#and his story is done

[the-graves-family]

Aegri Somnia: Sick Man's Dream

09-02-2024

It’s cold.

Aaron hasn’t been home in days.

No footsteps, no slamming doors, no yelling, no hitting. Nothing. The house is still, as if it’s holding its breath, frozen in time waiting for its master’s return. 

Each minute crawls by, painfully slow. Ace has no way to tell the time, except for the darkness that falls at dusk, and the light that breaks through at dawn. His brother will surely be upset when he returns: the chores haven’t been done. He can expect vicious words and strikes when Aaron returns. The thought only brings misery, condenses in his chest and leaves him feeling desolate.

He’s not sure if the persistent cough that has plagued him for weeks is gone, or if he’s just too weak to cough anymore. It had certainly felt like he’d broken something for a while. Pain is a familiar feeling, a constant companion for the last decade or so. He’s not sure if it’s a good or bad thing. On one hand, he’s not too bothered by everything that seems to be going wrong with his body now. On the other hand, it could be really serious, and he wouldn’t know. What’s one more ache in the midst of hundreds?

A few hours ago, he’d been in the most pain he’d ever felt besides the accident that had cost him his limbs. Writhing on the bed and gasping for air, begging for help. Now, he feels almost nothing.

Except for the cold. The cold is really starting to bother him.

Ace’s lungs haven’t been the same since the bomb. Makes sense, he’s missing half of one. But he can’t remember ever breathing so shallowly. It feels like no oxygen is getting into his blood, but he can’t even muster up the energy to panic. Every sensation feels foggy and distant.

Memories flicker to the forefront of his mind without his permission, faraway blurs of color and sound. Voices, faces, things that seemingly hold no meaning anymore.

Ace thinks of Adrian.

He’d like a hug from his brother, right about now. Adrian gives the bestest, warmest hugs. He can’t remember the last time he’d gotten one, and it makes him irrationally sad. He’s so cold. Why can’t his big brother come and help him?

Why isn’t anyone helping him…?

Another memory, and it’s the faces of two women he can’t recognize anymore. They feel important, so important, but their names are lost to him. Ace can’t remember where he knew them from, but it feels like he should never have forgotten them. Like an unconscious betrayal. He wonders how long ago they met. It must have been a long time, for everything to have faded away, surely. He remembers a small room, remembers rowdy meals, waiting patiently for something important to happen—

Ace feels incredibly alone for a moment, before a full-body shiver brings him back to the present by reminding him that his whole being aches dully. Cold.

It’s dark outside, and the light in the hallway has been flickering on and off for a while. Ace doesn’t know why he left the door to his room open: he usually closes it to avoid Aaron.

He’s not completely sure why he wants to avoid Aaron.

His twin, his other half. Why does the mere thought of him make Ace’s heart race, cold sweat run down his back? It makes the cotton-like confusion swirling in his head even worse. A lot of things aren’t making sense, and he doesn’t know how to fix it.

Ace is good at fixing things. Used to be, at least.

The face of a dark-skinned man flashes behind his eyes, and he has to curl up and whimper from the sheer agony of knowing he should recognize him. It feels so important, like everything will fall into place if he just remembers. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling. The man feels familiar, and kind. Warm, big hands. Wonderful hugs. He thinks about walks in the park, and dinners with candles on the table. A lot of people asking him questions and talking to him in a language he's barely started to understand. Awkward but heartwarming, because it means they care.

He’s so confused.

Why is he even thinking of people who aren’t family?

Family is everything, Father had always told him that. He has to be a good brother, and a good son, and everything will be alright. Adam’s sure that if he is good and dutiful, all these feelings and all this suffering will just be washed away by caring hands. Make him warm again.

He wonders where Father is. Even when he was very busy with his cases, he’d always find the time to visit his sons if they were sick. Adam feels very sick.

The more he stares at the white sheet on the bed, unable to even lift his head, the more he’s sure he’s never had white sheets in their room. Uncle always likes to use the colorful ones. Every shade of blue he could find, because Uncle says that white sheets remind him of hospitals.

Hospitals… something about hospitals…

Memories of his childhood room are tainted by smoke and burning plastic, blood pouring out of him unimpeded. No, nothing happened at the cabin. Right? No fires.

Adam’s scared. He doesn’t like being scared.

Aaron always makes him feel better when he’s scared. His twin is never scared, and he always says he’ll beat the crap out of anything that scares Adam. It makes him feel really safe. Even if they’re not supposed to use words like that. That’s just the way Aaron is, always breaking the rules.

The light outside his room flickers once more, and he’s sure he hears footsteps in the hallway.

Aaron’s home.

It’s getting really hard to keep his eyes open, but Adam still finds it in him to smile,  despite the racing heart, despite the chills down his spine. His twin’s home. Everything’s going to be okay. He wants to sit up, to greet his brother properly, but for some reason, his body doesn’t seem very keen on listening to him anymore. He’s trying his best, but all he can manage is some weak twitching. His limbs are numb, like something’s pinching all his nerves at once.

The more time Aaron takes from the door to his room, the harder it is to keep smiling. Why is he taking so long?

Darkness blurs the edges of his vision and he struggles to keep his eyes open. It's hard to see, hard to stay awake. He's tired. Nothing even hurts anymore.

Adam tries to sit up again, but the wave of nausea and exhaustion that overcomes him keeps him planted firmly on the bed. He doesn’t understand. He'd been fine just… yesterday? He can't—

He's very tired, and so very cold. Maybe he should rest for a little bit. Close his eyes for a few minutes before Aaron comes to him.

A shape in the doorway, gray and indistinct, makes him blink. Is he finally not alone anymore?

“...Aaron?”

But Adam is tired, so tired. 

He closes his eyes.

The house becomes empty.

[mobius-m-mobius]

#the Nowhere Man who waits and the God of Stories who watches

[steviesbicrisis]

To me it’s the fact that Steve assumed Robin had a license but still woke up 3 hours before his work shift to drive her to school everyday.

That is not a plot hole everybody, that is just the kind of person Steve Harrington is.

[nerdpoe]

Danny was a stillborn, and Maddie made a deal with a Devil to give her baby a soul so he could live.

But the Devil couldn't really like, make a wholeass new soul for this. He could grab one of the ones he owned, but that'd just be putting an adult in an infants body, and that whole thought kind of weirded the Devil out.

So, he compromised.

He had a piece of the Laughing Magicians soul, and he just kinda.

Shoved that into the baby corpse.

And holy shit it worked, the kid took it.

Which, awesome! He gets the lady's soul and the kids when it's matured!

Except that was fifteen years ago, and now said Devil is desperately trying to get into contact with Constantine to cancel the deal they signed and agreed to.

Cuz that little baby?

Yeah he's the High King of the fucking Infinite Realms; a being that can not only cancel said contract, but do it and declare the Devil who made it guilty of Treason.

So he needs to find the Laughing Magician fucking yesterday, before the kid looks too closely at why his soul is so weird and figures it out.

[thefloatingstone]

Appleseed PDA montage to save you from reading endless pages of unimportant politics that don't amount to anything

also because I have nothing better to do, I'm bored, I'm moody, my gaming laptop is still broken so no BG3, and it's too late at night to start drawing after doing animation clean-up all day.

[ruporas]

feast (ID in alt)

[bluerosefox]

GHOSTS WITH HEARTBEATS

When Jason had been going to Gotham Academy, he had (for a good reputation for the media and to help him catch up on his penmanship, remember he had been on the streets and dropped out of school before getting picked up by Bruce for a while) signed up for a penpal project for 'less privileged people' to write to.

(Although Jason was annoyed the penpal project stayed within the states and only selected a middle of nowhere town, he knew the Richie Rich Elites would never subjugate their 'Heirs' to actual kids in need of learning how to read and write)

But Jason didn't mind his penpal.

Danny Fenton was a riot to talk, err write to in all honestly.

From his dry punny humor (and boy can he give even Dick a run for his money in the pun department but hey using some of them actually got Dick to warm up to him a few missions ago) and death jokes so many death jokes, to his nerdy love for space Jason enjoyed writing to Danny.

Even the short stories he would write about a ghost kid protecting a small town from other ghosts was interesting to read. He really liked the different kinds of ghosts there could be. Granted some seemed very OP like that Clockwork dude.

Jason liked writing to Danny, and even after the penpal project was over they had plans to keep sending letters, maybe even exchange numbers soon...

But then he died by the hands of the Joker.

The letters leaving Wayne Manor may had decreased but the letters being sent never did or at least until a few years ago.

Then Jason somehow returned to the land of the living.

Got taken by the LoA, tossed in the green waters and turned into their Pit Raged weapon for a while before leaving them behind and setting out for his revenge against the Joker and to force B's hand.

And becoming a Crime Boss for a while too. Can't forget that.

Point being with all this going on, the old warm memories of exchanging letters with Danny Fenton was pushed into the back of his mind and forgotten about for a while.

It isn't until one afternoon at Wayne Manor that while roughhousing with Dick, who had Jason in a brotherly headlock as they walked down a hall to one of the sitting rooms, that while Jason had slipped out of Dick's hold had stumbled into a hallway desk that had a few things on the top of it, one of the things being a small box that tumbled off when Jason hit it.

The box lid opened and out of it spilled out a good number of letters.

"Shiii-p, dang it Dick!" Jason said when he looked at the mess he accidentally made and stopped himself from swearing, the place might be named Wayne Manor but everyone knew this was Alfie's domain and no swearing was a rule within his halls.

Dick only laughed and teased only in a way a sibling can do "Hey not my fault your as big as a tank Jaybird! We should get you some caution signals if you keep bumping into things!"

Jason flipped him his favorite finger, thankfully Alfred only knew when they swore thus it did not summon him, and bent down to the letters.

His hands froze when he recognized the hand writing and the address it was sent from.

"From: Danny Fent Nightingale

Amity Park, IL"

To: Jason Todd-Wayne

Gotham City, NJ.

Wayne Manor"

And when Jason opened the letter. He really wasn't expecting what was written inside.

"Jason.

I'm finally leaving Amity Park. I can't be there anymore, not after everything. I'm too tired, and emotionally hurt. Everything is just to much. And I can't keep doing this to myself. My parents still can’t understand there is nothing ‘wrong’ with me or why I refuse to let them take care of Ellie, I refuse to let her live the way Jazz and I did, Jazz has to much on her plate already with her own life and college but she’s been hounding me to reach out to mom and dad, Sam refuses to listen to me when I tell her I want to be more than ‘Phantom’ in Amity Park, and Tucker is so busy trying to get into a good college and job we barely have time to talk nowadays. And don’t get me started on Vlad, that fruitloop’s been breathing down my neck since Ellie’s deaging.

Despite how much of a hellhole you like to call it, I think Gotham might be my, no mine and Ellie’s best bet of living some kind of life, especially now since the whole deaging she had to go through, she needs an ectoplasm rich city as well and since she has no actual papers because she was my clone and I remember you saying Gotham has people who can create new identities and-

I’m rambling again, to letter you again. I really need to stop it.

I can’t keep pretending you’re going to read these.

I know you’ll never read these. You’re gone. I can’t even find you in the Realms no matter where I look.

I’m sorry. For using you as, well, a way to vent my life for last couple of years. I shouldn’t had done it but it helped me.

Believing my friend was still alive and getting my letters I mean.

Again I’m sorry.

This will be my last letter to your ghost, pun unintended.

Goodbye Jason. Wish us luck in your city.

-Danny Fen-Nightingale...."

The sent date on the letter was roughly eight years ago.

[nelkcats]

False Identity

Danny knew that if he wanted to escape Amity and all the chaos that was his life he needed to get a fake identity, move and go as far away as possible. He could probably ask Tucker or Technus, but he felt it was something he had to do on his own.

He made arrangements, destroyed the portal, said goodbye and ended up moving to Gotham. However his hacking job wasn't so good and he was discovered in an instant by the bats.

They decided to investigate him instead of confronting him directly, following Jim's advice that not everyone was running because of something malicious, Danny didn't do anything out of the ordinary.

He seemed to be adjusting to Gotham which was weird on it's own but the strangest thing he did was get a job in Penguin's Iceberg Lounge but that was more because of his job search than anything else.

His past records also showed nothing more than a child with poor grades and troubling injuries, probably caused by neglectful parents.

Damian began to fear the worst and hid the adoption papers.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Lackadaisy Enrichment

[bacchuschucklefuck]

okay unironically I love so much that porter is like this world SUCKS its BAD here and it HURTS you why do you care abt it!!! and literally every single bad kid is like ngl we just hate ur ass it does not matter what ur philosophy is

[todayisafridaynight]

[thatswhatsushesaid]

psa that the day there are no jgy stans left on tumblr dot com is the day i am dead

but rest assured i'll go to my grave exactly as i lived: obnoxiously proclaiming to everyone within earshot how great lianfang-zun is. narratively, metaphorically, spiritually. sexually, too, like why limit myself. i like to keep my options open

[teansouprmyjam]

[ID in Alt Text]

studies of rembrandt peale that turned into this guy

[starry-bi-sky]

"Stillborn? No, no, still born." -- DPXDC AU

Based off a comment I saw where Bruce knew about Talia's pregnancy in the earlier comivs, and was ecstatic to be a father. So much so that Talia feared he'd give up being Batman for it, so when she gave birth she put the baby (Damian) on a doorstep and (seemingly) told Bruce that the baby was stillborn.

Instead of Damian, that baby was Danny! Meet Daniel Brown, the 14 year old foster kid whose been living with the Fenton family for the last two years. He's about two years older than Damian.

His last name, "Brown", was a generic surname given to him because the note he came with didn't have one on it. It just had the name "Danyal" on it, but albeit 'Daniel' was the one that had been put into the system for, I'll be totally frank here, racism reasons.

(I looked it up to make sure, and it's generally not permissible for foster parents to change the names of their foster kids even if it's a permanent residency, and for that reason Danny doesn't have the last name "Fenton".)

Danny's got ✨~issues!~✨ He's been through a handful of homes growing up, most of them terrible for a variety of reasons. Which has, as a result, left lasting scars. He's generally a very sweet kid, just very distrustful and jumpy. He's got the signs of a kid suffering from PTSD, and a handful of other issues including attachment and insomnia. His inferiority complex could rival Damian's, and that's going to make for an interesting mutual hatred for when they finally meet.

(something I'll get into later)

He still has the blanket he was found in. It's made of a very high quality material and is a beautiful emerald green with little golden thread accents, it's high quality as a result has Danny clinging onto a desperate hope that his bio family might be out there, and the only reason they gave him up was because of some outside factor. It's been taken a few times in old foster homes, and he's flipped out each time.

While he still calls Jack and Maddie by their names, he likes them well enough. The bar isn't that high though, and while they're some of the better foster parents he's had, "better" doesn't equal "safest". Their laboratory malpractice. Basically, C- Fenton Parents. They're negligent by virtue of being engrossed in their work, but they do care equally about Jazz and Danny. So he doesn't hold it against them that much.

He kinda prefers it that way, their loud affection is overwhelming and Danny doesn't know what to do with their attention, even if he craves it. It's a bit of a complicated situation.

They took in Danny because they genuinely wanted another child, but didn't want a big age gap between them and Jazz. It was actually Jack's idea to foster, and they discussed it with Jazz beforehand. She was all for the idea. Thus, a handful of weeks later, a ton of paperwork, and inspection later, and Daniel Brown entered their household with a trash bag in one hand and eyes like shards of stained glass.

His relationship with Jazz is kinda strained, but that's by virtue of her constant psychoanalyzing and helicoptering. Like with the parents, Danny's overwhelmed by the attention and also just, straight up doesn't like the fact that she's telling him that there's something wrong with him. He knows that, thank you. He pushes her away when she does this.

Other than that though? When Jazz isn't smothering him and is acting like an actual sibling and not a third parent, they're pretty close, and Danny really likes her. They've hung out a few times on their own volition, and Jazz showed him how to take better care of his long hair.

His school situation,, pretty similar to canon with the bullying, albeit with a few more instances of him blowing a fuse and lashing out against his attackers. He's a rather angry kid, but it's quiet. It builds up, piles on top of itself, until eventually, like a volcano, it erupts and burns everyone within radius.

Danny's got a fire core, not an ice core. Phantom's hair is made of white magma; thick and heavy, setting itself on fire when his anger runs hot. When he gets angry, his skin begins to char and split open to reveal pulsating lava underneath, and he crackles and pops like a raging forest fire.

I haven't decided yet on how he meets the batfam -- i've got two ideas but they're both in opposition to each other, and drastically alter how the rest of the plot goes. But I do know that him and Damian hate each other in the beginning. And it has nothing to do with inheritance or "being the blood son" -- although their blood relation absolutely plays the major role in their disdain for each other.

Simply put, they're jealous of each other for the same thing: thinking that the other was wanted.

Damian hates Danny because, unlike Damian, Bruce knew about Danny since conception and wanted him from the moment he heard about him. He had a whole nursery set up, and still does. He never took it down -- just locked the door. Damian was thrust upon Bruce without warning, and he feels like he forced himself into the family. And while on some level Damian knows and understands that Bruce wants him and loves him as much as his other children, that doubt and feeling of inferiority still remains. He looks at Danny and sees him with what Damian always feels he needs reaffirmed.

Meanwhile, Danny hates Damian because he looks at him and sees him with everything Danny's ever wanted. He hates him because Damian grew up knowing both of their parents, with one of them for most of his life, and then moved over to the other. There was never a moment where Damian was (seemingly) left to doubt his place within the family. Damian was raised with the very same woman who left Danny on a doorstep, with no clue to his identity beyond a little green blanket and a note with only a first name. Damian was wanted everywhere, and Danny was wanted nowhere. Damian is Danny's replacement in his eyes.

(It's the little revelation that Damian grew up with their mother that elevates Danny from being quietly envious of Damian to downright despising him. What did Damian do, that Danny didn't? He could live with Damian living with Bruce -- Bruce didn't know Danny was even alive. But him living with their mom? Are you fucking kidding him?)

Damian never outright attacks Danny physically, but it's not like he hides that he didn't like Danny. Meanwhile, Danny, in all his repressive anger, quietly despised him from a distance until finally one wrong snide side-comment has him blowing up and it becomes a screaming match. They're both just enough similar to each other that when they look at each other they really just see a mirror.

They'll work it out together, eventually. But it'll be ugly and cruel and explosive, and they'll start mending the bridge to become brothers in more than just blood relation in the end.

But yeah, stillborn Danny has... a lot going for him.

[nerdpoe]

Damian has been partnered up with Daniel in their Home Ec final.

And Daniel...is putting no effort at all into cooking.

Damian keeps trying to convince him to help, but Daniel keeps wriggling his way out of the responsibility.

Damian ends up having to handle the Turkey! Unacceptable! He does not condone the death of animals for food unless it is for survival! This part must be handled by Daniel.

He shoves the turkey in Daniels' hands.

There's a soft green glow.

He hears Daniel whisper a horrified "oh shit no".

And the very dead turkey that they were supposed to be cooking comes to life.

It is very, very angry.

[floweroflaurelin]

🎶 The Crown…

Pix now wears the Crown… 🎶

—

The moment of recognition when that ancient and powerful thing deep in the catacombs… discovers the Crown.