#dick and tim both try and get damian to tell them the location of a pit (damian is uninterested)

[bearsincaves]

jason lets it slip that the lazarus pit gave him extra height so dick and tim spend the next two weeks trying to find a pit before the other one does. cue hijinks

[dcxdpdabbles]

DCxDP fic: Copyright

The first time it happened, the Waynes were walking around a street market, glancing at the art, when a woman wearing a Red Hood jacket and drinking out of a Red Robin coffee traveling mug struts by.

The heroes stop to stare, more in shock, to see how well the two items are done, which grabs her attention.

She grins at them, waving her cup. "You guys like the bats? You should check out both nineteen. He sells all official stuff."

"Official?" Dick repeats.

"Yup. He has it all trademarked." She says, pulling out a business card. She hands it to Dick with a smile before bidding everyone goodbye. Babs reaches up, snatching the card from Dick's slack hold, pulling out her phone to research the name.

Babs hisses through her teeth when she finds out that, yes, whoever the artist is, they did, in fact, trademark their designs. But not only did they cover their art, but they also put a copyright over the idea of all the Gotham heroes.

"He copyrighted Batman!?" Tim demands, reading over the baby's shoulder. "The symbol, the technology, the fighting moves- his shadow!? How!?"

"No one else did," Bruce answers with an amused smile. "He probably realized this and decided to slap one on while he had the chance."

"He can't do that!" Tim shouts. "Batman should sue him."

"Kinda hard to take someone to court regarding vigilantes." Dick shrugs his shoulders. "The Bats are illegal themselves, and they didn't copyright before this guy did."

"He owns Robin!" Jason announces with a laugh.

"That son of a-!!" Dick shouts, twisting around and stomping down the booths. People who recognize them jump out of the way for the raging celebrity. The rest of the Waynes were right behind him, a few slightly surprised by the pure anger on the eldest face.

Not Bruce or Jason. They see and personally know Dick's rage.

"How dare he try to claim Robin!" The eldest hisses, rounding the last row and stumbling to a halt. The rest are unprepared for his sudden stop, so they stumble into his back.

Grunts of pain and slight soft swears are heard as the group tumbles over onto the ground. Dick is unfortunate enough to end up on the bottom, feeling the total weight of his family. He's pretty sure Bruce's elbow was digging into his lower back, and Tim's head had slammed on the back of his neck.

Maybe Alfred was right about them going on a stricter diet. Ouch.

"Get up this instant. We are ashamed of the family name." Damian hisses from where he is standing above them. Of course, Cass is next to him with a cheerful smile.

Both of them had danced out of the collision in a way that appeared accidental to the untrained eye. Bruce likely let himself fall because he enjoyed causing scenes as Brucie Wayne, no matter how much he denied it.

"Dick." Jason groans, taking the hand Cass held out for him with grace. "Why did you stop?"

"Look at both nineteen." Dick hisses feeling Tim delibertly dig his elbow into his back. His brother offers him a sweet, innocent smile that does not hide the anger in his eyes. Sometimes Dick wonders if anyone can spot the pettiness in Tim or if his madness hides it.

"Oh," Steph whistles when she hopes off of Bruce to stare at the booth owner. "Yeah, I get it. He's hot"

"No!"Dick shouts, rising up from the ground. There is horror in his voice that makes the Bats all tense. "No, he is not hot. That's disgusting Steph. Look at him. Tell me who's face that is."

It's Bruce who spots it first. "I have more chidlren?"

Damian gasps. "Father, you have more blood, children!? How did you recognize him, Richard?"

"He looks exactly like Bruce at that age." Dick hisses, leaning closer. "The Titians and I met Bruce when he was sixteen during a mishap with a time wizard. I may have pretended to be a butler sent to Wayne Manor for training to get access to the cave. The cave was the location that we had to use to go home."

"That was you?" Bruce demands. "I thought that was an idiot who was in love with Alfred."

"Ew, why?"

"You kept complimenting his cooking, doing chores for him, and trying to take him out for a fun night in town!"

"Well, excuse me for wanting Alfred to have a week's vacation from the broodiest and most troublesome teen!" Dick shouts, throwing his arms in the air. "You were literally hissing at him whenever he told you to bathe!"

"I didn't like water back then!"

"Hey guys?" Jason cuts in. "Tim left."

Both men swing to stare at the second eldest with twin looks of confusion. "What?"

"Tim. He's over there. Yelling at kid-Bruce." Jason points to where a crowd is slowly building around them. Tim is in a screaming match with the owner. There is a lot of hand-waving, faces turning red in anger, finally ending with the owner throwing himself over the Red Robin merchandise with a protective little snarl.

Tim reels back and punches him in the face.

"Oh shit," Steph sighs, running towards the both as the owner is quick to tackle Tim. The Waynes find it odd that they must show off their bat training to break the two apart.

And that's how the Waynes get on the front cover of almost all media coverage that tells the story of Danny Fenton (Wayne). Bruce's second secret love child with a married woman (Jack and Maddie had briefly opened up about their marriage back then, so neither was mad) and who had met his biological father after a public fight with his adoptive brother.

Danny would like to go on record as saying that he was unaware of why Tim cared so much that he saw a fantastic business opportunity and took it. It's not like Batman could challenge his copyrights, and if the crimefighter came for his kneecaps over it, he would find himself against the Ghost King.

True the Ghost King in name only, but the Bat didn't know that.

Danny will be honest if asked how he felt about finding out Bruce Wayne is his father. He already knew. When he was around twelve, his parents sat him down and told him. It was how his dad explained where babies came from, the genuine Welcome To Puberty! Talk and what open marriages meant—which was as horrific as it sounds—and they never bothered with it again.

Because Jack Fenton had been the one to raise Danny, he had been the one who held him after his mom gave birth and had been the one who loved him with all his heart despite not being blood-related.

He had a bigger reaction to having to fist-fight Tim Drake over the fact he made Red Robin the official LGBT+ member of the Bat family because he is bi, no matter how much Tim insists Red Robin was straight.

It sounds to him like Tim is deep in the closet and in denial. Bisexual Red Robin forever!

[anothertimdrakestan]

Batboys Toxic Traits Headcanons

because no one is perfect, i wanted to get a little dirty with it and imagine what the boys are like when they're a little... too obsessed with you.

tw for romanticizing possessive, obsessive, jealous, aggressive actions haha xoxo

Jason Todd

- scary dog privileges wherever you go with jace, but he is ALL bite with one and only one warning bark.

- when a hand that isn't his brushes your thigh in a club, fingers get broken. when a cat caller thinks his compliment just has to be said to you, he most likely won't be able to speak again for weeks. And god forbid any villain try to use you as bait for jason, they've all learned if they value their life to never touch you. He's all for justice not vengeance until anyone tries to mess with you, then those words always get mixed up in his head.

- sometimes you cant even complain about people, they end up getting randomly harassed by a certain someone until they just move town

- jason is adamant as long as he's alive there won't be a problem of yours he can't solve with a little violence

- your biggest problem is that he struggles to let you have guy friends, obviously the ones he knows especially fellow heroes are more than fine, but he's been known to burst blood vessels when he sees you close and person with men he's never met

- he's proud of it too: "let another man try and touch y/n, it's been a slow night for me." or "i just don't get why you need him as a friend when you have me, myself, and i"

Tim Drake

- tim gets... obsessive.

- he tends to fall hard but with you he brought the house down with him

- before you were officially his he had hacked every security camera in the city to have eyes on you at any given moment

- both for your safety and his own maniacal flirting strategy: you admire shoes but frown at the price tag? tim's buying you the matching bag to go with the shoes he bought the second you looked at them.

- before you knew how insanely in love with you he was, you truly thought he was a mind reader

- well he kind of was, seeing as he scrolled through your search history every night to know which talking points to bring up with you

- once you finally fell for him and set some stronger boundaries he still occasionally found himself double checking your location when you weren't by his side, or lazily purchasing every item on your pinterest boards, he just can't help but dote on you

Damian Wayne

- damian doesn't really get close to people, but as always you were his exception

- however, this means his list of people to hang out with is extremely short, and he saw no problem in wanting to be around you wherever you went whenever he could

- like a kind of tall, dark, and brooding puppy, he quietly followed you everywhere, and when you strictly told him he couldn't follow along, you always noticed a perched shadow just a few building away

- eventually you got used to rolling over to damian coolly watching you sleep or patiently waiting to pick you up from your classes/job, happy just to walk you to your car

- just like jason, damian had a brutal and heartless style of problem-solving when it came to anyone giving you trouble

- too often you found yourself standing in between his rage a massive mistake whether it was nearly assaulting a friend of yours who tried to ask you out or threatening to buy out your entire workplace when you didn't get the promotion you wanted

- forever cooling his rage was worth having his adoration though, and you were happy to have your overbearing shadow follow you throughout your days

Dick Grayson

- for such a bubbly leader, dick often struggled with communication

- always used to bearing his problems alone youd spent too many nights tracking down your own boyfriend only to beg him to tell you what's wrong

- he never understood that you didn't always want to solve his problems, but hold his sadness or hurt with him

- it was the worst when he was upset with you, whether it was jealously or insecurity that crept into his mind

- he'd take off in a rush hoping you wouldn't notice but you always did, either hunting him down or simply waiting with open arms for him to come home

- it would take years to teach your traveling-circus-raised boyfriend that you weren't going anywhere, ever.

- but, this made for many heartfelt nights where he held you and promised you the world, as if you'd opened him up in a way no one else could, pulling forward the most magical and loving side of your sweet boy

[wondersinwaynemanor]

thinking how Dick always finds ways to hang out with his brothers. but reality is that, they have grown with different schedules and locations and responsibilities. his brothers have partners now. Jason is a dad for goodness sake.

Dick finds himself often emotional. he is a man nearing his 30's, but he still often misses his younger brothers.

so Dick tries.

Dick, calls Jason, who is in Star City: Hey, Little Wing. You free this Saturday? There's a new action movie. Want to check it out?

Jason, pouts at the other end of the phone: Sorry, Dickie. I have to attend to Lian's reading playdate at her friend's house. Roy refuses to go.

Dick, feels a pang on his chest: Oh, of course, yeah. I'm glad you're there to teach Roy how to read.

Jason, laughs which makes Dick smile: Hey, lay off! But maybe we can watch another movie next month? My schedule is kinda booked this month-

Dick, doesn't mean to cut his brother off: No problem, Jay. Next time, yeah? Maybe me and Wally can visit soon.

Jason: You both should. Lian is asking for her favorite uncles. Please don't tell Tim and Conner I told you that.

Dick, laughs: I'll see you soon, Little Wing. Miss you. Say "hi" to Lian for me. And "fuck you" to Roy for me.

Jason, chuckles which makes Dick smile again: You got it, Goldie. See ya!

Dick keeps trying.

Dick knocks on the door of Tim's room and cherishes this moment, because Tim is barely at the Manor. Well, none of them mostly are at the Manor for years now. He enters when Tim says "come in".

Dick: Timmy!! Want to try this new coffee-

he closes his mouth when he sees Tim in front of the mirror, wearing a suit and fixing a tie.

Dick, frowns: Oh, you leaving already?

Tim bites his lip as he concentrates to fixing the tie. Dick chuckles and approaches Tim to do it for him.

Tim: Yes, going to Metropolis for a business meeting. Then off to New York after, booked that hotel for me and Kon.

Tim gestures to the packed bag on the floor.

Dick, feels a pang on his chest: Oh, right right. I almost forgot.

he backs up and smiles at his brother.

Dick: Well, looks like you're ready to go. You look handsome, Baby Bird.

Tim, smiles: Thank you, Dick.

he gives Dick a quick hug and Dick wishes it was longer.

Tim: See you next week, Dick!

Dick: Have fun! See you, Timmy!

before Tim exists his room, he turns around.

Tim: You were saying something a while ago? Sorry, I didn't catch it.

Dick: It's nothing.

Tim: You better tell me when I come back. Bye, Dick!

Dick, says to the empty room: Bye...

and Dick keeps trying.

Dick is barely with Damian during patrols anymore, so he's glad his brother called for back up, since Bruce was in another planet with the Justice League. Damian has grown so much, he's been using new suits, because he has outgrown a few of the older ones.

Nightwing: Hey, Robin. Want to catch some Big Belly burgers after we freshen up?

Robin: I think I'll have to pass, Nightwing. Superboy is picking me up in a few.

Nightwing, feels a pang on his chest: Right, right. He better not drop you.

Robin, snorts, but he smiles so Nightwing smiles also: He would never.

before Nightwing leaves Robin on the rooftop, he leans down to kiss the top of his head. it hits him that very long ago, he acted as his father figure when Batman was gone.

Nightwing: Take care, okay? Love you.

Nightwing thought he would not get a response, but as soon as he turns around to head for home, he hears Robin.

Robin: Love you, Akhi.

Dick has come to accept that his brothers are grown up now. that maybe he wasn't part of their lives anymore, he could honestly cry-

so when the door opens of their house, he expects to see Wally, bringing flowers and food like usual, but he sees his brothers instead. Jason has a box on his hand, which happens to be a copy of the movie they were supposed to watch. Tim has a bag of coffee from the new cafe place. Damian has a bag from Big Belly Burger. and if there tears on his eyes when they hang out that night, at least he's got his brothers to cuddle with on the couch.

[auroreliis]

i just have one of the most life changing ideas ever and its- blind, deaf, and mute baking with the batfam. you can choose who’s who and who’s filming and who has the fire extinguisher ready.

Thank you for this request! It was entertaining to write :)

Yeah Alfred said no, so you had to wait until he and Bruce left the manor

Platonic Yandere!Batfam

Summary: Chaos in the kitchen (blind, mute and deaf baking)

CW: no warnings

(not edited or proofread)

This was going to be fun, that was for sure. However, the arguing that came along with it was maddening.

Currently all four of your brothers were talking over, shouting at and fighting with each other.

Together you had all decided to bake a cake while one of you was deaf, one mute and one blind. The only problem was that there were five of you, so either one role repeated or you had to find a different solution.

The primary source of the conflict was the question of who would have which role.

Dick requested to do it randomly, but Jason insisted that he and Damian should be mute, because they talk too much.

Damian, on the other hand, was not pleased with that solution and instead told Jason to just be deaf. However, Tim stated that he also didn't want to hear Damian and Dick talk.

Exhaling, you leaned your cheek against your palm with your elbow positioned on the kitchen counter. Maybe you should just call Alfred. The idea of all four of them getting in trouble was entertaining enough for you to subconsciously snicker. Just as quickly as it appeared, your smile dropped again when you heard what role they had decided for you.

"You'll be filming, alright, Songbird?", Dick pointed at you, expecting you to comply.

"What? No! I want to bake the cake too!", you protested, but to no avail. "No way! You'd burn the kitchen down", Dick dismissed you with the wave of his hand.

"Wow. So you trust Dick in the kitchen, but not me?", you turned to the others, not really believing they had any say in this at all. You were met with silence from their end.

Unbelievable. This was another thing about your new family. Everything fun was verboten. More specifically, anything that was even insignificantly risky, was off the table. Which sucked, since you were basically living off adrenaline.

You turned away from them to sulk in silence, knowing that they wouldn't change their minds.

By the time you had come to terms with the current arrangement, they had all settled and decided the following:

-Dick was mute

-Jason was deaf

-Tim and Damian were blind

While not completely satisfied, you realised that they would at least be somewhat entertaining to watch. Boredom was staring to get to you and you could only watch so many movies and TV shows before getting sick of them.

The start was...rocky, to say the least.

Tim and Damian were bumping into each other quite often. Neither were really happy when they realised who had just walked into them and after a while, they started searching for each other to purposefully bump into each other.

Dick was stressed, but you were having the time of your life. Sometimes you even called out to them, "Tim, watch out, Damian is to your left!", only to see them trying to ram into each other.

Dick was getting more peeved every time and his face always scrunched up. Every now and then, he would glance at you, wanting you to stop telling them each other's locations, but he could never ask you to stop. You were only helping your dear brothers stay safe, at the end of the day (and also he was mute).

Dick was having troubles. He relied on words so much, that being mute was really difficult for him. It was impossible to stand around and do nothing while the others argued and hit each other, but he couldn't diffuse any fights. He did try using sign language with Jason, but he mostly turned away from him and pretended to not to have seen him.

Jason often grabbed both Tim and Damian by the shoulders to guide them past any obstacles. What they didn't know, was that he would always make sure to leave some cake batter on their clothes. He would look to you afterwards and wink, implying that this stays between you and him.

Overall, Jason was doing great. He was in his own world, doing his own thing, listening to music and sometimes even humming or dancing along to it.

Damian was very irritated, especially when he, halfway through, noticed that his clothes were covered in cake batter. During the challenge, he often tried to identify Jason and trip him. He usually failed, since Jason avoided him, however he did succeed once. Jason fell and knocked Dick over along with him, luckily Dick couldn't say anything about it. Jason later tried to trip Damian as well, but he somehow managed to avoid falling every time.

Dick and Jason were the ones who did the most, because they could actually see, but Tim and Damian often tried to be involved more, even though it was a bad idea. Like when Tim accidentally knocked over the oil which Dick carelessly placed on the edge of the counter and Damian almost slipped on the puddle.

Tim stayed on the sidelines for most of the challenge. He did try to help, but it typically ended poorly. He just couldn't get used to the lack of vision. Even so, he did fling cake batter towards the source of Damian's voice when the latter mocked him for his lack of orientation.

When they had finally placed the cake into the oven, all of you exhaled in relief. You were starting to fear that you would suffocate from laughter. You had been laughing so much, that Dick considered setting up another camera, one which only filmed you and your radiant smile.

He did follow through with this. However, you only found out when you caught him rewatching the video a month later before going to bed. His proudest accomplishment, according to him, was finally making you enjoy spending time with them. You slammed the door when you left his room.

After a quick break you continued filming them when it was time to decorate.

Dick pushed everyone away and frosted completely by himself. However, nobody stayed still.

Damian, with sprinkles in hand, was tripped by Jason and stopped himself from falling by grabbing whatever was nearest to him. It just so happens that his hand landed on the cake.

Then another argument erupted, primarily because Jason was angry about the ruined cake.

Dick decided to rip off the tape from his mouth to diffuse the situation and end the challenge.

They all agreed that it was time to stop. You stopped filming and took a look around.

You lacked the vocabulary to describe the state of the kitchen after this challenge. "Chaotic" would be an understatement. Alfred would fall to his knees upon entering, only to quickly get up because his trousers would be covered in cake batter.

"So...when will dad and Alfred be returning?", you broke the awkward silence.

"I think they said on the 14th", Dick wiped his hands clean.

"Wait, what day is today?", Jason chimed in.

You were about to check on your phone when the sound of a door unlocking echoed through the manor

All of you exchanged looks.

Uh Oh...

[inkpotsprite]

I came up with this AU a while back - probably a few months after I stumbled into this fandom - and it's been bouncing around in my head for a while. (Excuse the scatterbrained nature of this post, I'm just writing my thoughts as they come)

Tim Drake meets Peter Pan (OUAT edition)

I mean, he's the perfect candidate for a lost boy. Neglected, lonely and will probably become scarily loyal to the first person who offers him a way out of that. Not to mention, he's smart, has loose morals (I mean, he did stalk and blackmail Batman) and can be a little ruthless at times, he'd be Peter's right hand man in no time.

So, he lives as a lost boy for a while, but finds Peter's ways of doing things too dark or cruel and, being the baby genius he is, escaped from Neverland, back to Gotham.

But also, we could combine this concept with the Tim joins the family early trope. Like, he goes to Neverland a couple of times, but also starts connecting with the Waynes, so that could be part of the reason he's able to let go of that loyalty to Peter, because he's got something better waiting for him. He never tells the Wayne's about his time in Neverland, worrying that they'll see him differently due to the morally grey things he did there as Peter's right hand man. Tim deals with quite a bit of imposter syndrome and insecurity, but ultimately, he's more happy than not.

Then, a few years later, Damian comes in and is all, well, Damian about things which makes things take a bad turn for Tim. The family is bad at balance/communication and Tim "Abandonment Issues" Drake is a very unreliable narrator at times, so it's angst galore. Then Peter turns up again.

Tim goes with him to Neverland, this time with the intention of staying forever.

Or, we could go another route and look into Damian, a kid whose whole life had been uprooted as he's sent to live with a father he's never met and with a family with vastly different dynamics to what he's used to. He's not neglected, but he's certainly lonely. Especially when being held up to expectations and moral standards that he finds impossible to comprehend after being raised by Talia and Ra's.

So Peter comes back, but he takes Damian instead, as a way to lure Tim back to Neverland. And, even if he doesn't like Damian much right now, of course Tim will go after him because that's his little brother and no way in hell is he letting Peter take him.

We could even sprinkle in a little backstory about Peter knowing Bruce from when Bruce was a kid, after his parents died. Now, two of Bruce's sons are missing and he has to find a way to Neverland.

That's where Jason comes in. Jason Todd, the ultimate lost boy who never was. Not for lack of trying. Peter's shadow swooped down to get him when he was living on the streets, but Jay isn't some naive kid, he's a Gothamite, a Crime Alley kid and he knows that if someone - even that someone is a creepy shadow person - grabs you and tries to get you to a secondary location, you fucking fight it with all you have. So, Jason never makes it to Neverland. Instead, he fights so hard that the shadow drops him, right onto Captain Hook - Killian Jones' - ship. They bond, Killian teaches Jason the ropes, but Jason ultimately decides to go back to Gotham for whatever reason (maybe Killian messes up or Jason's trust issues get the better of him) and he leaves.

We could also play around with parallels between Bruce and Peter. Both taking in lost, lonely kids that no one else wants, having them fight battles, Peter could even hit Bruce with that 'at least my boys will never die' as if forcing them to live forever in eternal stagnation is so much better.

While in Neverland together, Tim and Damian start to bond over their feelings of never truly belonging anywhere. That they'll be forever defined by what they did over who they are. As they grow closer, Tim reassures Damian that he will always belong with him, to give him the chance to prove it.

Meanwhile, Bruce, Dick and Jason are on their way to Neverland. And Peter is ready to start playing the game.

... And that's all I've got so far.

[wolfjackle-creates]

Ask Game:

8. "Who did this to you." and 24. Showing up at friend/mentors house.

With hurt Danny and any/all of the Bats.

Okay, but holy shit, you have no idea how perfect this one is. I was imagining a scenario with both of these earlier today. This is an alternate version of Bring Me Home where Danny and Tim were online friends from the time they were preteens. The actual fic will not go this way, so I'm so excited to have an excuse to share this version with y'all.

Nonny, I absolutely love you for sending these two in (no romo).

For those who don't follow Bring Me Home. Tim's username was IKnowYourSecrets and Danny often calls him "Secrets." Danny's username was -xXPolarisXx- and Tim will call him "Polaris."

And for everyone, Sam and Tucker ended up with codenames after all their adventures in Amity. Sam is referred to as Regrowth and Tucker as Pharaoh. This will come up later in Bring Me Home, but hasn't yet (mainly bc what I'm writing now takes place before those events).

Word Count: 1.2k

-----

Danny's vision blurred and he felt himself fall a dozen feet. He clutched his stomach tighter and grit his teeth against the pain.

He was almost there. He could make it.

With the last of his strength, he shot an ectoblast into the sky and fell a few more feet, hitting the roof of a building. He scrapped along the rough surface and the only reason he didn't scream was because he couldn't catch his breath enough to. Everything hurt.

He couldn't even push himself up and so just lay there, trying and failing to catch his breath. Not even when he heard a strange noise and footsteps behind him could he move. He tensed as much as possible.

"Who are you?" asked a man.

Danny just groaned. He hurt. He needed Tim.

The footsteps got closer and Danny opened his eyes. When had he closed them? He saw black boots and skin-tight leggins.

Then the man was kneeling. Blue accents on his chest, a domino over his eyes.

Danny let out a sigh. It tasted of ectoplasm. "Ni-win," he slurred.

"So you know who I am, who are you? What happened? How can I help?"

"R— R'bin. Know me."

"You're looking for Robin?"

His vision was going dark. "R'bin. Yea. Secrets. Friends."

"I'll get Robin here. Can you tell me your name?"

"Polaris. Tell—" Danny coughed weakly and spat out more ectoplasm. "Tell 'im, 'M ready to accept 'is offer."

"I will," promised Nightwing.

The blackness crept in further. Danny could hear Nightwing still talking, but couldn't make out the words. Everything was getting fuzzy. But he was in Gotham. Tim was here. Tim would make it all better. He let go.

---

Despite the quiet night, Tim was tense. He couldn't shake the feeling something was wrong. So when Dick's panicked voice came over the comms asking Damian about a secret friend, he was already pulling up Dick's location.

He was on the roof of Tim's civilian apartment building. Which, what?

"I do not have any secret friends," came Damian's reply.

"He's a meta. Caucasian with white hair. He's hurt bad, bleeding everywhere. Lazarus green blood—"

Tim's blood ran cold and he wished he could grapple faster. "Fuck! I'm heading to your location now. He's my friend, not Robin's. Bring him into my apartment. He needs specialized medicines and I've a supply."

"He called himself Polaris. Said he's ready to accept your offer," said Dick.

"Shit. Fuck. Okay. Eta, fifteen minutes."

"I'll get him inside."

"Don't try to treat his injuries," Tim ordered. "Human treatments won't work."

"Understood."

"And..." Tim hesitated, "Did he say how he was injured?"

"No. He passed out before he could."

Tim cursed again, but didn't reply further, despite the way the rest of his family demanded information. If it was the GIW, he'd need to arrange extraction for Sam and Tucker. But if it was Danny's parents... Well, he might just cross a line he swore he'd never cross when he first put on the Robin suit.

Fifteen minutes later, he was sliding the window to his apartment open. Dick had Danny laid out on the floor and was stripping him and pulling away loose bandages, revealing a large Y-shaped incision on his chest.

Dick looked up at him, face grim. Tim didn't let himself pause to look and ran to his bedroom and threw open his closet door. He slid open a hidden compartment revealing a safe and, with shaking fingers, punched in the code. The door swung open and he grabbed the silver-and-green case inside.

He rushed back to Danny's side. "Who did this to you?" he mumbled as he took stock of the injuries.

"Do you have any idea who might've wanted to hurt him?" asked Dick.

"With these wounds, it would be either the GIW or his parents." Tim bit back a hysterical laugh. "Been trying to get him away from them for three years now, but he swore they'd be okay once they realized who he was. Idiot." Tim bit his lip. He couldn't cry right now. He opened the case and pulled out gloves and antiseptic and began cleaning the wounds. "Dick, I need you to contact Superboy, Impulse, and Wonder Girl. Tell them Phantom's hurt bad and Regrowth and Pharaoh may need immediate extraction."

"Okay." Dick was already typing away on his phone. Moments later, it started ringing and Dick answered it on speaker.

Cassie's voice came over, "Red Robin, what's going on?"

"Phantom's been vivisected. He passed out before he could share the culprits. We're at my apartment in Gotham. If it was the GIW..."

"I'm sure Impulse is already there. I need to go home and grab my deflector first, but I'm going to get to Amity as soon as I can. We'll keep you updated."

"Thanks. Phantom's in bad shape. I don't..."

"Rob, you know what to do. We've known this was a risk for three years. You've talked to Frostbite and Regrowth and Phantom about how to best care for traumatic wounds. You're going to make sure he pulls through this."

Tim's eyes burned, but he kept working. Almost done and then he could start with the stitches. "Thanks."

"Anytime, Rob."

The call disconnected and Tim took a shaky breath. Time to start the stitches. They'd come directly from Frostbite and the thread glowed a bright, ectoplasm green.

"Tim," Dick's voice was tight, "Why do you have a case filled with Lazarus water and Lazarus-green supplies?"

"Not Lazarus water." He didn't bother explaining more. He laid the thread along the wounds and willed it to close the wound.

The thread obeyed, breaking into small pieces and sewing the skin together on his own. For the first time since he realized Danny was hurt, he smiled. Ghost medicine definitely made this part easier.

With the major injury taken care of as best as possible, Tim began checking over the rest of Danny. He had a bad burn on his left thigh, new electricity marks on his right shoulder, and his right ankle was either badly sprained or broken.

So he set to cleaning those as best he could. Creams then bandages covered the burns. The splint he laid along the ankle set itself just like the stitches had.

Dick tried to help, but Tim brushed him aside. It'd take too long to explain what had to be done.

Eventually, Dick got up and walked away. He could hear him in the kitchen area messing around in the fridge and reporting the situation over the comms, but he ignored it.

Finally, everything was categorized and bandaged to the best of his abilities. Now, for the final step. He pulled out a syringe shining bright with ectoplasm and stabbed it into a mostly-uninjured area of Danny's thigh.

Danny's back arched off the ground and he gasped, eyes flying open.

Tim leaned over him, "Danny, it's okay. You're safe now. You made it."

"Tim," gasped Danny.

"Yep. You made it. Can you tell me who did this to you?"

Danny closed his eyes and breathed out. "Mom and Dad."

Tim grasped Danny's hand. "Danny..."

Danny squeezed back. He opened his eyes and met Tim's gaze. "Still have that spare room for me?"

"I've had it since the day you died, idiot. Welcome home."

Danny gave a small smile even as tears tracked down his cheeks. "I'm home."

-----

Okay! That ended up being both longer and shorter than I thought it'd be. Hope you all enjoy. Thanks again for sending the prompt, Nonny! And the rest of you, feel free to keep sending some in. I'm off tomorrow and should be able to fill one or two. Any others I can work on over the course of the week.

For now, it's bedtime.

[schrijverr]

You Don’t Know Me, But I Know You 5

Chapter 5 out of 6

5 times Tim showed he stalked Robin + 1 time Jason did

Inspired by this post of thecrazyleader.

On AO3.

Ships none

Warnings: none

~~~~

5. A Familiar Blackmail Moment

It’s during a chase through Gotham that it happens. Most of them are focused on locating the robber of multiple dangerous weapons when there are suddenly two yells over the coms, before a storm of cursing starts up.

“Nightwing, Red Hood, report,” Bruce demands anxiously.

“We’re fine, Dickface just fucking entangled us on the grapplers, like a fucking Dickhead idiot, stupid asshole,” Jason curses.

Dick immediately defends himself: “This was so not my fault, Little Wing. You’re rusty with yours and being mean about it.”

“Don’t you fucking dare put this on me. You bumped into me,” Jason hisses.

“You didn’t check your six properly,” Dick protests.

“I swear you need to shut the fuck up, right now. I have knives and I’m near all your sensitive parts,” Jason threatens.

“Oh my god, are you two tied to each other with your own grapplers?” Steph asks, sounding delighted at the idea. “O, please say you have a visual on that.”

Barbara chuckles: “Oh, I definitely have a visual on that. They’re properly tangled and stuck. I’m getting a video of them dangling there to use later.”

“You have to show me that,” Steph says.

“Of course.”

“It’s not fucking funny,” Jason complains. “I don’t wanna get blackmailed for shit Dickface did. I refuse.”

“For the last time, it’s your fault we’re in this mess,” Dick shoots back. “I’ve been grappling all over non-stop, you haven’t. It’s okay to be rusty, but don’t start pushing this on me.”

Before Jason can give what would have probably been a scathing reply to that, they’re interrupted by a snort. Tim says: “I find it hard to believe Hood caused that when you got B tangled even in your later Robin years.”

It’s quiet for a second, then there’s chaos on the coms.

“Oh, yeah, I remember that,” Barbara comments, as Steph says: “Wait, you’re saying that Bats and Nightwing as Robin did a fish on a hook impersonation? Please tell me you captured that, stalker boy.”

Dick is whining: “Shut up,” as Damian says: “Yes, I refuse to believe this sort of slander.”

“Slander. Slander?” Jason shrieks. “Golden boy here is pinning his shit on me, that’s fucking slander. I can’t believe you, you know. How fucking dare you.”

“No chatter on the coms,” Bruce tiredly reminds them, something he often forgoes, because they have never listened once in their lives. He has already decided to make a strategic withdrawal when they turn against him, happy to have at least diverted the conversation again.

“Oh, now you’re picking his side, huh? When it’s your dignity on the line as well, I see how it is,” Jason bitches. “Creepy McCreeperson, make sure you find those stalker pics you took so I can defend my honor when this asshole tries pinning it on me again.”

“Not really inclined to help you when you’re calling me a creeper,” Tim deadpans.

“I’ll make you a coffee cake next time they put you on a caffeine ban,” Jason offers, obviously trying to sound enticing.

Dick admonishes: “Don’t bribe Red Robin with coffee. You know it’s for his own good and you know that we’re all above bri-”

“Deal,” Tim cuts him off.

“Hell yeah, you’re my favorite paparazzi stalker,” Jason cheers. “Now shut up, Dickface, and tell me how to get loose without plummeting, since you’ve obviously done this before.”

“I hate you both,” Dick complains, before he starts to explain.

[strangeshoepatrolbandit]

Alternate

Jason Todd x GN!Reader

Summary:Y/N L/N was sent to an alternate reality where DC characters such as Batman and Robin are real. Batman agrees to help keep them safe until he can get them back home, but will they want to go home after meeting a certain son of Batmans.

Warnings: Cussing, being taken in, mentions death and resurrection.

Hi, So this is a new series of mine, I hope you enjoy it! Series Masterlist.

~☆~

One second, you were asleep in bed. The next, you were passed out on a dock. You quickly darted upwards, looking around for any sign that could tell you where you were. Your eyes caught sight of a crate, the word 'Gotham' written on the side. Your hands darted around your body, trying to see if you could locate your phone, panic took over once you realized it was nowhere to be found.

A "whoosh" noise alerted you, your head turned in every direction to try and see where it came from. Your eyes caught sight of movement. Something was in the shadows. Everything in your body told you to run, run all the way until you find the police station, but some stupid little part in you told you to investigate it.

"Hello?" You called out, taking a step towards the movement.

"Um, I don't know where I am, or how I got here..." Your voice trailed off as someone came forward. The person was sporting a full body Batman suit.

"Okay, what's going on?" You asked more to yourself than to the other person. A noise of something landing behind you sent a shiver up your spine. As you turned around, you spotted a kid.

"What the fuck?" You whispered, staring at the kid that was dressed in a more toned down Robin suit, it looked like the most recent Robin, Damian.

"Who are you?" The kid asked, hand resting on his hip. You only stared at him, mouth slightly hung agape. You could tell that the kid grew antsy quick, repeatedly tapping his foot as your silence grew longer. A hand touching your shoulder made you spin around, staring at the "Batman.".

"Are you alright?" He asked.

You let out an ebrupt laugh as you stared at the man. Your hand ran along your face as your laughter grew louder.

"Okay, what are you doing?" You asked both males in-between laughter.

"Look, I have respect for cosplayers, but how did you get me out here?"

Both of them looked at you quizzically, wondering what the hell you were talking about.

"Where the fuck am I?" You yelled out, turning around again to quickly look at the kid again, then back to the man.

"You're in Gotham...are you okay?" The older man asked.

"G-Gotham?" You let out another ebrubt laugh.

"Where am I really?" You asked again, a large grin on your face to mask the uneasy feeling in your stomach. Both males just continued to stare at you as you awaited their answer.

"Okay, look, Bruce -" You were quickly cut off from the kid behind you, grabbing your hand and yanking you backwards.

"What are you talking about?" The older man tried to play your words off.

"Dude, I'm not playing this game." You started. "I'm just gonna call you Bruce since you won't tell me what's going on."

The younger boy held out a wooden sword, holding it to under your neck. "Who told you?" He questioned.

"Oh my God, Bruce Wayne?" You started again. "Batman, everyone knows this."

Both of them continued to stare at you, and you resisted letting out a laugh from the wooden sord that rested under your chin.

"Look, pipsqueak, where am i?"

"We already told you."

"No, Gotham is a fictional place, just like Batman and all of his Robin's. Where AM I?" You yelled out the last part.

"What do you know?" The older man asked you.

"What, about Batman?"

"And the Robin's."

"Um, I know about Dicks parents and how he was an acrobat...I know about how Jason stole the wheels from the Batmobile, and I know how he died and was resurrected...I know about how Tim stalked Dick, and I know about his borderline war crimes...i know about Stephanie's father and how Batman treated her...um, Damian is Bruce's actual son, with Talia Al-Ghul, the daughter of the guy who resurrected Jason...yeah" you listed off some things you knew about the comic book vigilantes.

"Okay, you're coming with us." The older man told you, grabbing one of your arms and walking off. You continued to yell at him and punch his hand, even trying to pull yourself from him. His grasp remained strong on your arm, not letting you leave, Robin fell into step next to you and grabbed your other arm, completely overpowering you. The two of them dragged you to a completely black car that was hidden in an alley. It looked like a mixture of almost every on-screen batmobile completely rolled into one.

~☆~

Both males continued to drive you all the way to a cave...one that could undeniably be recognized as the Batcave. They grabbed you from out of the car, dragging you over to a chair and strapping you to it.

"How do you know all of this?" The older man asked you again.

"I told you it's all FUCKING FICTIONAL!" You screamed at the two of them, trying to get your arms undone from behind your back.

"You don't believe them, right?" The kid asked, looking up at the older male who didn't respond.

"H-how did you get all of this to look so real?" You stuttered out, looking around the room- erm well cave that you were in.

"Whats your name?" The Batman dude asked, voice finally sounding reassuring.

"...Y/N." You hesitantly stated, watching both of the males closely.

"And you're telling the truth, Batman is a fictional character?" He asked you, genuinely trying to figure you out.

"....yes." You responded, not knowing if this dude was joking or not. The man proceeded to take off his mask, unveiling short black hair, with slight gray growing at the sides.

"Father!" The kid yelled, staring up at the older man.

"Take it off, Damian." He defeatedly told the younger boy. With a sigh, the younger boy yanked off his own mask, revealing his green eyes.

Your mouth hung agape as you stared at both of the males, your head going a hundred miles per hour.

"What the fuck- Bruce Wayne!?" You yelled out as you stared at the older man before staring at the younger boy. "Damian!?"

Both of the men let you have your moment, watching as you mumbled to yourself before you occasionally yelled out their names.

"Y/N, how did you get here." Bruce asked, staring into your eyes, Damian's shoulders hung as he listened to his father believe your story.

"I honest to God don't know!" You yelled again. Bruce let out a sigh as he listened to sit in your little hysteric fit. Honestly, he would probably do the same.

~☆~

Bruce led you up to the Manor, leaving a fuming Damian down in the cave.

"You are going to stay here while I try to get you home." Bruce stated, not giving you room for debate.

"Yeah, okay!" You agreed, completely on board with the idea of staying out of the streets of Gotham. Bruce led you all the way to the kitchen where an older man was doing dishes, completely unaware of the two people behind him, until you let out a gasp.

"Alfred..." You whispered into the air, smile on your face as you stared at the man.

"Ah, my apologies, but who might you be?" He asked, drying his hands off on a towel.

"Uh, oh well, I'm Y/N." You stuttered out, more excited to meet Alfred than you were when you noticed Bruce was real.

"They're not from here." Bruce added, keeping his mouth shut about you not even being from their world. Alfred walked over to the two of you, offering a small smile as he shook your hand.

"Will you be staying with us?" The older man asked you.

"Yes, they will, we don't know for how long, though." Bruce answered for you.

"Oh, well, I should get a room set up." Alfred stated.

"I can do the dishes for you." You offered.

"I believe you would be taking my job if you did that, Miss/Master Y/N." Alfred chuckled as he walked out of the room.

~☆~

Alfred had just finished setting up your room. He even layed out an old shirt from one of the boys. Your eyes scanned the room, there was a queen sized bed, a giant window that had a veiw of the garden, a wooden desk, minimal artwork, a giant wooden dresser, a chair, and an on suite bathroom. The room itself wasn't too big, meaning that it didn't look funny with furniture randomly spaced around it, but the walls were tall, along with the doors.

You let out a breath as you thought about your room back at home compared to this one, a tiny little room with a twin sized mattress that was as hard as a rock....you could get used to this.

~☆~

I really hope you enjoyed this!

New chapters will be slow, I'm sorry!

[liquid-luck-00]

My Life is One Complication After Another 5

Chapter 5

I’m going to try to post more this year and finish up a few of my started to fics so sorry for not updating this in a while

First *** Previous

~~~~~~~~~~

In his defense it had been only three hours, but he still doesn't understand how his newest child seems to be completely missing. They had all noticed she was missing during breakfast but none thought much of it. They all thought she was still in her room, when they looked she wasn't there

Queue them searching the entire Manor, while Damian searched the grounds, and Tim trying to trace her locations.

Now that lead to more questions than answers.

The last location her phone showed was somewhere in Starling City at 3:22 am and then it disappeared.

He and Tim were now attempting to trace her, Dick was pacing, while Jason was on the phone trying to call Roy.

The location history made no sense. One minute she is in Gotham, the next time her phone gives a signal she is in Starling, and the next she's gone.

"Damn..." Tim cursed, more to himself than to anyone in particular.

"What is it?" Bruce asked watching the screen.

"She's Pinky, remember." Tim stated as if that made everything make sense.

"Just spell it out Replacement." Jason grumbled still unable to get a hold of Roy, apparently.

"She's the one who erased every mention of a magical war in Paris. We've never interacted with her as Bats, but..." He held up a little red drive. "She put all the information imbedded into this drive, which she gave me the second day we met..."

Timothy's words hung in the air. The unspoken words rang in his mind like an alarm.

She knows.

He was beginning to spiral.

He's only had custody of his daughter for a week, and she's gone. From what Tim is saying she can hide from them if she wants. She could be anywhere. She could have been taken and she knows who they are. He didn't prep her, or even tell her himself.

No. She figured it out on her own and knows they are hiding it from her.

"If I may Master Bruce?" Alfred cleared his throat, effectively pulling everyone's attention. Breaking him from his thoughts, he nodded. "All of you have treated the girl as if she is made of glass."

"She is a civilian, we have..." Dick started but Alfred stopped him.

"Yet, from what I have heard she is not. She knows of your nightly activities." He rose a knowing brow.

"Alfred, you know more, don't you?" Bruce questioned.

"Even if I do. The young Miss should be the one to tell you." With that he turned and made his way back up to the manor.

"Tim keep tracing, Jason get a hold of Roy. I'm going to Starling, maybe Oliver knows where she might be." He grumbled.

---

"Why does everything always seem to be so much easier when you’re here Bug?" Green Arrow asked as the three of them were coming back in from patrol.

"It's the creation and balance of the Ladybug Miraculous. It quite literally tries to even everything out around it. Essentially meaning because there’s usually so much wrong going on in the city. So, it mellows it out to the point where it’s almost nonexistent it seems." She explains sitting down at one of the desks letting her transformation fall.

"I should probably head back." She let her head slightly hang lost in thought.

"Come on Nettie, Bruce is probably looking for you anyways, why don't you come and have breakfast. Laurel's been wanting to see you anyways." Oliver extended an invitation to which she gladly accepted.

Oliver took his car, while Marinette went with Roy on his motorcycle. The entire ride back she leaned into him comfortable and finally having a moment of peace since moving.

She knows her family means well, but they’re almost suffocating. And unfortunately she has a feeling the suffocation isn’t about to end.

The second she stepped in Starling, she remembered to put her phone into an untraceable mode due to miraculous magic. It however didn’t cross her mind to switch that off quite yet.

They rode back to the Queen estate where both Oliver and Laurel were waiting for them. She knows Roy took the long route, in order to help her ease her mind. As soon as she takes off the helmet Laurel envelops her in a hug.

"Nettie, it has been too long. And frankly if these two knuckleheads weren’t going to bring you I was."

"You know I’m only a phone call away Laurel." Marinette laughed, as the first genuine smile came back on her lips for the entire week.

"Why don’t we get some breakfast on and then tell me about all the drama which must've likely kicked up."

"Deal. Berry crepes?"

"If you’re making them, Bug, definitely." Roy leaned over and gave her shoulder a squeeze before settling into a side hug.

She looked up at him and gave him a knowing smirk. "You’re helping Speedy, come on."

She grabbed his wrist and dragged him knowingly to the kitchen.

Marinette would pop in to Starling almost as often as Roy did to Paris, and that would be almost biweekly. So Marinette knew exactly where everything would be in that kitchen. As she quickly whipped up the batter, she had Roy slice up fruits and the jams to create the filling.

The three of them were in the kitchen just casually talking, Oliver had of course gone somewhere that wasn't the kitchen, where he knew he would end up getting scolded by Marinette.

Can he cook, yes, did he usually get into Marinette's way, also yes.

He didn’t come back until they called him back to finally eat something.

They sat and talked until they all realized they were restless. So the four of them got up and left for the rarely used in home gym. Mostly because everyone in the house instead use thugs, mercenary‘s, and other meta-humans as punching bags, so the home gym didn’t get used all that much.

"You and me first, Nettie." Laurel pulled her to the mat in the center.

Kaalki and Tikki were floating around, the latter decided to sit on Roy's shoulder, both nibbling on a cookie. Oliver had disappeared again.

She smiled before falling into position facing Laurel.

---

Bruce didn't get nervous, much less worried, but Oliver was however getting on his nerves.

He has a daughter to find and bring home, and he is not co-operating in the slightest.

Instead of meeting him anywhere, Oliver told him to come over by the estate, which he did. He didn’t even make it inside, seeing as Oliver was waiting for him at the door.

"She’ll be home by dinner." He was nearly expressionless, stating a fact more than anything else, and Bruce hated it.

"I don’t even know how she got here, Oliver. If she’s even still here, I need to find her I..." He spoke in measured breaths, but his mind raced.

"You and the boys are suffocating her, Bruce. She’s not a civilian, you’re just too damn blind to see that. She understands more than you give her credit for."

"Oliver it’s not that I don’t trust her or I don’t see her worth. I..." He was once again cut off by the Green Arrow.

"Bruce talk to your daughter, before she ends up putting you on your ass." With that Oliver turned and went back inside, closing the door behind him. Which left Bruce annoyed and bewildered all the same time.

Of everyone in the league he and Oliver have the most in common. He knows he’s not the best dealing with his emotions or those of others, hell Oliver is not much better. Yet he knows if he doesn't change something, if this continues as is, he knows he might lose his daughter.

But this.

This is his family, his child. But at the same time he really doesn’t know what to do.

His children have always needed him, they needed both aspects of him. But her, she’s different from the others.

That he knows.

And not just the fact that she seems to be able to process her emotions. There’s a weight on her, one he feels he should recognize, but hasn’t quite yet.

So he returned back to Gotham. And the first thing he did was sit at the Bat-computer, and searched the Starling vigilantes. And a recent photo nearly made him panic.

There’s a girl in a dark red and black suit, the plating almost resembling an insects armor more than something man-made. Over her right shoulder was a clearly unconscious Aarsenal, and in her right hand was his bow. On the side was both Green Arrow and Black Canary looking like two immensely proud parents.

All he felt though was anger towards Oliver queen for making his daughter a vigilante. And panic for that exact same reason.

He needs to talk to his daughter.

~~~~~~~~~~

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[dairy-farmer]

After Jason and Damian’s murder attempts, Bruce and Dick decide Tim isn’t safe in Gotham.

They hide him in a bunker only they know the location of. Tim goes willingly at first, being assured that this is only temporary while they get the situation under control.

But they won’t let him have access to the internet, or any communication to the outside world. They won’t talk about what’s going on, but they’re with him nearly every day, bringing him fresh food and gifts.

It’s nice. They take care of him. But he wants to know when he can leave.

When he asks, their smiles become strained. They give him hushed money-answers, smoothing down his bedhead and kissing his forehead. Dick likes to hold him in his arms while they watch a movie on the couch. He’s warm, and firm, and Tim usually falls asleep.

They become a little more aggressive with their...conditioning. Bruce will no longer respond to ‘B’, instead demanding ‘Dad’ or, as he suggests to a pink-faced Tim, ‘Daddy’.

Dick insists on being with Tim constantly, often carrying him around the cozy bunker, even washing him in the bath, with Tim situated in his lap, trapped by his broad arms.

Tim realizes they won’t let him leave far too late. They’ll regretfully chain him to the soft bed when he’s being ‘fussy’, telling him that it’s just so that he doesn’t hurt himself while he calms down.

Sometimes, Dick can’t help himself at the sight of it. The cuffs are padded so that they don’t leave marks or pinch his baby brother’s delicate skin. Tim is flushed, panting from the excretion of shouting and trying to wriggle away. His soft t-shirt (one of Dick’s) has ridden up, revealing an adorable, heaving chest.

Dick crawls over him, shushing his confused protests with comforting noises. He holds down Tim’s narrow hips and presses his face into Tim’s stomach, breathing in the smell of soft skin and body wash.

He’d planned to just blow a raspberry, be a little silly, but he sees the pink of a dusky nipple, just barely hidden by fabric, and before he knows it, he’s gently and wetly kissing up Tim’s chest and ribs, sucking marks into that pale skin.

Tim isn’t screaming anymore. His gasps have turned quieter, more strangled, wet-sounding. Dick strains his ears, trying to catch a precious moan.

“Please don’t do this, Dick—“ Tim begs quietly.

Dick raises himself to look down at Tim’s face. Tim hasn’t seen the sun in months, but Dick’s smile is a near-thing. It blocks out everything, even hope.

“Do what?” He asks cheerfully, and bends back down.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i love dark aus where tim realizes that there's something off about his family!!!!!

i always thought that alfred is a pretty difficult character to peg but ultimatly i think that he's pretty firmly an enabler of bruce's and he'd overlook a lot of the 'shady' things he does. so he wouldn't be tim's saving grace in this scenario :(. and since damian and jason both have pretty antagonistic relationships with him they wouldn't look for tim either.

if bruce or dick have come up with a lie like 'tim decided to retire and asked us to help him go into hiding' no one would think to doubt them! sure bruce has a history of deceit but dick? well, a lot of people accept dick's words at face value.

so no one is looking for tim and i think he'd realize it and also realize the kind of deep shit he's in.

he willingly entered a prison he has no way of leaving. his two captors are highly skilled both physically and mentally, and they are actively trying to 'stockholm syndrome' him.

it doesn't look good for him.

dick is the presence that often fills the bunker. tim is certain they have cameras or bugs hooked up so tim's never truly alone but he'd prefer that quiet supervision over dick.

when dick started fucking him tim had been half sure that it would be too far for bruce. after all he always wanted tim to call him daddy, to be this small needy thing that hugs him when he visits him like he's one of those kids in videos of soldier parents coming home.

tim is on his back and dick is moaning, balls deep inside him when bruce walks in. tim tilts his head back, shooting a pleading look at him through the hitches sobs. dick always touches tim in some way, make it feel good so tim's cries are interspersed with moans.

dick takes every opportunity to fuck tim, whispering about how much he loves tim, how he knows they've both wanted this for so long-

tim knows it'd been hopeless but he'd still crossed his fingers when bruce walked in that he'd help him, save him, that he'd make dick stop.

(because tim was disgusted and frightened with how his body reacted, with how much he liked it, with how much it was fucking with his head-)

but instead...bruce watched.

dark eyes and soft hands pushign tim's sweaty bangs back and pressing soft kisses to tim's forehead, asking tim is he was being good for his brother.

tim froze at the words, at the feeling of fingers tugging at strands of his hair as his body was jostled with the force of dick's thrusts.

tim parted his lips...and cried.

bruce made a soft noise and kissed tim's cheeks repeatedly asking 'what's wrong, baby? oh what's wrong timmy? what can daddy do?"

tim just cried harder.

[kittymaine]

Two Weeks Notice - Ch. 2

// Summary: Jason and Dick fight. Jason and Babs talk over coffee and doughnuts. //

The next few months after Tim left, the Bat family practically imploded. Luckily, Jason was far enough removed from everyone that he was out of the blast radius. Just a few days after the big ass meeting, the police announced officially that they had found no wrong doing in Tim Drake’s disappearance and that they considered him a voluntarily missing adult. Just a few days after that, people started to get contacted by a horde of aggressive, high-powered lawyers and receiving Drake’s stuff. Before the month was out, all of his shit had been divvied out among the family and stirred up even more angst and sore feelings.

Jason being at the big fucking meeting to end all meetings must have put him on some kind of bats newsletter or something, because he kept getting emails in his actual email with updates on cases and crime rates and trends in the city, with all the other bats CC'ed. Babs also kept hacking the comm on his helmet to add him to the bat's roster, even though he never spoke to anyone and nobody ever spoke to him. He assumed she was also the one who added everyone’s contact info to his contacts in his phone. She also kept adding him to the group chat, even though he always left without saying anything once he realized he was in it.

This forced inclusion on her part meant that he picked up on a little bit of what was happening. It was like watching a train wreck, part of you were aware that what you're looking at is so incredibly horrible and tragic and yet the nasty lizard brain wants to look and learn and fascinate over other people's pain. Jason took turns feeling caustically superior and then absolutely disgusted with himself over feeling that way as he watched his second family steadily fall apart.

Bruce completely pushed everyone out of his life. He pretended like none of the other masks even existed, and god protect any of the younger ones who might accidentally cross his path. He was still going out as Batman and working cases and putting in reports, but he didn't talk to anyone else, didn't work with anyone else, didn't contribute to anyone else's cases, and bit the head off of anyone who so much as tried to talk to him both in and out of the suit.

Damian had stayed with Babs, Cass and Steph at the Clock tower for a week and then ditched for locations unknown. He responded to calls and texts, but wouldn't tell anyone where he was. When pressed, he only said that he was working on 'something important' whatever the hell that was. It had Dick basically crawling the walls, but everyone else took it in stride. The consensus seemed to be that, as long as Damian was willing to call for backup if he needed it, it was probably better for him to be gallivanting around the globe than to be holed up in the mausoleum of Wayne Manor with the whirlwind of dysfunction that was Bruce.

The girls seemed rattled, but otherwise okay. Babs had always worked hard to be as independent of Bruce as she could, and that was paying off. They all lived in the Clock tower and worked to fill any gaps in Bruce's patrols and investigations. It was definitely tough on them, since he wasn't coordinating with them at all, which left Babs to try and anticipate his increasingly erratic movements. Aside from that, they seemed to be weathering Tim's disappearance with a grimace, but weathering it nonetheless.

Batwing and Batwoman were by far the least affected. He could tell from some of their comm chatter that they were occasionally running into Bruce, but his shitty attitude didn't scare them. Jason suspected that Kate and Bruce might have gotten into a fist fight over his shit behavior, based on a few weird comments she made one night. If she did, she wasn't telling.

Dick, from Jason's point of view, was probably the worst off of them.

Dick cranked his 'Best Big Brother In The World' bullshit up to eleven and stuck his nose all the way up the younger kids' asses. He couldn't find Damian and obviously has no idea where to even start looking, so instead he constantly checked in on Steph and Cass to the point of that they obviously felt condescended to. He chatted up Babs so much that she even muted him on comms sometimes.

Not only that, but he was also the only person willing to even try to talk to Bruce. Jason couldn't imagine any of these conversations went especially well, but Dick always came out of them telling everyone over the comms “he's getting better, we just have to give him time”. Whatever.

Worst of all, he starts trying to follow Jason everywhere.

It starts with him hounding Jason any time he so much as steps out the door as Red Hood. Dick must have been haunting rooftops in the Bowery every spare chance he got, because it seemed like any time Jason tried to do a basic patrol, Nightwing was popping up from around an air conditioning unit or swinging down from a streetlight to say “Hey, Little Wing!”. God.

It gets so annoying that Jason stops going out as Red Hood altogether and just checks around the Bowery as regular old Jason Todd. Well, not Jason Todd, because that name is recognizable enough in Gotham even years after his adoption and subsequent death. If anyone asks (and hardly anyone ever does) his name is Jason Peter.

Even that doesn't work for very long as, shortly after Jason stops showing up at night as Red Hood, Dick starts hanging out around the Bowery looking out of place as fuck with his shiny sports cars and expensive clothes and swimsuit model good looks.

The third time that Dick shows up looking like that and clapping Jason on the shoulder like they're the best of friends, Jason drags him into the nasty bathroom of an old dive bar and shoves him hard up against the broken tile wall.

"What the fuck is your damage, asshole?" he snarls about an inch from Dick's face.

Dick has his hands up in a universal sign of surrender, but Jason sees his expression flicker for just a moment into anger before smoothing out into an expression of apology. Jason would have bought it too if he didn't catch that little flicker of resentment.

"I just want to check up on my little brother. Is that so wrong?" Dick asks casually, still pinned against the wall.

Jason gives him one last hard shove and then steps back. "It is when you've never given a shit before," Jason spits, crossing his arms over his chest and giving Dick an assessing look.

"I've always cared about you, Jason," Dick protested, his hands coming down to push himself off of the wall. Jason didn't step back to give him room, so Dick's move put them a little closer than was normally socially acceptable. Neither of them seemed willing to be the one to step back first.

"Okay, Dick," Jason sneered. "I know you're having a precious little breakdown or whatever, but leave me the fuck out of it."

"I'm worried about you, Jason," Dick said, self-righteous. "You're my brother. Am I not allowed to be worried about you?" he asked, a little bit of that anger Jason had seen before leaking out around the edges.

Jason rolled his eyes so hard that he might have seen his brain for a second. "Oh my god," he whispered. "You're my brother, like how I'm catholic. It might have been true at one time, but it's so fucking far removed from the way things are now that it's basically a useless statement."

Dick's face and stance hardened in a way that was unfortunately familiar. Dick was becoming rock solid, stubborn and immovable. "Jason, you have and always will be my brother. Nothing can change that."

Jason snorted at the 'nothing can change that' line. "Want to bet?" he said with another sneer.

"I'm serious-" Dick started to say, pushing in even closer to Jason.

"So am I, asshole!" Jason shouted, getting into Dick's face first. "You want to pretend you're such a good brother? When was the last time you 'checked up' on me before all this shit, huh?"

Dick winced and swayed back, and Jason took the opportunity to push even more into his space. "Hell, when was the last time we even spoke outside the job?"

Dick had no answer to that. He closed his eyes briefly, looking pained.

Feeling that he had successfully gotten his message across, Jason took two big steps back and gave Dick a heartfelt look of disgust. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Don't fucking talk to me again, asshole." With that, Jason turned and stormed out of the bathroom and then out of the bar and into the bitterly cold spring night. It was already March, but it was still cold and wet in Gotham, as always.

He walked with his collar turned up against the chill, his anger still throbbing in his chest like a glowing ember, keeping him warm even in the single digit temperature.

Dick didn't show up again after that, but that didn't mean he had given up.

Less than a week later, Jason opened the door of the shitty apartment he had been staying in to find a paper bag full of breakfast food from the diner around the corner he frequented. It was just the right kind of asshole gift. Dick probably remembered from when Jason lived at the Manor that Jason couldn't stand to waste food. If it had been almost anything else, he would have chucked it in the trash. Still, he couldn't bring himself to eat it himself.  He suspected he may get actually physically ill if he ate (and therefore accepted) Dick's fucking apology food. Instead, he walked a few blocks until he found the first homeless person and shoved the bag into their lap. It still sat wrong in his stomach, but at least someone got some use out of it.

Jason moved into a different apartment, but a week later, a bag of food from his favorite taquería was sitting just outside his door. He snarled and did the same thing with that bag of food and then moved out of Gotham altogether, instead starting to live in Bizarro's floating fortress full time.

That worked for a few weeks, until he had gotten a call from Babs one afternoon. That wasn't so unusual. Babs had been doing support for him, kind of against Jason's will. It wasn't that he was actively trying to stop her, but he also wasn't helping her. She just kind of shoved herself into his files and phone and helmet and kept dropping him tips and advice when he didn't ask for it. Not that he resented it. He appreciated Babs' style of trying to build bridges a hell of a lot more than Dick's.

"Hey, Babs. What's up?" Jason answered, propping his cellphone between his ear and shoulder while he carefully flipped crêpes on the stove. Bizzarro sat at the counter, comically holding a spoon and fork in each hand, while he waited for Jason to finish constructing his third plate of strawberry and cream crêpes.

"Hey," Babs said, her tone tired and reluctant, tipping him off that something was different about this phone call right away. "Before I say anything else, I want to tell you that it is not at all my intention to tell you what to do. Nor, do I want to in any way get involved with whatever you and Dick have going on."

"What?" Jason said, honestly baffled.

Babs kept talking. "Can you please give Dick a call or something? He has been moping all over the Clock tower ever since you went off grid, and it's driving me up the wall."

Jason growled in frustration and reached over to snap the burner off with a twist of his wrist before angrily plating his perfectly cooked crêpe.

“Babs, that asshole has no right to be upset about me not wanting to be besties. Where does he get off expecting me to come back at him with the warm fuzzies just because he suddenly decided to act like a big brother?” Jason paced away from Bizzaro as soon as he put the plate down, knowing his venomous tone would upset him, even though it was directed into his phone.

“Listen, I get it. Dick can be a lot, and he’s not great at understanding boundaries when it comes to people being mad at him,” Babs sighed heavily. “If you have time, why don’t you swing by the Clock tower tomorrow?”

“So that I can tell Dick off again?” Jason asked suspiciously as he stepped into his room and gently shut the door behind him.

“He won’t be here tomorrow. He agreed to take Cass and Steph to the mall for some kind of bonding shopping spree. And, I do owe you that rain check,” Babs added quietly.

Jason frowned in thought as he sat down heavily on the end of his bed. He wasn’t sure about that rain check. The more he thought about Tim and Bruce and whatever happened between them, the more something in his gut told him he would regret learning about it. Something bad enough to drive away Tim, something bad enough that Babs wouldn’t say it aloud in mixed company. Even in his sunny bedroom, Jason’s stomach twisted as he recoiled from even considering what that might be.

But, then again, something in Babs’ voice made it sound like the invitation was less for Jason and more for herself. Babs was the only one coordinating with the younger members of the team, with Bruce so deep in his own bullshit. Dick was so busy moping, would he be able to help her shoulder that burden? On top of that, Babs had been helping Jason so much lately, without asking for anything in return, without any judgement or questions. He showed up those weeks ago when Tim disappeared, and it felt like she had folded him back into her life just like that.

The least he could do was come over for a chat.

Jason sighed. “Want me to bring coffee?”

♥♦♣♠

Jason did bring coffee and a half dozen doughnuts from the good place just a few blocks down from the Clock tower. It was the middle of the afternoon, so Jason graciously entered through the front door. A dark tabby cat was sitting on the couch in the living room when he let himself in after Babs buzzed him in. She gave him a watchful look with her intelligent dark eyes, but otherwise didn’t acknowledge him when he waved.

No one was there to show him where to go, but the clock tower wasn’t that big. It didn’t take much trial and error to find the set of stairs up to the space behind the clock face that served as Oracle’s nerve center.

“Hey, you made it!” Babs said with a warm smile as she spun her chair to face him. She seemed sincerely happy to see him, with just a hint of relief underlying that. That just convinced Jason even more that maybe Babs just needed someone to talk to more than she needed to fulfill some debt or something.

“Sure did,” Jason said as he took a seat on a wheeled desk chair near her and offered her the paper cupholder and box of doughnuts. She hummed as she plucked a paper cup full of hot coffee out of the paper holder and perused the variety of doughnuts. She took a sip of her coffee.

“How have things been?” Jason asked

“Oh, you know,” Babs sighed, pointedly not looking up from the box of doughnuts, though Jason didn’t imagine her choice of pastry was that pressing. “Stressful, but otherwise things are okay.”

“Look, I’m sorry about Dick,” Jason mumbled, crossing his arms for a second before quickly unfolding them, not wanting to look aggressive. “I don’t want you to get all the blowback from our fight.”

“No, Jason, no!” Babs protested, immediately looking up from the box with a stricken expression. “I was wrong to even bring it up. Like you said, it’s not your fault how Dick acts. I’ve just had a lot on my plate lately, and sometimes I wish I could just take something off my plate,” she finished with an exhausted look over her array of computer monitors.

“I’m serious, I’ll set his ass straight if I need to,” Jason said, feeling less charitable to Dick with every tired word out of Babs’ mouth.

But, Babs just waved the offer away and took another deep drink of her coffee.

“He’s just shaken up, you know?” she said slowly, staring down at the plastic lid on her coffee cup before prying it off so that she could watch the coffee swirl when she tipped the cup. “Things between him and Tim had been rough for a few years, but I think he was in denial about how rough it was. Then, Tim disappears without a word to him about whatever was bothering him. Then, Bruce lies and obfuscates about it, and then shuts down completely when he’s found out. So, to say that Dick has been through a lot in a short period of time would be a bit of an understatement.”

“Yeah, but I could say the same of all of you,” Jason replied with a furrowed brow. “Cass and Damian lost their brother too. And Steph and Tim were dating or best friends or whatever. They’re not chasing me all over the city to pretend like we’re best friends.”

Babs sighed heavily and rubbed at her forehead. “I think he’s maybe drawing too many parallels between you and Tim right now. I’ve tried to talk him through it, but I don’t think the connections are rational, so I’m not sure that you can rationalize away how he’s acting.”

“Parallels like Tim and I are both brothers of his who have problems with him?” Jason asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Something like that. He feels like he messed up with both of you and let you both down, if in distinctly different ways. He feels like he missed his chance to make up for his mistakes with Tim, but you’re still here, so,” she shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess regardless of how remote the chance, he wants to try and fix things.”

Jason scoffed and looked away. He moved to run a frazzled hand through his hair before realizing he was still holding a hot coffee and instead transferring the motion to taking a pensive sip.

“It’s not even like I have some big beef with him,” Jason sighed. “He was just always so fucking superior, both when I was a kid and after I came back. And now he just wants to act like he never acted like that. Like, what does he expect? That he’ll just pretend that we’re close, and I’ll play along, and then what? I don’t get it. I don’t understand what he thinks will happen. Do we both just fake being brothers until somehow we make it true?”

“Like I said, I don’t believe he’s thinking rationally. Hopefully he’ll make some realization with time.”

“Yeah, here’s hoping,” Jason muttered into his coffee.

“You know, you really impressed me at the meeting,” Babs said, watching Jason with an accessing expression.

“What?” Jason asked, almost spilling his coffee. “God, why?”

“You just were so different from what I expected,” Babs said with a shrug. “I had almost talked myself out of inviting you, but then I thought that there was a real chance that Bruce might control the whole meeting, and if there was one thing I could count on you for, it was to challenge Bruce at every turn.”

Jason wrinkled his nose at that, but he couldn’t debate it. He didn’t bother to try and think of an occasion where he didn’t argue with Bruce because he knew that, at least after his death, it just didn’t exist.

“I thought you would be loud and angry and cruel, but you weren’t. You were one of the adults in the room, which I really wasn’t expecting,” she finished with a thoughtful lilt to her voice.

“Yeah, well,” Jason sighed. “For what it’s worth, I would have thought the same of myself. But, the subject was just a little too heavy not to take seriously.”

“Yeah,” Babs agreed quietly before tipping her paper cup up and draining the rest of her coffee before pitching it in the little plastic trash can under her desk. “I never did tell you what I found out. About what happened the night before Tim left,” she said, quiet as a whisper.

“And, you don’t have to,” Jason said quickly. “If it’s private or personal, I don’t need to know.”

“I know,” Babs said evenly, turning to regard one of her nearby monitors. Various stats and charts were displayed on the screen, but it was all Greek to Jason. “But, you deserve to know. This is your family too, much as some people would like to pretend otherwise.”

Jason grimaced. He was pretty sure he knew who ‘some people’ were, and they were currently wearing bat ears and brooding in a cave system under Bristol.

He briefly considered asking Babs not to tell him. Maybe he should tell her that he didn’t want to know. But then he thought of Tim wandering around in the countryside in fucking Pennsylvania. He thought of a teenage boy with gaunt cheeks and overgrown dirty hair and a look of bliss like he was happy and didn’t understand why. Jason knew he wasn’t always much of a hero, but that was what he had always aspired to be, ever since he put on those ridiculous scaly green panties. If he couldn’t look at the ugliness in his own family head on, how could he ever expect to face the real ugliness that Gotham offered up on a platter every night?

“Okay,” Jason said hesitantly. “If you’re okay telling me, then I want to hear it.” The words were stiff and sounded rehearsed, but he said them. Babs nodded while picking through some papers on her desk with a distracted look.

“Okay,” Babs echoed. “When I started looking, I also started to investigate whether Tim was a suspect in his own disappearance. Bruce was severely against it, but I felt strongly that I needed to at least eliminate it as an option before dismissing it. I, of course, then found the same things you found. The shell companies, the farm, the alias, all lining up too neatly with his disappearance to dismiss.”

“It could have been a red herring,” Jason offered.

“It could have been,” Babs agreed with a placid nod. “But, in the absence of all other leads, I had to take it seriously. Plus, I had the context to easily put together a motive.”

“What context was that?” Jason asked, already dreading the answer.

“To say that Tim has had some tough knocks during his time as a vigilante would be understating it,” Babs said wryly, moving to tap in a few commands on her keyboard while she talked. “He had his run in with you just a year or two into being Robin, of course. That was probably the first big event. Then, his father was killed by a costumed villain. Then, he’s adopted by Bruce and only a few months later is nearly killed by Damian-”

“Wait, excuse me,” Jason interrupted with an incredulous look. “Are you telling me that the twerp-”

“Damian attacked Tim his very first day in Gotham,” Babs spoke over Jason to say. “He was fresh out of the League and didn’t understand what was expected of him. Regardless, their relationship since Damian first showed on the scene has been non-existent,” Babs finished with a sharp downturn to her mouth and a glare at her screen that probably wasn’t due to the data she was looking at.

“Shit, okay. Sorry. That’s news to me.”

Babs sighed. “Yeah, I figured. It’s not something any of us like to talk about, but it happened, and I’m sure that Tim never forgot.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Jason grunted.

“Maybe half a year after being attacked by Damian, Bruce is ‘killed’ by Darkseid. Tim insists to anyone who will listen that he believes Bruce is alive and trapped in time, but no one believes him. He’s removed as leader of the Teen Titans due to mental instability. Thomas Elliot is installed in the manor to impersonate Bruce to help cover the connection between Bruce Wayne and Batman. In order to protect himself and Wayne Enterprises, Tim has to emancipate himself from Bruce and then take over the company.

“Then, Dick gives Robin to Damian and within a few weeks Tim leaves Gotham for Europe.” Silence rings for a tense moment after that statement.

“We know very little about what happened while he was overseas looking for proof that Bruce was lost in time. He never spoke to me about it. If he told Dick or someone else in the family, they never said and I never asked. If Bruce asked, it never ended up in any case files, which doesn’t sound like him. So, I have to assume he didn’t ask either. But, we do know that he got the attention of Ra’s Al Ghul in a big way and also lost his spleen.”

“Jesus,” Jason breathed, rubbing a calloused hand over his mouth. “Ra’s?” he dreaded to think of all of Ra’s megalomaniacal focus zeroed in on one completely isolated sixteen-year-old, but that was certainly the picture that Babs was painting.

“Yes,” Babs said. “On top of all of that, Tim managed to find proof that Bruce was still alive in the time stream and bring him back. But, he never moved back into the manor, Bruce never took back control of WE, and Tim didn’t get Robin back.”

“Everyone just accepted that as the new status quo, huh?” Jason asked. He knew he sounded unimpressed, but didn’t bother to hide it.

Babs grimaced. “I think that most of us thought that he had found himself and his own identity through this terrible crucible that he went through. None of us were happy that he had to find it the way he did, but we thought that he was at least content. Against all odds, he had proved to us and hopefully to himself that he deserved to stand with the adults.”

“Do you still think that?” Jason asked, honestly curious.

“No,” Babs said, tossing her glasses onto the desktop with a clatter so that she could rub at her eyes. “I think it was just a nice story we told ourselves to make ourselves feel better about how things went down while Bruce was gone.”

Jason nodded. He wasn’t pleased exactly, but he was gratified that it seemed like Babs at least was honest about how that whole spin on a terrible story sounded.

“Was that all the context I was missing?” Jason asked.

But, Babs grimaced and shook her head. “No,” she said. “Or, that’s the context, but not the internal information I was privy to.”

“Okay,” Jason said slowly, a new sense of dread settling into his stomach. It was hard to imagine things somehow could get worse, and yet that sure seemed like where it was headed. “What was that internal information, then?”

“To say that Tim was distant after everything that happened when Bruce went missing would be an understatement. It seemed to me like he had placed Bruce, Dick, Damian and even you into this bucket of ‘coworkers’. Or, at least, that’s how Cass and I talked about it. He would talk to them about work, but outside that he didn’t interact with them much.”

“Fair enough. At least that lines up with my experience with him,” Jason agreed with a shrug. He felt the same about Tim for the most part, so he couldn’t argue that.

Babs nodded. “So, there may have been a build up of bad situations that led to him making this decision.”

“There usually are,” Jason agreed with a furrowed brow. He wasn’t sure why Babs was stalling, but he was sure whatever the reason was, it wasn't good.

“I happened to know from talking to Dick that a few months ago Dick and Tim had a big fight. What it was about, I’m not really sure. Dick set up a meet up for dinner and a movie, but Tim tried to dip out just a few minutes into dinner. When Dick called him out on it, Tim had some choice words for him. He and Tim hadn’t spoken since then.”

“Okay, so he has a big fight with Dick, but you said they already had a lot of distance since the whole Robin thing,” Jason said.

“Right,” and here Babs honest to god fidgeted in her seat, something Jason didn’t think he had ever seen her do. “Then, a week before his disappearance, he had a fight with, uh, me.”

Jason felt his mouth drop open, but quickly snapped it shut. “Oh, did-” Jason cut himself off, unsure of what he was even going to say. “I mean, what happened?”

Babs put a hand over her eyes and hung her head, shame coming off of her in waves that made Jason so uncomfortable he was very tempted to make up some excuse, any excuse to leave before he had to witness her showing so much vulnerability. “He showed up with this incredible stock of information on the triads, a group that Cass and Steph had been tracking for months. The kind of thing that could blow a case wide open. And, I bit his head off.”

“What the fuck, Babs?” Jason exclaimed. Jason was so confused, he had no idea what else to say. It just sounded so unlike the Babs he had known since he was a kid.

“I know,” she groaned. “I’m not proud of how I acted. I knew as soon as he was gone that I was wrong, but I let my pride keep me from apologizing.”

“Why would you even- I mean, I don’t understand,” Jason stumbled out.

“It was just-” Babs sighed and rubbed at her eyes again. “Steph is so important to me. Her and Cass are somewhere between sisters and daughters to me. And, Steph is still so in love with Tim. She wants to be over him and I think they are legitimately good friends, but I don’t know if she’ll ever be able to stop comparing herself to him. Just the night before, she had been on my couch beating herself up over how she would never be as good of a vigilante as the rest of us, but especially not Tim. And then he shows up the next day with everything she’s been working so hard to find? I knew that Tim beating her without even trying like that was going to crush her. And, worse! I was going to have to be the one to deliver the news.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jason sighed, letting his head lean back and looking up at the slowly spinning clockwork above him that kept the clock tower clicking away.

It wasn’t like he didn’t understand having an emotional response to something. He felt like he spent most of his days walking around just spewing his feeling everywhere, on everyone he met. But, still. Somehow, it felt incredible that one group of people could fuck up so much.

“Okay, so, Tim has a fight with Dick, and then he has a fight with you. But, you mentioned Batcave footage at the meeting, so I know you have at least one more whammy to hit me with.”

“Right,” Babs agreed, seeming glad to quickly move on from her own screw up. “Once I was seriously considering that Tim likely left on his own, I scrubbed through cave footage to see if I could find any suspicious behavior from him. And, I did find that he had cleaned out his locker and removed all his personal possessions from the cave. But, I also found footage of Tim having a pretty damning conversation with Bruce.”

“Oh, yeah? What did they talk about?” Jason asked, frowning.

“The night before Tim left, he returned to the Batcave after patrol. He talked to Bruce and it,” Babs sighed heavily and rubbed a hand across her mouth. “I don’t think it would be right to show you the recording. But, it’s hard to put into words what happened.

“I think Tim was trying to ask Bruce for help? He asks him for time off away from Gotham and when Bruce denies him, he tells him that he’s struggling and that he can’t keep everything going.”

“How-” Jason’s voice comes out strangely hoarse, and he has to swallow a few times before he can try to ask his question again. “How did Bruce respond?”

In Jason’s mind, he can see his Bruce, the Bruce from before he died. He can remember the way his ice blue eyes would crinkle at the corners and his thick eyebrows would pull down, and his expression would go from looking like it was cut from rock to looking warm and kind and forgiving. He would have been empathetic and supportive. Jason could almost hear his voice asking, “What’s wrong, Jaylad?”

“He shut him down,” Babs said quietly. “He offered to have someone patrol with him for a few weeks. That was it.”

Like a dream, the Bruce of Jason’s memories goes up in smoke to be replaced by the Bat as he knows him now. A man carved from the same limestone blocks that make up Old Gotham, granite in the shape of a monster that hunts other monsters. Void of kindness and compassion, his only purpose to seek vengeance.

Someone incapable of being a father or of supporting someone in need. Someone incapable of being what Tim needed when all other avenues were lost to him.

“Well,” Jason grunted after a long minute of awkward silence. “I guess you had your motive.”

“I guess I did,” Babs agreed somber. “I wouldn’t blame you if you hate me now,” she said with a smile that looked more like a grimace. “I hate myself most days for the part I played in all this.”

“I don’t hate you, Babs,” Jason sighed. “I couldn’t say I would do much better if I were in your place. Besides, like you said. I might as well have started it all.”

“It’s just,” Babs yanked her ponytail out angrily and began to yank the elastic band between her fingers violently. “There’s no way of fixing it, is there? He gave up on us. There’s no other way to interpret his leaving, is there?”

“He could be hoping that you find him,” Jason offered. “He sure made it pretty easy to follow his trail.”

“I think you’re right that he wanted us to find him. But only in so much as to make sure no one else took the blame for his disappearance,” Babs said with a significant look at Jason’s cheek. He’d had a nasty bruise from Bruce’s sucker punch for well over a week, but it was gone by then. She must have been remembering it from the meeting. It had been pretty livid then.

“How can you know for sure?” Jason asked.

“I don’t!” Babs burst out with an angry shout. “But, what’s the alternative? We all burst into his little oasis of calm and beg him to come back, so that we can abuse and ignore him some more? Every time I consider jumping in the car and driving up to see him myself, I can’t help but feel selfish. If Tim wants space after all he’s been through, who am I to deny him that? How can any of us? We don’t force anyone to choose this life, so how can we justify dragging him back if he doesn’t want to be here?”

“I guess you’re right,” Jason said reluctantly.

But another part of him was frantically shouting that Tim was barely eighteen years old. He may legally be an adult, but in many ways he was also still a child. A child that needed support, no less. He may even be hoping for support and reassurance and not getting it. But, then what did he know about caring for and raising teenagers anyway? Jason was only just twenty himself.

“And now the family is in shambles, the patriarch has locked himself away in a tower to hide from the world, and it’s just me and Dick trying to take care of the kids that Bruce left behind,” Babs groaned, putting her face in her hands for a brief second. “I don’t mean to dump on you, but sometimes it feels like someone just dumped the weight of the world on my shoulders and I have no one to talk to about it.”

“Hey, no! Babs, it’s okay. I don’t mind,” Jason was quick to say.

“Really?” Babs said with a skeptical look. “You look more than a little shell shocked.”

“Hey! I think you called me a whole ass adult at the beginning of this talk. I need to at least try to live up to that,” Jason joked.

“Hm,” Babs hummed with a smirk. “Well, thanks for the sympathetic ear, Boy Wonder. Oh, and the coffee and donuts.”

♥♦♣♠

Jason returned to the fortress in the sky after his meet up with Babs. He felt exhausted in a way he usually only felt after real knock down drag out fights. And all he had done was drink coffee and talk with a girl who was nice to him when he was just a naive teenager.

He felt gutted about a lot of things they had talked about. He felt terrible that he had no idea what kind of crazy shit Tim went through. Jason knew on some level that he didn’t really know any of the Bats anymore, but things like murderous little brothers and missing spleens felt like the kind of shit people usually talked about. Maybe Babs and Dick didn’t do anything to help Tim, but he couldn’t judge them too harshly, since he didn’t even know there was any need for help to begin with.

But more than all the fucked up shit with Tim, it was the dissonance of how Bruce treated him that kept swirling in his head.

Jason had burned all his bridges with Bruce. He knew that, and he thought he had made his peace with it as much as he could. There was something wrong with him when he first came back to Gotham. Most days, Jason thought there was still something wrong with him. But, he was himself these days in a way that he wasn’t sure he was when he was just freshly back in Gotham. Regardless, It was still him that did all that fucked up shit that ended up with Bruce hating and distrusting him. He had earned all the vitriol and violence. A part of him was still trying to earn back the old man’s trust, but on the whole he knew it was a lost cause.

But, Tim was a good Robin and an even better vigilante. He was always loyal to Bruce above everything else. Hell, he had burned all his relationships to the ground just to save Bruce after everyone else had written him off as dead. How did Bruce not want to help Tim when Tim asked for help?

That terrifying thought wriggled deeper in his skull. That his Bruce was just gone. The Bruce that thoughtfully helped him set up an emergency food stash in his room. The Bruce that walked him through a move over and over until he could do it in his sleep. The Bruce that sat up with him after nightmares and read to him until he could get back to sleep.

Did Tim never get that Bruce? Did Cass? Did Damian?

People had told him that his death had changed Bruce, but it wasn’t until that moment that he considered that they were right. That maybe the dad he remembered really was gone. He had to consider that the dad he resented for not avenging him or mourning him couldn’t have done any of those things, because he was just too broken.

That thought spun and spun in Jason’s head, winding him up and up until his breath was coming fast. He had to believe his Bruce still existed in there somewhere, he had to.

If he didn’t, then what did any of it mean? Why had Jason even come back to Gotham in the first place? Why did he attack Tim? Why did he throw himself at Batman over and over trying to get a rise, trying to get a compliment or even just acknowledgement? Had it all been for nothing?

Jason threw up in the bathroom attached to his bedroom and then sat on the cold tile floor with his forehead balanced on his knees. He sat there for a long time, but it didn’t make the thoughts go away, and it didn’t stop his speeding heart. 

Jason felt utterly and completely lost and didn’t have the first idea what to do about it.

[bad4amficideas]

DC MASTERLIST

One throughts for my rambles & anon dearies for all answers (not requests)

Isekais xReader tag (all I read I mean)

EARTH 1T8 masterlist (Isekai! Bat! Reader x Yandere! Batfam)

Yandere write-it-yourselves prompts

Reader is Alfred lost grandchild

What if each Justice League member represents an Olympian god... and Reader is Aphrodite.

Young Justice + Teen Titans Verse

Fae! Or Succubus!Reader searching Harem

Being Robin with the Batboys being all villains

Batboys with superpowers

Working under Dick Grayson as a Police officer

Reverse isekai, the yanderes fall/trapped in your house!! (Maybe as cute animals)

JUSTICE + YOUNG JUSTICE + Teen Titans HCs/Requests

Yandere Justice League NSFW HCs

Symbiote!Reader comes from an alternate land. Their original self died in the main one. JL goes yandere on them

Yandere Damian + Yandere Raven HCs

Yandere Young Justice reacting to the reader telling them pick up lines?

Platonic Ra's Al Ghul x Youngest Daugther Reader

BATBOYS HCs/Requests

🆕️🆕️ Damage Control IsekaiReader x Yandere!DC

🆕️🆕️ Damage Control 2

Yandere Deadwing HCs

Robin Reader HCs

Platonic Yandere Alfred HCs

Random Batboys Yandere HCs

Yandere Batboys NSFW HCs

Legal Sex Worker AU part 1 (Tim + Jason + Dick)

Soulmate + Yandere AU with the Batboys

How would the yandere Batboys react to the reader having a stuffie that kinda comes to life and both of them are best friends?

Reader with a necklace that creates a protective forcefield around her when she meditates

Yandere Batfam with pregnant reader getting away and finding them years later thanks to their 15 y/o kids. They meet again at the kid birthday.

Starfire's sister reader run away from batfam, discover is pregnant, have her child, and now gots hunted back plus her sister tries to defend her

Yan!Batfam x Raven!Sister. Reader gots pregnant, gots away, the sisters and child are found and punished five years laters. What will they do to Raven and how will they break the reader into being the obedience little wife?

Yan!Batfam with superpowered sisters darlings who ended drunk-pregnant-married with them. Years laters are found with another man who know what they suffer and whom their kids call daddy. Yan!Batfam gets their darlings and sons back in the same place where it start

Batboys react to Reader asking if can publish their stories online

🦇 BRUCE WAYNE/BATMAN 🦇

Yandere Platonic!Bruce + Ex!Damian with witch!Reader. Damian dump her for Raven, then gets into accident and Raven dump him. Reader heals him

Yan!Batman&Yan!Damian x IvyDaugther. In jail ivy get a letter saying she's going to be a grandma

Yan!Batman&Yan!Jason x HarleyQuinn!Sister where they kidnapped Reader after a fight with the siblings where Harley got away cuz her sister help her and now Reader is not in jail but missing!

Superman and Batman sharing a darling, her running but being captured because has two kids of them whom were discovered by their fathers, kidnapped by Joker and she had them rescued.

Yan!Batman x Catwoman!Sister. How would the sons react to her being their teacher and now new mom and how would Bruce reaction to it

YandereBatmanxJoker!sister where she  fall into the same stuff that the cuz she was trying to help him get away and Batman bring her to the cave to keep her safe and to make them depending on them

Yandere!Batman x bat!superhuman!reader like they where he found her in a cave while casing bad guys and she got hurt

🔫 JASON TODD/RED HOOD HCs/Requests 🔫

Yandere Jason Todd reacting to someone trying to attack pregnant reader

Yandere Jason Todd testing reader to see If she’ll escape but she only goes to get him a bouquet

Yan!Batman&Yan!Jason x HarleyQuinn!Sister where they kidnapped Reader after a fight with the siblings where Harley got away cuz her sister help her and now Reader is not in jail but missing!

🗡️DAMIAN HCs/Requests 🗡️

Yandere DemonHead!Damian HCs

Yandere Damian + Yandere Raven HCs

Reader is part of a band/dance group and have to perform at another location. Yandere Damian Wayne can’t tag along

Yandere Platonic!Bruce + Ex!Damian with witch!Reader. Damian dump her for Raven, then gets into accident and Raven dump him. Reader heals him

Yan!Batman&Yan!Damian x IvyDaugther. In jail ivy get a letter saying she's going to be a grandma

Yandere!Damian with a reader with a really unhealthy sleeping schedule

Yandere Damian with a beloved in a idilic relationship

[remakethestars]

Being Batman’s Daughter Would Include:

Headcanons.

❝Listen, Robin. At their core, people are cowardly and self-serving. Trust no one until you know them. And even then, never completely.❞

— Bruce Wayne, “The Lesson Plan”

TRIGGER WARNING: Plant murder. Mentions of drugs/tranqs (stopping dealers), violence/physical harm, broken bones (knee cap), limb dislocation (shoulder), (Jason’s) death, smoke, waterboarding/drowning?

Headcanon masterlist.

You know how every teenager has that paradigm shift because as much as they love the people around them, they’ll never know the inner workings of your psyche? And they realize they’ll never truly be known? And it makes them feel really lonely?

Yeah, you never come to feel like that because you know Bruce digs so far into everyone around him he probably knows you better than you do.

Honestly, he probably reads your diary. At least, he reads the fake one you hide under your mattress. And the second decoy in the A.C. vent above your dresser.

If you’re as paranoid as Bruce, you probably don’t have a diary, and the aforementioned “decoys” are just to mess with him.

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War was practically your Bible growing up.

You’re torn between giving yourself the tactical advantage of being underestimated & being non-reactive, which — besides giving you the lioness role in the lion–gazelle dynamic — gives you the advantage of having time to think carefully on the repercussions before speaking.

Because, as Sun Tzu said in chapter seven, verse twenty-one, “Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.”

Seeing as Bruce and Damian both have eidetic memories, I’m guessing you do too. 

Which means you totally read the dictionary when you were young and whip our big words nobody’s heard of.

Bruce always assured you it’s okay to be scared. As a matter of fact, like he told Dick (seen in flashbacks in “The Lesson Plan”), he taught you to “Let terror embrace you. The better you know fear, the better you can use it against others.”

And we all know Bruce is the paragon of using fear against people.

Take that, Scarecrow!

(See, I chose that gif because earlier in that move, he displays a fear of bats, & in that scene, he summons them to use as a distraction and walks through them completely unperturbed. No? Okay, I’ll see myself out.)

You started into the vigilante business young, a little bulge under the back of Batman’s cape that made the rest of the Justice League in the meeting think Bruce was host to an alien parasite until your little mask-covered eyes poked up over his shoulder.

The League’s known you since you were young, so they kind of all see you as their niece. That just quadruples the amount of people who are overprotective of you.

Eventually, in your tweens, you think enough’s enough and start out on your own — being underestimated may be an advantage, but it’s getting ridiculous — and you tackle unsolved cases.

You set up various safe houses around the world for your own disposal (using the zeta tubes) and anyone who sees the inside of one in an emergency is always surprised. You don’t really understand why; what serious vigilante doesn’t have secure, state-of-the-art safe locations scattered across the planet?

Sometimes, it gets you into danger, but you always get yourself out of it. If there ever comes a time you can’t, well, you’ve got a direct link to Batman, and if communications fail, you can always yell for your Uncle Clark at the top of your lungs.

If the latter ever comes to fruition, you ask Bruce if he’s disappointed you had to call for back-up or that you called Superman instead of Batman, and he says, “It takes a strong person to admit when they’re weak, [Y/N]; if anything, I’m proud of you. Besides … you’re not the only one who yells for Uncle Clark when they get in over their head.”

Your training entailed hacking and mechanics, so you like to fix computers and sell them on the internet Hugh Jeffreys style. It started out with Macs from the dumpster behind Gotham Academy and turned into a surprising side hustle. Large portions of your profits go into either savings or funding your extracurricular activities. 

You’re using a MacBook that’s running Linux and an iPhone 4 that’s running your own program. 

At some point, your phone falls into the wrong hands, and someone asks why it has such high security. You deadpan and say, “I have three older brothers.” No further explanation required.

One such solo case led you to a ring of drug dealers working in a small town outside of Gotham. You made some tranquillizers and heavy-duty smoke bombs and busted out your shinobi-iri training.

After sliding on a mask covering the bottom half of your face that filtered out smoke, you set all of the bombs off at once in the ventilation system, filling the building and using the infrared in your domino mask to sedate everyone before the cops arrived so no one got hurt (because there would inevitably be a firefight if the cops got involved).

You never go into a situation expecting to go hand-to-hand with someone; you always have a plan to take our your targets quickly an efficiently.

One night, when you’re working on a cold case in Gotham, you stumble across some intel that Poison Ivy’s been stockpiling chemicals and is going to wipe out all human life on Earth.

Luckily for you, Bruce’s paranoia is hereditary; you just happen to carry some white kryptonite in your belt, so you won’t have to go all the way back to the cave to obtain some.

You type out a quick debrief on your wrist computer in case you end up needing to send out an S.O.S., pop on your bottom mask to filter out spores or pheromones she might send in your direction, and bust out your shinobi-iri training again.

Of course, you try the peaceful approach, explaining to Ivy that you agree with her on the tree-hugger front to build rapport (T.B.F., who doesn’t?), but it comes to physical confrontation. You kill every vine that comes your way with a quick punch from your kryptonite ring, toss an expanding polyurethane foam bomb (see Batgirl #38) at her feet, and manage to get an inhibitor collar on her.

Gordon takes her away, and by the next morning, it’s on the news.

“You took down Ivy by yourself?” Bruce asks when you come down for breakfast.

“… Yeah,” you say after a moment, expecting a tongue-lashing.

“Are you hurt?”

“No. She didn’t get a hit in. And before you ask, I had a contingency set up in case things went sideways.”

“… Good job.”

Your dad has the article framed in the batcave, which is the bat-equivalent of having your drawing on the fridge or getting a sticker back on a test.

You’re fighting a grin for the rest of the day.

It bugs you you can’t tell anyone why you’re so happy, so you visit Dick in Blüdhaven while he’s on patrol and give him a play-by-play. You even get a hair-ruffle!

Deathstroke targets you at some point. One of Batman and Nightwing’s worst villains, and he targets you because he knows they love you. You’re the smallest bat at the time, the weakest; he thinks you’ll be the easiest to take.

Boy, was he wrong.

He was trained by the League of Assassins, so you know dropping a smoke bomb’s not going to give you cover (and his mask probably has infrared). His brain processes faster than yours, so tricking him is improbable. He’s probably done enough research on you to know you favor foam bombs and has fast enough reflexes to dodge before they go off.

And he’s jammed your comms so you can’t call for backup. You’re worried he’s got kryptonite on him and will hurt Superman if you call for help.

It’s just you and him.

He has enhanced stamina, so he tries to wear you out. You maintain distance to avoid taking damage and wearing faster.

You always admired Tim for his ability to plan ahead (see, like, the entirety of the Red Robin comics). He doesn’t know how he does it; he just does. He can’t really teach you, so you just watch and learn.

You realize your fight with Slade is just a matter of managing the distance and immobilizing him, so you strike. You duck behind a pillar or grab onto a railing or something and shoot him through the thigh with your grappling gun, reeling him in. He, of course, draws his sword or a knife to cut the line, but you’re already throwing high-density expanding polyurethane bombs.

And, just like that, you’ve single-handedly taken Deathstroke.

It sends a clear message to the rest of the Gotham villains, Blüdhaven’s villains, the League of Assassins — don’t mess with the bat’s little girl. She can hold her own.

Now it’s time for you to come up with another plan to take him down; you doubt the same method will work twice, and you’ve just made a very powerful enemy.

As Wonder Woman’s said, “Do not mistake a desire to avoid violence for an inability to deal with it.” You might go into most situations with a plan to take down your opponent already in motion, but when it comes to an all-out brawl, you’re perfectly capable and don’t pull your punches.

You’re working on an unsolved case in Blüdhaven (Dick’s got enough on his plate) when you get an S.O.S. from the aforementioned along with the feed and recording from his mask. You listen to the mission briefing while you ride back to the cave and then the audio from the Young Justice mission. They got jumped by the League of Shadows in an abandoned factory, and Talia’s trying to coerce Damian into joining the League or whatever.

The usual dropping some smoke bombs and tranqing everyone isn’t going to work on thirty armed League assassins who were trained to fight blind, so you load up on polyurethane foam bombs and call Jason and Cassandra.

The three of you take out the guards outside before splitting up and taking either end of the building (Cass stays with you). You meet in the middle, in the room the team’s being held in.

You highjacked the speakers, so they’re blasting AC/DC’s “Shoot to Thrill” upon Jason’s insistence. You wanted Zayde Wølf or Alice Cooper’s “Hey, Stoopid,” but big brothers will be big brothers.

Jason pops them with rubber bullets from above to slow them down for you while Cass demolishes them and you drop foam bombs, slinging your signature custom shuriken, bonk them over the head with Tim’s staff you picked up along the way, dislocate their arms, or shatter their kneecaps. 

You and Jason get a couple slices from swords that got a little too close, but it’s nothing compared to what you’ve had before. 

When the fighting’s done and the building’s quiet, the team’s, like, “Who the heck are you guys?” 

And Dick’s, like, 😏 “They’re our siblings.” 

Speaking of siblings, you’re older than Damian, and as such, you take upon yourself the honor of teaching him all things pop-culture.

“I have a lot of amazing older siblings. I want to be a good big sister.”

First things first, you give him one of your refurbished e-waste phones and take him to Target to pick out an OtterBox or a LifeProof case or something that’ll keep it safe in the pocket of a vigilante.

Vigilantes are always coming to you when their phone’s broken anyway; you’ve got a stack of spares you’ve repaired.

Then you help him set up a Spotify account (follow me at @remakethestars 😉) and try to help him find his rhythm.

Poor child’s never had Oreos before, so you drag a pack of Double Stuffs out of the cabinet and a glass of milk and show him the best milk-dunking method you know.

You think about handing him a cookie and telling him to waterboard it until the bubbles stop coming up, but cookie-dunking is something every kid does; it’s sacred, and you don’t want him to associate it with violence.

You show him how you and Alfred feed the bats in the batcave.

And you show him Vine compilations and your favorite shows and movies and as many classics as you can, and you put up with him pointing out the inaccuracies and calling them stupid.

Every time he doesn’t get a reference, you write it down so you know what to show him later.

If anything ever happens to you, Damian finds your list and makes it his personal mission to watch/read everything on it. It makes him feel close to you.

You build a relationship with him that’s similar to his and Dick’s, and he comes to you with things he might not be able to come to anyone else with.

Plus, since you live in the manor still and he doesn’t want Bruce to think less of him, it’s you he comes to after a nightmare.

If you know Alfred has pictures of him curled up in your side, you ask him to send them to you. Not for blackmail purposes; just to have.

You’d never use the need of comfort or the sharing of emotions against him because (A) it’s perpetuating toxic masculinity and (B) you don’t want him to think it’s wrong or confirm any of the stupid “strength” things the League of Shadows taught him.

You gave him a stuffed cat that looks like Alfred (the cat, not the butler) with some of your perfume spritzed on it. He verbalized his revulsion when you gave it to him, but on nights he has a bad dream and you’re not home, it brings him comfort.

Titus comes to get you when Damian’s upset. 

Even when he’s not with Damian, he seems to know. Pets are like that.

You’ve learned to trust Titus’s instincts. Damian thinks it’s suspicious when he’s feeling down and you just happen to call.

You never realized it until a long time later, but Ace was acting weird the day Jason came back from the dead.

And he was acting weird the day Jason came back to Gotham too. He ran to the door and began barking. Alfred swept security, but nothing seemed to be off. The whole family was on edge that day.

You were the reason Jason knew he wasn’t completely forgotten; he spotted you through a café window, and you were wearing his jacket.

Visit my headcanon masterlist.

[soulmate-game]

Useful Part 2

fluff with a little hurt and comfort. If you want answers as to the lack of angst, look through my recent posts for an explanation. 

—* — * — * —* —* 

“Wait, you have a WHAT?” were the first words that the rest of the Gotham-based vigilantes heard when they finally were able to track down where Damian had gone. Dick looked over at Bruce, who was noticeably tense. No surprise there, the man had just found out that he had a second biological child. One who was apparently a superhero already, without his intervention, and also apparently had a tragic background in the League of fucking Assassin Assholes. Not to mention that Damian’s track record with meeting siblings wasn’t great, even if this one wasn’t actually new to him. Nobody had any real fear of Damian relapsing on his no-kill rule, they knew he had matured far too much to be at risk of killing for something as immature as sibling rivalry anymore. 

But there was still fear. Because this new Wayne was an Unknown Factor, and as a rule the Bats hated Unknown Factors. And they had no idea what the relationship between the two had been before they had been separated, or what it would become now. 

“That wasn’t Damian’s voice,” Dick helpfully pointed out the obvious. Bruce only frowned, doing his best (and failing) to hide his anxiety about what they would find. Silently, the group inched forward to the edge of the abandoned building they were on top of so that they could look over at what was happening. What they saw was a girl, presumably the same one who had been in a ladybug onesie and had fearlessly begun to ask them to leave Paris— until she had laid proper eyes on Robin and fled, that was. That girl was sitting down next to an unmasked Damian, who had his arm around her shoulders and let her lean into his side. He even smirked cheerfully at her question before continuing to speak to her. 

“A dragon-bat. I knew you’d love hearing about him, I’ll introduce you when you come visit the Batcave. His name is Goliath,” Damian admitted smugly. Despite the familiar attitude and pride behind his words though, his spying family couldn’t help but notice that he kept periodically rubbing the girl’s (they really needed to find out her name) shoulder in reassurance. None of them missed the tear tracks on both of their faces, or how red the girl’s eyes were. Clearly they had missed something big. 

But nobody wanted to try to figure that out yet. This scene was too precious, too breathtaking for them to interrupt just yet. They had never seen Damian this vulnerable around someone outside of their little circle before, someone from the Time Before Bruce, no less. Most of the time, only Nightwing was able to see this side to Damian. And usually the roles were reversed, with Damian being the one consoled. They had never seen him in the position of the comforter before. The pillar of support. 

It really cemented just how far he had come. 

So they watched silently as the girl flinched, pulling away a bit and hunching in on herself. The laugh she let out was small and overflowing with self-degradation. 

“You make it sound as if the rest of your family actually wants me to visit,” she replied sourly. Damian gently cuffed her over the head, frowning. 

“Two things,” he held up two fingers from his free hand. “One: They will. They accepted me, and I was— well, you remember how I used to be. Once they actually meet you, and process the fact that there’s another Wayne now, they will bombard you with more welcoming than you will know what to do with. Two: It’s Our family, Marinette. Not mine, ours.”

Well, at least they had a name now. But it seems like they had bigger issues now, like Marinette’s clearly damaged sense of self. Jason and Tim traded knowing glances; it wasn’t hard for them to guess where, or how, she might have been damaged enough to think so lowly of herself. 

They watched as Marinette shook her head. 

“I don’t know. It’s one thing to try to… to get to know you again. We used to be close before… everything,” she haltingly argued, voice small and frail and uncertain. But she never once looked away from Damian’s eyes, trying to convey as best as she could what she was feeling. “But they’re different. They don’t have any reason to trust or like me, Dami. And I’m bad at, well everything, but especially,” she waved her hands frantically as if indicating the whole situation they were in. “I mean, listen to me! I can barely articulate right now, and I’m talking to someone I’ve known my whole life! I’m a mess. Nobody wants a mess.” 

It was Damian’s turn to snort, and he pulled her right back into his side. “Please. If anything, that’s exactly the type of child Father goes looking for. We’re all a mess. Especially Father, trust me.” 

“You’re just trying to make me feel better,” she accused suspiciously, but sank into his sideways embrace anyway. Damian chuckled. 

“No, I’m being honest. He’s terrible at emotions, not that I really have much room to talk. We all are pretty bad with them. But he’s the most obvious when it comes to that issue,” Damian smirked over at his sister conspiratorially. “For example. He still tries to tell people that he works alone, and pushes people away because he has this intense desire to protect, but doesn’t know how to say “I don’t want you to get hurt, stop worrying me,” so instead he says “Go away, I don’t need you,” only for us to see through that nonsense and remind him that the amount of people in his team is in the double digits already. He doesn’t want to admit he cares about us and is vulnerable—”

“Sounds familiar,” Marinette teased with a watery grin, startling a short laugh from her twin. He nudged her a little roughly (but not to roughly) and playfully glared at her. Marinette just giggled.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he lied with a grin before waving his free hand in dismissal. “Anyway. Another example. He has no idea how to tell a stranger, “hey, I’m your father and I will not reject you. In fact, I’m completely willing to adopt you right this moment and whisk you away to Gotham and relative safety and hire an entire team of therapists to help you and buy you half the world if you asked for it,” so instead he and the rest of our emotionally constipated family just lurks on the edge of a building in broad daylight eavesdropping on us and expects us not to notice.” 

“Wait what,” Marinette’s gaze instantly whipped up towards the sky, taking only half a second to locate the aforementioned eavesdroppers. Everyone except Bruce at least had the courtesy to duck down and pretend not to be there when they noticed she had seen them, leaving Batman standing seemingly alone on the concrete roof. Marinette blinked once. Twice. Then turned to Damian. “I’m gonna blame the fact that I didn’t notice them on emotional turmoil, because there is no way I’ve gotten THAT rusty.” 

Damian smiled, but didn’t laugh. He knew that was a deflection to try and distract from Marinette’s quickly resurging self-consciousness. Her hands were already trembling again, and the fear from only minutes ago had resurfaced. The insecurity. He could practically see the words “I’m not good enough,” written in her irises. 

“You’ll be fine,” he whispered, standing up and pulling her with him. “If anyone has to worry here, it’s me.” 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Marinette whisper-hissed right back, eyes wide in disbelief and confusion. “You’re— You! Mister Perfect!” 

Damian rolled his eyes, and his self-deprecating smirk matched the laugh Marinette had given just a few minutes earlier. “For the League, maybe,” he shrugged. “Never the Wayne family. Which is why I know you’ll be fine. If they put up with everything I’ve done and still call me one of them, they’ll accept you with barely a second thought.” 

Marinette’s next argument was cut off by the sound of a dozen soft footfalls stirring up dirt not far ahead of them. The BatClan had landed from the rooftop. 

Marinette gulped. 

But if there was one thing— one thing she still remembered from her days as Marie Al-Ghul, it was how to fake pride and confidence. She straightened her shoulders automatically, lifted her chin, and pulled away from Damian’s supporting arm around her shoulder. Damian let her. 

A little bit of old resentment flared up in him as he saw Batman walk up close enough to comfortably talk with them. Resentment that he no longer held onto, but that had haunted him nearly every night of the first two years he spent with his dad. The realization that maybe his twin was the one that was meant to be a Wayne. Marie had the blue eyes, the compassion, the more specifically detective-oriented mind. The calm head. Sometimes. Marie was exactly who he imagined when he thought of a naturally born member of the BatClan. Stubborn, clever, morally just. She had risked immediate death just because she refused to fight him, for crying out loud. Because she didn’t want to hurt the boy who used to be her best friend. The only ally she had ever had, growing up. 

Meanwhile, he still had issues reigning in his anger sometimes. He had too much blood on his hands, he was more of a battlefield tactician than a long-term strategist. Still stubborn, but also completely unaware of the pain he brought others with his words or actions a lot of the time. He used to be such a rage fueled little demon, and thinking about how his sister fit the classic Wayne outline more thoroughly than he did had made him destroy more than a few practice dummies in frustration. 

But now, looking at Marinette trying so hard to appear strong and proud when he knew she was still so shattered inside, relief overpowered the old and dull resentment. This was what she needed, he could sense that easily. She, just like him all those years ago, needed Bruce and the others to start to heal her and reforge what the League had badly molded. 

“... Marinette, I suppose?” Damian nearly facepalmed at his father’s awkward attempt at a conversation starter. Marinette herself was clearly too keyed up and overthinking things to even register any amusement at the lame attempt, merely nodding with an overly serious expression on her face. 

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Monsieur Wayne. Or that’s my name nowadays, that is,” She stumbled a little in her response before clenching her fists and forcing herself to continue as calmly as she could muster up. “My birth name was Marie Al-Ghul.” 

Bruce’s eyebrows visibly furrowed underneath his cowl. “Was?” 

“I…” Marinette finally looked away, shame creeping back onto her face. “I was explicitly told that I was stripped of the Al-Ghul name and would be killed if I ever dared lay claim to it again. So I not-so-legally changed it. And I was later adopted.” 

Several sharp gasps or the hiss of breath through teeth bit through the quiet breeze. Nobody was necessarily surprised, Marinette could see it when she looked through her eyelashes and examined the winces and sympathy on the faces of the vigilantes before her. Batman’s shoulders were stiff, as if someone had paralyzed only his shoulder blades. 

“And the people who adopted you?” Batman pursued. Marinette couldn’t read his tone very well, but it sounded vaguely angry so she quickly raised her hands in a placating gesture and her eyes widened significantly. 

“They’ve been amazing! They don’t know anything about my past, or who raised me, but they are endlessly patient with me. I mean, honestly! Sabine caught me when I was trying to steal one of her gold bracelets in Hong Kong— and I know I’ve never been as good of a combatant as Dami, but I’ve always been better at sleight of hand and stealth so honestly that’s impressive— and she saw my dirty eight-year-old face and for some reason decided, ‘yeah I want this one as my daughter’ and roped Tom right into it and next thing I know they somehow tailed me to my hideout? I still don’t know how the hell they managed that, but Tom had a huge plate of steaming buns and I was so hungry and suddenly it’s two years later and I’m adopted and we’re on a plane to Paris—” Marinette threw up her hands. “I still don’t fully grasp what happened sometimes.” 

She belatedly seemed to realize that she had just gone on an entire breathless rant at the speed of sound, and slapped her hands over her mouth before lunging into a deep bow. “I apologize! I spoke horridly out of turn!” 

To her surprise though, she was met with a soft laugh instead of a scolding. She jerked in surprise, whipping her head up only to see Batman holding a hand over his chin to hide his large grin. It only took another second for the boys behind him to laugh a lot LESS softly. Nightwing strolled over casually and swung an arm around both her and Damian’s shoulders, playfully nudging her brother with his knee. 

“I think she fits right in, don’t you little D?” 

“Of course,” Damian scoffed, though his eyes were playful. “She is a Wayne by blood. She ‘fits in’ more than you strays.” 

“Dami!” Marinette whipped back to him and puffed out her cheeks. “That was uncalled for!” she barked. Damian held his hands up in surrender. 

“Relax,” he said as soothingly as he could manage. “They know I’m joking,” he dropped his hands and a knowing smirk took over his face. “And besides, now you’re relaxed so my plan worked,” Marinette could only blink at that. She… did feel more relaxed, actually. “Also. I told you you’d be accepted easily. They already consider you one of us.” 

“Wha— there’s no way—” she frantically looked at each of the older men around her, but each of them just shot her a smile or grin and a short nod. Her shoulders and jaw both fell, and it broke a little of everyone’s heart. 

Marinette looked so utterly shocked, bewildered to be accepted as if it was still something profoundly foreign to her. And there was that disbelief in her eyes, that distrust that screamed that she expected some sort of lie here. That told that she thought this would all crumble away at any second. If anyone had any reservations about bringing her into their inner circles, it vanished right that moment. She needed support, or she’d crumble away and they all knew it. 

“How about we start by talking about the situation with Hawkmoth?” Red Robin spoke up, walking forward to stand beside Batman. “I assume that’s a little more in your element?” 

Damian silently vowed to thank Tim later for that. In a silent, completely anonymous way of course. Couldn’t have Tim thinking they were friends or something now, could he? Marinette instantly straightened up and nodded, her confidence returning with a little more sincerity this time. 

“Yeah. Yeah, let me transform again. It’ll be easier to explain.” 

—*—*—*—*—*

It was three weeks later, on Marinette’s third now-weekly visit to the Batcave, when the question finally came up. Jason had asked to spar with Marinette for the first time, having seen her in action as Ladybug and wanting to test the girl when she didn’t have superpowers to rely on. Damian hadn’t been down in the cave to warn him, and the result was Jason’s gut sinking as Marinette scrambled as far away from him as she could, eyes wide and chest heaving in the beginnings of a panic attack. 

“Shit,” Jason muttered before he quickly knelt down and did his best to talk her down, to calm her until her breathing slowed and her pupils were back to normal. It wasn’t long afterwards that Marinette started hugging herself, refusing to look at him. But he wasn’t going to just back down, he wanted to solve this issue. If even the mere suggestion of a spar was enough to set her off, he needed to figure out why and fix it. 

So he carefully lowered himself so he was sitting only a foot away from her, resting his arms across his knees casually. 

“Sorry,” he apologized. “Didn’t think it would be a sore subject. That’s on me.” 

Marinette just shrugged, but didn’t answer him. She just buried her face in her arms and took a shaky breath. 

Jason let the silence linger for a while before trying again. “Does this have to do with certain Asshole Assassins?” 

That startled a slightly hysterical bark of laughter from her, and she had to wipe away a few tears when she raised her head and finally turned it in his direction slightly. Not enough for her to be looking at him,  but just a subtle turn to show that she was listening and speaking to him. “Yeah.” 

“You know, you never told us why you got disowned,” Jason tried to make his words as casual as possible, but wasn’t surprised when Marinette still stiffened and took a sharp breath. He didn’t push. The stage was set, and he’d wait until either she took the opportunity to open up or told him to leave well enough alone. Her tongue flicked out to wet her lips, and her foot tapped on the ground a bit. Clear signs of her anxiety around the subject, and Jason’s hopes vanished a little. He would probably have to wait longer for her to be ready to share.

But, to his pleasant surprise, he was wrong. She took another few minutes to gather her thoughts, but she did eventually open up to him. 

“I refused to fight Damian,” she admitted. “It was… We were seven. It wasn’t supposed to be a fight to the death, but it was a very important spar. We were using live weaponry, and we were told to fight until we couldn’t anymore. Whoever fell first would be relegated as a mere soldier, and have to fight for status like any other assassin in the League. The winner would officially be named as G— as Ra’s Heir. I didn’t want to fight, because I knew Damian would win but I also knew that it wouldn’t be as easy as Ra’s probably expected if I gave it my all like he wanted. I knew both Damian and I would be heavily injured if I did as he asked, and it wouldn’t be worth it. If I misjudged anything, any single hit, I could have accidentally injured Damian permanently and ruined his worth in Ra’s eyes, and that wasn’t an option. I didn’t care that throwing the fight was as good as giving up my life, because at least I could be sure that Damian kept his. I could make sure that he was treated well, or as well as anyone could hope for in the League anyway. I could, with only a few words, make sure he became indispensable. Ra’s and Talia never liked me as much as Damian anyway, I figured… I figured it was nobody’s loss,” She swallowed heavily, clenching her eyes shut. “I was always just the spare. The extra. Damian was their crown prince, the one with actual value. Even to me. I saw him, and I saw everything I wanted to be. I… I tossed down my weapons and let him stab me, because I figured I owed it to him for being such a failure in comparison to him. That I owed it to him to do everything I could to make things easier for him, since I was just an unnecessary obstacle—” strong arms wrapped around her, and she turned to sob into Jason’s chest as he just silently held her. 

“Idiot,” Damian whispered, making Marinette jump. Her twin sat only a few feet away, though only Jason would have known when exactly he had gotten there with them. He shook his head at her. “I never would have gotten as far as I did without you,” he whispered, looking up at the cave ceiling. “You were the only real rival I had. When you left, everything was either too easy or nearly impossible, nothing was the same as trying my best against someone who was just as good as me. And when I got here and met the others, I didn’t think any of them were worthy of taking your position, you know,” he scoffed a bit as he got lost in his memories. “That’s why I hated Tim for so long, I think. He reminded me of you so much that I wanted nothing more than to punch him for daring to replace you—”

“Heh, the Replacement twice over, huh?” Jason joked. Damian chuckled with a small eye roll. 

“Plus, he just has a really punchable face,” Damian added, trying to distract from the emotion behind everything he had just admitted. “Part of me thought you were dead. The other part refused to believe that. And seeing Tim and how some of his mannerisms were the same as yours,” Damian shrugged a little. “It stung. Especially that second year, when I started to regret that you never had the chance to come here and join them with me. Meet them with me.” 

Marinette sniffled. “... Who are you and what have you done with Dami? He’s never this sappy.” 

Damian flicked a pebble at her head with a good natured glare, successfully diffusing the serious air a little. Marinette wouldn’t ever be normal, and it would take a while before she was no longer fragile, but she could get there. Especially now that her bridges with her brother had been mended, and and a whole new family had cropped up to help support her. 

She was glad Damian had convinced her to try, again.  

[squishneedsahero]

Ductape and Superglue

Awesomest of Them All 2.0

Part 13 of 13

Word Count: 1607

Batman x Batmom!Reader

You know what the bat family needs? Someone to pull them together and give them all the love they deserve. Who better to do that than you? An author rising to stardom in Gotham who catches the eye of a billionaire with your standoffish attitude at a huge social gathering. You are yourself and never pretend to be more or less than that. Plus you're the most stubborn person in the world, refusing to let good things go without reason.

This is a rewrite of my story Awesomest of Them All, I wanted to see how much I've improved over 3 years.

Bruce got a call, one that he had never gotten before even if he had always dreaded it. A phone call during a Wayne Enterprises meeting from someone demanding money and sending a picture of you tied to a chair. You had that normal fire in your eyes in the picture and it was obvious you weren't hurt but still no one wants their wife held hostage and threatened with a gun or worse.

Tim looks over Bruce's shoulder at the photo on the phone screen. His heart leaps to his throat and he pulls out his phone, already working on figuring out where it is you are located from the little he can see in the picture. He and Bruce were here in a meeting it would only make sense to call the GCPD and not run out the door to get you to safety. Tim knows Bruce though, always thinking everything through except for when it came to you. He would do anything in the world to keep you happy and safe.

Tim's hand coming to rest on Bruce's upper arm pulls him back to the reality that is that he cannot run out the door to your rescue. "You call Alfred, I'll call the GCPD," that's all he says and that's all it takes to set things in motion.

Two phone calls are made and those lead to two more made by Alfred and Damian who he had just picked up from school. Alfred calls Jason and Damian calls Dick, they are the only ones who get notified in the moment to go get you but it's enough.

Cass is on a date with Steph, they're the next to get a phone call from Tim, just informing them of the situation but making it clear that they are not needed at the scene. Stephanie protests this and tries to claim that you'd need Spoiler's help as well. You were as much of a mother to her and Cass as any of the boys even if only Cass was officially adopted. In the end the two girls go to the Mansion to wait with Alfred and coordinate things from the cave with Babs who is there upon their arrival.

Damian liked to think he still disliked you and could barely tolerate you. But even if he wouldn't admit it he was more scared on your behalf than he had ever thought he'd be. Despite him being horribly rude to you, you had never been anything but nice even if your nice included sarcastic comments to prove your point. You had helped him learn what a family was supposed to be like.

Jason gets a call from Alfred and he is changed and out the door of his apartment before the call is over. You were his Ma and he was your Jaybear, and he wouldn't be letting you get hurt. Alfred was the one person you had given his phone number too even though he had told you to keep it a secret, but in this moment he was glad you had.

This leaves Dick, who had gotten a call from Damian, telling him the situation and that he would be joining him at the warehouse. Dick was with Babs at the mansion so the two head to the cave where Barbara takes over in the computer while Dick changes and hurries out the door to go get you.

Things seem like they're going smooth when the three boys arrive one shortly after the other. Jason is already in and picking off the men in the surrounding area and getting you out of the chair when Dick and Dami burst in and start taking out more guys. You're safe and that's all that matters to any of them.

But then there's that singular gunshot and all three of their hearts skip a beat. Damian sees you slide the rest of the way into the next room but the other two just see the door swing closed behind you. None of them know where you had been hit and if you were okay on the other side of that door. But they can't walk away from the fight in the middle of it. Once all the men are down Jason takes off too you, not giving Damian or Dick the chance and leaving them to tie the guys up.

"Mama?" Jason asks, slipping into old habits in his fear.

"Hey Jaybear, I'm fine, it's just my leg," you comfort him quickly but let him take care of your leg for you. You'll have to go to the hospital as it's the only proper thing to do but he stops the bleeding and gives you a tight hug.

The other two boys come in and you smile and comfort them, telling them all how proud of them you are. This gets interrupted by police sirens outside. You quickly shoo them away and let Bruce know you're safe, knowing your husband would want to come after you himself at this point but you were fine. You needed to let the police take you to the hospital and make all of this look somewhat normal and not like a family problem.

You spend a few hours at the hospital, getting stitches and a brace since the bullet had ripped through your muscles, leaving your leg weak. When they let you go they push you out in a wheelchair and give you a pair of crutches.

Media personnel try to crowd you and get answers for their many questions. You shut them up with one of your classic, "I'm fine now leave me alone to be with my family or you will start your own newspaper to post stories about them and slowly put them out of business." It was a good threat that worked every time. If it didn't work then you just added in the idea of getting photos of their butts to add to the articles, titling it "the asses of Gotham"

You choose to spend the early evening watching movies on the couch with your family. Cass and Steph take their own chair to cuddle in, same with Dick and Babs. This leaves you to cuddle with Bruce and Tim and surprisingly Damian sits next to you, kicking Tim out of his normal spot meaning you had no choice but to sit in Bruce's lap so the boys can both sit next to you.

Alfred wished you well upon your arrival home, then returned to make dinner for all of you even if you tried to tell him to just order pizza. "No, miss Wayne, you were shot today and need a healthy meal," he responds much to your annoyance with him calling you miss, as though you were a child and your parent had called you by both your first and middle name.

All of you aren't far into the movie when you get interrupted by Jason entering the family room. You light up at the sight of him and before Bruce can stop you you're out of his lap and over Jason wrapping him in a hug. How you made it that far without falling due to torn ligaments no one knew but you were now in Jason's arms and he could keep you steady. You make him lean over so you can kiss his forehead before you make him come sit on the couch where you had been.

When he tries to object you give him that stern mom look and he obediently comes and sits next to you, and Damian on the opposite end of the couch from Bruce. Things definitely were tense between the two but you don't care, it's a start.

You finally have your whole family back under one roof for the moment. Your four boys, one girl and two unofficial girls. You loved every single one of them so much and were so glad that you were all together again. They all knew how much you loved them, and how you took time for each of them, the only reason Jason was getting extra attention was because he had been gone for so long.

It had hurt so very much when he had suddenly been taken from you. The pain of loosing a child wasn't anything you plus bear even if you had had too for years. You all share a nice dinner together then because you had all spent so much time together Bruce insisted that the city would be fine for the night with just the kids and that he needed to stay and make sure you were taken care of.

For the first time in a long time things were relatively peaceful for your family, even if you had a leg wound. You had them all together and would now be able to work with Jason and Bruce on their relationship and getting it back to a less tense father son relationship. Damian was finally truly giving you a chance. Dick was on good terms with Bruce, and he was happy with Babs, even talking about marriage in the future. Tim was helping Bruce run the company and he was brilliant at it, plus he seemed truly happy for the first time in his life as he had recently started officially dating Conner. This just left Steph and Cass who were about to graduate high school and were looking at apartments, planning to move in together despite almost already doing so since Stephanie always seemed to be at the manor. It wasn't a typical life but you wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

The End... idk