clean your sword
i. Peter had thought many times about dying for his brother, killing for his sisters, as all oldest children do.
ii. He'd imagined it a hundred times: how if his mother and father were ever killed, he'd get some low-skill job and make sure Lucy's clothes still fit her as she grew. How he'd make fists and fight dirty if Susan was ever threatened. What he'd do if Edmund ever had to flee the country on a dark, windswept night.
iii. Yet when he heard Susan's horn that day, he still froze. Only for an instant, he thought, "this can't be my job, right?"
iv. The blood on his sword shone red when it was all over. When he wiped it on the grass, the stain it left was almost black.
v. They'd put Susan in his arms when he was two years old. Peter didn't remember it, but he knew he'd been waiting for her till then. He wasn't a real person until he was a brother.
vi. And when they walked back to the pavilion, Rhindon bumping Peter's hip, all he could say to his sisters was, "I'm sorry I didn't come faster."
vii. The High King was almost obsessive in the way he cared for Rhindon. When he grew older and required weapons larger than those made for a child, he obsessed over them too.
viii. He told the others, in no uncertain terms, that if it ever came to it in battle, they were to leave him and live. As their brother and high king, he commanded it.
ix. The first time Edmund risked himself for Peter's sake, Peter didn't speak to him for a week.
x. He was oiling his sword when Edmund found him. "See, the thing is, Peter, being brothers goes both ways. If you can love me enough to die for me, than I get to love you just the same."
xi. Peter agreed with him then, to avoid the argument. He was sick of not talking to his brother. Yet privately, he knew that Edmund was wrong. That sacrifice was Peter's special prerogative, as the first-born.
xii. Back in England, his mother noticed that Peter had become more fastidious. She didn't notice that his protective streak has grown - and maybe it hadn't, really.
xiii. It was uncanny, how Peter would always show up just when his siblings needed him. He'd round a corner, and there was Lucy stamping her feet and scowling at a bully. There was Susan, crying, and now his knuckles were bloody.
xiv. He cleaned the blood off in the sink so carefully. The water ran red for a second, and it almost seemed black.
xv. When Caspian asked for the High King's advice, looking so very young, Peter jerked his chin towards the sword a Caspian's hip. "Be ready to use that," he said. "Keep it clean, and close."
xvi. Susan forgot Narnia and she forgot Aslan. Yet selfishly, Peter still hoped that she would never forget how quickly he came when she called.
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Prompt 293
Jason takes a deep breath. He takes a deep breath, in for ten seconds, out for eight, and just takes a minute before looking again. Nope, there’s still the strange quartet of orbs in the box of what should be stolen weapons (What, the government had enough, honestly) that gave his workers the heebie-jeebies.
Which is not the vibe he gets from them. In fact, he’s actually kind of concerned with how much he has to beat the Pit back with how quickly it lurches to latch onto the… Well they’re not gems, and he’s a little wary about touching them at first, but the Pit does seem to settle when he does.
Alright, he can deal with this. It’s not like he has several heads in a duffel bag that needs to be delivered or a tiny assassin child back in his safehouse (Seriously Talia, why was he the preferred babysitter?) or an entire gang in Crime Alley to deal with. It’ll be fine.
…
He would like to curse out his past self, because there’s now four babies in his safehouse that appeared to have fucking hatched from the orbs. Goddamnit.
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people need to start talking about Julian Blackthorn more because he’s awesome, he raised a family at 12 while running an institute with no experience, no help and no one knew for 5 years, he killed his father to protect his siblings, he went into faerie to get Mark back, he united downworlders and nephilim in order to fight the cohort, he’s very clever and his plans always work, he turned into a true nephilim and SURVIVED he’s one of my favorite characters and we NEED to talk bout him more. that’s all😁
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it's interesting that despite all being the same age you can see a clear division of younger and older siblings within the Hargreeves siblings.
With five it's more obvious despite being mentally far older than all of them he looks like a child he looks like their much younger brother did when they lost him and so they treated him as such. But you can see that level out now to they still treat him like a younger brother but give him space to be an adult.
But for the other siblings that all remain the same age it's a nice little look into how parentification of the higher numbers and the wombification of the lowers ones by Hargreeves insane parenting methods created an artificial sibling age hierarchy amongst children of the same age.
Which is also why ben doesn't fit. He was number 6 to them but he was number 2 in his own family. They want to baby him but he is used to being looked to as an elder. it's also why him and Diego seem to clash the most can't be two number twos with complexes about being number two in the family it fucks the whole shit up
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The Family Plan, dpxdc edition
Danyal Al Ghul walked away from the assassin life when he was 13, just a year after Damian was sent to their father at age 9. Well, “walked away” probably wasn't the best way to describe it. He had escaped, because the Heir to the Demon's Head would never be allowed to simply leave the League of Assassins.
It wasn't too long after he escaped into the United States that he met Jasmine “Jazz” Fenton. She and her parents were attending a scientist convention of some sort, and she had bumped into Danyal at the entrance. Soon enough, she was introducing him to her parents. Danyal Al Ghul soon became Daniel “Danny” Fenton.
He had only planned on using them to craft a fake identity, so the League had less of a chance of finding him. He didn't plan to get attached, but he did. He didn't regret it.
Danny was fourteen when he died in the portal and became Phantom. He was fifteen when the League finally found him. Grandfather and Mother were not pleased.
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The Batman fandom infantilizing a near 30 years old white man taking in a child, saying he was a brother more than a father as if he wasn't a full grown adult taking in a child he could have birthed, but parentifying a brown young adult taking in his brother pre-teen for less than a year, saying he was a father more than a brother (only a year is barely enough but ok), or saying he was more a father to his other brothers than Bruce, when he met them when he was 18 and 21 is making me uncomfortable, ngl.
Like, Bruce is a "kid" when he became Dick's guardian when he canonically was over 25 (he started being Batman at 25), and a brother to him when he raised him for 10 years (and Dick probably has not many memories from before Bruce now), but Dick is a "father" to Damian he only had as his charge for less than a year, half of which they were fighting each others??? Make it make sense???
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