother to celebrate their love. It’s time to let go of their dark history; to give them a chance at a second life.”

They stare at each other, the implications of Bruce’s words hanging so thick in the air there’s no way anyone missed Bruce’s unspoken meaning.

That the pearls aren’t the only thing getting a real second chance in Bruce’s book. He’s finally going to make an effort with Jason too.

An elbow digs into Jason’s side making him hiss.

“For god’s sake, hug the man,” Kara mutters, voice a little thicker than usual.

At least Jason isn’t the only one affected.

Bruce smiles at him and holds out his arms for what feels like the first time since Jason was 15.

#jason todd #kara zor el #JayKara #50 fics/500 followers #celebratory prompt a thon #fluffy

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iphoenixrising · 5 years

Text

For 800 Followers! The Wrong Robin

Babe recc’ed me a fic, Liminal Space by Calamityjim and a few profound things hit me in this fic. The author talks about how basically when shit gets broken, it’s broke. The Bats fucked Tim over and it’s not just a forgive-and-forget situation. It’s literally a darker world he’s living in and my fucking heart goes out to him. I write some angsty things about Tim not coming back to the Bats, but I do a few that really aren’t that, so this is inspired by the Tim that can’t go back.

So, for everyone that’s only wanted to do good things but still gets beaten down over and over again. I love you. I love you so so much.

Getting pissed really isn’t an option.

Because vigilantes arguing in the middle of a rooftop after an epic takedown is never good PR for the capes and cowls–

(but it isn’t like he’s really one of them anymore, right?)

“Can’t motherfuckin’ believe I’m hearin’ this shit, Pretender.” The Red Hood is standing tall against the night with forearms and fists clenched by his sides, fucking arguing with him like any of it means a damn thing.

“Am I in the Twilight Zone right now or some shit?” Red Robin comes back, sneering and baring his teeth in the semblance of a smile. “Who the fuck even are you?”

“Lookit here, asshole–”

But Red just moves, gets right up in Hood’s grill, whiteouts narrowed in the night, standing right the hell up to the Robin that once-upon-a-time was his (and welp, hadn’t that ship sailed?)

“Why are you even here?” He demands, low and dark, “wasn’t it enough to shove a Batarang in my chest? To almost slit my throat? Wasn’t that the fuck enough for you? And then this shit? You here telling me some pile of crap about how I should come back? Come back to what?”

Hood takes a step back, the tension in his shoulders and forearms loosening, “whoa, waitaminute, just wait–”

“You called me fucking Pretender, didn’t you?” Is even lower, the younger vigilante still as stone, “because that’s what I am, right? No matter what my intentions were, no matter how much of a beating I took all those years. None of that shit means a fucking thing, does it?”

“Look, kid, I don’t know what the hell yer goin’ on ‘bout. B just asked–”

“What? He asked you to tell me to get the fuck out of Gotham? Like I really need anyone to tell me that? Like I don’t already fucking know?”

Now it’s the Red Hood that stills, not even a huff or guffaw through the synths, just the tiniest movement of the helmet moving to track when Red Robin takes a step back.

“Go back and tell B to stop wasting your fucking time, Hood. He’s already got all his Robins.”

And Red knows he’s taking a real risk here, turning away from the vigilante that’s tried taking him out of the game more than once, one that hadn’t had a fucking moment of hesitation. He knows giving his back to Jason Todd could be the last mistake he ever makes.

Still, he’s not the same person he was back when the Battle for the Cowl was going down. He’s not the same person Jason Todd asked to be his Robin. He’s not the same person that died a little the day the tunic was taken right out of his hands.

He’s more pragmatic, less idealistic. He’s a vigilante that’s hit the grey areas and been able to come back–

(and fuck you, Bruce. Fuck you for coming after him when that little thing with Boomerang went down. When he didn’t let that murdering bastard die. When Red realized who he was, and that was not a murderer, when he wasn’t going to be like Boomerang or his future gun-toting Batman self. Fuck YOU, B. Jason got a second chance. Damian got a second chance. But him? Well, he’s the fucking Robin that was never chosen, so jumping all over him was pretty much fine.)

He’s pretty sure the fight between him and the Red Hood would go down very differently if he’d been that broken the last time they had it out. Hood never would have asked for Red to be another Batman’s Robin. He would have gotten the fuck you memo first thing.

But really, what does any of that matter now?

They’ve reached the end of his little Robin ride, so it’s time to cut his losses and move on – just like all of them pretty much wanted.

So he’s going to do just that. He’s going to stand with his team, take every lesson he’s ever learned from the Bats, and keep fucking moving. It’s what he’s been doing for a little more than a year, makes it easy to turn away from Hood, makes him narrow his eyes when a gloved hand catches his elbow unexpectedly just as he’s ready to shoot the grapple and take off into the night. Red Robin finds himself gone far enough from who and what he used to be that he’s already got a plan to put Jason Todd the fuck down this time.

(You’re not getting another chance to fuck me over, Todd. Not again.)

“Hey,” is low through the synths, the hand around his elbow not tight enough to be a hold, not really. “Lemme start again, yeah?”

“There’s no point in starting anything,” Red Robin doesn’t even turn to look over his shoulder, to acknowledge Hood, “everything has been over for a long damn time. Go back and tell them that.”

The grapple fires in the night, a bang, cuts off a “–wait a motherfucking minute!” when he’s pulled into space, pulled out in the dark Gotham night. A flicker of gold from the harness and utility belt, a dance of shadows in the shape of a flapping cape, and the younger vigilante is gone in a literal blink.

Hood shakes his head a little, thrown from the way his replacement brushed him completely off, sprouted old rhetoric from the days when the second Robin was one angry motherfucker.

And as much as he shouldn’t give two shits about the ig’nant fuck, the sight of that kid’s face when he was in the red, gold, and green, that face when he was clutching at his throat, bleedin’ like a stuck pig, looking so fucking devastated, is there in the Red Hood’s mind’s eye when he fires his own grapple and takes off in the opposite direction.

Dickie don’t make it any better. Not at all.

“He didn’t want to hear it, B,” the oldest Robin shakes his head sadly, “and maybe we should just let him go. He’s got his own team and a new ident. Maybe he’s just happier where he is.”

Stephanie Brown straightens up, mouth set in a grim line. But at the end of the day, she has nothing to argue, really. Her choices back then had been...questionable, even with the best of intentions. Scarab and faking her own death, piling more on a newly orphaned Robin hadn’t been the answer, hadn’t been the way to test his limits to see what would finally make him break.

It’s a few years too late for these realizations, and even when she wants to shove her face right up in Dick Grayson’s grill and argue–

She can’t.

And fuck, she hates it.

Behind them, Jason Todd is sitting at his workstation, back to the conversation after giving them a clipped, condensed version of events. At first, the two of them were talking low at the Batcomputer after a somewhat easy patrol.

She, Dick, and Dami had come in and started breaking out of the capes for the night before catching some of the conversation –

“Lil’ asshole didn’t stay long ‘nough ta listen, you feel me, B?”

“He wouldn’t even hear you out?”

Between getting out of the body armor and taking a shower, unwinding wrists and ankles, ruffling their Robin as much as possible just to have him “tt” at her and still grin when he turns away from her teasing, she’d come to stand on the outskirts with Dick, waiting to give her nightly report before crashing hardcore.

“Said ya already had all yer Robins. Also said ta tell ya ta stop wasting yer time n’ shit.”

The Dark Knight is silent, cowl back to air out his sweaty hair, arms crossed over his chest. The draw of his brows and deep frown are telling as to what he thinks of this little convo.

She’d been ready to ask who are you talking about? since all the previous Robins were, in fact, more at the Manor these days than even Alfred can remember. It’s rough and tumble sometimes, all of them grating on each other, but it really was what Batman Incorporated probably should have always been.

At least for the Batfamily.

But when she pauses, when the words get stuck in her throat, his masked face from way back when gives her pause, is still associated with old pains and regrets, and Steph has to take a long, deep breath.

That’s when Dick, who’d apparently also put the topic of conversation together, had stepped in to break the news to them.

“Maybe he’s just...moved on.”

She grinds her back teeth together, and can’t say a fucking thing.

“Tt,” is about as unconvincing as you can get. Certainly Drake will realize it.

“I asked what you wanted,” Red Robin reminds him, not bothering to look up from the microscope he’s studying.

“As I said,” Robin repeats, “Father has requested you return to Gotham. As I understand there is some yearly tradition he wishes to reinstate.”

“And as I said,” is unruffled, absent; the older vigilante obviously distracted as he jots down notes on a steno pad beside the microscope, “enjoy that. Don’t come back unless you need something important.”

Irritation wells up, but the teenager closes his eyes behind the whiteouts and takes a soft breath, trying to quell the emotion, reminding himself that Drake may be annoying and arrogant, but he was also once a Robin. He has had a few redeeming instances in his crime fighting career.

“This is important to Father, Drake,” Robin replies in an even tone, “he wants all the Bats to participate. Thus this applies to you.”

His predecessor’s muscles go tight in just the under suit, straightens away from the delicate equipment at one of the labs in Titan’s Tower, but still, he doesn’t bother to turn and face the current Robin head-on.

After a few seconds of silence, Red Robin goes back to the microscope. “C’mon, stop fucking around. Go back and tell him I said I was busy for, like, the next ten years or something.”

“That would be inaccurate.”

“Well, tell him I just said no.” Shrug of the shoulders, back to divided attention, and it is quickly starting to get more than just irritating.

“If I am to tell him that, Drake, then he will ask why.”

“Tell him I’m not his responsibility anymore. I mean, wouldn’t it be awkward if I did show up? Nobody needs that, and I have plenty to do here.”

Robin’s crossed arms loosen just a little, his back less rigid, the discussion in the Cave a few days ago still sitting in the back of his mind, making him wonder.

“Very well,” he makes it falsely light on purpose, “and when I return to Gotham with your answer, he will be the one to show up next. Unless you want to deal with that, you will need to provide better reasonings.” And a huff because he has no idea why he’s even still here, “Drake. They are a pain in the ass. This is not news to you. However,” and the pause, how he trails off is the things that finally gets the older vigilante to glance over his shoulder, “they are family. They are your family and mine. It is...troublesome at times, but they are what they are.”

Whatever he said is enough to make the older vigilante stop what he’s doing and lightly brace just his fingertips on the countertop as he stands.

Drake turns and approaches slowly, whiteouts up and face utterly impassive. A few feet between them and his predecessor breaks it out, calm and low when Robin feels like this visage is only another type of mask.

“Family? You think I’m family? That I ever was in the first place?”

Robin’s arms tighten.

“I didn’t want to be Robin forever,” Drake keeps going and Robin can imagine his eyes are cold and calm behind the domino, “I gave it ten years or so. That should have been plenty of time for B to get over Jason’s death. At least enough that he would get control over himself back. But the longer I was in the tunic, the more people that died around me, the more I had to change so I didn’t end up doing the same thing he did. There wasn’t another kid to hang around and keep me from destroying myself, so I had to keep my shit together.”

Robin’s mouth is slightly open, wondering why all this is coming out now? He and Drake have always been little more than rivals. This heartfelt account makes Robin uncomfortable for several reasons–

Primarily because he’s never been interested in his predecessor’s time in the tunic. It had simply never mattered, not when he took over the Robin mantle and strove to make it his rather than Drake’s.

“But when he disappeared, and everything that happened afterwards. All of that made me realize that no matter what I did, or what I tried to do, it was never supposed to have been me in that tunic.” A gloved finger flicks to the R on Robin’s left shoulder. “I wasn’t family, Damian. Not from the moment I put it on for the first time, and not at the end when Dick pulled it out from under me. Family? Family wouldn’t do that.”

And even if it’s difficult, Robin tries to swallow, his mouth suddenly dry.

“The last time I even talked to your dad? Was when the Boomerang thing happened, you know that, right?” And Red Robin goes still enough that Robin wonders if he’s even breathing. “No one died, and even though I didn’t let that happen, I’m the one that didn’t get a second chance. Not like you or Jason. All those years, all the times I pulled him out of the fire, all those years I thought he was my friend, my partner, my family. All of it meant nothing in the end.”

And Drake takes one step closer, just one, arms still crossed over his chest, head tilted down, but Robin feels like his chest is so tight, like he can’t even get a breath.

“So,” and Drake’s voice is softer now, gentle almost, “he won’t be showing up. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it’s probably time for you to go back to Gotham. Batman...needs a Robin.”

And if his vision blurs behind the whiteouts suspiciously as Drake walks away from him, through the open doors of the lab, no one would be the wiser.

#angst #hurt/no comfort #dc comics #tim drake #jason todd #bruce wayne #stephanie brown #dick grayson #damian wayne #my fic #my drabbles #800 followers

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phantomchick · 4 years

Text

My wip list

Writing out my list of works in progress in the hopes that it becomes more manageable and easier to decide which to work on after I do.

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Call Me Fandom: dc comics / batfandom Summary: Jason calls Bruce for help after being assaulted, they deal with the aftermath both in the revenge way and the hurt/comfort way. Amount of work necessary to complete: ??? It’s a two parter fic so only one chapter left to go, however serious writer’s block to work through on this second part so who actually knows.

I tell myself that I don't need Anyone (But the truth is no one needs Me) Fandom: dc comics / batfandom Summary: The scene in UTRH where Bruce throws a Batarang into Jason’s throat is bullshit especially because there’s never any consequences for it, that’s not just bullshit, it’s batshit! And I refuse to accept it. A What if Jason didn’t disappear into the night after the events of UTRH to arrange for his next villain appearance, fix it fic. Amount of work necessary to complete: Likely going to be one of my longest fics yet, a multi chapter whopper! Which means a lot of work, both in research and in writing. I need to read up on ALL of the modern captain atom comics, a bunch of the crisis event chemo Bludhaven comics and maybe a couple of other ancillary comics of that era too, before I even get to writing the nitty gritty of the fic. We’re doing this canon and we’re doing it right! A fixing-everything motivated fic putting the canon divergence back into fandom.

The Many Curses of The Wayne Name / Of Curses and Covenants Fandom: dc comics/batfandom Summary: So much of a work in progress the official title’s still not completely decided! A fic delving into the relationship between the Wayne Family and the Zatara family, told through a series of curses various generations of the Waynes have been afflicted with over the years, some of these curses the Zataras were able to remove and some they couldn’t. Currently intend to have it end with Zatanna and her nephew Zach coming to dinner with Bruce and his kids. Amount of work necessary to complete: I already have an index of curses and which Waynes in the chronology get cursed where, ready to build with. But the series itself is still more a couple of lines and potential scenarios than any actual fic. Not sure how many stories I’ll end up telling here so unsure of how much work it’ll be to complete, likely a lot to get it off the ground though.

The Monster In The Man Fandom: Merlin, (bbc) Merlin, Summary: A continuation to CaffeinatedFlumadiddle's fic The Monster in the Mirror that ended on a horror-esque cliffhanger - written because my brain couldn’t handle the cliffhanger and had to extrapolate with a part two. Intended as a gift fic to that author. Basically the spell from an enchanted mirror has escaped and possessed Merlin, and is attempting to use Merlin’s worst fears against him until he kills Arthur. Can Arthur who has only just found out about Merlin’s magic save Merlin from what’s inside him? Amount of work necessary to complete: Currently at a little over 5000 words but likely to need at least another 5000 to both get to the main action and resolve things.

Those Winter Sundays Fandom: Marvel, Avengers, Iron Man Summary: Snapshots of Tony working hard for the avengers and no one noticing. Amount of work necessary to complete: Unknown as currently more of a wip idea than a wip itself, likely going to be a oneshot containing a bunch of ficlets.

Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies Fandom: Marvel, Avengers, Thor Summary: Thor tells the story of his banishment and return to Asgard ending with Loki falling into the Void and the Avengers have some questions, questions Thor had not thought of, remarks on things that Thor doesn't know how to explain. He goes to Loki's cell and asks him some things becoming more and more angry despite having no one he can punch. Gets drunk and criticises Sif and The Warriors Three. Focus on Loki still being underage by Aesir standards during Thor 1. “For while the Treason I detest, the Traitor I love still.” Amount of work necessary to complete: Either a oneshot or a two chapter fic. Need to be careful to ‘show not tell’ considering the plot I’m going with is gonna have a lot of talking about things that have already happened.

A Trinity of Head Wounds Fandom: DC Comics, Justice League Summary: Friendship fic, angst and hurt/comfort Clark yells at a concussed Bruce for being reckless and because Bruce is concussed he ends up accidentally making the slightly addled Bruce cry. When Clark notices he shuts his mouth so fast he could've crunched titanium between his teeth. Diana walks in, sees Bruce in tears and PUNCHES CLARK ACROSS THE ROOM WITHOUT HESITATION. After that there’s a lot hurt/comfort on all sides and Clark opens up about his anxiety over Bruce’s mortality and Diana bleeds on Bruce’s shoulder. Amount of work necessary to complete: It’s a oneshot but it’s one of those difficult ones where you’ve got to get everything just right or the emotional intent gets totally lost so a big ??? for this one too.

Separation Fandom: DC Comics, UTRH Summary: Split personality disorderRed Hood and Jason Todd, alternatively, Red Hood is a demon/parasite latched on to Jay. Amount of work necessary to complete: A lot considering it’s currently just an idea.

A Stark in The Stars Fandom: Marvel, Avengers, Iron Man Summary: Tony’s survived the universe wide disaster known as the snap or the decimation and has even survived carrying out it’s reversal, but he’d much rather help Thor, Carol and the Guardians sort out intergalactic repair efforts than face the damage Steve has accidentally done to time itself back on Earth. He keeps forgetting the differences between what happened in the fake timeline and the original one the longer he’s on Earth and though he knows Stephen Strange is doing all he can to fix it, he also knows that the changes for him are a lot more confusing and disconcerting than they are for the others (Save for poor Sharon Carter). Pepper understands better than anyone and actually packed his bag for him (with Morgan’s help) when he tried to explain what he was feeling. Maybe the little settlement on that mineral loaded planet he keeps visiting on behalf of the dwarves can help him find what he needs to get past this. Amount of work necessary to complete: This is a slower more thoughtful work about learning how to live when you never thought you’d survive and the sense of alienation you can get as a veteran returning to a world that isn’t the way you expected it to be when you got home. As such, it’s very introspective, so I want to take my time with it but realistically it’s likely to be a series of vignettes from both Tony’s perspective and the perspective of the people he encounters out in his travels through the galaxies. Max 5 chapters.

Another Time, Another Place Fandom: dc comics / Batfandom Summary: Martha and Thomas Wayne are sent 20 years into the future only to see a young man they've never met standing in their drawing room. He claims to be their grandson. I just love the idea of Jason being left in the house with Damian and Duke with Bruce, Tim and Dick gone and he's the eldest so he's gotta look after the situation Amount of work necessary to complete: However long it takes me to get past the writer’s block for the ending - I have most of a plot outline ready to write based on, except for how I’m going to resolve things. A oneshot with the possibility of an epilogue chapter to follow.

Vicki Finds A Bat Fandom: dc comics / Batfandom Summary: Vicki Vale sees Jason Todd sitting in a wafflehouse. Chaos ensues. Amount of work necessary to complete: Currently a little over 2000 words, probably gonna need an extra 2000 before it’s done.

You Don't Know Anything Fandom: dc comics / Batfandom Summary: Gift fic for paradise_runaway. One where the other Bat boys find out the circumstances of Jason's death and resurrection and their reaction. Amount of work necessary to complete: Started and restarted multiple times, can’t decide which route to take with it. It’s just a oneshot so once I get some inspiration to hit for it, it’ll probably be done pretty quick.

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#wip list #writing is hard #i have more wips besides these #but these are the ones I'm focusing on #i promise i don't hate steve rogers but the ending of endgame with old man steve was terrifying when you think about it #the implications!!!!#my wips #so many wips #covers gen abo ficlet wip with my whole body #you saw nothing

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unavenged-robin · 6 years

Note

Possible angst prompt: Red Hood finding Talon!Dick on the streets?? Or just Talon!Dick in general? Congrats on 2K followers that amazing!!! 💕💕

*meant to put that with my first ask so sorry about that!* “What happened to you?” -Jason Todd to Talon!Dick

Definitive angst prompt XD And thank you! ♥ This turned out to be much longer and more complicated than I had imagined at first but I hope you’ll enjoy it anyway.

Moving back to the Manor had not been an easy decision for him, and there were days - but mostly nights - when the very idea of staying even one more minute in that big, silent house, was unbearable and infuriating, and every instinct in his body would start screaming for him to run, and hide, and forget about everything and everyone. Voices inside his head would remind him that he didn’t owe anybody shit, that he wasn’t the one to blame for how the things had gone wrong, that this time he wasn’t the one who let the family down, that the silence in the house was not his fault.

But Jason has a trick for nights like those (nights like this one).

“Hey, brat!”, he calls out to the kid perched on the couch as he enters the living room. “Let’s go out.”

Damian doesn’t even raise his gaze from his phone. He does, however, raise his middle finger at him.

“Try that again and I’ll break every bone in your hand”, Jason warns amiably and then, before Damian decides to take him up to the challenge, he approaches the boy and, with a quick movement, snatches the phone away from his hands.

“Hey!”, Damian protests, immediately trying (and failing) to grab it back. Jason raises his hand over his head, way out of Damian’s reach, and smiles down at the kid.

“Come on, put on some shoes and let’s go grocery shopping”, he prompts him. “Alfred said he needed a few things for tomorrow’s lunch.”

Damian glares at him.

“I believe that Pennyworth is more than capable of getting groceries on his own, Todd”, he answers with his best snotty tone, the one that suggests he’s already doing Jason a great favor by acknowledging his presence on this Earth.

Jason snorts.

“And good thing he is. Otherwise this family would have gone extinct for some time now.”

Damian, having clearly reached the limit of his patience with Jason’s teasing - and most likely with Jason in general - stands up on the couch armrest and reaches out his hand again to recover the stolen phone, only realizing his mistake when he sees Jason grinning like the Cheshire cat. To give credit to the kid, he only groans in defeat when Jason wraps an arm around his waist and lifts him up to throw him over his shoulder, a gesture that has now become almost a habit for both of them (although with different degrees of appreciation).

“Put me down, you big oaf!”, Damian yells as usual, struggling in Jason’s hold despite the fact that he knows it will not help him one bit. Jason only laughs, readjusts his grip on the boy, and starts walking, not paying any attention to the indignant cries and insults spitted out at him.

As per script now, little fists promptly begin to storm down on every inch of his back that the kid manages to reach, but they’re not as violent as they could be, and fists are not even the best weapon Damian could use against him in the position he’s in. There are unprotected nerves that he could reach and hit if he really wanted, and a little pressure on one of those points would damage Jason in a much more serious way than a few punches, and Damian knows it as well as Jason does, since the first times he found himself flipped over his shoulder he went directly for those.

In a way, Jason supposes that it’s kind of sweet on Damian’s part to now accept the (sometimes not so) gentle bullying as if he had finally - albeit reluctantly, and definitely not without a fight - submitted to his role of younger brother.

He still tries to kick Jason in the groin, though. The little shit.

Jason half-heartedly swats the kid’s bottom in retaliation, then he peeks his head into the kitchen.

“Hey Alf, do you have a list of things to pick up for us? We’re heading out anyway.”

“No, we’re not!”, Damian yells, still kicking his feet over Jason’s shoulder. “Pennyworth, Todd took me hostage!”

Alfred stops stirring for the time needed to cast a glance at the unlikely duo standing in the doorframe of his kitchen, then raises an eyebrow at them.

“I can write down a list for you, Master Jason”, he answers after a moment. “And Master Damian, you should know that my policy in cases of kidnapping of your person by family members is of non-intervention. Unless there is evidence of ill or deadly intentions, of course.”

Damian groans and for a moment it looks as if he has accepted the inevitable defeat, then he gives a sudden jerk and goes again for Jason’s testicles, which only earns him another swat.

“Ow! You’re a bully”, the kid growls, slumping in frustration against him.

“I’m doing my job of older brother in teaching you the injustices of the world”, Jason replies, patting him in mock comfort.

“I’m going to kill you in your sleep”, Damian declares, then he huffs and lifts himself up as much as he can, making a point of sinking his elbows into Jason’s back. “Can I have my phone back at least?”

“Nope. And if you try to kick me again I’m gonna drop you on your head.”

Obviously Damian kicks him again. Obviously Jason doesn’t drop him. (But only because Alfred was watching.)

Supermarkets at night always have a surreal touch. Perhaps it’s because of all those bright neon lights buzzing and shining on every surfaces they find, and the crowded lanes that seem to become empty in the blink of an eye. Perhaps it’s the sound of the cart wheels that gets louder and louder as you move away from the front door, while the music in the background quietly disappears into white noise. Perhaps it’s the idea of the hidden cameras in the corners of the shop spying on him, recording his every move.

Damian doesn’t seem bothered by any of this, Jason notices. Although it could be because he’s again too much focussed on the phone that he’s just regained.

“Don’t you have the impression of being watched?”, Jason asks, and the question takes a few seconds too long to overcome for interest the colorful game that seems to absorb all of his little brother’s attention.

Once the words sink, though, Damian stops beside him and looks up, first at Jason, then at their surroundings. He maintains a pretty believable expression of teenage boredom, but his eyes are serious and attentive now, as he considers the possible implications of Jason’s remark.

It takes him all of thirty second to click his tongue at his older brother and dismiss him as a paranoid idiot.

“I mean it”, Jason insists, but Damian rolls his eyes at him and moves to grab a box of cereals from the lowest shelf.

“Is this okay?”, he asks. “Pennyworth’s note only says ‘cereals’, with no other specifications.”

Jason scratches his head and throws a few more glances all around.

“Yeah, sure”, he agrees distractedly, taking the box from the kid’s hand and throwing it into the cart. They turn the corner of another empty lane, reaching the frozen food section and the large windows facing the street outside.

The only lights out there are the familiar tall, black, and vaguely gothic - like everything else in that city - Gotham’s street lamps. All Jason can see is black asphalt, deserted sidewalks and puddles of dirty water. Nothing weird. Nothing out of place.

And yet there is this feeling in the back of his mind that makes his skin crawl. It’s been tormenting him since they stepped out of the car and he can’t shake it off. The feeling of being observed, cautiously studied by cold eyes, as if he were a prey. And not any prey either. He feels like a mouse hidden in the grass that senses the presence of an owl behind him. It’s a feeling Jason doesn’t like but one he knows.

Besides, there’s something else to it now. Something painful, something that’s mostly wishful thinking on his part, but that keeps tugging at his strings. Jason needs to know if he’s right. He needs to try, and he needs to do it alone. So he grabs Damian’s hand, pushing him forward and closer to the cashier, where a small group of people is waiting for their turn to pay.

“What are you doing?”, the boy complains, indignant.

“Here”, Jason retorts, handing the grocery list and the cart to the boy. “Pick up the milk, the eggs, and whatever junk food you think Alfred doesn’t know you keep hidden in your room, then wait for me here, okay?”

“What? No!”, Damian protests. “It was your idea to come here in the first place, you’re not going to burden me with-”

“Yes, I am”, Jason cuts him off. “It’s only gonna take five minutes, stop being a baby about it.”

An old woman in the checkout line turns around to look at them. She gives Damian an encouraging smile that succeeds in both making the boy blush and in interrupting the tantrum before it could escalate into a full fight, but also, Jason suspects, in cementing Damian’s intention to kill him in his sleep. He will have to make sure to bar the door of his bedroom tonight.

“Five minutes”, Jason promises to the kid.

“I will cut you into pieces and feed your remains to Quinn’s hyenas”, Damian promises back, still red in the face.

Jason pats him on the head and moves towards the exit, trying not to run.

Here’s a fact: owls are one of nature’s best killing machines. They’re created to be so. Every detail of their body is designed to make it easier for them to hunt, to better surprise their victims and to never let them escape once they’ve been captured. Owls are ruthless killers, and yet it’s quite easy to forget this little detail about them. Nowadays when people thinks of owls, they think about Harry Potter. Not here in Gotham, though. Here in Gotham people remember the murderers more than they remember movies and books. That’s evolution for you.

Jason’s not an owl, but he’s a pretty decent hunter (and killer, when needed) too. Not that his prey is making such a great effort to hide. The footsteps over his head are careful and feather-lighted, but still very detectable in the silence of the streets. And Jason can’t be sure that it’s him but at the same time he is. Because it wouldn’t make sense otherwise. And because if it isn’t him, then Jason has committed a terrible mistake in leaving Damian behind.

The sound of footsteps stops just above him. Jason looks up but the darkness mixes shapes and shadows and he can’t distinguish almost anything in it, except the profile of a fire escape staircase crawling up the side of a building. There could not be a clearer invitation, Jason thinks. So he grits his teeth and climbs the steps carefully, one hand over his gun, the deafening sound of his own heartbeat in his ears, waiting for an attack that he hopes will never come. (Because it’s him. Of course it’s him.)

He reaches the roof of the building undisturbed, and still finds only shadows waiting for him. But one of those shadows is familiar enough for Jason to breath a sigh that is both relief and something uncomfortably close to fear.

“Dick?”

A mask of black and gold slowly emerges from the darkness and it’s not his brother’s face, but it’s the closest thing to it that Jason has seen in months.

“Dick”, he breathes again, and the names almost sounds like a prayer on his lips.

He can see the Talon better now. The slim but solid body wrapped in black armor, the daggers lined up on his chest, the twitching blades in his hands. Jason swallows and takes a step forward.

“Hey.”

Silence. He doesn’t even hear the sound of a breathe coming from him (from it?). He had a conversation about this with Bruce once. Are Talons even alive?, he had asked him. It had been a sterile debate, an exercise in ethics and syntax that had ended with nothing but the usual resentment. Then Dick had gone and become one of them, and there had been no more space for any moral debate.

“What happened to you?”, Jason asks now, slowly, like he were talking to a feral animal instead of his older brother. “I mean… I know what you did. Why you did it. But why not come back? Why not let us help you after-”

He stops, licks his lips. The Talon in front of him hasn’t moved one inch, there’s no way to tell if he’s even listening to his rambling. There’s no way to tell if he is Dick either, and it kills Jason that as much as he wishes he could, he’s not capable of recognizing his own brother among all the Court of Owls’ soldiers.

“Do you remember when I first came back?”, Jason goes on, even though deep down he believes that his efforts are useless at this point. But he needs to at least try to connect with the creature in front of him, with what remains of his brother. And something of him must have remained, otherwise why would the Talon being spying on them in the first place? “Do you remember what you told me then? That I could come home? That whatever war I was fighting, we could fight it together?”

He is paraphrasing a bit, but a little white lie is not going to hurt anybody, right? No more than they already are, at least.

“I didn’t trust you. I didn’t know if you really meant it, if it was true or not. Not back then. But you should know that it’s true now”, because Jason’s ready to make sure it is. “Come home, Dick. Bruce needs you. The kids need you. They even called a truce for you, that’s how bad it is. Tim’s going crazy trying to find you, and Damian… well.”

The Talon shifts at the mention of the names, the motion almost invisible, but Jason is too focused on him not to notice it. He has no idea on what it means, though.

“You saw Damian down there, didn’t you?”, Jason insists. “The kid is heartbroken, Dick. And he’s angry. Angrier than he was when Talia dropped him here the first time, which it says something, if I can add my two cents. And you still care about him, right? So if not for the rest of us- for the rest of them, I mean, then at least do it for him, Dick. Do it for Damian?”

It comes out like begging, and Jason hates it. But if it works then whatever. He can always deny everything later.

“Dick…”

He realizes in a quick moment that it had not been the mention of the kids’ names that had bothered the Talon, but his very own. And apparently he had just reached the limit of his patience with it.

The Talon’s speed is inhumane. Jason has barely the time to see him move, let alone try to react or to defend himself. If this was a lethal attack, then his life would’ve ended in the space of a heartbeat, with a flash of red and gold. It is almost funny, the idea of dying on an anonymous rooftop, by the hand of someone that once claimed to love him. Someone he loves. Times like this, Jason feels like he can almost understand Bruce, all the things he did and still does, the burden he drags along every step Batman takes and that sometimes threatens to pull all of them down with him.

The hand that land on his chest seems to be made of stone and steel and knocks the wind out of him. He’s pushed backwards, his back collides with one of the chimneys behind him and Jason wheezes, tries to reach out a hand to stop him, to shield himself. He manages to grab the Talon’s wrist, fingers wrapping around the rough gauntlet of his uniform, but he’s not strong enough to move it, and the Talon’s other hand is crushing him, making his vision falter and waver, black spots blooming in front of him where the Talon’s face should be. He doesn’t even know where his gun is, and even if he did, he’s not sure that he would be able to use it.

One thing he still can see - that he can only see now, from this close - is that there are eyes behind the red lens. Blue eyes. His brother’s eyes. But there’s no sign of recognition in them, no familiar spark. Dick is a Talon, and the Talon is Dick, and for some reason, until a moment ago, Jason thought those were two very different things. It’s weird to only realize it now, because he’s never been one for denial when it came to things like this. People change, he supposes.

He blacks out while watching the owl mask in front of his face moving oh so slightly, as if the Talon were trying to speak (trying to ask for help), but no sound escapes Dick’s lips, and whatever the Talon is trying to tell to him, Jason doesn’t understand it.

The last thing he feels is a light brush of something cold and hard against his forehead, and then everything goes black.

He wakes up maybe thirty seconds, definitely less than a minute later, which is still enough time for the Talon to disappear into the night. Jason wasn’t expecting anything less. He doesn’t even bother with looking around for him.

His chest hurt, and so does his back as he carefully stands up and retrieves his gun from the floor. Getting down the stairs and dragging himself back to the supermarket is no fun, and it’s even less funnier when he has to straighten himself and pretend that nothing happened for the sake of the kid standing angrily in the street with two grocery bags at his feet and another into his arms.

The old woman from the checkout line is standing next to Damian, a grocery bag of her own in her arms, and from what Jason can see she’s smiling down at Damian and talking his ear off about something that Jason can’t grasp. Her presence is probably the only reason Jason’s greeted with a glare and a laconic “you are late”, instead of a punch and a colorful series of insults.

“Sorry, kiddo”, Jason concedes, then politely nods at the woman. “Thank you, Miss…”

The old woman gives him a smile that lacks in teeth but not in kindness.

“Only Ettie, dear.”

Jason smiles back at her, feeling a little surreal.

“Thank you for keeping an eye on my little brother, Ettie.”

“Oh, don’t mention it, dear”, the woman says. “Gotham is not a safe place for children to be left alone in the streets, you know? Especially at night.”

Jason’s shaken enough by the night’s events to actually feel guilty at her words.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. Sorry”, he repeats.

They talk for a few more minutes. About what, Jason really can’t say. He forgets the words as soon as they leave his lips, but at least he has the time to get back in control of both his body and his mental faculties, and by the time the old woman waves them goodbye he feels okay again. As okay as he’s ever gonna be, at least. Damian, on his part, only grumbles under his breath for the entire time, narrowing his eyes in a glare that promises a painful revenge for every second of this torture he’s forced to endure.

“You said five minutes”, the kid remembers him through gritted teeth once Ettie is distant enough. “What were you doing? Where did you go? If you dare again to-“

“Yeah, yeah, okay”, Jason repeats. “How many times do I have to apologize to you? I just had a little setback, that’s all. It’s all good now. You got everything?”

Another furious glare.

“Of course I did.”

“Good.”

Jason sighs and rubs one hand over his face. Damian takes a break from his rightful indignation to observe him with an almost worried sulk.

“Todd? Are you okay?”, the kid asks, losing the attitude for a moment.

I think I have two broken ribs, Jason wants to answer. He doesn’t. Partly because there’s no reason to tell Damian about tonight’s encounter, and partly because there’s that feeling again. Inhuman eyes looking down at him. Silent lips mouthing off words with no sound. A trapped bird, Jason realizes. That’s what Dick looked like.

He shivers. He knows the Talon’s back. And a part of him wants to look up, but if he does then Damian would follow his gaze and see Dick too. And that’s at least one nightmare that Jason can spare to the kid.

“Todd?”, Damian asks again.

Jason only shakes his head.

“Let’s go home.”

He leans down to pick up the grocery bags from the sidewalk and has to stop midway to not let out a moan. Yeah, definitely two broken ribs. Maybe three. Damian’s hand grips his arm and the kid tilts his head to the side, studying him.

Jason opens up his mouth to reassure him, but before he can speak the distinct sound of footsteps starts again above their heads, and Damian’s training kicks in place.

“What-”

He’s going to look up, Jason realizes. And if he sees Dick he’s going to go after him, and Jason is in no condition to follow either of them or to face the Talon again. And maybe that’s what the Talon wants. (Not what Dick wants, though). So Jason does the first thing he can think of: he grabs Damian by his shirt to pull him close and, going with the momentum, he kisses him on the forehead. (Like Dick had done on the rooftop, he realizes. Or tried to do as far as the Talon had let him, at least.)

It’s a quick, rough gesture, and the kid’s so surprised by it (almost more surprised than Jason is), that he doesn’t even punch him in the face. He only takes one step back to stare at him with wide eyes.

“What the hell was that for?”, he sputters, rubbing an arm over his forehead as if to delete the shameful gesture.

Jason stands up carefully and not without pain, listening for the Talon to move again. But the footsteps are gone now, and Damian seems to have already forgotten them.

“Just a reminder”, he answers then, his voice as casual as he can manage, while he adjusts the bags into his arms.

But Damian’s not having any of it and stomps after him when Jason moves towards the car.

“A reminder of what?”, he insists, still more confused than angry. “Todd, are you on drugs? Is this why you left? Father won’t be happy to know that you’re also a junkie, in addition to everything else.”

In spite of everything, even his hurting ribs, Jason finds himself barking out a laugh at those words. He pops the trunk open and puts down the bags.

“I don’t do drugs and you should know that, you little shit.”

The kid comes up in front of him, arms crossed on his chest and thunderstorms in his eyes.

“Then what the hell was that?”, he repeats. “And I want an answer that makes sense this time.”

Jason pauses. He too wants answers that make sense. He wants to know if Dick is a Talon or if there’s a Talon that used to be Dick. He wants to know which one of the two he faced tonight and what was the meaning of that encounter in the first place. He wants for this shitty situation to be solved. He wants his brother back.

“That was a reminder of the fact that you have an older brother who loves you a lot”, he decides then, and whatever answer Damian was expecting, this was not it. To be fair, Jason wasn’t expecting it either. And he still doesn’t know if he wants to believe it. “Now get in the car. You heard what your friend Ettie said: Gotham is a dangerous place at night.”

#jason todd #damian wayne #dick grayson #i realized i've never wrote about talon dick before #so of course my hand slipped #also it probably doesn't make sense #but it turned out like this #asks #spacenightwing #my fic #shari writes #batdictionary

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jrsechelon · 4 years

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Busy Ranking - Week 6

Updated Power Rankings

1. The Busy Killers (4/1/0) ↑ [Up 2 Spots] The Busy Killers keeps winning. Losing Delvin Cook this week hurts but this team has shown us they are resilient. They have held together with shaky play from Wentz and now with the recent signing of the 'Red Rifle' Andy Dalton, it looks like Wentz's days as the starter are numbered. This isn't about that though these are the Power Rankings and we're focused on The Busy Killers continued to dominate play each week. In a variety of ways, The Busy Killers are finding ways to pile up the points and shut down their opponents. Quietly this team has garnered the top spot and isn't being talked about too much. They've got a great coaching staff and scouts who are making waves in their locker room and through free agency. Bringing Gronk in was a big help last week, one that shouldn't be ignored. At the top of our Power Rankings, The Busy Killers have big wins against three above .500 teams and a 3/0/0 division record, they are on their way.

2. Evolution (4/1/0) ↑ [Up 2 Spots] In back-to-back weeks Evolution knocked off the last two remaining undefeated teams. Storming back against Hyrule Empire with the help of Aaron Rodgers's strong arm in Week 4 and with their elite defense in Week 5 against Black Hole Son they find themselves in the 2nd spot in our rankings. Evolution got revenge on Black Hole Son who defeated them in the Championship game last season, snapping Black Hole Sons' 17 game winning streak dating back to last season wasn't something that came easy. Evolution had to battle to the very last play of the game to get the win on a forced fumble recovery on the kickoff. Evolution may hold the 2nd spot but they had to battle from behind two weeks in a row, although that shows the will to never give up, they were shaky victories, and without a strong Week, 6 performance win or lose, Evolution could find themselves falling from the 2nd spot.

3. Black Hole Son (4/1/0) ↓ [Down 2 Spots] Black Hole Son finally fell from the top spot. Falling two spots to the 3rd place in our rankings isn't something they should worry too much about. They played a tough and tight game against Evolution but faltered in the final minutes. Losing Dak Prescott in the same week they suffer their first loss is what hurts this team more than even the loss. What will this team look like without Dak? Wednesday, they agreed on a trade with Evolution who sent Big Ben to Vegas in exchange for Hardman and draft picked between each team, Black Hole Son then sent Derek Carr to Balls Deep in a rare divisional trade for wide receiver Preston Williams. Black Hole Son has several questions now entering Week 6 but they still have a surefire thing in the backfield and as long as they can keep churning those first downs with their running backs, Ben shouldn't have to do too much.

4. Hyrule Empire (4/1/0) ↑ [Up 1 Spot] Hyrule Empire moved up to 4th after falling three spots last week and sitting at 5th. A big comeback victory late in the 4th quarter helped push Hyrule Empire to 4/1/0 on the season and gave them added confidence that they are for real. A majority of the focus is on Russell Wilson for this team and that's fair but let's not forget about this powerhouse defense who has done their part in helping Hryule Empire find themselves at 4/1/0 on the season. In a BIG Week 6 game, the defense will need a massively strong performance to maintain a top 5 ranking for Hyrule Empire.

5. Buds Bums (3/2/0) ↑ [Up 3 Spots] Wow! Buds Bums has found themselves in close affairs this year and has been able to pull out some tough games. The big win on Sunday against division rival LilShupeScoresBIGPoints was one they needed to make this division more difficult for LilShupeScoresBIGPoints to just run away with. Lamar Jackson and Todd Gurley are the bedrock of this team. The gameplan goes through them and that is where the points come from. If they can continue playing big boy football, Buds Bums will maintain a top 5 spot in our ranking week in and week out.

6. Rainelo Hawks (3/2/0) ↑ [Up 1 Spot] Rainelo Hawks held onto what should have been an easy win, instead, they narrowly escaped Balls Deep. Rainelo Hawks team isn't flashy, they don't scream contender, but they're atop their division and in a good spot. Last week Miles Sanders finally looked like himself, if he can continue that kind of play each week, Rainelo Hawks will soon be a contender with Kyler Murray and Sanders leading the charge.

7. LilShupeScoresBIGPoints (3/2/0) ↓ [Down 5 Spots]It was a punch to the gut for LilShupeScoresBIGPoints who suffered a division loss to Buds Bums. Josh Allen finally came back down to earth and entered the earth's atmosphere too fast. Allen didn't play well at all and it gave way to the loss. Higbee hasn't looked good the last two weeks and the lack of Julio Jones, their star playmaker showed last weekend. Luckily for them, Julio will be returning, Josh Allen won't make the same mistakes over and over, and they're bound to get Higbee involved sooner than later. LilShupeScoresBIGPoints may sit 7th but they won't be there long. This team is too good to not correct the mistakes they suffered last week.

8. The Canadian Cripplers (3/2/0) ↑ [Up 2 Spots] The Canadian Cripplers put it to PURPLEHAZE last week, pouring on the points. Brady didn't let up. The team is running on all cylinders in all phases of the ball. The start of our rankings this team was ranked one of the worst teams, they looked like they wouldn't stand a chance to be a middle of the road team. They've surpassed the expectations for them already and if Brady can keep playing to this level they'll continue to build on their success. A massive two-game winning streak against lowly teams was what this team needed to do as the true test comes this week in a division against with Aaron Rodgers and Evolution, who holds a 13/4/0 record all-time over these Canadian Cripplers.

9. VanillaGorillas (3/2/0) ↓ [Down 3 Spots]VanillaGorillas fans will yell that they are under The Canadian Cripplers after defeating them a few weeks ago but our rankings don't depend on who or who you haven't beaten. They depend on preformance and how a team shows up. VanillaGorillas dropped the ball last week, late, very late in the game. This defense allowed Hyrule Empire came back from a 24 point deficit. We say it every week, this team is young, they have a young core and there will be growing pains. This was one of those games they will look back on in the season and feel those growing pains.

10. Straight Edge Society (2/3/0) ↑ [Up 4 Spots]Is it me or does this team like to play on the edge? Every game they've played this year minus the Week 2 game has been a nail-biter. They are a fan of the dramatics I'd say. Their fans probably have heart-attacks every week. You better start taking an aspirin or two before sitting down to watch this team play. Straight Edge Society barely held on against Thunderbuddy4Life, a game they needed to turn their season around. They did it on the arm of Mahomes, the hands of Parker and Brown, and the legs of Gibson. The defense was able to hold down the fort in the waning seconds of the 4th quarter, stopping Thunderbuddy4Life from pulling out the dub. Straight Edge Society now at 2/3/0 and up four spots will look to continue their winning streak against the new franchise in Week 6.

11. Thunderbuddy4Life (2/3/0) ↓ [Down 2 Spots]Benching Ruggs, sitting Baker, disciplining Michael Thomas, and relying on Matt Ryan is all a recipe for failure. Thunderbuddy4Life did all of that and yet almost came away with the victory in Week 5. Down 2 spots they are looking to fix things in a big way. Justin Jackson looks like a massive steal through the waiver wire, and what's better than a two-headed-running game? A three headed-running game! Thunderbuddy4Life has everything they need to be a player in this league for this season, at 11th it looks worse than it is. They'll be alright but they need to start putting together wins if they want to contend for the Pacific, a division they are used to winning.

12. BroncosTillDeath (2/3/0) ↓ [Down 1 Spot] Winners of two straight, BroncosTillDeath looked like a far better team this second meeting against Ultimate Savages than they did in Week 1. Acquiring Gardner Minshew was just what this team needed. The quarterback situation on this franchise was iffy, to begin with, this season and after losing Barkley you knew they were going to have to rely on the quarterback more so. Trubisky wasn't the answer and Daniel Jones hasn't made enough strides to take the reigns completely. Minshew only in his second year is playing like a veteran. He is savvy and has a way of commanding the offense, something this team was lacking. Though they are down one spot in our rankings, they've looked leaps and bounds better the last two weeks and have a chance to keep making headway.

13. Ultimate Savages (1/4/0) ↑ [Up 2 Spots] Ultimate Savages are up two spots through defacto - being the best 1/4/0 team. It's been a tough ride for them since Week 1 and losing McCaffery. Last week they were trying to make a comeback but failed to complete it. They haven't been the same since CMC became sidelined. Brees has looked a bit sharper but still not at the elite level we know him to play. Their running game has been lackluster for several weeks and the receiving game has only been going through Mike Evans. They need more production from everyone on the field. Ryan TanneGOAT will get the nod this week against Straight Edge Society, can Tannehill help this team get off the snide?

14. PURPLEHAZE (1/4/0) ↓ [Down 1 Spot] PURPLEHAZE has not looked good all year. They have been unable to stream together consistency and a focus on winning games. Kirk Cousins isn't the guy, I am just going to say it. It's time to put in Justin Herbert. The kid can play and he has an arm to match. Jamaal Williams and Robert Tonyan have been the saving grace on this team, even La'Veon Bell hasn't done anything to get fans excited. In a loss that was embarrassing to recant, PURPLEHAZE will need to find solutions quickly if they want to turn their season around, it doesn't get any easier either. Their next five games are against four teams above .500 and two of those games are back-to-back divisional games, starting this week against Rainelo Hawks.

15. Yuba City Sultans (1/4/0) ↓ [Down 3 Spots] What is going on with these Sultans? I can't say it's the coaching staff, they are world-class, I can't say it's the players, they are balling out. What I can say is it's their schedule. In back-to-back weeks they have played Black Hole Son and The Busy Killers, this weekend they get LilShupeScoresBIGPoints. That is a brutal three-game stretch, whether you're home or away. Those are three of the better teams this year and have had better gameplans going in than Yuba City Sultans. I don't want to start passing blame to anyone on this team because they have everything they need in order to be a contender, I think it's just been a stream of bad luck, and the other team just wanting it that much more. Yuba City Sultans rounds out the 1/4/0 teams and although they are one of the more complete teams in the league, they haven't been able to put it all together through four quarters. Until then, they'll remain toward the basement.

16. Balls Deep (0/5/0) — [Remains 16th] Balls Deep is 0/5/0 they are having an awful year but they are trying to make moves and it has shown on the field. They almost pulled out a victory over Rainelo Hawks last weekend. It was close, ten or so points separated the two teams. With the signing of rookie receiver Claypool and trading for Derek Carr, Balls Deep may be able to find a silver lining in being so bad so far. They've been able to be first on the waiver wire and claim the guys they feel will give them the best opportunity to win going forward. 0/5/0 is a tough hole to climb out of but I'm excited to see what Carr can do in the bay area for this second-year franchise looking for any answers.

CLICK TO VOTE

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etc-greys · 7 years

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Season 14 Episode 4: Ain’t That a Kick in the Head

Songs of the Episode:

Fun, Fun, Fun by The Beach Boys

Leave the Light On by Overcoats

Silence by Grace Carter

Got The Feeling by Juliet & The X’s

Synopsis:

This week’s episode opens with Amelia shaving a part of her head for her brain surgery with both her sisters (Maggie & Mer) by her side. Mer is told not to tell Amelia’s mother because she felt that if her mom can’t show up to her wedding, why should she come to her surgery?

At Bailey and Warren’s home, Bailey is caught off guard when she wakes up to an empty bed. He’s been secretly working out (in case you missed it, he’s been casted in the new Grey’s Anatomy Spinoff about firefighters in Seattle, so while the audience knows he’s training to be somehow involved in the firefighting/EMS world, his wife doesn’t. But rest at ease Ben fans, he’s still slated to be a series regular).

Amelia’s mentor and surgeon (you know, the really arrogant one?) tells Bailey, Webber, Alex, Maggie, Mer, Amelia, and Owen his surgical plan. He answers all of their questions and concerns. Amelia gets real with her family and gives them all instructions: Deluca is supposed to question the surgeon to keep him focused, Mer is only to call Amelia’s mom if she dies, Maggie should take her room, Owen should move on if she dies or if she’s in need of around-the-clock care, and names April her power of attorney because she’s both sweet and smart to hold out some hope, but not too emotionally attached to let her go. After closing up some loose ends, she tells them how much she loves them. Once in the OR, this beautiful moment happens where the entire surgical team joins Amelia in standing in the superwoman pose. The pose is not only symbolic, there are studies that show that it increases your confidence and helps you perform better. The voice over emphasizes the fears associated with surgery. While you worry about not waking up from a normal surgery, when it comes to brain surgery you fear waking up and no longer being yourself, physically, mentally, or emotionally.

Bailey and Webber interview interns, and while some were amazing, the others were just straight up comical.

Mer goes to check in on Megan and unfortunately she has a fever. Mer then goes to watch Amelia’s surgery, in which the surgeon is playing the Beach Boys. Deluca tries to respect Amelia’s wishes and badgers Todd with questions. In the gallery, Mer vents to Maggie and Alex about Riggs, who left unexpectedly. Mer’s mad that he left Megan behind and Alex chimes in saying that he never liked him. Mer then puts his dating history into question and he says that his judgement has improved with age. <3 (Awwww!) Suddenly Todd stops singing along to the Beach Boys, garnering all of their attention, he’s forced to cut a vital line in the brain, which could either do nothing or be extremely detrimental...the screen goes dark.

She opens her eyes and begins answering all of their questions but... they can’t hear her. We then see that she’s still connected to a ventilator and can’t make any movements. NOOOOO! The only good thing is that her intellect remains intact. They’re all concerned that she’s not recovering properly.

Post Op Day 1: There’s no change, but wait.... she’s breathing over the intubation tube, they extubate her!

Catherine and Jackson return from Harper Avery’s service, and we find out that Todd goes way back with Catherine...possibly romantically. This doesn’t sit well with Webber. Maggie is a bit flirty with Jackson, who looks damnnnnn fine in his suit! I mean can you blame her for complimenting him? I don’t... but anyway, Mer then asks Jackson if she can take his name off of Megan’s innovative surgery because she wants to be considered for a Harper Avery. While he’s disappointed, he understands and gives her the go ahead.

Deluca was in the middle of fulfilling another promise he made to Amelia (perform her post surgery protocol, to get neuro patients up and moving post op as soon as possible) when Todd walks in and reprimands him. Deluca doesn’t back down and reminds him that Amelia has a higher recovery rate. Throughout all of this we can hear Amelia’s pleading thoughts, she’s in so much pain that she doesn’t want to continue doing her protocol, but since she’s a prisoner to her own body, she’s forced to do it anyway.

Mer and Megan talk about Riggs, both of which told him to go back to the other (Mer told him firmly get back together with Megan and Megan told him to stay with Meredith). These mixed signals lead Megan to believe that they broke his brain. Unfortunately, she needs 3 days of antibiotics given her fever and low white blood cell count. When she tells Jo about the possible infection, Jo worries it could affect the study, and slyly asks if she’s mentioned in the article that could be considered for a Harper Avery. Mer reassures her that her name is going to in the article! Yay.. but Mer needs photos... and Jo’s a bit nervous (her husband is a doctor and this article could put her in danger).

Webber visits Amelia and brings up the possibility of giving her opioid painkillers to help with her recovery, but she shakes her head in tears.

Post Op Day 2: Arizona, Maggie, Alex, and Mer all joke about how they never noticed her tumor. They go even further and wish they had a scapegoat such as a tumor to blame their mistakes on. April is sickened by their jokes, but they explain that in situations this scary and unknown, they’ve got to have some comic relief. Then AMELIA STARTS SPEAKING!!! Well... she starts speaking in French. But hey I’ll take it! It’s progress! Thank goodness Maggie knows French and the two of them chat. Mer then recalls that all of the Shepherd's went to French preschools.

Across the hospital, Megan freaks out when she finds out that Farouk is sick. In an attempt to calm her down, Mer tells her about the time she kidnapped her own daughter in a rash decision and that it made things a lot worse. She also reminds her that she can’t help him if she dies.

April is struggling to adjust to her new normal of joint custody. Thank goodness for friends like Arizona, who comfort her by relating to her own experience and how it’s a hard adjustment, but it eventually gets easier. But April doesn’t want a new normal, and Arizona stays by her side.

Owen goes to check in on Amelia, and.... SHE STARTS SPEAKING ENGLISH AGAIN! AND SHE REMEMBERS THINGS! ...but she forgets Derek died. What could this mean?

Post Op Day 3: She remembers he’s dead, but she’s scared because her thoughts and memories are scattered. She’s fearful this means that she won’t be able to be a surgeon again. Interestly enough, the arrogant mentor Todd was actually nice and proves to her that she will recover and that her confusion is only temporary.

Mer, who has been avoiding Riggs’s calls for days, finally picks up the phone. It turns out he went to Baghdad to get Farouk and he needs her help. He’s trying to get him to the U.S. and needs her to prove that her new trial and treatment plan are essential and that Farouk qualifies for her treatment. She rushes to look up facts in order to give all of the right answers, but she won’t know if they approved him until 3:00pm the next day (he has a flight to Seattle that lands at 3:00pm and if they approve him, they will both be in Seattle by that time the next day).

Webber brings Maggie to his and Catherine’s house for a family dinner with Jackson and Catherine... which by the way their house is GORGEOUS. Catherine lays him out because she thought it would be a family dinner and Webber is insulted since Maggie is his family.. but turns out the real reason she wanted for it just to be the 3 of them is because she was going to tell Jackson about his inheritance... his 250 million dollar inheritance. Yup you read that right 250 MILLION DOLLARS, but NBD. Meanwhile Jackson and Maggie have awkward small talk in the other room, but they overhear them their parents arguing, and that my friends is how he finds out about his life changing inheritance. Yup through his mother angrily yelling it to his stepfather. During their awkward dinner, Jackson tells his mother that he doesn’t want the money, but would rather have a chance at winning the prestigious Harper Avery Award. Catherine yells at him for complaining about having too much money and tells him to consider what it would be like to not have enough. Maggie defends Jackson by acknowledging the problems and complexity of having so much, maybe even too much.

Post Op Day 4: Amelia is cleared to go home!! But she’s still looking for something and asks to see her scans for herself.

Jo tells Meredith to take her name of the article. When Meredith asks why, she reminds her of her husband. Mer feels awful, but agrees to take her name off of it. Ben overhears and is appalled that she would take her name off of something that could change her life, since it’s such an incredible opportunity. He asks her why she would do such a thing and she tells him honestly. She explains that her husband might find her and try to kill her and that she’s been in hiding. He laughs at first until he realizes that she’s not kidding. He was shocked (just like the rest of us were when we first found out!) but she asks him to tell her a secret since she feels so exposed and vulnerable. He tells her that he’s been training for something and that his wife doesn’t know and that she’s not going to be very happy about it.

Amelia continues to search for something even after seeing her clear scans and even asks for more scans with better imaging. Mer finally gets the text from Riggs to pick him up from the airport! YAY! But when she arrives at the airport they give her a really hard time. So Meredith schools the guard like a boss! She questions his medical abilities, given that it’s not his area of expertise and warns that this child will die if she doesn’t see and treat him right away. He then lets her right through.

WARNING: This next scene will probably make you cry tears of joy. Mer and Riggs surprise Megan back at the hospital when Farouk walks through the door. Their embrace is just beautiful and truly makes you wanna hugs your parents. She introduces him to his Uncle Owen (I mean how cute!) and Owen thanks him for taking care of his sister all of these years... please excuse me while I ball a little.

Deluca comforts Amelia by bringing her literal tumor in a jar to her and shows her that the something she’s been looking for is right there and that it’s gone. He explains to her that something was wrong for a very long time, but now she’s safe. The other shoe is not going to drop. There is nothing wrong anymore. While he feels he might’ve overstepped, she proves that false when she gives him a huge hug and starts crying.

Jackson goes to talk to Maggie and apologizes for the dinner being so uncomfortable. As a moment begins to happen between the two of them where you think something might take place, it’s quickly squashed by Catherine who compares their relationship to a brother-sister relationship. (I know every Japril fan is rejoicing right now!!!)

Owen goes to see Amelia as she’s packing to go home and asks that she come home! She tells him that she’s gonna go with Mer and that he was right to want to leave, and admits to being awful to him. She admits that she doesn’t even know who she is anymore. So she sets him free, but instead of running, he finally fights for her.

At home Bailey confronts Ben on his new found need for running, and he avoids going into too much detail by distracting her.... ;) Arizona’s daughter calls her while she’s with Carina and she tells her she wants to come back home! YAY!

A very somber moment back at the loft when Jo can’t sleep. Honestly I don’t know how to describe what she’s feeling, but I think her words speak volumes. Here she tells Alex how much she hates her husband for still having power over her and continuing to take things away from her. Alex tries to comfort her, but there is only so much he can truly do.

Megan’s temperature is going down! WOO HOO! She tells Mer that Riggs is still in love with her, but Mer explains that he’s trying and that she’s gotta give him a moment to readjust.

Amelia goes home with Owen! (YES OMELIA FANS!!)

A Few Additional Thoughts:

AMELIA IS ALIVE AND WELL! I’m so happy that she is recovering well and that she’s on the road to finding herself. I’m excited to see where her relationship with Owen goes for sure, but I’m way more excited to get to know the real Amelia. I mean it was really mature and took a lot of courage to let him go. She wanted him to be happy and wanted to set him free. But I’m happy he’s finally fighting for her. What does this mean though for him and Teddy? Will they stay friends? Regardless, I can’t wait to see Amelia’s journey of rediscovering herself and I just hope she can finally be happy (even if it’s without Owen). (Omelia fans don’t hate me..)

Megan and Farouk’s reunion was so beautiful. And bravo to Riggs for reuniting them. I really hope they try to work things out and that she gives him a chance!

WHAT IS JACKSON GONNA DO WITH ALL THAT MONEY? It’s going to be really interesting to see what he will do. I have faith that he’s going to do something extremely generous with it. Like maybe he’s live off of that money and do pro bono surgeries for the rest of his life. Maybe he’ll start a new foundation. Maybe he’ll just donate it all. Who knows. But I truly feel he’s gonna do something that’s spectacular and worthwhile.

And finally, it literally broke my heart when Jo had to give up receiving recognition for her role in the innovative and groundbreaking surgery. While I’m happy that in some ways she’s healing, given that she opened up to Warren, I’m so heartbroken by the things she’s forced to give up. She shouldn’t have to hide her success or limit her opportunities because of someone else, no one should and it devastates me. This season they are supposed to bring back her husband in some way, I just hope that she gets some resolution and feels safe again. While this is a scary and utterly sad story to tell, it’s an important one.

#jolex #omelia #JAPRIL #grey's anatomy #season14 #TGIT #music

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junker-town · 5 years

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Baker Mayfield is the revenge-fueled quarterback the NFL needs

You don’t need to give Mayfield a reason to be pissed off; he’ll make one.

Welcome to Revenge Week at SB Nation NFL, where we are celebrating the dish that’s best served cold. You can keep up with all our latest revenge content here.

Baker Mayfield is unabashedly out for blood — and sometimes, revenge.

In a league often lacking in big personalities, the Cleveland Browns’ quarterback stands out as a fiery outlier, especially at his position. Quarterbacks learn long before they’ve reached the NFL how to answer questions without saying anything of substance.

You’ve heard the tired clichés like “we have to take it one game at a time” and “we need to play a full 60 minutes” over and over. So it’s refreshing when someone decidedly different comes along. Mayfield is certainly that.

His rise to NFL stardom had its share of hurdles. He was an undersized, lightly recruited prospect who had to fight his way into the Texas Tech starting lineup as a walk-on. He had to do it again at Oklahoma after leaving Texas Tech following his freshman season.

The massive chip on his shoulder that came with being overlooked propelled his rise through the ranks.

Mayfield‘s 2017 got off to a rocky start when he was arrested in February for public intoxication, but he ended that year as a unanimous first-team All-American and the Heisman Trophy winner. A few months after that, he was the No. 1 pick in the 2018 NFL Draft and finished his first season with the league record for touchdown passes by a rookie.

Now he enters his second season with the Browns as a legitimate NFL star. He had the 12th-best selling jersey in the latest numbers released by the NFLPA — ahead of players like Todd Gurley, Russell Wilson, and Julio Jones. This year, Mayfield has Odell Beckham Jr. as a member of his receiving corps and the Browns are the favorites to win their first-ever AFC North title.

Somehow through all those good times, Mayfield has found a way to feel disrespected. It’s actually impressive at this point. How he uses that as motivation is nothing short of a talent.

Mayfield even found a way to get fired up for a game vs. Kansas

Winning a national championship in college football often requires getting through the entire season without a loss. Most of the time that means winning a few big games and avoiding any shocking losses against underdogs. Staying focused for each is a challenge, though.

Yet it wasn’t hard for Mayfield to get up for a massive game at Ohio State and then plant a flag in the middle of the field after the Sooners’ win.

Revenge was on Mayfield’s mind for a year after the Buckeyes sang their alma mater on the field at Oklahoma in 2016 — something Ohio State does after every game.

“Everybody that was here for last year’s huge loss definitely remembers that. And we talked about it during camp,” Mayfield said. “We’ve never been here for a team to sing their fight song on our field. Quite frankly it’s just embarrassing.”

So sticking an OU flag on the Ohio State logo was Mayfield’s way of turning the Buckeyes’ triumph into payback fodder.

But what about when Oklahoma was a 38.5-point favorite against a Kansas team on a nine-game losing streak? Yep, Mayfield still found a way to feel resentful — even if the Jayhawks were probably asking for it a bit by opting against pregame handshakes.

Mayfield went full scorched-earth on Kansas with 257 passing yards, three touchdowns, and no interceptions. Oklahoma won, 41-3, and Mayfield hit the Jayhawks sideline with a crotch grab that was (hilariously) pixelated by ESPN.

lol ESPN blurred out Baker Mayfield grabbing his crotch. THE HORROR pic.twitter.com/Xfv7KccbwY

— Rodger Sherman (@rodger) November 19, 2017

That was one of 12 wins in a season when Mayfield led the Sooners to the College Football Playoff. He probably didn’t need Kansas to provide him any extra incentive to play well, but it was a telling moment of Mayfield’s personality. Give him a motive to seek revenge and he’ll absolutely take it.

Mayfield got pissed at Hue Jackson for ... uh ... having a job

In two and a half seasons as head coach of the Browns, Hue Jackson led the team to a grand total of three wins. His 3-36-1 record was historically awful and may never be topped.

So there’s reason for Cleveland faithful to dislike Jackson. There’s even reason for Mayfield to have some disdain for a coach who got his rookie season off to a rough start. When Jackson got fired, the Browns were 2-5-1 and Mayfield had a 78.9 passer rating — well south of his final rating of 93.7 for the season. It probably didn’t help either that Mayfield only cracked the lineup because an injury to Tyrod Taylor forced Jackson’s hand.

But curiously, Mayfield was offended that Jackson accepted an offer to become a defensive assistant for the Bengals after the Browns fired him.

#Browns Baker Mayfield admitted he didn’t like Hue Jackson defecting to the #Bengals so soon. Gave him a chilly reception pic.twitter.com/hF480gMc7N

— Mary Kay Cabot (@MaryKayCabot) November 25, 2018

“He was here trying to tell us to play for him,” Mayfield told reporters. “Then he goes to a team we play twice a year. That’s how I feel. We have people we believe in calling the plays now.”

Jackson didn’t ask to leave the Browns. He was canned midway through the season and jumped at the chance to stay in the NFL coaching ranks by joining a team where he already had two prior stints. That was short-lived and Jackson was let go by the Bengals in January.

Months later, Jackson still hasn’t found another coaching gig. That shows exactly why it was a good idea for him to take another job when the opportunity presented itself.

Mayfield was still able to convince himself that he and the Browns were wronged, and used it to stoke a four-touchdown performance in a 35-20 win against the Bengals — capped by an icy postgame handshake with Jackson.

A month after that, Mayfield got another win over Cincinnati. He made it crystal clear that he was still holding a grudge by giving a stare-down so devoid of subtly that it’d make Cersei Lannister jealous.

Baker Mayfield staring down Hue Jackson pic.twitter.com/GIOTBemQF1

— Vikings Blogger (@firstandskol) December 23, 2018

In the two wins against the Bengals, he totaled seven touchdowns, no interceptions, and a 135.8 passer rating — more proof that a pissed off Baker Mayfield is a force to be reckoned with.

Mayfield will still find fuel for his fire, even if he has to work harder for it

The Browns have more cause for optimism than they’ve had in decades. Even if they still haven’t had a winning season since 2007, no team looks primed to be more fun to watch in 2019.

Even the NFL knows it. The schedule makers put Cleveland on primetime in three of the first five weeks of the season.

Mayfield, in particular, is set up for a huge year after finishing his rookie season on a tear. He thrived when Freddie Kitchens took over as offensive coordinator eight games into the 2018 season, and now Kitchens is his head coach. Quarterbacks almost always up their passer rating in year two of their career, and Mayfield wouldn’t be far from MVP chatter if he manages to do so in 2019.

Fans are actually excited about the Browns, so you’d think Mayfield would have less reason to feel slighted. But with high expectations come doubters. One of those throughout Mayfield’s still-young career has been Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd. When the radio host went after Beckham, Mayfield defended his new teammate with choice words for Cowherd.

Once again, you’re a clown.... now I know you’re just trying to get me fired up. “Most memorable moments”... he’s 26 and his greatest moments are ahead of him. You forget the kids and people he inspires. That goes much further than football...

— Baker Mayfield (@bakermayfield) May 16, 2019

“He’s supposed to bring out facts and he chooses to put out irrational opinions,” Mayfield said of Cowherd in an interview with Complex Sports. “People can say what they want, they can say I’m not really supposed to comment on this, but a liar is a liar and a guy that is really just full of it needs to be put in his place.”

Mayfield has always paid attention to the critics. Before the 2018 NFL Draft, he told Russell Wilson that he was jotting down a list of all the haters.

Mayfield is keeping a list of the media members who have crossed a line, he says, and he stores screenshots of offending tweets in his phone. All of it serves as motivation when he’s working out alone, he told Wilson.

When prospective agent Bus Cook tried to sign Mayfield on as a client, he got the dial tone for not knowing that the quarterback walked on at Texas Tech.

“Every agent does the same thing, they give their resume, what they’re about, all this stuff,” Mayfield said of Cook before the draft. “Finally, when he was about to give me a chance to talk, he asked, ‘So, when did Bob Stoops start recruiting you?’ And I literally — I said, ‘Excuse me?’ And he repeated the question.” And then I said, ‘Yeah, I gotta go.’ And I just hung up.”

Mayfield still hasn’t dropped a high school rivalry with Sam Ehlinger, who’s now a junior at Texas.

It doesn’t take a lot to get on Mayfield’s bad side. New Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury probably understands that better than anyone in the NFL. Kingsbury was at Texas Tech during Mayfield’s brief time there, and the quarterback’s unceremonious departure from the program led to him blasting his former coach on the way out.

“When I got hurt, there was no communication between me and my coach,” Mayfield told ESPN in 2014. “When I got healthy, I didn’t know why I wasn’t playing right away. At that time, we were losing a couple games in a row. I was still clueless as to why I wasn’t playing. That was really frustrating for me because I started the first five games and we won. So, I just didn’t really know exactly what he was thinking or what the situation was.”

Mayfield got his revenge with 13 touchdown passes in three wins against Kingsbury’s Texas Tech teams between 2015 and 2017. He’ll get another shot this season now that Kingsbury is leading the Cardinals. The Browns travel to Arizona in December — giving us the chance to see payback-mode Mayfield in action.

Meanwhile, Kingsbury has only given the token answer you’d expect from a coach when asked about Mayfield’s grudge.

“I know a lot has come from Baker’s side, but I loved coaching him, loved the chip on his shoulder, cheered for him in every game except one,” Kingsbury said in July 2016. “It’s been fun to see the success he’s had.”

Those are the kind of answers you’re used to hearing in the NFL, especially from coaches and quarterbacks. Not from Mayfield, though. He’ll even take unprompted shots at other players with whom he has no beef at all.

“I cannot believe the Giants took Daniel Jones,” Mayfield told GQ during the 2019 offseason. “Some people overthink it. That’s where people go wrong. They forget you’ve gotta win.”

One of Mayfield’s Browns teammates said it best when he told GQ in that same profile that the quarterback has “the mentality of proving everybody who’s ever said something negative about him wrong.” Yep.

Mayfield will take a situation — no matter how small — and use it to fuel a vendetta that can only end with his enemy’s destruction.

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quinquinis · 7 years

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hey, can you please write another crossover between White Collar and Batman? like a oneshot or something, but i really like how you tie everything together. like maybe where he hadn't deleted his existence off of the internet and was found out as Dick sometime while working for the FBI. and like, everyone was shocked that rich-boy Grayson was grand-thief Caffrey. XD thanks, any theme you use is good though, i'm just really into your AU.

I don’t know if this is what you were thinking about but enjoy:

Bruce tried, Neal suffers and Nightwing drops in on Peter

Bruce had tried. He was exhausted and beaten and could no longer put up the fight. He could only hope his eldest son would forgive him.

"Hacked the wifi yet?" Jason asked Tim from his corner of the elevator. Tim, sitting right by the buttons, had pulled out some cords and was using them to try and get his tablet computer online.

"Didn't we get you a portable wifi modem?" Bruce questioned.

Tim hummed and crouched down, placing the screen on his legs. "That won't get me unrestricted access to the FBI. Nor will it tell me where we are." Bruce had no doubt that Tim could find a way around that but, it seemed his middle child wanted to do things the messy way.

"We're on the tenth floor, going up," Damian said in his 'you're stupid' tone. He pointed to the floor indicator on the button panel above Tim's head.

"They're inaccurate," Tim repeated. "And I want accuracy."

"Just don't get caught," Bruce sighed.

"-tt-" Damian pushed off the wall and Bruce glared at him.

"Damian!" he barked. "Against the wall."

"This is stupid," Damian huffed dropping back against the wall of his corner of the elevator.

"Then why did you come?" Tim snapped back.

"Because you were coming."

"Because I like the idea of walking right in and out of the FBI," Jason responded with a grin. "I think Red Hood is still on their watch list."

"I didn't ask you."

"He didn't ask you."

"Stick to your corners, boys!" Bruce said as they started to shift. How many more floors were there until the White Collar office anyway? He didn't think he'd survive the way things were going. "And I told you all to stay back at the hotel."

"Come on Bruce, that FBI agent said we should give our statements."

"After all, it's not every day we take down a fleeing suspect."

"Besides, this is the best team in the country. They even have a conman working for them."

"It's not the first time that's happened," Jason commented.

"This one supposedly stole the painting of St. George and the Dragon done by Raphael."

Damian rolled his eyes.

The elevator dinged.

Bruce tensed. It was time.

Bruce Wayne and sons walked into the office like they had stepped off the runway. Neatly and smartly dressed, Wayne and the two youngest were in suits while the other one was dressed in a blue button up shirt and black jeans with a jacket thrown over his shoulders.

They could give Neal a run for his money.

Neal's eyes widened and everyone wondered about that until the one in the jacket pointed at him.

"You!"

Neal pointed back and yelled at Bruce, "I thought you said you weren't going to bring them!"

Bruce looked like he had been caught between a rock and a hard place. He adjusted his tie while Jason growled at him.

"You knew?"

"I tried?" Bruce admitted to Neal, looking worn out for a moment.

A few of the agents felt for him. It was obvious he was out of depth with whatever was going on.

Up in his office, Hughes frowned at the sudden commotion. He walked out and popped his head in Peter's office.

"Is it Caffrey?" Peter asked with a put-upon sigh.

"Possibly. Wayne's here."

"Great," Peter groaned. They observed from above the bullpen.

A rather thin and short teenager had Neal pressed up against a wall with a finger shoved against his chest. Neal's hands were up in surrender and he had the smile of a conman whose con had just gone wrong.

"You know that the Raphael was my favourite!" Tim cried out. "Why'd you go and steal it?"

"Allegedly," Neal said, "no one has proved anything. Also, come on, Tim, you never saw it in real life anyway. It's not like it getting stolen affected you."

Damian cackled from where he was sitting on Neal's desk.

"Caffrey!" Hughes barked.

"This isn't my fault!" Neal whined back. Peter wondered about that. He was starting to understand why Neal had been twitchy whenever Wayne was mentioned and downright terrified of the man coming to the office.

Who knew Neal's reaction would have more to do with Wayne's children than Wayne himself?

"I do apologise for my children," Bruce sighed, causing Peter to jolt. The man had somehow appeared beside him without his notice. "They are... troublesome at times and it's been a while since they've seen their older brother."

"The guy in the jacket?" Peter questioned. He looked like a ringleader, standing behind Neal's desk and grinning at the others while he looked through Neal's drawers.

Bruce blinked. In an almost too-innocent tone he said, "no. That's Jason. He's the second eldest. I was taking about Richard... what did you call him? Caffrey? I was taking about Caffrey."

"I'm sorry, what are you talking about?" Hughes demanded to know. Richard Grayson was Bruce's first, taken in years ago and adopted only a couple of years back. "How is Richard related to Caffrey?"

"Hey, Dick! Why do you need a drawer full of ties?" Jason demanded to know with a wide grin in Neal's direction. He held up a blue tie which Peter had seen before. Neal wore it often but only in the office. If they went outside, he tended to change it. Neal had said that the tie was special and he didn't want anything to happen to it.

"Put that down Todd! I bought that for him!" Damian screeched, reaching across the desk to grab it.

"Everybody FREEZE!" Neal bellowed suddenly in a tone no one had ever heard from him before. It reminded Peter of Hughes or himself, the tone of someone in charge. "Tim, take a couple of steps back and I'll talk to you in a moment. Damian, get off my desk and follow your father up the stairs. Jason, choose. Either get yourself into the conference room or get out before I call security."

Silence reigned for a few moments, broken when Jason sighed and shoved the tie back in the draw.

"You will have to explain," he said, shoving a finger in Neal's face before quickly ascending the stairs and walking right into the conference room without acknowledging anyone else.

Damian made his way up to Bruce with a frown on his pudgy face.

"Tim," Neal sighed. "Really?"

Tim's expression was serious as he responded, "Really."

"Sara was bad enough but now you?" Neal huffed. "Forget about the Raphael for now and I'll explain what's going on upstairs."

"The FBI better get it back in a couple of months in an anonymous package or something," Tim said as Neal guided him up the stairs.

"What just happened?" Agent Blake questioned in shock.

Peter raised an eyebrow at Neal, who just shoved a thumb in the direction of the conference room. Hughes had already walked inside to keep an eye on Bruce Wayne and his brats.

"Okay, Caffrey explain," Hughes ordered.

Neal smiled. "Hi, my name is actually Richard Grayson but most people call me Dick. I'm Bruce's eldest. I... may have done some silly things and Bruce decided I could stay on the anklet until I learnt my lesson."

"You broke out of prison. For a girl," Bruce huffed.

"She was in danger! I was right about that," Neal muttered.

Peter winced at the reminder of what had happened with Kate. Neal had been devastated to lose her. He both disapproved of Bruce treating the anklet like a minor punishment and approved of his disapproval of Neal breaking out of prison.

"Prison. Which you were in because you went and forged bonds for Roy and then gave them to that Mozzie character."

Jason laughed. "Seriously? Bond forgery? Should of known you'd be the most boring white collar criminal."

"Bond forgery is not boring!" Neal countered. "That's mortgage fraud!"

"Does it really matter?" Tim questioned, looking between his two brothers. "Although I guess this is why we haven't seen you outside of phone calls for a while."

"A year," Damian said. "Not that I've been keeping track. I just have a good memory."

"Of course," Neal said with a fond smile and ruffling the kid's hair. Peter was amazed. Neal actually seemed like a responsible adult around these people.

"Dick, we will see you back at your place, I think," Bruce said. He told Tim the address and Jason, Tim and Damian bolted out of the room. "Let me just give you my prepared statement and then I'll be off."

"So, Neal is your son?" Hughes questioned as Bruce handed him a signed statement.

"That's right. Just... let him go by Neal Caffrey. It'll get him into less trouble than Dick Grayson," Bruce advised.

Peter wondered about that but decided to trust the billionaire. Neal already got into trouble on a regular basis. He didn't want to risk it getting worse.

A few months after meeting Bruce Wayne and his kids and learning that Neal was not just Neal but also Dick Grayson, Neal received commutation and was let go. The news had a mixed reaction from the White Collar office. Some agents would miss him while others was glad to see him go. The latter were not from White Collar and didn't interact with Neal often, if at all. Peter wasn't surprised at the news and wondered if Bruce had something to do with it.

Neal left with a smile on his face and a promise to Peter that he would see him again.

A few nights later, Peter had been in the backyard with his wife when a man in a dark uniform jumped over the fence. Peter grabbed his gun while El held him back. She had seen the flash of blue across his chest.

"Peter, wait! That's Nightwing!"

"Nightwing?" The man dropped to the ground, holding his side and Peter looked closer. He did look the vigilante who returned to New York and had started hanging out with a bunch of adults calling themselves the 'Titans'. "He's hurt, El. Get the med kit." He could see the dark stain of blood growing on the man's uniform. He wandered over, holding his hands and the gun up to show he meant no harm. "Can you stand?"

"Ugh, I have no idea. I didn't intend to hit the ground." That voice was familiar.

"Neal?" Nightwing grinned up at him and Peter huffed a sigh. He should have known. He reached down and helped Neal up, caution gone now that he knew who was under the mask. "Why are dressed like that?"

"I'm following a pattern of behaviour instilled in me in a young age," Neal responded. "Also, call me Nightwing, okay? To any outsiders, you're just helping the guy who crashed into your yard. I don't want any of my enemies coming after you two."

"Then why come here?" Peter growled as he deposited Neal into a chair. The man was heavy, probably as a result of all the lean muscle under his uniform. No wonder Neal always had looked fit.

Neal looked at the ground. "I missed you and I promised I would visit." Peter didn't budge, staring at him until he answered probably. "I'm hurt and was close to your place. Plus, I need sleep which isn't interrupted by my friends' 'emergencies' like 'Roy invented a bomb which exploded and now the room is covered in whipped cream' so can I sleep on your couch tonight?"

Peter rolled his eyes. "Come on, let's get a look at you." To his surprise, the suit had a zipper down the back which Peter had to pull down for Neal.

"I would do it, but I don't want to risk tearing myself open even more."

"I would love to know that trick," El said as she came in. "Maybe I could use it to get into some of my dresses."

"Use a coat hanger in the hole of the zipper," Neal responded matter-of-factly. "And pull it up."

Peter resisted telling his wife that were was no hole in the zipper for Neal's uniform. It was small, almost invisible.

Neal's side had been sliced. He raised his arm and had a look.

"Well, that's not as bad as I thought. Hurts though."

"Of course," Peter said patiently as El handed him something to clean the wound with. How had he ended up mending a hurt vigilante in his lounge room anyway? "You know what? While I'm helping you with this, maybe you could help with some of my cases?"

Neal barked a laugh. "Sure, why not?"

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