#Gothamites: *Screaming crying vomiting*

[puppetmaster13u]

Even More Meat Marionette Au

But a lil drabble <3 Because my ADHD snatched this au and isn't letting go.

  There were tunnels under Gotham. 

   Everyone knew about them, even if they were rarely spoken of. There were tales about them, some whispered in hushed voices from mother to child, others creeping across withered pages stained with age. Stories of creatures, of living shadows, of men going mad, wailing about the things beneath. 

   No one went into the tunnels. 

  Not purposely at least. 

   For one Bruce Wayne, he had fallen the first time- slipped into a well after a night of rain and into those dark caves with stone as black as night and just as stained with blood as the rest of the city. 

   No one had gone down for a long time, and no one should have gone down for longer still, but the rain had made the crumbling stones slick, the child reaching just a hint too far, and so down he went, nails scrabbling against unyielding rock and blood dripping from soft skin. 

   The child did not scream, even if his terror was sweet in the air as his blood mixed with the water soaking his clothes. He did not stay, just like the others before him, but the caves remembered the sweetness of the fear he brought. 

   No one went into the tunnels, not anymore. 

   Yet the child did. 

   Oh he wasn’t a child anymore, not to humans, but to the ancient caves, he was still but an infant. He’d eventually leave, and they’d still be there. They had been there long before, and they’d be long after even when the city turned to dust in the sands of time. 

   And yet… 

  And yet. 

   Yet he kept returning, night after night and day after day, running a hand along the stone that should have chilled him to the bone. His fear was still ever so sweet in the air, even if it was lessening over the time. It was… curious. 

   There was still the scent of fear, of terror coming from the human, but it also wasn’t. It was coming from him, but it wasn’t his own fear. 

   The emotion clung to him, but it wasn’t his. It was others’ fear, others’ fear he was bringing down to the cavernous tunnels. Others’ fear he was feeding It, unknowing or not. A gift, a meal, something for It and It alone. 

   It was only polite to return the favor, to gift the little human something to fight and terrify. As much as the spilled blood pleased It, the tunnels understood that it would be far better for Its little human to stay healthy, to be able to bring blood not his own. 

   The city was always full of corpses and the tunnels stretched far longer than humans realized after all, It could reach any who fell. Purposeful deaths, accidental, it made no difference to the bloodstained stone beneath. 

   It would call to Its little human soon enough, Its gift was nearly complete after all. Something to fly without the creaking metal or suits of wires. Something new, something It hadn’t formed before. 

   After all, what use would It have for a living body? What use did flesh and stone need to move? It had been here for a long time, and It would be here longer still, but perhaps, perhaps just this once another would last past the crumbling of life and bones turning to dust. 

   A gift, from the tunnels to him. 

   For one Bruce Wayne, who had returned to them with sacrifices of flesh and blood and fear each night. For one child who had fallen and returned to the depths of the tunnels, for one child that was Its.

This is a combo of my Au & @phoenixcatch7's and you need to check out their Possessed Doll Au because it's amazing <3<3

[thewriterwithnoplan]

Fire, Brimstone and the Glory of Gotham (Part 10)

Summary: Bart Allen always seems to know something about something. Strange facts or secrets or theories gifted to him from his soulmate. This ‘gift’ along with his forbidden speed wielding abilities, get him landed smack bang in the center of the Gotham Resistance - an army fighting against the Reach with the help of villains and assassins. Tangled up with the Council of Robins - an elitist group of heroic descendants - and their fearless leader Y/N Drake AKA Commander Apocalypse, Bart must navigate this new environment like a minefield. Because one wrong step could bring his life and the lives of every last human being, to a short and bitter end. Pairing: Bart Allen x Reader Word Count: 830 Warnings: Probably swearing.

They say that in the hardest of times people show their true colors. That when push comes to shove people will make their choice to cower or stand up and fight. Y/N had made the stupid assumption that nobody would be dumb enough to submit to their fate. She had simply assumed that people would rather go out in a blaze of glory than cower on their knees for mercy.

And then she got that call from Lou. Poor Lou who had survived life in Metropolis – a modern hell on earth – only to lose his brother to a petty illness that no one seemed able to cure. Stupid Lou who begged for mercy from those who only knew how to bring pain. Young Lou, who’s screams Y/N would hear every time she closed her eyes.

“Commander!” The radio crackled pathetically – it was the only communication they dared use, far too dated for the Reach to intercept. “Commander Apocalypse! This is Lou, I… I’ve lost sight of Bart. I can’t find him, listen, you need to get out of here they-”

Y/N stood in front of the clunky piece of tech, fiddling with the knobs and dials in a frantic attempt to do something. Lou’s voice crackled to a stop, there was a deep voice and then Lou began screaming. The sort of screams that made your throat instantly dry, the sort that made you want to vomit the instant the noise hit your ears.

“Lou?” Brigit rattled the device, “Lou! What’s going on over there? You’ve got to talk to us, Lou!”

Mari’ clutched at her ears, sobs wracking her frame. She’d been born into all this violence, but her heart was still soft, and she’d always liked Lou. He was one of the only people who dared interact with the youngest Robin, unafraid of her Tameranian side – he’d no doubt seen things fifty times as scary as tiny little Mari’.

“Mari’, come here.” Y/N pulled away from the radio as the screams began dying out. She crouched to her knees to hold the girl to her chest. “I need you to take the Zeta back home, tell Jocelyn and Dorian what just happened. Okay, can you do that for me?”

Mari’ opened her mouth to protest but only said, “Nightstar.”

“Apocalypse.” Y/N nodded before steering the girl by her shoulders into the zeta tube. Then she rounded on Brigit, “Come on Bri, we don’t know what happened, we’ve got to get in there.”

The redhead only gave her a dead look as if to say; we both know what happened, don’t lie to me or yourself. But if Y/N knew one thing about Gothamites, it was that they didn’t go down easy. Lou was still standing – she knew it.

***

When they arrived at the Happy Harbour labor camp, the only thing that Y/N could think was that it might have been a pretty cool place, way back when. She’d lived her whole life in a cave so she could appreciate the beauty of Mount Justice, even if it had been blown to hell.

Y/N’s second thought upon arriving at the Labour Camp was; where the fuck is everyone? It was a dead zone, covered in corpses fresh and old, all of them human but none of them Lou. That was the first warning sign, the Reach needed workers, that was why they conquered the Earth. So why had they suddenly slaughtered everyone? Had they finally realized that Earth just wasn’t worth the effort?

“Commander.” Y/N’s head snapped toward Brigit, only to realize that the voice had come from behind not beside. Lou stood there, looking to all the world like a Reach member as bloodied and broken as the bodies around them. “I- I’m sorry. Bart took off in a time machine. They said if I didn’t call you, they’d kill everyone. I tried to warn you. I… I’m just so sorry.”

Y/N realized a moment too late that Lou had sold them out. A horde of Reach members were on them within a minute, scrambling over the jagged edges of Mount Justice’s hollow corpse. They’d made Lou call to draw them in and when he’d tried to warn them… Was Bart really in trouble? Gods above, was he one of the bodies crumpled at their feet?

Brigit looked on the edge of breakdown as she surveyed the area, but her eyes kept straying back to Lou. Betrayal clung to the air, making it hard to breathe. How was everything falling apart so thoroughly? So, god damn quickly? One moment they were fine and the next they were surrounded by the promise of an untimely and likely painful death.

But despite her evident heartbreak, Brigit cracked a bitter sort of smile, “You take the right and I’ll take the left, aye Commander?”

“May the Old Heroes bring blessing upon us,” Y/N murmured with a nod and then charged into the fray with a cry of, “FOR GOTHAM!”