#as in only using it as an escape tool instead of a try to use your guarantee alive time to fix some shit tool

[dangeroustravelermultiverse]

Neglected wintersoldier! Reader x batfam

Chapter 2 : Regrets, I had a few

TW: Abuse, Violence, Depressing thoughts

This is a flashback on after she falls off the train

All of them can only watch in horror as she helplessly falls into the cold ice river.

Bruce's pov

No. This is all my fault. I failed her like I failed Jason to his death. I failed her as Batman and Bruce Wayne. I should have go with her. She does not deserve an ice cold death after facing those cold shoulders we gave her.

That was probably the last time I heard her call me dad.

"The mission's off we need to find her." I say in hope she will make it in the ice cold river.

All of us went down the cliff , and went to the edge of the rushing cold river. We follow the location track device on her suit for 2 hours before we find a piece of her suit that hs the device got stucked between the rocks.

"We can't give up yet. the device got snagged here so she must not be far." I say still trying to put hope in my children.

I regret neglecting her. Why didn't I help her. I'm supposed to be her father.

Flashback to when the reader is 15 years old

Y/N's POV

Brooklyn, New York – 5 Years Before the Incident

Rain poured over the rooftops of Brooklyn, masking the blood trailing down Y/N’s arm as she sprinted across the slick metal ledge. Her suit was torn, her ribs aching, and her comms completely shot.

The mission was supposed to be a simple weapons bust.

But instead, she was ambushed. They knew she was coming.

Someone tipped them off.

She fought anyway. Took down six armed men. Saved a nearby civilian kid from getting caught in the crossfire.

But the shipment?

Gone.

By the time she disabled the last truck, the main convoy carrying the prototype tech had vanished into the tunnels beneath the city.

She limped to the pickup zone, holding her side. Her arm was dislocated, and the gash on her leg was deep, blood soaking her boot. But she was upright. She survived.

The Batjet was waiting on a rooftop nearby. As soon as she climbed aboard, the door slammed shut.

Bruce stood there, looming in his suit, arms rigid at his sides.

She gave a tired, pained smile.

“I’m sorry. The intel was bad. There were more than we—”

Before she could finish, he slapped her.

The sharp sound of it cracked through the jet’s interior. Her head snapped to the side.

She stood there, stunned. Not because of the pain — she’d felt worse — but because it was him.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?!” he shouted. “You let them escape with tech that could level half the city!”

She touched her cheek, breathing hard. “I… I tried. There were too many. I fought as hard as I could—”

“And you failed,” he cut in, voice cold and full of venom. “You disobeyed protocol, didn’t wait for backup, and now millions could pay the price.”

“But the child—there was a kid—he would've died if I hadn’t—”

“That wasn’t your call!” he roared.

Silence.

Her ears rang. Not from the explosion. Not from the impact. But from the ache blooming in her chest.

She thought maybe—just maybe—he’d be proud she got out alive. That she saved someone.

But all he saw was failure.

All he ever saw was someone who didn’t belong.

“I’m sorry…” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to—”

“I shouldn’t have sent you alone,” he muttered, more to himself than her, but it wasn’t guilt. It was cold analysis. As if she were a tool that malfunctioned. “You’re not ready.”

And then he turned away.

Didn’t even look at her again.

The jet engines roared to life.

She stood frozen in place, bleeding, bruised, and alone.

For the first time since she’d put on the mask, Y/N wondered if maybe… he never wanted her to wear it at all.

She wondered, does she even deserve to live ? Is she a burden to everyone ? Is she that useless?

After that day, she recovered in her room alone. Only Alfred was seen coming in and out of her room to deliver her medicine and foods.

But at night, she is spiraling alone, she remember how each words of dissapointment rings in her head. She feels like she wanted to puke out of anxiety, panic and just from the slightest memory of dissapointing her father.

Dick scoff at the sight of her when they saw her out of her room. Tim and Barbara just glare at her for just existing apparently. Cass and Stephanie just pretends she's not there.

She can't cry in front of them since she knows her family will use it against her. Her own weakness will be turn into a weapon against her.

Back to present time

(Just imagine this is Y/n as the winter soldier)

The commander comes into the red room. His hand held the thick files indicating there is a new mission for her.

Her eyes are dead as always. Ready for a new mission even if it would kill her. She is just a functional machine, just a pawn in the secret government's organisation.

"Winter Soldier, I have a new mission for you. I want this mission to be complete in 5 days tops. You would be accompany with two more agents since this new mission will be involved in Gotham." The commander says.

He knows that the winter soldier can handle it alone but he can't risk the winter soldier's brainwashing flicker because the mission is in her hometown. Those two agents will help say the trigger word just to keep the winter soldier in control.

Оставление, Неудача, Забытая, Молчи, Оружие, Тень, Исполнение (Abandonment, Failure, Forgotten, Silence, Weapon, Shadow, Execute)

Note: So yeah, Sorry I took to long to write this. I've been busy with university. Honestly I write this chapter during my mid-semester break. Some of the character's story here are actually inspired by my life. Not the assasin parts obv, but those moments when my family just tells me I'm useless or straight up a screw up or how they are dissapointed in me. Sorry for ranting here but these days has just been hard and I write this chapter because I got inspired by my own toxic environment. Thank you for reading this new chapter. For those that want to be tagged in the previous chapter here you go :

@bat1212 @klutzymermaid @tw-om-gi-hs-56387 @prettiest-thing-in-the-morgue @maskedvoyance @nisarelle @mybones537 @welpthisisboring @vanessa-boo @sunnyfield @darling-dearesttt @kneelforloki @numbu5 @1abi @sbrewer21

[gallusrostromegalus]

This morning I came downstairs to discover that the dogs have invented a New Crime.

My husband get up very early for his Real Adult Job, and feeds Charleston (Black-and-cream Sighthound mix, mostly leg) and Herschel (40lb cardigan welsh crime tube), then lets them out into the fenced yard before he leaves.

I get up at the same time but take longer to boot up, so the dogs frolick about and discourage the local tree rats from lingering about the property while I get dressed/brush my teeth/try to not be psychologically crushed by The Horrors (TM)

Now it's pretty normal for me to find Herschel doing a high-speed yet startlingly efficient MC Hammer Shuffle on his stubby little legs around the base of the large honey Locust tree we have in the middle of the yard so he could keep his face pointed directly up the trunk at something in the canopy, because this his how he tries to herd squirrels.

...but Charlie is usually nearby, cheerfully play-bowing and encouraging the squirrel to come down, nothing bad will happen-!

This time Charleston is nowhere in sight.

I go outside to investigate and Herschel pauses to tackle me about the kneecaps as a greeting before returning to the tree.

Charleston is not behind the garden bins, nor in the side yard.

I am growing concerned, when I hear a telltale guilty scrape of claws above me.

Charleston is on the roof.

I shuffle out to the middle of the yard, until I can make eye contact with him.

He looks down at me, cheerfully wagging his tail, clearly anticipating praise for being such a clever boy.

I at least know how he got up there.

My house has a deck built off the second floor with a set of stairs leading up to it, and a large honey locust tree grows next to it. Part of the roof is easily accessible with a small hop from the deck.

The deck has only a minimal amount of railing ad the roof has none, so I blocked off the stairs with a board that was too high for Herschel, an inveterate explorer and criminal, to jump, but not Charlie.

I didn't worry about this at the time because Charleston is, in fact, The Best Dog In The Universe, and understands that even though he *could* easily jump various barriers, it would be *impolite* of him to do so.

Charleston is Extremely Polite and thus almost never commits any crimes.

...Almost Never.

Charlie has exactly two vices, which aren't even vices because his ancestors were bred for millennia to do these two exact things.

The first is that he is HIGHLY leash aggressive when I'm present (We were both attacked by a St. Bernard the first day I had him and Charlie has decided Strange Dogs Are Not Allowed To Approach Me)

The Second is that he has the Prey Drive From Hell.

He has chased bears and bulls with full murderous intent.

He almost got me arrested because he cut his leash to chase a pronghorn antelope in front of a park ranger.

It is only for the sake of my saftey and pursuit of prey that he will break the rules.

Today, he has his nemesis cornered

Charleston isn't clever the way Herschel is. He's never really explored using his toys as tools, whereas Herschel speedran the early stages of hominid tool use as a puppy. Arwen was a logistical sort of genius who managed to terraform my parent's yard into Rabbit Thunderdome.

Charleston's genius is... psychological.

If the Squirrels see both dogs, they run for the fence, but if they only see Herschel, they run for the tree.

Charlie is much better at tracking and guessing the route his prey might go, so Charlie runs for their preferred escape route of the tree instead of chasing them.

The squirrels compensate by running for the fence, which is farther away in general, but they have a head start on the dogs.

At Some Point, charlie managed to work out that if he stays in the shadows under the deck, the squirrels won't see his mostly-black body, especially when Herschel charges into the sunlight and catches it on his white ruff.

Charleston realized, long before I did, that there is only the ONE branch that overhangs the roof, and therefore if a squirrel runs up the tree, it only has ONE way out of the yard.

The real genius was combining all of the above into the realization that he could let Herschel charge the squirrels, run through the under-deck shadows and up to the deck and roof while the squirrels are distracted, and plant himself on the roof where the squirrels HAVE to land without them seeing him until it was too late.

-And so we stand this morning.

Herschel at the foot of the tree, preventing the squirrel from running back down and heading for the fence

Charleston square in the landing zone on the roof, at the ready

The squirrel paralyzed on the branch between them

...and me, only sort of awake and realizing that I'm probably the dumbest mammal here.

I need to figure out how to disentangle these beasts without anyone getting maimed. Charleston has the blood of his ancestors baying for the flesh of his nemesis in his ears. Herschel is dangerously close to figuring out how to get on the roof himself. The squirrel is contemplating some truly dire Maneuvers, including dropping out of the tree and assaulting me to buy time.

I haven't even had my coffee yet.

"Charleston." I say with a very aggravated sigh. "That's not where dogs go."

Charleston whimpers.

He has Disappointed (TM) me.

A fate worse than death.

He starts to walk back to the deck, but as he takes a step to leave, so does the squirrel, and he is pulled back by millennia of instinct.

This will require. Delicacy.

or delicacies.

"Stay. I'll be right back." I tell the dogs.

I go back into the house, and retrieve The Best Treat.

The Cat's Wet Food.

Both dogs crave this Most Forbidden snack with an irrational passion, and it is usually both out of reach in the cat tree AND defended by Mochi, who rules the dogs with an Iron Paw.

I return to the yard, and open the can in full view of both dogs.

"Charlie?" I call. "Do you want Wet Food?"

He is halfway down the stairs before I can finish the question.

Herschel switches his orbit from the tree to my person, and I have to shuffle to avoid tripping over them as we go back inside and the squirrel flees.

None of this is the new crime.

I go out with them later to pull Yet More Thistles, and a few minutes in, I hear a little 'huff' from Charlie.

I look up, and he's standing on the stairs, paw up to indicate he's going to jump over the barrier board and go right back up there.

You know.

...Unless there is wet food to be had.

The children have figured out how to commit extortion. I text my husband.

They're so smart! Do you think we can set them on the jackasses across the street? My husband asks, ever the practical man.

I'm going back to bed.

---

I'm a disabled writier who makes my living tellng stories. if you liked this, please consider giving me a Ko-fi tip, or pre-ordering the Family Lore book of stories on my Patreon. Thank you!

[cowboybeepboop]

Rescue

"Please, p-please, I want you to make me feel good."

Pairing: Robert “Bob” Reynolds x f! Reader 

Genre: Smut

Word count: 3.8k

Warnings: Needy and whiny Bob, kind of a dom fem reader, oral m! recieving 

a/n: Sorry chat.. This is such a ramble, but I  LOVE BOB omg Lewis Pullman is on top!!! As always, send any requests you have my way! I will write for any fandom or character, but I would especially love some Lewis Pullman character requests 😛

Bob stood in the dimly lit room, a flickering fluorescent light casting eerie shadows across the sterile walls. His arms were shackled behind his back, held tightly in place by Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, a woman who radiated calculation and control.

He felt utterly isolated. No one was treating him with any kindness; he was merely an object to them, a tool to be used and discarded at their convenience. After his shift into Sentry and then the Void, she’s kept him locked up in this damn room. 

The room he was kept in was small and confined, barely large enough for him to move a few paces in any direction. The air was thick and stale, almost stifling. There was no comfort here, no human kindness. It was as if they wanted him to feel isolated and forgotten.

Bob looked around the room, his eyes darting from corner to corner. The only sound was the steady hum of the fluorescent light and the occasional clink of his shackles as he shifted his weight. He tried to take deep breaths, to keep his fear and anxiety at bay, but it was getting increasingly difficult.

While he could use his powers, he’s simply just too scared to bring out the void again. So instead, he spends his time pacing his tiny concrete room. The fluorescent light overhead flickered intermittently, casting strange shadows on the sterile walls. 

Every now and then, he would glance up to see if the light was about to go out completely. 

He was exhausted. 

Not just physically, but mentally as well. The constant fear and anxiety of being in this small space with no human contact was taking its toll on him. He could hear footsteps in the hallway outside, but no one came to visit him. 

They weren't even giving him any food.

After Valentina realized she couldn’t *use* him for what she wanted, she decided not to deal with him at all, assuming he would be too fearful to try and escape. Plus, if he did use his powers against her once again, she would just hit her kill switch. 

You'd been working with Bucky and the "Thunderbolts" to rescue Bob from Valentina's capture. This plan only works if everyone works together, which, for the most part, they've been doing pretty well, at least until you became involved. 

Creaking open the door, you hold your breath as you step into the small and dimly lit room, the sound of your footsteps on the cold concrete floor making the space feel even more claustrophobic. The room is barely illuminated by a single flickering fluorescent light above.

As you enter, you notice Bob pacing the length of the room, his arms shackled behind his back, looking exhausted and tense. He glances over at you, his eyes widening slightly as he realises that someone has entered.

"You're Bob?" Your voice is gentle while you creep over to him, eyes roaming over him, taking in his timid stance. 

Bob pauses in his pacing as you approach, his body tense and wary, but he nods slowly, his voice barely above a whisper. “Y-yes, I’m Bob,” he says softly. He studies you warily, his eyes darting to the knife between your teeth before returning to your face.

"I'm Y/N, I'm gonna get you out of here, alright?" You slip the knife into your pocket, skillfully you begin to pick the locks on his shackles, which are surprisingly weak for being meant to hold someone with his powers. 

Bob looks at you with a mix of surprise and relief, his eyes widening slightly as you begin to pick the locks on his shackles. "You're...you're here to help me?" he whispers, his voice cracking slightly.

He watches you with a sense of awe as you work on the locks, clearly impressed by your skill. The locks seem to come undone surprisingly easily, given the fact that they're meant to hold someone as powerful as him.

"Of course, I'm here to help you." You smile sweetly at him, brushing your fingers against his shoulder, offering some comfort, waiting for Bucky's all clear signal. 

Your touch seems to momentarily surprise him, and he flinches away from it, before realising that you’re trying to help him. He gives you a small, hesitant smile back, clearly not used to any kind of human contact in this place.

As you wait for Bucky's signal, the tension in the room continues to build. Bob glances around the room, his eyes darting to the door, clearly anxious to get out of here as soon as possible.

Bucky lets you know that it's time to move, you carefully pull out your knife again, preparing for any necessary defense. "Come with me, Bob, stay close and hold onto this just in case." You hand him the blade, pulling out a small gun as both of you move toward the exit. 

Bob takes the blade from you, holding it tightly in his hand. He follows you closely as you move towards the exit, his footsteps quiet behind you. He’s clearly on edge, glancing around the room as if waiting for someone to come bursting through the door.

The gun in your hand is a reassuring presence for him, and he sticks close to your side, keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of danger. As you reach the door, Bob places a hand on your shoulder, his touch surprisingly gentle. "You'll p-protect me, right?" he whispers.

"I'll keep you safe," you respond gently, using your free hand to pat his hand that's resting on your shoulder before moving forward. Putting your focus back on getting him out. 

Bob nods at your reassurance, his hand remaining on your shoulder for just a moment longer before pulling away. He takes a deep, shaky breath, trying to steel his nerves as you move forward, your focus now fixed on getting him out of this place.

Together, you move through the building, keeping an eye out for any guards or obstacles in your path. Bob keeps close by your side, gripping the knife tightly as he follows you, his eyes darting around nervously.

With Bob safely in the back of the vehicle, you let out a ragged sigh of relief. The adrenaline that had been rushing through your veins starts to wear off, and you suddenly feel the overwhelming tiredness of the rescue mission catch up to you.

As soon as the vehicle starts moving, you look over at Bob, who is now sitting next to you, still clutching the knife in his hand. He seems just as exhausted as you are, if not more, his eyes tired and weary.

Brushing your fingers over his hand, you gently pull the knife away from his grasp. "You're safe now, Bob, I promise." The team knew that Val wouldn’t come after them, not with their hold over her, so it would be an easy trip back. 

Bob doesn't resist as you take the knife from him, his grip loosening as soon as your touch. He looks up at you, his eyes weary and tired, but there's a glimmer of trust there now, a hint of vulnerability that he couldn't have shown before.

"Thank you," he whispers softly, his voice hoarse. "Thank you for getting me out of there."

"Of course," you grin at him, scooting closer to his side so he can rest against your shoulder. "You should rest, close your eyes."

Bob looks at you with a tired expression, seeming hesitant for a moment. But then, as if too tired to resist, he starts to lean into your shoulder, his head heavy against your body.

He lets out a weary sigh, his eyes fluttering shut as he begins to relax, finally feeling safe in your presence. "I...I haven't slept in days," he admits quietly, his words slurring slightly with exhaustion.

"You deserve some good rest, Bob." You run your fingers down his arm, attempting to lure him to sleep.

Bob's eyelids seem to grow heavier with every passing moment, his body sagging against yours as fatigue washes over him. With your gentle touch, he seems to relax further, his breathing beginning to even out as he drifts closer and closer to sleep.

He mumbles something, a single word that escapes his lips in a tired slur. "Safe," he whispers, his voice barely audible.

A few weeks have passed since you all successfully rescued Bob, and thankfully, Valentina never tried to take him back. You sigh as your training with The Winter Soldier ends in another defeat, lying against the exercise mat, you take a few steadying breaths.

Bucky stands above you, a smirk on his face as he regards your defeated form. He offers a hand to help you up from the mat, his grip firm as he pulls you to your feet.

"Not bad," he says, eyeing you up and down. "You're getting better." Despite your defeat, there's a hint of pride in his voice, as if he's impressed by your improvement.

You catch a glimpse of Bob outside the room, letting go of Buckys hand and ignoring his compliment, you practically skip over to him. "How are you doing this morning, Bob?"  

Bob looks up as you approach, a small, shy smile forming on his lips as he sees you. "M-morning," he manages, his voice soft and tentative. "I'm, uh, I'm alright," he says, running a hand through his messy blond hair. He glances down at the floor, then back up at you, his eyes meeting yours for a brief moment before darting away.

"Wanna grab breakfast with me?" you grin sweetly, stretching and cracking your back. 

Bob nods shyly, a slight flush on his cheeks as he watches you stretch, his eyes darting away quickly when he realises that he was staring. He shoves his hands into his pockets, looking every bit the shy, awkward, but sweet man you're beginning to learn he is.

"Uh, yeah, that sounds nice," he replies, barely managing to meet your gaze. He's clearly trying to hide his nervousness, but failing miserably.

"Here, let's grab something from the kitchen, and then we can watch a movie in my room!" You're giddy at the thought of spending more time with him, you’ve been doing everything you can to get him more comfortable with you. 

Bob nods eagerly, his eyes lighting up at your suggestion. "Yeah, that sounds great," he says softly, a small smile on his lips. He follows you eagerly as you lead him toward the kitchen, his footsteps light behind you.

"Movie in your room?" he asks, a hint of surprise in his voice. "J-just the two of us?"

"Yeah, why not?" You grab some cereal for both of you, focused on the small task at hand. 

"Uh, no reason," he says sheepishly, a faint blush creeping up his cheeks again. "I just, uh, didn’t expect it to be just the two of us." He fidgets nervously as he follows you back to your room, his hand occasionally clenching and unclenching at his side.

You open the door for him, gesturing for him to walk in. "Well, we can keep things purely PG," you tease as you shut the door behind you, which is more a less a goal of yours than anything else. 

You find him simply irresistible; his kind, sheepish demeanor gets you weak in the knees. The two of you have never been alone in a private space very long before, so this opens up the opportunity for more than just friendly interactions.

Bob's cheeks visibly redden at your playful comment, and he lets out a small, nervous chuckle as he steps into your room. He looks around, taking in the space with a sense of curiosity and wonder. It's clear that he's a bit out of his comfort zone.

"Purely PG," he repeats, his voice cracking slightly. He stands awkwardly in the middle of the room, waiting for you to lead the way.

"Come sit," you plop on the bed, patting the mattress beside you. "We can find something together," your heart races as you notice the flush of his cheeks. 

Bob hesitates for a moment before slowly walking over to the bed and sitting down next to you. He sits on the edge of the mattress, his body tense and stiff as if he's afraid to get too comfortable.

He glances at you, his cheeks flushed red, as he tries hard to avoid your gaze. "Uh, sure," he stutters, his eyes darting around the room. "What do you like to watch?" he fumbles with the sleeves of his shirt. 

"I like comedy, shit to take my mind off of... Well, all of this." You scoot closer to him, reaching over his lap for the remote on the other side of him. Your breasts slightly brushing over his thighs with your swift movements. 

Bob's eyes widen and his cheeks flush bright red at the unexpected contact, and he tries hard to keep his gaze averted.

He lets out a soft, strangled noise, something between a whimper and a gasp. There's a brief moment of tense silence as he tries to recover his composure, his body completely stiff under your touch.

"You can relax, y'know," you grin as you turn the TV on, enjoying his reaction to your subtle touches. "I don't bite, Bob."

Bob blushes even harder at your words, his body slowly starting to relax under your touch. He tries to laugh it off, though the sound comes out as more of a nervous cough. "I know, I know," he stutters, his eyes flickering over to you before darting away again.

You find a random movie, glancing over to him, you question, "Is this okay?" Bob nods, his body visibly relaxing a bit more as he hears your words. He risks a glance at you, a small, shy smile appearing on his lips.

"Yeah," he says quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. "This is...yeah, this is fine." He shifts a little closer to you, his thigh now lightly brushing against yours, as he focuses on the movie playing on the screen.

Butterflies fill your stomach as you notice the small gesture he makes; it's nothing crazy, but it's the first time he's really initiated anything between you since the day you met.  

Bob seems to realise what he's done, and he quickly stiffens up again, his cheeks reddening once more. He glances at you out of the corner of his eye, his expression a mix of nervousness and shyness.

"Uh, sorry, I, uh...sorry," he mumbles, his gaze darting back to the screen. 

"Hey, it’s okay! Don't worry about it at all." You both begin eating your breakfast, your eyes wandering to him every once in a while to admire his adorable features. 

Bob seems to relax a bit more with your reassurance, his body slowly unclenching as he starts to eat his cereal. He notices you glancing at him, and every time you do, he can't help but feel his cheeks heat up again.

He steals glances at you as well, his gaze darting over to you every now and then, his eyes lingering on your face for just a moment before darting back to the screen. There's a growing sense of comfortable intimacy between you two.

With a sigh, you push the empty bowl to the side, content with the feeling of fullness, you lean back on your arms with a small yawn. Bob finished eating his cereal as well, placing his bowl beside yours. He glances at you as you lean back on your arms, a slight smile on his lips as he hears your yawn.

He looks more relaxed now than he did when you both first walked into the room, his body no longer as stiff as before. "You tired?" he asks softly, tilting his head slightly to the side as he looks at you.

"Yeah, Bucky kicked my ass in there," you groan, thinking back to the morning training. "He always does." 

Glancing over to him, your lips curve into a small smile as you move to rest your head in his lap. "Is this alright with you, Bob?" You’re making some sneaky moves, which you know you shouldn’t, but fuck, the way he looks at you has your body aching. 

Bob blushes furiously as you rest your head in his lap, his body stiffening for a moment before relaxing again. He tentatively places a hand on your shoulder, his touch light and gentle.

"Yeah," he mumbles, sounding a little breathless. "I… I don't mind." He seems surprised that you're being so close to him, but there's a hint of pleasure in his eyes as he looks down at you.

"You're so cute," you give him a slight teasing response, nuzzling into his warmth as you relax, eyes slowly fluttering shut.

Bob blushes even harder at your words, a soft, startled noise escaping his lips. He's not used to being called cute, and your teasing comment has thrown him off slightly.

He feels a pleasant shiver run through his body as you nuzzle into his warmth, and he unconsciously starts to stroke your shoulder gently with his hand. "Y-you're the one who's cute," he mumbles, his words coming out a little indistinct.

It was your turn to be flustered now, his response catching you off guard. "Yeah? You think so?" You bite down on your lip, fingers tracing small shapes into his thigh mindlessly. 

Bob seems to realise that he's made you flustered this time, and he can't help but feel a small sense of pride in it. He looks down at you, a small smile on his lips as he notices your fingers tracing shapes on his thigh. 

He subconsciously moves his hand from your shoulder to your hair, his touch light and tentative as he starts to run his fingers through it. "Yeah," he says softly, his eyes flickering away from yours briefly before returning. "I...I really do think so."

Bob's breath hitches slightly as he feels your hand moving further up his thigh, your nails grazing him, sending a wave of tingling through his body. He tries to keep his composure, his eyes darting away from you for a moment as he struggles to control his reaction.

"S-stop that," he mumbles, his voice shaky and uneven. "You're teasing me," he practically whines the last part.

"Teasing?" you question, knowing exactly what you're doing, fingers getting achingly close to his crotch. 

Bob lets out a soft whimper as your fingers get ever closer to his crotch, his eyes widening as he looks down at your hand. His cheeks are flushed red, and his words come out as strangled stutters, "You know you're teasing me."

His body is tense under your touch, every muscle coiled taut as he tries to control his reaction to your actions.

"Is it okay?" You shift slightly, lips pressing gentle kisses onto his clothed thighs. "Can I touch you, *tease* you like this?" your fingers continue their wandering, slowly inching closer and closer to his cock. 

Bob's breath hitches at the feel of your kisses on his thighs, his eyes fluttering shut as he tries to control the sensations coursing through him. His hands clench and unclench, and he can't help but whine softly under his breath.

He nods, his head tilting back just a bit, and his voice comes out as a strangled whisper, "Yes, yes, it's okay. You can, uh, you can touch me like that."

You fumble with the waistband of his sweat pants, slowly exposing his lower half, eager to taste him, to take care of him. "I wanna make you feel good, Bob..." Your lips continue their torment, but this time against bare skin. 

Bob's breathing becomes more ragged as you start to expose his lower half, his body quivering under your touch. He lets out a soft gasp, his eyes wide and fixed on you as you begin to lay kisses on his bare skin.

"Oh, God," he manages to groan out, his thighs trembling with anticipation. He wants you just as badly, his words coming out in a breathless, needy whisper, "Please, p-please, I want you to make me feel good."

You push Bob's boxers down, revealing his hardened cock. Your eyes rake over the length of him, admiring his size and girth before you lean in closer, letting your warm breath tickle his skin. 

Bob's entire body jolts at the sensation, his cock twitching in anticipation of what's to come.

You wrap your soft, warm lips around the tip of his erection, your tongue swirling around the head as you gently suck. Bob's hands instinctively grab onto the bed sheets, knuckles turning white with the effort it takes not to touch you. 

You can hear his muffled gasps of pleasure as you slowly take more of him into your mouth, your teeth lightly grazing the sensitive skin. Your hands come up to gently caress his thighs, the smoothness of your skin gliding against his. 

Increasing the pace, your tongue dances around his shaft as you take him deeper, your throat muscles tightening around him. You can feel him getting closer and closer to the edge with each stroke, his hips bucking slightly as he tries to keep still.

The wet sounds of your mouth working him fill the air, mingling with Bob's breathy moans. You're thorough in your ministrations, not wanting to leave any part of him untouched. 

Your hand wraps around the base of his cock, pumping in rhythm with your mouth, your other hand gently cupping and playing with his balls.

Bob's breathing becomes more erratic, his moans growing louder as you work him closer to climax. His thighs quiver under your touch, and you know he's close. You look up at him, eyes locked with his, the intimacy of the moment almost too much to handle.

With one final, deep suck, you feel his cock pulse in your mouth, and with a strangled cry, he releases, his warm seed filling your mouth. You swallow it all, not missing a drop, the taste of him lingering on your tongue as you pull away, giving his sensitive tip one last lick before sitting back with a satisfied smile. 

Bob's body goes lax, his eyes fluttering shut as he tries to catch his breath, a blissful expression etched onto his face.

The room is filled with the sound of his heavy breathing, and the sight of his spent cock against his stomach is incredibly satisfying. You lean up to kiss him, sharing the taste of him on your lips, and whisper, "I told you I'd take good care of you."

Bob's mind is completely overwhelmed by pleasure, his body trembling beneath your touch. He can barely form coherent thoughts, his whole world reduced to the sensations you're bringing him. Your name escapes his lips in a breathy moan, and he clings to the bed sheets tightly, trying to anchor himself to reality. 

When you finally pull away, he pants heavily, his body flushed and spent. He looks up at you, his expression one of pure bliss, and he can barely manage to speak, his voice rough and low as he whispers, "You're...you're incredible."

Here’s part 2 😛

[arolesbianism]

Mid patch but on the bright side new salmon run specials and on the brighter side kraken specifically I think we've found our new best survivability tool

[novelistwriter]

The Runaway Scientist

DP x DC Prompt

There is a young man running around the world. Normally, this wouldn't be a cause for concern for the Justice League, but this young man isn't an ordinary person. This young man is someone who rivals the greatest minds the League has to offer, who has tech with him that's very advanced, despite being made of everyday appliances, with a clean source of energy that no one knows of, no one but the young man they are chasing.

Batman was the first to encounter him in Gotham. The young man was doing something in an abandoned warehouse, and the Bats caught wind of it. Batman tried to interrogate the young man on what he was doing, but instead, he found himself flipped over and pinned down himself. The young man had realized who he pinned down and quickly fled with most of what he had. The only thing left behind was a high-tech belt. When they analyzed the belt, it was revealed to be a personal shield that could withstand a full force kryptonion punch with minor cracks on it.

Then, he began to be encountered by other League members across the US for a few months before he was sighted in other countries.

Now, it's become a race against time, as the League needs to get to the young man who may be an upcoming genius scientist, as their enemies caught wind of him.

Danny is on the run. The GIW had killed his family and friends to get to him when they learned that he was Phantom. His parents had just accepted him as Phantom as well. He took all of his parents' research and tools and destroyed the portal. He's using the Fenton Crammer to store the bigger things in a Thermos, like the Ops Center, the finished model of the Ecto Skeleton, the Fenton ATV, the GAV, the Fenton Submarine, the Specter Speeder, and the Prototype of the Fenton Rocket. He thought he could hide out in Gotham for a bit, but then he had to attack Batman, the adrenaline from escaping Amity and his training from when Pandora and his other mentors for him, Clockwork said that he needs training in martial arts because he is the Ghost King, and a King needs to defend himself. So he ran again, not knowing he left a modified Specter Deflector behind.

And now that he's on the run from the Justice League because he attacked a founding member, not knowing that the Justice League just wants to talk and maybe make him a scientist (plus the Batfam trying to convince Batman that this isn't someone to adopt). He now has to deal with the bad guys of the Justice League wanting him, as well as the GIW and the Justice League, his most recent encounter? A very old Fruitloop with ectoplasm in him that's the equivalent of Fast Food for Ghosts who wants him as his Heir, all because he easily bested the Fruitloop in a fight.

[skmhlml]

Note: I’m gonna be so sad when people aren’t obsessed with this thing anymore.

𝑬𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒎𝒂𝒏(s) 𝑿 𝑭!𝑷𝒍𝒂𝒚𝒆𝒓

You just hear him—in your head. Static, distorted whispers that slither around your brain like cobwebs. Sometimes they sound like your own thoughts. Sometimes they’re commands.

He first noticed you when you looked directly into his eyes during a stormy night. That accidental glance marked you as his. From that moment, he began watching. From trees, behind blocks, in your dreams.

You keep finding little blocks missing from around your house—then reappearing in places that don’t make sense. A flower you planted is now on your bed. Your favorite tool is buried in the floor. He’s nesting.

You made the mistake of looking into an Enderman’s eyes too long. But instead of just attacking you and leaving you to respawn, he didn’t kill you. He froze, twitched… and followed you. Then another one began to follow. And another. You’ve been… claimed. Now you live in a strange place between dimensions. You don’t know how long it’s been. You don’t know if you’re alone anymore..

Endermen don’t communicate in words, but in strange, vibrating hums and pulses.

They steal blocks from the Overworld and recreate your home (or a twisted version of it) in The End for you to live in. It’s uncanny. Nothing is quite right. The walls breathe sometimes…

If you try to leave, one will teleport right in front of you, grabbing you with unnatural limbs that seem longer than physics should allow. Another will be waiting behind you. Their teleportation makes escape impossible.

They stare at you constantly. Even when you’re asleep. They don’t blink. You’ve stopped trying to cover your eyes.

Their form shifts slightly when aroused. The black void skin gets slick and twitchy. Sometimes you can hear the inside of their bodies, like static and clicking bone.

They don’t have traditional anatomy, but that doesn’t stop them. Tentacle-like limbs emerge from the swirling shadows of their torsos. Long, pulsing, ink-black tendrils that move like they’re tasting the air… or your skin.

They touch with terrifying reverence—dragging long, clawed fingers along your body, humming like they’re worshipping a pet. You.

One of them “marks” you by biting—gently at first, then deeper until you’re bleeding. The other Endermen grow aggressive with each other if the scent fades. They take turns keeping it fresh.

If more than one is with you, they restrain you with inky tendrils, murmuring in broken echoes, repeating phrases they’ve absorbed from your voice: “Stay… stay… forever… mate… warm…”

They try to mimic affection, but they don’t understand it. They’ll bring you random items: bones, eyes of other players, bloodied armor. Gifts. Offerings.

You’re collared with an obsidian band that you can’t remove. It marks you as claimed—and it glows faintly when they get aroused. You feel it buzz against your throat when they’re watching.

They don’t fuck like humans. Their anatomy warps and writhes—long, shifting tentacles with glowing ends, slick and hot. They pierce, fill, and stretch you until you’re choking on your own cries. And they don’t stop.

They purr when you cry. Whine. Scream. The sounds seem to excite them. You’ve seen them shudder, glitching in place, twitching in arousal from the sound of your sobs.

They lift you like a doll—never speaking, but chittering to each other in some broken dimension-code language before deciding together what to do with you.

They use their size against you. You’re completely engulfed by their height, their limbs, their cold, grasping touch. You don’t walk anymore. You’re carried. Dragged. Positioned.

They don’t ask. They simply fill. No prep. No patience. Just pure need.

If you fight, they don’t stop. They tighten restraints. Slam you harder. The only thing that slows them is you passing out.

[jasmineoolongtea]

it turns out, gojo satoru hates silence. to be more accurate, he hates the sound of total nothing when it comes to you.

that's not to say that he wants you to scream at him like all hell's breaking loose but he just wants something from you, good or bad he doesn't care, over this suffocating silence. you don't even look at him; instead, you focus on attempting to secure the sterile white bandages on top of his injuries. you pretend like you don't see the crimson red of his blood seeping through them as you do.

"baby..." his voice is barely above a whisper, a rare occurrence for someone who's always been the loudest in any room he's in. he gets no response from you, only the sight of your jaw tensing up as you grit your teeth. satoru tries and fails to meet your eyes.

"baby. please, talk to me." he pleads softly, using his other unoccupied hand to reach out to you. you freeze slightly at the feeling of his fingertips upon your arm.

a small sigh of defeat escapes him. "see? i'm fine, nothing's gonna hurt me alright? it's just a scratch, that's all." as if to emphasise his point, he raises his arms up in a show of goodwill, swallowing the harsh wince of pain that threatens to escape his lips.

for what feels like the first time in forever, you look back at him, your eyes meeting his cerulean ones. "that's not the point, satoru." you state, finishing up your bandaging of him. "what if one day you do get hurt badly?" the clang of your tools hitting the metal tray table echoes within the walls of the infirmary.

he brushes off your concerns with a wave. "that's not going to hap-"

"okay, but what if it does?" you cut him off bluntly. your expression is serious, deadly serious with your unwavering gaze and slightly furrowed brows, to the point where he's rendered speechless for the first time.

"have you ever thought about what would happen to the people you leave behind... about me?" your words trail off at the end of your sentence, your voice faltering slightly as well. maybe it's a trick of the light but satoru swears that tears are welling up in the corner of your eyes.

his chest tightens with an uncomfortable squeeze, his gaze falling to the floor. no one dares to speak for a moment, whatever words and phrases of reassurance satoru would typically throw your way now suddenly seem shallow and lack any sort of weight behind them. the air is tense around the both of you.

you don't even need him to respond to know the answer to your own question as it would be a resounding no. for most of his life, satoru lives and breathes like he's untouchable, detached from most things including other people. being someone who has been leagues above everyone else since birth does that to a person.

however, it seems that this has caused him to forget that others around him don't share his fate and that no matter how detached he still believes himself to be, there are still ones who crave his connection and see past his facade of godhood and more as the human he truly is underneath it all.

"...i'm sorry, baby." he murmurs under his breath as he looks back up at you, sincerity and raw vulnerability evident in his expression. "i promise that i'll be more careful next time." he brings your hands to his lips and presses a soft kiss against your skin, letting himself bask in the warmth, your warmth, that is radiating off of you.

"there shouldn't be a next time." you huff half-heartedly, trying to stand strong in light of his previous behaviour which led to this moment but you feel your knees start to turn into jelly the moment his lips graze your hands.

a faint laugh escapes him. "i'll make a promise on that too." he adds, spreading his legs slightly just so he can pull you against his chest and into his arms.

gojo satoru is used to living only for himself but now, he has to remember that he has someone to come home to and he's going to make sure that he starts living like he did. only a shame he didn't see this earlier.

[alexanderwales]

The high-level prophecy interpreters all worked for the government or major corporations. They were the ones with the money, and the ones most likely to be the subject of a prophecy. Sometimes you'd have a multi-billionaire hire on a prophecy interpreter, but usually they just had one on retainer. The same went for celebrities who were famous enough to attract significant prophecies.

But at the lower level, there were prophecy interpreters who opened up their own firms, usually just one or two if they weren't in a major city. That was me: I had gotten in prophecy interpretation in college and ended up majoring in it after the Kepler Incident. I had my name on bus stops and billboards, and a single secretary in my employ who thankfully handled most of the phone calls.

In the field we sometimes divide the business up into three sectors based on timing. There's "prophecy impact", which is when we do a consultation right after the prophecy has been made, or at least sometime before it rears its head. Some prophecies are decades in the making, but people want to be told what to do about them. I hate that part of the job, personally, because there's not a whole lot to do, depending on the language. Plus the conversations are pretty repetitive: a guy hears a pretty clear-cut prophecy that he's going to die falling out of a plane, and he's begging for some way out, as though there's something I can do about it, as though I can tell him that prophecies are lairs sometimes. Prophecies are liars, but they're clever liars, hiding meanings inside words, only clear after they've passed. You can't escape prophecy, and at least half of "prophecy impact" clients explaining that fact to them.

The second sector is "prophetic immanence", when the client has a prophecy that they think is coming true. Sometimes this can be because there's a trigger phrase in the prophecy, a conditional that appears to have been met. One of the dirty secrets of the industry is that nine times out of the ten, people are mistaken: the nature of prophecy is such that you can't often pinpoint when the prophecy is nigh. In my opinion, you can judge a prophecy interpreter by how upfront they are about this. The weasels will milk their clients dry by pretending that every moment is a crisis moment.

It's the last sector that I find the most satisfaction from, which is why it's a disappointment that it's the least in demand. This is post facto prophecy interpretation. You're not trying to prevent anything, you're not formulating a reaction, you're just trying to figure out what happened and how it all fit together. These are clients that are in the aftermath of prophecy, or what they're pretty sure is the aftermath, and a lot of the time, they just want someone to talk to more than they want my specific expertise.

My client that day was an artist, a rising star who had a few very successful gallery showings. It had been prophesied that her older brother would accidentally kill her father, but it had been her instead. This wasn't a recent trauma, but the wound was clearly still there, so I tried to navigate it as carefully as I could.

"One of the things that makes prophecy tricky is ambiguity," I said gently. "There are some, outliers, that depend on pretty tortured readings. But in this case, I think it's just an alternate meaning. From what you gave me, the prophecy was specifically 'the child who first draws breath', and that's in reference to your career as an artist."

"That's stupid," she said. "He's two years older than me, would he really never have doodled a person drawing? Just a few lines indicating that something is coming out of their mouth?" Her hands were folded in her lap. They were curiously still, for someone who used her hands for a living, but maybe artists were like that, preserving the tools of their trade.

"It's stupid," I agreed. "But I do think it's entirely possible that his drawings didn't include anyone breathing, and that yours did."

"How can we know for sure?" she asked.

"We can't," I replied. "Though if we take for granted that the prophecy was fulfilled, and that you were the one to fulfill it, then we have to search for answers within the realm of what we know. And if you're not satisfied with that answer, then I need to spend some time searching for alternate meanings, to find some interpretation that lands better."

"I could understand it if I had some obsession with drawing breath," she said. "If I had done a series of paintings of visible breath escaping from a person's body, then that would make sense. But it's not that, it's the first to draw breath, and that's just ... I mean, doodles we did when we were children. It means nothing. We have no way to mark that. It wasn't pivotal."

I shrugged. "It is what it is." I use that phrase a lot. "There's a selection effect with prophecies. The ones we hear about are hugely ironic, they show the hand of fate, they warp and twist people. But many of them are just," I shrugged again. "Things that happened."

"My brother moved away," she said. "My father had kind of accepted it, probably from the moment we were born, or before that. He'd made peace with it, hadn't tried to fight it. But it was a hard thing to learn for my brother, and he'd just left to go to school a thousand miles away, and coming home was always stressful for him, because maybe this was when it was going to happen."

I nodded. "I can see where that would be difficult. How did he handle it?"

"Poorly," she sighed. "Dad was a good guy. My brother lost all that time, and it had always been a source of tension between them, not the death, but their perspective, you know? Dad preached acceptance, my brother wanted to avoid it, and so when my brother went out west, dad was disappointed. He said it was like losing his son, and that he'd have rather died than have that happen. So not only did my brother not have a close relationship with my dad because of the prophecy, it turns out that dad was right all along. It would have been better for everyone not to fight it."

"Maybe," I said. "In the business we don't counsel people not to fight prophecies. Sometimes it's the right thing to do."

"Well, sorry for wasting your time," she said. "Though I guess I'm paying by the hour, and I'm not going to apologize for something I paid for. So I'd like my apology back, please."

I smiled at her. "Certainly."

She stood up to go, and I marked the time so I could bill her later, but she paused for a moment. I put in the time all the same; so far as I was concerned, we were off the clock.

"Do you have any unresolved prophecies that you know of?" she asked.

"That's sort of a personal question," I said. "But I get it a lot, and if it might help you, I can share: I'm going to be eaten by an alligator."

"You're ... what?" she asked.

"An alligator?" I asked. "They live in swamps."

"And how are you going to be eaten by one?" she asked.

"Well, I don't know," I replied. "There's a chance I've dodged it already, or ... dodged it in the way that you can sometimes dodge an obvious reading." I held up my hand and showed her my pinky, or rather, my lack of pinky. "I went down to Florida, had my finger amputated, then fed it to three baby alligators under the supervision of a zoo keeper."

She stared at me. "And that works?" she finally asked.

"We'll see," I replied. "In general, yes, it's an approach with relatively good outcomes. A self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a peace of mind thing."

"But ... your finger?" she asked. She was looking at it. I sometimes thought that going with a toe would be better, or a chunk of flesh from somewhere else, but I had heard that losing a toe could interfere with balance. I had never regretted that it was a pinky finger.

"If I didn't avert the prophecy, I want to be the kind of guy who says 'oh, well that's funny'," I replied. "I think ... whatever helps you, you know? And now I don't need to stay up at night wondering how the hell it's going to happen. See, your father had it right, I think. You have to find a way to make peace with it. And this was what it took for me to make peace with mine. Though I have to admit that I'm not a fan of zoos, and I don't take vacations south of the Mason Dixon, so maybe I'm not as much at peace as I would like myself to believe."

"Huh," she said. She looked away from the missing finger and to my eyes. "Thank you for sharing that."

"It's okay if you think it's kooky," I replied.

"No," she said. "I was just ... thinking that if my brother had something like that, he might have had more time with dad before he passed."

I nodded. "You can share that story, if you think it will help. Sometimes it does."

When she left I went back to my computer, cruising the local news sites to see whether there had been any updates. I hadn't given her the best advice. My mind had been elsewhere.

A local guy had been busted for breeding reptiles without a license. I was sure it was nothing, but they hadn't said what specific reptiles it had been. It was probably nothing. I mean, a full-grown alligator escaping from custody, finding me, and managing to eat me was a little too much for me to believe.

But fate is a funny thing sometimes, and I was going to keep my eyes open.

[dreamersworldduh]

Hi, I love your stories. The way you write is truly incredible.

That said, if you don't mind, I'd like to make a story request. You see, I couldn't help but look at your profile picture and wonder.

How about a Damian Wayne x Male Reader story where the reader is an Anodite (or Gwen Tennyson's race, I can't remember her name well, I think she was an Anodite? Correct me if I'm wrong)

I don't know, maybe during an argument with Bruce and his brothers, Damian angrily escapes from the mansion where he is surprised by a boy with apparent amnesia who escaped from Lex Luthor? It turns out the evil bald man wanted to use him to experiment with his body, Damian a little doubtful, but at the same time curious takes him with him. Maybe you could add a Thamarean rank and have them learn the language with a kiss? I don't know 🤭 but that's the main idea.

I hope I'm not bothering you with this 😓

A LONG WAY FROM HOME

• DAMIAN WAYNE x MALE!READER

SUMMARY — After a disastrous mission strains his relationship with his family, Damian Wayne isolates himself in Gotham City—only to witness a meteor crash in a local park. Expecting debris, he instead finds a teenage boy—unconscious, glowing, and surrounded by a powerful pink aura.

WARNING! FLUFF. Violence. PG.

WORDS! 15.6k

AUTHOR'S NOTE! Here we are with our first request of the list and yes, Gwen is an Anodite. This was very interesting to write because I wasn’t sure of the angle that I was going for. I wrote two separate versions of this and chose this one. I’m still working on my other requests/works while trying to do my character animation finals. Anyway, enjoy your reading.✨🫶🏽

DAMIAN WAYNE carried a legacy that few could imagine and even fewer could survive. Every name tied to him was a weight—a title soaked in blood, power, and expectation. He was the grandson of Ra's al Ghul, a man whose name whispered through history like a ghost story told in secret, the immortal leader of the League of Assassins, who sought to shape the world through violence and control. From that lineage, Damian inherited a destiny forged in centuries of conquest, strategy, and unwavering purpose.

He was also the son of Bruce Wayne—Gotham's enigmatic protector, the Batman. A man who turned grief into mission, who wore trauma like armor and demanded excellence from all who stood beside him. Bruce raised him not as a boy, but as a soldier. Under Batman's watchful eye, Damian was expected to be more than just capable—he had to be precise, composed, and morally grounded in a world that had offered him little reason to believe in right and wrong.

Then there was his mother—Talia al Ghul. Brilliant, calculating, and lethal, she raised Damian with the League's doctrine etched into his bones. Before he could read, he was trained to disarm, to disable, to kill. Before he ever understood mercy, he understood efficiency. His childhood was a battlefield disguised as education. Every lesson came at a cost. Every success was expected. Every failure punished. He didn't grow up; he was forged.

When he finally took up the mantle of Robin, it wasn't to play sidekick—it was war. He fought beside Batman not as a boy eager for approval, but as a warrior trying to reconcile the man he was raised to be with the one his father hoped he could become. Every punch he threw, every enemy he brought down, was a step in a lifelong tug-of-war between legacy and identity.

But through all of it, there was one truth Damian held tighter than any blade: he was not a liar. He might be brutal. He might be cold. His confidence often came off as arrogance, and he rarely bothered softening his words. But he didn't deal in lies. To lie was weakness. It was dishonor. It was betrayal—not just of others, but of himself.

He had been trained to see deception as a tool, to use it, master it. But he refused to let it define him. Honesty, to Damian, wasn't kindness—it was a form of strength. It was control. Every truth he spoke was deliberate, sometimes cruel, always unflinching. It was the one code he had carved out for himself, separate from both the League's corruption and the Bat's rigid morality. Truth was the one thing no enemy could twist and no ally could question.

Damian Wayne could be many things—an assassin, a vigilante, a son, a warrior. But a liar? Never.

THE MISSION had gone sideways before it even started. The intel was bad—half-sourced chatter from unreliable contacts. The timing was off—an hour too late to catch the deal in progress, and just early enough to walk right into a kill box. It was supposed to be a clean op: in, intercept, out. Instead, it turned into a firefight in a warehouse rigged with explosives and death traps, where every exit led to another ambush. Damian fought alongside Batman, Nightwing, Red Hood, and Red Robin, each of them moving like parts of a machine built for war. But even the best-trained machine breaks when every variable turns against it.

By the time they limped back to the Batcave, suits scorched, blood dried on knuckles and faces, the air was already thick with tension. No one said it, but they all felt it—that heat beneath the surface, that pressure building in their lungs and throats. The silence didn't last long.

Damian had barely unclasped his gauntlets when Nightwing's voice snapped across the cave like a whip. "What the hell was that?" It wasn't just frustration—it was betrayal, confusion, disbelief all rolled into one.

Red Hood didn't wait for answers. He stepped forward like a fuse already burning, shoulders squared, helmet off, face dark with fury. "You want to explain why the whole damn place was rigged and you didn't say a word?" His voice was sharp, his stance aggressive—like he was ready to throw more than just words.

Tim stood a little apart, arms crossed, expression drawn tight. He didn't raise his voice, but the weight of his disappointment hit harder than the others' rage. "There were choices made that didn't line up with the plan," he said, gaze locked on Damian. "You made calls no one authorized."

They closed in—not physically, but verbally, surrounding him with doubt and accusation. It was like standing in the eye of a storm while lightning cracked in every direction. Each brother threw their own version of the same demand: What were you thinking?

Damian stood at the console, the pale blue light casting shadows across his face. His arms were crossed, shoulders rigid, every muscle tight with restraint. He didn't back down, didn't shift under their stares. His expression was unreadable—anger buried beneath control, emotion masked by discipline. But his eyes didn't waver.

Nightwing moved like a caged animal, pacing in quick strides, his voice rising as he listed out every misstep. "You ignored protocol. You split from formation. You led us into the ambush."

Red Hood's voice cut in, louder, raw. "You could've gotten us all killed, and you act like it was just another sparring session."

Tim didn't yell, but his dissection was surgical. "You made decisions alone. You didn't trust us enough to share intel. That's not how a team works."

And still—Damian didn't flinch. His voice, when he finally spoke, was level. Cold. Final.

"I wasn't wrong."

"I didn't lie."

"I did what you wouldn't."

His tone wasn't defensive. There was no desperation to be understood. He wasn't trying to win them over—he was stating facts. Stone on steel. He held the line, unshaken even as Red Hood stepped into his space, fists clenched at his sides, daring a reaction. Damian didn't give him one. When Tim shook his head, eyes heavy with disappointment, Damian didn't look away.

They were furious. And maybe they had the right to be. But anger didn't rewrite the truth. He hadn't betrayed them. He hadn't sabotaged the mission. He'd made a call in the field when no one else had all the facts. And he'd saved lives, whether they wanted to admit it or not.

So he stood there, letting their anger wash over him, letting their words crash and echo through the cave. Not defending himself. Not apologizing. Just holding the truth in front of him like a blade—and daring anyone to call it a lie.

Even Bruce joined in.

He had stood apart during the chaos—silent, still, barely more than a shadow cast by the glow of the Batcomputer. Arms folded across his chest, cape draped like a curtain of judgment, the cowl masking everything but the weight behind his silence. The others had raged, thrown their accusations like blades, but Bruce had waited. Watching. Listening. Measuring.

When the storm finally began to die down, when his sons' voices dropped from shouts to heavy breaths and clipped remarks, Bruce stepped forward. One step. No theatrics. No anger in his voice—just cold certainty.

"Damian," he said, his voice low and steady, "your actions nearly cost lives tonight."

He didn't yell. He didn't raise his voice or add heat. He didn't need to. The sentence landed with surgical precision—clean, quiet, and devastating. It wasn't just a critique. It was a verdict. The kind that didn't invite a response. The kind that carried the weight of both the cowl and the father beneath it.

Damian didn't blink, but his jaw tightened like a trap springing shut. His fists curled so tight at his sides that his knuckles whitened beneath his gloves. Every breath was a battle—shallow, controlled, forced through clenched teeth. He said nothing. Because if he spoke, the words would come out as venom.

It wasn't the team's outrage that hit him hardest. It wasn't Red Hood's fury or Nightwing's disbelief or Tim's cold precision. It was that. One sentence. One judgment. Delivered without anger, without hesitation, and without faith.

The Batcave felt colder than it had minutes before. Every monitor hummed like a reminder of everything that had just been said. The shadows felt deeper. The walls closer. The air tighter.

Damian looked at Bruce—just once. His father stood like a statue of finality, eyes hidden behind white lenses, unmoved. Unreachable.

That was enough.

Without a word, Damian turned. His cape snapped behind him like a second heartbeat, echoing each sharp footfall as he walked away from the console, from his brothers, from him. He didn't have a destination. He didn't need one. He just needed distance—space between him and the fury tightening in his chest like a vice.

He wouldn't beg for understanding. He wouldn't explain himself to people who had already decided who he was. Not to his brothers. Not even to Bruce.

Let them think he was reckless. Let them believe the worst. He knew the truth. And right now, that truth was the only thing keeping him from tearing the place apart.

As he reached the main hall of Wayne Manor, the warm glow from the chandelier cast long shadows across the marble floor. Alfred stood at the base of the grand staircase, perfectly composed in his crisp suit, hands folded neatly in front of him. His expression was calm, but his eyes tracked Damian with quiet concern.

"Master Damian," he said, gently, like someone easing open a door they weren't sure they had the right to touch.

Damian didn't answer. He didn't slow. His shoulder brushed past Alfred's arm, sharp and unyielding, and he kept moving like the words hadn't been spoken at all.

Alfred didn't follow. He didn't call after him. He'd seen that walk before—shoulders rigid, head low, stride too precise to be anything but restrained fury. It wasn't the time to intervene.

Up the stairs. Down the west hall. Past oil paintings and silent clocks. Damian reached his room and shoved the door open, then slammed it behind him hard enough to rattle the frame.

He stripped off the Robin suit like it burned him. Gauntlets peeled off and thrown across the room. Boots kicked aside. The cape—torn, soot-streaked, still reeking of smoke—hit the floor in a crumpled heap. The tunic came last, dragged over his head and tossed without care. He stood there, chest heaving, the silence pressing in around him like a weight.

Cold air from the manor's vents hit his sweat-damp skin. He yanked on a black hoodie—plain, loose, anonymous. Dark jeans. Sneakers. Civilian gear. No symbol. No armor. Nothing to connect him to them.

He didn't leave a note. Didn't shut off the light. Didn't even look back.

He walked to the tall window that faced the estate's southern grounds. His fingers moved automatically—unlocking the latch, sliding the glass open, letting in the rush of cool night air. Trees rustled in the distance. The moon cut through the clouds, casting silver across the hedges below.

Without a moment of hesitation, he stepped onto the windowsill. Crouched. Focused. And dropped.

He landed in the hedges with barely a sound, rolled once, then straightened, already moving. No backup. No comms. No tracker. He'd made sure of that.

He didn't have a plan. Didn't need one. He just had to get away. From the cave. From the silence. From him.

Because staying meant swallowing what they'd said. Accepting what they thought of him.

And Damian Wayne refused to be caged by anyone's version of who he was—not even his father's.

DAMIAN’S FOOTSTEPS echoed in soft, steady beats against the cracked concrete, a quiet rhythm in the stillness of Gotham's late-night sprawl. The city, always restless, had slowed to a quieter pulse—no sirens, no crowds, just the hum of streetlights and the occasional hiss of wind slipping through alleyways. His hood was pulled low, shadowing his face. His hands were buried deep in the pockets of his jacket, fingers curled tight against the lining. He walked without urgency, but with purpose, like movement alone could keep the storm inside him from surging back to the surface.

The roar of the Batcave, the voices, the judgment—all of it felt distant now, like a memory already starting to erode at the edges. The chill of the night air nipped at his cheeks, grounding him. Each breath came easier than the last. Every step further from Wayne Manor loosened something tight in his chest.

He turned a corner onto a quieter block and spotted a tiny juice bar nestled between a closed laundromat and a graffiti-covered bodega. Its flickering neon sign buzzed lazily in the window: OPEN 24 HOURS. Inside, it was empty, save for a tired-looking clerk half-asleep behind the counter.

Damian stepped in, keeping his hood up. The place smelled faintly of citrus and disinfectant. He scanned the menu, pointed at the only thing that sounded remotely tolerable. "Spinach, apple, ginger," he said, voice low.

The clerk didn't ask questions. Just gave a nod, blended the drink with mechanical efficiency, and slid it across the counter. Damian dropped a few bills on the counter—cash, always—and walked out with the cup in hand, the door's bell jingling behind him.

He made his way toward Robinson Park, slipping past shuttered storefronts and dim intersections. The smoothie was cold and sharp on his tongue—the kind of flavor that woke you up, cut through fog. The mix of bitter greens and ginger burned just enough to feel real. That was what he needed. Something real.

The edge of the park was quiet, the lamps casting soft halos across the paths. Trees rustled with wind overhead, branches shifting like old bones. Damian moved along the perimeter, not drawing attention, not needing to. His silhouette was just another shape in the dark—small, hunched, hooded. No mask. No emblem. Just another teenager in Gotham.

His heart wasn't racing anymore. The fire in his chest—the heat from the confrontation, the shame, the fury—it had cooled to a low burn. Still there, but manageable. His mind, usually a battlefield of reflexes and calculations, was still. Not empty, but quieter. Focused.

He sipped the smoothie again and took a breath so deep it stretched the tightness in his ribs. No shouting. No orders. No father waiting in the dark, arms crossed in judgment.

Just wind, and concrete, and space to breathe.

He didn't know how long he walked. It didn't matter. He wasn't chasing anything. He wasn't running from it either. He just needed to exist outside the weight of legacy and expectation. Outside the cave. Outside the mission.

Tonight, Damian was just a teen in a hoodie, walking under streetlights in a city that didn't know him.

And for the first time in hours, he could finally think.

Damian eventually drifted toward the heart of Robinson Park, his footsteps slow, deliberate, worn smooth by the weight of everything he wasn't saying. The smoothie was long gone, tossed in a bin near the rusted entrance gate, forgotten like the rest of the night's bitterness. The park was nearly deserted—too late for joggers, too early for the early risers. The only sounds were the soft hum of the city beyond the trees, the flickering buzz of half-dead streetlamps, and the breeze whispering through overgrown hedges.

Moths flitted lazily around the lamps, wings catching the dim light like flakes of ash. Damian moved along the winding path, eyes low, hands deep in his hoodie's pockets. The chaos of Gotham—the noise, the fire, the shouting—felt miles away, even though it was barely out of sight. The park existed in a pocket of stillness, insulated by tall trees and iron fencing. The skyline loomed on all sides, but here, in the center of it all, it felt like time had slowed.

He reached a worn bench near the park's neglected fountain. The wood was weathered and slightly crooked, one leg sinking into the dirt, but it held his weight as he sank into it. He slouched back, arms folded, his breath fogging in the cool night air. His eyes drifted upward, scanning what little he could see of the sky.

Gotham didn't allow for stars—not really. Too much light, too much smog. But Damian looked anyway. A few dim points of light clung to the black, stubborn and far away. A plane passed overhead, then another, blinking methodically. His thoughts quieted. The silence wasn't loaded, wasn't judgmental or tense. It was clean. Uncluttered. He could almost feel the anger draining out of him, like heat leaving metal.

Then, a flicker.

A streak of white light cut through the sky—fast, silent, unmistakable. A shooting star.

He blinked, barely believing he'd seen it. It was gone in an instant, like a thread yanked from the edge of the universe. He didn't make a wish. That wasn't his style. He didn't believe in signs or fate or magic falling from the sky.

But still... something inside him eased. Not healed. Not fixed. Just—eased.

He kept staring upward, his eyes searching the darkness, half-expecting to see another. And then, he saw something else.

The light hadn't vanished.

It was growing brighter.

Larger.

And it was coming closer.

His breath caught. The hairs on the back of his neck rose as instinct surged through him like a jolt of electricity.

That wasn't a meteor.

It was a missile. Or worse.

And it was aimed straight at him.

The moment shattered. The calm ripped away. A piercing, high-pitched whine screamed through the sky, followed by a trail of fire and smoke that tore through the atmosphere like the world was splitting open. Damian didn't think—he moved.

He launched off the bench, diving to the side just as the object blazed overhead. The heat was searing—so intense it singed the back of his hoodie and stung his skin. The air cracked with a sound like thunder and metal colliding.

The impact was cataclysmic.

The object slammed into the park with a roar that shook the earth. A shockwave erupted, ripping through the grass and soil, flinging debris in all directions. Benches splintered like matchsticks. Streetlamps bent and shattered. The fountain exploded—chunks of stone and jets of water hurled into the air like a dying gasp.

Damian hit the ground hard, skidding through the grass, dirt flying into his eyes and mouth. He rolled, coughing, until he landed behind a toppled trash bin. It wasn't much, but it was cover. He crouched low, hoodie scorched, adrenaline pumping like fire in his veins.

Everything rang. His ears. His head. The world was chaos again.

And at the center of it—the crater.

Smoke coiled from the ruptured earth, glowing embers littering the torn grass. The heat was still radiating, pulsing like a heartbeat. And in the middle of it, nestled in molten soil and fractured rock, was something that wasn't metal, wasn't stone.

It was glowing. Faint at first, but steady. A soft, pulsing light—like it was breathing.

Damian pushed himself upright, his muscles tense, boots crunching over scorched grass and broken stone. He brushed the dirt from his sleeves with short, sharp motions, never once taking his eyes off the smoking crater that had carved itself into the heart of Gotham Park. His breathing was shallow but steady, the aftermath of the blast still echoing in his bones.

Somewhere beyond the trees, car alarms blared in overlapping patterns—a chaotic symphony of sirens and panic that rolled through the dark streets like a wave. Shattered glass glittered in the grass. The park's lampposts flickered erratically, casting long, jerking shadows across the wreckage. The air was thick with the acrid scent of scorched earth, burnt wiring, and something stranger—something faintly metallic and ozone-slick, like the moment before a lightning strike.

Damian moved forward, slow and methodical, his footfalls silent despite the debris underfoot. The crater yawned before him, a jagged hole ripped into the earth, at least ten feet across, maybe deeper. Its edges were charred black, ringed with hissing embers and twisted patches of melted stone. Heat pulsed from its center, a wave of dry intensity that prickled his skin through the fabric of his hoodie.

And then he saw it. Or rather, him.

At the center of the crater—surrounded by fractured earth and glowing debris—was a boy.

Damian stopped cold, the tension in his frame going taut like a wire about to snap. His eyes narrowed, scanning the scene with trained precision, breaking it down like a tactical feed. The teen looked... normal. Human. No claws. No wings. No grotesque mutations or cybernetic implants. He appeared to be around Damian's age, maybe slightly older—fifteen, sixteen at most. His build was lean, wiry. His skin was dusted with soot and sweat. His dark hair clung to his forehead in messy strands. His clothes, though scorched and singed at the edges, were mostly intact—black pants, a thin jacket, shirt torn near the collar.

But the thing that shattered any illusion of this being ordinary was the light.

A soft, radiant aura pulsed around the boy's body. It shimmered with a strange, translucent pink hue, almost liquid in the way it moved—like it was alive. It didn't burn like fire or spark like electricity. It throbbed, slow and steady, mimicking a heartbeat. The glow bled into the surrounding crater, casting flickering shadows and distorting the air like rising heat off asphalt. Damian could feel it—tingling across his skin, humming in his teeth, stirring something ancient and electric deep in his chest.

He took a half-step closer.

Every instinct he'd ever learned screamed danger. This was unknown tech or alien power—or something worse. No parachute. No protective gear. The kid had fallen out of the sky, torn through the atmosphere like a comet, and was lying there breathing like it was nothing.

Damian's hand inched toward the hidden blade tucked inside his sleeve, fingers brushing the familiar grip.

Still, the boy didn't move.

Was he unconscious? Faking? Waiting?

The silence thickened around them, broken only by the soft crackle of burning debris and the distant wail of emergency sirens approaching from far across the city. Damian didn't flinch. He stood at the edge of the crater, eyes locked on the glowing figure below, his body ready to move in any direction—attack, defend, retreat. But his mind raced with sharper questions.

Who is he? What is he?

And what the hell did he just bring to Gotham?

Damian moved in, step by slow step, his boots grinding softly against scorched grass, crushed leaves, and fractured bits of concrete still warm from impact. The air thickened with each footfall. It wasn't smoke or fire—it was the aura, radiating off the boy like heat off molten metal. The closer Damian got, the more it pressed against him. Not painful, but oppressive. Like standing too close to a reactor—silent, thrumming, and ready to blow.

That glow—bright pink, tinged with violet at the edges—pulsed in steady rhythm, forming a thin shell around the boy. It rippled every few seconds, warping the air around it like a mirage. There was no sound, no crackle or hum, but Damian could feel it, deep in his bones. Every instinct told him to be careful. To back off.

He didn't.

He studied the boy's body, every inch of it, eyes sweeping over the shape, looking for twitches, breath, flickers of motion. Nothing moved, except the slow, even rise and fall of his chest. Not labored. Not ragged. Controlled. Like sleep—or sedation.

Damian stepped right up to the edge of the crater, the pink light casting faint shadows across his face. And now, for the first time, he got a clear view.

This wasn't some civilian who fell out of the sky. The teen was wearing a suit—a full-body tactical ensemble, sleek and streamlined, with overlapping armor plating that looked forged more than manufactured. It wasn't bulky. It was precision-built, contoured to move. The materials didn't match anything Damian had ever seen in the League or the Batcave. It shimmered faintly under the aura's glow—silver and deep matte black, threaded with microscopic circuitry that pulsed through the fabric like living veins. Tech that was way beyond anything most people had access to.

And then his eyes locked onto the chest plate.

Beneath a layer of ash and dust, half-obscured by scorch marks, was a logo.

A stylized green and purple "L," ringed by a polished metallic circle.

LexCorp.

Damian went still. The muscles in his neck coiled tight. His breath slowed.

Luthor.

The name hit like a punch to the sternum. Cold. Familiar. Dangerous.

Lex Luthor didn't do charity. He didn't hand out suits to lost children or build armor for random experiments. If this teen was wearing LexCorp tech—this advanced—it wasn't by accident. He was designed for something. A test subject. A weapon. A ticking bomb. Maybe all three.

Damian's mind went into overdrive, piecing together every angle. A boy falls out of the sky in a Luthor-built suit, radiating some unknown energy, and lands in Gotham of all places? That wasn't bad luck. That was a message. Or a move in a game no one else knew had started.

He circled the crater slowly, eyes never leaving the boy. The aura pulsed again—brighter this time—but didn't expand. No sudden flares. No instability. Just that constant throb, like a heartbeat out of sync with the world.

Damian reached for the communicator in his hoodie pocket, fingers brushing the edge.

He should call Bruce. He knew that. This was bigger than him. It was alien tech—or worse. The kind of thing that demanded containment protocols, scans, lockdown procedures. A dozen contingency plans were drilled into him for situations exactly like this.

But his hand stopped.

He remembered the way Bruce had looked at him—past him, really. The cold judgment. The distance. The lack of trust. He thought of his brothers, surrounding him with doubt, accusing him, cutting him off before he could even explain. They'd see this teen and jump to conclusions. Just like they had with him.

Weapon. Threat. Contain it.

Damian clenched his jaw and lowered his hand.

Not yet.

He'd figure out who this boy was. What he was. What Luthor had done.

On his own.

Before anyone else got their hands on him.

Suddenly, Damian's head snapped up at the sound—faint, but unmistakable. Sirens. At first, just a single wail somewhere in the distance, but quickly joined by others, layering over each other like warning bells in a war zone. Red and blue strobes began flickering through the canopy of trees that bordered Gotham Park, distorted by branches and leaves, but getting closer with every second.

He clicked his tongue sharply, annoyed at himself. His hand moved on instinct to his side—reaching for the comfort of his utility belt, for a smoke pellet, a grapnel gun, something.

His fingers met empty fabric.

No belt.

No gadgets.

No weapons.

No commlink.

Just jeans, a hoodie, and scorched sneakers.

Civilian.

His jaw tightened. He hadn't planned for this. He wasn't on patrol, wasn't chasing leads or tailing suspects. He'd left the mansion in a storm of anger, needing space, needing air. This was supposed to be a walk. A night to breathe. To be left alone. Not... this. Not a living weapon falling from the sky wearing a LexCorp insignia like a branded curse.

His mind spun fast, recalibrating.

No gear meant no backup. No way to ping the Batcave, no call to Oracle, no silent signal to Nightwing or Tim. Bruce would know something had happened—he always did—but he wouldn't know Damian was here, standing at ground zero. And that mattered. Because if the GCPD showed up first, or worse, if ARGUS or DEO or one of the other government agencies monitoring Gotham's paranormal messes got their hands on this guy...

It would be over. Damian knew how they worked. The boy would be bagged, tagged, and dissected before anyone even figured out he had a name.

He looked down again, the pink light from the aura casting a soft glow on Damian's face. The kid still hadn't moved. Still breathing, still unconscious. Whatever force shield protected him hadn't weakened, but it hadn't lashed out either. It pulsed gently, steadily. Like a warning. Or a countdown.

This was no ordinary tech. LexCorp hadn't just built a suit—they'd built this. A person wrapped in power, disguised as a boy. Or maybe a boy buried under the weight of something far more dangerous.

The sirens were getting closer now, echoing across the park in sharp bursts. And then—thump-thump-thump—the deep, mechanical rhythm of helicopter blades cutting through the night sky. Searchlights flared to life in the clouds above, wide beams sweeping the park, carving through the darkness like knives.

Damian's breath hitched for a second. He backed away from the edge of the crater, eyes flicking across the treeline, scanning escape routes, blind spots, anything that would get him and the kid out before the spotlight locked in.

They had maybe two minutes. Less if someone on the ground already had visual.

No plan. No gear. No time.

But Damian had never needed permission to act.

He made a call, quick and quiet, to the only person who wouldn't question it.

Himself.

He turned back toward the crater, narrowed his eyes, and prepared to move. This boy didn't belong to the cops. He didn't belong to Lex. And he damn sure wasn't getting left behind.

Damian crouched low at the lip of the crater, the ground beneath him cracked and scorched, still radiating a dry, searing heat that clung to the soles of his boots. Smoke drifted in lazy spirals from the fractured earth, and the stench of ozone and burned metal lingered in the air. The boy lay sprawled across the torn ground like a dropped marionette, limbs slack, his chest rising and falling in a slow, almost mechanical rhythm.

Damian moved with practiced caution, shifting his weight forward until he was just within reach. His fingers hovered over the pink glow that cocooned the boy's body, the heat prickling against his skin like static before a lightning strike. The aura buzzed faintly—not a sound, exactly, more like a pressure in the air, vibrating against his bones. It was wrong. Not magic. Not tech. Something else entirely.

Still, he pressed in.

The instant his fingertips brushed the edge of the armored suit, the boy's eyes snapped open—wide, bright, and electric with terror.

Before Damian could fully process it, the boy lunged upright, his movements impossibly fast, as if his body had been spring-loaded for panic. He jerked into a crouch, limbs tense, hands braced against the dirt like an animal about to bolt. His mouth flew open, and a stream of words came tumbling out—fast, frantic, and completely unintelligible.

It wasn't English. It wasn't anything Damian had ever heard before. And he'd heard a lot.

The language was guttural and sharp, but carried a strange rhythm, like there was a structure to it, maybe even a syntax—like it was half-spoken, half-transmitted. Not random babbling. Not madness. Language. But alien.

Damian's brain raced through his mental database: not Kryptonian, not Martian, not Tamaranian or Rannian. Nothing from Thanagar. Nothing from the League's interstellar records or the Batcave's archives. This was something new.

The boy scuttled backward in jerky, uncoordinated movements, as if he wasn't entirely sure how his own body worked. He stumbled over his own legs, breathing fast, shallow, frantic. The aura around him pulsed hard—hotter, brighter, erratic. It crackled with raw energy, casting streaks of pink light across the crater walls like lightning in a storm cloud. Damian could feel it on his skin now—tingling, alive, almost sentient.

The boy's eyes darted everywhere—trees, sky, shadows. His hands clenched into fists, then opened again like he couldn't decide whether to attack or run. His muscles were locked in survival mode. His face—too young for this, too human for this—was twisted in fear, not aggression.

Damian slowly raised his hands, palms up and empty. No weapons. No sudden moves. His voice was steady, even. "Easy. I'm not here to hurt you."

The boy didn't flinch at the sound of his voice—but he didn't understand it either. His eyes locked onto Damian's face, scanning him with a mix of suspicion and desperate hope, like he wanted to believe the tone, even if the words meant nothing.

Damian held his ground, every instinct telling him to stay low, non-threatening, patient. He watched the boy closely—the way his gaze jumped to exits, the way his body flinched at every distant noise, every flicker of movement. There was trauma behind those eyes. Not fear of a stranger—fear of what would happen next.

Someone had done this to him. Had conditioned this kind of reaction.

Damian's gaze dropped to the chest plate again, and the LexCorp insignia stared back at him like a brand burned into steel. Green and purple. Cold. Corporate. Clinical.

And suddenly it all fit.

This wasn't just a LexCorp suit. It was containment. Control. A cage. The boy wasn't wearing it. It was wearing him.

Someone—Luthor—had built this boy into a weapon. Had torn out whatever life he had before and filled it with fear, programming, instinct. Damian didn't know if it had been surgery, brainwashing, genetics, or all of the above. But he knew what he was looking at now.

A victim.

And possibly the most dangerous one he'd ever encountered.

Damian's jaw clenched. His voice dropped to a near whisper—more for himself than for the boy.

"I don't know what he did to you," he said quietly, "but I'm not him."

The boy didn't answer. Didn't understand. But he didn't run either. Didn't strike. His breathing was still ragged, but slower now. Controlled.

For now, that was enough.

However, the sirens were no longer a distant echo—they were here, howling through the city like wolves circling prey. Their pitch bounced between the high-rises that framed Robinson Park, echoing off steel and glass with maddening intensity. Spotlights from incoming helicopters swept across the treetops, cutting long, blinding arcs through the smoke and casting flickering shadows across the cratered ground.

Damian's pulse surged—not with fear, but with focus. His mind snapped into overdrive, calculating routes, timing, probabilities. If the GCPD arrived first, they'd lock the scene down, raise questions no one had answers to, and cart the kid off to a black site before anyone could intervene.

They were running out of time.

He turned to the boy, still seated at the center of the crater like a fuse waiting to be lit. The pink aura around him sparked erratically, no longer a steady pulse but a wild, unstable shimmer, like the shielding was struggling to hold its form. The boy's chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths, but his eyes were locked on Damian—watchful, cautious, uncertain.

Damian stepped forward, carefully, extending a hand again.

"We have to move. Now."

The words were firm, urgent—but low. Controlled.

The boy tensed, eyes narrowing—

BOOM.

The sky split open above them with a sound so loud and sharp it tore through the air like a bolt of steel. Not thunder. Not natural. Something designed to announce its presence.

Damian's head snapped up.

A streak of silver and violet burned through the clouds, trailing smoke and static behind it like an open wound in the sky.

They came in fast—two of them—descending with terrifying precision.

Robots.

Sleek. Streamlined. Built for war.

No bulky joints or exposed mechanics—these things were clean-cut and refined, humanoid only in shape. Their alloy plating was matte silver with faint traces of violet light pulsing beneath the surface, and propulsion jets roared from their backs and legs in perfectly controlled bursts. No wasted movement. No hesitation.

Military drones—LexCorp military drones.

Each one had a red, horizontal visor glowing across its faceplate like a scanner locked in permanent sweep mode. Their arms, thick and modular, were weaponized—no hands, just built-in tech: plasma cannons, grappling systems, something bristling beneath panel plates that hadn't fully deployed yet.

And right in the center of their chests, plain as day, was the LexCorp insignia.

Damian's stomach turned to stone.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement—fast. The boy reacted the moment the drones pierced the cloud cover.

His entire body tensed, every line of him pulled taut like a bowstring. His fingers clenched into trembling fists, and his aura surged with raw, unfiltered energy. What had been flickering and weak suddenly roared to life—brighter, angrier, hotter. Pink light bled into white at the edges, casting wild shadows against the crater.

His breathing shifted—sharper, rougher. His eyes flared, fully glowing now, not just lit by panic but something else. Something darker.

Rage.

Recognition.

Damian didn't need translation. The boy knew exactly what those machines were.

These weren't just weapons. They were memories. They were trauma in metal form.

Damian's mind connected the dots instantly: LexCorp drones. Precision-engineered. Retrieval tech.

This boy didn't just fall out of the sky. He escaped.

The boy sucked in a breath, chest rising like he was about to scream or explode. Maybe both. The air around him began to shimmer with raw heat, distorting reality like a broken lens.

Above them, the drones locked on, their visors glowing brighter as targeting systems engaged. Limbs shifted. Panels opened. Servo motors adjusted with terrifying exactness as they initiated descent, flanking the crater like vultures circling a carcass.

Damian backed up a step, instincts flaring.

This was about to go loud.

The first GCPD squad cars screeched to a halt at the edge of Robinson Park, their tires carving deep grooves into the grass as they swerved off the road and slammed to a stop. Doors flew open. Officers spilled out in a rush—guns drawn, eyes wide, adrenaline firing before they even knew what they were looking at. Flashlights flicked on. Shouts pierced the night.

"Hands where we can see them!"

More cruisers arrived behind the first wave, their red and blue strobes bouncing wildly across the trees and grass, throwing frantic shadows across the crater's edge like a strobe-lit battlefield. Within seconds, the chaos multiplied. GCFD trucks rolled up next, firefighters already jumping from their rigs, lugging stretchers, oxygen tanks, and hose reels. Smoke still hung in the air like a shroud, forcing some to pull masks up over their faces as they moved through the wreckage, looking for casualties.

In the center of it all, Damian and the boy stood alone—surrounded.

The boy was still in the crater, huddled in the pulsing glow of his aura, which flared and dimmed like a short-circuiting sun. Damian crouched close, shielding them both from panicked eyes and twitchy trigger fingers.

He didn't get the chance to explain.

Because that was when the sky cracked open.

Whrrr-KRAAAACK!

The sound ripped through the night like a lightning strike from a god.

The human-sized machines, built like soldiers—sleek, armored, efficient. They didn't hover awkwardly or stumble on landing. They glided, using bursts of blue-white propulsion to position themselves with surgical control.

Damian didn't have time to react before the first drone opened fire.

Blue plasma streaked through the air in neat, controlled bursts—retrieval fire, Damian realized instantly. Designed not to kill, but to disable. Paralyze. Subdue.

One bolt struck just feet from a GCPD officer, sending him flying into a tree with a choked cry. Another tore a gaping hole through the side of a fire engine. Panic exploded across the scene. Officers dove for cover, some screaming into radios, others dragging the wounded out of the line of fire. Firefighters dropped their gear and scrambled behind their trucks, eyes wide with disbelief.

Damian reacted on instinct, spinning toward the boy. "Get down!"

But he didn't have to.

The boy's body was already responding. His eyes flared—pink light pouring from them in full, unfiltered brilliance. His hands snapped up, not in defense, but in reflex—pure, unconscious survival. The aura around him swelled outward with a sudden boom of invisible force, expanding into a dome of shimmering light.

The plasma bolts struck the barrier with high-pitched hisses, splashing across the surface like acid on glass. The dome held. It absorbed the hits, sending ripples across the mana field that shimmered like heat over asphalt.

Damian blinked. His knees hit the scorched ground beside the boy.

Not tech. Not Kryptonian shielding. Not a force field.

Mana.

Raw magic.

The energy wasn't being controlled—it was channeling through him, untrained, instinctual, but real. The boy didn't even seem to realize he was doing it. His jaw was clenched, his breathing ragged, sweat beading on his face as he tried to hold the shield. His gaze flicked wildly between the drones above and the cops behind them, panic fighting instinct in every movement.

He was protecting everyone. Even the people who had pointed guns at him moments before.

The drones kept firing—precision bursts, low-yield plasma meant to weaken shields, not destroy. The aura flickered under the pressure, pulsing erratically, and Damian knew it wouldn't hold forever.

His brain shifted gears. He scanned the battlefield like a general, every moving part a variable. The cops weren't the target. The fire crews weren't even in the equation.

The drones were locked onto the boy.

They're following a directive, Damian realized. Retrieve the asset. Ignore everything else.

He crouched beside the boy, voice low and sharp. "They're here for you. Just you. If we can draw them out of the park, they'll follow."

The boy didn't speak. He didn't need to. His glowing eyes locked onto Damian's with recognition—maybe not of the words, but of the intent.

He nodded once. Quick. Nervous. Willing.

Damian rose to a crouch, scanning the perimeter. Flashing lights. Guns. Civilians. Confusion everywhere. No time to explain. No time to get clearance. He shouted toward the nearest group of officers, ducked behind a cruiser.

"Get everyone out of the park! Now! They're not after you—they're here for him!"

An officer popped up. "Who the hell are—?"

"MOVE!"

The tone in Damian's voice cracked like a whip—pure command, clean and lethal. It was the kind of voice Batman used when the time for questions was over.

That got them moving. One of the lieutenants began shouting into a comm unit, barking orders.

"Evacuate the perimeter! Move the wounded to the south end! Get the civilians clear!"

Damian turned back to the boy, hand on his shoulder.

"Drop the shield when I say. Then run. Don't look back."

The pink dome flared again as another volley slammed into it, cracking the air with heat and static. The drones tightened their formation, weapons whirring, scanners pulsing red.

There was no more time.

Damian's plan was reckless, half-formed, and dangerous as hell.

But it was better than watching this kid get dragged back into whatever nightmare Luthor had built.

And if they pulled it off, they'd both live long enough to figure out who he was.

And what exactly Lex Luthor had turned him into.

The instant the last of the civilians were cleared—herded south under frantic GCPD commands, stumbling through smoke and flashing lights—Damian acted.

"Now," he said, low and sharp, eyes locking with the boy's.

The boy hesitated—just for a breath—but then exhaled hard, a ragged, shuddering release of tension. The barrier flickered, pulsed once in defiance, then shattered like glass under pressure. Pink light dissolved into a mist of glowing particles that drifted upward, catching in the smoke before fading entirely.

Damian didn't wait.

His hand snapped out and latched onto the boy's wrist—tight, firm, not hurting but unbreakable. He pulled.

"Run."

They moved as one.

Damian led the charge, weaving through the edge of the crater with fluid speed, his boots hitting scorched grass and cracked soil in perfect rhythm. Behind him, the boy stumbled at first, legs unsure, body disoriented from trauma and overload. But Damian didn't slow. He yanked once, just enough to force motion—and then, the boy matched his pace.

Not perfect. But fast.

They tore through the wreckage-strewn remains of Robinson Park, weaving around shattered benches and smoking rubble, darting between trees half-crumbled from the crash impact. Sirens blared behind them. Radios crackled. Shouts echoed off the trees.

But none of that mattered now.

Because the drones noticed.

The shift was immediate.

In the sky above, the two LexCorp units pivoted mid-flight with eerie synchronicity, scanners pulsing a deeper red, their bodies rotating with a mechanical hiss. Their weapon systems shifted, recalibrated. Their target designations changed.

They weren't focused on the crater anymore.

They were focused on movement.

On escape.

On them.

A shrill whine split the air as both drones surged forward, propulsion systems igniting in a howl of blue light. They dropped altitude fast, engines screaming as they locked in on their fleeing targets.

"Move!" Damian barked, yanking the boy hard as they ducked around a crumbling statue, the marble split from base to head by the shockwave. They dove through a twisted line of hedges, limbs whipping at them like claws, dirt and soot kicking up underfoot. "They're locked on. We pull them away from the park, they'll follow. They won't risk hitting bystanders."

The boy didn't answer. Couldn't. But Damian felt it—the resolve in the way his grip tightened, in the way he kept pace, his breath ragged but steady. No more hesitation. Just forward.

They sprinted through the park's darker edges now, where the lights from the police cruisers couldn't reach and the trees formed jagged silhouettes in the smoke. Around them, the world became a blur of motion—branches cracking underfoot, ruined lampposts leaning at dangerous angles, scorched grass giving way to raw earth.

A plasma bolt struck behind them—FOOM!—exploding a tree in a burst of splinters and flame. Another followed, slicing through the air with a flash that lit Damian's path in eerie blue. Heat licked at his back, close enough to feel, not close enough to kill. Yet.

"Keep low!" Damian shouted. "Cut left!"

They ducked beneath a bent steel archway once meant to mark a walking trail. The boy moved faster now—fear or instinct, Damian couldn't tell—but he was keeping up. Close.

More shots rained down, tearing craters into the ground just feet behind them. One bolt slammed into a light post ahead, sending it crashing across their path. Damian vaulted it in a single motion, tugging the boy with him. They rolled, hit the ground, and kept going.

His mind ran calculations with every breath. The drones were fast, but predictable. Tactical AI. They'd prioritize capture over chaos. That gave him an angle—if he could get enough distance, enough cover, he could set an ambush. Maybe hijack one. Maybe lure them into a blind spot. Something.

But he needed time.

He needed a minute.

Even thirty seconds.

And so far, they were still alive.

His lungs burned—not from the exertion, but from the pressure that tightened in his chest with every step. The tension was suffocating, coiled tight beneath his ribs, a mix of calculation and cold adrenaline. They were nearing the edge of Robinson Park now, the eastern border—where the trees thinned out, the manicured grass gave way to cracked pavement, and the ruins of an old greenhouse rose up ahead like the bones of a forgotten time.

It was open ground.

No dense foliage to duck into. No alleyways. No shadows deep enough to disappear in. Just broken walkways, overgrown vines, and shattered glass that crunched underfoot like brittle ice.

They had maybe twenty more yards of breathing room. No more.

And the drones knew it.

With a thunderous boom, the ground jumped under Damian's feet. A LexCorp drone dropped from the sky in a controlled descent, landing directly in their path. Its propulsion jets scorched the ground in a flare of blue light, blasting debris outward in a ring of smoke and ash. The pavement buckled beneath its weight, and it landed in a low, mechanical crouch—like a predator bracing to pounce.

A second later, another drone crashed down behind them, cutting off their retreat with the same brutal precision.

Boxed in.

Damian skidded to a halt, boots grinding against cracked stone. His arm instinctively shot backward, tightening around the boy's wrist to steady him. He shifted, placing himself slightly in front, his body falling into a low, ready stance—compact, balanced, dangerous. His eyes locked on the machines.

The drones stood tall, rising from their landing crouches with eerie synchronization. They towered over Damian, their frames built like humanoid tanks—sleek matte alloy plating with violet-blue trim, no wasted mass, just pure design. Their visors glowed blood-red in horizontal bars across expressionless faces, pulsing in slow sync like they were breathing together. Shoulder panels hissed open with sharp mechanical bursts, revealing retractable weapon ports and compact launcher units embedded just beneath the surface.

The air felt charged, vibrating faintly with the hum of active systems powering up.

Then, for the first time, one of them spoke.

“ANODITE: COMPLY."

The voice was low, processed, and inhuman—cold as steel, flat as glass. It echoed slightly, like it wasn't meant for ears but for data logs.

The boy behind Damian went still. Completely still.

"ANODITE: STAND DOWN. RETURN FOR IMMEDIATE DECONTAINMENT."

Damian's eyes narrowed.

Anodite?

Not a name.

A classification. A tag. The way you labeled a weapon, a test subject—something made, not born.

The boy—Anodite—reacted like the words had struck him across the face. His chest hitched. Shoulders tensed. The soft pink glow that had been dimming since the start of their flight now flared to life, bursting in erratic pulses down his arms, lighting up the veins across his neck like molten lightning. The air around him seemed to warp, distorting slightly with every flicker of the aura.

Damian glanced over his shoulder.

The boy's expression had cracked.

Terror still lived behind his glowing eyes, but something else was bleeding through now—anger. Raw, wounded, buried deep and starting to surface. The kind of fury born from being caged for too long. From being named by people who never once asked who you were.

Damian's voice cut through the silence, sharp and flat.

"He's not going with you."

The drone's head tilted—just slightly. It processed the voice. The refusal.

"NONCOMPLIANCE DETECTED. LETHAL FORCE AUTHORIZED IF RETRIEVAL FAILS."

With a high-pitched whine, the drones' weapon systems extended fully—barrels telescoping into place, emitters glowing with concentrated plasma, targeting optics clicking and adjusting with precise, cold efficiency. Their stances shifted, locking into combat posture. No more warnings. No more restraint.

They were preparing to end the resistance.

Damian felt the boy step closer behind him, his aura flaring brighter, the heat radiating in waves now—raw energy with nowhere to go.

Cornered.

Outgunned.

And out of time.

But Damian didn't flinch.

He raised one hand, fingers flexing slightly—no weapons, no tech, just intent.

"Then you'll have to go through me first."

And in that instant, between the machines' hum and the boy's rising power, Robinson Park became a powder keg.

The words "lethal force authorized" were still hanging in the air, echoing in the static-charged silence, when Damian's eyes snapped left. His mind processed the terrain in a flash—debris, shattered stone, broken limbs of trees—and then he saw it.

Half-buried beneath a mound of scorched dirt lay a fractured metal pipe, about three feet long, likely torn from underground infrastructure during the impact. It was twisted, blackened at the edges, one end jagged like a broken blade. But it was solid. Dense. Enough weight to matter in the right hands.

‘Mine.’ Damian lunged without hesitation.

In one fluid motion, he snatched the pipe off the ground, twirled it once in his grip to feel the balance—slightly front-heavy, but manageable—and then launched forward.

The nearest drone was already tracking him.

A bolt of blue plasma screamed through the air, passing inches from his shoulder and slamming into a nearby tree. The explosion lit up the park like a flash grenade—splinters and bark raining down as the trunk shattered in a bloom of fire and smoke.

Damian didn't flinch.

He'd faced live fire before. He'd trained in worse. The only difference now was that he had no armor. No gadgets. No WayneTech to bail him out. Just a pipe, his speed, and a lifetime of learned violence burning in his blood.

He ducked under another shot, muscles tight with adrenaline, and sprinted toward a crumbling stone bench. His foot hit the edge and he vaulted up, using the fractured structure as a springboard. In midair, he twisted his body, bringing the pipe down like a hammer.

CRACK.

The metal slammed into the drone's shoulder joint with a sound like a car crash. The casing dented inward with a crunch of metal and a burst of orange sparks. The impact staggered the drone, forcing it to reel back half a step, its servos whining as it recalibrated.

Damian hit the ground in a roll, recovered instantly, and came in again—this time low, swinging the pipe in a brutal arc toward the joint behind the machine's knee.

CLANG.

Direct hit.

The drone jerked violently, systems compensating to stay upright, but the damage showed—its movement glitched for a split second, just enough for Damian to register a small victory.

Then came the counterstrike.

The machine pivoted with terrifying speed and swiped at him with its forearm, the limb moving like a piston. Damian barely avoided the brunt of it, but the blow grazed his ribs and sent him tumbling across the pavement. He hit hard, rolled, and came up on one knee, chest heaving, pipe still in hand.

His side screamed with pain.

But he didn't stop.

Behind him, the second drone stepped forward, weapons still trained but not firing.

Because the boy—the Anodite—hadn't moved.

He stood frozen, his feet planted in the dirt, the glowing aura around him flaring with erratic surges of light. His fists were clenched so tight his knuckles had gone white, and his whole body trembled like a live wire. His breathing was shallow, panicked. His eyes, wide and haunted, were fixed on the drones—not with confusion, not anymore, but with raw, animal fear.

The name had done something to him. Anodite. It wasn't just a code—it was a leash. A trigger. A wound.

He wasn't acting like a weapon now.

He was acting like a prisoner who knew the guards had come to drag him back.

"Hey!" Damian shouted, teeth clenched as he dodged another shot that seared past his ear. The heat of it burned a streak across his cheek. "Snap out of it! I can't do this alone!"

The drone pressed forward, stepping into range again. Damian ducked another swipe and swung upward with the pipe, slamming it into the joint beneath the machine's arm. More sparks flew, and the drone recoiled—but barely.

Damian's grip slipped. His stance faltered. One more hit, and he might not get back up.

He planted his foot, pushed through the pain, and struck again—aiming for the joint at the hip this time.

Another hit.

Another hiss of heat.

But he was running out of gas. Fast.

The drones were recovery units built for battlefield extractions. Subdue. Secure. Survive. They were machines designed to outlast resistance, not overpower it immediately. Which meant Damian wasn't fighting for victory—he was fighting for time.

And time was almost gone.

He turned, bruised and bleeding, toward the boy still frozen in place, trembling behind him.

"You have to fight," Damian growled, voice low, ragged. "Whatever they did to you—whoever they made you think you were—forget it. You're not theirs anymore."

The boy's glow intensified, veins lighting up like molten circuits beneath his skin.

Still trembling.

Still scared.

But something in his eyes shifted.

The light stopped flickering.

And for the first time, it started to focus.

Meanwhile, the drones recalibrated with cold, mechanical efficiency, their movements precise and terrifyingly fast. Both units shifted their weight in perfect sync, armor plates realigning with sharp hisses and clicks as internal systems adjusted. The one directly ahead of Damian stood to its full height—easily over seven feet—plasma cannon sliding into place along its right arm, glowing coils locking into alignment. Its chest thrummed with energy, the LexCorp insignia pulsing faintly beneath the surface.

The second flanked him to the right, every motion clinical. It stepped wide, positioning itself to cut off any escape route. Their formations were textbook—military-grade containment tactics. Squeeze the target, fire from opposing angles, eliminate resistance before it could gather.

Damian didn't need to guess what was coming.

The cannons charged.

A rising, teeth-clenching whine filled the air as energy built within the weapons—concentrated plasma, drawn into glowing, unstable spheres at the tips of the barrels. They pulsed like sickly stars, their light staining the smoke-polluted air. The frequency of the sound made his skull ache. His fingers tensed around the pipe—a weapon already warped and blackened from impact. It shook in his grip, half-useless now, but he didn't let it go.

His breath came ragged and shallow, muscles screaming from the last round of fighting, every inch of him bruised and burning. But he stood his ground.

He wouldn't beg.

He wouldn't flinch.

If this was it, he'd face it on his feet.

Then—everything changed.

A sudden pressure surged through the air, not a sound but a sensation—a deep, resonating hum that rippled through the ground like the distant thrum of a monolith awakening. It vibrated through Damian's boots, through his chest, through the bones in his arms.

He had just enough time to pivot halfway—eyes wide, instincts firing—

Then the world exploded in pink light.

A tidal wave of raw mana energy erupted behind him, slamming into the drones like a battering ram made of sound and fire. The force of it knocked Damian off his feet instantly. He didn't resist—it was like being hit by a shockwave from a grenade. He tucked into a roll, just like he'd been trained, letting the momentum carry him across the torn ground. He hit hard—shoulder, hip, ribs—but he kept the pipe. Always keep your weapon.

Air punched from his lungs.

He landed hard, dust and ash in his mouth, stars in his vision.

But when he looked up—he saw him.

The boy.

No longer frozen. No longer trembling.

He stood in the blackened heart of the battlefield, feet planted in the scorched earth, back straight, chin raised. The fear was still in his eyes, but it had changed. It wasn't paralyzing now. It was forged. Channeled. Controlled.

His arms were raised, both hands glowing with radiant pink energy, pulsing with raw power that lit up the entire clearing. Not flickering. Not wild. Focused. The aura wasn't just clinging to him anymore—it expanded outward in arcs and tendrils, crackling through the air like enchanted lightning. Magic, but alive. Elemental.

A force becoming aware of itself.

The drones had been thrown like toys—one smashed into a thick tree trunk, splitting it down the middle with a deafening crack, its body sparking and twitching. The other had been launched into a shallow ditch, skidding across gravel and soil, leaving behind a smoking trail of gouged earth and shattered plating.

And the boy hadn't moved an inch since.

He just stood there.

Breathing hard.

Power flowing around him like a storm barely held in check.

Damian, still on one knee, eyes stung from the light, felt something rare coil in his chest—a flicker of awe, tightly laced with relief.

He did it.

He fought back.

And now the battlefield wasn't two drones closing in on a boy too scared to move.

Now it was them who had something to fear.

Though the silence after the blast was short-lived—just a breath, just long enough to register the devastation the boy had unleashed. Then came the sound.

A shrill, mechanical screech tore through the smoky sky above them.

Damian's head snapped up.

From the haze and cloud cover, more shapes dropped like fangs falling from a steel jaw—dark silhouettes lit by blue flame. Jet thrusters ignited with a banshee howl, scorching arcs into the smoke as they descended. One by one, they hit the ground with bone-rattling force, their landings throwing up waves of dust and dirt, impact craters blooming beneath their armored feet.

Two.

Four.

Six.

Eight.

They formed a perfect half-circle—symmetrical, exact. No wasted movement. A wall of precision-engineered soldiers in humanoid frames, their matte alloy surfaces gleaming under the flashing light of the fires they'd left in their wake. The whir of internal mechanisms followed, a rising hum that grew into a chorus of death. Red visors flared to life across all eight units, scanning and locking on with laser accuracy.

No voices this time. No commands.

No mercy.

Just war.

All eight drones raised their arms.

Click. Whine. Lock.

Then came the storm.

A blistering barrage of plasma fire roared toward them in synchronized bursts, white-blue bolts screaming through the air in arcs of deadly light. The sky itself seemed to catch fire. The first impacts hit the ground around them like bombs, vaporizing grass, splitting earth, turning once-familiar trees into erupting columns of ash and splinters. The remnants of park benches twisted into molten slag. The very air shimmered from the heat, folding in on itself like it was being torn.

Damian barely had time to brace before the world turned white.

But they weren't incinerated.

Because the boy didn't fall.

He held.

The mana shield sprang up around them like a rose blooming through fire—vibrant, alive, defiant. The magic expanded in a radiant dome, stretching wide enough to protect them both. Every blast of plasma struck it like a drumbeat of war, hammering it again and again, and with each strike the shield rippled violently—but held.

Flashes of pink clashed against the white-blue of LexCorp's assault, bathing the battlefield in surreal, flickering light. Every impact sent tremors through the ground. Every second it held felt like a miracle.

Damian stood close, shielded just behind the boy, his arm raised to protect his face from the worst of the radiant heat. The air smelled of ozone and scorched metal. Smoke rolled around them like waves.

He risked a glance sideways—and what he saw hit harder than the explosion.

The boy was rooted in place, arms raised, fingers spread wide as if physically holding back the incoming storm. His whole body trembled—not with fear, but exertion. Veins along his arms glowed faintly pink, like the power was running directly through his bloodstream. Sweat poured from his brow in thick rivulets. His jaw was clenched tight, his eyes wide, but focused.

The shield shimmered. Cracked. Reformed.

But it held.

"He's pushing himself too hard," Damian muttered under his breath, his voice nearly lost in the roar of weapons fire. He dropped low, eyes scanning the chaos—looking for angles, escape routes, blind spots in the drones' formation. Anything. He'd fought trained soldiers, maniacs, meta-humans—but this was different. This was cold, relentless, designed.

They were being driven back inch by inch. The drones advanced like a living wall, precise and unrelenting. Every few seconds, they moved forward in formation, stepping through the smoke like executioners, never breaking rhythm.

The plasma never stopped.

Still, the boy didn't fall.

He didn't cry out. He didn't collapse.

He refused.

He stood between them and death like a dam holding back a flood, his magic flaring brighter with every breath he took—every heartbeat a declaration of defiance.

Damian could feel the ground beneath them crack.

Could hear the drones' servos tightening.

Could smell the ozone burn rising sharper.

They couldn't hold out forever.

But for now—for this moment—

He was still standing.

The boy hadn't spoken—not a word, not even a sound—but his silence said everything.

His expression had changed. The fear that once dominated his face had drained away, leaving something colder, something ancient. His jaw was set. His stance, unshakable.

And his eyes—

They blazed.

Not softly. Not subtly. Not like before.

Twin beams of white-hot light erupted from them, brilliant and absolute. Damian instinctively raised a hand to shield his face, the intensity forcing his pupils to contract. It was like staring into the heart of a star.

Then he realized: the shield wasn't holding anymore.

It was growing.

No longer a barrier fending off attacks, it was a siphon—pulling in power. The boy wasn't just defending. He was feeding.

The earth trembled beneath their feet, but it wasn't the drones this time—it was him.

The grass around them blackened in seconds, shriveling into brittle curls before turning to ash. Leaves on nearby trees quivered violently, vibrating as though caught in a wind that didn't exist. Then, one by one, they collapsed inward, disintegrating as their color drained. The life was leaving them, funneled somewhere unseen.

Damian's eyes dropped to the ground. Cracks spiderwebbed beneath the boy's feet, veins of glowing pink mana pulsing through the earth like bioluminescent roots. They spread outward, claiming more of the park with every second. The boy was drawing energy from the world itself. Nature, space, air—all of it bled toward him.

Damian stepped back—carefully. His heart beat faster, not from fear, but from caution. Something was happening. Something huge. And he wasn't sure if even the boy could control it.

Then it broke.

The shield burst outward—not violently, not destructively, but like a soap bubble finally collapsing under pressure. A wave of pressure exploded across the park, visible in the way leaves and dirt flew away in concentric ripples. Trees bent. Benches overturned. The closest drones staggered, forced to adjust, recalibrating their stances mid-step.

In the center of it all—at the epicenter of the storm—he changed.

Damian could only watch.

The boy's skin darkened in real time, shifting from its pale tone to a deep, flawless shade of purple. It gleamed like wet obsidian under starlight, smooth and mirror-like. But it wasn't just color—it was texture. His form became partially translucent, as if his body was made of magic wrapped around light. You could see the mana moving within him, arcing across his limbs, pulsing beneath the surface like liquid lightning.

Then his hair ignited.

It flowed upward, no longer strands but streamers of radiant energy—pink, impossibly bright, alive. It moved like silk caught in a current, trailing behind him in long, elegant tendrils. Each strand flickered and flowed as if responding to the rhythm of the power now bursting from his core.

Wings formed next.

Not feathered. Not mechanical.

Wings of pure mana erupted from his back—arched, swirling constructs of energy that flickered like candlelight but held shape like blades. They shimmered in constant motion, wingspan wide, fluid, alive.

His eyes—if they could still be called that—were gone.

No whites. No irises.

Just twin orbs of solid, blinding white light, glowing with a purpose that was no longer human. They burned with will, not emotion. Not anger. Not fear.

Power.

Damian stood frozen, pipe still clutched in one trembling hand, breathing hard as he stared up at the boy.

He had seen gods wear flesh. He had stood beside Kryptonians. He had fought Martians. He had stared down monsters built in labs and legends born of prophecy.

But this—this was different.

This wasn't a weapon.

It was a being.

Raw magic, concentrated into form, barely human at all anymore. Alien. Elemental. Alive in a way most people could never be.

The drones hesitated. Their visors flickered rapidly, red light blinking in erratic patterns as their targeting systems faltered. They were trying to process what they were seeing—trying to match it with any profile in their databases. But this form... this transformation... wasn't in their programming.

Damian didn't speak. Didn't move.

He wasn't sure he could.

Because the figure standing before him might have once been a terrified boy.

But now?

Now he was something else entirely.

All eight drones locked on as one, their targeting systems flashing crimson in synchronized pulses like a war drum. The transformation hadn't caused hesitation—it had triggered escalation. The LexCorp protocols didn't register awe. They registered threat level. And this new form—the radiant figure cloaked in energy and pulsing with alien mana—had just maxed out that scale.

The drones reoriented with chilling precision, each adjusting its stance a fraction of a degree, forming a deadly arc around their target. Their cannons rose in perfect unity, mechanical joints whirring, targeting optics focusing to microscopic tolerances.

Then they fired.

Eight streams of superheated plasma exploded from their cannons in a blinding volley—pure destruction compressed into white-blue lances of energy. The park lit up in a cataclysmic blaze. Trees, grass, earth—everything around the line of fire was swallowed in screaming light. The blasts converged on the boy like a pack of guided missiles, air howling in protest as the barrage ripped toward him.

And yet—he didn't flinch.

Not an inch.

As the plasma reached him, his body reacted in an instant. The glowing tendrils of mana that trailed behind him like a living comet snapped forward. They coiled around him with impossible speed, weaving into a tight, spiraling shield—an armor of energy that wrapped around his form like a chrysalis.

But this was no dome. No static barrier.

This was living defense—dense, reactive, hungry.

The plasma struck.

And vanished.

No explosion. No concussive backlash.

The bolts hit the mana shield and were absorbed, sucked into its swirling layers like water disappearing into dry sand. Each blast disappeared on contact, devoured by the boy's shield with eerie, effortless silence.

No smoke. No heat.

Just light.

And the light grew brighter.

The boy's entire body pulsed with it. From his chest to the tips of his fingers, from the soles of his feet to the fiery strands flowing from his head, veins of glowing energy flared in brilliant, branching patterns. The plasma wasn't damaging him—it was feeding him. He was a conduit now. A living conversion engine. Everything they threw at him only made him burn hotter.

The drones kept firing, locked into their loop of calculated aggression, their systems blind to the futility. To them, it was just math—more fire, more pressure, more control. But they didn't understand what they were facing.

And neither, Damian realized, did he.

From his position crouched several yards away, hidden in the shadow of a shattered tree, Damian watched in stunned silence. His chest heaved. The air smelled like scorched ozone, and the earth beneath his boots was still trembling with residual power.

He had seen shields. He had seen absorption tech—hell, Bruce had once built a suit that could store kinetic energy.

But this wasn't tech.

This was instinct.

The boy wasn't just protecting himself. He was consuming their weapons. Drinking down the very force meant to destroy him. And growing more powerful with every passing second.

The energy around him shimmered in waves, heatless and surreal, warping the air like a mirage. Debris floated. Cracked bits of stone and twisted grass hovered for moments before falling again. Gravity itself seemed to bend near his form.

This wasn't containment.

This wasn't defense.

This was ascension.

Damian's jaw tightened as the truth settled like ice in his gut.

LexCorp hadn't just created a weapon.

They had awakened something ancient. Something magical. Something far beyond the limitations of code and steel and protocols.

And now, as the drones poured their fire into him—unaware that their efforts were only sharpening the blade that would soon be pointed back at them—l

Damian felt it in his bones before his mind caught up. Static crawled across his skin like a warning, prickling the hairs on his arms and neck. The ground beneath him vibrated—not violently, but with a deep, steady rhythm, like the earth itself was holding its breath.

At the center of it all stood the boy—no, Anodite—bathed in radiant, otherworldly light.

His entire form glowed now, not in flickers or pulses, but in a sustained brilliance that outlined every muscle, every motion. The pink energy around him was no longer wild—it was shaped, refined. Controlled. His skin shone like polished crystal laced with veins of liquid light. His eyes, twin spheres of blinding white, stared into the distance without blinking, emotionless and infinite. The space around him warped with heatless pressure, air bending into waves, like reality itself was trying to accommodate his presence.

Then—he moved.

A single breath escaped his lips, silent and calm.

He raised both hands, palms open toward the sky, as if offering something—or preparing to take it.

The glowing tendrils of mana trailing from his back snapped to attention, then surged outward like awakened serpents, crackling with raw power. They spiraled into the air, twisting and coiling, each one a conduit of focused energy waiting to strike.

For a heartbeat, everything froze.

The drones—still locked in combat protocol—began to reposition. Their targeting systems flickered. Red lights scanned and re-scanned, recalibrating to track this new level of power. They were preparing to adapt, to fall back, to change tactics.

They didn't get the chance.

The boy unleashed hell.

With a flash of motion and no audible command, a massive pulse of mana erupted from him—pure energy forged into a blinding sphere of pink-white light. It didn't roar. It expanded. The initial blast was silent, almost peaceful, a radiant bloom of power stretching outward at impossible speed.

Then came the sound.

A deep, thunderous boom exploded outward, rolling across the park like the voice of a god. Trees bent and snapped. Park benches were flung like matchsticks. Nearby windows shattered in waves. Dust and debris were swept up in a spiraling vortex of displaced energy.

The drones were caught mid-movement.

They didn't burn. They didn't explode.

They came apart.

The mana hit them like a cleansing flame, unraveling them on a molecular level. Their sleek, armored shells cracked and split open, light spilling out through every joint. Their bodies disintegrated into showers of particles, glowing briefly before dissolving into the air like ash in a storm.

One by one, the eight advanced LexCorp combat units were erased.

Gone.

The explosion left behind a massive crater that radiated outward in jagged lines, earth torn up in concentric rings around the boy. Chunks of soil and stone still rained down as Damian threw himself behind a nearby tree stump, shielding his head as the heat of the blast rippled over him. The sound left his ears ringing, and for a moment, his vision blurred from the intensity of the light.

Then—silence.

Pure, absolute silence.

When Damian lifted his head, the battlefield was unrecognizable.

The scorched remains of the park smoldered quietly. Trees were stripped of leaves. Ground was blackened and cracked. At the epicenter of the blast, framed by a slowly fading corona of pink lightning, the boy stood motionless.

His body still glowed, though the light had dimmed slightly. Mana flared gently along his skin, flowing through him like a current. His hair—still a streaming flame of ethereal light—floated weightlessly in the air behind him, shifting in patterns that made no sense to physics.

His expression was blank.

Not angry. Not triumphant.

Just... still.

The ruined earth beneath Damian's boots crackled faintly with residual mana, glowing pink veins slowly dimming, pulsing slower and slower as the energy bled away into the cooling night. The silence that followed wasn't peaceful. It was unnatural—too complete, too heavy, like the entire park was holding its breath.

The boy—Anodite—was swaying.

His body, once radiant and charged with impossible power, now shimmered weakly, the glow around him flickering like a dying star. His dark, obsidian-like skin rippled as if struggling to hold its shape, until slowly—inevitably—it began to fade. His ethereal form unraveled in layers, like a mask peeling away under heat. The mana tendrils that had whipped and defended, that had torn drones apart like paper, flickered out one by one, vanishing into the night like embers carried off by wind.

His skin lightened.

His glow dulled.

The celestial pink fire that had made up his hair collapsed into soaked, black strands clinging to his face and neck, heavy with sweat and heat. His wings, once broad arcs of liquid energy, crumpled inward and dissolved into thin air.

And then his eyes.

The blinding white orbs dulled. Dimmed. Faded until only his natural eyes remained—glassy, dazed, unfocused. He looked around like he didn't recognize any of it. Not the crater. Not the smoke. Not even himself.

His head turned, slowly, like he was underwater.

And his gaze found Damian.

No fear. No panic. Just exhaustion so deep it looked ancient. Like he'd been carrying it for years, not hours. Their eyes met—and then his body collapsed.

Everything gave out at once.

His knees buckled. Shoulders sagged. His entire frame folded like a puppet whose strings had been cut mid-movement. He hit the ground with a heavy, graceless thud, the impact stirring a cloud of dust and ash around his slack body.

"No—" Damian breathed, already moving.

He sprinted across the crater without thinking, his boots kicking up broken earth and scorched grass. In seconds, he dropped to his knees beside the boy. His hands moved with urgency born from training—checking the pulse in the neck, pressing a hand to the chest. Still breathing. Still alive. But barely.

His skin was damp with sweat, clammy and cold beneath Damian's palm. His breathing was shallow, every breath thin and uneven. His limbs trembled faintly with residual power, like the echo of a storm long passed. He wasn't injured. There were no burns, no bruises. But he was spent—drained down to the bone, every ounce of energy poured into that final surge of defense and release.

"You held it together through all that," Damian muttered under his breath, more to himself than to the boy. "You don't get to crash now."

He pulled the boy gently into a recovery position, cradling his head with one hand and keeping the other steady over his chest, counting the rhythm of each shallow rise and fall. Damian's eyes flicked up to the skyline beyond the shattered treeline. Still no movement. No cops. No drones. But they wouldn't stay alone for long. Someone was coming. Bruce, probably. Or worse—LexCorp, ready to reclaim what they'd lost.

But for now, they had this moment.

And then the boy stirred.

Barely.

His lips moved—dry, cracked, trembling. The sound that came from them was a whisper. Delicate. Soft and fragmented, like a language bleeding through a cracked window. Damian leaned closer, heart thudding in his chest.

The boy spoke.

The words were foreign. Not gibberish—structured. Beautiful, even. Fluid and melodic, filled with syllables that had never been shaped by a human tongue. The language wasn't from Earth. Damian knew dozens of alien dialects, and even he couldn't place it.

But the meaning... something about the tone hit differently. It wasn't a command. It wasn't even a warning.

It was grief.

It was memory.

It was a name—or a goodbye.

Damian didn't know which. And he didn't ask.

Before he could try to respond, the boy moved again.

Slowly, trembling, one hand rose and found the front of Damian's hoodie. Fingers brushed the fabric, soft, searching, as if to confirm something was still real. Damian froze, uncertain.

Then, the boy leaned forward.

And kissed him.

It wasn't forceful. Wasn't romantic. It was gentle. Quick. A press of warmth against Damian's lips—trembling and featherlight. Not driven by adrenaline. Not desperation. It was something quieter—a gesture stripped of logic, shaped by instinct.

Then the boy slumped, the last of his strength gone. His head rested against Damian's chest, body limp, his eyes fluttering half-closed.

But just before he slipped away, he whispered one more word.

"Thank you."

Soft.

Breathless.

In heavily accented English, but unmistakably clear.

And then he passed out.

His body went still, a faint smile ghosting across his lips as unconsciousness took him.

Damian knelt there in silence, the smoke still curling through the ruined park, the ground warm beneath them. Sirens wailed faintly in the distance, growing louder. The breeze stirred ash and leaves, but he didn't move.

He just held the boy close, watching over him as the chaos faded.

Whatever this was—whoever he was—this wasn't the end.

But right now, the boy was safe.

And Damian would make sure he stayed that way

LATER THAT night, high above the Earth, the Justice League's Watchtower hovered in its eternal orbit—silent, pristine, a fortress of steel and starlight among the void. Inside, in one of the war rooms ringed with holographic panels and data streams, Damian stood with his arms tightly crossed, his posture rigid. Behind him, a large 3D projection of Robinson Park flickered in midair, the display rendering the damage in hyperreal detail.

The scene spoke for itself: a blackened crater at the heart of the park, ringed in scorched earth, melted walkways, and fragmented metal. Traces of pink energy shimmered faintly across the terrain like residual heat from an invisible fire. The flickering trails of magic danced in slow pulses, still too volatile to classify by Watchtower sensors.

The silence in the room was thick.

Superman stood nearby, tall and unmoving, his arms crossed over his chest. His face was set in a mask of quiet concern, but his eyes betrayed unease—an unease that deepened as Damian finished recounting what had happened.

Jon Kent stood beside his father, posture tense and leaning forward slightly, eyes wide. He kept glancing between the projection and Damian, like trying to reconcile the two—what he was seeing and what he was hearing.

Batman loomed behind his son, cape draped over his shoulders, silent and unreadable. His face betrayed nothing, but Damian could feel the intensity of his father's scrutiny, the sharp, surgical calculation of a man who was already mapping out contingency plans behind that mask.

"And that's when he passed out," Damian said flatly, his tone stripped of emotion but not of weight. "After obliterating eight fully armed LexCorp drones in under ten seconds. They were in kill mode. He didn't hesitate. The amount of mana he drew in... it wasn't ambient. It was alive. Instinctual. Like it responded to his will the way muscles respond to pain."

Superman exchanged a glance with Batman, his brow furrowed. "And you're certain the armor was LexCorp?"

"I saw the insignia myself," Damian said. "It wasn't slapped on. It was part of the suit's internal architecture. He wasn't wearing it—he was fused to it."

Jon spoke next, his voice quieter. "But... he looked human?"

Damian paused, eyes narrowing as he remembered the boy's collapse, his hands shaking, the soft weight of his body against the charred grass. "Almost. But when he changed, it was like watching a mask dissolve. His entire physiology shifted. Skin, bone structure, light displacement. Magic didn't just cloak him—it rewrote him."

Until now, Starfire had remained silent, her arms loosely folded, her golden gaze fixed on the projection. The soft glow from the hologram lit her orange skin with shifting patterns of light, but her eyes were focused far beyond the room.

Then she stepped forward.

"You said he became dark," she said, her voice calm, thoughtful. "Semi-translucent... and his hair became pink flame?"

Damian nodded slowly, gaze narrowing. "Like it wasn't hair at all. More like... energy, shaped into strands. It moved without wind. It moved like it was alive."

Starfire nodded once. Her eyes flared slightly as a memory surfaced. "I know what he is."

All eyes turned to her.

"Or rather," she corrected gently, "what he is. He is not from Earth. That boy is an Anodite."

Damianmoan straightened slightly. "That's what the drones called him before they initiated fire."

"They knew," Starfire said. "Because they built their weapons with him in mind."

She turned to the others, her voice steady, but serious. "Anodites are ancient. A race of mana-based beings that exist almost entirely outside known galactic governance. Most of them dwell in uncharted sectors—places not even the Green Lanterns map regularly. Their bodies are not made of flesh in the way we understand it. They are born of magic—pure magic. They do not learn to wield it. They are it."

Jon looked visibly stunned. "You've seen one before?"

"Yes," she said. "Tamaran was briefly allied with their world during a peacekeeping mission in the Outer Nebula. They are not violent. But they are feared. Because if provoked... a single Anodite can alter the course of a war."

Superman's eyes narrowed. "And this one was enhanced by Luthor."

"Worse," Damian said. "He was altered by him. Engineered. That armor wasn't armor—it was a cage. A conduit designed to control how and when he accessed his own abilities."

"And it failed," Batman said quietly.

Damian nodded. "Completely."

Starfire's gaze darkened. "That makes him vulnerable. An Anodite raised away from his people, stripped of his identity, forced to serve someone like Luthor... He may be powerful, but emotionally? Psychologically? He is fractured. A being made of instinct and emotion, trained like a weapon and left to rot."

"He didn't trust anyone," Damian said. "Not at first. He didn't speak. He didn't fight until he had no choice. When he looked at me, it wasn't with fear—it was with expectation. Like he was used to being exploited."

Superman exhaled slowly. "If Luthor put his hands on something like that... we can't afford to let him get close again."

"He won't," Damian said firmly. "We'll make sure of it."

Batman stepped forward finally, the weight of his presence grounding the room. "We don't just protect him from Luthor. We protect him from everyone who will come next. Because now that he's revealed himself, every agency, every intergalactic faction, and every corporate predator who traffics in power will come looking."

Starfire nodded. "He is a star-born being of magic, left stranded among humans. If he is to survive, he will need more than shelter. He will need a place to belong."

Damian's eyes dropped for a moment, his expression tightening.

"Then I'll give him one."

The room fell into silence again, the image of the destroyed park hovering behind them like a ghost.

Outside the Watchtower's viewing windows, the stars drifted silently across the blackness—cold, endless, and watching.

THE HUM of the Watchtower's life support systems thrummed softly beneath their boots as Damian, Jon, and Starfire moved down the long corridor that curved gently with the arc of the space station. The polished silver walls reflected the low amber lighting of the simulated night cycle, casting long shadows that followed them in silence. Though Earth had long since rolled into the early morning hours, the artificial calm of the Watchtower did little to soothe the weight pressing on all three of them.

No one spoke as they walked. They didn't need to.

When they reached the reinforced doors to the infirmary, they parted with a gentle hiss, letting out a cool, sterile breeze tinged with antiseptic and ozone. The lights inside were soft and dim, set low for rest, but everything gleamed with precision. Med-pods lined the far wall in pristine rows, their curved exteriors like sleeping shells awaiting occupants. But only one was in use.

The Anodite boy lay within it.

He looked almost normal now—blanket drawn to his waist, arms limp at his sides, eyes closed. Peaceful. If you didn't know better, he could've passed for any unconscious teenager recovering from exhaustion. But if you looked closely, there were signs: faint ripples of pink light still traced delicate patterns under his skin, glowing softly with every slow breath. Mana. Dormant, but present. Waiting.

Jon drifted closer, hands stuffed in his jacket pockets, the corners of his mouth turned down in something between concern and wonder. He stared at the boy's face for a long time before speaking.

"He doesn't look like someone who took out a fleet of LexCorp drones by himself."

Damian stood beside him, arms crossed tight, eyes narrowed. "That's what makes him dangerous," he said. "He doesn't look like a threat. Not until you're already on fire."

Jon glanced at him, but said nothing.

Starfire moved to the other side of the pod. Her posture was relaxed but attentive, the soft glow of her skin reflecting faintly off the medical interface. Her eyes were fixed on the boy—not in suspicion, but in recognition. Like someone looking at an ancient text they hadn't seen in years.

"You said he spoke?" she asked Damian quietly.

He nodded. "Right before he blacked out. Before he spoke English. Not any dialect I recognized. It wasn't even structured like language—more like... vibration. Something tonal. I've studied dozens of alien scripts and syntaxes. This wasn't one of them."

Starfire stepped closer, her eyes never leaving the boy. "That was Anoditian. Their speech is more than language. It's resonance. Their mana carries their meaning. They don't just speak—they express."

Damian raised an eyebrow. "Then how do you understand them?"

Starfire turned to him with a serene smile. "Again, Tamaraneans and Anodites share a long, quiet history. We shared... customs."

Jon tilted his head. "What kind of customs?"

Starfire's expression didn't change. "Kissing."

Damian blinked. "What?"

Starfire nodded. "Tamaraneans absorb language through physical contact. A kiss creates a neurological link—temporary, but complete. Anodites... their version is deeper. It is tied to mana. It creates an imprint, a resonance link between two beings."

Damian stiffened slightly. His arms remained crossed, but his jaw tensed. "So when he kissed me—"

"He was reaching for connection," she said gently. "To understand you. To anchor himself. That kind of gesture, especially for one of his kind... it means trust. Rare, deliberate trust."

Damian looked down at the boy in the pod. The calm rise and fall of his chest. The fragile mana pulse under his skin.

Jon spoke softly. "He's really not just some experiment, is he?"

Starfire hesitated for a breath. Then she moved toward the pod and laid her hand lightly on its rim. "He's more than rare," she said. "I recognized the pattern of his aura. The fractal formation that pulsed when he transformed—it's unique. It belongs to the House of Noctyrae."

Damian frowned. "That means something to you?"

"It should," Starfire said. "That is the ruling family of the Anodite system. He's not just one of them. He's their heir."

Jon's eyes widened. "He's a prince?"

"The crowned prince," she confirmed. "And he is here. Alone. Bound in LexCorp tech. That suggests only two possibilities—he was stolen... or he fled."

Damian felt his stomach tighten. "Luthor got his hands on the heir of a mana-based civilization. And he tried to turn him into a weapon."

Starfire nodded solemnly. "And failed."

The room went quiet again, the soft beeping of the pod's monitor the only sound. The boy stirred slightly, a ripple of light fluttering beneath his skin like lightning behind clouds. Damian stepped closer, watching him carefully.

"He didn't trust me at first," Damian said. "He didn't trust anyone. But when he looked at me after the fight... something changed."

Starfire gave a small smile. "You carry his imprint now. His bond. When he wakes, he will look for you first."

Damian's eyes didn't leave the boy's face.

"I'll be here," he said quietly.

And he meant it. Every word.

[help-itrappedmyself]

Danny Punches a Clown Part 6

Masterpost

Danny, after many promises and assurances, lets Red Robin take him to the batcave. They travel by car, and as fancy as it was, Danny was almost scared to touch anything inside it. Red was a much better driver than his father though, so he just closed his eyes and focused on trying to keep his healing up.

The Batcave turned out to be an actual cave, underground, with actual bats in it. He was whisked to a medical area too quickly to see much of anything else besides some other vehicles and a giant computer set up. 

Someone was waiting in the medical space with a tray of tools and bandages ready next to the bed, Red introduced him as Agent A. They were quick to lie him down on a cot and set him up to a heart monitor and that had Red and the A frowning immediately.

“It’s a medical condition.” Danny blurted, and both pairs of eyes shot to him. “My heartrate is naturally very slow, temperature runs cold, pale skin, slow circulation so I can't have a lot of different medications." Not that any medications would really work, but better safe than sorry. Them not working would be suspicious, and Danny does not have the energy or focus for trying to keep straight any real explanations right now.  "It’s fine, I promise.”

Agent A nodded slowly. “Is there anything else we should know before we start treatment?”

“Just can't give me any medicines, I think that's the only relevant bit.”

“Alright, I will keep that in mind. Please lift your shirt so I can see the wound.”

Danny does, and they manage their expressions quite well on seeing it. Agent A goes immediately for creams and bandages.

“What burned you like that?” Red asked.

“Gun.” Danny was starting to slur. He did not want to sleep right now, with these people here.

“A gun? What kind of gun causes burns?”

“New blaster, parents made it special.”

“Your parents make guns?”

Danny shrugs, turning his head to look at Red instead of the far off ceiling of the cave. “My parents make lots of things. They're scientists, inventors." Danny waves his arm around vaguely. "The gun was new though, hadn’t been shot with that one before. The earlier versions were much less powerful.”

“Are you saying that your parents are the ones that shot you?” Red asked gently, taking a seat in the chair next to the bed. “It wasn’t just their gun that was used?”

Danny frowns. “Well yeah.”

Tim is very concerned at the tone he just used, like getting shot at by your parents was normal. “Do they shoot at you a lot?”

“Fair amount I suppose.” Red could see Danny thinking really hard about something. Dany’s head was really starting to hurt. His brain was fuzzy and he knew he should be concerned about something, but couldn’t figure out what. His parents shooting at him was nothing new, considering. “Like, they did it more than Vlad but I don’t see him as often, and they’ve done it longer than the GIW, but since the GIW has started they’ve been about equal I guess. I mean, sometimes all the defense systems in the house target me but that wasn’t technically intentional. Took forever for us to figure out how to get them to stop that.”

“Danny, when was the last time you slept?” Red asked gently.

Danny wasn’t sure if his blip earlier this morning counted. He didn’t think it lasted more than an hour, but the last time he slept before that was before his fight in Amity, escaping through the ghost zone and running around in this dimension.

“It’s been awhile.” Danny landed on. True enough for medical history he supposed.

“Right.” A finished the last of the bandages and tugged Danny’s shirt back down. “Well, why don’t you do that now, while we go and find you something to eat.”

“I’m too tired to fight food right now.”

Tim shared a look with Alfred before turning back to Danny. “Okay then. Maybe sleep first and then eat?”

“I will go start making something now that you’re all set up here Mister Danny.” Agent A states, walking past the medical curtains and shutting them behind him. Red pulled out a tablet and started tapping on it. He noticed Danny’s eyes on him after a moment.

“You going to sleep?”

“Strange place, strange people. Not sure that’s the best decision here.”

Red looked up from his tablet.

“You trusted me enough to come here. Trust me enough to sleep. I will make sure no one but me or A comes in before you’re ready.”

[ckret2]

Chapter 87 of human Bill Cipher in drag as his cishetsona, Sexygirl McGovernment-Seducer: in which he attempts to get intel out of Agent Powers during a dinner date using the feminine wiles he's totally pretending to have but definitely doesn't.

Spoilers: he's not going to help Powers solve the mystery.

(warning this chapter for some mild sexual content, although it's all non-explicit and nothing happens on screen.)

####

Soos drove Bill to Greasy's Diner half an hour before his scheduled date. Before Bill got out of the truck, Soos put a hand on his shoulder. "Dude. Wait a sec."

"What."

Soos opened his mouth, and then didn't say anything.

"What?"

Soos nervously wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. "Uh..."

Oh, come on. Teeth gritted, Bill snapped, "What."

Soos rummaged around in his cargo shorts, pulled out a slightly sweat-damp envelope, and offered it to Bill. "Here. Just... just in case."

"What is it?"

"Um."

Bill peeked in the envelope. Oh. Protection. Intimate protection. Not like he'd asked for it, but—yeah, sure, Soos was the only human in the house currently getting any action, of course he was the only one with supplies. Bill nodded solemnly. "Message received." If the possibility came up, it might make for a useful persuasion tool.

And besides that, Bill needed it. Not as ravenously as he'd needed it two or three weeks ago (something to do with this stupid body's stupid hormones, no doubt), but he needed it. His little tryst with his worshiper last weekend had only served to whet his appetite. Having been reminded said appetite existed—and that there was a slim chance he might finally get it satisfied—he could feel it low in his abdomen. It felt like someone had emptied a can of soup, heated the empty metal can on a stove until it was red hot, and then teleported it into Bill's flesh beneath his small intestine: searingly hot and empty—

Bill pushed aside his discomfort and tried to cover it by making someone else even more uncomfortable. He shook the envelope. "But you think I'll need six?"

Soos looked out the windshield, studiously avoiding Bill's gaze. "Um. I thought, 'hey, uh... better safe than sorry,' right?"

"Sure." Better than pleading with his captors for a pharmacy trip. He checked his dress for pockets, found nothing, and stuffed the envelope in the folds of his umbrella instead. "Better add more to my part of the grocery list. Ya know, for the future," he said. "Ribbed. With that tingly lube. If they don't have any with that lube, just throw in a poblano and I'll figure it out myself." If he was going to have a sex life in this body, he was going to enjoy it properly.

Looking out the windshield wasn't enough, Soos was staring at the truck's roof now. "Okay," he said weakly. "You got it, dude."

Bill knocked his umbrella on the passenger door. "Now let me out of this sardine tin."

####

"Bill Cipher is on a date," Ford said. "With a government agent who's privy to all kinds of classified intel. Totally unrestrained and unmonitored. No supervision. No magical handcuffs." He took a deep breath. "And I'm fine with it. I'm just fine."

Stan glanced over from the TV. Ford was laying on the sofa, perfectly straight, hands laced over his chest, staring at the ceiling, like he was expecting a heart attack any minute and had decided he might as well prepare his body for the casket. "I can tell," Stan said. He elected not to try to reassure Ford until the next commercial break. Cash Wheel was on, and it was nice to be able to get in some guesses without Ford blurting out the answers first.

Sitting on the floor with Mabel, Dipper said, "It's not the first time Bill's been outside without restraints. The handcuffs came off during the eclipse, and he didn't cause any trouble."

"Plus," Mabel said, "he just escaped the shack and came back voluntarily! Because he trusted us not to kill him! We can show him a tiiiny bit of trust in return, right?"

Ford groaned, pulled the baby blue doily off the back of the couch, and covered his face with it.

"Besides, he's not totally unsupervised!" Mabel held up her phone, beaming. "Let's just say, there's a good reason I made sure he'd go to Greasy's."

####

Every time the restaurant door opened, Pacifica's head whipped around to see who was coming in, and so far she'd only been disappointed. She'd picked up an extra shift this evening just because Mabel had texted to say her personal makeup project would be taking his date here, and so far all she'd gotten was lumberjacks and some of Spiderwebs' weird prison gang pals.

She was busy passing out plates to the elderly throuple that came in twice a week when the door opened and Pacifica finally caught a flash of golden hair from the corner of her eye. There they were. (Ooh, and the government agent was tall, too.)

Her heart leaped into her throat when she saw Lazy Susan approach them first. "Heeey, I haven't seen you two before! Welcome! Booth for two?" Susan turned slightly to glance over her shoulder at Pacifica.

That woman was a treasure. Pacifica nodded subtly—yes, this was the couple she'd been talking about all afternoon.

Susan nodded back, and led the couple to Pacifica's half of the diner. "This way! Your waitress will be with you in a minute. What can I get you two to drink in the meantime?"

While Pacifica was wrapping up with the throuple and passing their salad dishes to the kitchen, Susan had brought out their drink orders, and now was saying, "Say! Have you got a funny eye too?" She lifted her eyelid with a fingertip. "Wink!"

Goldie laughed. "Yeah, and they take turns being funny." He switched which eye he was squinting shut. "Wink."

"Really? Oh how silly! Mine stays on the same side." Susan left their table. "You two enjoy yourselves!"

Voice low, the agent said, "I meant to ask yesterday if you'd hurt your eye, when you were wearing an eyepatch."

"Nah, it's a condition! If I use 'em both for too long it gives me a migraine. Usually the eyepatch is for afternoons," he rested his chin on his laced fingers and batted his eyelashes, "buuut I wanted to look nice for you." (For which Pacifica was grateful—she hadn't spent several hours teaching Goldie and Mabel just for him to smear his eyeshadow under an eyepatch.)

Finally, she'd offloaded her plates and could rush over to their table. "Hee-eeyyy guys, my name's Pacifica, welcome to Greasy's I'll be your waitressss." She gave them both her best waitress smile.

Goldie's brows shot up in surprise—Mabel must not have told him she worked here—but the agent squinted at her in concentration. "Aren't you the Northwest girl? Pacifica Northwest?"

Pacifica froze. Her parents worked with some government people; she didn't know whether this agent was one of them. With no change to her singsong customer service tone, she said, "Please don't tell my parentssss." She gave them both her stiffest waitress smile.

The agent shook his head. "None of my business."

The agent ordered the meatloaf; Goldie ordered a club sandwich with fries, and Pacifica kicked herself for not advising him on proper dinner date etiquette. Girls should order salad on the first date, her mom had drilled that into her head, guys don't want to watch a girl actually eating. If you didn't think you could survive the night on a salad then you ate before the date so you could pick at your lettuce without looking ravenous—and of all other options, a sandwich was the worst, crumbs all over your hands and it was so inelegant to tear off chunks of bread with your mouth... She uneasily remembered Goldie's sneer as he told her she was one wrong jab away from an eating disorder, and decided he probably wouldn't have listened to her advice about proper date foods anyway.

Still, she had no idea what to make of the fact that Goldie had also requested maple syrup, grape jelly, and "the hottest hot sauce you have" on the side. She prayed this wouldn't be a disaster. She was invested now.

As she left, she heard Goldie gush to his date, "So tell me all about your investigation...!"

####

"This isn't public knowledge," Powers said, "but as a matter of fact, there is a little more to the investigation than a few power surges and a couple of gravitational anomalies."

Bill nodded, the perfect picture of fascination. "You don't say?"

"Perhaps I should... tell you a little more about my work," Powers said. "The Bureau of Covert Investigations isn't exactly a secret agency, but it isn't widely advertised to the public. We don't even have a website. We don't accept job applications, either; the only way agents join is by being recruited from other departments."

He decided not to point out that he already knew way more about the eagles than Powers was telling him—including the fact that they were under the Department of Cover-Ups, which was top secret. (Of course, Powers was covering that part up.) "Sounds pretty elite! Where'd you get recruited from? FBI? CIA?"

"The Criminal Investigations department of the IRS."

Bill choked back a laugh. 

"We're dedicated to investigating reports of potential domestic threats within the United States that seem... too absurd for other departments. Including reports that might be considered... paranormal."

"So, when you say there's more to your investigation than a few power surges... I take it you're not talking about checking the local power plant for OSHA violations."

"Precisely," Powers said. "Most of the time, our work consists of uncovering hoaxes, or finding natural scientific explanations for supernatural-looking phenomena. But this one..." He lowered his voice, leaning further across the table. "I've been working the Gravity Falls case for years. It was my first assignment when I joined the bureau in the 80s—and I became convinced that something odd is happening in this town, just under the surface. Over the next few years, my investigation uncovered irregularities in the town's historical records, strange localized effects on magnetic fields, a disproportionate amount of reported sightings of things like Bigfoot or UFOs, occasional tourist disappearances far above the statistical average for this part of Oregon... The original case I was assigned to investigate went cold, but I remained certain that Gravity Falls is the key to something big."

(Uncovered irregularities in the historical records? So the bureau hadn't just told him about the irregularities. He really wasn't part of the Trembley cover-up. Bill nodded enthusiastically, go on.)

"But the anomalous power surges stopped, and I was forced to put the Gravity Falls case on the back burner for lack of any new evidence," Powers said. "Until last summer. When we picked up readings identical to the ones we detected in the 80s. We discovered that they coincided with localized fluctuations in gravity, as well. At last, I had the resources and manpower to pursue the case in earnest."

Bill considered cracking a joke about Manny Powers's manpower, then decided there was no point if Powers wouldn't even find it funny. "And what happened then?" With the core of their knowledge of the case having been ripped out by the memory gun, Bill was really curious how the agents remembered that whole incident.

Powers looked embarrassed. "Well... we... didn't find anything, I suppose." He cleared his throat. "But—in spite of last summer's... lack of success, I'm sure something is happening in this town. If anything, I'm more convinced now than ever before."

"Really? More convinced?" Talk about a backfire. Ford might've been better off erasing the eagles' memories of the entire case... but then, once they got home, whatever information they still had on file at their headquarters would've reactivated their memories. In this situation, there really was no winning with the memory gun, no matter how carefully tuned it was—with so many people involved and so many disparate sources of information, the Pines couldn't have kept everything secret. "How come? Didja find any evidence?"

"Nothing concrete, but..." Powers made a noise of irritation. "The locals seem normal enough, they'll tell you there's nothing strange about their town—but talk to the visitors who pass through, and they all seem to feel that something eerie is going on."

Bill considered that, trying to find an angle to nudge Powers away from Gravity Falls. For a man employed to investigate the paranormal, he seemed like a pretty rational, logic-driven guy; maybe a logical argument? "I did say the town feels spooky to me too, but... if even you couldn't find any evidence, I've gotta wonder if it's just a psychological trick making us think Gravity Falls is a bigger deal than it is."

"How so?"

"Think about it: how many reasons do people have to visit this place? The one road into town dead ends at The Club—which I'm convinced is only visited by locals and the Northwests' business guests—so they're not getting traffic through town. There's the lake, but there are plenty of other lakes around more popular tourist towns in the Mount Hood area. (Personally, I'm fond of Pyramid Lake—no particular reason.) If you want a mall, you'd get more bang for your buck driving a couple hours to Portland than going to Gravity Falls'. The Tent of Telepathy shut down in under two years. Nobody's gonna visit the history museum unless they're already in town. So the biggest draw in town is... the Mystery Shack. You hit the turnoff for the shack before you even reach the town. It's no wonder tourists feel like something weird's going on!" Bill scoffed, "Maybe that's the real reason your anonymous tipster said there's someone 'dangerous' in the shack. They coulda been talking about our pal Sascrotch."

"You do make an excellent point," Powers said. "But reports about the town's strangeness extend beyond the tourists. Truckers who stop in at the Triple Digit Truck Stop claim that this stretch of Route 14 is haunted. And out-of-town loggers say that the loggers in Gravity Falls are... skittish."

"Oh, that's just Dan," Bill said. "Tough guy, but he's nervous about the things in the woods."

"You know Dan?"

Right, Bill was supposed to just be a tourist. "I've been in town long enough to notice him. Hard not to notice him, he's built like a bonfire!"

Powers nodded slightly, accepting that. "But don't you think it's odd for a lumberjack to be nervous around trees?"

Bill didn't have time to think of a response to that before Pacifica came by with their meals. "Here you go, one meatloaf and one club sandwich. Everything great so far?" She directed the question toward Bill.

He flashed her a bright grin. "Terrific. Thanks."

She looked relieved. "Great! You two just let me know if you need anything."

"Will do!" He could use a break for dinner, anyway. He'd hit a dead end; he needed to think up a new angle.

But he'd find something. He always did.

####

From the far end of the restaurant, Pacifica clapped her hands over her mouth in horror as Goldie drizzled maple syrup over his fries. The agent stared in silent fascination as he added grape jelly and hot sauce to his club sandwich. What was he doing. No wonder this guy was friends with Mabel, he was just as silly as her and twice as oblivious to it. He was ruining everything.

As Pacifica watched, he emphatically offered the maple syrup to the agent, who looked dubious, but tentatively drizzled a tiny bit on his mashed potatoes and tried a bite. He looked pleasantly surprised. Huh. Who'd have guessed.

They had their dinner; Pacifica took care of her other customers and checked in on them a few more times; and as Pacifica took their plates back to the kitchen, Susan, who was sweeping behind the counter, asked, "Sooo? How are the lovebirds doing?"

"I... guess not bad." She had to admit that Goldie looked like he had that agent wrapped around his finger. The agent's gaze hadn't strayed from Goldie's face once. Which was impressive, since Pacifica had learned from experience that when Goldie was looking at you, making eye contact felt like trying to stare down the sun. "I mean, I know my makeup tips were good, but I'm really surprised Goldie's doing this well."

"Oh? Why's that? I thought she seems nice!"

Pacifica winced. Frankly, because—in spite of his reassurances that the agent was into him—she still couldn't quite believe that the agent wasn't grossed out by the fact that he was fat and had weird eyes. But that also described Susan; so instead, Pacifica said, "Ummm... Because she's... kinda weird?"

"Oh, well that's fine!" Susan said. "Guys like girls that are a little bit out there, haha."

Pacifica had to fight to smile instead of grimace. "Yeah... sure." Guys really didn't, though. And Pacifica wasn't sure Susan was qualified to talk about what guys liked, considering she'd never been married or anything.

Lazy Susan was really a sweet woman. She'd immediately taken Pacifica under her wing when she was hired as a waitress—teaching her stuff like the regular customers' orders and how to balance tall drinks and heavy foods in the middle of the tray. She always intervened to take the creepy customers, keeping them away from Pacifica's tables; and she helped out behind the counter whenever the usual counter waitress's trucker fiancé made a rare trip into town for lunch, so she could slack off and talk to him. She'd never been weird about the fact that a few months ago Pacifica's weekly allowance had been more than the restaurant's weekly profits, unlike some of the other employees, and she was patient with Pacifica's clueless rich girl moments. She never had anything snide to say when Pacifica was a little naughty and ordered chicken fingers and mozzarella sticks for her mid-shift meal, and whenever Pacifica was going from the restaurant to her ranch instead of home, Susan insisted she take a slice of marionberry pie.

But, for all her virtues, Pacifica had to reluctantly admit that Susan had some blindspots, insensitive pun unintended—particularly when it came to her own appearance and understanding how your appearance affected how other people treated you. Sure, it was a nice break for Pacifica to get out from under the scrutiny she got around her mom, but Susan wasn't doing herself any favors with that obliviousness. Pacifica would love to help her overhaul her wardrobe someday, as thanks for everything Susan had done for her; she just needed to think of a way to offer it that wouldn't insult her. Not everyone was a former pageant kid who could take Pacifica's blunt critiques and be just as blunt in return.

Susan slid a slice of cherry pie across the counter. "You should give 'em a slice of pie! On the house! Dessert's romantic! And those government guys just love the pie here." She leaned on the counter and said in a loud conspiratorial aside, "There's one slice and two forks so they have to share!"

At least that was a sound idea. It was a flirting tactic her parents would look down on, but Pacifica knew sharing a dessert was something commoners found romantic. "Thanks, Susan." She put on her customer service smile and carried the plate over to their table.

####

In the past two hours, the only "fact" Powers had "learned" about Bill was that he was in town for the summer and had rented a cabin in the area, and Bill had only offered that lie to justify why he'd been able to immediately recognize another couple of names Powers had mentioned. Powers didn't notice he hadn't learned anything else about his date; it had only taken a little prompting from Bill and he'd been all too eager to just keep talking about the case he was enthralled with.

No, not enthralled. Obsessed.

"I feel as though there's a... a hole, right in the middle of everything I know about Gravity Falls." Powers was hunched forward with his elbows on the table, brows furrowed, rubbing his forehead as though he could reach into his brain and grope around for the missing piece. "If I can just fill in that hole, then everything will fit together. But..."

But. Unfortunately, there was a hole in the middle of his knowledge—a Mystery Shack-shaped hole—and Bill could not let him figure that out.

Most victims of Spectacles's memory gun never questioned the gaps in their recollection; usually only the ones with damage as extensive as Specs himself ever even noticed there was something missing. But Powers was different. As he told Bill about his case—as he bumped up again and again against the things he didn't know—it was clear just how aware he was of the information he should have but didn't. He knew he'd gone undercover several times last summer to conduct his investigation covertly, but he couldn't remember what exactly he'd been looking for that required such subterfuge. He remembered that he'd come to town with Trigger to conduct the initial investigation, and then had called in a whole team for backup... but he couldn't remember what he'd thought he needed so many people for. He remembered attending Northwest Fest—he even remembered that the party had been attacked by a ghost—but he was almost positive encountering the ghost had been a coincidence and he'd been at the manor to investigate something else... but what?

It was fascinating, watching this human groping around the edges of his damaged memory, like a blind man feeling along the cliff above a canyon, looking for a bridge to the other side that had been burned down.

The mind of a typical memory gun victim simply frayed around the ragged edges where the missing memory had been snipped out, slowly unraveling further over time. Bill had seen that damage in its most extreme form, a fully unraveled mind whose loose threads cut at Bill like razor wire.

But from what Powers had told Bill about the case, it seemed that over the past year he'd mentally run around and around and around the place where his missing memory had been, so much that he'd inadvertently hemmed the loose edges of his mind. He'd defined the edges clearly enough to recognize the negative space. He was so close to realizing that the hole in his recollection wasn't something he just hadn't yet learned about the case, but something he'd forgotten.

What Bill wouldn't give to be able to hop into Powers's head and prod around the damage himself, see what was happening inside his brain. His mindscape had to be fascinating.

Bill took advantage of Powers's distraction to shake a little pepper and hot sauce onto the cherry pie slice and steal another bite. "Maybe you can't fill that 'hole' because whatever you're looking for isn't in Gravity Falls? Whatever's happening here might just be a small part of something bigger happening in other places. If you look for patterns—maybe other places with power surges..." Humans loved patterns.

But Powers was already shaking his head firmly. "No, I'm sure it's here," he said. "With everything else you know, I suppose there's no point in hiding what we're looking for in the Mystery Shack. Last summer, we... misplaced the flash drive with all our ongoing reports and case notes."

"Misplaced?"

"It should have been taken back to Washington by one of my superiors. But it must have been dropped—dropped or stolen—because we picked up its signal in the Mystery Shack. The signal's gone today, but..." He sighed. "Maybe if I could look over our reports from last summer, I'd notice something I missed."

(Boy, Bill bet he would.)

"I just don't know why we hadn't already submitted those reports. We're supposed to submit daily reports and back up all documents at headquarters. The only reason I'd ever ignore our usual filing procedures would be if, per agency guidelines, we were dealing with an emergency of sufficient magnitude that we couldn't waste any time on something as trivial as filing. But...?" He flung up his hands in frustration. "I don't remember any emergencies! I don't know what I was thinking. Was it the summer heat? Am I just getting old?"

"Hey, don't say that," Bill said reassuringly. "You're not that old. I'm sure you've still got a good nineteen years left in you, maybe even nineteen and a quarter!"

"I appreciate it."

Bill was beginning to suspect he wasn't getting Powers to leave town. Without more time, resources, and allies than Bill had at his disposal, he didn't stand a chance of convincing him there was nothing going on in Gravity Falls. His next best chance was convincing Powers something was going on, but it was something other than it really was. But what?

How he missed who he was supposed to be. This should have been easy for him. If he had all his billions of borrowed eyes, if he had a clear view of the whole expanse of the future and all its shining branching timelines, if he had a body made of light that could slip into Powers's dreams... He wanted to claw off his skin, shed this burden of a body, rise up electric and perfect.

That would probably be a dinner date faux pas. He distracted himself from the urge by drumming his scarlet fingernails on the table. He needed to buy more time.

"Is everything alright?" Powers asked.

"Fine, I'm fine. I'm just puzzling over this mess, too," Bill said. "I think it'll drive me crazy until we figure out what's happening in this town."

"I'm sorry for burdening you with it." He shook his head. "I spent all dinner talking about work, didn't I?"

"Because I kept asking you questions!" Bill waved off the apology, "Don't worry about it, I love a good mystery. I bet I could even help you solve it!"

"Do you?" He considered that; then sat forward, lacing his hands together on the table. "Do you have any relevant skills?"

This guy loved collaborating with local informants. "I know a little something about just about everyone in town. I know gossip about some of 'em they don't even know themselves! I'm pretty well-versed in local history. I'm an expert in cryptology—"

"Really? How much of an expert?"

"Enough of one to know that there's a cryptogram stitched in the back of your jacket that says 'Government property: if found, please return to the Bureau of Covert Investigations, P.O. Box..."

Powers started. "How—?"

"You adjusted your jacket when you sat down! I got a glimpse of it!"

"That could only have been a split second. You must have decoded it instantly."

"It's just a simple substitution cipher! It reads like plain English to me." The better question was why they'd encoded the instructions on how to return a lost coat. Probably the end result of a long bureaucratic decision-making tree involving a dozen people who didn't talk to each other. It was a problem in any government department, but especially in a department where all the employees were trained to keeping secrets—even from each other. "Like I said, I'm an expert. Cipher's my last name."

"Isn't the phrase 'middle name'?"

"Sure, whatever."

Powers stroked his chin. "I might have to take you up on that. A surprising amount of this town's founding documents have passages written in code, and I don't currently have a cryptologist with me. We could use the help."

Ah, good old Quenty and his proclivity for hiding important information behind codes and treasure hunts. One of humanity's greatest and most unappreciated geniuses. He'd been ahead of his time. (And his time wouldn't come until Bill finally got Weirdmageddon going again. Bill really hoped Quentin survived that long; humanity's psychopomps were so stodgy, and getting a spirit out of one of Earth's afterlives was a bureaucratic nightmare he'd rather not deal with. He'd do it, but what a pain.)

Bill said, "Say, you've got some kind of case file on this town, right? I don't mean that drive you mentioned. You must have had records back at headquarters from the past thirty years—plus whatever you found on this trip. If I'm going to help you, maybe I should see everything you already know."

At that, Powers finally looked uncertain. Apparently telling Bill all about his case was fine, but showing him classified documents was beyond the pale. "I uh, don't have it with me," Powers said. "I left it in my motel room."

"Did you." He laced his fingers together and propped his chin on his hands. "I would," he said, "love," he said, "to see that file."

It took Powers a moment to raise his gaze to meet Bill's. When he did, the look in his eye—the disbelief, the hope, the eagerness—

He graced Powers with the tiniest smirk; and Powers's eyes widened and cheeks reddened as he realized he hadn't misunderstood Bill's offer.

Got him. A lonely, affection-starved man would do whatever it took to feel like he was wanted for a few hours.

(A lonely, affection-starved triangle would, too.)

####

Bill flashed Pacifica a thumbs up as he passed, his umbrella cane hooked over one arm and the other arm conspicuously looped around a rather flustered-looking Powers's. As soon as the door shut behind them, she whipped out her phone.

PACIFICA: Ok stop blowing up my phone, they just left.

MABEL: How did it go?????

PACIFICA: Really good, I think. I don't think the government guy can smile? But he didn't stop looking at Goldie and they talked the whole time.

PACIFICA: And he left a big tip. Always a good sign.

MABEL: 😻🎉🎉🎉

MABEL: Did you hear what they talked about?

PACIFICA: Mostly his work I think?? Which is fine, guys like to talk about themselves on first dates. I didn't get the details.

MABEL: That's great!

MABEL: Soos said he was gonna wait for Goldie down the street where the agent won't see him. (LONG story! 😹) Can you let Goldie know where to find him?

Pacifica slid into a booth to peer out the window. There he was, across the street and about two blocks away. But as Pacifica watched, Goldie looked toward the truck, made direct eye contact with Soos for several seconds, and then wordlessly turned away from him as the government agent let him into the passenger seat of his own car. (The agent had a crummier car than Pacifica had expected.)

PACIFICA: Actually, he and the government guy left together.

MABEL: Ooooh.

MABEL: Cool cool cool

MABEL: did they say where they're going?

PACIFICA: No clue.

MABEL: That's fine!!! I'm sure it's fine.

####

The last time Bill had paid attention to this corner of Gravity Falls, this block had been occupied by the Twin Bed Motel. Since then, the long one-story log building had been replaced by a two-story brick building, the Roamin' Holiday Motel. As they drove into the parking lot, he saw a car in the parking lot with two bumper stickers: one from Gleeful Auto Sales, and a simple black and white one with no text—a flat horizontal line followed by four triangles, starting short and obtuse but growing progressively taller until the sequence ended in an equilateral. Well, well. So this was where his gals were staying. Good to know.

Powers parked his own Gleeful Auto junker at the far end of the building. "Well. Here we are," Powers said.

"Here we are!" Bill agreed.

"I could bring the case file out to the car." Powers swallowed hard. "Or, if you'd like—perhaps it might be more comfortable for you to come inside...?"

What a gentleman, giving Bill one last chance to turn him down—but it wasn't gonna happen. His body had caught on to his brain's plans, and during the seemingly interminable drive from Greasy's to the motel, the metaphorical metal soup can in Bill's abdomen had melted down into a crucible of liquid aluminum that threatened to leak out and set the car on fire. He ground his knees together as though that would help contain his anticipation, and he tried to ignore how the movement had been automatic in spite of how alien it was. "I'd love to come in!"

While he waited for Powers to open the car door, he double-checked to make sure the envelope Soos had given him was still stuffed in his umbrella.

####

It wasn't the best human-on-human action he'd had in the last ten thousand years, but it wasn't the worst. It was certainly better than some cramped backseat fumbling.

Bill missed hearing my god, my god, my god; and he missed the taste of tears. But at least this human wasn't afraid to touch Bill's body. Longterm 

And he was happy to let Bill take the lead. Powers hadn't had a longterm relationship since college, had given up on dating in his 40s; he was so lonely, so sure he'd be lonely forever, so grateful for the attention; he probably saw some pretty gal eagerly taking control, and mistook it for being wanted instead of being used.

####

"There's something wrong with this town." Even at a whisper, Powers's voice was clearly huskier than it had been earlier. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, only half re-dressed.  "I can feel it whenever I'm talking to the townspeople—as though they're hiding something. Do you know what I mean?"

So many humans could rub together a couple of poorly-placed flesh accessories for an hour and suddenly feel like they could trust each other. Like baring the most secret parts of their bodies was equivalent to baring the most secret parts of their souls. It was so funny.

So useful.

It was like a dam had broken; and Bill was keen to see what came pouring out.

He was sitting in the center of the bed, legs crossed lotus style, the sweat still drying on his skin, staring at Powers's back. He hadn't bothered to redress yet; he was hyper aware of every cubic inch of his alien body, and covering up wouldn't fix that, so he might as well take advantage of the temporary socially-sanctioned excuse to not bother with human clothes. "I know exactly what you mean. I swear, it feels like they're all in on it. I don't think you can trust anyonein this town." The manipulation came easily; he didn't need to slip into Powers's skull to know how his words would rattle around in his mind, like knocking a pool ball around a table until it finally fell into a pocket. "Have you asked anyone if anything weird happened here last summer? Try it. They act like they didn't even hear you. It's strange."

Powers sighed deeply, evidently relieved that Bill hadn't simply dismissed him. "HQ thinks I'm getting paranoid," he muttered. "They almost didn't let me come back."

(That was news to Bill. From all the signals Powers was giving off, Bill had thought he'd resented being sent back to Gravity Falls. He thought the only reason he was trying to solve the case was so the bureau would let him move on from it.)

"I'm afraid this town has... done something to me. Done something to all of us. All us outsiders."

Slowly, Bill slid to the edge of the bed to sit beside Powers. "Something like what?"

"Last year we came to Gravity Falls to investigate some odd power surges and gravitational anomalies—just like this year—and... nothing. It's not that we found nothing, I just... I can't remember anything we found out. I can remember being in town, where I stayed, what I ate, people I spoke to, places I went undercover—we all can, I've talked to all the agents that were assigned to that investigation—but—but it's as if I didn't find anything useful out for weeks." A frustrated growl entered his voice, "But I know I must have found out something! I don't remember not finding anything, I would remember if I'd not found anything—but I don't know what I found! No one from that investigation does! We handed our files, all of them, over to a superior officer—and when we returned to HQ, we were asked where our files were! And we couldn't name who we'd handed our flash drive to! Who knows where he went, I've checked all the agency personnel records that I have clearance to view I don't know how many times..."

"Did he have any distinguishing features?" Bill asked.

"I... He had a black coat, that's all I can remember." (It was something of a relief to know Powers hadn't counted the fingers, either.) "It's as if our entire team just... zoned out on the job for several weeks! All to be told by some superior officer we can't remember the name of that we'd been wasting our time chasing a meteor shower!"

He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. "We were heavily reprimanded—myself in particular, which I deserve, given that I was in charge. They almost took me off the Gravity Falls case entirely. Goodness knows I want to leave this accursed town behind. But I can't, because something happened to me here, and—I—need—to—find—out—what. But the only leads I have are the power surges, an anonymous tip saying there's someone dangerous in the Mystery Shack, and the signal from our missing flash drive."

He fell silent. Bill leaned against his side, sliding a hand onto his shoulder, reassuring (possessive, controlling).

Voice almost inaudible, Powers said, "Frankly, I'm terrified. At the thought that something might have been done to my mind."

"Of course you are." He ran his hand through Powers's thinning hair. "I can't think of anything more terrifying than having someone else's fingers inside your head, pulling the strings."

Bill almost felt bad for the big dummy. He was no great genius explorer-researcher, no intrepid paranormal investigator flying by the seat of his pants, no shaman nor scholar nor wizard nor psychic. He was by the books, methodical. He obeyed the rules, he filed his reports, he was patient with bureaucracy and trusting in the government.

He wasn't the kind of man who traveled to the bottom of a deep dark cave seeking a god of fire and sunlight who offered enlightenment. He wasn't the kind of human who called for Bill Cipher.

And yet... he had the potential to be an interesting person—and Bill did like to bring out people's potential. As staid and businesslike and dull as Powers was, buried beneath the tedium, he had that spark of curiosity that made a few humans so charming. The way he talked about Gravity Falls—the way its mysteries had pulled him in from the start, before it had scared the bejeezus out of him—Bill thought Powers wasn't driven to stamp out the strange, the way some eagles were. He just wanted to record it, quantify it, put it down in a little official report—see it.

Powers might appreciate a friendly muse pointing the way to the cave's exit and showing him the sunlight.

Unfortunately, there weren't any friendly muses in town. Just a dead triangle who didn't want to die again. 

Powers put his hand over Bill's. "I'm glad I found someone I can trust."

"So am I." Bill leaned his cheek on Powers's shoulder, paying attention to the angle he tilted himself at, careful to seem natural. "It's good to have you here, Manny."

"Please... I—I want you to call me by my real name," Powers said. "It's—"

"Gary, isn't it?"

Powers turned to stare at Bill's face through the dark. "Yes. How did you know?"

"You know... I'm not sure."

Bill had a plan now.

And he wasn't about to help Powers find a way out of the cave into the sunlight; he was just reflecting fires in funhouse mirrors to dazzle his eyes and lead him deeper underground. This was what he was good at.

It would be fun. Bill would enjoy himself. Still, though—it was almost a pity. He mighta liked to get to know the guy. He might've been a fun toy to play with a little longer before he broke it.

######

(Some chapters you finish; and some chapters you stick in the queue to force yourself to stop editing them. This is the latter kind.

Once again, the only significant TBOB-related alteration to this chapter was clarifying Powers's department's relationship to other departments. Initially I had specified it was separate from the Department of Cover-Ups; now that we know his bureau handled the Trembley case, I put it under the Department of Cover-Ups.

Anyway this is a chapter I've been greatly looking forward to getting to, so I'm eager to hear y'all's thoughts!)

[ficfluffqueen]

ART THE CLOWN (REALISTIC) KISS HEADCANNON 💋🤡

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

As Art the Clown closes in for the kill, you grab him unexpectedly and kiss him, leaving him momentarily stunned and confused by your boldness.

————————————————————————————————————-

As Art the Clown hunts you through the shadowy hallways, he’s clearly savoring every bit of fear he’s drawing out, delighting in how his silent pursuit unsettles you. His exaggerated movements, twisted expressions, and absolute silence create an atmosphere thick with dread. Art thrives on this—a game of predator and prey, each second intensifying his sadistic pleasure.

But then, as he finally corners you, you make a split-second decision. Instead of shrinking back or trying to escape, you grab him by the collar and kiss him. The unexpectedness of it hits him like a jolt. Art freezes. His expression loses its usual sadistic glee, replaced by a blank stare that seems to ask, Did you really just do that?

In that moment, Art stands completely still, his hollow eyes wide with something close to confusion. He’s used to fear and screams, to people breaking under his relentless pursuit—not this. His head tilts slightly, his face twisted in morbid curiosity. He studies you, as if calculating exactly what to make of this strange, bold act. For him, it isn’t affection, and it’s certainly not attraction. Instead, it’s an unexpected disruption—a crack in the usual pattern of fear that he exploits.

Then, that eerie, mocking grin starts to spread across his face again. His lips twist into a grotesque smile, and he pulls back, wiping his mouth with an exaggerated, almost offended gesture. He stares at you, silent and unblinking, and then, in a slow, theatrical gesture, he starts to clap. It’s not applause; it’s mockery, a twisted acknowledgment of the audacity you showed. Art’s expression seems to say, You think you’re clever, don’t you?

And then, just as quickly as he’d frozen, Art’s demeanor shifts again. He leans in close, mimicking the kiss back at you in his own exaggerated, mocking style—blowing a cartoonish kiss with a sardonic gleam in his eye, all while maintaining that unhinged grin. He’s turning your act of defiance into part of his performance, making it clear that, to him, this only adds to his game. The kiss becomes just another tool for him to warp and twist, a new way to unnerve you.

With renewed intensity, Art resumes the hunt, his movements becoming even more exaggerated, his grin even wider. Your act of bravery has only made him more eager to pursue you, to stretch out every ounce of terror he can get. The kiss wasn’t a moment of connection or a way to throw him off entirely; it was simply fuel to his sadism. Now, he’s more invested than ever, excited by the prospect of breaking down this unexpected show of resistance.

[snail-day]

Inked

Yan!Suguru x Reader

Previous // Part Two // Masterlist

TW: Slight Yandere Behaviors, Modern! AU, Dubious Professionalism, Power imbalance, Nipple piercings, MDNI

Tattoo Artist!Suguru who definitely wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon. Plays it off all cool, the same welcoming smile, low hum of recognition as you sit down, but his bright, violet eyes scan you quickly, taking in your outfit, your expression, the way you’re fidgeting with the hem of your shirt like you're working up the courage to say something.

He’s halfway through your touch-up when you finally ask.

“So… um. About nipple piercings…”

Suguru blinks. His hand stills, machine still buzzing as his grip tightens. He glances up, dark, thin brows lifting slightly, surprised. Not that you remembered, but that you actually followed through.

“Really?” he says, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Didn’t think you’d go for it.”

You’re bashful, almost squirming in his chair as you nod. Something he would've teased you about if you hadn't just thrown a curve ball at him. “I’ve been thinking about it. A lot.”

God. He has to refocus on the tattoo before he does something stupid like seem a little too eager, smile a little too wide. “You know I do them here, right?” His voice is light, teasing, but there's a subtle edge underneath it. “I’ll even do it for free - since you came all this way.”

You start to object - money, fairness, something about feeling bad - but it doesn’t matter. You’re here. You asked. And he’s not letting anyone else touch you.

So when the tattoo’s finished, he cleans up quietly, then turns to face you, snapping on a fresh pair of gloves.

“You still want it?” he asks gently.

You pause, chewing your bottom lip before admitting, “I was wondering if maybe… a female artist could do it instead?”

Suguru laughs, soft and disarming, though there’s something glittering behind his eyes now. “Don’t you trust me?” he asks, voice dipped in honey. “I promise I’m professional. I’ve done dozens. You’ll be in good hands.”

You hesitate… then slowly nod. Can't help the feeling of your cheeks warming up at the way his eyes seem to drop to your shirt.

He swears he doesn’t rush the prep, but his hands are moving quickly, sanitizing tools, laying out sterile jewelry, prepping clamps. He’s too focused, too stiff in his movements, which is how you know he’s trying to contain himself. Trying to ignore the pressing hard-on. Trying to ignore the lingering thoughts of what a beauty like yourself looks like naked.

He gestures for you to sit up straight on the chair and remove your shirt. “It’s just us,” he assures, voice low. “Take your time.”

But the second your top comes off?

Suguru freezes. Not obviously, no. His face stays calm. His gloves keep moving. But his gaze dips - lingers - just a second too long. Mouth salivating. Trying not to bite his lip at how perfect your buds are. Better than anything he could imagine. Your chest is all soft and warm, nipples already hardening from the cool air, and it’s killing him that he has to touch you like this under the guise of procedure. He marks each side carefully, asking you to look in the mirror. His gloved fingers brush over your skin, tugging gently to center each dot.

He kneels in front of you to line things up and - fuck - he has to take a breath. One hand spreads your chest just slightly, thumb resting just under your nipple, holding it still as the other hand preps the clamp.

“Deep breath,” he murmurs, those pretty violet eyes flicking up to your face. “Ready?”

You nod, hitching a breath.

He pierces you slowly, smoothly, a soft grunt escaping you as the needle slides through. He follows with the barbell, threading it with precision. Then the other side. The same process. The same slow, delicate handling. Only the best for his girl.

It’s supposed to be clinical. Quick. Efficient. But it feels too intimate. The drag of his covered, latex thumb. The closeness of his face. His steady breathing, that makes your skin tingle. The way his voice softens as he murmurs praise, “You’re doing so well,” and, “Almost done, sugar.”

When it's over, you're flushed and avoiding his eyes as you slip your shirt back on. He removes his gloves, tossing them into the bin, before asking - casual, too casual - “So… what made you decide to get them?”

You pause before answering, and for a moment he wonders - hopes - you’ll say him.

But instead, you give him a really pretty, dazed smile and say, “My boyfriend. He’s an artist too. Thought I’d look cute with them. It's a surprise for him.”

Suguru just stares, finally a single blink. Then a slow, practiced smile spreads across his face, cool as a cucumber.

“Lucky guy,” Suguru says smoothly, though there's a barely-there crack in his voice. “He’s got good taste. I’m sure he’s going to love them.”

The words roll off his tongue with ease, but his jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. Without missing a beat, he transitions into explaining how to care for your new piercings - what to clean with, what to avoid, how long it’ll take to heal. His tone stays calm, professional. Words well rehearsed.

But inside, he’s reeling. He won’t let it show, the twitch in his fingers, the heat crawling up his neck. He’s not thinking about the way your chest looked under the soft lighting of the studio, or how your lips parted when you winced, or how his gloved fingers brushed your skin so delicately. He’s not imagining the bounce of your body on someone's cock, someone else's hands on your hips, someone else's mouth on your chest.

Someone else enjoying what he got to see first.

His warm palm should be the one grazing against your newly pierced nipples. His mouth should be the one murmuring praise, not some faceless boyfriend with "good taste."

Later, after you're gone, he stares at your number in his contacts. Thumb hovering over the screen. No messages sent. The memory of your bare chest, your bitten lip, the tiny wince when the needle pierced through - all of it is burned into his mind like ink into skin.

He’s professional. Of course he is. But he’s thinking about you a lot. By the time the studio closes, he’s already on his phone, typing into Instagram:

“Tattoo artists near me.”

Just to see who this mystery boyfriend is. Just to see the face of the man who thinks he can touch what Suguru has already claimed.

[mullermilkshake]

Stretching limits.

Part 1 <- -> Part 2

You’re being chased, will you make it out unscathed?

Kento Nanami x Fem! Reader DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT,Non con,Knife play,Possessive,Forced,Vaginal fingering,Drug use/ drugging,Forced orgasm,Squirting,Mouth gag,Threat of violence,Stalking,Kidnapping,Nipple play,Hair pulling

<<< For more Nanami content, click this link to go back to the Masterlist! >>>

You never should have skipped gym class. 

If you hadn’t, you might have carried on into your adulthood and gotten fitter. Much fitter so you wouldn’t try and keep your gasping lungs quiet as you ran through the abandoned building you had found yourself in. 

You would be as quiet as a mouse if you had just gone to the stupid gym.

The concrete flooring was the biggest conductor, alerting anything of your movements like it was taking revenge. What a bastard.

Who you were running form was more complicated than just a one word answer, a name or even a reason. It was horrific and it couldn’t just be explained away. No, it was an experience only others could understand when they lived it themselves, which was few and far between. 

Climbing up the stairs, bare and musty, the plastic on the ground floor was ripped away, it crinkled deadly fast, but no one spoke. You stopped, not daring to move in fear he would see you if you did. 

Slowly, you slipped your shoes off, the dust and grime already sticking to the soles of your socks. You weren’t sure if you should have kept your shoes, but there was no time, he would head up the stairs eventually so you chose to hide them. 

How did he even find you in the first place? You’d moved, changed numbers, gotten the police involved. Everything you could have done, you did. But it didn’t stop him from tracking you down like a deer in open season.

The cross hairs were right between your eyes. 

You carried on up the stairs, minding yourself past wet patches and puddles to keep an invisible path leading to you, stepping over the loose cables and forgotten equipment you couldn’t afford to trip over.

You searched and rummaged through a tool box, too inviting to leave unattended, perhaps you would find a wrench or some other weighted tool you could sling at his head. 

You knew he could dodge an attack like that, but it never swayed you to think otherwise, just in case there was a contributing factor. Maybe the sun would reverse, and rise instead of its steady drop in the sky, blind him for a second and a flying wrench would knock him over so you could get away. 

A nail gun? No the cable wasn’t nearly long enough, the big industrial ones never ran off of gas, it used the generator placed precariously in the middle of the floor over some hazardous sheets of metal over a large hole to the ground below. 

Right where you thought he was. 

Where the hell could you put your shoes? 

You cursed as quietly as possible, you were starting to panic. You finally hid them under a screwed up dust sheet you found and took the next set of stairs, crouching just in case. You hadn’t heard anything since the plastic sheet, for a foolish moment you almost talked yourself into believing that it was just the wind, and you were hiding for no reason but that hope shattered like glass.

“Darling.” His voice echoed and sounded so close. “I know you’re in here, there’s no point in hiding. It’s getting dark and I want to go home.”

You backed up slowly, never taking your eyes off of the stairwell behind you. He was baiting you, if you spoke now, he’d appear right in front of you like a ghost, a demon ready to swallow you whole. 

Part of you wanted to tease him, you’d escaped once, you’d escape again. Unless he chained you, that wasn’t the most comforting thought. You were still struggling with your breathing, you covered your mouth and took one deep breath.

Then, you snuck up, trying to at least get a floor difference between you. Think. Always be prepared, your father had said since you were little. How could you be prepared, if there was nothing to prepare with? 

Going up another flight, here was your golden ticket. 

Rope and sheets, crudely hung up as though they were drying, tents and discarded trolleys littered around on the floor. Plenty of places to hide and plenty of opportunities to slip past him. 

There were plenty of chances to get caught too. Wet and moulded newspapers, spilt candle wax and old blackened metal spoons, all hazards. 

Getting low, you moved around the sheets, looking for anything, something to inflict pain, even if it was as small as a pin, anything could hurt him. All you found was a ballpoint pen, you almost spoke out loud. 

But it was like he heard you anyway. “So you’re up here then. I guess I still know you very well, but if you think you can slip by me, you still have plenty to know about me, Darling.”

He could have been mere metres away from you by now and you wouldn’t know any difference. He was much more silent than he had even been before, had he taken his shoes off too? 

You froze in place and listened, clutching the pen as your lifeline, waited for a sign, a sound to tip you off. You could maybe slip into the neighbouring tent, but the zip, it would scream your location. You scanned the floor and found a pebble that could work as a deterrent. 

Getting down lower there was a shadow, faint, barely there but it was moving, that’s where he was. You threw it away from you, away from the stairwell and that was when you heard his footsteps. 

So you made a break for it, silently so, but still with a rocket up your ass. Freedom so close, so tasty you could smell it like a warm inviting home.  

There he was, in front of you, his back turned, but he was right fucking there, you almost blew it by your gasps you caught in time.

“If you show yourself now” He boomed, nothing like you had ever heard before, like he panicked. “I’ll forgive what you did back at the house and we can start over, if you don’t, there will be severe consequences.” 

His wrapped knife was on his back, smiling at you, you begged the inanimate object to keep quiet and it did. He still hadn’t seen you, so you kept going. But it was foolish of you to turn your gaze, even if it was just for a second. 

“There you are.” He was so quick, wrapping his fist around your hair and holding you there. He’d never done that before. “I thought I told you to show yourself when I asked.” He said your name with so much vitriol.

“Ken- ouch!”

He ripped you by your hair. “I don’t recall giving you permission to speak. Though I do recall you leaving me tied to the bed and you walking out without an explanation. Care to elaborate on what you were thinking?”

You’d put tablets into his drink, tied him down for good measure, but you underestimated the amount he needed. 

“No explanation? I had one! You took me away from everything I knew and I told you over and over to let me go!” You pushed at him, swinging the ball point pen, hoping no matter how much you hurt, you hurt him too. 

He smacked it away. “Watch your manners!” It didn’t hurt him. He just pulled you again so that you could have sworn your hair was coming out in his hand.  

He let go, much to your relief, and took your arm. It didn’t hurt any less but you could manage it. He looked so angry, the shadows of his face were so sunken, like voids, black holes under his eyes that would swallow you up. He started dragging you down the stairs.

“Stop! I’m not going back!”

“Yes you are.”

Kento pushed you up against the wall on the stairwell and squeezed your shoulders in an act to scare you, it worked too. “You will go back. I don’t treat you unfairly do I? Do I beat you or force myself on you? No, I definitely do not, so don’t act like I do.”

“It’s not what you do though. It's about how you did it, all of it!” You tried to push him away, you really did.  

He never moved, pure muscle brick house. You were just lucky you got away the first time. If you went back with him, there was no way you were getting out another time, one big fat lie you told yourself. You were never escaping him again.

“You should have let me go! I have a new life now, a job, friends and you're fucking it all up again!”

Kento got close to you, towering over, he had the same cologne on he always wore, the undertones of fresh cotton lingered, along with the tickling of his breath. “I took you with me because you were the only thing that made me feel more than just a fucking worker ant. And I won’t let that go, do you understand me? I won't allow it.”

If someone had walked in on that moment, they would have assumed they'd walked into a sensual, steamy romance novel. The mist of your breaths in the ever growing darkness, heavy breathing, closeness, your noses almost touching. But it was more like hell. 

You barely spoke, “Just let me go.”

“I won’t do it.”

“I don’t want to be with you, I just want to live my life.” Those were famous last words.

“You can live your life with me. You won’t leave me. I’m not the villain here.” He growled your name. “I’m not like those other pigs, I take care of you, make you dinner, buy you clothes, provide all of these nice things, for what?”

“I didn’t ask for any of it!” 

He took your wrists in his hand and pinned them against the cold concrete, it scraped against you, uneven and unforgiving. “I can be like the others if that’s what you want- is it? Want me to be like the others?” He pulled his knife away from his back and pushed it slowly under your chin.

“What the fuck?!” 

“I don’t want to have to use this, so I need you to behave, can you do that?”

What? Was he just going to kill you if you didn’t do whatever he wanted? Had he fallen off that deep? You found yourself fighting for self preservation and nodded, but that didn’t stop your words.

You tried to calm your tone down to a respectable calmness. “I want you to leave me alone, Kento… Please, just go.”

His voice was a whisper. “Just once, Darling.” 

“What?” You hadn't properly heard him the first time, but your gut already did.

“Just once, then it’ll be alright.” 

He held your wrists there, keeping them tight as they were. His free hand pulled the knife back and slotted it back into its holster. “I’ll put it to your throat again if you try anything.”

 He wandered, touching you in places he never had before, caressing the side of your neck, down to your hip. It was incredibly suggestive and the penny finally dropped.

“No! Kento don’t, you're better than this, I don't want this.”

“You will.” He moved in, pressed his lips on yours, but you pulled away. “Once we've done this, you’ll see why you're so special, I’ll show you just how special you are.”

He cupped your breast, your t-shirt gathering around his fingertips, squeezing hurt, the chill in the building made your skin react. He kissed you again, but quickly moved to your neck, sucking and nipping like he was starved. Lifting your t-shirt, he pulled your bra down rough, exposing your breasts to the cold air. His grip never ceased, only clamped down more, your hands were going numb already. 

“You drive me crazy.” He took your nipple in his mouth, warming you up ever so slightly. “You don’t realise what kind of man you threaten to make me.” 

The tension changed on his lips, he was marking you, the side of your breast, the soft, sensitive skin there was close to going purple. 

“Kento, stop this now before it goes further. You’ll regret it, I know you will. Don’t be like the others.” Whoever these others were. 

He pulled away and admired your body, you couldn’t see the mark, but knew just as well it was there. “You’ve made me like this.” 

His hand moved down and slid across your stomach, going straight to your jeans, to your underwear. 

“Kento.” You said with more of a blunt tone. “Stop right this minute, you don’t know what you’re doing!” 

“My conscience has never been clearer.” 

Kento pulled his tie off in a fashion he always did, something he made look sensual though he never meant to. But you knew he knew all along by the look in his eyes, it came apart in his hands and he balled it up. 

“Open.” 

You went to shake your head in defiance, he couldn’t assume you would just agree, you remained still though, the thought of the clothed knife still lingered. He took your chin and forced your mouth open, shoving the fabric into your mouth, it instantly took the moisture away. 

The pop of your button came and the heated pads of his fingertips touched you where they had never before. 

“You lied to me.” He cooed your name. “You said you didn’t want this, but your body is telling a completely different story.”

You didn’t. It was your body's response to stimuli, nothing more, you knew it was a lie he kept telling himself to make this situation more consistent with his beliefs. He was going to regret this after his spurt of clarity. He barely touched and you flinched and he even made a noise so close to a laugh, it caught you off guard more than ever. Kento was always so serious.

“You’re starved, look at you. My bet is that you’ve never even squirted before, have you?” He rubbed you, playing with the slickness to improve his movements. 

You hadn’t, you didn’t know if you could, but it wasn’t something you tried. You tensed and pushed your thighs together, he wouldn’t find out, you wouldn’t let him. 

You moved your hips to the side, recalling every self defence video you ever watched, but it all went out the other ear. He shoved his knee between your legs, pinching the skin until he touched the wall. His fingers moved over slowly, slipping, squelching around you, like he knew clitoral stimulation was the way to make you come every time. 

“Do I need to get my knife out?”

Shit. You shook your head again.

“Good. Now relax.” Why did he sound so soothing? “If I curl my fingers like this,” You were wet enough, two fingers slid in, his long, slender fingers. “You’ll experience the best orgasm of your life.”

He still held you in place, so strong, never ceasing with the amount of raw strength,  just there like he was holding up a poster on the wall. The chill had ridden up under your shift, the faint, thin hairs on your back stood up straight, welcoming goosebumps to your predicament. 

His fingers pumped at a pace that was neither acceptable for a lover, nor a quick one night stand, it was neither here nor there like it had its own rhythm. Kento’s rhythm. You could feel every inch on him, turning, squelching, moving with purpose inside you. 

“Can you see now, how you make me feel? You’re sucking my fingers in because you’re so good. You’re so good for me.” 

You weren’t good for him, you didn’t even know him. You fought alongside that thought, even when you sensed an orgasm brewing in the pit of your stomach. Using your tongue, you were able to push the tie free from your lips, mouth scraping at the barrel to collect as much saliva it could. 

“K-Kento.” 

“Hmm?”

“Stop this, I don’t want to be here.” You almost sounded defeated. 

He thrusted his fingers and even added another, stretching you out, like he could take more aggression out on you without getting violent. 

“You’re here. Right now. And nothing will change. You’re coming back with me as soon as you come all over my hand.” 

“But I-“

“But nothing. Come for me now.”

The rush accelerated, you tried to dismiss it, ignore it, because if you couldn’t feel it, then it wasn’t there. But it was, and it was fast approaching. His lips around your nipple made it go quicker, ramping up the heat to new levels, deeper, much more solid.

What the fuck is this? 

There we go.” He went faster, really moving his fingers. “I’d like you to come, pretty fucking hard now.”

It was coming, you were coming. 

What was this? Did you piss yourself? As you came, liquid shot out of you, the pressure of the orgasm beat against you as you squirmed and writhed under his touch, threatening to send you to the floor when your knees buckled. 

Wetness gushed and dripped, soaking into your jeans, all up Kento’s arm. The post orgasm clarity hit you like a ton of bricks, what a fucking idiot you were, it had gotten much darker and you still had to find a way back home without Kento finding you. There was no way you were going with him. 

He didn’t let go. 

“You’re a good girl.” He placed a soft peck on your cheek, almost cheekily to the point it stunned you. “I knew you’d listen.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you, you know that, right?”

He finally let go but kept your exit blocked “Did you think we were finished? Come on, let’s finish this at home, you’re filthy, look at your socks. I’ll run you a hot bath, okay?” 

“You aren’t listening to me!- get off!” The pain shot down your arm again as he took it again in his grasp. 

“We’re going home right now, and we’re finishing this. Don’t ever think of leaving again, who knows what’ll happen.”

And he just took you, kicking and screaming back to hell, like the devil he was. 

DISCLAIMER - Crossposted from my AO3 - I do not own any of the characters or anything from the anime. This is a work of fan fiction and is absolutely not representative of the views or intentions of the original creator(s).

Also please don’t post any of my work without permission thank you!

[withering-bloom]

Arlecchino x Fem Reader Angst

Arlecchino angst because I hate myself and I’m incredibly depressed atm, listening to good luck, babe for the past four hours LMAO

arlecchino x fem Reader Angst ,internalised homophobia, reader marrying a man tw.

2.5k words

The ballroom was gilded in gold and excess, every chandelier a mockery of the weight crushing your chest. Guests danced in practiced elegance, their laughter ringing hollow in your ears. Your fingers clenched the fabric of your white dress as you stood at the edge of the festivities, trying to make yourself invisible. But no amount of opulence could dull the aching in your heart.

You shouldn’t have looked. You promised yourself you wouldn’t, but when her piercing gaze found yours from across the room, it was as though the ground beneath you disappeared. Arlecchino stood in the shadowed corner, her presence impossible to ignore despite her effort to blend into the background. The tailored suit she wore fit her perfectly, but it was her expression that broke you. Her normally unreadable face now bore something raw, something vulnerable.

You forced yourself to look away.You have a husband now you're supposed to give your undivided attention and support to him.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. You weren’t supposed to fall in love with her.

But you had.

Your father’s voice lingered in your mind like a cruel shadow, a constant reminder of why you were here tonight. His words were sharp, not with pride but with practicality, as he justified your union with the Demoisters, the family you're now bearing your last name with. It wasn’t about love or your happiness—it never was. This marriage was nothing more than a transaction, a lifeline for your father to pull himself out of crippling debt, no matter the cost to you.

Sometimes, in the back of your mind where your unspoken dreams slowly die , you wished the weight of his failures would finally crush him. Maybe then, you could finally escape the invisible chains he had wrapped around you for as long as you could remember. Even now, as a grown woman, you were nothing more than a pawn to him, your life reduced to serving his needs, his ambitions, his mistakes.

You’d tried to tell yourself it wasn’t his fault, that he was only doing what he thought was necessary to save your family. But that excuse had grown thin, and now, standing in the midst of this charade, you couldn’t ignore the bitter truth. He would never see you as more than a tool. And you—despite everything you wanted to believe—were too afraid to break free.

The realisation sank deeper, heavier, like a stone tied to your soul. You weren’t living for yourself. You never had been.Marrying the heir of another family wasn’t just an expectation—it was a lifeline for your family’s survival. You couldn’t afford the luxury of choice, let alone the freedom to love someone as dangerous as Arlecchino.

She’d warned you.

All that rang through your mind was the night before all of this happened. The last encounter you had with Arlecchino before she called off things with you for good.

“Your father is just using you,” she said, her voice low but trembling with restrained anger. Her eyes, usually so piercing, now brimmed with raw pain and frustration. “He doesn’t care what you want. He never has.”

You flinched at her words, but it wasn’t because she was wrong. It was because she was right, and hearing the truth from her lips made it unbearable.

“I—he’s my father,” you mumbled, the excuse tasting bitter in your mouth. You couldn’t meet her gaze, your eyes fixed on the floor instead, where the shadows of candlelight danced—so fragile, so fleeting. “It’s not that simple. I don’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” she snapped, stepping closer, her voice growing more desperate. “But you’re too scared to take it. You’re scared of what they’ll say. What he’ll say. That’s why you’re going through with this farce of a marriage, isn’t it? Because it’s easier to let them decide your life for you than to fight for what you actually want.”

Her words hit like daggers, and you hated how well she could see through you. She always could.

“You don’t understand,” you whispered, your voice cracking under the weight of your own emotions. “I have to do this. It’s my family—”

“It’s not your family,” she interrupted, her voice sharp enough to cut through the air. “It’s him. It’s always been him. He doesn’t care about you, about what makes you happy. He’s doing this for himself—to save his business, to save his reputation. And he’s dragging you down with him, forcing you to live a life that isn’t yours.”

Tears burned in your eyes, but you refused to let them fall. Not here. Not now. “It’s not that simple,” you said again, but the words were hollow, and you knew she could hear it too.

“And for what?” she pressed, her voice softening but losing none of its intensity. “For a family that doesn’t see you for who you are? For a man who doesn’t love you—and never will? That’s why you’re marrying him and not me, isn’t it?”

The silence that followed was deafening.

She took a step back, her shoulders trembling as she let out a bitter scoff, the sound laced with heartbreak. “Because they’d rather see you miserable than happy with me. Because they’d rather you live a lie than accept the truth. And you’re letting them. You’re letting them steal everything from you, including me.”

Your chest tightened, and the tears finally fell, hot and unforgiving, streaking down your face. You wanted to tell her she was wrong, to reach out and beg her to stay, but your voice caught in your throat. Because deep down, you knew she was right.

“I can’t,” you whispered, your voice so quiet it was almost inaudible. “I can’t fight them. I’m not strong enough.”

Her expression crumbled, her mask of anger giving way to something far more devastating—grief. “Then that’s it, isn’t it?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “You’re going to let them decide your life for you. And you’re going to lose me in the process.”

She turned away, and for a moment, you wanted to reach for her, to beg her to understand, to stay despite everything. But you didn’t. You couldn’t.

“I love you,” you said, the words breaking on your lips.

She paused, her back still to you. “Then you should’ve chosen me.”

And with that, she walked away, leaving you alone in the suffocating quiet of your own cowardice, your heart shattering into pieces you would never put back together.

But you had no choice.

Now, the gilded ring on your finger felt heavier than lead. Every step you took toward the man you were bound to felt like another nail in the coffin of your happiness. He smiled at you, oblivious to the storm raging within you, as he held out his hand to guide you into the first dance.

You moved mechanically, your heart somewhere else entirely—across the room, where Arlecchino stood unmoving, watching.

When the music slowed, and the crowd dissolved into polite applause, you excused yourself under the guise of needing air. The garden was empty, the cool night breeze biting against your skin. But it wasn’t the cold that made you shiver.

“I shouldn’t have come.”

Her voice was low, cutting through the silence like a blade. You turned to see her standing there, her suit blending into the shadows.

“Then why are you here?” you whispered, your voice trembling.

She stepped closer, and for a moment, you thought she might touch you, but her hands stayed firmly at her sides. “Because I had to see it for myself,” she said, her voice cracking. “Had to see you give yourself to someone else.”

“I've told you a million times it wasn’t my choice,” you said, tears welling in your eyes.

“There’s always a choice,” she hissed, her calm veneer cracking to reveal the fury and heartbreak underneath. “But you’ve made yours.”

Her words stung, but they weren’t untrue. You had made a choice. A cruel, impossible choice.

“I love you,” you said, your voice breaking as the tears spilled freely now. “I love you more than I can put into words, but—”

“But it doesn’t matter,” she interrupted, her tone hollow and sharp. Her hands twitched at her sides, as if fighting the urge to reach for you, to pull you close one last time. “It never mattered, did it?”

“That’s not true,” you whispered, stepping closer, but she stepped back, the distance between you an unspoken barrier you knew you’d never cross again.

“You’ve already chosen,” she said bitterly, her voice trembling in a way you’d never heard before. “And I’m not going to stand here and beg for the scraps of your heart. Not when you’ve already handed it over to someone else—someone you don’t even love.”

Her words struck you like a physical blow, and you recoiled, clutching the fabric of your dress as though it could hold together the pieces of your breaking heart. “This isn’t fair, Arlecchino,” you choked out. “I’m doing this for my family—”

“For your family,” she repeated, the words dripping with venom. “What about you? What about what you want? Or does what we had mean so little that you can throw it away without a second thought?”

“It’s not that simple,” you pleaded, your voice barely audible.

“It is,” she snapped, her sharp eyes blazing with a mix of fury and heartbreak. “You just don’t want to admit it. You’re a coward, and you’re running from the one thing that’s real.” Your shoulders stiffened as you raised your head up to look her directly in the eyes.

“So what?” you snapped, the words spilling out before you could stop them, sharp and defensive, laced with fear you refused to acknowledge. “I’m doing what’s best for my mother and my sisters. They need this—they need me to do this.” You folded your arms tightly across your chest, trying to steady the tremble in your voice. “You don’t understand. They would never… they’d never look at me the same if they knew about—about us.”

Your voice cracked, and you swallowed hard, willing yourself not to cry. You hated how weak you sounded, how transparent. “They’d disown me,” you whispered, almost to yourself now, the words like broken glass in your throat. “They’d hate me. My own mother, my sisters—they’re the only family I have, and if I lose them, I’ll have nothing.”

Her silence stung, and when you finally looked up, the hurt in her eyes was unbearable.

“They wouldn’t hate you,” she said softly, but there was an edge of disbelief in her tone. “They’d come to understand. They love you. Isn’t that what family is supposed to do?”

You let out a bitter laugh, shaking your head. “You don’t know them like I do. Love isn’t unconditional in my family. Love is earned. And if they found out about this, about me…” You trailed off, your chest tightening as the weight of it all pressed down on you,while fiddling with the ring chained around your finger, “They’d never forgive me for ruining everything.”

“You’re not ruining anything,” she argued, her voice rising with frustration. “You’re just too afraid to live your life—our life. You’re letting their expectations cage you, and for what? To keep their love? What about your own happiness? What about mine?”

You flinched, her words cutting deeper than you wanted to admit. “You don’t get it,” you hissed, desperation creeping into your voice. “This isn’t just about me. This is about them, about saving them from losing everything. And—and being with you? It’s wrong, don’t you see that?”

Her face fell, her expression crumbling into something between anger and heartbreak. “Wrong?” she echoed, her voice barely audible. “You think this is wrong?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” you said quickly, but the damage was already done.

“Yes, you did,” she shot back, her voice trembling. “You think being able to allow yourself to love me is wrong. You think you are wrong.”

Tears pricked at the corners of your eyes, but you refused to let them fall. “You don’t understand,” you repeated, weaker this time. “It’s not about love. It’s about survival. And if that means I have to bury this—bury us—then so be it.”

Her shoulders sagged, and she let out a shaky breath. “I hope it’s worth it,” she said quietly, her voice devoid of the fire it once carried. “Giving up everything that matters to you. Including yourself.”

The silence that followed was unbearable. You reached out, desperate, but her cold, empty laugh froze you in place.

“Do me a favor,” she said softly, her voice cracking under the weight of her own words. “When you stand at that altar tomorrow and say your vows, don’t think of me. Don’t look at him and wish it was me standing there instead. Because I won’t be waiting for you, not now, not ever.”

Her words broke something in you, but before you could respond, she turned and walked away, her silhouette dissolving into the shadows.

You didn’t follow her.

You stood frozen in the cold garden, the echoes of her parting words wrapping around your throat like a noose. When you finally found the strength to move, your steps felt heavy, every movement dragging you closer to a future you no longer wanted.

As you re-entered the ballroom, the weight of the ring on your finger seemed to double, a gilded chain binding you to a life of pretense. Your fiancé greeted you with a warm smile, but you barely heard his words. You saw only Arlecchino’s back as she disappeared into the darkness, taking your heart with her.

And as the music swelled and the guests toasted to your impending marriage, the truth settled in your chest like a dagger:

You would love her for the rest of your life, but she would never forgive you.

And you would never forgive yourself.

Live,love,lesbian angst.

Me writing this fanfic:

[sadokasochism]

For me, the most heartbreaking aspect of Ivan is that the poor clueless bastard didn't have the tools to express his affection in any way that didn't involve violence or manipulation, or weren't too inscrutable, quiet, or unseen to be picked up by Till.

I definitely interpret Ivan as autistic for several reasons, a big one being their Segyein teacher's notes about him:

It's just. Classic ND behaviour to me.

Not only does expressing emotion and communicating the way other kids do not come naturally to Ivan, but it's not as if he's been given a great example of coping with this from the Segyein.

Ivan managed to mask in a way that made him popular with other students, and got him in the good graces of their captors. He did everything expected of him to survive and thrive in this environment.

Then he meets Till, inscrutable and very different to the other kids, just like Ivan is. Except, Till doesn't mask. He doesn't change or try to endear himself to their captors, and he doesn't bend to anyone, no matter how much he is hurt and punished for it.

This is a new situation for Ivan, and he's never had anything to compare his feelings to. He also can't figure out how to communicate with Till, every interaction, no matter how well meaning, seems to end in failure.

I bring your attention to the cheer up comic, and how, again, autistic this interaction feels:

There could be many reasons why Ivan chose to say what he did, but to me it feels like ND bluntness not being received well. And that's fair! From Till's perspective Ivan is being a jerk for no good reason.

Instead of responding with glee towards Till laying him out (as we see from Ivan when they're a bit older), Ivan justs seems... really confused. Like he didn't expect that statement to upset Till that much, and he didn't expect Till to respond in the way he did. Everything was fine a second ago, what went wrong?

Then, Ivan uses the phrase he learned from Till in an attempt to self sooth. It might have been the first example of comfort after an injury/hurt he had ever seen, given how he defaults to it. And it was from Till trying to cheer up a flower.

This also shows some of Till's blindspots. He has grown up having to be vigilant, because violence and hurt have been a core part of his upbringing. This leads to anything he doesn't immediately, clearly understand being perceived as a threat or a slight, and so he reacts violently to Ivan's statement.

I'll also draw your attention to this comic where, as far as we know, Ivan is simply stating a true fact in a blunt manner:

In my interpretation, these types of interactions keep adding up, and Ivan is grasping at straws the whole time, trying to be closer to Till and failing every time.

Eventually, the only surefire way to get Till's attention is to piss him off, provoke him, manufacture scenarios to talk to him. I'm not excusing this behaviour, but I understand where Ivan could be coming from, from the perspective of both an emotionally immature/stunted child and/or an ND child.

Despite how much they fight and bicker, at every moment it really mattered, Ivan was there for Till. It was always Ivan coming to free him, to take off his collar or gag, and it was Ivan who led their escape.

Ivan couldn't leave Till behind when he went back for Mizi. Even with the confirmation that Till would choose Mizi over Ivan every time, Ivan couldn't leave him.

The miscommunication goes two ways though. It's insane to think that Till didn't care about Ivan at all. They were close as kids, and I doubt Till ever forgot about the escape he gave up.

We have the graduation messages, where Ivan is able to write something that could be reasonably interpreted as affectionate or fond towards Till.

Meanwhile, Till's message-

If we're being charitable with our interpretations, we can say this was Till's way of saying 'of course I remember you' and attempting to communicate that Ivan HAD left a lasting impact on him.

However, how could any reasonable person be expected to get THAT out of 'you stole my fucking pencil'? Ivan could have taken this one of two ways:

1) Omg he remembers me 🥰

2) he leans into his 'i will never be loved back' bias and thinks that Till really doesn't care about him at all

Who the hell knows what goes through that weird little brain of his. But given how Round 6 went, and what Ivan had to say in the confession comic, he obviously didn't think his impact was significant enough.

Then Alien Stage happens, and in Round 3 Ivan is FINALLY communicating his feelings in a way that is vulnerable and might even have a chance of being understood as love and yearning!

Till is unconscious through it until the very end.

Then in the next round, Mizi goes missing, and Till can't care about anything anymore.

Ivan finds him after the private performance, takes off his gag, and just holds him. Again, Till is unconscious for all of this.

Then, in Round 6, not only is Till distraught from the disappearance of Mizi, but he's given no time to process what the fuck is going on before Ivan is dead at his feet. Till might have finally had a chance to really understand where Ivan was coming from, how he really felt all this time, and Ivan DIES.

And still, Ivan's most transparent act of affection? It's delivered with violence. He's kissing a distraught Till who tries to push him away, and neither of them are happy. He puts his hands around Till's neck, not really hurting him, but it's enough to look convincing for the cameras, and it's enough for Till to go limp and wait for death. Ivan's final loving act is to give Till a soft look with blood pouring out of his mouth, that Till still does not see, and then let go before falling to the ground.

It's just a collection of failures. We see from Ivan that he truly loved Till, made a lot of selfless decisions for his sake, was filled with so much longing and affection, but he just couldn't get it across in a way that doesn't seem fucking deranged from an outsider's perspective. And when he DID manage to communicate his feelings more clearly, it was to a Till that was unconscious, or too distracted/dense/traumatised to see Ivan's actions as ones of love.

There's no guarantee that Till would have reciprocated even if Ivan had managed to communicate his feelings in a healthier way, but there was at least a CHANCE. At least Ivan could have gotten some closure, even if he was rejected.

Instead Ivan died thinking he was completely unloved by the person who he cared about more than anything else, and his last ditch effort to make Till understand was deeply flawed and uncomfortable.

If these kids had grown up any other way, maybe they could have had a chance. Unfortunately, the world they were in didn't equip them to not hurt eachother in their attempts to grow closer.