#everyone who meets Bruce/batman either wants to fuck him or be him

[frownyalfred]

Lex Luthor doesn’t hate Bruce Wayne because he’s a competitor. He hates Bruce Wayne because Bruce once let a Lex Luthor impersonator hit it on Instagram Live because he thought the implications would be “hilarious” (they were)

[raynewolferune]

Battle of the Not It

Just me pushing my personal agenda that the Battle for the Cowl makes no freaking sense once again.

I want to see the Battle of the Not It, Nose Goes, Worst out of 126+ Rounds of Rock Paper Siscors Takes It, etc. Basically, the Batfam throwing down in Bruce's absence to Not Be The One Who Inherits (TM). No one wants dear dad's emo fursona but they all agree someone has to take it. The resulting Loser Gets Batmanned sibling war throws Gotham into chaos, Oracle's keeping score of everything, the one with the lowest score at the end of every week is stuck with Batman Duty the following week.

Damian hates loosing his swords everytime he gets stuck doing Batman. Tim can't stand losing his tech. Jason misses his guns. Cass hates having to talk on can't use words days. Staphanie hates doing the voice. Dick can't tolerate being unable to smile. Duke needs his freaking sleep. The list goes on because they've all agreed they hate to embody Bruce's Batman, no one can put their own flare on it (Gun!Batman will not happen on their watch and they won't risk any other equally horrible variation either.) The resulting sibling war takes place 24/7 in the masks and the criminals and citizens of Gotham are as awed as they are horrified by it.

The strangest alliances form and disolve week to week. Dick cheats whenever he gets close to loosing and dips out because "Bludhaven needs him." Cass flits off to China on a last minute mission when too many of her siblings start forming up an alliance against her. Steph breaks her leg (she says it's an accident but Tim has very vocal doubts about that). Tim, Duke, and Damien start teaming up against Jason frequently and Red Hood gets stuck doing Batman practically every other week. Other weeks, Jason picks one of them as Robin for his Batman week (rotating between them as revenge) and forces a temporary alliance to make another of them Batman for the next week. Alfred encourages the four's little rivalry and manages to finagle them into all staying in the manor full time with him.

Just Batfam bonding shenanigans over how much they all Do Not want to be Batman.

And when Bruce comes back Babs naturally has a highlight reel waiting for him. Some of the gems include: Steph in a cast with crutches say "oh no, I broke my leg, however will I be Batman now" in the most deadpan voice. Dick 'answering' an obviously turned off cell phone pretending it's an emergency calling him back to Bludhaven. Cass saluting the security camera as she leaves with a full duffle bag in the dead of night. Jason in the Batsuit, minus cowl, storming into the kitchen shouting "you little shits are conspiring against me!" As Tim, Duke, and Damien are crowded around the island with a bunch of documents clearing planning something. A heated game of Rock Paper Scissors between Dick, Jason, and Tim with the rest of the batkids watching (having already won their freedom from the cowl for the following week). Duke wearing the cowl and asking Oracle repeatedly over coms if it's time for bed yet. Damien throwing a full on tantrum trying to get out of wearing the physical cowl "it's unnecessary and impractical!"

Oracle sends him the reel a day after his return during the standard Justice League team meeting, helpfully projecting it so everyone can see. The reels starts with an argument in the Bat Cave between all of Batman's (previously unknown to the Justice League) children:

"Well, Dickhead, I guess this means you're it now." The clip starts with a red helmeted man speaking.

"The fuck?" Nightwing asks on screen.

"You're Batman now." The teenager with yellow bandoliers replies from where he sits in front of an enormous computer. A girl in purple and another in black both nod. (At this point, it begins to dawn on members of the Justice League that this is footage from the fabled Bat Cave they're seeing.)

"Oh, fuck that!" Nightwing answers. "Not it!" He shouts. The boy with the bandoliers jolts and then says seemingly reflexively.

"Nose goes!" Bandolier boy calls out hand shooting up and touching his nose as he speaks. Both girls and Nightwing react immediately following suit. A smaller boy with a sword copies them a half second later. The red helmeted man sputters.

"Wha-that-NO! NO NO NO NO NO! I am not the one! Fuck no!"

"You snooze you loose, Bro." Nightwings tells him.

There's a pause, red helmet starts laughing, pulls the helmet off slowly to reveal a red domino underneath, and lazily touches his nose with a sharp grin.

"You're right, Bro." He says teasingly. "And Signal's still sleeping." A short pause and then all the people on screen are laughing.

"Oh," bandoliers gasps out between giggles. "He is gonna be so pissed in the morning."

[i-yap]

So if you have time, I thought about Batfam X reader , like reader is Damian's twin who grew with in Manor, looks exactly the same, but loves soccer and is typical 10 years old, and he meets Damian. Like I would want to see how this would play out.

Batfam X gn! reader- Damian's twin

When talia found out she had twins, she and ra's had a lot to discuss. There could only be one legacy, only one child to be turned into an assassin capable of replacing ra's. And so after studying the genes of the twins, one was selected. The other was dropped off at the manor with a note stating that talia and bruce had only one kid and that kid is now bruce's kid.

By that time, the batfam had grown to a considerable size and Bruce was used to having kids around. This is around the time jason got kidnapped. Tim joined soon after, Barbara and steph also became more involved. Cass and duke joined a few years later and about 5 years later Jason returned. Dick was excited to raise you, everyone still had guilt about Jason and as a collective decision (with a little push from alfred) it was decided that you would be raised as a non vigilante and that you will get to choose what life you wanted.

You grew up smart, loved and well taken care of. You ofc learned how to fight, out of fascination for dick's acrobatic skills. Tim thoughts about cool bands and geeky films, Cass only ever showed her soft side to you. Jason was taken aback( either he exposes damian and tell everyone about the twin or he sticks to him promise with talia and not mention him(it depends from comic to comic) from how different you were to the devil spawn.

Im assuming damian was 10 when he was sent to Batman (its different in different series) . He knew about your existence, what he didn't expect was a sunshine, capable and dearly loved kid who was more than just normal. Damian almost expected a vigilante fuck up or a abandoned kid. But here you were, living an alternate life, a life he could have had.

But he isnt jealous and neither are you. he is living the life he wants, to be one of the greats and to replace ra's . You want college and a family and a successful career as whatever your passion is.

And twins do feel love very instinctually, he would understand you, consider you an equal and damian is very serious about family. So you will both get close and be different. A very damian and jonathon kent type of relationship I feel ( just less hostile and aggressive)

hope this was sort of what you were looking for? I'm not really a sibling writer type person but I tried so..yea

[anxiousnerdwritings]

def not an request but i wnt ur thoughts on this. you answered an ask once about the batboys + bruce lovin bruce's adopted sibling bcuz of how affectionate they are. and while I have alot of thoughts, my main one is just wonderin how they'd react if they died.

it could be from the rogue of the week, them dying bcuz they were held ransom and one kidnapper was trigger happy, a hitman for some reason. point is they died but i know for a FACT that jason and damian wouldnt think twice about using the pits to bring them back. they wldnt even think,, theyd just share a glance and nod.

like can you imagine bruce spiraling (they all are tbh) cuz his sibling died. alfred is trying to console him while comforting dick as dick is sobbing buckets. tim is trying to fight tears as he scours for any images of his aunt/uncle's killer and jason's in the back like "damian get the shovel" and a shovel spawns in damian's hands magically

sorry for this being long btw i waa excited

Everyone would be completely distraught at the loss of the only thing they felt kept them grounded. Their only sense of outward love, affection, and warmth being ripped away from them like that would be detrimental to everyone of them. Especially if the Reader has been killed so senselessly, like their killer didn’t even know who they were or their ties to Batman and the Batfamily or to Bruce Wayne in general. They could all blame themselves for being the reason a rogue got to them but just some random mugger having been the one to take away their beloved sibling/aunt or uncle would tear at them even more. Especially for Bruce, having the Reader taken away from him like his parents had been would mess him up all over again.

Honestly, there’s no doubt that Bruce, Tim, and Dick would heavily contemplate using the Lazarus pit to bring the Reader back. But it’s definitely Jason and Damian who don’t think twice about it and go through with bringing their precious aunt/uncle back. I feel like Alfed would be the only one to not consider it, whether he just can’t bring himself to do so or he’s come to accept the loss of the Reader.

The only reason I could see him being accepting/tolerating of the idea of the Reader being brought back by means of the Lazarus pit would mainly be for the sake of Bruce and the boys. Of course he’s affected by their death and not being able to be in their company again or to have them fret over him like they did, but it’s how hard Bruce and the boys take it that really has him willing to turn a blind eye while Jason and Damian go through with their plan. Alfred would also low key give his reassurance and acceptance to Bruce for him to go through with his own thoughts of bringing the Reader back to life. It may even be Alfred who plants the seed of using the Lazarus pit to begin with, in his own desperate way to get the family back to the way it was.

Also, in the case of a rogue having taken the Reader and was using them to get to Batman and the boys, I could totally see one of the villains’ lackeys being the one who deals out the Reader’s demise. Whether they went too far with trying to get information from them/roughing them up to add to the vigilantes rush to meet with the respective rogues demands or they just really wanted to take it into their own hands to get back at the Dark Knight/prove their worth to their boss. Either way, I could see their boss even being like “👀 You done fucked up and now we’re all going to die😬”. Trust me, Jason and Damian would go on a bloody warpath killing and maiming everyone involved in the death of the Reader or even just for being there, and I don’t even think Bruce would be in the mindset to stop them. Or maybe he doesn’t want to stop them.

In the case that the Reader was pointlessly killed by a mugger or low grade criminal for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Bruce and the boys would work tirelessly to find the person who did it. It would especially be infuriating and defeating if the Reader’s killer was just gone in the wind. No trace of the assailant, no leads off what evidence they did have, nothing. If they aren’t able to hunt the Reader’s killer down before they bring the Reader back to life then they would all be extremely paranoid about something similar happening to the Reader again, whether it’s the same assailant or someone else. Not getting that closure of permanently getting rid of the person who tore away their darling from them would weigh and all of them. They’d become even more overprotective of the Reader once they have them back and wouldn’t allow them to leave the manor for anything out of fear of losing them all over again.

Similar to Alfred, Dick would be the one consoling and trying to keep everyone together knowing that the Reader wouldn’t want them to tear apart like they already are. He pushes down his own heartache and hurt over the loss of the Reader to try and be there for Bruce and the boys, especially Damian. Alfred knows exactly what Dick’s doing, focusing on the others so he doesn’t have to deal with his own trauma regarding the ordeal. But Alfred doesn’t let that fly and he confronts Dick about it only for Dick to breakdown and unleash everything he’s been keeping under wraps.

The death of the Reader would really affect Bruce and the boys severely, they all shut down in their own ways. Sick is the only one who still comes off as his normal self but behind closed doors in another thing. Jason becomes even more aggressive and rough when dealing with any criminals, no matter how high or low on the food chain they are. Whatever sleep and healthy habits the Reader had gotten Tim to do to take care of himself went away the day they died. If anything he’s only gotten so much worse, a husk of what he used to be running solely off of caffeine and the need to find the Reader’s killer. Damian shuts himself off completely from everyone, not even Alfred or Dick can get to him. He won’t let them. All the wonderful progress he made with the Reader regarding letting others in and being able to let go of being the child of an assassin and vigilante and just allowing himself to be a kid is destroyed. He doesn’t want anything to do with anyone unless it’s his beloved aunt/uncle.

Bruce is a mess, both physically and emotionally. He’s taken a backseat from things, mainly pertaining to the Justice League and Wayne Enterprises. He stops by every so often and does want he needs to but he isn’t involved unless he really, really needs to be. Even though he has Alfred, Damian, Dick, Jason, and Tim, Bruce can’t help but feel cold and alone after losing the Reader. He feels the exact same way he did when he first lost his parents, before he adopted the Reader and brought them home to be his family. He knows he’s not truly alone, at least not physically but there’s a hole in his chest and he finds himself completely lost. He know he needs to be there for the boys, that the Reader would scold him for not being there for them when they need him most but he just can’t. He tries but he can’t do it, he can’t give them what they desperately need, not like how the Reader could. And that makes him feel even worse.

Bruce would be overcome with the feeling of being useless and vulnerable and he hates it. It would especially be hard for him if Dick and Jason were moved out of the manor leaving the family to be apart in such a trying time. Although, having Jason and Bruce in the same place together might not be good given that that may cause strife between the two. Especially if Jason blamed Bruce for the Reader’s death, or at least used Bruce as a way to let out his own grievances about not being able to save the Reader himself and projecting his own guilt and self blame about the whole ordeal.

This would only push each of them further towards bringing the Reader back by any means necessary. And they don’t care what anyone else has to say about it, they need their darling back otherwise their family isn’t going to last much longer without them.

Also, the overwhelming guilt and self hatred of Bruce or any of the boys if they had inadvertently been the cause of the Reader’s death. Like, while trying to get to the Reader maybe a stray bullet or knife/batarang/wing-ding hit the Reader and led to the their demise.

[dairy-farmer]

Please consider this ridiculously convoluted idea inspired by my favorite Norse myth:

Basically, there are a couple of parents whose son is being threatened by a monster (ogre / trolls/giant / whatevs) and they pray to Odin for help to protect their son. Odin says no because he's busy and/or he's not interested in helping these random humans. So next they try praying to Thor for help but get a similar answer, and start to despair. But Loki happens to hear about Odin and Thor turning down this couple and their son and shows up to intervene and defeat the monster (I suspect because of how many children Loki has lost in the mythology). The story ends with the three of them giving Loki a hug in thanks.

So what does this have to do with Tim and the bat family? Consider: Justice Lords situation and let's say because of the whole 'being okay with murder/be evil but thinking they are good' thing, the Justice Lords either have no beef with or are actively friendly with Ra's. Ra's has taken an interest in the son of a wealthy Gotham couple named Tim and has sent them a message informing them that he / his minions will be coming to collect Tim.

First, Jack and Janet try asking Superman for help to protect their son, but Superman is basically 'I'm far too busy taking care of the world to worry about one random kid' about the whole thing. So next they try petitioning Batman, but since Batman has a neutral, trending-towards-positive relationship with Ra's in this universe, he declines to interfere.

But Bruce has a son; Dick Grayson, AKA Nightwing AKA formerly Robin (and everyone knows that Robins, the first one at least, are rather mischievous. Thus the Loki role)! Dick hears about the situation and how both Superman and Batman have declined to help. And maybe, even if Ra's and his League aren't enemies in this universe, let's say Dick has some animosity towards Talia ( how dare she try to date his father: Baby!Dick to the rescue cockblock) and messing with Ra's is a roundabout way of messing with her.

So Nightwing shows up and sends the assassins (possibly even Ra's himself) packing, saving the day! Jack and Janet are so grateful, and bring out Tim from the panic room they had hidden him in to meet and thank Nightwing personally. And when Dick sees Tim for the first time, he falls in love instantly: Tim is a beautiful teenager, all smooth pale skin, strong yet delicate limbs, silky black hair and intelligent blue eyes. He blushes so prettily when he thanks Dick for keeping him away from Ra's (and from definitely becoming his new little wife).

Dick plays it cool, even while he drinks in every detail of Tim, already planning how to court this beautiful young man. Nightwing even cracks a joke about getting a kiss for saving the damsel in distress. He is pleasantly surprised when Tim blushes, looking down nervously, before placing a hand on Nightwing's shoulder and leaning up to press a sweet kiss to his cheek.

Dick wants to stay longer, but unfortunately he has to figure out how to clean up the mess/get the assassins back to Ra's before it becomes an issue. He promises before he leaves that he will come back to 'check in' on Tim and make sure he's doing all right.

(That's all I really have, aside from this somehow leading to a detailed and relentless (and enthusiastically welcomed) courtship that ends up with Tim revealing that he knows who Nightwing really is and them eventually getting married (and fucking nasty style, of course 😘)

Thank you for indulging me in this myth nerd silliness! 🦇

❤️❤️❤️❤️!! dick obviously being so unable to resist sweet little tim, he's tim's knight in shining armor afterall, his little damsel which tim is all too happy to be ❤️!

[msfcatlover]

Okay, but in the Reverse!Robins AU, when Bruce is dead & everything is a mess, here’s how Jason gets the Red Robin arc:

Jason just wants to help, but it gets spoiled at every turn.

Damian is having an existential crisis because he’s been working so hard for nearly a decade to define his own path/identity, but there’s a big part of him that still feels like it’s his duty to follow in his father’s footsteps. It’s tearing him apart inside over whether he’s a bad brother for trying to take what he’s already abdicated, or a bad brother for forcing the others to carry the mantle, or a bad son for not stepping up, even though that’s what Talia wanted more than Bruce, but Bruce & Damian aren’t that close since Steph died, and maybe Damian’s been wrong this whole time—

Cass doesn’t know how to process grief really, because the only huge losses in her life are Steph’s death & Tim’s mobility, and with the latter she was mostly relieved he wasn’t dead too. She’s getting everyone’s grief 24/7, but she doesn’t know how to talk to them about it or her own. She declared long ago she wanted to be Batman, and everyone seemed very happy then, but suddenly she doesn’t feel ready for it. And on top of all that, she’s the only one Dick even tries to spend time with, because she’s the only one who doesn’t either lash out at him or try to get him to talk when he doesn’t want to.

Duke is trying to hold everyone together, and as the oldest he’s trying to get Bruce’s affairs in order, and it’s such a mess he actually has to stop being the Signal for a little while. Even though he’s normally the family’s emotional rock, he’s frazzled & exhausted, he doesn’t know what to do, and his temper is burning pretty short even as he tries to hold it together for his siblings.

Dick honestly seems to hate Jason, for reasons Jason cannot comprehend. Every time Jason tries to reach out to Dick, he ends up getting screamed at or having something thrown at him, and eventually Jason just gives up. (Dick is a complete fucking mess, because just as he was starting to settle in at the Manor and find something resembling stability again, his foster father went & died on him.)

Steph is AWOL since the funeral, and generally ignores “family troubles” like the plague.

Tim still figures out Bruce is still alive. He doesn’t want to get the younger kids’ hopes up, so he approaches Duke, Damian, & Cass with his evidence instead of calling a family meeting. It… does not go well.

Jason beats a retreat from the tension at the manor, telling Alfred he’s going to crash with Tim for a while. Alfred, Cass, & Duke all try to hide their relief over not having to worry about Jason for a little while. Wrongly believing Jason & Tim will keep eachother grounded.

While at Tim’s, Jason find his folder of evidence. Jason immediately confronts Tim with it, and Tim starts to get defensive before realizing Jason believes him. They go over all of it, as well as Tim’s plans & theories for where/how to find further information.

But Jason sees several problems Tim refuses to acknowledge. Gotham needs Oracle, now more than ever. And a not insignificant part of Tim’s plan relies on exploiting the resources of a certain obvious but unnamed group. Everyone knows Ra’s put the hit out on Tim all those years ago as a sort of “if I can’t have you, no one can” thing, and either intended to end Tim’s vigilante career or figured being unable to stand without crutches was significant enough punishment. But only Jason was there when Tim found the card inviting Tim back for a dip in the Pit whenever Tim was ready to admit he ‘needed’ it; Jason leant Tim his lighter to burn the note. So Jason might be the only one who knows Ra’s has been waiting for Tim to come groveling back ever since that bullet clipped Tim’s spine. And Ra’s definitely won’t deign to help Tim without ‘fixing’ him first. 

Jason’s not about to let his big brother get sucked back into that mess. Not Ra’s spiral of abuse & manipulation, not the potentially devastating side effects of the Pit, and not the struggles with worth Tim’s had since he had to hang up his cape. No way.

And Talia has made it very clear she’d be interested in training Jason.

So Jason steals Tim’s plans. Jason modifies them. Jason tells Tim that Jason’s going to go stay with the Titans, because Jason needs to get out of Gotham for a little while, and asks Tim to cover for him.

Jason steals a credit card for one of Damian’s alternate identities, knowing full well Damian’s too much of a mess to notice the charges until it’s too late.

Jason zetas to San Francisco, and asks the Titans to cover for him if anyone comes asking.

Jason uses Damian’s card to buy a plane ticket.

By the time anyone realizes what’s happened, Jason’s in too deep to risk extraction. After all, you can’t just flatter your way into an al Ghul’s favor only to back out at the last second, and no one in the family is emotionally equipped for delicacy right now.

Tim just has to do his best to make things easier for Jason, play dumb when anybody asks, and pray he isn’t setting his baby brother up to get murdered.

[mzminola]

Because something superhero comics, noir, and fanfic all have in common is leaning into soap opera convolutedness, @alexmaybe & I have come up with the Bruce Wayne Spawn Shell Game AU, in which the middle kids are all biologically Bruce’s.

(Dick really is John & Mary Grayson’s, and Damian is Talia’s direct clone.)

No one finds this out until Batman!Bruce & Robin!Damian are fighting a magic user who has heard rumors that Robin is Batman’s son (rumors started by Damian’s not so quiet comments about being The Blood Son). The mage gloats that they’re going to use a “teleport everyone with X trait to me” spell to yank Robin over, and use the disorientation of teleportation to take him hostage. “I will summon Batman’s direct blood descendents! Mwa ha ha ha!”

Cue Damian staying firmly at Bruce’s side, while Cass in street wear with bubble tea, Jason doing gear maintenance, a random college student studying for exams, and Tim in his pajamas pop out of the ether all within a yard of the mage.

The mage regrets their life choices.

~

Now, how did we get here?

Firstly, during the years Bruce is doing his world tour of Learning Batman Skills while still swinging in and out of Gotham, Bruce is seeking physical activity to make his brain shut up, and also seeking intimacy but keeping too many secrets to let himself actually get close to people, so he is sleeping with Even More People Than In His Batman Years. He remembers condoms but always doesn’t use them perfectly.

Bruce meets Sandra & Carolyn Wu-San at their dojo in Brooklyn. Some time later when David Cain coerces Sandra into reproductive sex, she seeks out every male martial artist she vaguely respected or thought had potential to sleep with them too as a Fuck You to undermine Cain’s scheme without openly breaking their deal.

Bruce has a one-night stand with pre-transition Willis Todd, both of them just giving their first (legal) name, no contact info. Figuring out several months later that he’s pregnant but no clue how to find the other father, Willis, who does want kids someday, weighs the pros and cons of “having trouble making ends meet right now, can I support a kid?” with “everyone says pregnancy would be harder later in transition,” and opts to have Jason now.

Sheila Haywood is either a friend or a bribable hospital worker (or both) who agrees to put her name down as the mom so Willis can legally be his kid’s dad without any complicated paperwork. Willis and Catherine never got around to telling Jason before both of them died. When Jason showed up at the camp thinking Sheila was his bio-mom she rolled with it, figuring she could get details of why he thought that later, and then unfortunately [canon ensued].

It won’t be until the spell incident happens that Bruce puts together one night stand Wilhelmina with Why do the pictures of Willis Todd look kinda familiar? Because he definitely never slept with Catherine or Sheila.

Bruce meets, befriends and sleeps with Janet Drake while going on an archaeological research binge. He’s also still having a lot of random bar and nightclub hook-ups.

Some months later, while Jack is out of town on a business trip, Janet complains to Bruce that Jack really wants a son, but the latest ultrasound shows a female fetus. Janet really doesn’t want to deal with pregnancy ever again, but Jack isn’t open to adoption, and ugh if only Janet could just swap this one for a male infant. It would be so easy to nudge Jack into an archeology dig closer to the due date, he’d never have to know!

(No, neither Bruce nor Janet have thought maybe Bruce got Janet pregnant instead of Jack.)

“You’ve got this knack for finding odd things at just the right moment, Brucie…”

Janet knows it’s a long shot, and dubiously ethical because adoption records exist for good reason, and if they can’t find a baby that works she’ll just have to dig her heels in with Jack against trying for a son, but if Bruce could find a baby…

Bruce makes no promises other than keeping an eye and ear out.

Anyway, Bruce isn’t Batman yet, but he’s home between tutors on his World Tour and venturing into the city in various disguises to learn more about Gotham’s underworld, and getting into trouble. So it is Bruce Wayne with a fresh concussion, not a drunk Brucie, who stumbles into an alley to vomit and finds a baby in a dumpster.

It’s a very full dumpster, one half of the lid broken off. An orange cat (who may or may not be Teekl returning a future favor) is curled around the newborn baby boy. The infant has a shock of hair as dark as Janet’s.

Concussed Bruce walks all the way to the Drake townhouse marveling at the tiny hand gripping his finger so tight.

Janet schedules a C-section. Bruce forges Timothy Jackson Drake’s birth certificate and arranges the adoption of Janet’s daughter by a family in Oregon. He keeps tabs on them over the years, preparing a Wayne Foundation scholarship to the college of her choice someday.

~

Back to the magic incident: Nightwing and Batwoman were on their way there as back-up when the mage cast the summoning spell, so Dick is able to hug Damian as the kid bluescreens about Not Being The Blood Son.

Bruce awkwardly explains that yes, he ran Damian’s DNA when Talia dropped him off, but when he realized Damian was Talia’s direct clone, he also realized Talia was taking steps to ensure her child escaped the League of Assassins, by attaching him to one of the few people on the planet who can go toe to toe with (and even defeat) her father. Bruce opted to go along with Talia’s choice.

Kate has gotten popcorn from somewhere, munching on it while Bruce desperately thinks back to his Mega Ho Years to figure out how everyone else happened.

Cass is feeling a vindictive sort of smugness about not being David Cain’s bio-kid. He’s still her dad, but he only got part of what he wanted from Shiva.

Jason is pissed at Bruce for not figuring it out earlier, but kinda relieved that Sheila wasn't actually his mom.

The freshman college student from Oregon is really annoyed, she was at study group and she CANNOT fail this class!!! Now she’s on the entire opposite coast???

Tim is having some feelings about how fucking soap opera his origins turn out to be. Bruce slept with his mom Janet, but also she wasn’t his birth mom, he was adopted and no one told him??? Who the heck is his other birth parent??? What were the odds of his apparent bio-parent Bruce being the one to find him??? Wait, was finding baby Tim in a dumpster why younger!Bruce suddenly had Wayne Enterprises put money into improving and proliferating Safe Drop-Off Sites in Gotham???

(He is Not Thinking About his complicated relationship with Jack.)

~

Tim, when things are just starting to quiet down: “Wait, so does Talia have XY chromosomes, or does Damian have XX? Because I’ve done a lot of of cloning lab work, and—”

Damian: “Don’t talk about my mother’s chromosomes, dumpster baby.”

Tim: >:(

Bruce, very tired: “Damian, don’t call your brother a dumpster baby.”

Damian, indignant: “But you just told us you found him in a dumpster as an infant!”

Freshman college student: “Dude, it’s still fucking rude? Like how would you like being called a test tube baby?”

Damian: /draws sword/

Dick, pushing sword back into sheath: “No drawing weapons on civilians. Or calling Tim rude things. Tim, I think any chromosome questions are Talia and Damian’s personal medical business, so please don’t speculate on them.”

Tim, sarcastically: “Sorry, I forgot medical privacy exists after how you all reacted to the spleen thing.”

Freshman college student: “Spleen thing?”

Tim: “Don’t worry, it’s not genetic. Speaking of, B, you’re gonna have to update, like, all our medical history now.”

Bruce, even more tired: "Hn."

[sing-me-under]

Sometimes I like to think up scenarios where Bruce dies either shortly before or shortly after meeting Tim, and the entire focus is on years into the future (like present day comics) where the world just keeps going except Bruce Wayne is dead.

There’s still an earthquake. There is an entire city wrecked with grief that’s never quite stopped grieving. There’s no uber wealthy and influential Bruce Wayne, but there’s still an entire JL and many influential people who loved Bruce willing to help Gotham in his name at least. Life goes on.

Like, Jason still resurrected. He probably already resurrected and was just wandering Gotham or in a hospital by the time Bruce died. He comes back to Gotham fully aware that his dad is dead and just sticks to the underground, never interacting with the Gotham hero community.

Speaking of the Gotham hero community, it’s more disconnected without the bats. There’s still the Birds of Prey, of course there is, but the heroes who rose up inspired by Batman and Robin just never get that spark of surety and passion. Gotham itself just feels a bit more lifeless, a bit more hopeless, without a Batman and a Robin.

Maybe there is a Batman actually, but it’s usually someone else in the suit. Maybe it’s Nightwing trying to be Batman in that initial grief but giving up at the behest of his friends. Maybe he never returned to Gotham at all, absolutely refused to. This cursed city is the gravesite of four family members. Maybe it’s Superman in the bat suit once every few months or even one a year, making himself seen just enough to keep the urban legend alive. Maybe it’s someone else entirely. A different vigilante using the name but everyone knows they’re not really Batman.

But there’s definitely no more Robins. No one thinks of the second Robin and aspires to his fate. Maybe Tim temporarily takes on the Robin mantle, but the weight is too heavy and he makes a different name for himself. Maybe he tried to reach Dick and bring him back to Gotham, but he never succeeded in convincing anyone. Maybe he went straight to Bruce a la fanon and tried to help, but he couldn’t.

I had this one idea where Bruce saw this scrawny boarding school kid with a whole lot of spark and the exact same vision for Gotham’s future, and instead of letting him be Robin at Alfred’s behest and with Dick’s acknowledgement, he instead decided “when this kid is old enough, I want him to be my successor.” and he starts teaching Tim the basics. He already failed Dick and Jason, so he resolved to not let Tim be an active vigilante until he’s 18. He fucking dies anyway but leaves a will and instructions for Tim to basically learn from the same teachers when he’s of age, but Tim’s mom dies and his dad is comatose so Tim goes “Fuck It. Gotham needs me now” and drops out and speedruns his world tour way earlier than Bruce would have wanted.

There’s still Damian, somewhere. Maybe Talia drops him off with Dick when it’s apparent she can’t protect Damian in the League, not from its cruelties and certainly not from her father. Nightwing is unobtrusive to the grand scheme of the LoA. Talia may not like Dick, may have been frequently at odds with him during his Robin days when a family with Bruce seemed like it was in the palm of her hand, but she trusts him, unfortunately. He was loyal to Bruce, at least, despite all their disagreements and domestic hostilities. Dick looks at Damian and thinks “I’m the same age Bruce was when he took me in. Damian is the same age I was. I can’t do this, but damn it all if I don’t try” and the regret fills him and he’s doing everything not to drown in it.

But there’s still Cass somewhere, probably with Barbara. There’s still Helena and Stephanie and Duke and the kids who became Robins in another timeline but choose a different name to rally under here, if they take up arms at all.

At least without Batman, there’s no Joker. He went down in that helicopter over the Atlantic Ocean and never showed his face again.

Regardless, this world is just a little more worse for wear, a little more tired and weary. This is a world where Batman dies, not with a bang but with a sizzle, and he doesn’t come back. No one is sure if he’d even want to.

[beepawz]

(Do not look at the background it was rushed. Other than that, enjoy the quick drawing of Stephanie and Cass) If Cass’s outfit looks odd it’s because its not a cannon suit. In this au she modeled it after Macaque. (I wanted an excuse to give her a red cape) Thinking of calling this au MonkeyBat (I know im bad at naming things) unsure tho

Also, here’s the link to the LMK specific headcannons. Enjoy:

·   Cass is 17 when she first went back to the dimension she was born in

·   At this point I wanna say we’re close to the end of season 2 of Lmk so she’s started her training with Macaque

·   She learns the basics first- how to summon her staff, shadow travel and she’s working on making shadow clones

·   When Batman finds her, it doesn’t take long to tell she has powers, so he assumes she’s a meta

·   Cass likes to go back and forth between dimensions

·   She disappears randomly to go back home before showing back up at the manor for random periods of time

·   No one knows where she goes off to. Trackers don’t work (she always finds them) and not even Batman or Superman can find her

·   When asked where she was she either shrugs or says home she will not elaborate

·   At first the family was suspicious but as time went on and it became clear she wasn’t doing anything malicious they kinda dropped it and it became usual

·   Tim is still trying to figure out where she goes

·   Bruce is too but not like Tim is

·   At first, she didn’t care to much for her birth dimension and that doesn’t really change much except for the batfam

·   She came back because she likes the family. She likes helping them out at night and hanging out with them

·   She still refuses to let Bruce adopt her though and tells him he’s like an uncle to her.

·   She drops hints that she has a family and but never drops names or locations

·   At first the family think she might be talking about Lady Shiva and David Cain, but it doesn’t take long for it to become clear they aren’t who she’s talking about

·   The search continues

·   The batfam know that Cass can shadow travel, inhuman strength, her durability and that she has a strange shadow staff (that seems to come out of nowhere) but that’s about as much as they know on her powers

·    It takes about 2 years for the batfamily to figure out she’s technically from this dimension but it’s not her “home” dimension

·   She doesn’t tell them because she sees no harm in keeping it to herself. Besides it’s kinda funny watching them try to figure it out. She also wants to see how long these “world’s best” detectives take to figure it out. It’s not like she’s not dropping subtle hints.

·   Stephanie is the first to find out about everything. Duke is second.

·   They’re both smug about it once the entire family knows.

·   They are also the first two that Cass brought home to meet everyone

·   Before everyone else knows, Steph and Duke like messing with the rest of the family by making their own hints/references to Cass’s family

·   It frustrates the others more than ever

·   The three are having a great time

·   As she gets more of her powers, she doesn’t really use them while around the batfam

·   She just doesn’t see much reason to. She does however use them to fuck with some of the rouges if she’s on her own

·   No one believes them when they say she turned into a slightly demonic shadow being

·   Well no one but Tim

·   Tim will figure her secrets out. Cass finds it entertaining.

·   Cass and Duke get along great.

·   Dukes just glad there’s someone else with powers around

·   The first time Constantine met her, he showed up, looked at her, turned around, and noped right out of there. He doesn’t explain anything and refuses to be near Cass unless he has to

·   Cass finds it hilarious and will sometimes sneak up and scare the man

·   When confronted or asked if she knows why Constantine acts like that around her, she just shrugs.

·   It’s not her fault he’s scared of the sheer demonic presence she give off

·   With the exception of Constantine, she does try to avoid the league and other magic users. To many people who could possible out her by her presence alone and she enjoys being a mystery

[batmanego]

"At worst it's shipping a serial murder with the father of his victim" yeah that's why it's FUN, they're both fucked in the head and only deserve each other! Bruce knows exactly what he's doing and the drama if/when resurrected Jason finds out has such delicious "lost focus and had a consensual workplace relationship" vibes but with EXPLOSIONS

maybe it's my bubble of fellow "lives have been wrecked by infedelity" fanfic writers but i don't know anyone who actually sees it as healthy or anything but either one-sided or big cheating-on-his-mission-for-Justice vibes. Batman doesn't deserve a healthy relationship because he's ruined his loved ones lives. So he's stuck with the creepy stalker that's obsessed with him. I know like 3 other writers w this viewpoint, not every ship is all UWU, sometimes toxic ships are fun. It's not flattening Bruce, it's adding complexity and inner turmoil, but it also assumes you're working with a view of Bruce most of the fandom doesn't share because everyone loves Batdad, idk. Just tossing in my 2 cents.

I also wrote a whole thing creating Jeannie as a fully fleshed character outside of "Mrs. Napier" so don't say it's something about erasing women, maybe on some subconscious level that I need to work on, but I do try to counter it with fleshing out other female characters. I enjoy Talia & Selina but Bruce is fundamentally a fucked up guy and he rlly only deserves a fucked up ship. Idk.

Thanks for reading this or skimming and deleting it idk im mostly shouting to the void

i went back and forth on whether or not i wanted to respond to this jokingly or seriously or even at all, considering theres So Many Other Things I Could Do With My Limited Time On This Earth, but honestly you as a person seem infuriating in a very specific, Jerking Off On The Page Never Read A Comic Donated To AO3 Harry Potter Fan-type way and im sort of diametrically opposed to you because of this so i will formulate a "brief" response.

putting it out there first and foremost: i really don't care all that much because i'm an adult and i have other fucking shit to do, but comics is an industry that i am both passionate about and want to work in, so i think i'm granted a little bit of bitching about misinterpretation of characters, considering i want to Actually Write Them For A Living at some point.

for starters i notice that you changed what i said about joker from sexual predator to serial murderer. hmmmmmm. could it be that that is a line you realize shouldn't be crossed?

that aside, the reason i bring up jason ties into why your approach (an approach shared by many) to bruce wayne is fundamentally flawed. bruce wayne is a man who had nobody, and then gradually accumulated a network of strong support systems that are more important to him than anything else. i mean that. really, from a character standpoint, bruce died in that alleyway with martha and thomas - everything from there until meeting dick was him going through the motions. living death. but dick changed things! it gave him a person to care about! it gave him responsibilities outside himself! it forced him to be a caretaker! albeit, in the early years, he wasn't a very good one, but he did try.

and we can see that attitude continued in his relationship to jason - when jason dies, bruce changes. i've talked before about how death in the family changed not just batman, but batman comics tonally and thematically, but jason's death really marked a point where bruce closed himself off from people again. all of this reinforces the fact that for bruce, he is fundamentally a man that claims to work alone while actually being surrounded by friends and family.

to bruce, compassion is key. compassion in EVERYTHING. with your family and with your criminals.

you want drama between bruce and jason? their story is already rife with it. literally just read under the red hood and you'll see, nothing there needs to change or have Drama inserted.

also, this comic is really funny and antithetical to your They Belong Together point because bruce explicitly says he fucking hates the joker so much.

and man, i dont even know where to start with this paragraph, it's just so goddamn funny. hey. you know you sound insane, right? you know that? you know you're shooting yourself in the foot? i didn't say a goddamn thing about erasing women. you said that. that's an issue you recognized in yourself. it's not one i won't say is there - i could go on for hours about the discarding of canon female love interests (canonically bisexual female love interests in the case of selina and canonically love interests who are both woc! hmmmm) out of misogyny, but i won't because it seems like you've kinda got that front covered.

and, again, cause i can't say this enough: bruce's friends and family are the most important thing to him and he will always prioritize them. he loves them.

just as an afterthought, framing bruce as "fundamentally fucked up" is kind of weird to do. i mean, i have my problems with framing any hero as "what if they were evil, actually" (the least of which being that i think it's pretty fuckin boring) but this post does a pretty good job of summing up "is bruce wayne really a good guy?" (the answer is yes)

anyway, you want to ship bruce with a sexual abuser who murdered his son and ruined his life? i can't stop you. but i do urge you to think critically about the character decisions you're making there and step outside of your fanfiction echo chamber and into the wonderful world of comics for once. if you need recommendations on where to start for good bruce characterization, i've got plenty.

ps. you want bruce to kiss one of his villains? harvey dent's right there. xoxoxo ferris

[evita-shelby]

The Johnathan Crane(batman begins/dark knight verse) x Eva Smith in 20 bullets

Mostly for @thegreatdragonfruta

Gifs by @thiskindoflife and @dailytvwomen

Johnathan meets Eva at a fancy party (Eva is running several large companies and Johnathan Crane is up and coming genius psychologist with a biochemistry degree) and he seduces her with every intention of using her to test out his newest fear toxin and kill her afterwards

Eva however was trained by the league of assasins and has been asked to investigate the fear toxin Johnathan is making and recruit him so she plays along with it

Eva still has her clairvoyance and may have been ressurected with the lazarus pit one or two times(implications that Eva Shelby is in fact Eva Smith just immortal or reincarnated) this leads to her being immune to his drugs

This intersts him more than it should so he actually starts dating her(it was either that or ghosting her and he wants to know why the fuck is she immune) after being recruited by Ra's al Ghul/Ducard

Time skip to batman begins, they are now Dr. and Mrs. Johnathan Crane

Eva is trying to take over Wayne Enterprises and merge it with Riley International

Johnathan has made his strongest most contagious toxin yet and has been testing it out on criminals

Eva discovered how to make an antidote using her blood and plans on selling it at a very high price to Lucius Fox as part of her own secret plans to take over the city and eventually the world

they celebrate catching the Falcone Family and driving them insane as the League has planned just as Bruce discovers the league's plan to eradicate Gotham

Rachel Dawes is suspicious of the Cranes but is running on the assumption that they have been coerced into declaring the mobsters criminally insane thanks to Eva’s stellar acting

Eva runs into Bruce at a party (whom she also recruited into the league and was his fuck buddy for a while) who confronts her about the League's plans

Eva just laughs and tells him it ain't gonna happen, but that if he wants her help he's going to have to make her CEO

Bruce makes her CEO and Rachel Dawes becomes even more suspicious of the Cranes and how Eva manages to essentially clean up Wayne Enterprises a little too well

Lucius manages to make an antidote that doesn't require Eva's blood thus making it easier to mass produce, and they begin making it secret just as she blackmails Lucius into telling her bruce is batman

Eva confronts Bruce about being batman and warns him that Ra's al ghul is alive and may be behind the toxin, claims Johnathan is innocent and makes Bruce believe that he is being framed by a man calling himself the Scarecrow who was using the company to recieve the ingredients for the toxin

Rachel Dawes is not convinced about their innocence and continues to investigate this leads to her getting dosed by Crane and Bruce discovers that the Cranes(at least johnathan) have been working with the League to poison everyone

Evil is seemingly defeated,but Eva comes out unscathed and convincing Bruce that she is on his side at his party by betraying Ra's al ghul

Rachel confronts Eva and is convinced that Eva is innocent when she provides the antidote in water bottles and subdues her now criminally insane husband by injecting him with the og antidote

Johnathan is later aquitted, disgraced and selling his fear toxins to criminals in secret while Eva hands over the CEO position to Lucius and leaves Gotham 'to focus on rehabilitating her husband'

Eva meets with Miranda Tate (Talia al Ghul) expresses her condolences and tells her phase 1 was a success

[the-hopeless-haze]

Everyone is Afraid of Something, Even the Strongest Man Alive (Justified Sin Chapter 2)

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

A/N: This is early bc I’m supposed to be studying for my test but I’m blaming Robert Pattinson for sending me straight into a manic episode bc this is literally all I can think about rn. so here you go. same warnings apply. Domestic violence. don’t read if it’s a trigger

Taglist: @pop-rocks-and-skittles​ 

“How much do you know about Mrs. Matteson?” Bruce asked Gordon later that week.

“Who? The girl we pulled over a few months ago? Not much. She keeps quiet, runs that diner. Food’s good there. I hear Bruce Wayne of all people is a regular, so I guess it must be something if it’s enough to get that man to leave his house. She shows up for the events she has to for her husband, doesn’t go to the ones she doesn’t. Don’t know much else. I feel bad for her, though. She seemed like she was on her last thread that day we pulled her over,” Gordon replied. “Want me to do a check on her?”

“No. No. That will just scare her,” he said, shaking his head. She’d assume he, Bruce, sent a cop to check the house out and maybe never speak to him again.

“I didn’t feel good sending her back to that house. We shouldn’t have let her go.”

“I know.”

“Why don’t you check on her? She seemed to like you.”

“Somehow I don’t think that will go over well either.”

Every night, he waited for the signal, and every Monday he showed up at the diner, counting new bruises almost every week, and every time he responded to the signal, it was never you.

“Did you send the signal this time?” Bruce asked you once the restaurant was cleared out.

“I didn’t need to. When things get bad, I run, and I drive far away. He doesn’t follow me. He knows what it would look like to have a car chase in the streets with his wife.”

“Remember what you promised me.”

“Yeah. I promised you I’d call him if I needed help. Haven’t gotten to that point yet. Stop. Pushing. Me. I wouldn’t have thought you’d be a Batman fanboy.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Bruce snapped, maybe a little too harshly, and he makes himself soften his hardened facial expression.

You giggled, maybe the first time he’d heard you laugh with mirth. “You talk about him all the time. Think you’ve got a crush, hm?”

Bruce grimaced, remembering why he never used to leave the house in the first place.

“I do not talk about him all the time. I just want you to get help.”

“Touchy, hm? You ever meet him?”

“No.”

“Really? I would’ve thought you’d have more pull to do so, considering you’re Bruce fucking Wayne,” you grinned, leaning across the counter.

“It’s just Bruce Wayne, thank you.”

“It was for emphasis. Be happy I didn’t call you Brucie," you teased.

“Don’t ever.”

“Oh, come on. We’re friends now, right?” You asked, nudging the one hand he kept on the counter. He looked down at his hand, then up at you.

“I suppose.”

“Jesus, you don’t have to act like it would kill you to admit it.”

“I’m just afraid if I agree you’ll think it’s a free pass to call me whatever you want,” he said, the hint of a smile on his lips.

You startled him, then, touching his forehead with the back of your hand. “Are you sick? Was that almost a joke?”

He rolled his eyes, but his smile lingered longer than your touch. He wanted to say he hated the teasing, nicknames, and subtle invasion of personal space… but he didn’t. Not from you, at least.

“You’re not what I thought you’d be like,” you said, tilting your head a little, obviously studying him for some reaction.

“The magazines lie.”

“I know. No one knows you, I guess, but I guess I just thought you’d be… colder. But you… I don’t know. I think you’ve got a sixth sense for these things. When I met you at that gala, I don’t know, it felt like you were seeing right through me. That’s why I said it felt like I’d met you before. But it takes one to know one, right? You’ve dealt with a lot of pain yourself.”

“Mm.”

“Sorry. I guess I should’ve known you don’t like to talk about yourself. You’ve had ample opportunity to do so over the years and you always refuse interviews.”

“There isn’t much to say. You’re the one with an interesting life. I just manage my parents’ legacy and try not to fuck it up. That’s easier to do from the shadows. You run a restaurant, you know the city gossip better than most, you’re involved in politics for better or worse…”

“My husband’s an abusive piece of shit…” you interjected. “Mm. So interesting.”

“That isn’t funny,” he said sternly, looking at you intently. “It’s not.”

“You really have to lighten up, I mean, fuck, Bruce. If you don’t use humor to cope, how the hell are you supposed to deal with anything?”

“But you could—"

“I could die. I fucking know that. How am I supposed to deal with it without making a few jokes at my expense?”

Bruce frowned, then nodded. “Fine. But I’ll never think it’s funny.”

“Aw. You think some of my jokes are funny, though, don’t you, Brucie?” You asked, a glimmer in your eye.

Instead of grimacing, he gave in and broke into a smile. He didn’t laugh, and god, you could be irritating, but you hit just the right buttons that he couldn’t be mad at you.

“I knew you did. You’ve got a nice smile. You should use it more often. Become the pretty boy millionaire Gotham wants to thirst over. Do a few risqué photoshoots. I think you’d get Batman’s attention that way,” you laughed, raised an eyebrow, always pushing further. “You’d be quite the power couple. I could see it.”

Now you’d done it, and he was laughing. He felt it before it happened, bubbling in his chest before he exhaled, the sound foreign to even him. For a split second, he almost wished he could tell you the truth so you’d know just how funny you were.

“Oh, I knew I’d get to you one day,” you giggled, leaning over and ruffling his hair. It was almost too much to process, the laughs, the quick touches, the compliments, your smile, your beauty, the fact you wanted to be friends with him - and not for his money or his fame. Not for any ulterior motive: you liked him. When was the last time he had a friend who knew his face?

“You do have a nice smile, though,” you told him again, cupping his cheek with your hand, strands of his dark hair falling onto your skin. He can still feel the heat from your fingers, the gentleness of your touch now, as he reminisces, lurking in the floors of the hospital.

He wanted to tell you had a nice smile, too. That your laugh is like music, that he was happy your husband couldn’t take that away from you because it made you so titillating to talk to. That he never knew what to expect to come out of your mouth and he hated to love and loved to hate being kept on his toes whenever he was with you. But he didn’t say anything. Maybe he acted too awkward, maybe gave off the impression that he didn’t want you to touch him. You started to pull your hand away, and it was a split-second decision but he caught your hand with his before you could bring it closer to your body. You smiled and he smiled back, his hand covering yours on the counter.

There were a few moments of comfortable silence, but he saw a storm brewing behind your eyes as your expression faltered and changed to one of worry.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

You nodded, swallowed hard, and placed your other hand on his, rubbing circles with your thumb. “Don’t push me on this, please but I… I… sometimes I’m scared that I won’t be able to run. It’s always been what I’ve done when he hurts me bad enough, and if I needed to I suppose I could haul ass to light the signal, but what if he won’t let me leave, Bruce? Because that’s what I’m really scared of,” you said, and he could see it as you spoke, as each word came from your mouth your eyes watered and your lip trembled.

He placed his other hand on yours, stacking your hands, and then he flipped both his hands under yours so he’s holding both of them in his. Looking up at you, his blue eyes met your tear-filled ones. “Then you call me,” he said. “And I’ll signal him myself. Okay?”

“Okay,” you nodded, sniffling a little.

“I’m going to keep you safe.”

You snickered. “Heard that one before. You know, I trust you, Bruce, against my own better judgment. I hope you don’t make me live to regret that.”

“I won’t,” he said quickly, then processing what you said he asked, “What do you mean, ‘heard that one before?”

You sighed, releasing your hands from his, walking over to grab the coffee pot behind you to refill your mugs. “You’re not the first person I’ve trusted. Let’s just leave it at that.”

———

You called him for the first time that week when he was out at a crime scene with Gordon. He called you back as soon as he left, his blood like ice in his veins.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his tone sounding frantic even to himself. He consciously makes the effort to pitch his voice a little higher, hoping no one around him noticed.

“I’m okay. You don’t need to signal. I just need stitches again. Urgent care is closed and I don’t feel like sitting in the emergency department for hours. Can you meet me? Or do you think I should head up there? It’s already up, so he must be out, right?”

“Where are you right now?”

“My car.”

“You’re safe?”

“I’m safe.”

“Good,” he said, glancing around at the people around him. The last thing he needed is for you to say something that would reveal his identity. He desperately wanted to see you like Bruce, wanted to stitch you back together again like he did a few weeks ago where you could see his face. But your safety was more important than these selfish feelings and wants and you didn’t believe Bruce could be of much assistance, but the jury was still out for your belief in Vengeance and he wanted to do all he could to make you believe that he could do something, anything, for you. “I think you should head up there. I’m sorry I can’t meet you tonight.”

“It’s okay. I know it’s late. If you can do stitches I think he could, right?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I think you know, pretty boy.”

It’s all he could do not to blush. He knew you meant it as a backhanded compliment because fuck, it’s not like Bruce Wayne is getting injured at his job… but… it’s almost not fair. And he knew he couldn’t blame you for it, couldn’t hate you for it - for all he knew you had no idea you were making him feel this way. You had enough to worry about before you thought about how you made him feel when you called him pretty or said he had a nice smile.

“Get up there before you bleed out,” he said stiffly.

“Okay, okay. If he even shows up.”

“Worth a shot. If he doesn’t, call me again.”

Of course, he showed up. When he gets there, you’re already there, a blue cardigan wrapped around your shoulders as you sit with your legs dangling off the edge.

“Well, fuck. Didn’t think you still came up here this late,” you said, turning your head around to look at him. “My friend kept pushing me to try.”

“What are you doing up here?” Bruce asked.

You shrugged. “Just wanted to chat.”

“Highly doubt that. Are you hurt?”

“Yeah.”

“How bad?”

You got up, then, walking over to him, and he could see the blood seeping through your shirt. You’d held a towel there to keep pressure, but it was still bleeding badly.

“Jesus,” he exhaled. “What happened?”

“I stabbed him in the ribs with a knife a few weeks ago because it was the only way to get him to stop choking me,” you muttered. “I knew I’d pay for it. Just didn’t know when.”

A murderous rage heated his veins, one like he’d never quite felt before. He’d wanted to kill certain people before, but never like this. He could almost see the smug look on your husband’s face in an attempt to justify this, could almost hear him saying “the bitch did it to me first”.

“Let me bring him in.”

“I told you what would happen. Can you please just stitch me? Or I’ll go to the ER.”

He sighed, pulling the medical thread from his pocket. “You’re not safe in that house.”

“He’s hurt me worse before. I’ll have a good couple of weeks before he does anything again. He’s already blowing up my phone that he’s sorry, that he loves me, that he will never do it again.” You laid down and exposed your stomach to him, and he cleaned the dried blood around the wound. Thankfully, it wasn’t deep, but it was deep enough that it wasn’t going to close on its own.

“Do you believe it?“ he asked, trying to keep his voice level as he starts to wipe your skin with alcohol.

“Do you know how much I want to? Fucking Christ, that hurts like a bitch, Batty,” you said through clenched teeth as he started to suture your skin. “You don’t have any painkillers?”

“No.”

“Well, fuck, what use are you, huh, Batty? The Tylenol I took an hour ago is not fucking cutting it, let me tell you that right now. Fuck. Maybe next time I will go to the ER even if it’s not worth their million fucking questions. I’ve shown up there too many times, now, anyway. Dave doesn’t like that. Gotta give him less ammo, you know?”

He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know what it was like in your head, constantly calculating what you could do in a given moment to make it less likely that this man you married, this man that was supposed to love you would be less likely to hurt you. You were crying again, and he didn’t know if it was from the pain from the amateur stitching or if it was from your situation - and fuck, maybe it was both.

“Almost done,” he said gruffly, trying to go as fast as he could without fucking it up. He wishes you knew it was the same hands-on your stomach as the ones that embraced your hands earlier this week, but how could you when he concealed every recognizable part of himself? Whoever he met you as, you were always just you, unconcealed, snarky, strong. But you’d met him under pretenses and even he struggled to figure out which one he wanted you to think of as the real him.

“I still can’t believe you showed up.”

“Believe it.”

“Maybe my friend is right to have a crush on you. Come out here swooping like a knight in shining armor or whatever, fix me up in the dead of night, Jesus.”

“Your friend?”

You laughed, and he felt the vibration as he rolled his eyes, stopping his maneuvers. You winced at the pain.

“Maybe don’t do that when I’m trying to put you back together,” he grumbled.

“Point taken.”

“The friend?” He asked again, and he felt incredibly selfish to try to get you to talk about him to himself, but he had to know what you thought about him without you seeing his face.

“Bruce Wayne, of all people, can you believe that? He helped my diner kick off, and I don’t know. We’ve just been talking a lot. It’s been nice. He’s the one who pushed me to contact you again after I told him about our lovely first encounter. Said you could help me. Think he has a crush. Talks about you a lot. Want his number?”

“I’m good,” he said. “You’re all set.”

“What, you’re too good for Bruce Wayne? I mean, the magazines are wrong. He’s not cold, or rude. He’s just shy, maybe a little standoffish. He’s got… I don’t know… this depth. I bet he’d write you amazing love poems. He’s… something special. He’s not bad to look at either. Not at all.”

“Sounds like you’ve got the crush,” he said before really thinking.

“What? No,” you said, blushing, sitting up and grimacing. “Jesus, Batty, mind yourself. I’m just trying to sell him to you. The power couple of Gotham, you know?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t date,” he said stiffly.

“Oh, damn, Batty. Should’ve known. Too brooding, the weight of Gotham on your shoulders, right?”

“Something like that.”

“Who are you really, anyway? You weren’t born with that mask.”

“For all you know, I was.”

“Figured you weren’t going to tell me. Thought I’d try.”

“What can I do to help you? I don’t like sending you home like this,” he said, desperate to change the topic.

“I sleep in the diner. I had a bed put in there for a reason. I won’t be going back for a few days.”

“But you will go back,” he said. “And he will do this again. And eventually, it will get worse—"

“But it always gets better first.”

“If he’s going to start using weapons… it’s a lot different than getting hit.”

You laid back down, closing your eyes. “I’m too fucking tired for this, Batty.”

He crouched down next to you, his breath fanning the skin of your face. “Do you want to live?”

You opened your eyes, staring at him intently. “Sometimes I don’t know.”

“Let me teach you self-defense.”

You laughed for a good solid minute. “The knife was a desperate last-minute resort. I don’t do that shit. I run. I’m fast, believe me. Those years of high school track helped me a lot.”

“You’re going to need to learn how to block weapons. I think I’m equipped to teach that. I’m not going to teach you how to hurt him back if you don’t want that. Just enough to block him so you can get away. Okay?”

“Yeah, with what time? You’ve got a city to save.”

“You’re a Gotham resident, aren’t you?”

“Jesus Christ, I don’t know who’s worse, you or Bruce. I’m just one girl, Batty. Go save the city. Don’t worry about me. Lose that Jesus complex and lose it fast because you can’t save everybody. Least of all me."

“No. I can’t. Not if you won’t let me help you. You don’t want me to put him away. My only other option is to help you fight back.”

“Why the hell are you doing this, anyway? Something awaken in you when you pulled me over?”

Yes. You could say that. A fiery rage in the pit of his stomach but it’s grown into something more than that, something much more complex and dangerous.

“Are you deliberately being this annoying because you think it’s going to make me give up?”

“Aw, look at you, figuring me out.” You closed your eyes again.

“It’s not going to work. Get up. I’m bringing you to the diner. Meet me back up here in three days. Four AM.”

“Four AM? Are you trying to kill me?” you protested, your eyes opening again just so you could roll them at him.

“The opposite. Come here,” he said, gesturing with his open arms.

“Whoa, wait, wait, we’re going to fly?” You asked. “Fuck, I wish I wasn’t so exhausted. I’m not even really going to be able to enjoy this.”

“Trust me. You won’t be able to fall asleep.”

You grinned. “Don’t drop me, Batty.”

“I’ll drive your car back later.”

“Mm. Thank you.”

Wordlessly, he strapped you to his chest with his harness, your body flush against him something that was going to keep him up until the morning even with all the layers of clothing between your skin. As you flew, your whoops and hollers were enough to make him break out into a grin as he navigated safely to the diner. Even when you should be completely broken and hollow, you weren’t. Sure, you were testy, sarcastic, upset, but you weren’t hopeless even if you wanted him to believe you were. There was still so much life in you, so much strength.

Reaching the doorway, he unstrapped you, and you turned around, hugging him hard enough he lets out a grunt of surprise. “I… I’ll take you up on the offer. Okay?”

“Good choice. Be on time.”

You placed your hand on his cheek again but it’s different this time; there was a different energy in the air here as you stare into his eyes, your cardigan halfway down your shoulders. You looked like a mess, to be fair, but you were still beautiful, with windswept hair, a tear-stained face, bloody torso, and all. Before he realized it, you were standing on your toes, leaning up, and your mouth was on his, your hand moving from his cheek to the back of his neck. He started to kiss back, pulling you closer, but his brain kept screaming at him to slow down and think. Eventually, he did, and the kiss seemed to last for hours as he fought with himself internally. He wanted to give in to the kiss, give into you, tell you he wanted you, that you drove him up the wall… but not like this. He wanted you to want Bruce, but Bruce wasn’t going to teach you self-defense, be pressed against your sweaty body in awkward positions, it was going to be “Batty” as you so irritatingly and affectionately referred to him.

Still.

He couldn’t do this like this.

Gently, he pushed you away, and there were fresh tears in your eyes, and it’s enough to start to break his heart. How could he reject you? He had to constantly remind himself he was doing the right thing. You couldn’t love a man in a mask. It was dangerous to get involved with Bruce, but it was a death sentence to get involved with Batman.

“I’m sorry,” you sniffled, tears running down your face again. “I shouldn’t have done that. It’s just the… adrenaline and I’m upset and I… I know where this leads anyway. I know better. I’m sorry. You don’t have to meet me—“

“Hey, hey. Shh,” he whispered. “I’m still going to help you. I just can’t… we can’t.”

“Right. You don’t date. I’m sorry.”

“It’s overwhelming,” he stated in an attempt to be sympathetic, but that was an understatement. His head felt like it was spinning at tornado-level speeds. He could only imagine what you felt.

“It’s not even that… I… I��m just lonely. I figured you can’t get hurt, not by Dave at least, and maybe it’d help me forget, but I… I just feel worse now,” you said, looking down at your feet, your voice small and quiet.

“Don’t. It was a mistake. That’s all it was. I won’t hold it against you,” he said. “Get some sleep. I’ll see you in a few nights.”

Watching you pull your cardigan back over your shoulders, watching you walk into the diner, his heart swelled and his head ached. You wanted him, the wrong part of him, the better part of him, the dangerous part of him, the person he wanted to be all the time. Without the mask, without the suit, without the lenses, who was he? Maybe like you’d said, a pretty boy millionaire with nothing much else of substance to offer. How would that help you?

You were accepting what little help he could offer short of killing your husband. It’s what he wanted from the start. Wasn't it beyond selfish, damn-near verging on narcissistic to want more from you?

NEXT CHAPTER

[ragingbookdragon]

Even Though We May Be Hopeless Hearts Just Passing Through, I Was Made For Loving You PT. 1

Batsis x Kyle Rayner

Word Count: 2.1K Warnings: Explicit Language

Author's Note: I realize the other story didn't follow the whole, dating the brother's best friend trope, so I decided to remedy it. And what do you get when you cross a hopeless romantic with someone who's new to love? Perfection. That's what. Enjoy! -Thorne

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

Saturday mornings, in Dick’s opinion, were meant for sleeping in and quite possibly going to IHOP when everyone finally crawled out of bed at ten. They were not meant for being shoved in the side by a little brother.

“Golden-boy,” a voice grouched from beneath the bedside. “Your phone’s been going off for an hour. Either put it on silent or answer the goddamn thing.”

Dick let out a tired ‘pfft’, rolling onto his stomach, face buried in the side of the bed as he looked down to the floor. “Annoyed much, Little-wing?”

“I am going to shove that phone so far up your—”

Reaching over, Dick put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

Where are you?

“Still in bed,” he responded, sentence ending in a groan as he stretched. “Why?”

You were supposed to be on the flight back to Gotham two hours ago.

Dick’s eyes went wide, and he sat up, gaping at the bedside clock. “It’s today.”

It is today. I can’t believe you forgot it was today.

“Oh my God, it’s today and we missed our flight.” He stumbled out of the bed, barely registering the shout from Jason as his foot landed in his brother’s stomach. “Jason, get up! It’s today!’

“What’s today?” his little brother griped, rubbing his abdomen.

“(Y/N)’s coming back!”

Jason’s eyes went wide, and he scrambled to his feet, hurriedly finding his bag to change out of his nightclothes. “Christ, I can’t believe we forgot that (Y/N) was coming home today!” he looked at Dick. “This is your fault.”

“My fault?” Dick yelped. “How is this my fault!”

He scowled. “Big brother wanted everyone to be with a sibling for the night, so they’d be together and be punctual but you and I both know neither of us have any concept of time.” His scowl grew. “I knew I should’ve bunked with Cass. She’s on time no matter what happens.”

Dick threw Jason’s sweatshirt at him. “Dress now, bitch later.” He put the phone back to his ear. “We missed our flight, but we can drive there.”

Your car’s in the shop.

“Shit,” he hissed, spinning in a circle to help his brain circuit enough to think of something new. “Uh-uh-uh—”

“Kyle!” Jason shouted, pointing at him. “Kyle’s like thirty minutes away from Manhattan! We’ll go to him for a ride!”

Dick grinned. “We’ll find Kyle.”

You sure Kyle’s at home?

“Pfft, Kyle’s always home on the weekends. He’s lazy.”

Just get here. (Y/N)’s plane is going to land in less than four hours.

“We’ll be there,” he said. “Is Diana coming too?”

Of course. She is (Y/N)’s mother.

“Nice. Alright, see you in Gotham, Bruce.”

Love you boys. And be careful. I’ve already heard that Cass, Tim, and Steph got into a fender-bender with Damian and Duke.

Dick blinked. “They’re…they’re legitimately driving separate cars? How’d they hit each other?”

Don’t ask.

The line went dead, and Dick looked at his brother. “Ready?”

Jason nodded. “Already got an Uber to Kyle’s place.”

“We could always just Uber to Gotham?” he offered, and Jason recoiled with a shocked look.

“And pay a ridiculous amount of money instead of just paying Kyle’s gas? Fuck no, big brother.” He shoved his wallet and keys into his pockets. “C’mon!” he chirped, rather excitedly. “Our baby sister’s coming home!”

***

When he swung the door open to yell at whoever was pounding on it, he wasn’t expecting to see two of his best friends grinning like idiots. “Wha—”

He’d barely gotten a word out when Jason shoved a bag of fast food in his hands. “Get dressed. You’ve gotta drive us to Gotham City.”

Kyle blinked, glancing down at the bag before looking at Dick. “Why?”

“Our sister’s coming home, and we overslept and missed out flight outta here.”

“And you came to me…why?” he asked.

“Because you have the functioning car.” Jason retorted, antsy on his feet. “C’mon Kyle. We have to hurry! (Y/N)’s coming home!”

Figuring it was better to agree than to argue, Kyle relented, handing back the bag of food before he disappeared into his apartment, reappearing moments later, dressed in a pair of dark blue jeans, a graphic tee, and his usual slim casual jacket. He took the bag back and started digging around in it.

“Who’s (Y/N)?” he inquired, biting into a breakfast burrito as he locked his front door behind him.

“Our baby sister.” Jason said.

“I thought Cass was your baby sister?”

Dick nodded, getting out his own breakfast from the bag. “She is. But (Y/N)’s like…the OG baby sister.”

Kyle blinked, glancing over at him as he pushed the elevator button. “That makes no sense.”

“He means that (Y/N) was around before Cass was.”

“And she isn’t with you guys why?”

“She’s been on Themyscira for the last few years training with her grandmother and the other Amazons.” Jason answered as if it was the most normal thing in the world, stepping onto the elevator.

Kyle merely stared at the two brothers who were looking back at him; he felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. “Wait, your sister’s an Amazon?”

“Yep.”

“Who’s her mom?” he asked, stepping between them.

“Wonder Woman.” Dick said.

Strike two. “Who’s her dad?”

“Batman.” Jason responded.

Believe it or not, Kyle went three for three punches to the gut. “Bruce and Diana had a kid together?”

“Yeah.” Dick murmured. “I think it’s also why B’s so insistent against inter-team-relations.” He nudged Jason behind Kyle. “First time he attempts dating a coworker he ends up with a baby.”

Jason snorted. “And all those lessons about, ‘Children, whatever you do, don’t date anyone on your team. It’ll only lead to babies and limited visitation’.” He laughed again, then he frowned. “I don’t think any of us have followed that lesson.”

Dick opened his mouth to make an excuse but all that came out was a pitiful, deflate of air followed by, “That’s actually a good point.”

The elevator dinged and they watched the doors open before walking out towards the parking garage. They climbed into Kyle’s car, Jason in the front because his legs were longer than Dick’s, and Dick was a contortionist anyways so if anyone deserved to have their knees in their chest, it was him.

Halfway through the drive Kyle asked, “You guys are paying for my gas, aren’t you?”

All he received was unsure responses and he merely sighed.

***

He figured he should’ve just dropped Jason and Dick off at the airport in Gotham and drove home, but he couldn’t help but want to see just what the daughter of Wonder Woman and Batman looked like. He imagined a little girl dressed in a Batman suit three sizes too big and wielding a sword and a lasso way too heavy for her. It made him smile, the way that the two brothers gushed about (Y/N). From their praise, she was their world. Kyle had to see her though, because nothing was going to satiate that curiosity of seeing the big Batman’s daughter.

He watched Dick and Jason crane their necks like birds as they looked around. And honestly, the family shouldn’t have been that hard to find considering that every time Kyle was around the entirety of the Batfamily, they were like psychos on steroids—he very much so understood why the entirety of Gotham’s villains became flighty when every member of the Batfamily was out patrolling.

Kyle wasn’t expecting a voice to crack over the airport, loud and bubbly. “Brothers!”

All three of them stopped, even him who wasn’t even a sibling, looking over towards the call and Kyle’s jaw dropped as a young woman sprinted over to Dick and Jason, slamming into them with the weight of a train. The three of them collapsed into a pile on the floor, but they were laughing so Kyle assumed the siblings were alright.

“Princess!”

“Baby girl!”

“Oh, I am so glad to see you both!” she exclaimed. “I have waited so long to come home!” she was on her feet in moments, pulling them to theirs as if they weighed nothing. And Kyle knew Jason weighed a lot—he’d been crushed under his best friend before in fights.

Suddenly, she stopped and looked over at Kyle who immediately felt his heart lurch under her sharp gaze. “Who is this you have brought?”

Jason gestured to him. “(Y/N) this is Kyle. He’s a friend of Dick and mine. Kyle, this is our little sister, (Y/N).”

She huffed laugh. “I am not little, Jason. I am twenty-one.” Reaching out, she immediately pulled Kyle in for a hug, squeezing him tightly. “It is good to meet you, Kyle.”

“You too,” he murmured, feeling his cheeks warm as she pulled away and placed her hands on his shoulders.

“Any friend of my brothers is a friend of mine.” (Y/N) smiled. “Are you a superhero as well?”

He couldn’t help but toss a quick glance towards Jason who nodded. “Uh, yeah. I’m a Green Lantern.”

(Y/N)’s eyes widened in wonder, and she let go of his shoulders in favor of grabbing at his hands until she found his ring. She stared at it, murmuring quiet, ‘ooo’s and ah’s’. “That is simply amazing!” she chirped, looking at him, and then she silently gasped, raising his hand near his eyes. “Oh…your eyes are almost the same color as your ring.”

Her smile made Kyle’s heart beat a little faster as she expressed, “They are beautiful.”

They gazed at each other, too captivated in the moment to understand that the family had gathered around them by then. Someone’s hand curled around (Y/N)’s wrist and she looked over seeing Dick tugging her hand away.

“C’mon Princess, let’s go get your things on the belt.”

She smiled and followed, giving a small wave to Kyle, who returned hers shakily whilst grinning like a dope.

Someone elbowed him in the ribs, and he gasped, holding his side as Jason muttered, “Don’t ever stare at my sister like that again.”

Kyle blinked, glancing at him. “What’re you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about, you goddamn skirt-chaser.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Kyle spluttered.

“You’re thinking about it.” Jason warned, pointing a finger in his face. “Make a move on (Y/N) and I’ll kill you with your own ring.” Kyle recoiled just as she and Dick were coming back, both holding a suitcase.

“Father!” she called, glancing at Bruce. “Dick and I have retrieved my luggage.”

He smiled at her. “Let’s go put it in the SUV then.” He paused, looking over the large group. He and Diana had ridden together, and since his children had fender-benders, they’d picked up Cass, Tim, Stephanie, Duke, and Damian; there wasn’t room for (Y/N) too.

“Father? Is something the matter?” (Y/N) was staring at him with concern.

“There’s not enough room in the SUV for you too. Maybe we—”

“There’s room in my car for (Y/N)!” Kyle blurted out, smiling nervously at Bruce. “I can follow behind you.”

Before anyone could screech ‘NO!’, mainly Dick and Jason, (Y/N) lit up like the morning sun. “Oh, that is a wonderful idea!” she grabbed onto Diana’s arm. “We should all stop for ice-cream though! Mother, what do you say?”

She smiled at her and leaned over, kissing her head. “I say that sounds like a fantastic idea, daughter.”

Kyle grinned and held out his arm for (Y/N), her giggling as she took it. “You know, I don’t live in Gotham, (Y/N), but I do know a good gelato store around the area.”

“What is gelato?” she asked, and he groaned.

“Oh, I can’t believe you don’t know what that is.” He started off, pilling her along, leaving everyone behind. “Don’t worry, I’ll show you.”

Jason’s face pinched and he looked over at Bruce. “Can I break the no-kill rule just once?”

Bruce blinked, crossing his arms over his chest as he watched his daughter laughing along with Kyle, both looking like newlyweds already. “Believe it or not, I’m strongly considering it.”

“Bruce.” Diana admonished. “Let (Y/N) and Kyle become friends. You know she doesn’t have many outside this family here.”

Dick growled. “Except Kyle doesn’t want to be friends with (Y/N), Diana. He wants to be her boyfriend.”

“They just met though?”

“Yeah, and Kyle’s a propose on week two type of man,” Jason griped. “Jesus Christ, this is going to be a disaster.”

“I don’t know about you guys, but (Y/N) and Kyle said gelato and you guys are just standing here.” Tim said. “Can we go now?”

[invisibleanonymousmonsters]

Could you please write Jason and Y/N (Father of Mine Universe) with prompts 48, 31, and maybe 30? could go either way.

Even if you choose not to write this, thanks for creating Father of Mine, it's one of my favorite fics!

Father of Mine

48. Using your body to shield them from attack.

31. Hurriedly checking for their pulse.

30. Performing CPR when they stop breathing.

Jason and Y/N were walking along the water after getting dinner.

Most of the harbors in Gotham were run by one crime lord or another. Which meant that there were very few areas on the water for civilians to enjoy – or feel safe. 

But Jason knew of a strip that was under the radar.

There were a few other couples with the same idea. And random groups of kids and teenagers hanging out and messing around.

Jason was relaxed.

That was his first mistake.

Jason had immediately clocked a random middle-aged man who was covered in sweat and was visibly trembling.

Being far too familiar with the sight, Jason assumed the guy was another unfortunate addict. 

But then he noticed the man was carrying a backpack.

Jason had all of 5 seconds to realize what was about to happen.

He shielded Y/N with his body while screaming as loud as he could, “Get down!”

Jason knew he couldn’t save everyone, and Y/N would always be his number one priority.

The next second, the bomb exploded.

The impact knocked Jason unconscious.

For how long, he had no idea.

He was disoriented from the explosion, his ears ringing from tinnitus and his vision struggling to focus from the vertigo. Yet, somehow he could still hear the beating of his heart in his eardrums. 

People were screaming in pain around him and others were crying as they looked down at their loved ones. Half the harbor was on fire from the explosion. Cement and debris was everywhere. Jason’s hair was grey from it.

He blinked and then panicked.

“Y/N!” Jason screamed when he realized she wasn’t anywhere near him.

He jumped to his feet and whipped around in every direction looking for her.

“Y/N!” He screamed even louder, his throat burning from the effort.

Then he realized when the explosion when off they had been standing next to the railing that blocked off the water. The railing that had now been blasted away and into the harbor.

Jason sprinted to the edge and looked down at the black water below.

Without hesitation, he dove into the depths.

It was almost impossible to see anything.

But just seconds later, he found Y/N unconscious and completely submerged.

Jason had never swam faster in his life.

But when they breached, Y/N didn’t gasp for air.

She was completely unconscious.

Jason’s eyes darted around, trying to find their escape.

By some miracle, there was a rusty ladder that led back up to the pier from the water.

Jason put Y/N’s body over his shoulder as he climbed the ladder, silently praying that the metal didn’t break under their combined weight.

When they reached the top, he gently laid her down and his fingers shot to the pulse point at her neck.

Nothing.

“No, no, no,” Jason mumbled. “Y/N. Come on, baby. You’re not doing this to me.”

He found his Red Hood comm in the pocket of his jacket, and put it to his hear.

“Contact Bruce,” he commanded the AI as he started performing CPR on Y/N.

“What is it?” Bruce answered with slight panic. 

Jason had never called him like this before. And therefore Bruce knew immediately something terrible happened.

“Get the fucking jet here right now,” Jason growled.

“What’s happened?” Bruce asked, but it was obvious he was moving around already to leave.

“There was an explosion. She doesn’t have a pulse and she’s not breathing,” it was all Jason was capable of giving him. “Just get the fucking jet here now!”

He didn’t have time to explain more and hung up. And he didn’t have to say Y/N’s name for Bruce know who he was talking about. There was only one woman in Jason’s life that would have him sounding so panicked and desperate.

Jason continued his CPR, fully focused now that he knew Bruce was on the way.

Still nothing.

He did another round of compressions.

Jason’s eyes started watery as his mind began to believe that Y/N wasn’t going to make it.

He wouldn’t survive.

Y/N had changed his life. She made him better, made him good, made him want to worker harder – do literally anything to become the man she deserved and to continue to be deserving of her love.

“Please,” Jason whimpered. “Please don’t leave me.”

But then Y/N’s eyes shot open and she immediately turned over and started coughing up water.

“Holy fuck,” Jason gasped in relief at the sight.

Y/N continued coughing until her throat was scratched and dry.

Jason rubbed her back, trying to comfort her without preventing her body from getting all the water out of her lungs.

After she finished, she was shaking from being freezing cold and from the shock.

Despite him also being wet, Jason put his coat over her shoulders.

“Don’t ever fucking do that to me again,” Jason begged Y/N as he pulled her into his arms. 

He kissed the crown of her head and hoped his body heat would be enough to warm her up.

“What happened?” Her voice had never been raspier and it was now quivering.

“A bomb went off. I thought I shielded you from it, but the impact must’ve thrown you into the harbor.”

“I’m OK,” she tried to tell him. But her shaking voice was unconvincing. 

Jason wasn’t letting go of her anytime soon.

It was only 5 minutes later that the batplane touched down on what remained of the pier.

Jason looked up to see Dick, Tim, and Damian jump out and immediately start helping the injured.

But Bruce, dressed in his Batman uniform, was walking straight to Jason and Y/N.

“She needs to go to a hospital,” Jason called out when Bruce was a few yards away. “Her heart stopped beating and her lungs took in too much water.”

Jason knew Bruce wouldn’t argue with taking Y/N there immediately.

Bruce was clearly relieved at seeing his daughter alive and conscious. But that didn’t mean she was in the clear. Nearly drowning still had its risks. If her heart stopped beating, she was in danger of brain damage or pneumonia.

“I’ll take her. You help the others,” Bruce ordered as he stepped forward to take Y/N from Jason’s arms.

“Like fucking hell I am,” Jason growled as he stood up with Y/N in his arms.

Bruce was about to fight him on it, but then he met Y/N’s eyes. Her skin was pale and almost had a blue tint to it. She looked so small and vulnerable in Jason’s arms. Not like the strong and grown woman that had first strutted into Wayne Manor.

“I’m not leaving her,” Jason added for good measure.

Bruce finally sighed and nodded. “Take the jet. You know where to go. I’ll meet you there.”

Before Jason could carry her away, Y/N whispered, “What about the others?” 

Her eyes tried to look around her boyfriend’s broad shoulders to see the other victims.

“B is going to help them,” Jason gently told her. He even angled his body to block her line of sight. She didn’t need to see any of it. 

“We already have ambulance and firemen on the way,” Bruce added, hoping it would convince her further not to worry herself. 

There was nothing she could do for them anyway. 

Then Bruce locked eyes with Jason. “Go. Get out of here. Take care of her.”

“Always,” Jason muttered quickly before hurrying Y/N to the jet.

————————

Y/N woke up to two low voices clearly having a serious discussion, but trying to keep their voices down.

When she opened her eyes, Y/N realized she was in a hospital room. But it wasn’t just any room. It seemed like a five-star hotel with how fancy it was. It didn’t have that sterile smell or those harsh fluorescent lights that caused headaches.

“It was a turf war,” Bruce told Jason quietly. “Carmine has jurisdiction over the harbor the two of you were at tonight. But Farrelli wanted it for himself. He forced his latest victim to bring the bomb.”

Jason crossed his arms. “So, the guy was dead either way, Farrelli just thought he’d put him to some use before he murdered him.”

Bruce nodded. “And kill five more people with him.”

“Five people died?” Y/N burst out without realizing it.

Both men’s heads whipped in her direction.

“You’re awake,” Jason sighed and immediately rushed to her side.

“What hospital am I at?” She mumbled, looking around again.

“Gotham General,” he told her as he sat on the edge of the bed to face her.

Jason gently grabbed her hand and kissed the back of it. But he had no intention of letting it go, keeping a tight hold and rubbing his thumb back and forth across her skin.

Bruce was slower to join them as he walked with his hands in his pant pockets.

“This isn’t Gotham General,” she commented with a suspicious gaze. 

Jason scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Well, as soon as Bruce arrived, they realized that you’re Gotham royalty by blood, and brought you to a special suite.”

Then Y/N’s eyes slowly moved to her father. “Five people died from the explosion?”

She needed to know. But she also knew that both men would try to protect her from possible survivor’s guilt.

So Bruce just nodded.

“How are you feeling?” Jason asked, trying to distract her by changing the subject.

“Tired. And my throat is sore,” she admitted with a light shrug.

Then she looked up at Jason and really took him in.

There were dark shadows under his eyes – the eyes that were still a bit bloodshot. 

Had he been crying? She hadn’t registered that. 

His hair was a mess, probably from drying haphazardly after jumping into the water to save her.

“Are you OK?” She asked.

It would be right on brand for Jason to risk his life saving her, but ignore any and all injures that he’d received from the same life-threatening travesty.

“I’m fine. Always am,” Jason reassured her too quickly.

Bruce chimed in,“We were all just worried about you, Y/N.”

Both men knew her next question was going to be about the well-being of Damian, Dick, and Tim.

“Can we go home?” She asked softly.

Y/N had always hated hospitals. And once her mother got cancer, Y/N absolutely despised them. Now all she had attached to them was bad memories that constantly threatened to trigger her. 

“They just need to get a scan back, make sure everything’s good,” Jason tried to comfort her. “Once that’s good, I’ll take you home.”

He knew her distaste for hospitals and was prepared for her to want to escape at the earliest opportunity.

“Scan?” Y/N questioned.

“You didn’t have a pulse,” Bruce explained. “You have a concussion. We need to make sure there was no brain damage or any lasting side effects.”

“Right,” she mumbled, trying not to sound worried.

“You’re gonna be fine,” Jason reassured her as he cupped her cheek.

“Perhaps you should stay at the manor for a few days,” Bruce offered. “You can relax and not be bothered.”

“She can not be bothered in our apartment,” Jason interrupted, giving him side eye.

“Jason…” Y/N warned gently.

She knew the signs of Jason getting worked up. The fire in his eyes was always something Y/N could read – more than anyone else.

Bruce wasn’t offended by Jason’s little snipe. He was used to his temper. But his gaze did turn rather serious. 

“Could I talk to you outside for a moment?”

Jason was about to refuse, not wanting to leave Y/N’s side. But he knew that would just most likely lead to an argument. And Y/N didn’t need to hear or see that. She was already exhausted and recovering. The last thing she needed was to witness was her father and boyfriend going at it – especially over her.

So Jason just nodded and stormed out of the room.

The quicker they got this over with, the better.

As soon as the door closed, Jason was sizing Bruce up.

“What exactly is your next move?” Bruce questioned.

“I’m going after Farrelli,” Jason rumbled, as if it was obvious.

No one put Y/N in danger and got away with it. Jason had already come up with a plan on how to seek his revenge. 

It was going to be gruesome and dirty, but nothing less than what the bastards deserved.

Bruce clearly had expected this answer. “So do you plan on doing that while you take care of Y/N?” And he tilted his head as he challenged Jason.

“Are you really trying to stop me?”

Bruce took a step forward. “No, Jason. I’m trying to protect you from yourself. You get blinded by vengeance. And I let you get away with it. But now your actions don’t just effect you…they effect her, too.”

Jason blinked.

“Y/N needs you right now. Even though she will act like she doesn’t.” Bruce inhaled. “If you’re going to put revenge over her wellbeing, she should stay at the manor.”

This was a somewhat of a warning – an opportunity for Jason to do the right thing before he could make his mistake.

Jason’s head hung low now. “I can’t let him get away with it. She almost died, Bruce.”

“And he won’t. But we’ll take care of it,” Bruce promised.

Jason thought it about a moment, before he finally nodded slowly. “I think the manor would be good. But I won’t leave her.”

“I never said you had to,” Bruce corrected.

Jason nodded again and made his way to the door of Y/N’s room again.

“Jason?” Bruce called.

He turned around with an eyebrow quirked.

“Thank you for saving her life.”

Jason tried not to roll his eyes, but took a few steps back to Bruce. 

“You have your opinions about me and her, I’m sure. But I want to make this is clear: I’m always going to protect her. Always. What happened tonight is never going to happen again. I’d die protecting her.”

Jason didn’t wait for Bruce’s response before turning back around. 

But just as he opened Y/N’s door her heard, “I know, Jason. I’ve always known.”

—————

Jason was able to convince Y/N to stay at the manor.

And she surprisingly agreed – as long as he came with her.

Alfred spoiled her rotten with all of her favorite meals. He was constantly bring her tea or coffee. 

Damian ordered all of his pets to keep her company and cuddle with her. To the point where Jason was annoyed because there was literally no space for him.

Tim downloaded a hundred movies for her to watch. 

Dick sent flowers and chocolates. 

Even Clark stopped by when he heard what happened. 

Unbeknownst to Y/N, all the boys and Bruce were working on taking down Farrelli. 

If Jason was the man from just a few years ago, Farrelli’s corpse would already be rotting somewhere in Gotham. But he had changed. Now they had to do things the right way.

Jason stuck to Y/N’s side like glue. He hovered, watched her like a hawk, wouldn’t let her do anything on her own.

After of a few days of this, Y/N finally had enough.

“You gonna talk to me anytime soon?” She asked him in bed on their third night.

Jason broke their eye contact.

“Jason. Please?” She whispered.

Silence filled the room.

“I can’t do it.”

Her brow furrowed. “Can’t do what?”

For a split moment, she thought he was about to try and break up with her. 

“I can’t watch you get hurt again. I just…I can’t.”

She cupped his cheeks. “But I’m right here. And I’m fine, Jason.”

“When I…” He hesitated. “When I died. I knew it was coming. I saw the bomb counting down and I knew there was no escape. I accepted my fate. I knew I was going to die. And I was scared.” 

Jason shook his head and took in a deep breath, “But Y/N…that was nothing compared to what I felt when I was convinced I’d lost you. I’m never been so fucking terrified in my life.”

Y/N smothered him with her embrace. “I’m so sorry for scaring you. But I’m OK. Please just focus on that. Please.”

“I can’t lose you, Y/N.” Jason whispered into her hair. “This place was hell before I met you. And I have no fuckin’ interest in fighting it without you.”

Y/N wished she could promise Jason that she would never leave him. But she was the child of a mother who passed far too soon. She knew life and death could be so cruel, ripping the loved ones away with or without warning.

No, she didn’t die this time. But who was to say something like this wouldn’t happen again? And maybe next time, she wouldn’t be so lucky. They lived in Gotham after all.

“Fate may have other ideas…But I never plan on leaving your side, Jason. I love you too much to do anything else.”

Jason actually laughed. “I can fight fate.”

He’d done it once before.

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

I have a few more of these prompts for bonus material. But let me know what you think 🤗

[dairy-farmer]

Had a dream the other night where Tim learned from a young age that if there was one thing that made sad, middle aged men feel better, it was knocking up a cute pussy

It started with his own dad, who seemed so sad and lonely all the time, and would admit to Tim that he and Janet just weren't in love anymore. This broke Tim's heart, and so he sat on his dad's lap to hug him. He's only wearing a nightgown tho, so when Jack grinds against Tim's pussy he feels it, and he /loves/ it. Twenty minutes later and Jack has Tim thrown over his desk and is pounding into his little pussy hard and fast. They fuck often from here on out, and it doesn't occur to either of them to maybe be careful, and by the time one of them does think of it, Tim is already pregnant (finally after 12 long years of being an only child, Tim is finally getting the baby brother or sister he's always wanted!)

He's worried about Jack's reaction but his dad is over the moon at the news, having always wanted more than one child, but Janet never wanting to deal with another one. At this point, Jack is home most of the time while Janet is almost never in Gotham, constantly going from place to place for their company while Jack stays home and fucks his pregnant, 12 year old slut of a son.

When Tim has his baby brother, it's only about two or three months before he's pregnant again. After his second brother is born, Jack brings something up one day.

"you've always been interested in the business, right Timmy?" Tim perks up and nods his head gently, not wanting to disturb the two week old nursing from his full little tit. "Well, how would you like to join me for a meeting in a few weeks? We can have a nanny watch the boys for the evening, and I can show you how you can help the company"

Tim's eyes shine. "I can help right now? Don't I have to be older?" And Jack smirks reaching out and pinching the unoccupied nipple, making Tim whine and squirm at the pleasure. "normally, yes, you would have to be older. But I have the perfect job for you. Sound good?" And Tim nods eagerly (he is surprised when later that night, after the babies are asleep, Jack fucks him hard and fast and then /pulls out/, coming on Tim's chest and face. Typically his dad likes to come deep in Tim's pussy, and Tim figured they would start trying for another baby now that he's gotten the all clear from their private doctor to have sex again)

A month later, and Jack brings Tim to a meeting of DI investors. It's boring and dull and Tim nearly falls asleep near the end, but then his dad excuses everyone but three men, and finally Tim learns about what his new job is

Jack let's the highest payer fuck and knock up his son, who is a proven breeder, having two babies before he was even 14. Tim is apprehensive but also incredibly turned on by the idea of being nothing better than a baby factory, just a little body designed to get knocked up and push out babies. He is fucked that night by some old man whose name he doesn't bother remembering, and he visits for the next three weeks to fuck Tim and fill him with come until the test comes back positive

These men are only paying for the pleasure of breeding Tim, and while they get video and picture updates as his pregnancy progresses, in the end, when the baby is born, they're Tim's and only Tim's, which is just how he likes it. 5 months before he turns 15, Tim has his first little girl

A month after she's born and Tim is ready for another one, but he manages to convince his father to contact Bruce Wayne, who is grieving the loss of his son, Jason. Tim thinks he can help Mr. Wayne overcome his grief and move on (and hopefully Batman will get better as a result, Tim has seen how violent Batman has been getting since Jason died) if he offers to give him a baby of his own. It works and Bruce fucks him brutally, like an animal, and Tim has never come so hard in his life

When he's 2 months pregnant, his mother dies. When he's 7 months pregnant, his father is murdered. Tim mourns his father (his mother not so much, she was never really around enough for Tim to miss) and is quickly invited to live with the Wayne's next door, along with his 3 - soon to be 4 - babies

Once he has Bruce's baby, the older man is quick to knock Tim up a second time, much to Tim's glee. By the time that baby is born, Jim Gordon is going through a divorce and a scandal, and Tim can't let him be so miserable all the time, not when he has a way to help! It helped his dad, after all, and Bruce as well. So he lets the commissioner bend him over the bat signal one night and knock his little 16-almost-17 year old pussy up with his sixth baby

After this, Tim let's Dick get him pregnant, and then Bruce again, and from there his reputation grows until he's got a plan to let almost every man on the JL fuck him and knock him up. He's booked solid for the next few years: after he has Bruce's baby, he gives one to Oliver, then Hal, then Arthur, then Barry, Clark finally joins in after being unsure about all of this, Bruce again, and a handful more JL members, some of the Teen Titans, too

Everyone is so happy and content to have Tim as their slutty little broodmare, and Tim is just happy to help (and being fucked pregnant so often is an added bonus, ofc, as well as all of his sweet little babies)

But yeah my dream was basically just

Tim, talking to an older man: you seem sad. Would knocking me up help you feel better 🥺

(spoiler alert: it does)

YES YES YES YESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE BREEDER TIM!!!!

tim knowing that the cure for depression is his pussy 🥺.

him getting fucked by his dad and having his own siblings, having a child with a DI investor who lets tim 'keep' the baby.

BRUCE!!! adopting tim when his parents both die and fucking him like an animal at the offer of giving him a baby. and then doing it again!!! him fuckign tim throughout his entire pregnancy because tim is so good at taking him despite being so small and bruce feels something other than pain and anger when buried balls deep into the pussy of this underaged slut.

then gordon (i'm so happy that gordon is here!!!!) fucking this little pocket pussy full of his cum and getting another red-haired baby out of it.

tim getting passed around the justice league!!!!! some of them are doing it because they want more kids and others because they find out they have a breeding kink by listening to others. either way tim gets more sweet little babies and a guarantee of a long list of fathers that will keep him full and swelled up with children. just how he likes 🤗!!!!!!!!!!

[thevindicativevordan]

Why isn't Nightwing a bigger deal? He has all of Batman's skills and Superman's faith in humanity and is arguably the most beloved hero in the DCU, but most people seem to know him either as the leader of the N̶o̶t̶ ̶J̶L̶ Teen Ttians or just Robin.

Thank you for asking me about Nightwing, I've been wanting to write a piece about him for a while now. The short version is that everyone who claims Dick becoming Nightwing was him "moving out of Batman's shadow and becoming his own man" is completely wrong.

Dick Grayson is a fantastic character, someone who saved Bruce Wayne in-universe both by forcing Batman to grow up a bit, and the countless times he saved Batman's life as his partner whether as Robin or Nightwing. Dick saved Batman in the real world as well, hard to believe but Batman was actually in danger of being cancelled due to poor sales early on. Enter Robin, a young daredevil audience stand in the creators hoped would get kids interested in reading Batman. And it worked! Sales on Batman doubled once Robin showed up which is crazy to think about, but Dick Grayson has always been a popular character. Cartoons like Teen Titans, Batman: The Animated Series, and The Batman only helped grow his audience.

Character-wise, Dick Grayson really does fill a number of crucial roles in the DCU. For Batman, Dick is proof that Batman is a positive force. Meeting Batman helped change Dick for the better, helped him heal after his parents died. With Dick, Batman can take comfort in knowing that yes, he has made a difference in the world for at least one orphan boy, which is all he wanted when he lost his parents himself. To the wider DCU, Dick is a friendly face who convinces others that Batman is competent and not a complete asshole. He took this kid in, trained him to be one of the best heroes the DCU has seen, and did it all out of the kindness of his heart. That someone like Dick can confront the evils of Gotham and not break means there's still hope for that city. As Robin, Dick has led the Titans and is an icon in his own right as The Sidekick, the original, the one every other Robin is built around copying or contrasting. The one all other superhero sidekicks are drawing on as a basis. As Robin Dick Grayson is very much on Batman's level.

Just not as Nightwing. As Nightwing, Dick has been a second rate Daredevil which means he's a third rate Batman (fully prepared to get hate for this but I've read and enjoyed the Miller and Bendis DD runs so I feel entitled to my opinion). A typical Nightwing run tends to go like this: Moving to Bludhaven (which is Gotham... but WORSE!), Dick Grayson usually enrolls in a pointless job we don't care about in order to provide some meaningless soap opera drama that doesn't go anywhere. Patrolling the city as Nightwing, he fights a variety of bad guys who are usually rather lame and unthreatening, with his big bad being a Kingpin knockoff called Blockbuster. Villains are fought, long running plotlines are set up, then everything is abandoned because it's Batfamily event time, and Dick has to run back to Gotham in order to play sidekick again. Usually his involvement is completely superfluous and it would've been better if the writer had gotten to opt out. By the time we finally get back to Nightwing's solo plotlines, the audience has usually ceased to care and the run gets cut short.

That's how Nightwing has been since the New 52 at least. Anyone who thinks that's "becoming their own man" is out of their mind. Dick is so thoroughly in Batman's shadow that he got shot in the head and spent a longer time as "Ric" which everyone fucking hated and sold like shit, than he did as Agent Grayson which was extremely well-received. Reiterating: Ric went on longer than Grayson because of a fucking Batman plotpoint Tom King wanted where Bruce was sad and cut off from the Batfamily because of Dick getting shot. Not just calling out King either, how many times was Kyle Higgins Nightwing run derailed because of Scott Snyder's crossovers? Or how about that entire run getting dumped to the side because Johns wanted to out Dick during Forever Evil, a Justice League/Lex Luthor story? DC has repeatedly made their contempt for Nightwing clear, he's Batman's sidekick still in their eyes, and he serves whatever story role the Batman writer wants.

Hell his best stories tend to have been the ones where he's not Nightwing. He was Robin in a good chunk of the Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans run. Morrison really showcased his depth as a character when they wrote him as Batman, their time with Dick under the cowl was actually one of the first Batman runs I ever read, and no Nightwing run has ever matched it in terms of quality in my humble opinion. Scott Snyder's work with DickBats also was a high point for the character, showing Dick as competent and examining his relationship with Gotham and the Gordons. King and Seeley gave him one of the best comic runs with Grayson, a series where he wasn't even a "superhero" technically! When it comes to actual pre-New 52 Nightwing runs that are highly recommended where he *is* Nightwing, there's Chuck Dixon and uhhhhhhh... Tomasi's brief run before Dick became Batman? It's not exactly an overwhelming list.

Look there has been good work done with Nightwing, I'm not claiming there hasn't been. Tim Seeley wrote a great run with Nightwing Rebirth. Seeley fleshed out Dick's Rogues Gallery with cool new ones like Raptor, he brought back old foes like Dr. Hurt (why oh why couldn't you have brought back Flamingo too?), he gave Dick's world some character it solely needed. Bludhaven under Seeley is pretty much the only time I've really felt like it lived up to being Dick's city.

The problem with fictional cities is you have to put in the work to give them the character of real cities. You have to make the cities feel like characters in their own right. Gotham is the best example of this, it's a character all it's own, one that tells you a lot about Batman and his cast. In contrast Bludhaven is usually one of the worst. Any place that wants to claim to be worse than the city that is built over the gate to hell and gets wrecked every other month by the Arkham freaks has to really put in the work to compete. Simply put, Bludhaven typically fails utterly. There's nothing about it that makes you really buy it's worse than Gotham, I mean does anyone really think Nightwing's Rogues wouldn't get their lunches eaten by Batman's? No, no one genuinely buys that. When Bludhaven claims to be worse, it just comes across as tryhard, an attribute that does end up telling you about Nightwing in unintentional ways.

So Seeley didn't do that. Instead he created a city built for a hero like Dick Grayson. Someone who is bright and flashy, but does have an element of darkness to him. Someone who loves the spotlight, but often uses it to obscure. Seeley turned Bludhaven into Las Vegas, and that was the fucking best concept for Bludhaven I have ever seen, it makes so much sense. Las Vegas is the "Entertainment Capital of the World" and isn't that the perfect city for a hero who got their start working in the circus? Isn't the aesthetics of the gleaming casinos, the glamorous sex appeal of the performers, and the spectacle of the shows, all being used to cover up the seediness of mob bosses meeting backstage perfect for Nightwing? It's so utterly unlike New York City, yet Las Vegas is still dangerous, it's got a crime culture all it's own. Seeley used it to great effect, as did Humphries during his brief run, and I will always be pissed that DC didn't continue to use it. That should have stuck around and been the definitive look for Bludhaven.

How Seeley's take on Bludhaven was treated feels like a small scale version of how Nightwing in general gets treated. Whenever creators pitched ideas for him, if editorial thought there was potential to break big, they asked for those ideas to be repurposed for Batman instead. Anything big or good gets repurposed for Batman or tossed to the side so Nightwing can go back to his default: having irrelevant adventures in a city that is supposedly worse than Gotham but can't live up to it. Just like how Nightwing is supposedly better than Batman but never gets to show it. Goddamn it's so frustrating seeing his potential get wasted like that.

The Nightwing book should be one of DC's most ambitious books in terms of storytelling. You can go from traditional superhero stories, to romantic soap opera, to spy stories, to crime noir, to horror, to cosmic adventures, and ALL of them would fit because Nightwing is someone who has a foot in both Gotham and Metropolis. He's got friends everywhere on every team, and has been a hero longer than most Leaguers have at this point. No reason DC should still be afraid to let him loose and insisting on hewing close to what Dixon established almost over 30 years ago is only holding him back. At the very least get him some better Rogues, why the hell didn't he get to keep Professor Pyg? That's Dick's villain not Bruce's! Bullshit that they didn't let Dick keep him. Hopefully Flamingo comes back, with a slight revamp I think he'd make a great reoccurring Nightwing Rogue.

Luckily it does look somewhat like Nightwing fans have reason to be optimistic. While Taylor isn't to my taste, DC clearly views him as a "big" writer, and that they put him on Nightwing says a lot. Taylor has been selling well so far, so hopefully he gets to tell his story, hilarious that even he lampshaded having to write Dick running over to Gotham for another tie-in after Taylor's big opening arc was all about Dick committing himself and his money to Bludhaven. Scott Snyder is apparently working on a Black Label Nightwing book which will explore how he's a different detective than Bruce. The Gotham Knights video game has him as one of the main stars, and while Titans is... controversial, it's one of the most popular streaming shows and Dick is the main character. There's a lot of content coming that features him in the starring role, and that will only help his star rise further.

For the first time in, well, ever it feels like DC may be serious about elevating him. Time will tell if it pays off, but I for one choose to be optimistic that the 2020s will be a turning point for Dick Grayson where Nightwing becomes hugely popular in his own right. Not just as Batman's sidekick.