#until you've forcefully carved out this one little safe haven for yourself

[starculler]

strap in for this week's fic flavor: the failsafe episode of season one of the young justice cartoon except the simulation just won't. fuckin. end.

(fics that inspired this at the end)

If I ever did sit down to make my own fic, I'd split it in 3 parts:

The Simulation: bits and pieces of the 40 years Dick lives after most everyone he knows has died

The Return: the immediate aftermath and healing from the trauma of having not-quite-actually lived a whole life only to wake up and find out it was all fake. nothing traumatizing about that whatsoever.

The Unintended Consequence: aka the twist I'd love to add and would hint to in the second part - finding out the simulation, through martian mind fuckery, pulled from the real world (and in many cases, from real minds). Dick meets a bunch of people he didn't think were real outside the confines of his simulated life. A bunch of rowdy, heroism-inclined teens across the years get to meet the sibling/friend/mentor figure they all dreamed up one night.

(actual idea snippets under the cut)

.

Dick Grayson is 14 and most of the world's heroes have died. He planned a suicide mission that left him the sole survivor of a doomed team he helped found. The invasion may have been stopped, but is this really the price he wanted to pay?

The first face he sees in the infirmary is Roy's, and he has to close his eyes and just breathe for a few minutes because for one painful moment he'd thought it was Wally. But this isn't the world where his best friend miraculously survived alongside him. This is the one where he got his best friend killed and didn't even give him the courtesy of following behind him. Behind them.

.

Dick Grayson is 27 and has lived longer without Bruce than with him. The invasion's anniversary is always a tough day for him, but that morning seems especially harrowing. He'll get shit for it later, but can't resist stepping out onto the balcony of the manor's master bedroom (Bruce's old bedroom) for a smoke -- his first since he'd promised to quit if Jason, just 15 then, did too.

"Bad habits tend to pile up," he'd said, a rueful quirk to his tired grin. He'd tapped the cigarette twice on the railing and added, lower, "and this one's especially nasty, huh."

He inhales, watches the sun creep across the horizon, and lets acrid smoke burn through his lungs for a long moment before blowing it out in a small cloud. His eyes water, but he doesn't cough. It tastes just as bad as it did the first time he smoked one, not even a year after the invasion and treading water as Robin proved insufficient.

There hadn't been enough heroes to go around then, and Dick had been trained by one of the best. It hadn't been fair, but it had been his plan that had ultimately stopped the invasion. His shoulders everyone's expectations fell on.

He takes another drag, then smudges the lit end against the rail he's leaned on when he hears a boot scuff purposefully against the roofing above him.

"Todd and Pennyworth will be upset with you."

He doesn't turn around. Damian doesn't jump down to join him.

.

Dick Grayson is 54 and wakes up in a room full of ghosts. He hears his long-dead father-figure tell his long-dead team about a simulation they weren't meant to win. A training exercise gone wrong and only half a day spent under their mentors' careful, if slightly panicked, supervision.

He looks at his hands, watching the way his gloves crease when he flexes them in and out of tight fists. He looks at his team, their eyes a little haunted but shoulders slumped with relief even as they grumble. Batman's heavy, gloved hand settles on his shoulder and the weight of it is a nauseating mix of foreign-familiar.

He opens his mouth. Closes it.

Tears prick his eyes behind his domino mask, and he tells himself the suffocating, acidic void building in his chest is just some leftover side effect of the ordeal and not the grief-guilt of outliving yet another family (no matter that they hadn't been real in the end).

.

Dick Grayson is 16-going-on-56 and well used to the coincidences piling up between his simulated life and the real thing. Some of it -- missions and villains he remembers cropping up -- he's marked for Bruce to review and sort as he pleases. Some -- security for the cave, team building anecdotes, and training regimens -- he's shared with the team. And some he keeps only for himself.

Tim is one of those. He knows it's not fair to the kid (so much smaller now than he ever was when Dick lived his simulated life), but he can't help being selfish just for this. Tim is the one kid he's sure he didn't make up, and if Dick's taken to babysitting the kid just to be near at least one member of the family he built for himself in the wake of the worst days of his life .... Well, anyone who says shit about it can happily stand in line to have their teeth kicked in.

Despite this, it still catches him off-guard when he sees a familiar face pop up in one of Bruce's reports.

Jason Todd, caught boosting tires off the batmobile, is nearly the same age now as he was when Dick met him. He stares at the words, but none of them really sink in beyond the kid's name and address. He's moving before he's even made the decision.

He's used to the world kicking him when he's down - lived it for 40 frustrating years. But he has Bruce again. And things with Tim have been so good. And he's always been selfish when it comes to family. If he could just see Jason. If he could just meet him. If he could talk to him.

If if if if if--

.

Inspirations:

Circles in Shattered Mirrors by InfinityIllusion

Fine (But Not Okay) by CharlotteDaBookworm

Verisimilitude by mutemelody

#young justice #young justice cartoon #batfam #batman #dick grayson #thoughts and headcanons #the heart wrenching inability to cope with the fact that you've lived a fully realized life #you've loved and lost and loved again in the face of every unending tragedy #until you've forcefully carved out this one little safe haven for yourself #only to be thrust back to the beginning of one of your greatest traumas - esp one you're partly responsible for! #gotta love it #anyway i am and always have been obsessed with dick grayson and no one can stop me #the simulation was fake but some psychic bs means real world elements filtered in #cue several children with weird dream-memories of half-lived experiences and a massive sense of deja-vu #when they wade into the superhero world #all i can picture is the spiderman pointing meme but it's the batkids at dick lol #my favorite idea is that once Dick gets his grubby hands on Jason and Tim it's all over from there #he's pulling late nights and researching and scouring facial recognition databases until he finds his kids #(he blurs the lines a lot when it comes to considering them his siblings vs kids #on the one hand they're not super far apart in age bar Damian #on the other he hasn't been a kid in any meaningful way since he was 14 and he very nearly raised half of them in some way #(plus side to an au is that i can space the ages out more as needed compared to the show haha) #jason and cass are firmly siblings close as they are to his age #steph tim and duke fluctuate depending on how in trouble or injured they are #i will die by dick being damian's dad tho lmao #babs is more platonic life partner than sibling but very firmly family regardless #this is the dick grabs on to any shred of family he can with both hands and drags them in kicking and screaming if he has to au