#anyways i saw a post about how cass is right up there with dick in terms of bruce loyalty and devotion and i thought they were gonna start

[apopcornkernel]

you ever see a post that for the first few sentences or so you're like YESSSS YES YESSS FINALLY SOMEONE WHO GETS IT and then you keep reading and. Oh. Never mind. You somehow just. completely went off the rails again

[tinkerbelle05]

Stepping Up

Stepdad!Clark Kent headcanons about him stepping up to the plate when it comes to Bruce’s kids.

Inspired by this post:

In order to appeal to Damian, he showed him all the pictures of the farm animals back at home. He saw the small smile on Damian’s face even though he insisted that there wasn't any. After Damian warmed up to him, Clark always gives him updates on the well-being of the animals whenever he gets home.

Lex had made a rather underhand comment on Tim’s handling of the company. Something about how a child has no place in a boardroom controlling men twice his age. And him being Lex also took a dig at Bruce (that man is so miserable). Tim ensured Clark that he didn't have to do anything and that things were being handled which was code for “drag this sorry excuse of a man through the mud and back as salt for the emotional wound he’s about to inflict upon him.”

While Tim was ripping Lex into strides about his empty promises to improve Metropolis, to how he’s a supervillain bc it was obvious he wasn't hugged much as a child, to yelling about his failures as a father to Kon. At the end told him to pick a struggle.

Clark was like, bet. So after Tim’s speech, Clark posts his exposé about the mistreatment of Lex’s workers and how they’ve been going on endless strikes to fight for their rights and to unionize. Let’s just say, Lex had to suspend his Twitter account for 3 months as his PR team scrambled to fix his image.

Clark learned how much Dick is trying to reconnect to his Romani culture: re-learning the language, cooking the food, singing the songs. Clark could relate to that, being one of the last Kryptoians ever. So in solidarity, he asks Dick if he could learn with him. So every Wednesday, Dick and Clark cooked a Romani dish for the family. This week was Mămăligă.

Clark and Duke understood each other. Their powers might’ve been different but the sentiment all the same. They feel different, the odd one out from their family. Clark feels honored that Duke feels comfortable telling him this. He knows how much the bats and birds love their secrets.

There was a practice at Cass’s dance class that was optional but basically, all the parents and guardians attended and participated in. Unfortunately, Bruce took a hard hit as Batman and was unable to attend, which sucks since they’ve both been looking forward to it. Clark, who knows absolutely nothing about ballet, went into it nonetheless. Cass was unsure about this but Clark looked really excited to join so she said yes. He was terrible at it, as expected. Cass was smiling because he tried anyway. He was clumsy and stiff, and probably embarrassed but he still showed up and did all of their moves anyway.

Once they were done, they both recounted the experience all while laughing over greasy food and soda. Cass didn't have to say a word either all was in sign language, something she greatly appreciated.

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[cephalog0d]

Okay, but like. There's the whole joke about Bruce recruiting children to be his sidekicks, but honestly there's only really one that fits that.

And it's Jason. And the whole story there is, frankly, unhinged. Aaaaand then he died.

(I'm specifically talking about "first post-crisis origin stories" here because Jason and Dick, in particular, have both had multiple major retcons and revisions over the years, and some of them dramatically change how things happened.)

Like okay. Going backwards, you've got Duke who joined/led a whole Robin-based gang at a time when Bruce wasn't even Batman. You've got Damian and Cass, who were both literally born into the world of masks and capes and heroes and villains, so they weren't ever really not going to be part of it. Steph might have taken inspiration from previous heroes but she made her own identity and repeatedly refused to stop involving herself in the vigilante lifestyle. Tim, obviously, basically strong-armed Batman into letting him be Robin, despite Batman's protests.

Dick's a little more complicated just because there's so many versions, because that's what 80 years of comics and multiple universe reboots will do, and there's kind of a general trend that earlier pre-crisis versions were more of Batman being like "hello, child, would you like to be my sidekick" and later versions have leaned harder and harder into the idea that Dick was absolutely going to do this anyway, regardless of what Batman had to say about it. But even in the first post-crisis version, the flashback in Batman Year 3, Dick says he wants to find a way to keep people like that from hurting others again. When Alfred questions Bruce's offer to train him, Bruce says that Dick should learn to do things the right way if he's going to do it. It's not hard to extrapolate that, much like later versions of the origin story, Dick was going to get himself into this one way or another. (Batman (1940) #437)

And then there's Jason. Whose backstory has also had a lot of (sometimes major) revisions over the years (remember when his adoption was, like, some kind of Joker-originated long con? Fucken Nu52, man). But the original post-crisis version is pretty straightforward. Steals Batman's tires, gets caught and sent to Ma Gunn's Secret Criminal School, intervenes when Batman goes to investigate, immediately gets offered the chance to be Robin based entirely on that.

Which is itself kind of unhinged. That Bruce saw this kid who was living on his own stealing tires and went "Hey you would make a good Robin" as his very first instinct.

But if you've never read Jason's post-crisis origin, or it's been a while, it's honestly even more unhinged than that because that arc starts with Dick getting "fired" as Robin specifically for the reason that he got shot by Joker and Bruce freaked out about how the Robin identity has too many enemies and therefore Dick, a legal adult with approximately a decade of training and experience, should not use the identity anymore.

(And it's specifically about the Robin identity, in this version, because when Dick says he's not going to stop the crime fighting thing Bruce's response is basically "I know and I didn't expect you to". Honestly I could also say a lot about this version of the Robin/Nightwing transition vs. later ones and how this one definitely feels like the Heavy Hand of DC Editorial in the fact that they had no contact for so long afterwards, because the interaction really doesn't feel like it warrants that in this case compared to some later versions, but that's a whole other too-long ramble.) (Batman (1940) #408)

And then a few weeks later Bruce turns around and picks up a random kid, a literal child, and goes "Hey you would make a good Robin!"

And I think a lot about how fucking wild that is. And it's not like the people writing just didn't notice. Dick's big argument with Bruce when he finally comes back to Gotham and meets Jason isn't about the fact that Bruce took in another kid, or even necessarily about Dick feeling proprietary over the Robin identity, the thing he's angry about is that Bruce said it was too dangerous for him, an adult, someone who has trained with Batman for a decade and was already highly physically trained before that for his whole life, to be Robin, and now Bruce has turned around and painted that target onto some random new kid. He pushes, repeatedly, trying to get Bruce to justify himself and this absolutely irresponsible decision, and Bruce gives a lot of answers about how Jason was on a bad path and needed this outlet and eventually just admits that he missed having a partner. (Batman (1940) #416)

And like. Dick's right, is the thing. He is 1000% in the right in this argument. If he can't be Robin anymore because of the danger, how in the hell is it anything like a good idea to hand it over to someone way younger, way less trained, way less experienced, and expect that that wouldn't end in tragedy?

And then it did.

And yeah, Bruce, it is kinda a lot of your fault.

[batsandbugs]

Bruce Wayne’s Headache Classification System Chapter 3

IKEA Verse

A/N: The author shows up a month and a half late, with Starbucks: S'up, here's 7500 words of pure chaos. Feast! Y'all are the best, thank you for the amazing comments in the last chapter. I love seeing your excitement for this crazy little world I've created. I have a new fic that I'll be adding eventually, called: "The Stalking of Daminette: A Treatise by Steph and Cass" it's still in its baby stage, so we'll see how long that grows before I post. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it because I have not started on the next part and I'm moving in less than a month, so maybe the next chapter will be out sometime in October, but I'm not making any promises. Enjoy!

Chapter 3

Bruce narrows his eyes and pins his children with an unimpressed stare. “What did you do?

“He was totally willing!” Dick insists with an innocent grin.

“Coercion.”

“Manhandling.”

Dick’s grin disappears evilly side-eyeing his brothers. “Both of you suck at being back up.”

“He didn’t want to at first,” confesses Tim. “But they held my computer hostage to convince me to agree.” Tim rubs a hand over the top of his laptop in a soothing manner. “So, I stole all his knives so he couldn’t stab us, while Jason and Dick wrangled him into the car.”

“Little demon was spittin’ nails, but we persuaded him not to throw himself out the car, so he was trapped.”

“By the time we arrived, I convinced them how a game of hide-and-seek would be a fun, non-disastrous way to spend time together,” says Dick, his face one of ruined hopes and dreams.  

“Mostly through bribes, blackmail, and calls to our innate competitiveness,” says Tim.

“Dickie kept the keys so none of us could leave, and declared himself seeker first,” Jason continues. “He found me-" 

"In the food court," says Dick.

"Then Replacement-"

"At the Starbucks."

"Didn't even get to have that coffee," grumbles Tim.

"So we joined forces and decided to search for Damian together. We spent an hour chasing him in circles. Swear I almost caught him too.”

Tim scoffs, “Yeah no, he had us good. We had no clue where he was.” 

Jason rolls his eyes. “Oh, shut up Tim.”

“You shut up,” Tim shoots back.

“Boys…” warns Bruce, already regretting bringing all three of them into this sitrep.

“Okay, so he evades us long enough to team up with a girl named Marinette Dupain-Cheng-” starts Tim.

Jason growls a bit. “Lying bitch.”

“Jason…” Dick sighs but doesn’t refute the insult. This only serves to deepen Bruce’s headache which now strongly veers out of the I-am-not-mentally-or-emotionally-prepared-for-this category and straight into Ongoing-dumpster-fire territory.

This was fine.

Jason slams a fist on the table. “She lied to my face multiple times! She said she was hired to poison Tim and Damian in order to steal Tim’s phone and if I didn’t find them in time, they were gonna die from brain damage!”

Bruce blinks. Did he hear that right? “Sorry, what?”

Tim sighs. “Okay, rewind, so Damian evading us like the little assassin he trained to be, hooks up with Marinette, who, as far as my research shows, is a civilian-”

“Yeah right, girlie ain’t a civilian. No way, not in a million years.”

“Shut up Jason, let Tim talk,” snaps Dick.

“She lied to Jason about where Damian was, and between her initial meeting with Jason and the incident in the food court, about an hour passed. Then she appeared in the cafeteria with Damian’s card, how we tracked her there in the first place. She panicked when she saw us and used her magic on the shelves in the warehouse to cause a diversion-”

“She crushed a fucking forklift, and we got blamed and billed for it.”

‘How?’ Bruce thinks in despair. Not over the money, of course. They had more than enough to cover costs, just in the general sense of incredulity. One would think, after being Batman this long, it would inoculate Bruce from bewilderment at all types of situations.

It has not.

Tim shakes his head. “No, I proved we had nothing to do with that."

‘Oh well isn’t that grand?’

"Didn’t manage to pin anything on her either considering how much electrical interference occurred whenever she performed magic, but we don’t have to pay.”

“Magic doesn’t cause electrical interference,” Bruce reminds them. “Not unless it completely breaks the system in the process.” All three boys – men really, his kids all grown up now, even if they pulled stupid shit like this – turn to him. Identical expressions of contemplation played over their faces.

“Shit, you’re right,” mutters Dick.

“Well, her magic does,” counters Tim, his brow creasing heavily, grasping past the sleepy, foggy haze that comes with being awake for three days straight. Grabbing a notepad he jots down the observation. “Her magic doesn’t obey any rules we know to be true.”

“It’s magic, dumbass,” Jason sneers. “It doesn’t have to make sense. I’m still on the fence about whether she enchanted Damian though. On one hand, demon-spawn shouldn’t be capable of smiling that much, and he defended her, deferred to her, fucking used her first name without blinking an eye. That ain’t natural for him. On the other hand, she’s the same brand of demented as he is, and maybe they want to be horrible little demons together.”

“I…” starts Dick before trailing off, his face flickers through a series of emotions. Mostly fragile hope, pragmatic disbelief, and good heaping of uncertainty.

“See, Golden Boy, even you can’t say this is a good thing!”

“He made a friend?” Dick offers with a pained wince.

“She’s a psychopath!”

Bruce cuts off the argument. As much as he would love to hear more in-depth detail about Damian’s newest… acquaintance, he wants a clearer picture of what happened at the store before he judges the situation. “Boys, behave. Tim, please continue.”

Tim nods. “Okay, so Marinette escapes the warehouse, and we track her back to their entry point into the vent system. We split up to cover more ground, I take the warehouse and keep myself from the worker’s sight but close enough to the vent I could spot them exiting. About forty-five minutes later they set me on fire-”

“Wait,” interrupts Bruce. “Fire? FIRE?”

Tim looks at him like he’s being particularly slow. “Uh, yeah, I said that a time or two now, keep up. To be fair, the fire was more around me. But I did end up singed.” He shows his arm sleeve again, and the singeing on the sleeve takes on a whole new meaning.

“I wasn’t sure what happened at the time, I expected to catch the little twerps, not engage in guerilla warfare. So, understandably, I’m off my game. The security guard dragged me into the office, and I’m ready to call for backup, only to find my phone missing. I talk down the manager in the warehouse, but then he yells at these poor workers. And Bruce, they were kids, couldn’t be more than fifteen, working in this busy warehouse with no clue about any rights they had, and then after the manager became… distracted I conversed with the other workers, and-”

Tim’s one-breath ramble was swiftly cut off by Jason. “Yeah, yeah you caused a worker’s strike through the power of charisma and rhetoric. So original. No one else in the world’s history has ever done that. Can we get back to the French bitch tricking me?”

Tim huffs, crossing his arms. “You can continue then because I wasn’t part of that.”

“Cool, I will. So, there I wait at my post, and it’s been like an hour and a half at this point. Timmy finally calls, but it’s not actually him it’s the French girl. She’s actin’ like a paid assassin slash company spy, and says she poisoned Tim and Damian through tricking them into eatin’ poisoned coffee and shit.”

“And you believed that?” Bruce asks. Jason glares at him with piercing green-blue eyes, and although his second son puts off an air of anger and annoyance, it’s a mask for a deep-seated fear that his brothers were genuinely in danger. That he would be too slow, too late to save them, like what happened to-

Jason flippantly shrugs his shoulders, years of practiced reticence covering his care. “With our craptastic luck, I sure as hell wasn’t going to take any chances. So, I go chasin’ and-”

“~It’s a trap~,” Tim gloats in a sing-songy voice, his grin wide and eyes unfocused. He’s going to crash soon, it’s just a matter of time.

“Shut up, you ended up set on fire and pickpocketed. You have no leg to stand on.” Tim rolls his eyes but slouches back in his chair. “So, it’s a trap, and demon-spawn is waitin’ there with one of those tricked-out trip wires Timmy made. He and Frenchie wrapped me up good, taunted me, and stripped me taking my wallet and phone. Bitch also took my knife. I insult the brat, and he fires back, but before he does anything else Marinette pulls him back and tells him to simmer down and he does.” Jason’s wide eyes drip with incredulity and, quite frankly, a little awe.

“I see,” Bruce says, a fake calm surrounding his words. He really didn’t. They were talking about Damian. Bruce loves his only biological son, he truly does. He loves Damian’s sketches, and care for animals, he loves his dedication to sword mastery and sly humor. The way his son has the same wrinkle crease between his eyes Bruce gets, and that Thomas did before them. The similarity soothes a small part of Bruce’s aching soul. He’s ridiculously proud of all the work and effort Damian went through, put himself through, to become a better person. To overcome the trauma his upbringing caused and come out stronger.

That being said, Damian was still arrogant, stubborn, and quick-tempered. He considered his opinions and plans more highly than others, and unless one could give a quick and compelling explanation as to an alternative option, he would be proceeding with his plan with efficiency; damn anything else standing in his way. Damian spared no sympathy to the average person and even less for fools.

This behavior was extremely out of character for him.

Which made the entire situation ring with alarm.

Jason shook his head. “I don’t think you do,” he says, calling Bruce’s lie out. “You’re gonna need to see it to really understand. Anyway, they leave me there for the police to find me, and the wire’s wound on tight, so I’m still struggling to get them off when security finds me ten minutes later.” Jason smirks. “Now those idiots had no clue who they were dealing with, and they loosened the wire round my legs, cause they sure as hell couldn’t carry me. By the time we reached the car I was out of the bonds and knocked one out and escaped from the other. Fat-ass bastard.”

“Language,” Bruce reminds him. Jason flips him off.

“Fine, the heavy-set bastard. Better?”

Bruce sighs. “Not really.”

“I scale the building, figuring the store entrances would be monitored. They had a nice handy dandy human-sized ventilation shaft up there - no wonder with the place’s fucking size - so, I shimmy down-”

“Like Santa,” Tim giggles, well past bordering on a manic state, and instead moved well into the capital of it.

The comment doesn’t appear to have fazed Jason though, who takes another long sip of his alcohol-soda mixture. “And like Santa, I have a knack for toys. I emerge out of a vent in the children’s toy area and snag myself a nerf gun.”

Sharp pain blooms on the side of Bruce’s neck. He doesn’t let it show on his face though. “Why?”

“Seemed like a good at the time, ya know?”

Bruce mentally counts to ten, takes a deep breath, and says, “Sure.”

“So, I head towards the play area to find Dick, because obviously, Replacement was a lost cause.”

“Geeze thanks, Jason.”

“But before I can get there, I spot Demon Spawn constructin’ a wacky ass Rube Goldberg contraption-”

Dick winces. “I saw the remains when I chased after Marinette. It was initially meant for me.”

“You were chasing the girl?”

Dick pouts. “She stole my phone!”

“Wait, so a civilian pickpocketed all of you?” 

“She was quick,” mutters Tim.

Jason raises a finger. “She didn’t technically pickpocket me, she frisked me after tying me up. I was fully aware of the stealing.”

Bruce reminds himself that he can’t strangle his children. He. Can’t. Strangle. His. Children. “I plan to make all of you go through awareness training, again. A civilian!?”

“Still not convinced,” Jason mutters, crossing his arms.

“I don’t care she certainly hasn’t trained with assassins and spent half her life mastering stealth and deception. I expect better from you all.” All three men mutter in acquiescence, to the extent that they would do better. “Continue.”

Jason’s demureness fades to be replaced with a gleeful grin. “Yeah, there wasn’t much left of the trap after I jumped the little bastard. I started shooting-”

“Jason…” Bruce’s headaches gain a specific twinge of exhaustion whenever Jason becomes involved. It’s a talent he possessed since the day Bruce found him hi-jacking the Batmobile’s tires.  

Jason’s hands go up in defense. “With the nerf gun, chill Bruce I ain’t trying to contribute to America’s public shooting crisis. I wouldn’t take a loaded gun into a shopin’ center unless crazies were already causin’ chaos.”

“I’d prefer you not to use guns at all.” It’s a pointless request, but maybe one day Jason would cede to it.

Jason scoffs. “Yeah, you’re still gunna lose that one pops. I got a rep to maintain.”

Bruce reigns in a sigh. Expected.

“Anyway, everythin’ was fine, I’d managed to dismantle their little trap for ya, you’re welcome,” he says with a pointed glance at Dick.

His eldest crosses his arms, and with a total deadpan stare, replies, “Thanks, Jason.”

“But then a security guard interfered after I knocked down a display or two.”

“So, you strung him up and gagged him?” Dick asks voice rising into the hysterical range.

Bruce now understands why Tim looks exhausted, dealing with the fallout from a situation this unhinged for the past forty-eight hours.  

“No, I didn’t do that. Demon spawn already set the rig, waitin’ for you. The guard tripped it.” He pauses, cheese-covered chip in hand. “Although I did add the gag, he was shoutin’ too much and grabbin’ attention. It only took a second, but by the time I turned back, Damian had shot off like a rocket.”

“Don’t take your eyes off the target,” chides Tim, with a smug little grin.

Jason’s eyes flash a brighter shade of green. “Fire.”

“Shut up.”

“Boys…” Bruce warns.

“Fine, fine,” Jason mutters, as he takes another sip of his drink. “I chase him through the store and he’s barely keepin’ ahead of me. I keep shootin’ at him. Newer nerf guns have a range and a surprising amount of ammo. Bastard didn't even look inconvenienced; he takes a fucking phone call at one point.”

“That was when I was chasing Marinette and we found the remains of their plan,” Dick interrupts. “She panicked with the sprung trap and called someone, but I couldn’t hear a word.”

“Yeah, he jumps off the call when I manage a shot at his head, and I’m close enough to have him in reach. Unfortunately, he ducked into the employee-only entrance. We weave through security rooms and offices and shit, and of course, causin’ chaos there.”

“He was right there, and yet somehow, we’re the only ones banned,” mutters Tim.

Jason scoffs. “Yeah, don’t know how that happened. Pretty sure I saw him dump a pot of coffee on-” Tim groans in frazzled distress. “Bad Timbo, you can’t have any more caffeine until you take a goddamn nap!”

Tim slouches into the solid wood dining chair. “You can’t tell me what to do, you’re not my dad.”

“Tim you can’t have any more caffeine until you sleep,” Bruce says.

Jason grins, sticking his tongue out at Tim, while Tim only glares and mutters something under his breath about ‘killjoys’ and ‘he’ll show them tired’ and Bruce really doesn’t want to see the result of that decision. This needs to wrap up soon. For both Tim’s sake, and his own as his headache has moved from Hassles-have-evolved-into-ongoing-dumpster-fires to Information-overload-caused by-dumbass-decisions-please-reboot-system.

“I get tangled in an office jam – literally, there were cords involved and by the time I scramble out of it, Damian’s already through a door and down a hallway. I haven’t a clue which way he’s gone, so I pick a direction and gun it because security is on my tail and there ain’t time to waste. I head down a hallway and lock the doors behind me to give me a second of breathing room. Then I spot the intercom system.”

“I wondered how you got close enough to use that,” Dick muses.

“I wondered what they did to piss you off so bad,” Tim adds.

Dick nods. “Same.”

“Yeah, so I call out Demon Spawn and French Bitch over the intercom, and I know they both must have panicked, but the guards broke through the locked doors, so I split. Now here’s the fucking miracle.” Jason leans forward, grinning. “I find the door that’ll take me back to the showroom area, the guards bearing down on me from all four sides. I don’t have a chance in hell, when the lights go off.”

“Blackout?” questions Bruce.

“Magic,” Dick says flatly. “It was Marinette.”

Jason slaps the table, snarling, “Damnit! Now I have to give credit to her.”

“She knocked out electricity to the whole store,” says Tim.

“And caused a display to collapse in front of me. I tripped,” admits Dick.

“You have fought off assassins while poisoned, and executed advanced acrobatic maneuvers with broken bones, and you tripped over a toppled Swedish store display because of the dark?” Bruce knows he’s trained his children better. Why in the world did this go so sideways on them?

Dick braces his arms against the table and roughly slides his fingers through his hair. ”I know. I know. I was right there. Any other day and I wouldn’t have blinked about jumping right over it, but this time it felt… off. Bad day?”

“You’re getting old Golden Boy.” Jason takes a sip of his drink, doing nothing to hide his shit-eating grin as he teases his older brother. “I guess it’s all downhill from here ain’t it.”

Dick flips him off.

Jason sticks out his tongue.

Bruce’s headache takes on a twinge of my-children-are-immature-brats feeling (generally categorized by a sharp sting right at his temple) and holds in an exasperated sigh.

“So, after magic girl shuts the lights off with her mind or whatever, I escape the security guards by an inch. One emergency exit later, and I’m back in the store proper. People are freakin’ the fuck out about the lights. By the time they turn on again, I’ve lost Damian for good, and now I just try to stay off security’s radar. I settle in a nice little blind spot right outside the children’s toy area and keep myself out of any trouble.” Jason looks over at Dick, fighting to keep a smug grin off his face. “Course I did see a woman go off on a poor employee. I kept my nose clean of it ‘cause it wasn’t my business.”

“Oh, ha, ha very funny. That woman was a menace,” groans Dick.

“Woman?” Bruce questions, almost scared to ask.

“Jessica Merope-Laverne, fifty-five, resident of Pleasantville. Married twice, has two children, a restraining order, and a police file with multiple notes about disturbing the peace,” Tim rattles off. “Thoroughly unpleasant.”

“That’s an understatement,” mutters Dick.

“Practically dragged Dickie Bird away by the ear.”

“Right as I was about to nab Marinette too. She’d hidden in one of the wardrobes in the room, and I was this close-” Dick positions his fingers scant centimeters apart from each other, “-to cornering her, and I got dragged away.”

“Shit, would have loved to know that,” mutters Jason. “Anyway, I stood around, making sure nobody was on my tail, soon I heard rumors about a ruckus in the atrium-”

“That would be me,” Tim admits with a grin.

“Well, I didn’t know that. I was hoping demon spawn and Frenchie were involved somehow, so I headed over, and then-”

“Oh, I know what happened from there. I saw the video.” Bruce pins Tim and Jason with a stare. “I respect both of you have opinions-”

“Opinions? Opinions? I have justified grounds for calling out his revolutionary bullshit! His entire life embodies nothing but the anthesis of systemic poverty, and he argues for class cooperation!” shouts Jason. Bruce always marvels at how eloquent Jason becomes when angry.

“Violence isn’t the answer,” counters Tim. “You would harm the very people you try to uplift in the process.”

“Sure, it is! It’s the natural response to a gluttonous, greedy, overburdened, bureaucratic system that’s leeching off the populous and perpetuating its own supremacy.”

Tim slams a hand against the table, raising to his feet, exhaustion clearing from his eyes. “It’s an option, not the option. We can do better than violence if we work at the cause's root problem without pulling out a fucking guillotine.”

Jason rolls his eyes. “Oh of course you would argue for that, you’ve never had less than six figures in your bank account in your life.”

“So says the self-proclaimed drug lord!”

“That was ten years ago!”

“A bag of heads on the steps of the GCPD!”

“Oh, get over it!”

“If it matters,” interjects Dick. “Probably doesn’t, systemic economic issues are hard to fix when we have bigger problems like an actively insane criminal population that likes destroying important city infrastructure on a monthly basis.”

“Which Wayne Enterprises does its best to counter,” adds Bruce, not bothering to chide his children back on track. This particular topic turned them into a bunch of unherdable cats.

“Funneling more money into the one percent’s hands!” Jason’s bordering on manic at this point.

“We are the one percent, Jason!” counters Tim. “And we stay that way, despite the copious amount of infrastructure projects, that we hire Gotham citizens for, and pay at least a living wage to all of them. Not to mention every other single employee we hire who also are paid a living wage, with benefits, and support. I know I am privileged. I am trying here.” The last sentence came out as a distraught cry, as he collapses back into his chair.

“Are… are you okay?” Dick asks tentatively, ready to cross the table to comfort his brother.

Tim shoves his hands into his hair and mutters, “I need an espresso.”

“No, you need sleep,” says Bruce, mentally calculating where all the caffeine in the house is so he can hide it. “Can we return to the recap, so your brother can go to bed?”

“My side of things is much shorter in comparison to Jason’s,” says Dick. “As long as nobody interrupts.” Casting a pointed glare in Jason’s direction. Jason shrugs casually and crosses his arms.

“I waited at the children’s play area. Now, a man my age would attract attention without a need to be there, so I’d ducked into the employee-only area, and grabbed a shirt to disguise myself. I hung out in the Starbucks for a good forty-five minutes trying to look like I was on break while observing the play area. Although I couldn’t tell where the vent entrance was, I figured two adults Damian and Marinette’s size would be easy to spot coming out of an area meant for children.

“When an hour and a half passed by, I’m nervous, because neither Jason nor Tim has sent any word. I called them both. They didn’t answer.”

“Yeah, 'cause the French phone napper took our phones,” mutters Jason.

“So, I decided to do some reconnaissance. The lady at the front desk looked bored enough, and so I went over to… chat.”

Jason rolls his eyes. “You mean flirt.”

Dick glares. “Shut up. So, I hang around the front desk for half an hour at most, before the kids went crazy. Like plastic balls being thrown everywhere, kids shrieking, this one little girl, later we learn her name is Abby, she’s doing this whole speech about a revolution-”

“Tim…”

“Not me, I’m not here at this point.”

“I stand there in shock, wondering what the heck set it all off. This one little girl runs up to the daycare worker, Melinda? Melody? Something. I don’t remember. And the little girl’s nose was bleeding, so there immediately goes my peaceful cover. I back up into the crowd, which at this point has gathered around pretty thick.”

“You know I wondered why there were so many people hanging around in that front lobby area,” says Tim.

“I’m almost sure the commotion has something to do with Marinette and Damian, so I keep my eyes peeled waiting for any adult-sized figures to emerge from the play area.” Dick sighs, rubbing a hand across his face. “I was right of course, but I missed Marinette slipping out, and she approached me from behind.”

“This is where you get pickpocketed too!” crows Jason.

“Really, Richard?” asks Bruce with a raised brow. This is ridiculous.

“Okay, look, I was distracted, off my game, there was a ton of screeching, and it had been a long day. And she was very good. The technique was flawless, minus a bit of overacting and a touch of obviousness. Which was her goal because-”

“~It was a trap~” Jason and Tim sing together.

“It was bait,” Dick corrects. “Leading me to a trap, that didn’t even work. So really, I did the best between the three of us.”  

“You all will complete remedial awareness training, so a situation like this never happens again.” Bruce massages the bridge of his nose with a long-suffering sigh. “Just… just please continue.”

“I can’t full-out chase her or anything, but she keeps out of reach through the store, until we reach the place where they set the trap. Obviously, Jason already tripped it, so she turned face and ran in the opposite direction. I followed, trying to convince her to stop and talk. But at this point, she’s full-on outpacing me and doing well too. I’m hesitant to say trained, but she had practice.”

“She’s gotta be a spy, or maybe she’s working for the League?” muses Jason.

“Damian would see right through that,” interrupts Bruce. He knows his youngest son has an instinct when sniffing out undercover League members. Talia certainly sent enough of them over the years.

“Maybe she’s just that good?” says Tim. “I certainly can’t find a damn thing on her, and being a League plant would explain that.”

Dick shrugs. “We’ll figure out her deal later. She calls Damian, and they talk briefly, but I couldn’t hear the conversation. Soon after Jason does his whole intercom takeover Marinette pulls out her little magic electro bursts and short circuits the electricity to the entire store.”

“And then caused you to trip.”

Dick wearily nods. “And then caused me to trip. By the time I detangle myself, she’s long gone. The lights come back on, and I’m stuck wondering where the hell she’s gone. I try to avoid getting clocked by security, so I keep to blind spots, which is how I eventually spot her doing the same.”

“Suspicious,” mutters Tim. “More evidence for the ‘League plant’ theory.”

“Or she could know security is looking for a woman of her description and she’s smart, either way, I tail her and corner her in a display room, no idea why she chose that one, but when I walk in it’s empty.”

“She teleported, or vanished like a ninja,” gasps Tim, eyes wide, pupils smaller than pinpricks. Bruce is now counting the seconds until he passes out.

Dick shakes his head. “No, she hid in the fucking closet. Tim, you need sleep.” Tim sticks out his tongue.

“I was this-” Dick places his fingers centimeters away from each other “-close to nabbing her, and then the whole Jessica situation happened.” He rubs a hand through already messed up, fly-away hair. “She drags me away screeching about lawyers and customer service, and it had been a very long day, so the second her back was turned I bolted. I couldn’t risk heading back to the display room, although if I were Marinette I’d be long gone, so I backtracked to where I stuffed my actual clothes and headed towards the atrium.”

“Yes, I saw your arrival as well,” Bruce confirms with an exasperated drawl. The videos spread out across multiple platforms gave an all-around idea of what happened in the atrium. “You all know better than to escalate things in public. We have an image to maintain after all." The boys nod, cowed and guilty. "That being said, things wrapped up rather neatly.” He eyes the boys with a paranoid weariness. “Too neatly.”

All three sag into their seats and gaze at each other with sheepish grimaces.

“Yeah, B, we noticed that too,” says Jason. “But at the time…” he trails off.

Tim continues, his speech sluggish. “It felt normal, to accept what was going on. The fight, the crazy lady, the little kid with the ball pit balls, her uncle being Dick’s old friend, and the store manager, and they let us go. It was easy to go along with it.” Grimacing, he gestures to his assorted piles of papers. “You know, besides for all the work I have now.” Crossing his arms on the table he lays his head in the middle. “Too many people, so little sense.”

“Damian hasn’t said a word about any of it.” Dick slouches lower in his chair.

“Kid was all smirks when he and the little liar approached us after we left the store,” grumbles Jason. "Had fuckin' ice cream and everything." He spins the almost empty bottle of alcohol coke on the table. “Of course, they made us wait, because after we left and booked it to the car, Dickie realizes his keys are gone too. So there we are standin' in the parking lot, Timmy doesn't have his shoes, and all we got between us is one nerf gun, no phones, no keys, and no fucks left to give.” Bruce, too tired from the absolute rollercoaster of emotions and information his children just sent him on, can do nothing but muster up a stern and disappointed glare. He trained them all better than to let a civilian pull one over on not just one of them, but all of them.

“Yeah, yeah, I know situational awareness. We’ll work on-” Dick breaks off his sentence, and sighs softly. A small soft smile overtakes his face, and he raises a single finger to his mouth. He nods in Tim’s direction.

Tim’s head, previously cradled in his arms, now lolls to the side. Neon blue light from his laptop highlighted his closed eyes, and the purplish bags underneath.

“Finally,” Jason mutters. “I swear he has the survival instincts of a wet paper bag. He’s been up for way too long.”

Bruce is just grateful he won't need to physically drag Tim off to bed and force him to get some desperately needed sleep. “Now we just need to get him to his room.” He would have done it himself if his ribs didn’t spasm the second he thought of the idea.  

“Not it,” Dick whispers so quickly it’s practically a rush of air.

“Not it,” says Jason, barely a millisecond behind.

“Ha!” Dick impishly grins. “You do it.”

“But-”

“Nope, I said it first. You got to carry him.”

Jason turns his head towards Bruce, big bluish-green eyes looking for support.

Bruce doesn’t get himself involved in the decision-making games his children play. “He said it first.”

Jason’s hopeful glance turns into a disgruntled snarl. “I hate both of you,” he spits.

“Love ya too, Jay.”

“Thank you, Jason.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, wrinkling his nose. Jason pushes back his chair, and although he’s annoyed, the solid wood chair doesn’t scrape against the floor, so he can’t be too mad. Despite drinking his entire liter of mystery-alcohol-diet-coke mixture, his footsteps pace steady and strong. “Come here, ya little coffee-addicted gremlin.” Jason slips his arms around Tim’s body. It’s a testament to how exhausted his son must be, that Tim only flutters his eyes and protests incoherently at being lifted out of his chair.

“Quiet down, Replacement,” Jason murmurs, his voice soft as he speaks to his sleep-deprived brother. “All your calls and research will be there when you return from the land of nod.”

“But…”

“You can go willingly, or I can grab sedatives from the med bay and forcefully put your ass to sleep. I’ll put a bet on who’ll win that brawl.” Jason stands a good six inches taller than Tim, who looks like little more than a bedraggled rag doll in his older brother’s arms. Bruce knew who would win that fight too. Tim sighs and relaxes another inch into Jason’s arms. “There ya go. You can go back to bein’ insufferable once you’ve had some fucking sleep.”

“Hmm…” Tim's eyes fully flutter shut. Jason shakes his head and rolls his eyes, but softly traverses the room so as to not jostle him. Looking back over his shoulder one last time to shoot an I-can’t-believe-I’m-doing-this look at Bruce and Dick, before walking out of the room.

Silence overtakes the grand dining room as the last of Jason’s footsteps fades into the echoing halls of Wayne Manor. A light rain drizzles outside, the faintest patter hitting the tall arched windows letting in a soft grey light.

Dicks groans, pulling himself out of his slouch gracefully and into more of a respectable position. “I’m getting too old for that.”

“If you’re old, I must be ancient,” Bruce responds. He’s not, really. Only forty-seven to Dick’s thirty-two. What he’d been thinking taking in a ten-year-old at twenty-five, he couldn’t really quite say. The only thing that mattered at the time was the aching echo of loneliness reflected in the eyes of a child who had just lost their parents.

Now, look at them, all these years later.

“Nah, you’re not ancient, B. We’ve just been through enough shit in our lives to age a person twenty times over.”

Bruce gives him a look of high disappointment. “Stunts like this do not help, Richard.”

Dick has the decency to look properly ashamed. “I really didn’t mean for the situation to get so out of hand,” Dick insists in a soft, quiet tone. Bruce doesn’t quite believe it. His sons thrive off of chaos. Even if they didn’t mean for things to get out of hand, they tended to actively encourage it once in the middle of the undertow. “I know, I know, but how was I supposed to anticipate Damian teaming up with a… witch? Magician? Whatever she is.” Dick mutters the last sentence, but Bruce hears it clearly.

His sons certainly think the young woman is dangerous. Tim is thoroughly confused and stressed by her existence, although deciphering his third son’s emotions through his fog of exhaustion is a vexing endeavor Bruce still isn’t sure he accomplishes all the time. Jason clearly hates her or at least is holding a very large, very deep grudge against her. He wonders what exactly the content of the conversation was when she threatened Tim and Damian. He wonders if she knew the effect it would have on Jason.

Flickering light from the chandelier above pierces his eyes like a particularly vicious game of stab-the-vigilante, but this conversation is important, so, despite the full body ache accompanying his you’ve-pushed-too-far-and-now-you’ll-suffer-the-consequences migraine, he pushes through to ask, “What do we actually know about her?”

Dick sighs heavily, rubbing a hand across his face, and suddenly he looks every inch of his thirty-two years. “To be honest? Only a little. Tim wasn’t the only one to look her up. I did my searching too.”

“And?”

“Practically nothing. Basic info, but school records sealed tighter than Fort Knox, and firewalls grow tighter every time I try to hack ‘em. School activities, online media presence, and even pictures; all of it is whisps in the wind. Every time I try to look deeper, something...” Dick shudders as if shaking away a bad feeling. “I come up short and I can’t find a reason why. Even trying to think about Paris as a whole feels off and I can’t put my finger on it.”

“I can see if there’s anything in the League’s database about the city the past few years. It was Diana’s home base for decades until…” Bruce trails off, his mind an unexpected blank. Diana moved to the US from Paris eventually. Sometime within the last decade, but he can’t quite remember why. Surely, she must have told him at some point.

“She’s a fashion designer, I know that much. She has a website but it’s very bare bones. Commission work only. And her current course of study at Gotham U is Fashion and Business Management. But-” Dick’s hands flail into the air. “She’s from Paris! What on earth possessed her from moving from one of the fashion capitals of the world to here, to study fashion is beyond me.” 

“Hmmm…” Bruce’s brain whirls at a million miles a minute. Connections forming and rearranging on his mind’s case board. The incongruency is so stark, there must be a reason. They haven’t found it yet.

“As for her magic…” Dick shrugs. “She said her powers mostly affected situational outcomes, and from the incidents I saw, she told the truth. But I’ve never seen magic like that before. Magic that just… happens. She didn’t say words, she didn’t make hand gestures. She used tiny little - I want to call them mechanized balls, but we never came close enough to tell – to kickstart the magic.”

“A techno-mage then?”

Dick contemplates the idea for a moment before saying, “Could be. But it felt more than that. As soon as she became involved the whole day felt… left of normal. Which I suppose aligns with situational outcome manipulation. The day certainly went their way…” Dick shrugs. “I just don’t know.”

Bruce hums, finally asking the question that had swirled in his mind since the girl was brought up. “Do you think she’s a danger?”

Dick leans back in the chair, his face an avalanche of flickering emotions. Wind lightly howled outside the dining hall filling the intervening silence. Finally, he sighs and says, “No, I don’t think so. She was chaotic sure but genuinely enjoyed the game for what it was. Damian probably encouraged the more unhinged ideas. And yes, she has magic, but so do a ton of other, far more obviously dangerous people. Our system is tricked out for all types of magic users, and even if she can bypass them due to her own unique magic, we’d at least receive a warning. And as for our identities…” Dick half-smiles. “She didn’t even know we were the ‘Waynes’ until we were just about to leave, and she didn’t appear particularly star-struck. I doubt she’d make the jump from chaotic billionaire’s kids to vigilantes.”  

“As for Damian…?” Bruce hardly knows what to make of his youngest’s out-of-character reaction and hopes to receive some cohesive read on the situation from his eldest.  

Dick, being quite unhelpful, shrugs. “I think you should talk to him. Get his side of the story. Things may have been chaotic on our end, but he did genuinely have fun. And, yes, he’s acting out of the norm.” Dick pauses. “Way, way, out of the norm for him, but I don’t think he’s enchanted. I think he just has a crush.”

Bruce blinks. Isn’t that a hell of a thought?

Damian.

With a crush.

He doesn’t have the bandwidth to deal with these kinds of realities. Reflexively he massages his temple with the tips of his fingers trying to relieve the paining, aching pressure.

“Headache again?” asks Dick with sympathy. After twenty years his son knows his tells well, and Bruce has always had headaches, although his reasons for having them have certainly increased over the years.

“Yeah, is what it is though. We’ll keep an eye on Damian, have you run him through the influence-affected protocols?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

Dick shrugs. “Nothing, it’s mostly why I think he’s fine. She may be a danger, or powerful, but I don’t think she’s doing anything to Damian. Besides making him run up the data plan on his phone. He really hasn’t stopped texting the past two days.”

They’ve spent plenty of time talking about Damian, but Bruce hasn’t seen a glimpse of him since he woke up this morning. “Where is he?”

Dick pulls out his phone. “On a date, according to Stephanie.” Pulling up a photo that’s taken in a long-distance setting. Damian is pictured, seated at a cafe table, drinking out of a white coffee cup. Across from him sits a girl, Asiatic features, black hair, clad in a colorful sundress. They’re both smiling at each other.

It’s normal and adorable. And slightly worrying. Damian doesn’t smile like that unless looking at a fluffy four-legged creature.

“Stephanie trailed him?” 

Dick flips the phone away. “Actually, she and Cass both followed him when he left this afternoon. Not sure what they planned, but they’ve sent some nice pictures.” He pauses for a moment and smiles fondly. “If she’s not a danger, or a League plant, this could be really good for him.”

Bruce hums, unsure, and hating himself for that unsurety. He’ll make a call when he has more information, and less of a migraine. “Go wash up and grab some sleep. I’m out until my ribs heal, so I’ll need you to take point on patrol.”

Rising from his chair, Dick stretches and shoots him a grin. “It took you twenty-five years, but damn, you’ve finally learned to call it quits when you need a break. Proud of you B.”

Bruce doesn’t bother to disguise his roll of the eyes. Dick would know he did it regardless. “Get on.”

Dick shoots him a lazy salute. “Sir, yes, sir.” He ambles to the door, and Bruce calls out again before he’s gone.

“And next time, Dick, please try to keep the antics out of the paper, and off the internet.”

The shit-eating grin betrays Dick’s real thoughts when he says, “Of course Bruce, won’t happen again.”

Liar.

Bruce shakes his head in reluctant bemusement – should he honestly have expected anything else – and Dick ducks out of the door without another word. Finally, the dining room is quiet, except for the pitter-patter of rain on the window panes, and the soft hum of Tim’s computer.

Carefully, Bruce rises from the chair, his side twinging, head throbbing in what is now a full-on migraine.

He should have stayed in bed.

Ah, well, he’s suffered worse, and now he has a good idea of what happened with his sons that caused a headache so insistent he felt it halfway across the galaxy.

Gently closing Tim’s laptop, he doesn’t bother to touch the articles and paper, knowing his son’s organizational system may appear a mess to outsiders – even him on occasion – but that it has meaning for him. He observes the rest of the room; collecting Tim’s coffee mugs, and Jason’s empty plate and coke bottle – no need to have Alfred do it if he was right here – and ambles slowly to the kitchen taking care not to drop the dishes or disturb his ribs.

Placing the dishes away, Bruce leans heavily on the counter. Mind whirling, analyzing, and connecting the information as he has always done, however, it battles for dominance over the present, persistent, migraine. His body screams for more rest, and as much as he wishes to dig to the bottom of these problems right now, he trusts Dick has given him an accurate read of the situation. Later he can pry information from the girls, maybe they’ll have a less biased view of Damian’s… friend than his sons do.

He flicks the lights off in the kitchen, for now though, he’s heading back to sleep.

-line break-

A nap, a full meal, and hours later, the pitch black of the night concealed a heavier storm than the light drizzle which draped over the manor earlier in the day. Bruce, knowing damn well he wasn’t fit for patrol, sat in his office, a bottle of forty-year whisky perched next to a crystalline tumbler and a box of chocolates. A minor indulgence, especially as he should stay far away from alcohol at the moment. But if he hadn’t died from insane nutcases, aliens, or his children’s antics, mixing medicine and alcohol probably wouldn’t kill him.

Bruce snapshots a picture of the newspaper Alfred gave him this morning.

The front-page cover contains enough of the story to showcase the significant amount of drama his children had caused.

He texts the images to both Diana and Clark.

All he adds is, ‘I always know, and I’m always right.’

He pours another finger of the amber liquid into his glass and swirls it around as the computer turns on. Just because he wasn’t out and about, didn’t mean he intended to take the night off. Bruce stretches his fingers and opens up a blank case file template.

Time to find out who exactly is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. 

[anniebuddy]

!Not Batcest!

i feel like Steph has had a crush on a large bulk of the Batfam. if Tim Drake is any indication, she can fall for people pretty quickly - and like, there are a LOT of hot people in that family. some of them were just the briefest of considerations that she managed to push to the back of her mind, but others occupied her headspace for a while - and made missions with them considerably more awkward.

a cool, confident redheaded genius who used to be Batgirl? yeah, she had a crush on Babs. probably tried coming up with excuses to drop by her workspace more often.

a funny, charismatic gymnast with a bod? definitely crushed on Dick (though if their initial dynamic was anything like in canon, it came some time after, when Dick’s skepticism finally wore off. the first time she found herself blushing at his jokes she was like. “Shit.”).

Jason Todd? …okay, i can imagine she thought he was pretty hot when they met, but then he opened his mouth and she immediately realized he was just as much a dorky gremlin as she was. they were teasing and noogieing each other soon after.

but she was almost certainly shellshocked when she first saw Kate Kane. Steph is partial to tough ladies she can look up to, so a big part of that was hero worship (for more on that, see Dinah Lance). and that brings us to Cass.

regardless of whether it worked its way into a relationship, i feel like Steph crushed on Cassie hard. not at first, mind you - she wasn’t sure what to make of the quiet, full-face masked badass who seemingly existed just to emphasize how outmatched she was. but it got brought out the more they got to know each other. a hero her age, who was incredibly strong and yet still emotionally vulnerable, who enjoyed her company - someone whose story she could relate to, who shared her virtues, made her laugh, made her think…the kinda gal you can have fun with one minute, then pivot to talking about unimaginable trauma, and then go right back to goofing off. like…yeah. even when she was mad at or dismissive of her, she’d still find herself frustratingly charmed by her.

once she started ingratiating herself into the Batfam as a full unit, her relationships w/ everyone got to be much stronger - and also much more platonic.

…but she’s still gay as shit for Cass bc i say so? may make a followup post about that bc i ended up launching into StephCass in the first draft askdjhkjhds (big surprise)

anyways, once the rest of the BatFam found out, they got to work arguing about who should be ranked where based on how long Steph had a crush on them. needless to say, this was embarrassing as hell for her (thank u to my friend for this part it’s gold).

[obsidianstrawberrymilk]

Okay so I saw this post earlier about how the Battle for the Cowl should have been between Cass and Jason (I can’t find it; if anyone knows what it is sorry), and yk it make so much more sense than what happens in canon!! Neither Dick nor Tim want to be Batman - they’ve both been shown to want to make their own path and being Batman stresses them out like crazy. Having either of them fight for it makes no sense. Steph and Babs have their own thing, they have no desire to take the mantle, and Damian is like 10, so?? HE might think he’s ready to be Batman but no one would let him.

Anyway so I’m just gonna say Duke’s already been adopted into the Batfam here (bc I love him) and that Tim and Steph were Robins together because I like it better. And so Bruce dies right? So there’s no Batman. Dick’s chilling in Bludhaven with no desire to be Batman, no one in Gotham wants to be Batman... sans Cass and Jason.

Plus it would be like a moral conflict too - Cass is so against killing, even moreso than Bruce, because of her past and what she was forced to do, while Jason believes there are people you just can’t leave alive. And are either of them right? We don’t know. They both would want at least the role Batman has in protecting the city, though they’d do it in very different ways. And Cass would obviously win because she never loses, but I feel like seeing them battle it out would be so fun bc Jason is brutal, yeah, but he’s also smart as fuck - seeing him trying to figure out Cass’s weaknesses and use them against her and seeing Cass use her own experience and superior abilities against him.

What’s everyone else doing? Dick’s probably stressing the fuck out because two of his siblings are trying to kill each other in Gotham shit- but after a while of getting yelled at he decides to just leave them to it. Damian probably goes with him and is his sidekick like in canon when he was Batman, but given he’s still Nightwing here Damian’s not Robin. Maybe he could be Flamebird - to complete with the story Dick got Nightwing from. I like to think Steph winds up chilling with them too, because I love her bond with Damian (she’s literally the closest to him after Dick and they have such a annoying older sister-bratty younger brother bond and no one does anything with it??) and since I think she’s meant to be the next Nightwing (right?? Am I reading the wrong things??) I’d love to see her have a sibling bond with Dick as well.

Ig Tim has more time to like... obsess over bring Bruce back to life or whatever he did? I genuinely forgot how he did that aside from that “I’m not Batman; I have friends” (Tim my guy icon), so he can probably be doing that while he and Duke and Barbra all continue being vigilantes and protecting people in the middle of Jason and Cass’s fighting. Barbra has better things to be doing - yeah she cares about Jason and Cass both and she probably yells at them to sort it out, but they’re both old enough to figure shit out. Duke is also stressed out but he has more important things going on rn. I feel like Tim wouldn’t care.

Tim and Steph would probably become Spoiler and Red Robin (he named himself after a fast food place does this guy live under a rock) bc no Batman = no Robin. I guess you could go the Steph Batgirl route but I like the Spoiler costume better so I’m sticking with it.

Actually, I kind of don’t want Bruce to come back now. Like how did he even come back in canon what did Tim even do.

[arty-shadow-morningstar]

Graveyard Siblings (5)

[Masterlink] (PART 1) (PART 4)

-----

Mari and Cass sometimes switch their suits as they have the same body type. Cass would sometimes go out in full Hellbat gear and give the appearance that Hellbat is out more often than she actually is.

So Orphan/Black Bat also sometimes uses guns.

This also helps with concealing secret identities. Maria was rescued by Hellbat from Joker’s Henchmen. (Vicki Vale was getting sus of the new Wayne and Hellbat.)

Unfortunately since Hellbat rarely comes out and she had already made all of her appearance for the month and it wasn’t a busy weekend, the public had come to the conclusion that Hellbat has a crush on the newest Wayne.

Basically everyone thought that Mari has a crush on herself. Which led to some teasing and escalated to Mari announcing that Jason had a crush on Red Hood on live TV.

It didn’t help that a video of Red Hood and Jason re-enacting Romeo and Juliet with Jason on his apartment balcony and Red Hood on the roof was posted on the internet a few days later. (Thank you, Trixx and Tim’s awesome video editing skills)

Sadly, it was taken down 24 hours later. (Tim and the others have multiple copies of it, on the cloud or hardware, hidden around in the manor and their respective safehouses in the US.)

Some people kidnapped Jason to hopefully gain leverage over the Red Hood and to their dismay and nightmares for years to come, Hellbat came instead.

One lucky and incredibly brave reporter asked why she was there instead of her brother.

Mari being a little shit, “Red Hood may be a tough and scary guy but when it comes to his feelings, my brother is a chicken.”

Pictures of Jason tackling Hellbat somehow never made it into any papers.

The criminal underworld hasn’t taken a hint and Jason has been kidnapped a few more times.

Other times Jason was kidnapped:

Robin: Red Hood made a fool of himself in front of Todd recently and he doesn’t dare to show his face.

Spoiler: He was taking too damn long checking his hair even though I told him that no one was going to see it under his helmet and he was so offended that he is currently sulking in the bathroom.

Red Robin: Red Hood can’t think straight when he is around Jason. I mean have you seen the dude.

Arsenal*during a rare visit to Gotham*: Red Hood owes me one now.

Dick finally ends it by going out as Red Hood and rescuing Jason. Gotham is happy that Redson (Red Hood x Jason) ship has finally sailed.

-------

Kate, Babs, Cass, Steph and Mari were out on Mari’s first girls’ night since her move to the manor.

This is set a little after she came back from Paris with Jason.

They watched rom-com movies, did hair and nails, gossip about the superhero community and bitch and vent to each other.

Marinette off-handedly mentioned the crazy shits she had done during her stint as Ladybug. It started with asking about the T-rex in the Batcave and she mentions jumping into the mouth of a live one before.

Everyone in the room was shocked and after a few more questions, it was obvious that she was very reckless and self-sacrificing. Yep, she was going to fit into this crazy family just fine.

And Holy Shit. There is so much trauma packed into this kid. She needs lots of therapy.

Babs finally decided that they all needed to get out and have some fun. All in their respective suits and they went out.

Joined by Harley, Ivy and Selina.

Plagg came along because I want Plagg to meet Selina.

It was a chaotic night and it was a miracle that Bruce didn’t find out about what the girls did.

-------

Batman and Red Hood were on patrol together when Selina jumped in front of them.

“Hello, Boys”

“What do you want, Catwoman?”

“I want to meet my new prodigy, Kitty Noire.”

Cue Marinette jumping down from her hiding spot, transformed with the Black Cat Miraculous. “Hiya.”

Red Hood carries her like a potato sack and points his gun at the other two.

“Nope, she’s my sister and I called dibs. I adopted her. She’s off limits.”

“Legally, she’s mine.” Batman coughed out.

“I did it first. Emotionally. She’s my emotional support sister. You have plenty kids already, B and Selina, get your own.”

“Hey, I am still here and can hear you.”- Maria

-------

Alya was worried for Lila. She had been acting weirdly for the past month.

She looked very out of sorts. Her clothes weren’t in order and her hair was in disarray. She had bags under her eyes and her eyes looked wild. Lila didn’t look like herself at all.

She jumped at any sound and flinched at really sudden movements.

Alya tried to find out what was wrong with Lila and received vague answers.

One time Lila said that Marinette is to blame.

Alya reaches the somewhat right conclusion that Marinette was haunting Lila and hurting her because Lila used to come to school with bruises and claims that Marinette did it.

Alya goes to Marinette’s grave to desecrate it. (Yeah, go anger the ghost that is haunting someone.)

Unfortunately, the moment she tries to do something, the sky turns dark, clouds appear and the wind begins whipping. A Lightning strike near her and there was a cloaked figure beside her with a scythe.

All Alya saw from the figure was the blood-red lips in a very sharp grin and glowing blue eyes, raising the scythe high before she ran away. The scythe swiped the air where her head once was.

Alya didn’t get far before she tripped and blacked out.

When she woke up, she found herself in the hospital with no idea how she got there.

She was told that somebody found her with a concussion in the park and took her to the hospital.

------

The next one on Mari’s hit list was Natalie.

She wasn’t as involved in the whole thing like Lila, Adrien or Gabriel but she still did it anyways.

Her punishment is a little mild compared to the others and was more of a warning to Gabriel.

Natalie woke up in the middle of the night to see a not-so-dead Ladybug sitting on her vanity chair with the moonlight from the windows illuminating her body and her neck. Her suit was torn exactly like the day of that battle with blood dripping down her arms and from her open wounds. The shadows kept her face hidden but glowing blue eyes stared at her.

Natalie was scared at first. But she regained her normal cool composure.

“I assume you are here to extract your revenge for aiding in your unfortunate demise. But before you kill me, I regret my part in my entire thing and I apologize for everything I have done against you even though I knew it was wrong.”

“At least you show remorse over what you have done. Visiting my grave when even my parents didn’t and leaving flowers. I love those purple hyacinths by the way. Did you know that they mean sorry in the language of the flowers?”

“Why are you stalling my death? Just kill me already.”

“Madam Sancouer. You just played a minor role in my downfall compared to what Adrien and Lila Rossi did to me. And you showed more guilt over your actions than they ever did and Adrien claimed to have loved me. And like I have told the Bats, Death is too swift of a punishment.”

“Who are the bats?”

“None of your concern. You should be more concerned about yourself.”

“Lila sees the ghosts of her past and they haunt her. Adrien is in a living nightmare and has no control over his actions and is despised by everyone. What are you going to do to me?”

“Well, since you show some guilt over your actions, let me tell you a little secret. I am not dead. Not really. I mean I did die. But there was a spell in the grimoire that revived me. It took a few days to work.”

Marinette changed to her normal form. It was a little jarring to see an older Marinette Dupain-Cheng sitting on her vanity chair like it was a throne. The Ladybug suit and the wounds were gone. She looked a little familiar.

“Why are you telling me this? What was the point?” Natalie faltered as she wondered why the girl looked familiar. Marinette moved closer and her face was fully illuminated by the moonlight.

“I intend to take everything by which I mean everything from Gabriel Agreste for what he did.”

“M. Agreste just wanted his wife back. You just gave him your Miraculous, you would still have everything.”

“What difference would it make? Sure I had friends and family before but they turned out to be disappointing. I might have become a famous designer like I dreamed of and can't achieve because I died. Besides, he never said about wanting his wife to come back in his tedious monologues. For all we knew back then, he wanted them for world domination. He showed that he would end the world for them. For kwamis’ sake, he nearly started World War III, just for a pair of earring and a ring. He was willing to kill me to have her back. No wait, he did that too. If he actually read the translated grimoire or asked the Guardian or at least someone with magic for help instead or maybe used his head and made some who can heal as his champion using the Butterfly, we wouldn’t even be in this mess. Face it, Mme Sancour, your boss is a power-hungry and very controlling maniac who is also thankfully an idiot.”

“But- he- he just-. You are just a child, what do you know? M. Agreste knew what he was doing.”

“A child who had a normal life up until he tried to ruin it with his idiotic schemes and hiring Lila to do it. A child who had to fight a war on her own.”

“I am sorry you had to go through that but I doubt you and your little revenge rampage is going to solve anything.”

Ghostly Chains wrapped around Natalie’s body, squeezing tight like it was squeezing the life out of her.

“I was all for sparing you, you know. If you had actually listened to my side of the story, you would have spared from my ‘little revenge rampage’. This is going to be a little painful. Sorry about that.” In a tone that was definitely not sorry.

Pain coursed through Natalie’s body. Her skin crawled and itched as pitch back feathers grew out of it. Her bones turned to dust and reformed.

Where Natalie Sancour once was, there was a raven.

An omen of death and destruction for one Gabriel Agreste.

Marinette leaned down towards the raven. Natalie tried to peck her eye out but Marinette held the beak in a firm grip.

“Ah. ah ah. Luckily for you this is temporary. Mostly. Every night, you will assume this shape and each night the longer you will stay in this form. Slowly counting down the days until Gabriel’s downfall. Since you love helping him so much, you are going to help him know how long he has to live. The night you are a raven from sunset to sunrise, that sunrise starts the day Gabriel Agreste will be utterly destroyed.”

She released the beak and headed towards the window.

"Send him my regards."

With that, she was gone.

(Part 6)

[feysandfeels]

I gathered you read the chapter... how are we feeling, any thoughts you might want to share?

There I was, writing on my journal after a decent day at work when this fucking bomb exploded quite literally on my lap. But fear not I am here and we shall discuss until we can make fucking sense of it.  Should I even warn you of the length of this post, or are we all on the same “Luisa can’t synthesise for shit” boat now?

I. Azriel

I will start by saying that this does not make me hate Azriel or stop caring for him and wanting what’s best for him. I still do very much love him. This however does not mean I applaud or get behind how he expressed himself during this specially chapter. For me it was quite disturbing to see how he saw Elain merely as a sexual partner and thought that that translated into love. If he had made the distinction between being physically attracted to her and being in love with her, then I don’t think we would all be feeling like we are. Because it is fair to be sexually attracted to someone but not necessarily in love with them.

From what we saw I think we can gather that Azriel knows Mor is not into him and in his grief from all those years being in love he wants something immediate and there. On top of that he sees his brothers settled and feels like he is owed from the cauldron, so of course he starts seeing Elain as the perfect “solution” to his pain. Now, of course Elain (and no one for that matter) should be seen a solution to anything really. Much less he should jump on that boat and already think of her as his. Az, my sweet, possessiveness is not love. 

When I first read the chapter something stood out for me, he said he’s envious of his brothers and the emotional stability they both have, the fact that they were both chosen by the ones they love. We know Az loved Mor with all his heart and although she loves him too, it was not corresponded on the same energy since she is well bisexual homoromantic. He, so far, does not feel chosen in that same sense, which only feeds his insecurity of being unworthy.

In his envy he oversimplified things, he saw what both Rhys and Cassian now have and did the simple most stupid math ever: he went Rhys+Feyre = love, Cass+Nesta = love... hummm then If I’m single and Elain is single then it must mean Az+ Elain = love. (Sugar I love you but that is dumb as fuck). This has the same energy of when you are in high school and you let your friends convince you that you are actually into someone when you are really not, but then you buy into it and start believing in it yourself. In this case he was the one who created that push and convinced himself that it was the right thing.

I think so far we can gather a few things of the place Az is at right now: he is feeling extremely lonely, extremely envious and extremely sad. I do not think this excuses his behavior at fucking all, but at least we know where he is coming from. He is clearly mistaking sexual attraction and possessiveness as love. But I do think it all stems from this turbulent place he is at emotionally, not because he is a bad person. 

I do not thing he is a bad person for thinking of Elain as he does, because I truly think this is a set up for the growth he will experience. Is it a good look? honey no. But is it a realistic one? I dare say it is. As I said when I read this I got full on high school bull shit vibes, I thought “ohh I’ve seen this film before and I have lived it”. He is being immature and there is no denying. Which was only confirmed with him regifting that necklace... sugar... that was a dick move, very fucking dickish move -specially since it was alluded that they might have feelings for each other–. My man needs to do some emotional growth because yikes. 

II. The Narrative

Now, I have said before that for me, Sarah’s strength lies not so much on her world building or the originality of her works (which is not to say that her worlds suck or her narratives are not interesting and offer something new), but it lies more on her characters. To me she has always excelled at creating characters that do exemplify the range of humanity in its good, its bad, and all that’s in between. Even you can look at stuff that your fave did and go “yeah not cool at fucking all”. At least I know I can and I adore almost every character in this series. I love characters not because they are perfect but because I can either relate to them or because they allow me to understand and experience points of view that are alien to my own experience. Sarah has never made characters black and white. Your faves will make mistakes. Feyre has, Rhysand has, Cassian has, Nesta has, Elain has, Lucien has, Mor has and Az has. 

What make her books interesting from this perspective is that she says “characters development does not equal character growth”. Take Chaol for example –if you haven’t read ToG do yourself a favor and read it– his character arc is one of the most interesting and best fulfilled ones in that series because we saw him at his lowest, when we couldn’t empathize exactly and he was being an ass, and then we saw him question his problematic behavior and move past it. Character development means just that: that the character move from point a to point b. It doesn’t mean he will be better by the end, but it means movement. Character growth does mean he will hopefully get  to a place where they are “good”.

I think she knows exactly what she is doing with Az and with this teaser. Need I remind you of the chaos the bonus chapter in ACOFAS left this fandom in for a solid two years. This got our emotions high and got us one way or another expecting to see where this will all lead. I don’t think any of us were expecting this chapter when it was announced that Az would get a pov. 

III. Conclusion

To conclude I just want to reiterate that I don’t support how he’s is behaving. I think I am accepting how he is behaving. Acceptance however does not meant that I am behind it, it means that I accept it and I am willing to stick around to see him grow out of this and realize why this is all so wrong (because well you know I can’t actively engage with him since he is... you know... fictional). I have had moments like this with some of my closest friends irl with whom we’ve had talks about previous behavior and have had the “be fucking better” talk, which is something that Rhys essentially said (GOD BLESS YOU BOO), and is also a sentiment most of us shared, even Feyre, when Rhys forced Mor to face both of her abusers and then didn’t consult her when selling Velaris off to her dad. And to me that is part of what friendship means, it means being there through the growth.  

Everyone has their own limits of what they can understand of a character/person. If this is your own then it’s fine, no harm no foul. If this is what makes you jump ship from Elriel (that’s their ship name right?) then hey all good, I’m sorry for your loss.  

I am not an Azriel hater, nor I think I will ever be. At least not from the information I have right now. I do still love him and as I have said before I want to see him happy and with a healthy amount of self confidence (and no Azriel saying you could easily kill Lucien is not the healthy self confidence I am talking about). So if anything I am interested in the arc his character will face, we just caught him at a moral low –which to me still has a solid chance of growth–.

I hope this offer some light or whatever. And remember take it easy, it’s okay to feel things deeply but don’t quit in the middle of the war, we still have his book coming up and I am 100% that will enlighten us more. 

ANYWAYS, LONG LIVE ELUCIEN BITCHES.

[hollyharper]

At first, I was going to post this fic as one peice. But for the last month, I’ve had the worst case of writers block. I do intend to fhish this, but for now here’s part one of my dickbabs fanfic: Time Bomb.

Part 1

Barbara shook her head again. It couldn’t be true.

She wiped away tears with the back of her hand. She clutched her knees to her chest and suffocated a sob.

It wasn’t true. It was impossible.

Street lights slowly flickered to life under her. It was. Deep down she knew it. Her heart felt it.

But her brain?

It fought to find every fault in the information. Barbara couldn’t find any. Barry wouldn’t lie, especially about something like this.

Would he? Of course, she questioned.

She wanted any reason to believe it wasn’t true. Was she really going to die? Everyone did. But by the end of the year? It was only November. The leaves had dropped, and winter’s wind was already bringing the foretaste of snow.

That’s what Barry had said. During a trip to the future, he had seen her gravestone and the year of her death.

This year.

No. Again she fought the reality. There was no escape. The end was coming. All she could do was prepare. She heard a small thump.

“Babs?” She didn’t have to look up to recognize Dick. “Are you okay?” His voice was flooded with worry. “Bruce is looking for you. He said it was important.”

“I don’t care,” she growled.

“What’s wrong?” Now he was even more concerned. Concerned enough to cross that unspoken barrier. He rested a hand on her shoulder.

“I’m fine.” She brushed his hand away and stalked off. “I’m going home.”

“Barbara!” He called after her, but she had already disappeared.

Swing through her bedroom window, Barbara collapsed on the floor. Thoughts ran through her mind at hyper speed. Everything blurred tighter into an intangible mess.

She sighed, trying to reorganize her thoughts. What was the most important thing? Her family. She would need to talk to her father eventually. When she- died, Stephanie and Cass would be without her guidance. She would have to teach them as much as possible before-

The Birds would need a new Oracle, as would Batman. Her gear would have to be moved and- her mind flicked back to Nightwing.

They had been each other’s lifeline since childhood. Without her, he… she didn’t really know.

Maybe he’d be fine, or he would be like she had been after he was shot. Every memory of him came flooding back. The way he held her the night Ainsley died. His tears soaking her blood-stained shirt as she drifted in and out of consciousness.

How he held her hands every time she was put under for surgery. His encouragement and patience as she learned to navigate life from a wheelchair. His gentle presence in a night that was haunted with nightmares. He had always been there.

All of her life, he had been caring for her. And this, this would drive him to insanity. This would push him off the edge. And after everything he had done for her, she couldn’t cause him more pain.

--------------

If there was anything Barbara did that drove Dick crazy, it was this.

When she went into a workaholic mode to distract herself. It had been three days since he last saw her. Within twenty minutes, she had gone for extreme break down to 24/7 vigilante.

He doubted she had even refilled her Batarang stock. Her anxiety was unlike anything he had ever seen from her.

Worse, she refused to respond to him, and from what he could find no one else. He knew better than to allow her actions to affect him, but they did anyway.

The only way Dick could find to calm down was far different. He resorted to curling up in bed watching chick flicks and eating junk food. It was only after he ran out of potato chips, that he ventured out of his apartment. Even then it was only to the closest convenience store.

He could tell something was off the moment he stepped through the door. An unusual floral scent wafted through the apartment. He quietly closed the door and tip-toed to the kitchenette. A redhead was seated on his couch.

“Babs?” He whispered inching over.

She was in full costume and shaking. Her head lifted enough for him to see her dilated pupils. Cautiously, he reached a hand out.

“N-n-no.” She pulled farther away.

“What’s wrong?” Dick dropped to his knees.

“Ivy.” Barbara’s voice wavered. “Out of…”

“...Antidote,” he finished.

That wasn’t good but explained her reaction.

He crossed to the bathroom. The cabinet creaked open. After a moment of confusion, he found the right basket and rifled through the bottles.

At the bottom was the dark blue vile. He tried to hook it into a shot. The bottle refused to screw in. Babs scrambled to the other side of the couch as he sat down. By the time he got the vial in place, she had crawled back to him. Her head nuzzled against his back. Dick stilled while she settled. Her entire body shook. He swept her hair to the side and eased the needle into her neck. Barbara winced. When the last drop had been injected, he removed the needle. She gave a shaky sigh.

“You need to take a break,” Dick whispered.

“Mph,” was her only reply.

She shifted, scooting closer to him.

“What happened out there?”

“Ivy sprayed me with her love pheromone. I was out of-“ a yawn cut through the middle of her explanation. “-Antidote.”

It would take a while for the cure to take effect. He could tell simply by how affectionate she was. Barbara wasn’t a very cuddly person, except at the moment. Not that he was complaining.

Even if he wasn’t sure where they stood, he knew how he felt about her. Neither believed in soulmates, at least he didn’t use to. She was making him rethink that.

It took some coaxing for her to move on enough for him to settle. The moment he had comfortably sat down, she was back in his lap. The tv remote sat on the coffee table. With one hand, Dick reached for it, all while holding her steady. When offered the remote, Babs simply batted his hand away. He rolled his eyes and started to scroll through options.

“No chick flicks,” she mumbled.

At least the poison had worn off enough for her pickiness to show. Every suggestion he made, she shot down. All of hers were rejected. Even through the bickering, the two remained cuddled. Eventually, Dick gave way. With a pleased expression, Barbara flicked the movie on. He closed his eyes and focused on her breathing.

Barbara continued to keep her distance from Dick. The ache was strong, but her will was stronger. Cassandra and Stephanie knew something was wrong but never spoke a word. Tim and Jason whispered behind closed doors. Damian had attempted to confront her but was brushed off. Bruce was the only one who knew. She avoided him too. Barbara rehearsed responses until it was impossible to tell she was lying when she said she was alright. It was a lie so deep and dark, that she had to lie to herself to keep it. And eventually, she tricked herself into believing the same lie she kept telling the others.

“You have to tell them.” Bruce was never one to beat around the bush.

“I will,” she fibbed, not turning her eyes from the computer.

“Tonight.”

That caused her to jerk her head up.

“No.”

“I called everyone together. You’re going to tell them.”

Her face still showed resistance.

“And if you don’t, I will.”

“It’s my life. My decision.” Her voice held a fit of contained anger, only a breath away from breaking free of her control.

“Bruce?” Dick’s voice echoed through the cave.

Barbara ducked her head. Footfalls approached.

“Hey, Babs.” He didn’t know what else to say.

With her face hidden there was no way to tell what she was feeling. To his surprise, she didn’t even jerk away when he causally laid a hand on her shoulder.

She stayed slumped over as all the others filed in. Tim stood as if in an army lineup. Next to him, Steph chattered nervously, her hands fidgeting. Cass stood solemnly. Her saddened gaze was focused on Barbara, even as Jason fought for her attention. Damian, as always, simply looked grumpy.

Bruce cleared his throat. Everyone stilled, except Steph, whose nervous fingertips were now playing with Tim’s cape. Instinct told Dick to stay by Barbara’s side, as she stood in front of the group. Bruce nodded to her and stepped to the side. A knot formed in Dick’s throat. Whatever this was, it caused his stomach to feel empty. Barbara seemed to panic. One look from Bruce though, and she cleared her throat.

“Barry has brought news from the future.” Dick’s hands closed into fists. Her face remained emotionless. “During his last visit, around three weeks ago, he saw my gravestone.”

Murmurs spread like wildfire. Stephine’s nervousness had escalated. Tim wrapped an arm around her in an attempt to calm her. Jason stared, barely breathing. Damian appeared concerned, and Cass seemed to know exactly what Barbara was about to say.

“The date of death was, is…” Her breath caught in her throat. “This year.”

The room erupted. The monstrous claws of fear gripped Dick’s racing heart. Jason’s face was empty and paler than death. Damian was gripping his father like a lifeline. Tim stood motionless, except instinctually comforting a sobbing Stephanie. Cass was still for a moment. She threw herself into Barbara. Babs hugged her back. The young girl had always looked up to Barbara. Their bond was far deeper than teacher and student.

A single tear trailed down Barbara’s cheek. Without letting go of Cass, she lifted her head. Her eyes welled with emotion. A deep dark fear. He didn’t know what to do. Her eyes begged. Her entire face was red, even though only a few tears had escaped. Dick took a cautious step forward. With no negative reaction, he dared to pull both girls into an embrace. Cass remained with her head pressed into Barbara. Babs rested hers on his shoulder. Stephanie squashed into Barbara’s other side. Tim trailed after her. Comfortingly, he placed one hand on Steph, the other on Barbara’s back. Jason copied, one hand on Babs, the other on Cassandra. Damian squeezed in next to Dick, who hugged his younger brother. Bruce made no move to join the sibling hug.

Barbara broke. She started to sob, bottled up emotion coming out in a tidal wave. Her knees gave way. Everything blurred tighter behind a curtain of tears. She was pulled into a tighter embrace as she fell. Six pairs of hands rested against her back. Large ones, familiar ones, hugged her. The other fives simply rested on her. One more, larger and stronger, rested on her shoulder. The comfort of family slowly started to calm her. She dried her eyes on the closest she could find, which turned out to be Dick’s shirt. The others, including Bruce, knelt beside her. Jason wiped away her last tear, and Damian crawled into her lap. He had never been very attached to her, but when death is looming things change.

Big thanks to @snapdragon76 for helping with the editing and formatting.

[flying-nightwing]

Damn Him

Hi, this is average af but I needed to post something. You’ll probably be disappointed lmao. Anyway, enjoy some Dick Grayson content!

More on my masterlist, pinned as a top post!

Pairing: Dick Grayson x Reader

Word count: 4798

Warnings: None

Summary: Dick Grayson never seems to say the right thing around you, and it’s not quite for the reason you initially thought

You looked up from your book when your cellphone vibrated on your desk beside you. You were in the midst of studying for your last exam of the semester, so you had your phone on a strict do not disturb schedule, which meant it remained on 24/7. Your notifications were blocked for any social media, text or calls you might receive, well, except for your one emergency contact: Bruce Wayne. He knew he was supposed to contact you only if he had no other choice but ask for your help, and never had he even used that card ever since you knew him. Reluctantly, you put down you book and marker to switch them for your phone. Turning on the screen, you ignored the various hidden notifications, focusing only on the single line that stared back at you.

Call me when you can - B.

Sighing, you unlocked your phone and pressed the contact name, then the phone icon next to it. It rang twice before Bruce picked up.

"(Y/N), how are you?"

"A bit stressed out, but it could be worse" You replied truthfully. "What's up?"

"I hope you know I wouldn't do this if I had any other solution" He began. "But I need your help on a recon mission, almost all my effective got busted last night"

"Oh my, are they okay?" You frowned with concern, even if he couldn't see you.

"Yes, don't worry" He said, "I'll explain in person, that is if you agree to come. I'd understand if you refused, though"

You rubbed the bridge of your nose and closed your eyes for a second. You owed a lot to Bruce, and since it was a simple recon stakeout, you could take one or two nights off to help him out. You were already ahead of schedule in your studying and confident in your knowledge of the material.

"Yeah, sure, I'll be there" You finally answered. "What time do you want me over?"

"As soon as you can"

"Aight, see ya"

You hung up the phone and put it back on your desk, observing it for a second. It had been gifted to you by Bruce after you began going on missions more regularly with the batlings, he said that way he knew for sure all communications would be secure and sheltered from hacking or government surveillance. You had to admit, having an encrypted phone was pretty neat, as it ran entirely on Wayne Enterprises servers and networks. The simple thought of not having to suffer through youtube ads was satisfactory enough on its own to justify the need for it, even if you didn't join missions as much as you used to.

You finally stood up and went to change from your yoga pants and loose tank top to black jeans and a sweater, then jumped in your car and drove to the manor. You punched in your code at the gate and took the right to the garages, where you entered a second code to open the doors. Your car was several notches under those parked there, but you had to have something less flashy as not to attract too much attention. Still, it was more than a majority of college students even had. You had to thank Bruce for that too. He wasn't your adopted father per say, since he found you a few days before your eighteenth birthday, but he still acted like a guardian and mentor for you.

You jogged down to the batcave, where you instantly spotted a chatty blonde sprawled in a seat, making wild gesture. She sprung up straight at the sound of you coming in and her face split in a wide grin. She jumped on her feet and skipped toward you.

"Hey giiiiirl" She drawled out excitedly. "Long time no see!"

"Hey Steph" You chuckled, going for the hug. "Sorry I didn't call, I have no excuses"

"Don't worry about it" She waved off with an airy laugh. She knew how busy school kept you, and how you kind of wanted to separate yourself fromthe vigilante life. "I'm just glad you're here"

"So am I" Bruce called from the computers. He gave you a subtle smile, and you nodded back to him. "It seems like we're in a bit of an impasse here"

You didn't miss the quick glare he sent to Tim and Steph, who sheepishly avoided looking back at him. It didn't seem too serious though, or the air would have drastically changed.

"Before he says anything, know it wasn't our fault" Steph hurried to say.

"We were totally ambushed by Vicky Vale" Tim nodded along."No idea what she did there, but she was, and she saw right through our disguises.We had to bolt before she exposed us"

You frowned in confusion. "Okay can someone tell me what is going on here?"

"Tim and Steph were supposed to go undercover and cozy up with the high leaders of what I have suspicions on good authority are transiting premium grade opium into the US and Europe, and are close partners to Count Vertigo" Bruce began, already exhausted. "But as they said, Vicky Vale was somehow invited to the banquet and singled them out immediately before they could get even near the big guys"

"My magnificent blond mane attracts way too much attention, I'm afraid" Steph sighed sadly, making you chuckle. "It's a curse, babes. I tell ya"

"Keep telling yourself that, Stephi" A new voice came from the top of the stairs. You both wanted suddenly to go back to your books as a big part of why you barely tag along on missions anymore skipped down the stairs. Damn Dick Grayson, damn him. "We all know covert missions are not your strong point"

"I'm gonna kill you in your sleep, Grayson" She smiled sweetly at him.

"No, because you suck at being subtle" He returned the grin, just as sweetly if not more. He ruffled her hair as he passed by. "What's up Timbo"

He hummed something unintelligible, flipping his brother off. Dick laughed, then almost added something when he finally noticed you. His laughter died down and his eyes widened, and suddenly he looked uncomfortable. "Oh, you're here"

"So it seems" You replied as flatly as he spoke. It wasn't new, you had never known how to act around each other. Did you hate him? Of course not, you had absolutely no reason to. Did you consider him your friend? Hard to say. All you knew was that any and every encounter you had with Dick Grayson was awkward. You got along with Tim just fine, and even Jason when he was still around. You loved Cass and Duke, and you even managed to get on Dami's good side, or most of the time anyway. But Dick remained a mystery to you, one that had eluded you for years now. You didn't understand a single thing about that boy, and you doubted you ever would. You've had conversations before, loads of them, and you had no doubt he would make an amazing friend, but you couldn't seem to get past the stage of acquaintances.

Which was frankly disappointing, because you had been instantly attracted by his charms and easygoing nature when you first met. You had been drawn to him, and you couldn't try and pretend you hadn't pinned after him for the longest time. But you hit a wall when his behaviour began changing wildly around you, right around the time you slipped flirts every now and then to let him know that you were into him. Right now, you were just really over his poor attempts at pretending he never noticed it happen.

"So" Bruce spoke up, breaking the tension that had suddenly arisen in the cave. "Tomorrow night we'll have a new opening to try and get to them, hopefully without interruption this time. I've taken a look at the list, and no reporter was on it. We should be good"

"But Tim and Steph already got busted" You pointed out. "They'll know something is up if they show up again"

"That's why they will be seen at the Gotham Charity Auction at the museum" He explained, meeting your eyes. "That's why I called you up. You'll be going undercover with Dick as husband and wife"

"What?" Dick coughed almost immediately. "We're not–" He laughed nervously. "Us? As a married couple? This is ridiculous"

Your head turned sharply toward him, your eyebrows raised in disbelief. "Wow, thanks a lot for the vote of confidence" You snapped. "I didn't know being my fake husband was such a terrible perspective"

"No– Wait– That's not–" He stuttered, his eyes wide. "I didn't mean it that way"

"Sure" You rolled your eyes, before turning to Bruce again. He had an unreadable expression on his face, more unreadable than usually anyway. Tim and Steph stood there in stunned silence, not daring to speak up. "What's the briefing?"

Bruce glanced in between you and Dick, before looking back at you again. "Félix Lachance and Stella Gustavsson, they're the one you need to befriend. Since you're not known to the public, it'll be easier for Dick to pass under the radar and not cause an incident like last time"

"We get it, B" Tim muttered under his breath as Bruce passed you the files with the pictures.

"I need you to retrieve any information you can" He continued, ignoring Tim's comment. "Names of business partners, location of transactions, dates, anything, you know the gig. Your occupation and alias if you want one will be at your discretion, I trust you can deal with that. As always you need to be extremely careful as not to alert them, because this is our last chance to get the critical Intel we need to take this down. So I'll need you at your A game, both of you"

This was a warning and you knew it. He let you know more or less subtly to put aside whatever was happening between you and behave like adults. You straightened your back and took a deep breath, getting your head in the right mindset.

"Alright, I'll be ready for tomorrow night" You nodded as you gathered the files. "Can I stay over tonight? There is no point in trying to study now"

"You don't need to ask, (Y/N), you're always welcome here" Bruce said, a hint of fondness in his voice. He always liked having you around, he said your presence tamed the boys. You nodded and made your way upstairs, finding the room you claimed as your own for about a year, and the same you always came back to when you stayed the night.

You went to the drawers, fishing out old training clothes you had left behind. You weren't sure all those were yours, they were probably mixed with pieces you stole from Steph and Cass. In return, they probably did also steal from your drawer occasionally, balancing it all out. You were about to change into something comfy for bed when a soft knock at your door caught your attention. You walked to it and tentatively opening the door, your expression flattening when you saw how it was.

"Yes?"

"Hey um" Dick scratched the back of his neck. "I just wanted to say, I'm sorry it came out that way. I just meant that it would be, you know, weird"

You stared at him blankly. "You're not helping your case here, Dick"

"Shit, that's not what I mean either!" He hurried to say, realizing his mistake. But you were already closing the door. "Please (Y/N)–"

"Get some rest Dick" You said as you pushed the door closed. You sighed and shook your head before adding in a whisper, "God knows we'll need it"

------

You had done covert missions before, but this was the first time you were operating in such conditions. You finished retouching your hair, staring at yourself in the mirror, wondering whether or not it was more expensive than your total life income. The floor length champagne coloured dress was stunning, tailored to your form and just sparkly enough to let you shine through the design. You suspected the shoes were made especially to fit with the dress, as they resembled its lace and belt colour. You were sporting on top of that a heavy diamond necklace with matching earrings, proving the general high cost of the outfit. Your comm was carefully tucked in your ear, functional and well hidden.

"Oh my my" Steph whistled lowly. "If I wasn't dating Timbers I would date you"

You laughed. "This is the outfit talking. You haven't seen me tired and puffy in sweatpants just yet"

"Grump, just take the damn compliment" She playfully poked your exposed shoulder.

"Alright alright, thanks" You rolled your eyes. "Since it's gonna be the only one coming from this household anyway"

Steph wiggled her eyebrows. "Wouldn't be so sure about that" She said in a sing-song voice. "Your fake boyfriend may have some thoughts too"

"Ha" You snorted, walking out of your room with her following at your side. "It's good, that you're wishful thinking. The boy can't seem to talk to me without insulting me lately"

"Trust me, he won't be able to resist to this bombshell" She gestured at your form. "Dick's a people pleaser, and looking like a whole five course meal like that, you sure are easy to please if you want my opinion"

You shook your head, a small grin on your face. Steph had always been your favourite for a reason. She knew how you felt about Dick, but she never meddled. Well, not more than she typically would anyway, and not enough to cross your boundaries. And even then, she had no explanation either for his behaviour. You finally reached the foyer, where Bruce was dressed casually, sleeves rolled up and without a tie, talking to an all dressed up Dick, his hair now dark red and with almost black contact lenses. Your heels clicking on the stairs was what snapped their attention to you; Bruce nodding at his choice of dress for you, and Dick, his mouth slightly agape. You felt Steph gently but excitedly elbowing your ribs.

"Ah, (Y/N), there you are" Bruce said. "I'm glad to see the dress fits well"

"Yeah" Dick tried to smile, but it came out more like a grimace. "You look okay"

You blinked in disbelief as you heard Steph's facepalm behind you. You closed your eyes and exhaled through your nose, while Bruce shook his head slightly at his son.

"Yikes" Tim made his presence known. You shared this one word mood immensely right about now. "Way to go D"

Dick cleared his throat, trying to push back the embarrassment blush creeping up his cheeks. "Uh, shall we go?"

"That would be preferable, yes" Bruce replied, making Steph choke and cover he laughter with a cough. The way he said it was clearly meant to be a jab to his son's tactless attitude. "Be careful"

"Of course" You smiled tightly and all but dragged Dick outside. You'd take one of Bruce's luxury car to get there, and it was already waiting in the driveway. Dick pressed the door button and slowly, they lifted up to let you in. You slid in the passenger seat without waiting for Dick's help and you kept your eyes on the windshield in from of you as he began to drive. The ride was silent until he decided to speak again, tentatively.

"It's nice to see you all dressed up, for once" He said, still clearly not thinking of his choice of words more carefully. "It's different. A good different!"

For once? Was he serious?

You audibly sighed. "I'm begging you to just stop talking"

"What?" He objected, confused. "What did I say wrong this time– Oh"

"Yeah" You replied, your tone clipped and dry.

"I'm an idiot" He mumbled under his breath. That you could agree on, but you didn't voice it out loud.

He couldn't pull into the driveway fast enough. You slipped on your fake engagement ring as Dick stopped in front of the awaiting valet, doing himself the same thing. You both had a recording device slipped in your clothes, and the ring allowed you to turn it on and off at will, as well as the comm in your ear. You turned both off for the awaiting scan at the entrance, as not to emit detectable frequencies.

"Ready?" He asked, and you gave him a firm nod. He got out first and rounded the car, opening your door for you as he would be expected to by this particular crowd. You took his offered hand to climb out and linked your arm to his as he gave the keys to the valet in exchange for a ticket. He left a tip before you walked inside, registering to the guest list. You passed the security checkpoint without a hassle and found yourself in the hall where the auction was held. You turned on your comm and recording device again.

"Recon first, then regroup?" You suggested in a mutter as you were both visually scanning the room.

"Yep" He replied shortly. "B, copy?"

"Crystal clear" 

"Good. Let's go"

While Dick headed to the bar, you opted for the art collection on display, pretending to scout for potential pieces to bid on. But your eyes weren't on the expensive paintings and statues, but moved around the room to spot some VIP lounge or area where the big shots might hang out at. There was a room where attendees came and went, but you shrugged it off as there wasn't enough security for the profile you were searching for. You paused your recon for small talk here and there, and you were in the middle of a casual chat about painted landscapes with an older gentleman when Dick rejoined your side, handing you a drink.

"There you are honey" He smiled sweetly, his unusually dark brown eyes reflecting the light from the chandelier.

"Joey, my love, allow me to introduce you to Sir Fernand Bretworth of Essex" His alias flew out of your mouth naturally, then you took a small sip of your drink. Non alcoholic, nice thinking. "We were discussing impressionism and its influence on modern art"

You wanted to smirk at the clueless look Dick gave you. He was a prodigy in a lot of things, but art wasn't one. It was more Damian's thing, or Tim's if he tried hard enough, but definitely not Dick's. Take that now. 

"Ah, yes..." He replied slowly. "Fascinating indeed"

"Alright" You let out a small, cover up laugh as your hand rested on his bicep. "My husband has little interest in art, my apologies"

"No offence taken" He chuckled. "I'll leave you two, my wife must be looking for me. An old fool like me gets easily distracted!"

You laughed along with him until he was out of earshot. Then you dropped your hand and turned to him. "Noticed anything?"

"Yeah, there is a guarded room with special access" He said as you walked deeper into the crowd not to look suspicious. "Only owned of a special pass can go in, and the guards are very thorough"

"Great" You breathed. "Now let's hope out lovebirds will come out to mingle"

"As it turns out..." He trailed off, and instinctively, you began turning your head toward where his gaze lead. He immediately redirected your head back to him with a firm, but gentle touch on your cheek. His hand remained there for about three seconds longer than necessary, until he realized what he did and retracted his arm. You could have almost enjoyed it if he didn't look like he was touched by literal fire. "Don't look"

"Sorry" You mumbled, avoiding his gaze.

"... They got out, they're talking to people" He informed you, ignoring what just went down. "You go for Stella, I'll take Felix. Remember, friendly but not suspicious. Sweet talk your way into spilling the beans"

"I know" You bit back, your voice low. "Not my first mission, remember? I know what to do"

"I was just reminding you"

"Yeah, I got that" You scoffed. "If you don't trust me, just say so, it'll save you trouble of babying me"

"Come on, that's not–"

He began arguing, but you walked away before you could slip up and say his real name. It would give him one more reason to come down on you like you were a beginner in need of guidance. You were rusty, not stupid. You didn't need him insulting your undercover talents as well. You stopped in front of a beautiful emerald necklace that had a start bid of ten millions dollars and took a long sip of your drink, now kind of bummed it was non alcoholic. But that very detail was probably why you felt a presence approaching you from behind, giving you a few seconds to compose yourself and sweep your frustration under the rug.

"Trouble in paradise?"

You turned around, surprised. It looked like the voice made you jump, when it was in fact the nature of the question that threw you off, as well as the person who had spoken. Before you could ask, the Stella Gustavsson smiled warmly and nodded to where Dick had been seconds earlier.

"I saw what happened" She began, and your heart skipped a beat, hoping she hadn't overheard. "Those frustrated hands gesture are all too familiar. What did he do?"

You relaxed slightly, for now. "We've been having trouble lately, well, more than usually" You explained with a little complicit cock of your head. She seemed to get it. You, on the other hand, knew Dick was hearing everything on his comm, so you decided to go for it. "He's acting... Weird. Can't seem to talk to me without irritating me, whether on purpose or not. I'm sorry, I'm venting to a stranger, I can't imagine how it must look look like.

"Don't worry about it dear, I asked" She winked, extending her hand. "I'm Stella"

"Aleka" You shook her hand.

"Your dress is stunning, by the way!" She exclaimed. "Which designer?”

You froze for a second before shrugging. "No idea, my designer got it for me" You brushed off. "As long as it looks good, I don't care where it comes from"

"Amen" She said, taking a sip of her champagne. "Although, I need to know the name of your designer. They have amazing taste, and I'm looking for a new one for myself"

Oh shit.

"It's B" You replied instantly.

"Bee?"

"Yeah" You nodded, and she looked at you incredulously. "I mean, that's what we all call him. I'm sure he has a name, but I pay him to dress me, not to know his personal life"

"Harsh, (Y/N)" Bruce said in your ear, and you remembered he had been listening to everything. "But nice save"

She laughed, unaware of the comments from Batman himself. "That is very true. How have I not met you before? I feel we have a lot in common"

"I sincerely have no idea" You replied, adding a little gasp of disbelief.

"You're different from this crowd, I can feel it" She kept going on as you started walking side by side in the exposition room. "Everyone here only cares about petty, trivial things. You have a head on your shoulders, you're smart. Too bad your man can't seem to see what's in front of him"

You sighed in agreement to hide the fist pump of victory that threatened to come up. Just like that, you had won Stella over. "I don't know what to do about it. I've tried to talk to him, but it just makes it worse"

"But have you tried to make him jealous?" She suggested with a perfectly shaped eyebrow raised. "There are plenty of young men around, or older bachelors if you're into that. Flirt with them, make sure he sees you, he'll come running, take my word"

"It won't work, he's not–" Even my boyfriend, you were about to say, but you saved your fall just on time. Still, you could practically see Dick's glare in the back of your head at the almost slip up. "Jealous. He's not a jealous man, he's very confident and secure"

"What a shame" She drawled out, going for her champagne again. "Here's what you can do then. Go to him, take him by the neck and french kiss him like there is no tomorrow”

You choked on your saliva as she watched you with a mischievous grin. "Excuse me?"

"It's guaranteed to work, darling" She lifted her shoulder in an elegant shrug. "Then you hold him off. You'll thank me later tonight when you're back at home, just wait and see"

You were about to argue some more, but her insisting stare told you she wasn't just going to let it go. So you scanned the crowd for Dick, spotting him casually excusing himself from a conversation group, going for a refill at the bar. You reached him and grabbed him by the elbow, bringing him face to face with you. You made sure your back was to Stella before beginning to explain the situation.

"I heard" He told you in a mutter, making sure his lips were unreadable under Stella's stare from the distance.

"Then you know what she expects" You sighed, slipping your hands behind his neck. "It doesn't have to be deep, just convincing. Can you do this without grimacing?"

You thought he would stumble into some weak apology, or say something clever. He did neither, instead dived straight for your lips so quickly it was you who was taken by surprise. Naturally, all you could do is kiss him back and try to keep up with him. At some point you thought he would break off, but you weren't prepared for him to actually deepen the kiss. He wasn't letting you go, and it made you dizzy in all the best ways. Let's say you were thankful for his arm around your waist right about now. Finally, you still had to breathe, so you parted reluctantly.

"What was that for?" You asked, your eyes still dazed.

"An apology for irritating you unintentionally" He grinned boyishly, for probably the first time ever directed at you. "I'm an idiot"

"Can confirm" You replied, bringing him down on your lips again. This time, it was a bit shorter, but the spark was still very much present. "You should have done this a long time ago"

"I know" He nodded, his head slightly down and his puppy dog eyes shining even underneath the dark contact lenses. "You're a bit intimidating, I didn't know how to act"

You let out a loud laugh at his confession. "You're kidding"

He pouted.

"Me?" You repeated. "But you're– You're you!"

"Well, duh" He chuckled. "You've got me all tangled in here," He pointed at his chest. "Made me nervous all the time"

You melted just a little bit at his little display, before remembering doing this was a specialty of his. You were just not used to be on the receiving end of it. "You're lucky you're cute, and that I'm already sold on you"

The bright grin returned.

"As heartwarming as this moment is, please focus on the task at hand" Bruce's stern voice echoed in your head, and you were suddenly reminded your conversation had been integrally transmitted to him.

"Right, sorry" Dick apologized sheepishly.

"See, I told you"

This time, you were taken by surprise by Stella walking on you. Even Bruce's intervention hadn't quite brought you back to reality. Damn Dick Grayson, damn him. You turned around, trying to hide your flustered state and instead focusing on the tall gentleman at her side. Must be Felix Lachance, you thought.

"It works every time" She added, sipping from a new glass of champagne.

"You were right" You let out an airy laugh. "Stella, this is my husband Joey Moore. Joey, this is my new friend Stella"

They shook hands before she introduced her husband to the both of you. You already knew his name, but you both pretended you didn't for the sake of your covers.

"Nice to meet you two" Félix smiled politely.

"Hey, would you like to go for a drink after this?" Stella asked. "I sure would like to get to know you two better"

Dick and you exchanged a glance, knowing you had locked the target. Acquiring intel from now on would only be a piece of cake, the base was laid for further actions. You smiled, returning your glance to Stella.

"That would be absolutely lovely"

[ultimatetornshipper]

Daminette December Day 7

@daminette-december2019-2020

((Note: If you’re a confused little muffin who saw our ship in the top 100 list and you want to know what in the ever loving fuck we are, feel free to dm me or mention me in a post or even to send an ask. do be warned tho that if u send me hate i will block and report u (and not just to tumblr, to everyone I know who is part of this fandom). our little sub fandom is not a toxic space and no one is allowed to make it one or there will be a fucking war))

And we’re back to our anxiety induced in denial Damian. I love this kid. Tho I do wanna make him slightly more… how do I say this… like cold? I dunno maybe I can bring that in with other people and his interactions. I just wanna write him with his proper grammar and what not and like lbh this boi is already a simp for Mari. But I don’t wanna let things happen too quickly, y’know?

Anyway, maybe I should make the theme of this chapter the fact that he has absolutely no chill. Lmao, I think that’s hilarious ngl. Also I’m just gonna pretend certain things existed back then for the sake of my sanity I can’t keep coming up with words that make sense for explaining what a thing is without saying the actual word because it didn’t exist yet. The hologram in that one chapter was hard enough bruh

Ok here we go, thanks for reading! I hope u enjoy it

Princes and Pedestals

Chapter 7 – Chill

Previous

Next

Damian rolled the ring between his fingers as the morning light filtered through his windows. She’d put the choice in his hands, it was a kind thing to do, smart too. It made sense, if this role was as important as she made it sound it needed someone who could commit to it.

The miraculous was the kind of black that seemed to stretch on forever. It had a bright green paw print on it. He hadn’t put it on yet but from what he could gather it’s kwami would appear as soon as he put it on.

He'd be one of the leaders of an entire Order. He had no idea how big it was. His mother had raised him to lead but that was an entirely different organization. How would Marinette react to that? Could he handle the responsibility?

These thoughts had been plaguing him from the moment he picked up the ring.

But that wasn’t what got to him the most. She was just so… good. She had even agreed to move her entire court to Gotham for his sake. To uproot her entire life and move everyone involved just so that he could stay with his family.

There had to be a catch.

There always is.

He sighed, overthinking everything wasn’t going to help him make this decision.

There was only one thing he could do.

He put on the ring and a bright light caught him off guard. A small floating cat like being appeared in front of him.

“Kid?” he kept his eyes closed as though he didn’t want to see who was in front of him, his voice breaking slightly.

Slowly, the kwami – Plagg if he remembered correctly - opened his eyes. Damian stared at him as disappointment flitted across the creature’s face.

He lifted his brow and asked, “Hope to see someone else, Plagg?”

He chuckled slightly, sadness lacing the sound, “My previous holder, thought maybe I'd get the chance to say goodbye this time,”

Damian frowned, “What do you mean?”

Plagg frowned, “You don’t know about my previous holder? Who gave you my miraculous?”

“Marinette did,” he said, simply, “She actually just gave me the chance to consider the offer of the position, I have the rest of the day to get to know you and make my decision,”

Plagg seemed to consider what he said, he then sat down on the bed in front of Damian. He explained the basics of the miraculous to him, the phrases he needed to use as well as what those phrases would do. The things he’d need as well as what behaviors he might pick up.

“Purring?” Damian said in a disbelieving voice, “You’re telling me I might start purring in my civilian form?”

Plagg cackled, “Yeah, don’t worry it’s not that bad,”

“Tt, what exactly is the purpose of it? In fact what exactly is my purpose? It seems like she has the leadership thing under control,”

Plagg seemed to sober up at the question, he flew up right in front of Damian’s face and looked him in the eyes, “Her job is to lead and look after her court,” his look sharpened and he narrowed his eyes, “Your job is to look after her, your job is to protect her, your job is to see her. Your purpose is to make hers as easy as possible. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll have other official responsibilities and you will rule alongside her, but your real job? Your purpose? You have to help her remember that she’s only human and that that’s okay,”

Damian stared at Plagg, the kwami stared back. It couldn’t be that simple, could it? There had to be something. Some kind of catch.

Before he could grill the kwami, Dick burst into his room.

Damian could see his brother’s clear panic and immediately stood. Dick’s eyes found his, “She’s gone,”

Damian felt himself spiral, memories flew through his mind. All the times he or any of his siblings had been taken. Cass didn’t speak for a month after the last incident. Jason’s “secret" panic attacks had increased tremendously. Tim stayed up for nights on end, only sleeping when he passed out. Damian sparred for hours and hours, hating the feeling of being useless. 

His father and Dick weren’t in Gotham at the time and Selina was helping Harley with one of her ‘projects’.

When they got Steph back after a week, she was so shook up that she kept waking up screaming from nightmares for months.

They all blamed themselves.

“Her kwami showed us a letter she left but someone could’ve faked it to buy time, they’re searching the village,” Jason said, coming into his room, holding a piece of parchment.

Damian barely registered the way Plagg seemed to study his reactions. They needed to find her, it was already afternoon, who knows how far gone she could be?

They spent hours scouring the castle. Before he knew it the moon was rising and they were all gathered in the living room, going over possibilities.

“I’m going to go get Alfred and Bruce, this has been going on long enough, it’s time to call in back up. It’s already passed nightfall and she’s not back yet,” Dick walked out of the room, barely two seconds passed before he shouted something to them, “Guys I found her!”

They were out quicker than a lightning bolt. He ignored his siblings as they all flocked around her. He took her in.

She was wearing a cloak, which Jason quickly took and gave to a passing maid. She wore one of her black dresses. Her hair was in a braid.

But the cloak was dirty, the dress had tears and the braid was messy.

But it was her eyes that got him. The blue irises looked like someone had taken every drop of sadness in the world and left it in them. They were red rimmed and puffy and there were black bags under them.

She’d been crying and she hadn’t slept. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out.

Somewhere along the line, they moved back into the living room. Cass was sitting next to Marinette on the couch and the others were arguing.

Damian couldn’t take his eyes off of her. She was here. She was safe. She wasn’t taken.

Cass tapped his arm, he turned to look at her and she started signing. (a/n ok yeah I know that sign language might not have existed but do I really care?)

Get her out of here, she’s tired, Cass signed.

Damian nodded and after asking her permission and scolding his siblings, he escorted her to her room.

Plagg whispered something to her that he couldn’t hear. 

Then she apologized for scaring him and he explained his thought process. She explained that he would’ve been able to know via their miraculous whether she was in trouble or not. He made a mental note to ask Plagg more about that.

When they got to her room he opened her door. She was about to go in but he grabbed her hand, stopping her. She looked at him expectantly. He searched her gaze, he had so much he wanted to ask her, why she’d been crying was at the top of that list.

But she looked so tired, and Damian just couldn’t get himself to form the words. Instead he bid her goodnight and went back to the living room where his siblings were waiting.

All eyes turned to him when he entered. He didn’t know what to say. Instead of thinking his words through he blurted out the first thing he thought.

“She didn’t flinch when our eyes met,” he said. They all stared at him for a few seconds. Usually they would’ve laughed at his bluntness, Damian is certain, but there was something about the haunted look on her face that sapped all humor out of the situation.

Jason was crouched in front of the fire. Stephanie sat on one of the chairs while Dick leaned against its armrest. Damian was next to Cassandra on the couch and the five of them sat in silence.

Millions of questions danced through the air, the answers all just out of reach.

Little did they know that they weren’t the only ones with questions.

Outside, three pairs of eyes were watching the oblivious siblings closely.

Damian felt a chill go down his spine and turned towards the window. He walked over and stared out into the forest, he didn’t see anyone but the uneasy feeling wouldn’t leave him.

He closed the curtains.

The smallest of the three chuckled slightly, “She got herself a paranoid one, huh?”

“We need to head back,” the only guy out of the three said to the others.

They nodded and followed him deeper into the forest.

Taglist:

@animegirlweeb @loysydark @toodaloo-kangaroo @forgottenfriends @wolf-for-life @heyitsbugette @f-rget-lt @fusser90

[headcans-oneshots-and-stuff]

A what? (Crack drabble)

Warning: None as far as I know, excpet maybe that it’s crack Word count: ~1k Summary: You have a mission and you’ll even use the dirtiest of tricks to get what you want  Request: Can you please do a Damian dating reader and she shows him tik tok maybe made him try to do a dance or mocking the reader in the back ground of her dance (I just saw a fake social media post where Damian said I dont know what “tick tock” is and I found it funny

You were on a journey. No, not a journey, a mission. It had all started when you decided to make a TikTok account as a joke between you and a friend of yours. At first, the videos you made were just off all the different Pets Damian had, underlined with some nice music, but soon Steph caught you making one of those videos with Titus and told you you would get thousands of followers if you'd upload videos that actually showed you. You were unsure about that, but when she got you to learn a TikTok dance with her, you found out that it was actually rather fun. That was when an idea made its way into your mind. You made it your personal goal to make at least one TikTok with all members of the Wayne-family. Tim and Dick were relatively easy. Tim was too tired to really care and basically just stood beside you looking confused and waving through the air while you did the actual dance part and Dick couldn't help but show off his moves, making you the one who stood there and look at him surprised. And just like that, your account blew up. Overnight you had like Stephanie predicted, thousands of followers who all knew about the Waynes and were amazed by the possibility that one girl would be able to get three members of the family to make TikToks with her, they didn't know that you were Damian's girlfriend after all. The next ones on your list were Duke, Cass and Harper and you managed to make one with all of them together, even though it ended with Cass and you being the only ones really dancing and Duke and Harper laughing in the background. Jason was a tough nut to crack. He liked the idea and thought it was funny, but refused to be part of it. The only thing that managed to convince him was when you promised you'd get Bruce to make one with you too. And that promise set you onto the next problem. Bruce not only didn't know, nor care, what TikTok was, he also didn't want to make some weird dancing video with you. In the end, you managed to get a compromise by just making the video in front of his desk with him rolling his eyes in the background. It was worth it though because not soon after, it was your most liked TikTok. By then you already had over ten thousand followers and after you also somehow managed to convince Alfred to make a TikTok with you, even though you spared him the dance, you only had one name left on your hitlist. Damian. And that was how you ended in the situation you were in right now. "Dami-darling," you asked him with your sweetest voice, puppy eyes ready and eyelashes fluttering. Your boyfriend narrowed his eyes and looked at you suspiciously. "Yes, beloved?" "Soooo, what would a nice girl like me have to do to get you to make a TikTok with her?" "A What?" Your eyes widened. You knew your boyfriend could be a social dunce, but not knowing what TikTok is... You were almost disappointed. But maybe you could use that... "Uhm....it's nothing forget it... But anyways," you clapped your hands and turned back into your cheery self, "I want you to dance with me!" "But you barely like to dance on fathers Galas, why would you want to dance now? We don't even have music," Damian asked even more confused and took your hands into his. "I don't want to slow dance, my love," you smiled, having to resist the urge to turn your smile into a smirk, "I mean a...uhm...more modern dance. I can teach it to you, here look." You showed him the dance that only lasted a few seconds and admittedly seemed somewhat silly without the music. Damian looked at you bewildered. "No." He simply stated, turned around and left. You had to think of a plan.

Think you did. You decided that there was no way in hell that you'd get your boyfriend to actually voluntarily dance with you so you went down the same road you did with his father. Well, more or less... You got Steph, Dick and Jason (who just did it to spite Damian) to help you. Steph was equipped with your phone, ready to film, while Dick and Jason trapped Damian between them on the couch. "What are you dimwits doing?" he asked annoyed and looked up from the book he had been reading. "They're helping me out with a little problem I have," you smiled viciously, feeling like a mob boss. "And with what exactly are they helping you, beloved?" "Well, since you refused to dance with me, you'll just have to be danced," Damian's eyes widened with a realization about what your words meant and he tried to wiggle out of his brothers grip, but to no avail. To be fair, he wasn't trying as hard as he could, somewhat amused by the situation. The video you got out of that was hilarious. You were flawlessly doing the dance in the foreground of the video, completely ignoring the three brothers that were basically fighting in the back. Dick and Held Damian's legs and Jason his arms, but after about a second of them trying to move him somewhat similar to what the dance was supposed to be, his foot landed forcefully in Dick's face and his fist in Jason's stomach. When you finished your moves, completely ignoring the still fighting boys, you and Steph looked the video over and decided it was good enough to upload, before leaving to get ice cream. Damian would probably be a bit bitter about that when you'd see him next and maybe ignore your text messages for a while, but you knew that if you missed him too much, you could simply text him that you'd make a TikTok with Jon next and send him a link to one of those videos where the couple doing the dance would end up a bit too close for Damian's comfort and he'd be in front of your door in a matter of minutes.

[batfam-rewrites]

Batfam During Quarantine: Training Day

Thanks so much for the amount of love the last post got!I’m sorry it took me so long to post this next one, school and other stuff started to get in the way, so to make up for it I added a surprise arc at the end. I might start doing theses in chunks to save time and fill in any gaps where I don’t post as much because of school. Not so sure yet but it’s just an idea. I hope that if you read this you enjoyed it! I am going to try and post more frequently now that I’m almost caught up with my school work.

Damian: Good morning Tim! I made you breakfast.

Tim: What do you know? Why are you calling me Tim?

Cassandra: Plus three large hot cups of coffee.

Tim: What’s going on? Why are you guys acting so weird?

Cassandra: No reason. Just want to be nice.

Tim: Nope. That’s not it. What did you guys do.

Jason: Done making Tim’s bed! I’m off to steam his suit!

Tim: WHAT THE SHIT IS GOING ON???

Cassandra, Damian, and Jason: *in unison* We just want to be nice. *all three surround him in a big hug*

Tim: THIS IS SO WEIRD!

Dick: *walks into the breakfast room* Morning Tim! How’s it going?

Tim: NO! ALL OF YOU LEAVE ME ALONE! *storms out of the breakfast room*

Dick: What did you do to Tim?

Jason: We have no idea.

Damian: The dude is losing it.

Dick: *gets face to face with Cassandra* Cass, do you have something to say?

Cassandra: We woke up early and decided to be nice to Tim for no reason.

Dick: You guys are evil. Go have your fun.

All three run out of the room.

Jason: TIM LET US LOVE YOU!!!!!!

Daily Briefing

Dick: Hey, Babs doesn’t know your here. I don’t want her to get jealous or something so could you please join the zoom call from another room.

Helena: Sure, I understand, lover.

Dick: No, we aren’t going through that again.

Helena: I make no promises.

Tim: You know you’re going to be in deep shit when Barbara finds out, right?

Dick: I’m in deep shit anyway.

Tim: Very true.

Dick: *begins the zoom call* Hey everyone, so if you can’t tell, Huntress has arrived to help out. Now, to everyone at the manor I created a schedule for when to work out. They should be completed before patrol. For those of you at home, I trust that you made your own.

Barbara: Yep!

Kate: Please, I’ve been training much harder than most of you guys since I was 6.

Harper: Yeah, sorta did. Not able to do much because I’m not at the cave.

Dick: That actually leads me to my next point. Harper I made a schedule for you because Bruce, Alfred, Selina, and I found a way to have Cullen inside the mansion without him finding out who Batman really is. Cullen already knows the alter egos of Red Robin, Spoiler, Orphan, and Nightwing. Everyone else is a question mark, so we will allow you to enter the mansion. When Cullen is around, we all will have to restrain from talking about our vigilante work. Have everything ready by next week. Once you arrive you’ll have to quarantine in your room for two weeks.

Harper: Awesome!

Dick: Today there has actually been no crime in Gotham City, so far, so we’ll take a day off, but if something comes up, cases will be assigned as they normally are. So everyone, after training, feel free to relax but be ready in case something pops up.

Dick and Jason

Dick: *turns on his training playlist, first song being “Devil in I” from Slipknot*

Jason: You know what, if this is the kind of stuff you have on your playlist, I might actually enjoy training with you!

Dick: I have 357 songs on here.

Jason: Damn!

Dick: What did you expect, I listen to every genre!

Jason: Really! I should actually start listening whenever people talk.

Dick: Remember that next time Bruce yells at you for shooting someone.

Jason: I’m just saying, if I mistake someone’s knee cap for their head, is it really that bad?

Dick: *laughs* Yes!

The two stretch a bit before moving on to pommel horse.

Dick: Figured you’d want to get this out of the way first.

Jason: Fuck you!

Dick: Just think of the music, and not falling.

Jason: *goes for a loop on pommel horse and bangs his legs against the pommels and falls* AHHHHHHH!

Dick: Maybe I should take pommels off first?

Jason: That’s an option? Then yes, please do so!

Dick: *quickly takes of the pommels then goes for a magyar, a triple russian, flare, spindle, press handstand one and a half piro, and flawlessly sticks his dismount*

Jason: Show off.

Duke and Damian

Dick and Jason had been training for an hour and fifteen minutes before Duke and Damian walked in. After stretching, the two began to spar.

Dick: Duke! You made a mistake when choosing your partner.

Jason: Nah! My boy Duke will show Dami who’s the boss.

Duke: I honestly like my chances!

Damian: Good Thomas, your over confidence will be your doom!

The two begin to fight. Damian dives right for Duke, rolling out and uses his momentum to go for a front flip and kick Duke in the chest, however Duke evades Damian’s strike and trips him after Damian lands.  Damian gets back up though, thrashing at Duke. Duke dodges each strike and finally jabs Damian in the gut a few times and kicks him in the chest. That would be the only fight out of the three they had that Duke won. 

Afterwards, Dick began to teach him the basics on both high bar. Duke was able to catch on very quickly and by the end of his training on high bar he was learning how to do kips and flyaways. Dick and Duke also decided to tumble together so Duke could learn the basics and some advanced skills too.

Damian spent the rest of his time trying to out do Jason. When Jason was using 100 lb weights, Damian would use 120′s. When Jason ran 5 miles, Damian ran 6. 

Jason: Dami, you’re going to be extremely sore. Take it easy.

Damian: Easy? *huff* Let me *huff* remind you that *huff* I was also trained *huff* by the League *huff* of Assassins. *runs to the garbage to throw up* I am superior *huff* than all of *huff* you in every way.

Jason: Okay bud. Well, I’m about to spar with Dick.

Damian: I’ll fight Grayson, too. *jogs up to Dick while moaning in pain* *huff* Fight me Grayson. *huff*

Dick: I’m not going to fight you. You look like you’ll pass out.

Damian: I’m *huff* fine.

Dick: Throw a punch at me like you normally would without groaning in pain.

Damian: *starts to punch but his fist his Dick like a soft tap* Ahhhhhh.

Dick: Go rest, take an ice bath, eat a lot of fruits, and drink a lot of water.

Damian: Okay, *huff* but only because *huff* you said so.

Dick and Jason then started to fight and after they concluded, Dick took the trash bag that Damian hurled in and tossed it out. An hour later Duke concluded his workout.

Cassandra and Julia

Cassandra: Woooo! Are you ready?

Julia: Your enthusiasm is a little bit concerning.

Cassandra: Yeah, but just deal with it.

Since she arrived to the mansion Julia has not let herself stop her routine. She has been training as much as she has been since her days in Britain's Special Reconnaissance Regiment. However as soon as she saw Cassandra doing freestanding handstand push-ups while doing an inverted crunch, she knew she had to up her game.

Cassandra just ignored the list Dick gave her for the most part and did the craziest exercises she could think of. When she started strength conditioning, she ran to the still rings and tried to do what she saw Dick doing once. She tried an azarian to an iron cross but immediately fell through the rings. it took her twenty minutes but she finally made it to the iron cross and rolled backwards into a planche. An hour later she finish conditioning and waited for Julia to finish so the two could spar.

Julia: Okay, you ready? *walking over from the treadmill*

Cassandra: More than ready! Lets do this! *she started bouncing on her toes like a boxer*

Cassandra won all three fights within a matter of minutes. Julia almost had a chance in the second one where Cassandra lost her balance, but she reacted too slow as Cassandra regained it and knocked Julia to the floor.

Selina and Helena

Selina focused more on her agility during her cardio workout than anything else. I mean, it’s definitely something that she takes pride in so why wouldn’t she?

Helena: Hey, can I ask you a question? *throwing punches toward Selina*

Selina: Sure! *dodges each strike, jumps off the wall, and dives over Helena’s head*

Helena: What’s the situation between Dick and Barbara? *grabs Selina’s torso and slams her body down*

Selina: Oof. *gets back up from the floor and sits down with Helena* Don’t think of it. Dick is all sad that he has to stay at the mansion without Barbara. I wouldn’t even try to approach Dick about the situation because he’ll act even more weird then when you arrived.

Helena: That explains this morning.

Selina: What happened?

Helena: I said hey and he replied with “Hey, what’s up, gir......friend, lady. Girl who is a friend and a lady. Saved it.” Then, just for fun, I pinched his ass and he jumped up and screamed. 

Selina: You’re playing with fire, I don’t blame you for pinching his ass though.

Helena: Hold on, it gets better. After that I leaned towards him and he started leaning over the table and asked, what’s wrong lover. He then stepped to the side and said “Nothing, nothing.” and started walking backwards saying “coolcoolcool” until he reached the door.

Selina: Why bother messing with his head?

Helena: Because it’s fun. Plus I still feel like there is something there. 

Selina: Very well. Now that you have that out of your system let’s head to the showers.

Helena: You won’t tell Dick, right?

Selina: What you just told me is between you and Dick. I will not interfere in any way.

Stephanie and Tim

Tim: *walks in tired as hell* Hey Steph. You ready?

Stephanie: Yeah!

Tim: Alright. Cool.

Both Stephanie and Tim go to do their separate training regimes. Tim however, being extremely tired started to move very slow during his workout. Halfway through his work out he stepped out to grab a five hour energy shot and started flying through his conditioning list that Dick made. 

Tim: You ready to spar? *jumping around like a rabbit, then lands sideways, falling to the floor only to get back up*

Stephanie: *looking at Tim like he’s a crackhead* No, I think we should skip the sparring match today.

Tim: No, come on let’s go! *grabs Stephanie's wrist and drags her over to the sparring arena*

Stephanie: Tim your going to hurt yourself. Instead of sparring let’s take a nap.

Tim: Come on, sleeping is for people who have don’t have tragic backstories. Let’s fight!

Tim tries to throw a few quick jabs but Stephanie quickly sweeps Tim’s legs causing him to fall. Stephanie Runs forward pointing her fist at his throat.

Tim: Owww! That’s abuse! You abused myself! Why are you mean?!

Stephanie: Tim, when was the last time you slept?

Tim: Ummmmm........... Tuesday?

Stephanie: Okay, training is over, go let yourself rest.

Tim: Pffft. I’ll sleep when I’m dead. 

Stephanie: Okay. *text Dick* Hey Dick, we have a code yellow.

Dick: *text back* On my way up.

Tim: You know I like to live by the words of the Beastie Boys anyway. No sleep ‘til Brooklyn, and because I have never been to Brooklyn, I am not obligated to sleep.

Stephanie: You have a problem!

Tim: No, *points his finger dramatically at Stephanie*  you have a problem.

Dick: *walks in* Hey Tim, I have a case I want to work on with you.

Tim: *to Stephanie* See, now I can’t sleep.

Dick: We’ll take the Batmobile.

*3 hours later*

Dick: Okay, we just entered Brooklyn. Now go to sleep!

Tim: No fair, you tricked my brain.

Dick: SLEEEEEEEEP!

Tim: NO!

Dick: Why are you staying up all night?

Tim: Because, I don’t want anything to change! *starts sobbing*

Dick: It’s okay, you’re alright. *pulls over to the side of the road*

Tim: No I’m not. Everything is changing and I don’t want it to. I don’t want to fall out of my habits because what about when things get back to normal. Then we have to build those habits again, and what if while we are readjusting someone dies because we weren’t ready. Plus, there is so much stress with helping Bruce keep his company from falling, trying to finish my homework, training, and patrolling the nights where there is more activity. 

Dick: *embraces Tim in his arms* Look change is going to happen whether we like it or not. It’s not what happens that shapes who we are but how we react to the changes that occur in our lives that do. The world is never going to be the same after this pandemic is over, so you could either adapt, or repeat your mistakes. It’s okay to not be okay. You are not alone, you have all of us at the mansion to talk to. Another thing that you have to keep in mind is that people are going to die. We both knew that the moment we signed up, and sometimes there is nothing we can do about it. All we can do is learn from what happened to stop it from happening again. You also need to get some sleep. I know you are under a lot of stress right now, not going to lie, but you have it worse than all of us right now, but how do you expect to save others if you won’t take care of yourself. 

Tim: *starts calming down*

Dick: I’ll talk to Bruce tonight to see if he could cut you some slack. I’ll find a way to help out too now that we aren’t patrolling as much. Just make sure to take care of yourself.

Tim: Okay.

Dick: Smart, toit.

Tim: Stop it Peralta. *begins to laugh*

Dick: *laughs pretty hard* Now get some rest, I’ll wake you up when we get back to Gotham.

Tim: Okay. I guess.

Black Mask, Hush, Two-Face, and Jason Bard

The night was very silent as Roman Sionis looked upon Gotham from the building. It was quiet, empty, peaceful, and disturbing. Hush walked into the room, followed by Harvey Dent and Jason Bard.

Black Mask: Congratulations, you found your way here.

Jason Bard: You’re pretty easy to find when you want to be.

Black Mask: Or is it because no one else is on the street other then your snitches.

Jason Bard:......

Hush: You called us here. What do you want?

Black Mask: Look out at the city. Tell me what do you see.

The three men walk forward towards the window.

Two-Face: Fear.

Hush: Silence.

Jason Bard: Caution, and paranoia.

Black Mask: You are all correct, but you missed one thing.

Two-Face: Stop playing games! What do you want us to see?

Black Mask: Opportunity.

[i-am-ironic]

Daminette arranged mariage au part 7

**************************

Damian arrived right on time as usual, to pick Marinette up for dinner. In the car they went over the plan one last time.

"So the plan right now is just to tell your brothers that we are dating until the papers go through confirming you are Xander's father, right?" Marinette said watching the city fly by.

"It shouldn't take long." Damien replied, "Rich families tend to get things done faster then anyone else. Everything should be in order before the end of dinner."

"But what about when they start asking questions?"

"We avoid the questions until the paperwork goes through, then we can tell them the whole story." He Paused thinking back. "When I got back I didn't talk about what happened. I didn't tell anyone so they should be interested enough in the story to leave their questions till the end."

"This might not go well dames," Marinette started Fidgeting with her bracelet, "what if they don't like me? Or they think I'm helping your mother? Or what if-"

"No, mari." He said, his voice bringing her away from her anxious thoughts, "it will be fine. i promise. they will love you and once we explain, everything will be fine. We are here are you ready?"

She nodded and stepped out of the car. The manor was even more extravagant then she had imagined. She was going to need to come back to sckech just the doorway not to mention the rest of the house. Thinking about the architecture helped to calm her nerves.

"Here we go" she said stepping up to the door. It opened before dhe even had the chance to knock. Behind the door was an elderly man in a suite.

"Hello Ms my name is Alfred, I am the Wayne's butler and your name is?"

"Just call me marinette.”

“I must insist it wouldn't be proper to call you anything but your last name.” Alfred said.

“Just marinette for now but you will probably know my last name by the end of the night.” he looked at her curiously, why didn’t she want him to know her name yet?

“Very well ms marinette,” he said before turning to damian, “master damian your family is waiting for you in The sitting room.”

the two of them walked into the room and marinette was expecting a lot of things, but not this. damian just looked so done with his family. 

“Ahem.”he said drawing attention to himself.  “Marinette these are my brothers Dick is the one hanging from the chandelier” she waved at the familiar man. “Tim is the one drinking straight from the pot of coffee and Jason is the one throwing knifes at Dick. Oh and cass is the only normal one sitting on the couch.”

“Hey!” the boys all yelled in unison.

“Its a pleasure to see you again marinette.” bruse said before the boys could start arguing “I presume that our other guest will be here after dinner?”

“That is correct Mr Wayne.”

“Its Bruce as I have told you.”

marinette rooled her eyes smiling. She wasn't going to call him Bruce

“Hold on what other guest?” Jason said confused.

“Dinner is served.” alfrid said from the doorway as he lead the group out of the room.

“Damian wait!” Dick said reaching out for his little brother. Damian turned glancing at marinette who nodded.

“What do you want Grayson?” he siad eager to get back to marinette. 

“I don't think you should be seeing marinette you know how dangerous our 'job' is and-”

“She can take care of herself” he cut his brother off turning to follow were the rest of the group had gone. 

Dick grabbed Damian’s arm makeing him stay this was importent.“I'm sure she can but she has a 2 year old son who can't take care of himself and I don't think-”

“Richard.” that got his attention damian never called anyone by their first name.

“Yes?”

“Xander is my son.” that took a moment to Process before-

“WHAT! WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE IS YOUR SON!”

without answering Damian walked out of the room. Dick folowed him into the dining room, where evryone looked at the two.

“Dick whats wrong? we heard yelling and you look like you saw a ghost.” Cass said conserned. 

“Its nothing,” Damian replied sharing a meningful look with marinette. “I'm sure Grayson is fine. so marinette do I need to take any of my brothers to the garden”

evryone looked shocked at the implicashons but marinette just giggled.

“No they have all been wonderful. besids you know i can handle your brothers.”she smiled. 

“Listen, marinette, if damian kidnapped you blink twice.” jason said in a sereous tone.

she gigaled again, “He didn't kidnap me besides we both know I can beat damian in a fight.”

“take that back! i have beaten you plenty of times before.” this made the boys and cass very intrested, if damian was defending himself he must have actualy tried to beat her, and falled.

“Dames I beat you 68% of the time.” interesting. 

“so you admit i have beaten you before!” he said triumfently.

“Yeah when I let you win.” damians mouth fell open in legitament showk. he looked over at his father, who nodded, before making a statment that would change this family forever.

“Marinette Anne dupan-chang al Ghul Wayne you take that back right this minute!”

the reactions were very mixed. Dick was shocked. not only did his baby brother have a child but it apered that he was marred. Jason didnt know what to think. he had begun to coneckt the dots, marinette had foud the father of her chiled, she then showed up with his brother and she had the same last name as him. $#*! Tim alerdy knew about all this from his reserch and cass decided to wait for an explanation.

“No.” marinette said scrunching up her noes playfully. "I refuse to take it back."

there was silence for a moment before Bruce spoke.

“Maybe we should continue this discussion in the sitting room”

“So would you like to explain why marinette has the same last name as you?” cass said once they reached the other room. 

“Not really but-”

“dames be nice, we knew we were going to explain when we came here tonight. I'll text luka.” 

.”Who's Luka?” Tim said, he hadn't read anythig about a ‘Luka’.

“Its a long story so let's start from the beginning,” marinette started.

“Three and a half years ago I was walking back to my family's house after hanging out at a friend's house. Before I got home I saw a man who needed help, so I went over to help. him i cant remember what he was doing but when I got there I felt a prick in the back of my neck. I pulled the dart out before I hit the ground. The next thing I knew I was in a room laying on a coute. the door was locked and I could hear yelling from someone else in the building. I could tell it was a man but I couldn't make out what he was saying. it wasn't in french I later found out he was speaking Arabic. After the yelling stopped i heard the door unlock and got ready to run but when the door opened a woman was standing there with two big men behind her. She walked in and because of the two men I couldn't run. She started speaking to me in french she said 'my name it Talia. I need you to put on this ceremonial dress.' To which I replied as any sane person would that I wasn't going to put on the dress and they needed to take me back home. She asked 'did you hear that man yelling a moment ago?' 'Yes?' I said though I wasn't sure what that had to do with anything. 'if you don't put it on and do what I say I will kill him.' So I put on the dress. They tied my hands behind my back and blindfolded me before leading me out of the cell I was in. When they took the blindfold off I was kneeling at an alter. Talia began speaking in french so I could understand. She was saying things about the strongest bond known to man, and a queen for the future king. I didn't understand what she meant until I turned to see a boy my age bound and kneeling next to me. Thats when it hit me we were getting married. She made us drink something from a chalice before we were ushered into a different room. We were both untied and left alone. the door locked behind us. The only thing in the room was a bed. The boy introduced himself as damian and said that he wasn't sure why his mother made us get married but that he was going to get some answers. He looked pretty cute when he said that.”

Damian blushed at her compliment.  

“Anyway Talia's explanation was that damian was 16 and for the league that meant he was a man and had to get married. And I had the great honor to be the one he married. I, was pissed. She said that as such a powerful magic user i was worthy to marry the future king of the league of assassins. I was even more pissed. She had the audacity to say that getting married, AT 16, to someone you had never met was a good thing. That little-”

“Alright mari I'll take over.” Damian said resting a hand on her sholder. “Anyway she said that after a year of mari training with the league we could go back to our normal lifes until we turned 18, at which point if we didn't at least move in together they would kill one of us. best mom ever. After that we were left alone to talk. Every day we trained and talked and worked hard. Once a month they would move us to a different compound and give us a huge array of blood tests. We became good friends. it was us against everyone else. Since we were already married we decided to give this whole romantic thing a try. But after six months I was sent to meeting with Talia she said I was going home and knocked me out sending me back to you. I searched and searched but I couldn't find any sign of marinette. so I had to asume Talia killed her. I couldn't think about France without thinking about her so I blocked all news from France. I didn't say anything to anyone for a month. And evrey year for one day I couldn’t speak, the anniversary of the last day I saw her alive.”

“I wasn't dead incase you were wondering.” marinette said picking up where damian left off,” I was sent to the med bay. No one would tell me what was happening or were damian was until Talia came in and said damian had fulfilled his usefulness. she exsplaned The only reason i was there was because damian had spent to much time with his father and had gone soft. The league needed a new heir to the throne. They picked me to be the mother of that heir. I was stuck there for months. I knew they weren't going to let me go. After the baby was born they were going to kill me. One day something big happened, I don't know what but it was big enough no one was watching me. I escaped. I hiched rides to France and snuck across borders. When I finally got back i saw a doctor as soon as I could. I didn't know if the baby was ok. He was born when I was 17.” she turned to the door where a young man stood holdng a toddler who scrambled down and ran over to his parints. “Everyone I would like you to meet Xander Thomas dupan-chang al Ghul Wayne.”

“Damian you have a son.” cass said wide eyed.

“I'm aware” damian said handing the boy his phone with a game already opened up. 

“Xander is my nephew??????” Dick said staring at the boy like he had grown a secend head.

“Yes.” marinette said simply.” It took a year to defeat Paris' villain. After that I moved here to find damian and tell him about Xander.”

“Dang. So you know about Robin then?”

“Yep”

“Why didn't you say anything??? I've known you for over a year and you said nothing????” the betrayed jason said.

“I didn't want to explain anything until I could tell damian. i thought He should be the first to know about his son.”

“We have a break in at gatham museum.” alfered said over the intorcom

“We are not done with this conversation.” Bruce said. 

“Suite up!” called Tim.

“Marinette do you want to come?”

she smiled at her husband “I wouldn't miss it for the world.”

************

I'm pretty sure this is the longest chapter I've ever written yay me. Pro tip if you see a centipede in your house DON'T TUCH IT it can and will sting you and it will hurt, my little brother just got stung by one. Anyway im glad so many of you like this story thanks for all the love! If you want to be tagged please let me know you can ether message me or reply to this. And if anyone can explain how to link things the pretty way with just "here" underlined that would be great. if you asked to be tagged and you weren't then ask again and ill put you on the list.

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[currentfandomkick]

Marinette did Not sign up for this part 5

so, this happened. i would feel bad, but the characters hijacked this story after chapter 1 and i’m just along for the ride and checking that words makes sense.

First part here Previous Here ao3 Here

--

“Hey Alya, you haven’t been getting more hits on your blog from Gotham lately, have you?” Marinette asked.

Alya rolled her eyes as honestly, could her bestie be any less obvious? She could see the “new” necklace. The one that only shows up when Multimouse is on call. Honestly—why is it everyone keeps thinking she doesn’t know who’s who? She’s the Fox—Illusions and Truth are her bread and butter.

“Now that you mention it,” Alya pulled up her latest stats. “Yes. The whole site—jeez these guys must have just found out and want the scoop from the best source in Paris,” Alya preened.

Marinette acted… different after she got that answer. Moved in on herself. Alya could feel the attempt at a cover-up before she even asked.

“Hey, is something up?”

“Nothing! Nothing is up, why would something be up! Ha, that’s a good one Alya!”

Ah, the miraculous-related tic was in full swing then. Marinette isn’t exactly the most in-the-know miraculous user, and the Mouse is always taken back after its been used. She could be forgiven for assuming Alya, the expert in all things Miraculous second only to the Original duo and their boss, would not know that something was going on in a certain spotted heroine’s life, and it was all hands on deck.

“Okay,” Alya switched to her theory notes, “Any new names to add to the ‘would not be surprised if they were Hawkmoth’ list?” Marinette is a goldmine on this topic, and while miraculous adjacent, definitely able to ease the whole ‘not in control’ and helpless feelings this situation was probably stirring in her girl. She knew it was for herself atleast.

Marinette perked up with a familiar ‘I know what you will say, but lets do this anyway’ type of sly smile. “Okay, so we do agree that it has to be someone that knows Gabriel’s schedule and doesn’t want to interfere with it for the most part, right?”

“Well,” Alya wasn’t letting this hunch go anytime soon, no matter what LB and Chat said about evidence against. She knew she was onto something with it, and for all she knew, some miraculous magic could be interfering. “I still say it could be him and Natalie taking turns, but that doesn’t rule them both out.”

Marinette shot Alya a look, of the ‘I strongly disagree, but feel it is futile to remind you why’ variety.

“I’m kidding, your boss isn’t Hawkmoth, I know… He’d totally have better designs for akumas if he was.”

Marinette leaned forward conspiratorially. “You should have seen him tear into the Bubbler one when I brought it up as an example of horrible design. His face was perfect!”

Alya would love to imagine the many, many ways to torment Gabriel after what she and Nino have come to understand about the man from their friends. Ranging from negligent and uninvolved control freak at best to manipulative, victim-blaming, and abusive POS. If Adrien and Marinette were a little less attached (re: not pedestalling the man so much), then she could get them to see the truth and they could go over the pair’s options to get them both away from his BS and make the man pay for the all the crap he put Adrien through, and was starting to put Marinette through. Why else would the girl be running herself ragged—especially the past week—if the man wasn’t a demanding asshole boss?

“That’s great, next time, get a pic or vid and share the love.”

“I will, so I met another one of his suppliers and…” Alya began to take vicious notes, glad for Marinette’s attention to detail on these things. It made looking for possible Hawkmoths much easier on her and Max—yes she knows who Pegasus and Cowboy are, Markov in a hat is still Markov in a hat. It was a wonder that no one else noticed.

Alya grinned when she saw Trixx peek out of her hiding place, a wide smile that reminded her exactly why Alya could catch everyone’s identity while her friends still hadn’t put together she’s Rena; a Fox casts illusions. To do that well, you have to learn to seek and see the truth, and get your evidence. And Alya? Is a damn good fox.

----------

Tim hates his stupid insane list of designers. He managed to knock of half by using his own damn filters, thank you very much for dominant genes from the Wayne side that could be seen visually. It knocked out a good chunk (about two thousand out of five thousand) on hair alone. He decided he would let it keep running for those that linked their socials to their psueds and aliases.

The problem was the handful (about ten) that didn’t. He’d have to meet them in person, used his glasses to get pictures, and run those against social media posts in Paris to find out who these more private designers were—all to find out if they really are in the right age range, and if their natural features do put them in the ‘likely a Wayne’ category for Wayne dominant traits (and those possible given Bruce’s own DNA makeup, which he doesn’t know Tim has. Hey, he’s the Robin that Gets Shit Done, never said he was the polite one. That’s Dick’s job, not his.)

---------

Adrien hates not having Plagg with him. Not that Tikki isn’t great and all! Really! Just… he misses him and his stinky cheese, okay?

“Adrien,” Natalie knocked on the door.

“Come in.”

Natalie entered the doorway, but no further. “When is Marinette free for consultations next? we have a high end client who would like to commission her as soon as possible.”

“Give me a minute…” Adrien checked his ‘overseeing Marinette’ schedule on his phone. “Uh, she has walk-ins around four until five tomorrow.”

“Excellent. Will she be at her home or the studio Gabriel has provided for consultations?” By her tone, he could tell which Natalie and Father would prefer.

“Let me check with her.”

“See that you do.”

Adrien sent a lipstick, X arm lady, and house emoji to Marinette.

In a minute she sent back a thumbs up and apartment building emoji.

“Studio it is.”

Natalie nodded. “Excellent choice. I will let them know to be there at four ten, given Marinette’s… difficulty arriving on time.”

Adrien grimaced a bit on that as yeah… no longer having a Danger sense meant her punctuality was… not very good.  “Are they speaking to Marinette or MDC?”

He’d need to know if he should just pick her up or not. MDC didn’t have to get picked up—designers to celebrities are allowed to be late and can blame it on getting caught up in a few details on a commission design for a walk-in consultation. Marinette was tied to the Gabriel Brand and needed to reflect that, therefore, be there on time and ready.

“Marinette for now, though they expressed an interest in MDC as a budding designer, and they are well within the MDC price range,” Natalie hinted.

Adrien kept the hiss growing in the back of throat quiet. Marinette chooses who MDC works with, not his Father.

--------

Stephanie is both delighted and upset when she sees Cass. As its Cass—she probably figured it out already damn it!—but its Cass and she missed her since she left a few months back for a mission and got caught up in the Chinese crime scene again.

“Hey Cass!”

Cass grinned when she saw Steph and made her way over.

“Found her!”

Stephanie was gutted. She really wanted to win, just this once, at a detective thing. You know, be the normal one that managed to out-do the prodigies and geniuses. Not to be again. “Oh, that’s great. Where is the baby bat?”

Cass shook her head. “Not her, Soup Girl.”

Stephanie opened and shut her mouth. Then lit up as she still has a chance! “Oh, right—right! You said you wanted to meet her a while back.”

Cass nodded. “Her family is nice.”

“Did you talk to her or…”

Cass shook her head. “Busy.”

“Ah.” That made sense. “Well, uh, still competing?”

Cass raised an eyebrow. That was a yes.

“Maybe we should work on helping her on the hero side of things together, you know, so we don’t freak her out when we all swarm her place. Make the whole thing a bit less…”

“Dramatic.”

Stephanie nodded. It would help ease the girl into the family, and keep Cass on that case instead of finding Baby Bat for a bit. Win-Win for Stephanie and Baby Bat.

-------------

Chatte Noire really, really hates dealing with akumas. She's built for strategy, to see tricky parts and work out how to make them safer for the team and minimize risk. She is not made to be Chatte Noire. Yet here she is, in an akuma attack, trying to play the role of a Black Cat—identify and destroy threats to the team. Problem is, she lacks Chat Noir's heightened ability to sense danger. In fact, she lacks it completely--and she knows the team isn't happy.

The attack is taking longer than it would if she was Ladybug. This would be over if she had just managed to keep her big mouth shut and not talked to Aquaman. Then the Justice League wouldn’t be involved. Then the whole promise to Murder Robin would not be broken and Paris would already be saved for the day instead of dealing with another Sandboy attack going on well into the night, with a cure that won’t be able to handle fatigue, energy renewal or relax the body for sleep post ‘I’m scared out of my mind’ fear.

She made sure to avoid this Sandboy’s attacks and she would save whoever got caught. Her Cataclysms may not be as strong as Chat’s (his do make the whole thing go away) but she is just as quick on her feet and just as good at getting civilians out of danger.

“Chatte!”

“On it Buggaboy! And not yet!”

It was too off for the Lucky Charm. They’d need Viperion, and he was stuck underwater with Aquaman trying to get him out at the moment. Until then, she just had to minimize damage, keep civilians away from their nightmares hunting them down, and keep moving and planning and work everything out while playing bodyguard for the team at Cha—At Mr. Bug’s call.

She hopes things turn out okay.

Then she sees a bat symbol and the world vanishes.

----------

Red Hood blinked when he saw some girl running around on rooftops in… Isn’t Chat Noir supposed to be the cat one? Where the hell is Ladybug—and why is some guy in her place? Shit, did the baby bat lose her miraculous or was it stolen? Damnit, now he has to steal it back for her!

“Okay, how did LB get hit when she isn’t even here?” The fox girl groaned as she dodged another attack. “Aren’t these guys supposed to go after who’s scared of them?”

The bee girl rolled her eyes. “More than just Ladybug can be terrified of the bats. They’re the Ghosts, remember?”

“Hey, can we argue about fears and who has rights to them some other time?” fake ladybug asked, flinching and moving closer to the Turtle guy. “Uh, Chatte, that way!”

Cat girl—Chatte— said something he didn’t catch and grabbed a kid stuck in a mob and bounce out.

“I—” the boy threw his hands up. “We’re screwed. She really, really isn’t getting the whole Cat thing.”

Red Hood pulled out his guns, checking that the darts were loaded and aiming for Spots.

“Chatte---guy with a gun!”

This time cat girl managed to look over and froze. She started… hyperventilating? Shit—kid’s having an attack.  

Red Hood lowered his gun and made sure to get closer to her---seeing as the other heroes—Dragon girl, Monkey boy and Snake Guy were busy with the bee and fox girls trying to circle some kid on a pillow. No clue where the other kid in black was, but the cat girl losing it? that was his current focus.

“Kid, come on, breathe.”

“Oh my—” the kid looked at him like he was the threat. “Fuck, no—I shouldn’t have talked back to---shit. Shit, now I’m gonna—”

“VOYAGE!”

Just like that, Red Hood was dropped into Gotham harbor. Jason didn’t even get to look around to see what happened. He did manage to tread water and work out which was to go to get to shore.

“Oracle!”

“Jesus Hood—sending Robin to your location. What happened?”

“Some kids stole baby bats’ jewels, some akuma attack, the actual cat thief was hyperventilating and then I end up here.”

“Oh, B is not going to like this.”

“I already don’t like it.” Batman growled out over comms. “Did someone say voyage?”

Red Hood wracked his somewhat waterlogged brain. “In French, yes.”

“One of the local heroes.” Jason could feel Bruce’s annoyance. “Why were you in Paris.”

“Well,” Red Hood kept swimming to shore. “When you find out a long lost bat is in life threatening danger, one must locate and meet this possible winner of the ‘avoided having crappy parents raise me’ lottery to give a well-earned ‘congrats, you’re a well-adjusted person in a family of crimefighter! Mazel tav.”

“Hood.” Robin began on a private channel. “We need to talk.”

“Gotta go B, life to live, baby bat to find.”

“Red Hood!”

“Bye!” Red Hood climbed out of the harbor, finding his baby brother on his motorcycle that was definitely not Bruce-Approved.

“What’s up buttercup, didja miss me?”

Robin scowled at him. “Of course not, the world is more peaceful without the drivel that falls out of your mouth.”

Red Hood snorted. “Yeah, and that’s why you hide in my room all the time.”

Robin refused to make eye contact, shoving Red Hood onto his bike. “Is it true, did my sister lose her miraculous?”

“Unless she’s B and Catwoman’s lovechild and she decided to embrace it.”

Robin was quiet on the way to the cave. “…how long would it take to get the pilot to return and take me to Paris?”

“…you’d make it there around their in time for dessert.”

Robin frowned. “that’s not soon enough.”

“Closest you’ll get. And don’t’ think you’re going alone.”

Robin frowned. “I am not exposing my sister to you.”

“She’s our sister first of all,” Red Hood corrected. “and second of all, I have a bet to win, and I’m behind thanks to this portal guy. So I’m coming.”

Robin rolled his eyes. “Only if you get past Father and Alfred.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

Robin smirked as they pulled into the Batcave.

“Father, I believe Red Hood needs your full attention given he was in the harbor for so long, and we all know how cold they are this time of year.”

Jason decided Damian was by and far his least favorite sibling in that moment. “Wait, B, no, look—no signs of hypothermia, no shaking, just need to change and—”

“I will check and ensure you don’t develop it with Alfred on standby.”

Jason glared at Damian, already stripping from his Robin gear with that self-satisfied smirk. “Traitor!”

“I simply want what is best for my siblings, how is that wrong?”

----------

I hope this gave you all a good idea of what’s going to happen next… I do love the Batfam and all, but some of their approaches here… no good and need to have that hit over their head.

And if I’m screwing up ladybats characterization, feel free to let me know so I can fix it---going off what I could find from DC fans and lore but I also do not know these characters inside and out, and want to do them justice.

OH and for anytime i refrence princess Justice, got a refrence for you now! picture the one made by @tinymelonbug right here with the only (maybe?) change being that below the cut it is cut off as a romper: Here 

TAGS:

@heldtogetherbysafetypins @laurcad123 @raisuke06 @chaosace @jeminiikrystal @toodaloo-kangaroo @kris-pines04

[fearfulkittenwrites]

“Traitor! My cookies!”

Inspired by @tiny-italian-danger-noodle​ (Link to the amazing post: https://tiny-italian-danger-noodle.tumblr.com/post/624948123561852928/im-sorry-but-i-just-love-the-idea-of-the-rest-of )

Word count: 2261

Notes: Heyy! Quick heads up: I changed some things from the original post. Idk, it just made sense in my head to write it like this. Also, yes, I did made a point in fitting in the batman bingo, because I have a card to fill and it was perfect, so don't yell at me :( I hope you enjoy it! <3

It’s not like there was any kind of conscious effort in it. And yet, Dick was slowly becoming the closest thing the batfamily had to a mom. He hated it, but someone had to tell Damian to not kill his brothers. Or tell Tim to go to bed after 48 hours up. Or tell Jason not to shoot firearms inside the house. Or tell Steph to not prank elderly people (It doesn’t matter that they are homophic Steph, you can’t do that, they’re 80). And if no one else would do it, then, well, he would.

It started after the cookie episode.

Alfred had baked them after Damian requested it. He had been craving those for months, and finally decided to ask for them. But Jason came home before he did, and ended up eating most of them, leaving the smallest two for the boy. Once the kid got home from school and saw what happened, he was fuming.

“Devilspawn, what are you doing in my room?” Jason asked, laying on the bed, face buried in a book.

“You. Ate. My. Cookies.” He said, katana in his hands.

“Okay, and?” Jason answered “I left you some. And I eat stuff from everyone in the house, so that really shouldn’t- You have your sword. Oh my God, why do you have your sword?” He jumped to his feet after the realization, trying to run.

“You will pay!” Damian raised his katana, charging towards his brother.

“Fuck!” Jason yelled, climbing on the bed, trying to get away from the boy.

“I have been waiting for those cookies for ages!” Damian sliced through the air, aiming for the other’s feet. Jason fell from the bed trying to evade the move and ran through the bedroom door.

“Help!” He yelled, running down the halls “Dick, help! Damian wants to kill me! Again!”

“Traitor!” Damian screeched behind him, tiny footsteps growing louder and louder as he approached Jason “My cookies!”

“AAAAAAAAAAAH!” He ran down the stairs, going to the entrance hall “Dick, please! He’s getting closer!”

Damian skipped steps behind him.

“You coward!” He brandished his sword “Face me like a man!”

As they went into the dining room, Damian felt a sudden pull at his uniform’s collar. Dick held him there, as if he was a kitten, and pointed at Jason.

“Don’t move.”

“Okay.” Jason said, backed up against the wall.

“Unhand me Grayson!” He complained, trying to twist himself free “He deserves punishment for his crimes!”

“Give me the katana.” Dick took the weapon from his brother’s hands “Damian, the no kill rule does extend to siblings. Please keep that in mind.”

“I wasn’t going to kill him.” Damian pouted, angry “I was simply going to mutilate or maim. If he died, that would be on him.”

“We don’t mutilate or maim each other in this house, okay?” Dick said, finaly letting go of the kid “Don’t make me repeat that.”

“Fine.”

“And you,” He turned to Jason, crossing his arms “Why did you eat all of his cookies?”

“I left him some.” He mumbled.

“Doesn’t matter.” Dick answered, hardened expression “You should’ve waited for him to get home, and you know it.”

“Yeah, okay.” He scratched his head.

“Now, apologize to each other.”

Both of them looked horrified at the idea. Dick sighed.

“Apologize. Now.” They didn’t budge “Or you’re both banned from patrol for a week.”

“You can’t do that.” Jason said “Can he?” He asked Damian, in a quieter voice. The kid shrugged.

“Don’t test me.” Dick answered.

“Fine.” Jason rolled his eyes “I’m sorry for eating all your cookies.”

“And I’m sorry for trying to mutilate you because of it.”

“Great. Now hug it out.”

“I’m not...”

“You must be...”

“Now!” He stomped his foot, and both of them grumpily hugged each other, clearly uncomfortable way “See? Was that so hard?”

“Yes.” Both of them answered.

“Then think about that before you do some stupid shit again.” Dick answered, leaving the room.

Tim, who was out of sight but within earshot, raised an eyebrow at the scene.

The next week, he knocked on the door of Dick’s room, covered in glue, feathers and glitter.

“He- Woah!” Dick said as he opened the door, finding a very unamused Tim on the other side “Okay, you’re not getting in here like that. What happened?”

“Steph happened.” Tim answered, flat toned and tired.

“I love how that explains so much and so little at the same time.” He sighed, supporting an arm on the door frame “What did she do?”

“Glue bucket on my door. Tripwire, then a bunch of feathers. And finally, a glitter bomb by my bathroom door.”

“Oh God.” He covered his mouth with a hand “Why?”

“Prank war. She took it a little too seriously.”

Dick rested his head on his forearm.

“Steph!” He yelled out “Come here!”

They heard footsteps, and the blonde girl emerged, laughing.

“Oh, man!” She said “This is the best one yet.”

“Steph, why would you do that?” He asked.

“Oh, so he can hack into my computers and change the names of all my files and I can’t play a little physical prank? I sent my teacher a very rude meme because of that. Almost got expelled.” She crossed her arms. Tim snickered.

“What?” Dick asked “Why?”

“Prank war.” Tim shrugged.

“Okay, you know what? No more prank wars until you two learn how to behave.” Dick said and pointed at Steph “You are cleaning all the mess you made in his bedroom. And you,” He pointed at Tim, and twisted his nose “Well, you are going to take a shower, and then you’re going to change back all that you messed with on her computer. And,” He kept going “Both of you are cleaning the batmobile after patrol for a week.”

“What? That’s not fair!” Steph complained.

“You’re right.” Dick said, scratching his chin “Okay then, Steph is cleaning the batmobile for a week and Tim can’t use the batcave before sunset and after three a.m. for a week.”

“What?!” Tim screamed “What do you expect me to do all day then?”

“Learn how to function in a healthy way? Anyways, complain too much, I’ll make it a month.” Dick answered.

“You can’t do that!” Steph complained “You’re not Batman.”

“Try me.” Dick squinted.

“Fine!” She threw her hands up, leaving “I’ll clean the stupid room and the stupid car.”

“Traitor.” Tim hissed, walking away.

Then three weeks after that, Batman came up to him in patrol, and, on top of a building, said:

“I need your assistance.”

“Sure. Who are we up against now?” Nightwing asked.

“Not... That kind of assistance.” Batman looked down “Your brothers keep talking in a weird way. I don’t understand the colloquialisms in their language, and I’m almost sure they are mocking me.”

Dick blinked a little under the mask.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I need you to stop them from doing that while we’re on patrol.”

“B, can’t you... I don’t know, you are their dad, not me!” He pointed out.

“But you are the one who gets them under control.” He shot back. They stared at each other “Please. Just while they are wearing the mask.” Dick sighed.

“Fine. I’ll talk to them.”

Later on, when they got back from patrol, Dick felt a little ridiculous having to explain to a bunch of masked heroes that they have to stop communicating in memes and insulting Batman when on patrol. And why it wasn’t okay even if it was to his face, Steph. Damian, of course, was let off the hook on that one. He had just recently grasped the concept of a meme, having declared on multiple ocasions that they were a stupid waste of internet data. Tim was personally offended by all of those declarations.

It didn’t take long for Dick to start correcting the family’s unhealthy habits after that. He had given Cass a “required socialization day”, to be performed at least once a month, Damian had mandatory off patrol days every two weeks, he dragged Bruce to bed every other night, and regulated Tim’s caffeine intake.

Duke was the best enforcer of his rules in the house. Not because he was brutal or particularly persuasive, but because he could instill guilt into the members of the family.

“Hey, Bruce, didn’t Dick tell you to go upstairs and grab lunch?” He asked, going down to the cave to practice. The man grunted as he set down his gym bag “Okay then. I just don’t know how you’ll deal with his broken heart when he sees you haven’t been taking care of yourself like you said you would. I mean, how can you even break a promise you’ve made to that guy? He worries so much about us, it’s-”

“Okay!” He exclaimed, getting up “Okay, I’ll go get lunch.”

Whenever Tim went to get a cup of coffee after seven p.m., Duke would stare at him until he poured the liquid in the sink. He could convince Jason to give up on any idea by saying ‘But what would Dick say?’, or ‘That would break your brother’s heart you know?’.

Duke’s proudest moment was the one time he managed to build up the courage to do it with Cass.

Dick had been telling her for weeks that she needed to rest. That training so much everyday is bad for her health. That she should try having fun in different ways. The man had been (and still kind of is) on a quest to find her a non-lethal hobby. But when Duke went down to the cave once, to fetch his forgotten water bottle, he found her training, and figured out why Dick had a frow on his face earlier.

“You know,” He started, testing the waters “Training so much can strain your muscles.” Cass shot him a look, but didn’t say anything “I’m just saying,” He put his hands up “Maybe you should listen to Dick. I mean, he’s usually not wrong about these things. And he’s been doing it for longer than we have.”

“What do you want?” She asked, annoyed.

“Me?” He placed his hands on his chest “I don’t want anything. I just think you have been working too hard. You deserve a break.”

“I don’t want a break.”

“Well, maybe you should take a break anyways. It would make Dick so happy.” She stared at him, and Duke kept going “You know, he was very upset earlier. Seeing that you have taken his advice would make him smile so much. He really cares about you, y’know? Sometimes, I think we all take him for granted, not realizing how much of his time he spends trying to-”

“Shut up.” Cass said, pushing him aside to climb up the stairs “I’ll take the break.”

Duke smiled to himself. Dick would most likely ask him how did he do it later. He’d smile and say ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, I didn’t do anything’.

And he rarely ever got into trouble. Considering that the other five had set multiple rooms on fire, broken several pieces of expensive furniture and ruined the house’s plumbing system many times in the past, there wasn’t much Duke could do to be considered trouble. Dick would vent to him about the others and always asked him to report on their behaviours whenever he had to be away for too long.

Damian envied that. He could give much more detailed reports of incidents than Thomas could, and he was ready to die on that hill. Dick mentioned multiple times that this just wasn’t the point, and that if he could go at least a month without threatening to kill one member of the family then he’d consider asking for Damian’s help.

Damian would then argue that he wouldn’t threaten anyone if they weren’t such useless piles of meat with no functioning braincels and irritatingly deficient fighting skills, and Dick would take away his cellphone for the day.

But the moment they realized how much power he actually had was when Alfred started using him as a threat.

“Master Damian, please stop sharpening your sword in the living room. I’m sure you can do this down at the cave.”

“I’m asserting my dominance, Pennyworth.” Damian replied “Drake can hear this from the kitchen and therefore knows better than to continue his attacks.”

Alfred frowned.

“Master Damian, I’m certain there is a better way to handle the situation. I trust you can find that out by yourself, or should I ask for master Dick’s assistance?”

They got caught up in a staring match for a while. And then, the boy silently got up, and went to the cave. Alfred smiled to himself, before moving on to the kitchen.

“Master Timothy, I do believe you have been told not to tease your younger brother in the past.” Tim raised an eyebrow “If you insist on these antics, I will call master Dick.”

“I- um...” The teen started “Okay.”

Alfred nodded, and turned to Bruce, who was entering the kitchen.

“Ah, master Bruce. Will you be joining us for dinner tonight, or should I ask master Dick to call for you?”

Bruce froze and looked at Tim. The kid made a face.

“I will be joining you.” He answered, hesitant.

“How delightful.” The butler said, making his way out.

“Wha... What just happened?” Bruce asked.

“Alfred knows.” Tim said “We’re fucked.”

“Language.”

“Oh, leave me alone.” He shot back, sipping a freshly made cup of coffee “You’re not Dick.”