#It's from Talia’s POV and will add more perspective.

[abyssal-ali]

Burned my wings close to the sun/But I'll keep on flying/I'm too young for dying

Pairing: None

Rating: M (blood, violence, death, thoughts that could be seen as suicidal)

WC: 1.6k exactly (yes I'm proud of that)

Tired of never knowing exactly where he stands with Bruce, Jason decides to force his hand.

A/N: This was heavily inspired and plotted by a friend on tumblr, so most of the credit goes to @skypalacearchitect.

A note for the tag "Immortal Jason". Technically he can die, but he will always come back. His power is resurrection, not total immortality.

The song for this fic is "Higher" by The Score.

It may seem a little confusing (though I hope not) but more will be revealed in the second chapter, which I hope to work on and have up this weekend/coming week.

Enjoy!

Chapter 1: They try to keep me down, but I just get higher

Jason fumed all the way out of the Batcave.

He fumed on his ride back to his safehouse, he fumed as he passed all his security protocols, he fumed as he removed his gear and headed to shower and change. He fumed halfway through his shower, too, until his anger decreased from 'rolling boil' to 'gentle simmer' and his thoughts turned to vengeance.

Mr. 'I-am-Vengeance' himself would get a healthy taste of his own medicine. Jason smirked ominously to himself.

Back in the Batcave, a tired-and-irritated Batman felt a disturbance in the void.

~~~~~~~

After a lovely sleep dreaming and scheming, Jason awoke to the smell of food in the air. Hopping out of bed, he headed to the kitchen with a knife in hand as a precaution (not that he wasn’t a master in several hand-to-hand martial arts) that he put down when he saw who had invaded his kitchen.

“Talia? Why are you here? I thought you were with Damian?”

“I had a feeling my oldest son was plotting something and needed my help.” Talia left two steaming mugs of tea on the island and warmly embraced him. He left the knife on the counter and joined Talia in easy harmony as they danced around his kitchen making the meal.

Once they had begun eating Talia pinned Jason with her slightly unnerving green stare. “Jason. You are not one to hold back your thoughts, habibi. What is it?”

Jason sighed inwardly. Always straight to the point with Talia, and nothing was long hidden, either. He met her gaze. “I want to perform a little experiment on Bruce, and I'd like your help.”

She looked him over calculatingly. “Go on.”

“Bruce said some things last night...I almost shot him somewhere he'd have a hard time recovering from. But then I thought, he's still never recovered from the first time I died. That's what this is all about, anyways, so what if I do something to him he'll never recover from.”

Talia had stopped eating by now and had a wrinkle on her brow as she stared at him and analyzed his body language.

Jason continued, “I want you to kill me in front of Bruce.”

Talia stood up and her mouth was pressed into a firm line. “I did not save my son from that man's brutality just to kill him myself.”

“Look, T, I'm not sayin' this lightly. I know what death is like better than most. But I need to know exactly how he feels about me, if I can realistically continue to work in Gotham or not. You and I know I'll come back, but he doesn't. I- he seems like he wants me dead and gone, so he can still mourn Robin-me. I need to know for myself.”

Talia stood in front of him, carefully scrutinizing his body language and facial expressions. “...this is not a situation like the aftermath of your showdown?”

“No, T, I'm not askin' this 'cause I want to die. I'm askin' because I want to live. I don't feel like I'm really living around the Bats, always keeping an eye out for a potential problem and what I'll be blamed for next. But...I need to know just how big of a chance I have to live with them. And how much they'll look for me if I leave. I'm not asking this of you lightly, T. Feel free to say no; I'll understand.”

“I must think about this, Jason. But if you leave, I will always help you, whether they chase you or not.”

Jason smiled and hugged her. “I know. Thanks, Talia. Take your time, I have drama to plan anyways.”

~~~~~~~~~

Talia stayed with him longer than her usual day or two, instead living in his apartment for a whole week. They didn’t bring it up again, but Jason figured it was so Talia could keep an eye on him and assess his mental and emotional state before she did anything.

She mostly stayed inside so she wouldn’t alert Bruce to her presence, but Jason caught her watching him from the shadows the two nights he went out as Red Hood.

The next Saturday evening, while Jason washed the dishes and Talia dried them, she casually mentioned his request. “I’ll help you with your plan, habibi.”

Jason turned to her, dripping a few suds on the tile floor. “I’m mentally stable enough to handle you killing me?” he asked wryly.

Talia’s lips thinned subtly in displeasure, but she was long used to his ways of speech and his use of humour as a defence. “Something like that. Are the dramatics of your plan sufficiently plotted?”

“Almost. I was thinking I’d confront Bruce in the Batcave, if possible with his little sidekicks there so he can’t hide anything from them anymore, and then you come in and hug me and stab me in the back.”

Talia frowned.

Jason explained his reasoning and Talia finally acquiesced.

They set the date for Tuesday.

~~~~~~~~~

Jason rode into the Batcave just after the Batmobile pulled in, having followed the Bats through their patrol to figure out the best time to make his dramatic entrance.

The Batmobile had been the last to return, so they should all be gathered now for his…demonstration.

Nightwing, Batgirl, Spoiler, Red Robin, and Batman were all standing around in various mixtures of costumes and comfy clothing, and Babs was on the Batcomputer’s main screen, pointing some information out to Nightwing.

They turned to see him park his bike facing the entrance and approach them, though he stayed a carefully calculated distance away to give Talia more space to flee when they inevitably attempted to apprehend her after she stabbed him. He took off his plain motorbike helmet, having only dressed in civvies to appear more defenceless to appease the paranoid old man.

“Jason? Why are you here? You stormed out last Saturday and haven’t been very active lately.” Bruce almost sounded pleased to see him, but Jason could hear the underlying cold calculation as he wracked his brain to figure out why he had returned.

“I had something I wanted to say to you, Bruce.” He made sure his voice stayed neutral–after all, this was to confirm Bruce’s thoughts and feelings about him either way, though both Jason and Talia subconsciously knew which side Bruce would pick.

"Which is?” Bruce prompted, annoyed that there was an audience that would be suspicious if he sent them away to hear Jason out privately.

“I want to work with you. You were my first family, and you helped me live longer and better than I would’ve as a kid on the street. I’ve come to terms with the fact that we will always share opposing viewpoints on certain subjects, but I still respect that you have a code. I’ve even compromised on my own views when I could to make myself appear in a more palatable light.”

Bruce stood stiffly, body language as cold and closed-off as ever. His sidekicks were all huddled in a group, whispering amongst themselves. Jason was pretty sure they were betting on how this would turn out. He and Dick had used to do that–no, focus on the present, Jason. Don’t be a Bruce and live in the past.

“But why is it always me compromising? I’m more than willing to accept your unwillingness to kill, but why must you be so coldly against anyone killing? Even if I stopped killing permanently, you’d never see me accurately, would you? I’d always be viewed through a blood-red lens. I would never be your son.”

“Once a killer, always a killer. You enjoy these executions you perform, Jason. My son died when he was fifteen.”

Jason sucked in a breath, trying not to show how much those words hurt him. “Thank you for confirming my hypothesis.”

The watching circle of sidekicks looked incensed (Dick), concerned (Babs and Cass), and shocked (Tim and Steph). They didn’t have a chance to act, as the exit to the Batcave beeped.

Talia easily entered, using Jason’s passcode, striding determinedly up to Jason and Bruce, nodding reassuringly at Jason. “Habibi.”

Of course, Bruce took the address to mean him and not his son and angrily questioned her why she had broken in.

Talia laughed lightheartedly. Jason had to hand it to her, she was a good actress. You’d never know she was about to stab her son in the back.

“I just had one final thing to accomplish before I left Gotham for good.”

She turned to Jason.

“If this will hurt you after or you just can’t do it, I’ll understand,” Jason whispered in the League dialect.

“I appreciate your concern, habibi, but I will be alright. This is for you.” She wrapped her arms around him tightly.

"I love you, Ummi.”

“I love you, ya albi.”

She took a deep, steadying breath and raised the dagger in her hand, swiftly piercing him through the heart. He lurched a little in her arms but turned to face Bruce, who was staring at the scene in shock.

“This knife in my back hurts less than the figurative one you shredded me with time after time. Congratulations, Bruce, your son is dead.” He choked and spat scarlet blood at Bruce’s feet. “His blood is on your hands.”

Bruce stared at him, then the blood, still stunned at the spectacle.

Talia gently laid him on the floor, his head in her lap, combing her fingers through his hair.

“See you soon, T.”

Talia’s hand rested tenderly over his eyes, brushing his eyelids closed.

[kindlingkeen]

🍒🍑

🍒 What’s your favorite character dynamic to write? (Can be romantic or platonic, specific or general!)

I like writing characters when they’re trying to solve a mystery. I think you can see examples of that with Gordon in Echoes of Future Past and Dick in The Calm Inside the Storm. I also like writing stories that are driven by one character but told from another character’s perspective. For example, Guerrilla Tactics is told from the Bats POV, but Jason is driving the plot. In many ways The People We Choose is driven by Talia’s choices, but is told exclusively from Jason’s POV.

I realized after I wrote this out that maybe the prompt is actually asking about relationship dynamics, but I’m just going to stick with this answer for now, lol. 😋

🍑 If you could make a connection between your favorite character and another work you care about (whether a crossover/fusion or a wonderfully “pretentious” literary reference) what would it be? How would it work?

I already answered this one here, but I’ll add that I’ve always loved fairytales, and if I was going to try my hand at something it would probably be with Atlantis and selkies or mermen 🦭🧜‍♂️🌊

Thanks for the ask, friend! 💙

Ask me more fruits!

[cheeto-flavoured-pasta]

For the Random WIP Ask Game:

11. 🌈 RAINBOW SLOTH: Wild card! Share one thing about your WIP that you have been waiting to be asked about!

And all of a sudden I’ve forgotten everything I’ve ever wanted to be asked…

Kidding (partially).

I initially wanted to post a whole paragraph about plot twist ideas/arcs for my WIP for this, but then again, I also wanna talk about APS fun facts, but then again again, the question is asking to share only one thing, so now I have to actually make a choice and commit. :P.

I think I’ll do the second option, so here are some random APS fun facts:

The very first version of APS was some novel I wrote 3 years ago that was set in Japan (I was a huge weeb at the time and it was so cringey) and the plot was wildly different and honestly so convoluted. I tried to take the premise of “superhumans discovered by government and go through dystopic hell” and “secret underground superhuman organization that basically fights off ‘bad guys’” and mush them together. Turns out, you can’t have two main premises at once (at least for me). One of them could have been a side-premise/subplot of sorts, but nooo. I had to mash them together and squeeze them into one book to the point where the plot switched from one plot idea to the next (ex: I set up the story as a “superhumans discovered by gov’t” plot and then completely flipped it on its head and forgot the other premise halfway through). It was a hot mess. A flaming mess. I deleted that book entirely and decided to change everything about it (except the title). That was a much better decision.

Caster was supposed to be the love interest of another random side character. Decided against it later because I don’t wanna center the story too much around romance. Caster’s also aroace and not interested in any kind of relationship, it wouldn’t really be fitting anyway. Idk, the idea just didn’t stick.

There was supposed to be a scene in chapter 6(?? Was it 6?) — the one where there’s a street brawl and someone chokes and dies — where Talia actually steps in to do something. All she manages to do is splash water in one of the perpetrator’s/instigator’s faces. I only wrote that because I thought it was funny, but I took it out later because it created a big character inconsistency

APS was supposed to be a book series with dual-POVs throughout (ex: Caster and Talia for the first book, Melissa and Cassian for the second, etc. etc.) I eventually scrapped that because the second POV either became useless to the book or it could have another whomp story all by itself without sharing the story with a perspective of another character.

At one point, I planned APS to be a 6-10 book series with so many fucking prequels and sequels and companion novels. I scratched that entirely because, seriously, it was so unnecessary to have that much for no good reason at all. The plot would be too stretched and convoluted if I kept it as a 6-10 book series, and after revamping the plot events, I realized I only needed three books to tell the whole story.

To build off the previous one: I do have a slight “spinoff” series of APS called APP (A Powerful Past). It’s more of just individual books covering pieces of backstory/lore in more detail, but that’s a side-series, so it’s pretty much it’s own thing. I’m only gonna work on it after APS is finished, so for now, the most I do to work on APP is to add to any thought dump pages.

[denna5]

End-of-Year Writing Meme asks: H, N, R, & V please :D

H.  How do you write? Paper, pen, computer? Music, nomusic?

I use my coumpter, sometimes music but usually just have ontv as background noise.

N. Anything you were planning to write that never gotwritten?

So the ones I wanted to start posting this year that have notgotten written enough to be posted would be my Clint/Steve/Bucky  soulmark au where Bucky and Clint are markedbut don’t know, Steve does and is involved with both of them and trying tofigure out what to do and my pirate Nat one which would Clint/Natasha/Buckywith them seducing Bucky to get his castle. I’m still working on them, just don’tknow when  they will be posted.

For stuff before this year, I had a Dark Knight RisesVampire Au I wanted to do, that was possibly going to end upBruce/John/Talia/Bane/Basard and then a Hannibl au with John/Barsad/Bane.  I was also going to write fill for kink memefic for Avengers  soulmate au where Clintwas supposed to get Steve’s mark but Hydra meddles and Rumlow’s mark appearsinstead and all the angst and conflict that would bring.

R. If you had to rewrite one of your stories from scratch,which one would it be? What would you do to it? I had plans to rewrite or atleast repost Lost Bird, my long Dark Knight Rises Au where John is raised withTalia  and if I was to do it now, I wouldadd some more of their childhood instead of having it just be about fourchapters instead of having it reveled later and maybe have a few more sceneswith them and Ra’s. I would also finally finish it.

V. Which story was the most viscerally pleasing to write?Tell us your narrative kinks. 

I love writing Soldier’s Boy and Jagged Pieces series .  I have a lot of character povs in those, fivein Jagged Pieces( Natasha, Bucky,Clint, Steve, Fury) and four with three morebeing added probably in Soldier’s Boy( Clint, James, Rumlow, Pierce and soonFury and two others) I just really love having the same events shown indifferent perspectives, to see how Steve reacts in Broken Parts as opposed toBucky, how Pierce sees his relationship with Clint vs how others see it inSoldier’s Boy. I love playing with that and those two fics are where I think itreally shows.