#but still a huge dick

[erigold13261]

Hello hello I'm in your asks once again lol-

Anyway I'm just curious on how you think Alyona (if she was alive of course) would initially react if she found out that Tatiana had kids of her own (aka Titanium, Sonya, and Rosie) and maybe other members of Tatiana's family finding out about the 3 daughters that are very important to Vinyl City via Titanium ruling in place of Tatiana once she retires, Sonya being the drummer version of Kul Fyra of her own band, and Rosie being the #1 Artist aka the Beloved Idol of Vinyl City.

Of course Matevy (I may have spelled his name wrong-) would not be allowed to be anywhere near the daughters, especially Rosie since she's the youngest and the most impressionable due to her innocent nature. If he even attempts (which I doubt he would) to go near Rosie then everyone would know and Titanium would have to restrain Sonya and her bandmates along with Rosie's boyfriend Azul (who can get pretty dangerous since he is a dragon hybrid-) from jumping Matevy while she has her security escort him out. Poor Rosie would be very confused though-

Also maybe Alyona also meets Olive and they chat and all that, and Olive would be pleased that her and Tatiana's daughters are getting along well with their grandmother. Rosie would always be happy to see her grandma when she comes to visit :3

(meant to answer this earlier woops)

Oh Alyona would be absolutely ecstatic to be a grandmother! Also, if Alyona stayed alive, Matvey have never laid a hand on Tatiana. He definitely would not have been a good father still, but he would not have been physically abusive at least. I would still see Tatiana keeping him away from her kids and family though.

But back to Alyona. She would absolutely be super happy to have grandkids and would spoil them so much! She'd even spoil Olive when her and Tatiana started dating. Maybe she might have been able to change Matvey's mind about some things, but I doubt that.

If your Tatiana is a transwoman like mine is, then Matvey would probably say things behind Alyona's back to Tatiana about having her stop pretending to be a girl since Olive would need a strong man/husband. If your Tatiana is a cis woman though, Matvey would make some lesbiphobic comments about a family not having a father is the worst thing that can happen to kids.

So yeah, no matter what, keep Matvey away from the grandkids. It's not like he would want to be near them anyway. He wouldn't say shit if Alyona was around so at least if the grandkids wanted to meet him for some reason then Alyona would stay by his side the entire time.

Alyona would be very proud of Rosie, Titanium, and Sonya. She probably wouldn't be able to provide them with much in terms of gifts, but you better believe she takes up the stereotype that grandmas never let family go hungry! She'd make all kinds of delicious foods and treats for the kids when she comes to visit of if they visit her! Maybe even making them some clothes or teaching them to control any possible fire powers.

Speaking of powers. I personally have it so the time powers only show up in biologically male individuals, but if one of the 3 daughters have time powers like Tatiana then I can see that being a very rare instance of the time powers going to a girl. This alone would probably make Matvey reconsider some of his world views as he would want to teach his grandkids how to properly manipulate time.

So if Alyona is alive and well, there is a possibility that Matvey actually becomes a better person. Or at the very least a decent/okay person. Still definitely not great, but LEAGUES better than the OG timeline where Alyona has died. I still wouldn't trust him alone with the grandkids as he can still be a huge misogynistic asshole who does not like kids, but at least he isn't beating (or trying to beat) the shit out of children anymore.

But yea! Alyona would be a very positive light in Tatiana's life and with her family!

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID in alt text, transcripts for comics also found there!]

🎉🎇HAPPY NEW YEAR!🎇🎉

Sure was a year...This is just me taking the end of year opportunity to post the various DC comics doodles that have been gathering dust in my files! Disclaimer that I'm a heathen who mostly reads batfam comics (and also a lot of. Sidekick-y stuff? Like YJ98) and these are all for fun! (Image #3 is a direct adaptation of this text post I made)

[termagax]

[unexpectedbrickattack]

heehee (pepstavo under the cut)

[silverwhittlingknife]

How do you feel about Jack Drake?? What are your thoughts on him and Tim’s relationship?

Anon, I hope you were interested in a novel, because look, I am fascinated by Jack Drake.  He’s key to a whole lot of what I find compelling about Tim as a character, and if I were in charge of DC, I’d bring him back to life.  This would make Tim unhappy but would IMO make for good plotlines.

Jack and Tim’s relationship is Complicated (TM)...

Jack and Tim hug in Nightwing 20 / Jack impulsively yanks a TV out of the wall in Robin 45 / Tim grieves in Identity Crisis

“I could tell the truth.  But I don’t.” - Robin 66

...and it involves a whole lot of Tim lying, and feeling guilty about lying, and thinking about telling the truth, and choosing again and again to keep lying.

And I think that’s great.

Below the cut:

Shorter version - key points about Jack

Really long version - my gentler take (vigilantism is choir and Jack loves sports) vs. my harsher take (Jack has some major flaws)

Final thoughts

Shorter version - key points about Jack:

He’s a bad parent.  He’s self-centered, he consistently prioritizes his own comfort and interests over his son’s, and when upset, he does things like order Tim off to boarding school.

But he’s never a bad parent in an actionable way.  He’s not like David Cain or Arthur Brown, who are abusive monsters.  Jack’s not a monster!  He just...kinda sucks.

He genuinely loves Tim. If Jack’s aware that Tim’s disappeared or is in trouble, he’s always worried and upset.  He periodically resolves to be a better dad, and IMO he’s always sincere.

And Tim loves him, a lot.  Tim’s protective of him and worries about him when he’s kidnapped or in danger, and when they’re reunited, Tim’s really relieved and usually hugs him (and Jack hugs back!). 

...But they have very little in common, and that’s a problem. Jack doesn’t value the things that Tim values, or respect the people that Tim admires, or care about the things that Tim’s interested in.  Tim lies to him a lot, but that’s partly because he correctly guesses Jack wouldn’t respond well if he knew the truth of what Tim’s up to.

The Batfamily is a surrogate family that Tim’s drawn to because of the ways his real family doesn’t meet his emotional needs…but also he feels guilty about that and disloyal. (And to the extent that his dad recognizes what’s going on, he's jealous and resentful!)

Very long version:

(LISTEN I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS)

Okay!  So first: Jack’s a character who IMO is pretty up for interpretation.  You can interpret him very charitably, and make excuses for the bad behavior, and fill in the blanks sympathetically when situations are ambiguous; or you can interpret him uncharitably, and emphasize the bad behavior. I don’t think either approach is invalid - it depends on what kind of story you’re interested in!  I have enjoyed Bad Dad stories and also stories that redeem Jack.

My personal take on canon is that Jack and Tim’s relationship is in a gray area.  Jack's definitely neglectful, and he does prioritize other things over Tim, but he’s never so bad that Tim can easily reject him, and he's never so bad that Bruce could justify taking Tim away.  He's just...not great.  Tim loves him, and feels loyal to him, but it’s a very mixed-up complicated love.

I have a gentler take and a harsher one which I switch between as the spirit moves me. xD

My Gentler Take (tl;dr: vigilantism is choir and Jack loves sports)

Here’s the core conflict: Jack and Tim are very different people with different values.  Tim idolizes Bruce and Dick and vigilantism, and secretly gets involved, knowing his dad will hate it. He gets increasingly wrapped up in his secret world and lies to his dad...because if his dad finds out, he’ll make Tim quit.

This is a great setup for an ongoing comic.  It’s practical, because it provides endless potential for plotlines, and it’s nicely thematic, because it maps closely onto relatable real-life situations with extracurricular activities:

Tim the drama nerd whose dad thinks he’s playing football and not in the school play; 

Tim the closeted-queer kid secretly getting involved in his school’s politically-active Gay-Straight Alliance; 

Tim the choir kid whose dad only values making money and wants him to go into the family business (and Tim keeps promising himself he'll give up choir soon, definitely soon, but maybe he'll stay in just a liiiittle longer, because they need him, you see, the last tenor left town, so...); 

Tim the computer geek with the sports-obsessed dad (this one’s just canon);

etc. etc.  

The extracurricular metaphor works pretty well for Tim’s relationship to vigilantism.  Tim's involved in his "extracurricular" because he genuinely thinks it's important and fulfilling, and he values it and wants to be good at it. He idolizes Bruce and Dick because they're good at it. He's been collecting information about it since he was a little kid, and hiding it from his parents because he knows they wouldn't approve. And mayyyybe there's also an element of low-key rebellion against his dad, and maybe that's secretly part of the appeal. And yet also as Tim gets more and more invested, he starts to daydream: maybe I could tell my dad and he'd be proud of me and supportive. But he doesn't, because actually he knows his dad would be upset and angry and make him quit.

And - again, just like with lonely kids and extracurricular hobbies - one of the things that happens is that Tim starts getting his unfilled emotional needs met ... by people he knows through this secret hobby. And people like Bruce and Dick start turning into a surrogate family. Which Tim feels guilty about. And also as Tim gets more and more wrapped up in their world, he has to lie to his dad even more, which means the distance between Tim and his dad gets bigger and bigger and more and more unfixable.

I love this dilemma. It's simple, it's recognizable, it provides endless sources for conflict, and there's no obvious solution! Tim can't tell Jack: he'll make Tim quit! And Tim doesn't want to quit, because he loves choir / art / theater / whatever.  Yeah, it’s difficult, and there are challenges, and sometimes he has doubts...but at the end of the day, he cares about it a lot.  And everything he values is there, and all the people he admires and cares about are there, and all he wants in the world is to feel like he's one of them and belongs there. So he has to lie, even though he doesn't want to lie, and he feels guilty about it...

...but also he ends up lying more and more.

(Sidenote: I think it's important that Tim chooses to keep lying - Tim's narration often glosses this as "I have to lie to my dad," and that's certainly how it feels to Tim, but this... isn't quite true. He has to lie to his dad, because if he doesn't, his dad will get mad at him and try to stop him, not because he literally has no choice about it.)

Other Reasons Why I Like The "Secret Extracurricular" Interpretation

(tl;dr it complicates not just Tim's relationship with his dad, but also all his other relationships)

Tim's problems have some obvious parallels to Steph and Cass, who both become vigilantes while rejecting their evil supervillain dads. But Jack isn't evil. And that means the Tim-and-Jack relationship is ambiguous and complicated in ways that I like. Steph and Cass can just leave their Bad Dads in prison, and say good riddance, and feel very righteous and triumphant about it! Tim’s more complicated. Tim gets into vigilantism ostensibly out of duty and altruism, but secretly, he's also involved for straight-up selfish self-fulfillment reasons. He's lonely, and bored, and his life feels pointless, but he thinks that Bruce and Dick are cool and amazing and he wants to be a part of the things that they do.  When his dad gets jealous of Tim’s relationship to Bruce, and feels like Tim’s looking for a surrogate family, he’s... not wrong.

And the ways in which Jack is not Actionably Bad complicate things from Bruce's POV.  If Jack was a straight-up villain, it’d be an easy call to keep in touch when Jack finds out and makes Tim quit...but he’s not a villain, not really.  So what do you do?  Do you try to surreptitiously stay in touch with Tim even though you’re ignoring his dad’s express wishes and thus forcing Tim to sneak around?  Do you respect his dad’s wishes and stay away from Tim even though you have a years-long relationship at this point?  

Again: a bit similar to the extracurricular analogy.  Say you’re the choir director and you’ve built this whole relationship with a kid in the choir, and you’re an important mentor to him and you care about him etc. etc. etc.... and then right before a big performance, his dad finds out he’s been secretly involved, and yanks him out.  How would you react?  Well, maybe kind of in some of the ways Bruce reacts.  You replace him. You’re annoyed with him. You miss him. You want him to come back. You’re also worried about him.  You’re upset with his dad.  But also... what should you do, exactly?

Bruce and Alfred and Dick care about Tim as if he were part of their family, but he’s not part of their family, and there’s a lot of interesting tension there.

My Harsher Take

Jack never hits his son.  But his temper is a big deal.

In his worst moments, he takes out his anger on Tim’s stuff - wrecking his room, or ripping his TV out of the wall and confiscating it.  When he’s worried about Tim, he usually expresses that fear by yelling at him / punishing him / sending him away - threatening to send him to boarding school in Metropolis in Robin III, or threatening to send him to military school abroad in Robin 92, or actually forcing him to go to an all-boys' boarding school post-NML.  

This is bad behavior!  It is Not Good!  

And you can easily connect the dots to a bunch of Tim’s terrible coping mechanisms, like the constant lying and or the fact that Tim’s go-to methods for dealing with interpersonal conflict are 1) repress it and pretend it never happened (most of his fights with Bruce), 2) withdraw from the relationship until he can pretend the conflict doesn’t exist (when his friends get mad at him in YJ, he quits the team for a while), or 3) literally run away from home.

Also, Jack is a Manly Man with firm opinions about how men behave vs. how women behave, and he thinks boys shouldn’t be scared and thinks Tim should date hot girls and pushes Tim to work out and wants him to play football and expresses period-typical sexism, etc. etc. etc. ... and though obviously this wasn’t what the writers had in mind at the time, all of that is certainly interesting to read backwards in the light of Tim as a queer character.

More Disorganized Thoughts on Jack Drake

Tim’s our hero, so we’re naturally more sympathetic to him, but it’s also true that relationships are a two-way street, and Tim doesn’t value any of the things his dad values, either.  Jack at various points is shown to care about grades, business, money, boarding schools, archeology, football, a kind of macho bragging-about-dating-hot-women ethos, and a very public and performative kind of caring. Tim tends to respond with discomfort or disinterest or even disgust.  When Jack gets on TV to try to rally the government to save his son from No Man’s Land, Tim isn’t touched—he’s mortified.  When Jack makes some bad investments and loses money, Jack’s deeply upset and his self-image is majorly impacted, and far from being sympathetic, Tim’s annoyed and kind of contemptuous of the idea that this is a problem.  Jack thinks fishing in the early morning and going to tennis matches is a fun father-son activity; Tim finds it exhausting and tedious.  And so on.

This means that Tim often longs to be closer to his dad in theory, but this longing is more tied to fantasy than to reality. He rarely seems to enjoy spending time with His-Dad-The-Actual-Person.  So for example, when Tim’s deadly ill with the Clench, he has an extremely poignant fever dream about telling his dad the truth and getting hugged…even as he insists in real-life to Alfred and Dick that he does not want them to tell his dad what’s going on.

The same is true of Jack, who IMO genuinely wants to be closer to his son and is continually declaring that he’s going to turn over a new leaf and get closer to his son…and just as continually backs out of activities or loses his temper when faced with spending time with his actual son.

Tim and his dad sadly get along best—by far—in Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder situations.  When Jack gets kidnapped or is in danger, Tim worries for him (and Tim grieves him deeply when he dies).  When Tim disappears or runs away, Jack’s genuinely worried about him.  So e.g. they have a really moving emotional reunion and hug when the earthquake hits Gotham, and Tim panics about his dad’s safety and comes running home (and meanwhile Jack’s been panicked about Tim’s safety!).  It’s the day-to-day, regular life stuff where they don’t connect.

Jack's written quite differently by different writers. Mostly, Tim's parents are at their least likable in his early appearances and early miniseries (this is where you get, for example, Jack and Janet being nasty at each other while a pained employee looks on, and Tim disappointed to once again get news of where his parents are via postcard - "I guess that sums them up! Never know where they’re going to be–or when–or even how long!” - and Tim alone on school break, and Bruce and Alfred thinking there's something weird going on with Tim's parents, etc. etc.). Jack's more sympathetic but still often unlikable in most of Tim's Robin solo, and he's almost invisible (but positively treated if he does show up) in Tim's team books.

For obvious reasons, Jack's remembered way more sympathetically after his death. Tim's completely devastated by Jack's murder, which he arrives moments too late to prevent, and he basically never gets over it. We see him grieving Jack again and again in Robin, and also in Teen Titans, and also in Resurrection, and again in the Halloween Special, and again in Batman: Blackest Night, and all the way up to the end of Red Robin. Tim also grieves for an extended time over Janet - he hallucinates a happy reunion with her when he's feverish in Contagion, and hallucinates her in the final issue of Robin, and the reveal-your-buried-emotions song in Robin 102 brings up his grief for her too (meanwhile, other characters dance or laugh or otherwise get giddy).  Tim’s grief over his parents’ deaths is intense and long-lasting.

I'm not going to clip comic panels because this is long enough, but if you're curious, here's a nice and fairly lengthy compilation of comic panels with Tim and Jack.

If you're interested in a Jack-centric story with a softer-but-still-recognizably-canon take on Jack, I really like the way Jack’s narration is written in the one-shots Heart Humble (set shortly before Jack dies) and Never a Hero (Ra's resurrects him during Brucequest, and Jack's archeology skills turn out to be unexpectedly useful).

[problemswithbooks]

So, I recently watched Helluva Boss and as always I've been prusing the tags for it on tumblr to see what other people think about the story and characters.

Something that stuck out to me is when people say Striker is a hypocrite because he hates the Royals, puts down Blitz and Fizz for being with Royals, but he, himself, works for one. Also that his pitch he gave to Blitz about teaming up to take down Royals was all a lie.

Now, I'm not going to say he's not being a bit of a hypocrite, especially given how much he hates Royals. What I will say is that I understand why Striker wouldn't see it that way (besides the fact he has a seemingly desperate need to feel superior to other imps).

Striker wants to kill Royals--that is very clear. A huge hurtle to that goal is that they are immortal. The only thing that can kill them is Angelic Steel--something that is rare and expensive. Yes, Striker is supposedly a well known assassin, but it's doubtful he'd ever make enough money to afford Angelic Weapons without taking on extremely wealthy clients. The wealthiest would be those at the top.

We don't know if Striker has worked with Royals before. If we assume Stella was the first Royal he was hired by, that makes his choice to work with her make far more sense. Particularly when we take into account who her target is--her equally Royal husband.

Unless stated otherwise later, Stella must have provided Striker with his Angelic Weapons so he could kill Stolas. She doesn't just give him a single weapon, either. She gets him a sniper rifle, pistols, a knife and a rope so he can incapacitate Stolas and take his vast magic abilities away, rendering him helpless. On top of that, she is also paying him money.

Given Stella never brings up the fact he lost the sniper rifle, or demands he return the weapons she provides, this deal he's making, although hypocritical, is only a benefit for Striker. He's getting paid to kill someone he wants to anyway, and a new arsenal that gives him the capability to kill Royals afterward.

This is why I don't think his offer to Blitz was a lie. I think what he told Blitz is his long term goal/plan, and was simply offering Blitz to join him since he found Blitz to be somewhat equal to him after Blitz did so well in the harvest games. Once they killed Stolas, got Stella's money, they would turn around and start using those funds and weapons to kill more Royals.

The reason Striker doesn't see himself as on the same level as Blitz and Fizz with their relationships with Royals is because he sees himself as using Stella, where he perceives Blitz and Fizz as being used. It's true that Blitz gets similar benefits from his relationship with Stolas (if Striker even knows about Blitz using Stolas's spell book for his business, I can't recall) but given what Striker saw of their relationship, he would see Stolas using silly pet names despite Blitz disliking it and see that as Blitz debasing himself publicly for Stolas. Yes, Stella doesn't treat him with the upmost respect, but it's over the phone, without witnesses. Nor does he give her anything in return except a dead husband--someone he would have targeted anyway.

He sees Fizz as even worse because, to him, it appears Fizz has given up his own autonomy to live a cushy lifestyle. Yes, Fizz gains many benefits from being with Ozzie, but Striker views it as letting Ozzie take advantage of him, to let Ozzie treat him like a pet (which some people do, do to some imps). He doesn't know Ozzie loves Fizz--franky I don't think he'd believe a Royal could love an imp at all anyway.

Yes, he may work for a Royal, and take her orders, but he does so to pilfer more and more Angelic Weapons from her as well as take her money, all of which I'm sure he tells himself he will later use against her and the rest of the upper class. It's a business transaction that he actually holds all the cards in. Unlike Blitz and Fizz he doesn't have to publicly debase himself to get the benefits he seeks. At least that's how he sees things.

[tbcanary]

in moments like these we do need to ask ourselves. does it even matter to dinah if she’s the best fighter in the world. is that what motivates her. is she at a point in her life where trying to prove herself and her abilities makes sense. is this not something we’ve already covered.

[savage-rhi]

Fuschia/Magenta?

[13eyond13]

One of the hardest headcanons I find to conjure up is what L would be doing with his life if he wasn't the world's best detective with a dad who supports his every whim. I first noticed this when people were talking about putting him in a Squid Game AU, and the thought of L trying to kill other people for money was just really weird and unnatural to me? I sincerely don't think he is actually a money-hungry person, but he also was never shown in a financially desperate state of affairs or anything either. 🤔

Definitely interesting to imagine him with totally different circumstances sometimes as a way of fleshing him out in my mind. I think he wouldn't necessarily have been a good student if he was a successor at Wammy's instead of the original L, for example. Because I don't know if he would ever be motivated to do something like try to take over somebody else's role like that... I think he would much rather just do his own thing and really not want to be told what to strive for or how to behave

[girlsdads]

daniel continuing to show time and time again how he’s able to get the absolute MOST out of that john deere riding mower is so unbelievably sexy to me

[iholli]

"weh weh Alastor is canonically aroace you're being disrespectful" I'm ace and probably aro-adjacent get the fuck out of my space and let me foam at the mouth in peace

[redrobin-detective]

“While dick is not acting like a doting parent but an f up 20-something year old” you’re brain is so big how does it feel to be so correct

Broke: Dick has Eldest Daughter Syndrome and feel personally responsible for all his younger siblings

Woke: His younger siblings have assigned Dick Eldest Daughter Syndrome

[yellowocaballero]

Is Dick Grayson a Good Person? Slade Wilson's Opinion Fails To Count.

“You realize that this frees you.”

“Gotham’s not a chain!” Dick snapped, before he even had the opportunity to control himself. “I put half my life into that city and I won’t abandon it just because everybody else in your stupid country has! It is a starving child, it is not a burden.”

Slade’s lip curled upwards. Dick wondered if he had fallen into a rhetorical trap. “Defensive. I was referring to your obligations towards the Batman.”

“Batman isn’t dead,” Dick said coldly. “You won’t get that lucky.”

“But you are far out of his reach.” Slade folded his arms on the table, eyes glinting. “As you said, there’s not much work you can do for him now. You’ve always found the task distasteful. The lying. Prioritizing Batman’s mission over the greater good. You can remove the mask you wear. However necessary the subterfuge was in the past, it’s hardly necessary now. You can do what you like. And you’ve never liked your job. You’re free.”

So I did that thing I always do when writing a bugfuck huge story and wrote a smaller story off it for fun. Normally I'd save this for much later, but this time I thought I'd be fun to post it before the main story and have it be a teaser. I think this very short slice of the universe must be really fun to read if you have no idea what the hell's going on!

I think by the end of it you can get a good idea of what's happening. This will be more difficult if you aren't familiar with certain Batman plotlines. This one requires some basic Teen Titans know-how to fully get, but I can offer a Cliff's Notes if requested.

Very short 5k mystery under the cut.

He was standing in the gift shop.

Just standing. He wasn’t scrolling on his phone or pretending to browse or doing anything that would keep him remotely invisible in the crowd of children. He stood in front of the back door to the gift shop that led into the main Tower building, hands in his pockets and aimlessly looking around. Zero fucking shame. 

“Why didn’t he just call?” Gar hissed. “That’s why we have a phone. That is the purpose of phones! What’s his purpose? Annoying us to death?” He glanced back at Joey, who was looking thoughtfully at the screen. “Uh. No offense.”

“For the last time, please do not censor your words for my benefit,” Joey signed, eyes crinkling in faint amusement. “He’s a difficult person. Nightwing, I’ll go down and speak with him.”

Dick was too tired for this.

He hadn’t been sleeping well, or at all. Gigantic fucking surprise, that one. It was worrying Kori. She was looking at him now, with her eyebrows furrowed in that increasingly familiar way. She barely looked at him normally anymore.

For the five millionth time, Dick thought that he ought to break up with her. For five millionth time, he decided it wouldn’t be worth it. Maybe next time. 

He adopted a Leaderly Thinking Pose anyway, rubbing his thumb over his bottom lip. It was his genuine body language while he was solving a problem on the ground as Nightwing, but he had to force it now. He really just wanted to stare blankly into space now. “If he wanted to speak to you, Joey, he would have randomly showed up on your balcony.”

“He also never wants to speak to you!” Danny piped up. Pantha flicked him on the temple. “Ow! Child abuse again!”

Vic’s eye twitched. “No horseplay in my security booth, guys.”

“Oh, but horseplay literally everywhere else is fine?” Donna asked archly.

Gar grinned. “Horseplay? You call that horseplay? I can show you -”

“Do it and you’re dead, little man!”

“But I could be a little horse! Just a little one! Shetland pony!”

Dick was way, way, way too tired for this. 

“If he had actually wanted to speak with us, he’d just show up.” Dick resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Standing in our darn gift shop’s a message. A ‘come out and play’ thing. It’s a…”

“Power play,” Donna sighed. “The Slade Wilson special.” 

“Which means he wants to talk to me,” Dick agreed. He stepped away from the console, waving the sweaty young adults out of his way as they tried to make room in the overstuffed security booth. “I’ll be back.”

An awkward silence fell over the assembled group. Dick forced his way back into the hallway, leaving the others to trip over their feet and follow after him, but the sound didn’t obscure Panthera whispering a question in Gar’s ear. 

“Uh,” Gar said, furry green ear flicking, “I’ll tell you later, yeah?”

“Oh! I know this one! I got it!” Danny thrust his hand in the air, ignoring Panthera grabbed him by his collar and physically towing him along. “Slade Wilson kidnapped Nightwing from the circus when he was twelve and taught him how to be a super-badass bounty hunter mercenary! But then Nightwing was like - no way, Jose, no mercenary looks this good in Spandex. Lookit my toned butt. So Nightwing made a break for it and decided to use his ill-gained skills in pursuit of heroism and justice and making me clean my room -”

“So if I look inside your room, it’ll be clean?” Donna asked mildly, and Danny froze. “If I go in there right now, it’ll be sparkling? Just like you said it was? Because if you lied, I’ll have to take you off -”

“Give me ten!”

That successfully got rid of Danny. Panthera obviously had a billion more questions, but after Gar whispered something back she nodded and peeled down the hallway in the opposite direction. Dick finally made it to their cavernous living space, stuffed full of couches and empty soda cans and video game systems. The familiarity and safety didn’t make him feel any less claustrophobic. 

The Tower had been his home since he was eighteen. He had never moved out or gotten his own place, choosing to live on site like their more vagrant members. Nowadays he spent most of his time at Kori’s place, to the point where he might as well be moved in already - but the Tower was still Nightwing’s home. The Titans were still Nightwing’s family. 

“Love, please wait,” Kori said, and because it was her he stopped. 

He turned around to see his friends in front of him, and realized for the first time that they all looked worried. Kori, Donna, Gar - old and familiar expressions on their faces.

“I really hate that guy,” Gar muttered, glaring at the floor as his tail lashed. “How does someone get worse the less evil they are?”

“Somebody may be a ‘good guy’ and a bad person. Or somebody may be a ‘bad guy’ and a good person. Evil or good - I believe it has little to do with your character.” Kori turned to Dick, and Dick forced himself to meet her eyes. “Nightwing, you do not have to meet with him.”

“Kori, he’s not going to leave until I -”

Kori grinned. Like Gar baring his teeth was a grin. “I would enjoy the opportunity to remove him myself.”

“There’s no need for violence.” As much as he loved to see it in Kori, he would like to avoid traumatizing schoolchildren. “God knows I’ve talked to him enough times, one more won’t kill me. It’s the fastest way to make him go away.”

“That’s not the point,” Donna said sharply, crossing her arms. “You shouldn’t have to be left alone with the man who kidnapped and abused you as a child.” Dick flinched hard. “We’re your family, Dick. Let us protect you from him.”

Her words made Dick sick. He let them see it. They’d misattribute the emotion. They’d attribute anything to anything they wanted. And it wouldn’t matter if Dick had never said a word. That wasn’t what they would remember. 

“If I have to hear the word ‘apprentice’ from his gross yellow teeth one more time, I swear I’m going to turn into a horse and bite him.”

Kori turned to Donna. “Please let me kill him.”

“Dick already said no.”

“We can all outvote him.”

“Joey would make that kind of weird, Kori.”

“Joey will live.”

“And Slade won’t!” Gar said cheerfully. 

There was something Dick didn’t know how to admit. Thankfully, he didn’t have to. “He didn’t kidnap me and he didn’t abuse me,” Dick said evenly. Frustration flashed in everybody, even Kori, but the denials were important. The denials wouldn’t make them forgive him, but they would keep him out of any potentially illegal waters. Dick knew the value of a technicality. “I wish you guys wouldn’t make those assumptions.”

“Assumptions are all we have!” Gar protested, throwing out his arms. “You still haven’t told us anything! Like, you don’t have to, really, but - all we have are the weird scraps you drop, and the picture is super worrying. Everything you have told us is scary as hell. If we’re misunderstanding, then why can’t you just -”

Scary? Scary? They’d said it a hundred times, and he’d never disagreed - out of context, the way everything slipped out, he knew what it looked like, but even Dick wasn’t perfect and even that was too much to say. They’d said it a hundred times and it had never bothered him before, but today - now -

“Thank you for worrying, Gar.” Dick smiled, warm and sincere. “But I can handle one old friend. I’ll be back soon.”

“Love, I don’t -”

Dick cut her off by kissing her, and he left to get changed with no more fanfare. There would be no need to go downstairs and talk with Slade, or to coordinate a meeting place. They knew each other too well for that.

He didn’t relax until he was out of the tower in his civvies, the clothes that felt almost alien on him. The suit had felt alien on him for weeks. Everything was alien on him. Everything was alien - even his home, even his family. His world, shifted irrevocably to the right. The United States of America, two million people short.

Dick piloted the boat back to the mainland in silence. The boat had a video camera in it too, so he did nothing but stare at the waves.

*

The reserved room was under the last name ‘House’. Ha, ha. Never let it be said the man didn’t have a sense of humor. Dick was proof enough of that.

The Japanese restaurant was upscale, but it was their regular haunt. Slade was in Japan for business frequently, Dick had spent a vaguely traumatic but extremely educational summer studying under a master there, and Jump’s very sizeable Japanese population had resulted in some authentic restaurants with private back rooms for business deals.

Slade was already waiting, which was a surprise. Maybe he already had gotten in his power plays for the day. Unlikely. Normally he liked to make Dick wait twenty minutes. Maybe he had picked today to be unusually kind and considerate. Even more unlikely.

Without looking up from his phone - undoubtedly working, the man never stopped - he said, “The sake’s poisoned.”

Dick glanced at the innocuous bottle on the table and the two stacked bowls next to it. “My enemy or yours?”

“Mine. Don’t worry, they don’t know you’re here. I’ll resolve this after we’re done here.” He put his phone face down on the table, looking up at Dick for the first time. “You look quite well. Funny.”

“Let me guess,” Dick said wryly, sliding into the seat across from him, “you’re about to congratulate me on my lying skills again?”

“I’m hardly effusive with praise.” Slade reached into his jacket and pulled out his own flask, taking a bowl and sloshing a dark amber liquid onto the porcelain. “And I thought the term was ‘performance’?”

“Performance is the word for you this morning.” Slade held out the bowl to Dick, who held up a hand. Slade shrugged - your loss. “Was embarrassing me in front of the entire team really necessary?”

“Was it fun?”

“Are you an asshole?”

 “It was a favor,” Slade said archly. He tipped the bowl into his mouth before setting it aside. “Which is why you’re here. Because you recognize the favors you owe me.”

“And you recognize the blackmail I have on you,” Dick said sweetly. Slade’s mouth twitched backwards a little. “I think last time we established quite well that we are at a standstill, Slade. What did you call it - an impasse?”

“If we are at an impasse, then why did you come?” Slade twisted the cap back onto his flask. Dick was silent. “Joey well?”

“Very. Talia?”

“Unhappy.”

“Unsurprising.”

“She asked me to check in on you,” Slade said lightly. “See how you were doing.”

Dick snorted. “Is that why you came?”

“Yes.”

Dick stopped short. 

Slade half-smiled. Point to him.

Then there was a knock on the door, and when the waiter walked in Dick expected to be asked for his order or given a menu. He wasn’t expecting the waiter to bring the entire meal, including Dick’s order. Mapo tofu extra spicy. His favorite. That explains the power play. If it wasn’t obvious, then it was hidden. No situation in which there wasn’t a power play. Fantastic. 

“Okay,” Dick said sourly, picking up his spoon. “So why are you actually here?”

“Don’t worry about the check, son. It’s on me today.”

“You are so divorced.”

“And you stink of orphan. Let’s move on from the obvious.” To Dick’s shock, Slade pushed away his own bowl of tonkatsu ramen - a working class dish for the high class man - and folded his arms on the table. He gave Dick his full attention, so heavy it could squeeze the breath from him. He almost never did that. Not outside of a fight, anyway. “How are you doing?”

Dick ate his tofu.

“There’s nobody else you can speak to about this besides me.”

Barbara. Who was even more distraught than Dick, and who Dick had been focusing on supporting instead of dumping onto. Who still believed in the police. In her father.

Alfred. Who was suffering enough.

“I’m not stupid enough to bare my neck to you,” Dick said quietly.

Slade leaned back, crossing his arms. “Vulnerability? You were flayed open to me many years ago, Dick. I have seen parts of you that even you have not seen.” Dick snorted softly. “Like will always recognize like. What’s a few words of frustration between an apprentice and his old master?”

Dick put his spoon down. Dick breathed. In one. Out two. In one.

“You don’t have to hold your temper, Dick.”

“I shouldn’t have come.”

“You knew you had to come,” Slade pressed. “You aren’t perfect. Nobody can hold all of this within themselves. You came because you needed to talk to somebody, and I am the only person in the United States of America that you can be honest with.”

“It’s ridiculous of you to act as if a lie entitles you to honesty.”

“I’m just trying to do you a favor, Dick. I’m the only person left who wants to help you.”

Dick breathed. 

The first unexpected thing of the night happened. Slade sighed, rubbing his forehead in an exact mirror of Joey’s expression from earlier that day. “I’m here when you’re ready.”

Then he picked up his chopsticks and began eating. Dick and Slade ate together in complete silence. Somehow it wasn’t even that awkward. The food was good, and if you were in a room with Slade the ideal environment was silence. 

He wasn’t halfway through his meal when he noticed that his hand was trembling. Dick watched it, detached and half-interested. That didn’t normally happen. He wasn’t feeling much. Certainly nothing intense enough to make his hand shake like this.

Slade definitely saw it, but he politely didn’t say anything.

He was halfway through his meal when he noticed that his careful breathing had gone off the rails. His breaths were coming in too hard, too fast. He was lightheaded. He needed to get out of this room. This claustrophobic back room in a Japanese restaurant under the name House, a grim fucking parody of his real home and family, eviscerated and dead. 

Dick dropped his spoon. “I should go.”

He didn’t stand up. Slade ate his noodles.

“You did this after Jason.” Exactly this. He had done the exact same thing, down to the same restaurant. Dick hadn’t even registered. He didn’t remember the month after Jason too well. “You - you sat me down and told me that I could talk to you about it. You did, didn’t you?”

“Goodness, Dick, I wasn’t hiding it.” Slade blew on his spoon. “I remember finding it interesting. You and Joey couldn’t be more different. When Grant died, Joey only - well. Of course Joey didn’t say much. But I remember he just lay there in that hospital bed. Just staring out the window. I didn’t really know what to do. Let his mother take care of it.” Big-ass fucking shock, that one. “You, however - you, I knew what to do with. And you look exactly the same now as you did back then. Do you know who you look like, Dick?”

Dick didn’t say anything.

“You look like a man angry enough to strangle the world.”

Dick bit his tongue.

Slade looked back down at his bowl, sipping his broth. “Tell me about it.”

Bruce would be so fucking disappointed in him. But it wasn’t as if Bruce could know.

“I’m not like you, Slade,” Dick said. He forced himself to keep staring at the man instead of looking at the woodgrain like he wanted. Do not forget who you’re speaking to. Don’t let him win. Was this letting him win? Were there some battles he wanted to lose? “But I’m not like them either. They’re honest people. Their lives have been messy, and they aren’t always nice, and sometimes they don’t always do the right thing. But they are honest people. They’re guarded, but none of them are pretending to be something they’re not.”

“Are you?” Slade asked mildly. “You’re a hero. There’s no doubt about that. I believed that was the only qualification for membership into that club. Certainly not talent.”

“Yeah, I’m a hero. I’m a good person. I’m a leader, I’m a boyfriend. A son and a brother.” He would always be a brother. Jason could be dead for fifty years and Dick would still be his fucking brother. And Tim… “But I’m a soldier too. At the end of the line I’m a soldier. Which is why I’m out here playing video games and eating ramen instead of where I’m needed.”

“Batman needed his spy?”

Dick winced. He hated that word. Accurate as it was. “The world needed Nightwing. That’s what he said. I’m not much good as a spy right now.”

“You were always a very good spy,” Slade said lightly. “I couldn’t even get Terra past you.”

God. Terra. Dick had almost forgotten about that. Maybe in self-defense. “Terra was a rank amateur and a little girl. You’re disgusting, by the way.” Slade shrugged. Dick didn’t know what part of leading a gullible teenage girl into believing that you might fall in love with her if she did everything you said warranted a shrug. “So unless you have any more Terras or Amanda Waller has any more ideas, Gotham needs me more than the Titans do.” 

“And yet here you are,” Slade said. “A soldier following his final order. No wonder you’re distressed. The only thing keeping you with the Titans are orders you don’t want to follow.”

“I was raised family uber alles,” Dick said lightly. His hand wasn’t shaking anymore, so he carefully picked his spoon up and started tucking into the tofu again. “Congratulations. You got what you wanted. Are we done here?”

“Are we?”

“I’m two seconds away from that sake.”

“Don’t stop on my account.”

“Oh, you wish.”

“We’re both well aware that I prefer you alive, Dick.” Great, that old power play - you’re alive only by my will! Just because it was true doesn’t mean he should lord it over him. Everybody Dick knew was alive because he wanted them alive, it wasn’t really something to brag about. “You realize that this frees you.”

“Gotham’s not a chain!” Dick snapped, before he even had the opportunity to control himself. “I put half my life into that city and I won’t abandon it just because everybody else in your stupid country has! It is a starving child, it is not a burden.”

Slade’s lip curled upwards. Dick wondered if he had fallen into a rhetorical trap. “Defensive. I was referring to your obligations towards the Batman.”

“Batman isn’t dead,” Dick said coldly. “You won’t get that lucky.”

“But you are far out of his reach.” Slade folded his arms on the table, eyes glinting. “As you said, there’s not much work you can do for him now. You’ve always found the task distasteful. The lying. Prioritizing Batman’s mission over the greater good. You can remove the mask you wear. However necessary the subterfuge was in the past, it’s hardly necessary now. You can do what you like. And you’ve never liked your job. You’re free.”

Dick’s hand clenched so hard his knuckles turned white. He turned his attention back to his breathing again. In one, out two. Slade watched, amused.

It all flashed through his mind. The news coverage. Bruce’s face in that D.C. hotel room. The gossiping, the smiles. The Titans. The scorn.

They had been sympathetic. They were good people. Danny said a lot of callous shit, obviously. That kid needed therapy badly. Donna had tsk’d over it, Kori had solemnly proclaimed that it was the decision of a weak leader. 

“That place is so scary,” Gar had said, shivering. “Gotham bad guys are bad guys on steroids. I can’t imagine being trapped in a city full of them.”

“And they aren’t even letting us do anything about it!” Wally had announced. That was what had really galled him - Wally hated inactivity. “Is this really the end of it? It’s so unfair.”

“There was no other outcome,” Vic had said shortly. He was the ‘cold hard reality’ one. “That plague could have swept the US. Shitty how we aren’t even trying to make a vaccine, but quarantining the place is the only thing that kept everybody else safe.”

“But to just abandon it!” Kori had said. “It’s too unfair.”

“Yeah, it’s fucked.”

“Well,” Wally had said, “nothing to do.”

“Nothing we can do,” Donna said.

“Gotta say,” Gar said, “kinda glad it’s not my problem?”

“With you there,” Vic said. 

Raven had said nothing. Dick didn’t remember what he had said. He only knew that she had stared at him the whole time, and that he had to eventually force himself not to care. Raven had his number. She knew what a liar he was. She never told anybody. She’d kept every secret so far - she’d keep this one too.

Everybody had jumped to conclusions. Nightwing never said a word about why he had the skills and drive he had, why he chose their strange and unsettled life. The first person they see who really seems to know him is Slade Motherfucking Wilson, who won’t stop going on about their fated master-apprentice destiny. Who wouldn’t assume that they had a history? And wasn’t that a pretty fantasy too convenient to destroy? 

Dick hadn’t lied about that. Slade had. Completely out of his ass, with full abandon. Gleefully. Called it a favor to him. Dick could do without his favors. Sometimes Dick wondered if he believed his own lies.

Dick didn’t have to say it. Slade knew. Slade knew full well, and he had only said it to make Dick see it too. 

The mission was worth it now. It was worth it. The lying, the masks, the betrayal, their fake history - it was worth it and more. He couldn’t imagine wanting to do anything else.

“You can say it, Dick.”

Dick dropped his spoon, letting his fists clench in his lap. 

“I already know. You can say it.”

Dick’s teeth grit together.

“I want to hear you say it. Admit it, Dick.”

Maybe Dick had been kidnapped by this man one too many times. Maybe hearing that tone of voice, a tone he only used when he had Dick at his complete mercy, ground against his mind at just the right angle and produced a spark. Or maybe Dick was just weak without Bruce - weak, when he was alone in the world - and he just wanted to say it. 

“I want them to pay for this.”

Slade was polite enough not to gloat. God only knew he’d worked hard enough over the past five years to try and squeeze something half as cold out of him. “And you have to stay undercover to do so. Even now, when it’ll be more difficult than ever.” Dick nodded. “Revenge, then. What will that look like?” Dick shrugged. “You haven’t figured it out yet? Unlike you.”

“Hard to figure out something you don’t like admitting,” Dick said lowly.

“Sounds like I’m doing you another favor, then.”

“Sounds like you need to watch your mouth.”

Slade barked a laugh, making Dick roll his eyes. “Let me guess - you’ll rather die than accept my help?” Dick flipped him off, and he laughed again. “So be it, then. That’s a pity. I would have liked to know what your revenge would look like.”

“I can do it on my own,” Dick snapped, a second before he realized what that sounded like. “Christ, Slade, I’m not taking revenge on the United States. That’s supervillain behavior. I’m just -”

“Fantasizing about it?” Slade asked archly. “Thinking, dreaming, wanting? Not doing? It’s unlike you. You’ve always taken what you wanted.”

“Are you seriously trying to convince me to go supervillain right now?”

“Just trying to help.”

“Your help’s sh - not welcome, thanks.”

A dim, sunken light shone in Slade’s eye, and Dick looked away. He hadn’t allowed Dick to curse at him for those long two months. Knowing that shit from so long ago still stuck probably got him off. Asshole. Bastard. Fucker.

“It’s here if you want it,” Slade said. “It’s always been here. Just because you’ve ungratefully rejected it, thrown it back in my face, doesn’t mean it’s no longer here. For what it’s worth, I think you’re more than capable of the revenge you seek. If you’re actually willing to take it.” Slade angled his head down, one watery blue eye piercing straight through Dick. “Are you willing?”

Dick couldn’t breathe.

“My little brother is twelve,” Dick whispered hoarsely, and for once in his life Slade fell silent. “He is a little boy. And he is trapped in that city fighting Bruce’s crusade. If it doesn’t kill him it’s going to break him. And I’ll have lost two brothers in two years. Two kids. Because there’s ‘nothing we can do’. Or because ‘there’s only criminals left in there anyway’. Because of the greater good. Because some asshole in charge decided my family wasn’t worth a couple of bucks. Again.” Dick’s breath was coming hard and fast, and it took all he had not to fall. “I almost killed the man who did it. Bruce had to pry me off him and rip the knife from my hands. I can’t kill the people who did this. I would not do it. I can’t kill everybody who isn’t lifting a finger to help. That’d be - that’d be everybody. And I wouldn’t want to hurt them either.

“I keep on trying to think of a way to make sure that they wouldn’t get away with it. That the people who trapped Tim and ground Jason into poverty experience the consequences of their actions. But I can’t think of it. I don’t know how.”

Short of air-dropping them into Gotham. But that would just be murder. What with the rampant plague and everything. On top of the earthquake. And the riots. Jesus.

“You can’t,” Slade said simply, and Dick didn’t know why the words were crushing. Maybe it was just hearing them from Slade, of all people. “Those people pressed a few buttons and took a few bribes and ruined millions of lives. They will never face ramifications for that. You cannot bring justice for Gotham. The best you have now is payback. The best you can do is revenge. Is that good enough for you, Dick?”

Dick was silent. 

And Slade just shrugged. He pushed his bowl away - when had he finished it? - and stood up. He reached over the table and picked up the small poisoned sake bottle with two fingers, tilting it gently back and forth. He put his hand in his pocket, angling his arm back just enough to flash his concealed gun.

“The person who ordered me the poisoned sake is sitting in a business meeting with his fellow executives. They’ve stiffed me on a payment and are trying to get away with it. Of course, nobody stiffs me and walks away. My life exists on a permanently balanced system. Everything in my life is fair. You should give it a shot. It’s quite pleasant.”

“I have better things to do with my time,” Dick said cooly.

“Ah, yes. We all best return to our lives. And you to your friends.” Slade walked past him, pausing only to rest his hand on Dick’s shoulder and bend down. His breath was hot on Dick’s ear, and Dick found himself  freezing still. Another ancient reaction, persistently clinging. “Word of advice, Dick. Don’t tip your hand to your friends just yet. Your fight will only grow more complex from here. You’ll need as many allies as you can.” 

Dick turned to look at him. His skin crawled at the smile on Slade’s face, at that familiar bristly stubble. Thank god Joey was identical to his mother. “Every ally I have?”

“Every one.”

They stared at each other, heavy and sour, and for the first time in a long time -

“Then I guess I’ll need all the help I can get,” Dick said softly.

Slade straightened, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Attaboy. Now, if you excuse me. Wait until the gunshots stop to come out.”

“You’re always taking care of me, Slade.”

“I told you I would,” Slade said loftily. “Have I ever lied to you?”

“No,” Dick said, “we’ve never lied to each other.”

Dick stayed seated in that room long after Slade left. He stayed seated through the murmur of voices, the first screen. They’d need to find a new meeting point. 

A hail of gunshots descended over the restaurant, far away and close, and Dick finally broke into tears. Nobody could hear them over the sound of the shots, and nobody could see him in here, and nobody had to know. 

He cried as long as the gunshots lasted and no longer. After ten minutes, he wiped his face and exited the room. Better hurry home. It was getting late. 

They’d be expecting him.

[compacflt]

i'm so curious: what's your favorite thing you've written? something that makes you nod and go, "yeah, that's it right there. i did that." just the best combination of words you've ever churned out in your personal opinion. it makes you proud just Thinking about it. could be a sentence, a paragraph, etc.

very cute ask anon, thank you. im going to assume for your benefit that you mean specifically my icemav writing—obviously I write outside of top gun and am very proud of that stuff but it wouldn’t make sense out of context.

There’s a lot of more recent stuff that I’m extremely extremely proud of on a technical level, but I’m prouder of this paragraph below on a deeper more existential level.

This paragraph was one of the first parts of WWGATTAI i ever wrote—august 12, i think, well before I had fully realized the characters’ voices or their attitudes towards life/each other; I only had about 5k written of what is now a 300k+ project (at the time of writing this paragraph i wanted it to be 10k max) and had no real outline, didn’t know who or what I was dealing with, hadnt seen TGM in two months, had done no research (so it’s not at all politically/militarily accurate or anything, why the FUCK is ice going to fucking GUAM)—and STILL this wound up being my favorite paragraph in the entire fucking series. not to suck my own dick or anything. I’m STILL so proud of this paragraph, 9 months and 275k+ words later, even though i Absolutely Would Not write it this way now.

[wormshirt]

Thirteen and yasmin are insane because watching the show it feels like the doctor is genuinely incapable on some level of truly loving yasmin- even to the extent that she fell in love with previous companions.

Hear me out, (this is a bit of a crackpot theory) something about this regeneration, something in the way she seems to be built as a direct reaction to twelve's late-season unabashed emotionally vulnerability- the way he held onto the pain and emotions and held on HARDER when they hurt, and now thirteen wont even pick them up.

Somewhere in those few seconds of regeneration, the regeneration itself must have latched onto the previous doctor's lingering thoughts- all those thoughts, a whole lifetime thinking about how much everything HURT- of much EASIER it would be to just AVOID all of that to just IGNORE it how he didn't HAVE TO GO THROUGH ALL OF THAT. But regeneration is a bit of a tricky process isn't it? You're usually lucky enough to get the right amount of arms and legs. You'd probably have pretty poor luck if you tried politely explaining"I'm just kind of grieving pretty hard right now and my life sucks ass usually and my desire to not suffer and irrationally blame my emotions themselves for this is actually a pretty common response so please don't overreact and make me incapable of proper emotional expression and connection with the people in my life please that'll actually make this WORSE not BETTER." I mean seriously good luck trying to explain those concepts to splitting timelord cells, I can't imagine they're great with conversation.

So the twelth Doctor's dying and one of his last thoughts is "man if I cared about people less I'd suffer less" and the thirteenth doctor is born (in a sense) woth that thought at the forefront. And she still cares!- so, SO much, but... it's.. different. It's not quite CLICKING. anymore. Things that WERE easy or at least DOABLE before just AREN'T now. Or at the very least they feel WRONG. Like walking around in someone else's shoes. In an old coat that doesn't quite fit. In an old face. And then the universe dumps the doctor right into the lap of 3 new companions with no clue about space or aliens or the doctor or any of that. No idea of what the doctor was like before- of what she is capable of now or WAS capable of before, and she doesn't tell them either.

And so she's walking around and she's keeping this ravine of distance between herself and everyone and everything in a way she never has before and there's no one there to call her out on it, but she pretends! She pretends it's not there! And she's really, REALLY good at it this time- maybe because twelve regretted not being better at it himself, even (but that's a different thought). And sure the companions call her out on it, yasmin in particular calls her out on it A LOT, Ryan, too- but they still don't realise the EXTENT to which the Doctor is (failing? refusing?) to connect with them because they have ONLY EVER met THIS DOCTOR and so they don't realise how drastic the difference is. They lack the proper knowledge to REALISE what is even truly going on with the doctor. But the doctor is still the doctor aren't they. And these are still their companions. And frankly, they're still kind of a dick.

So despite their sudden inability to connect with their companions on a level the doctor has never experienced before, and despite these new companions personalities being so unique and their journey with the doctor being so hectic that the doctor and all of them keep chafing and slipping out of the same old Doctor-And-Companion molds that the doctor keeps trying to shove them all into, the doctor wont stop trying to make these old molds fit! And honestly that never ends up being a huge problem for any of them. It's just kind of an interesting aspect of the doctor- a fascinating way that they sort of dehumanize their friends, by just plopping them in a mold and replacing them when they wear out. Because of course you still care for them! But by giving them a ROLE in your life that can just be REPLACED as opposed to letting them exist as a PERSON in your life once they're gone? That makes things easier. That makes the grief easier to bear.

ANYWAYS. back to the yasmin thing. If you remember the Yasmin thing. So. Yasmin falls in love. Of course she does. And the doctor notices. Of course she does. She's old and more people have been messing with her head than usual but she's good with noticing things no matter what else changes about her. And she doesn't say anything. Because she's a timelord! And Yasmin will die, or fall in love with someone else, or turn into a cyberman, or experience one of the infinite possibilities of horrors or wonders in all of time and space that will tear them apart and the doctor will be left alone again, so what's even the point!

Except then Ryan and Graham leave. And then the Timeless Child arc happens. And it wouldn't hurt to feed into it a little would it? Just to keep Yasmin around? Just to keep her from leaving? It wouldn't hurt right? I mean Thirteen could love Yas! She does! Of course she does! Yas is her fam! Her companion! The only one who's stuck with her through it all!- who keeps calling her out, coming back for her, saving her, taking care of her, helping her- and she's grateful! And she cares about Yas! That's not so different from love, right? And love would make Yas stay! And it'd be easy! It'd take what?- a date? Two? Probably! Humans like dates! And romance! And flirting! She can do those! In all honestly she HAS been doing those- (She gets incredibly posessive of anything that becomes part of her tardis, her world, her home, and well, yasmin has been there a long time. And flirting is fun! And a sort of socially acceptable way of staking a claim isn't it? Not to mention the doctor isn't great at denying themself anything that gets another being to feed their ego.) So she leads Yas on a little. Drops hints here and there. She doesn't really know if she means them or not but she knows that she wants Yasmin to stay, that she can't even imagine Yasmin leaving. And that's love right? Or close enough anyways.

So she decides that she loves Yasmin and that she and Yasmin are "together" in a way and decides not to question it further. Because she's placed yasmin in a new companion mold and herself in a new doctor-companion relationship model, and everything's as it should be! and yasmin has no other point of reference for the doctor, so she settles for what she's given. Decides "this is all she can give. She abandoned Ace and Tegan seemingly without a second thought and didn't even apologize- I guess this is how it's always been, with every companion. That's fine! I can handle this! It's worth it for her." And in the meantime The Doctor is sitting there on the other side of the console fully aware of the fact that this is in fact NOT the limits of her affection, but she's HAPPY, or at least as happy as she will allow herself to be with Yasmin.

Yasmin though. Yasmin WANTS more, she DESERVES more and Thirteen KNOWS this, but Thirteen puts her own desire to both keep Yasmin at a distance and avoid desciphering her own feelings above Yasmin. Eventually, Dan calls the doctor out on this. Pretty much just telling her "You KNOW that she likes you. Do SOMETHING about it." The doctor doesn't say anything but does, in a later episode, sit down on a beach and make a wish with Yasmin. "I wish this would go on forever" both meaning she hopes yasmin stays with her forever and that their relationship never progresses. She has everything she needs from yas- which, for the doctor who with previously loves (i am intentionally NOT specifying romantic interests) became OBSESSED with them to the point of not just self-destruction, but universe destruction? Potential INTER-universal destruction in the case of Rose? How could THAT doctor- because YES this is a DIFFERENT DOCTOR, but this is still THE DOCTOR- ever be satisfied with the disconnected relationship she has with Yasmin if she was in love with Yasmin? If she felt THAT WAY about Yasmin? Like she had for all those comapnions that had come before Yasmin that The Doctor had fallen in love with?