#he also wants to see if he can finally use this to get under batman's skin

[hypewinter]

DP x DC prompts

Just a couple of ideas that have me by the choke hold right now

Danny is Jason's older brother who died and got reincarnated. After circumstances force him to Gotham, he finds out that his beloved little brother is now a crime lord

As all the others leave the league of assassins, Danny is left behind to be molded by Ra's Al Ghul. One day Ra's decides to unleash his prized assassin on Gotham

Danny moves to Gotham and starts helping out at a local pet shelter (mainly so cujo can make friends). It is there where he runs into one Damian Wayne who is setting off his must protect senses

Danny becomes a back door engineer. He fixes things for cheap no questions asked. No one can beat him when it comes to using whatever you have laying around to build something from scratch. That's why he's Red Hood's personal mechanic

Danny is a clone of Batman and Superman. Superman is grateful that he can finally do right by his clone. Conner is exceedingly jealous of Danny's treatment. Batman is contemplating taking his friend to court for custody. And Danny is just vibing because now he has two powerful dads who won't let the giw get their hands on him.

And the final one that is really rotating around in my head:

Danny is Batman's informant. He can get any info the bat needs in record time. Batman is the only one who knows about Danny and his abilities so whenever anyone else catches a glimpse of him, they think it's Bruce's secret love child. Damian is not happy about this.

[bet-on-me-13]

Danny is Cass's brother

So! Back when David Cain was making his "Perfect Weapon", he came across a complication.

Lady Shiva, the woman who was set to give him his Weapon, was pregnant with Twins.

He decided that the Spare was useless to him, and that he needed to devote all his time to the Weapon. He was about to give it up, or maybe just dispose of it, when he decided that it was fine to keep it. A Spare is still a Spare after all, if the Weapon ever failed or died, he could start from scratch.

So, Danny was raised for the first 8 years of his life as a Spare Weapon. He didn't get the same rigorous training that Cass did, as she was the main focus, but he was still trained in the basics. Even a Spare Weapon need maintenance after all.

Then, when he was 8, Cass broke into his Cell Room and ran from the Base with him. She knew that once she escaped, Danny would be the next one to suffer, so she took him as well.

Unfortunately, they got seperated somewhere in Illinois when they got caught by some of David's mercenaries.

Cass kept going, running all across the country before ending up in Gotham at 15 (1 year earlier than normal). There, she got adopted by Bruce Wayne and became the Vigilante, Orphan. She never stopped looking for her brother, but at the very least she knew that he must have escaped David Cain's men. They were focused specifically on her after all.

Cass had enlisted the help of her new Family to search for him. DNA tracking, Facial Recognition, even asking some of their Underworld Contacts for information.

Unfortunately, they had no leads. Until one day when one of their Facial Recognition Programs finally picks up on a Match.

The face of a Small Time Hero in Illinois.

...

When Danny and Cass got seperated, he ended up in Amity Park. After a few days of Wandering, he was found by Jazz, who then took him to her Parents and convinced them to Adopt him.

When Danny is 14, he is in a Lab Accident that turns him into a Halfa. Using his New Powers and Old Training, Danny manages to keep his new Family and Home safe from the Ghosts coming through the Fentons Portal. He becomes a Hero basically, even though he doesn't really want to attention.

He thanks the Ancients when he finds out about the Media Blackout Amity is Under. He guesses it's not great, but at least he is safe for now.

He continues like this until one day when he is 16, and there is a knock on the Door.

He opens it, and stands shocked when he sees his Sister. Not Jazz, the wonderful woman who took him in and taught him how to speak all those years ago. The one who has acted as his Older Sister for the past 5 years.

His Sister. His Twin. Cass.

After a moment of Shock, they simultaneously go in for a Hug and start to cry a little.

After a few minutes of calming down, Danny introduces his Sister to his bewildered Family. Cass likewise introduces her Adoptive Brother, Dick, who came along to make sure she was safe on the trip.

While Dick and the Fentons get acquainted, Danny takes Cass up to his room to talk.

She explains what happened after they got seperated, what she is doing there, and how she found him.

She tells him that she had originally come to Amity to bring him to her new Family, but she could see the love he held for the Fentons. Also the town needed its Hero.

Danny is shocked that she even found him through the Media Blackout, but not so much at the fact that she nailed his secret identity on sight. She was always observant after all.

After that, Cass and Dick stay in Amity for a few weeks so Danny and Cass can catch up. He introduces her to his friends, shows her around his parents Lab, and even let's her meet some of his kore friendly Rogues.

They are just having a great time.

...

Back in Gotham, Batman just got a very frantic call from Barry.

"Bruce, I just came back from the future!" Shouted Barry through the Comms.

"Explain." Demanded Batman. Barry knew better than to Time Travel without just cause. If he was forced to time travel, it was serious.

"A Villain shows up, an Apocalyptic Level Villain." Barry explains, "He destroys Everything. And I mean Everything. None of us can stop him, he has too many powers to combat. Flight, Invisibility, Intangiblity, Energy Beams, Energy Constructs, Ice Manipulation, Weather Manipulation, Electrokinesis, the list goes on."

"How do we stop him?" Asked Batman. This was dangerous, a Villain with even half of those powers was deadly already.

"It's complicated, but I think he followed me and another Hero back in Time. I think it may be a Closed Time Loop. He is the catalyst for his own creation."

"Is there any way to break the Loop? What is the main driving force to his Creation?" Asks Batman.

"Well, I know his name at least. He goes by Phantom, but his real name is Danny Fenton." Barry explains.

Bruce feels his heart grow cold. He knows both of those names.

Phantom, aka Danny Fenton, aka Daniel Cain.

Cassandra's Brother.

Barry seems to hesitate, before continuing, "...and as far as I know, the catalyst for his creation is the death of Orphan in Amity Park."

[spacedace]

So I've seen a lot of "Jazz works as a therapist at Arkam" in the dp x dc fandom, and while I like the concept, I also feel like Jazz would take one look at the place and immediately be like "what the absolute fuck" at just the everything of the place.

Like, she either nopes out after the tour during the interview or quits not too long afterward starting there, not because she can't take it but because she's so appalled by what's going on there and can smell the corruption rolling off the place and knows no one sent to there is ever actually going to get the help they need.

So Jazz decides to open a private practice instead while still being absolutely determined to work with the various rogues in the city, she is here to help and nothing is going to stop her.

So she just starts showing up at known hangouts of rogues and during their heists/schemes/sprees, and even fights between them and the batfam, just like

"Hi! It’s so nice to meet you! My name is Dr. Jasmine Fenton/Nightingale/whatever last name she’s using and I was hoping we could talk!"

Casually kicks a baterang away without looking because she's being polite and professional!

"I understand that your experience with therapy through Arkam has been nothing but atrocious and that you are rightfully -"

Kicks Batman away without breaking eye contact or a sweat.

"Suspicious of attempting therapy again, and Idon't want to force anything on you, therapy should be on your terms after the experiences you've had but -"

Grabs Robin out of the air as he leaps at the rogue she's talking to and tucks him under her arm, ignoring his feral hissing and all attempts to break her hold.

"-I really think that you'd find it beneficial, even if I'm not the right therapist for you."

The rogue in question is having the time of their life and takes Jazz's business card - and a few extra to pass around - not really intending to actually ever book a therapy appointment with her but way too entertained and excited to share this madness with everyone else.

But then one of the rogues actually looks up Jazz's website and sees all the various safe guards she’s put in place to ensure that any villians that come to her will be protected while seeing her - soundproof therapy room, regular sweeps for listening and tracking devices, the most insane firewalls and protections anyone has ever seen on her network, and ooh she provides snacks and drinks!

So someone finally books an appointment with her, half convinced she's either going to turn them in or is a villain herself intent to experiment on them, but then it’s actually really nice??? And they feel a lot better afterwards?? She doesn't even say anything to indicate that she wants them to stop being villains, she just wants them to be okay??

So more and more rogues start going to her, and Batman was already losing his mind about this woman before - Oracle can't hack her system?!? And her background check shows a totally normal Psychiatrist?? - but now half of Gotham's heavy hitters and a dozen or so other minor league villains are seeing her regularly and every time he tries to get info on any plans the rogues might be scheme via her office it fails utterly. Nightwing got knocked out with something called a creep stick and when he tried to break in himself to get answers she just appeared out of no where and gave him the most scathing lecture about doctor-patient confidentiality before bullying him off her property and threatening to sick her brother on him if he tried again?

And because she's become such a figure in the Gotham underworld, she gets the attention of Joker.

And everyone, rogues and Bats alike, are terrified that she’s going to try and take him on as a patient like she has so many other villains in the city and that's just a recipe for tragedy.

But then the Joker is on his way to the hospital with two broken legs and the fear of god beat into him babbling about eldritch nightmares and whenever anyone asks Jazz what happened she just shrugs and just says things like "I refused him as a patient, he's not my problem." Or "My brother doesn't like clowns." And just, does not elaborate.

Batman is losing his mind over it all. Jazz is just happy to be able to actually help the rogues. Arkam is less happy about how she absolutely destroys their reputation.

[nerdofspades]

Bruce looked at the pop-up on the Batcomputer's screen.

"Explain," he growled, glancing down at Tim.

"Not much to explain," Tim answered, pulling up lines of code. "It showed up ten seconds ago."

"I'm starting a full diagnostic," Barbara said, voice filtering through the speakers. "So far, I'm not seeing anything."

"And yet..." Time trailed off glancing at the window again. It had a video queued up to play and the words "IMPORTANT: PLEASE WATCH. DO NOT DELETE" in large text at the top.

"There's a new folder labeled 'a gift for Batman,'" Tim said. "Not something any of us made."

"Clearly."

"I'm still not finding any viruses, corrupted files, or spyware," Oracle said. "The new folder was programmed to stay in a hidden partition for a few days after it was placed. Then, obviously, the pop-up to catch our attention."

"Folder also has a text file named 'security notes,'" Tim said. "Maybe our new hacker is friendly?"

"It's starting to look like it," Oracle agreed. "The video is clean. It should be safe to watch."

Bruce sighed. "Then let's see what they've got for us."

-

The video opened with a dark room. The background hidden in shadows, while the foreground was well lit, letting them clearly see the tired teen in the center of the frame as he took a heavy swig from his mug before putting it down.

"Pulling up facial recognition."

He ran a hand through his messy black hair and then down his face, pinching his nose and hiding the bags under his blues eyes for a moment before he dropped his hand and finally looked at the camera.

"I really don't want to do this," he said, "but you need it." He glanced longingly off screen in the direction of the mug he'd put down.

"First of all, I think I should apologize for hacking you. Or asking my friend to, technically. I just. You need to know about this and I didn't know of another way to get it to you that would be secure.

"I did at least make him promise to make a record of how he got in so you can patch that.

"That out of the way... to business? I'm Danny Fenton, for the last year or so I have also been the hero Phantom in Amity Park. My parents are Jack and Maddie Fenton. They are ectobiologists and ghost hunters. While extremely biased and not actually that good at catching ghosts, their tech is easily the best in the business."

"That's a positive match."

"Running a search on Phantom."

"I- fucking shit." Danny put his head in his hands again, running them back through his hair before leaning back, almost collapsing into the chair.

"This kid has... gotten into some shit."

"Everyone knows you're the League's strategist, Batman. And. I'm strong enough. I can handle my problems, that's not what I'm worried about.

"It's been about a year and I've already been mind controlled once." Danny laughed. A dry, broken, almost desperate laugh. "And that was just some lowlife that wanted to rob jewelry stores. I'm still not worried about. It's not why I'm sending you this. The magic relic he used is broken and gone now."

"Well that explains one of his problems."

"The others?"

"An attempted kidnapping and fairly standard property damage. I want to see some footage of those fights before passing judgement."

"Even more standard given he doesn't seem to have a mentor. Batman, he was fourteen."

"No. I. I've seen a version of the future. One where I go mad. Where I snap. And the Justice League can't stop me.

"I don't know if I- he kills everyone. I don't know who, if anyone, makes it out. But it's not anyone that could really do much. I... I saw ten years after he- I snapped. Earth was little more than rubble and ash. Only one city was left holding out and it was about to fall- was falling when I got there.

"I've managed to change the time line. What broke him didn't happen here. But. I can't guarantee nothing ever could.

"So. Yeah. Next best thing is making sure you're prepared. All my powers. All my weaknesses. Everything I know of that could possibly hurt me. Schematics and blue prints for anything you could need to fight me, track me, keep me out, keep me contained. All nice and giftwrapped for your convenience.

"Uh... that's everything. Why is it always so awkward to end a video? Hopefully we never see each other? I guess? Pretty sure us actually meeting is gonna be a bad sign.

"You know what. I'm gonna turn this thing off now before I say something stupid."

-

"Batman, who's 'Phantom'?" Superman asked, glancing up from the Watchtower computer he was working at. "Aren't we supposed to vote on new members?"

Batman grunted. "He's not a member, just someone who understands the need for contingencies."

"You know what, I'm not gonna even ask."

"Probably for the best."

[swissboyhisch]

We're Not Naked

Pairing: Nico Hischier x Hughes!Reader

Summary: You just wanted some time alone with your partner. Sadly your brothers are clingy.

Word Count: 660

Warnings: Some making out and mentions of a boner

Request: From Anon I just wanna make out with Nico and then get caught tbh I have no shame 💀

A/N: I would love that as well. So I wrote this little piece. Thanks for the inspo :)

THE MASTERLIST JOIN THE TAGLIST HOCKEY DISCORD

As the photographer of the New Jersey Devils, you got to enjoy the training and game nights as a part of your job. A perk alongside working in the same organisation as your boyfriend. Nico, the captain of the New Jersey Devils, and yourself had been dating since you had met in 2019. You met through your brother, Jack. Which was the downside of working for the Devils; your brother was also on the team. Oh and can’t forget Luke, your youngest brother, who had moved to Newark to play on the team as well. 

After training, you and Nico went back to your apartment. He was house mates with Jack so it wasn’t unusual for him to stay with you as you didn’t live with anyone. Both of you got comfortable. You changed into your favourite lounging clothes then grabbed out some snacks. Since neither of you had work tonight, it was going to be a lazy day. The movie Batman was set up on the tv. Nico came back to the couch in just a pair of sweatpants. 

“You look cute,” Nico mutters, pressing a kiss to your lips as you two get comfy.

A giggle escapes your lips as he continues to pepper your face with kisses. He shifted you two around so you were under him. It had been a while since the two of you had some time to yourself. It soon heated up. Hands started wandering, finding exposed skin. 

“You taste like skittles,” You laugh, pulling away for a second to catch your breath. 

Nico smirks, “I could taste a little sweeter if you’d like.”

You didn’t bother replying, only kissing him once more. Nico pulled off your devils hoodie, leaving you with your comfy Bonds bra and your fluffy sleep shorts. You grin into the kiss when you feel Nico through his sweatpants. Mid tongue down your throat the door was thrown open. A door that was locked.

“Ew!” 

Luckily Nico had a quick reaction time and grabbed the throw blanket. He pulled it over you, covering your tits. “What the fuck are you two doing here?”

Your brothers, Jack and Luke, stood inside your apartment with Luke’s friends Seamus and Ethan behind them looking like deers in headlights. The only reason Jack even had a spare key was incase of emergencies. Not for random visits.

“What the fuck are you guys doing here?” You seeth. 

Luke pulled out his phone and called someone. “Yo Quinn. We just walked in on (Y/N) and Hischier making out naked on the couch.”

“We’re not naked!” You shout, hoping your twin could hear you.

“Semi naked,” Jack compromises. 

Quinn sighed on the other side of the phone. Sometimes he was glad he was alone in Vancouver with none of his siblings able to do this exact situation. “Leave them be you guys. They’ve been dating for like three years.”

Nico didn’t move from above you, hoping his hard on wouldn’t be on show through his grey sweatpants. “Can you two please leave?”

“We wanted to go out for lunch, do something on our day off.”

You groaned once more. “Why didn’t you text us instead?”

“We did,” Luke argues. “Neither of you answered.”

“Did you ever think maybe we were busy doing our own thing? You know… as a couple?”

“No.”

You huffed, pressing a kiss to Nico’s cheek and standing up from the couch. Making sure to hold the blanket to your chest. Your brothers didn’t need to see anything more than they already have. “Give us 10. But you have to leave and wait in the car.”

“Yes!”

Both of the boys raced out excitedly. It allowed Nico to finally stand up from the couch. Both of you sighed and went to your room to change into some better clothes. 

“I feel like we’re their parents,” Nico jokes.

You chuckle, “At least our kids will be better than these rascals.”

“That they will.”

TAG LIST

@findapenny @mp0625 @hischierhaze @11zegras @lvrzegras @francesfarhadi @cixrosie @daisysthings @jayrami3

[bongo-clash]

Peacock Au Part 3

(Part One & Two here!!!)

Continuation of the Eldritch Danny DPxDC fic!!!! This is Kind Of the final chapter but Bones has also been making my brain go So Wild with other ideas so!!! Big chance they'll be more parts at some point (probably after Ectober week if I do!!)

Either Way Here It Is

(Fic under cut!!) (+ Part 4 Here)

-

Constantine makes the executive decision not to explain anything to Batman until the other League members are gathered in the watchtower meeting room. Maybe not his best choice, evidenced for the most part by the seething glare the vigilante is shooting him from his place at the head of the table, but still, John really doesn’t want to have to talk about this any more than he has to. It’s already going to be a pain in his side as is. 

It doesn’t take long for the rest to appear through the zeta tubes. Superman and Wonder Woman predictably arriving first of the lot, followed by Zatanna, the Flash, and then Green Lantern. Once they’re all settled and he figures this is all the people that’ll be showing up today, he deigns to begin speaking. He might’ve appreciated a bit of a higher attendance rate, but he’ll take it. 

“Alright, you lot,” He starts, just as the Green Lantern opens his mouth, likely to ask what this whole meeting is for. “I believe we’ve got a little bit of a situation on our hands.”

“Situation how, Constantine.” Batman asks, eyes narrowed behind the cowl, the furthest thing from a question. 

Constantine sighs deeply, fingers fidgeting in his coat pocket for a cigarette even if he knows he can’t smoke in the watchtower (maybe he could just hold one…). In lieu of looking the man in the face, however, he addresses everyone else in the room. “Well, see, the Bat here had a Pit forming in his territory, and he decided it’d be a bloody brilliant idea to call me for help instead of literally anyone else. The good news is the Pit’s gone. The bad news is I’m pretty sure the thing that got rid of it is worse.”

A few of them make faces, since if Constantine’s involved then this is definitely a magic problem, and none of them are fans of magic problems- Superman looks like he’s trying not to twitch. “Can you describe it?” 

“Not properly, no. Big, bright, bit of a space theme going on? Had these horrible things on them, kept changing between eyes and mouths and hands- used those to reach out and get rid of the Lazarus Pit, ‘far as I could see. They knew I was doing it for the Big Bat even though I never said a word about it, and from what I understand, they wanted a favour for sorting it out. I don’t know what they want it for.”

Batman’s face is unreadable, but there’s a scrutiny there that permeates the air around him. “So you discovered the existence of a powerful, unknown entity, and not only did you deign to summon it into our world, but you then proceeded to make a deal with it as well, completely unaware of the potential consequences.”

“In my defence,” Constantine retorts. “This is entirely your fault for getting me involved. I’ve no clue why you thought coming to me was a solid plan in the first place.”

There’s a storm brewing beneath that bat mask, but Wonder Woman intercepts before it can descend into a full-blown argument. “Now is no time to be assigning blame, we need a plan. Do you know of any way we can attain more information on this being, Constantine?”

“Not the foggiest,” He replies simply. “The only thing the book said was that it could help with the Pits. When I asked the damn thing what it was, it just gave me a riddle and, quite frankly, I wasn’t going to push it. So unless Zatanna has anything, I’ve got nothing.”

The whole table turns to look at Zatanna. She has a contemplative look on her face, pausing for the moment presumably to run through the information in her head. “Well, there’s a lot of entities around whose existences centre on keeping the balance between realms or concepts, but this is the first I’ve heard about anything like this. The closest thing I could think of is maybe Pariah Dark, since he’s known to have a connection to the Lazarus Pits, but he’s been out of commission for centuries now, and he’s never been depicted at all the way you described…”

“…And I know for a fact that his summoning ritual requires a blood sacrifice, and this thing didn’t want blood.” Constantine finishes. 

Zatanna makes a sour face, seeming to understand his implications, and the remaining non-magic members of the JL look appropriately disturbed. He thinks the worst thing about it for them is probably that there’s no real way to plan this out. They’ve got no power list, no strengths, no weaknesses, they don’t even really know what the entity is beyond its relation to the Lazarus Pits and even that’s an area of questionability, because the Pits are damn confusing on their own. If this thing shows up on them now, they’re screwed.

And just as the thought crosses his mind, there’s a tangible shift in the watchtower atmosphere, like the air’s thinning and closing in on itself at the same time. He looks at Zatanna with matching confusion, praying to gods he’s never met and that don’t like him that he hasn’t just managed to jinx himself in the worst way possible. 

“Do you feel that?” He says, and it doesn’t look like it’s only the other magic user in the room that does, because a fair few of the remaining League are pulling expressions Constantine really doesn’t like. Please, please say he hasn’t jinxed himself. 

There’s a sound like whale song and whistling as something comes up through the floor, and there’s not enough languages on Earth or beyond to encapsulate how many swears John wants to say right now. 

But it’s not the entity. 

Or at least, it doesn’t look like the entity, even if it certainly feels like it. It kind of looks like a teenager, of all the awful things. They have flare-white hair, bright, sheepish green eyes, and they’re wearing what Constantine thinks is a hazmat suit but doesn’t know enough about hazardous material protection to say for certain. No alarms going off, no doors opening or shutting, no signals at all; just a weird breeze, and the few seconds of warning that gives before the being appeared. That’s worrying. The way the League doesn’t even say anything is more so. 

“Hi,” They start, after what feels like an eternity of silence, and oh boy, they really do sound about twelve. Constantine doesn’t know how to deal with children, let alone ones that can just phase into the most secure superhero base in Earth’s orbit. This is awful. “Okay, so, I feel like we got off on the wrong foot yesterday, so I just wanted to, y’know, rectify my first impression? Uh, sorry if I came across sort of… weird.”

Everyone looks at the glowing kid. Everyone looks at each other. No one knows what to say. Flash decides to be the one to break the silence with a cough. “That’s great, kid! Uh… who are you, though?”

“Oh!” They startle. “Right. Me and Constantine met yesterday- I think I kind of scared him? It was by accident, though, I promise! I’d just had a long day, y’know? I didn’t know I was gonna get summoned and I wasn’t thinking so everything just kind of happened.”

No way. 

No. No way in Hell.

“You are not that thing I summoned yesterday.” 

And he knows, he knows entities like that tend to have forms more palatable for mortal eyes, but after seeing that yesterday, his brain just cannot for the life of it connect it to this. This child floating mid-air in a base he shouldn’t be able to access, with big huge earnest eyes and a painfully youthful face. One that seems to have reached a realisation. 

“Ah,” He says, smile just a little bit wry. “Fair enough, I did look kinda different then. Just- here, this should look a little more familiar?”

It’s not a full shift. He doesn’t contort into the same mind-searing thing that Constantine had had to bear yesterday- but his eyes scatter into neon spots across his face, nose and mouth left intact, the neck of his jumpsuit folds into the creases of an open eye, and those peacock-membrane-whatevers fall into fruition on his back, drifting like a cape or like spines. And just to top it all off, there’s a dinky little crown floating above his head, decorated with icicles and whispers of mist. 

It’s not a full shift, but Constantine’s never going to forget those damn cosmic peacock feathers. No mistaking it: that’s the entity. Forget yesterday, this is the worst day of his life. 

“What the Hell is happening right now.” Green Lantern flatlines, face dulled into non-understanding. Constantine thinks he feels the same way but worse. 

He takes a deep, cleansing breath, and tries not to scream. “You’re the one who sorted the Pit problem out?”

“Uh, yep, that’s me.”

“Okay, great! Fantastic. Can you tell me what the Hell that whole deal was?”

What’s left of the maybe teenager’s face drops somewhat, and a gloved hand reaches up to rub at the back of what’s left of his neck. “Ha, right, yeah sorry.” He mumbles, and Constantine kind of feels bad, but he’s also still kind of suffering from the adrenaline high of meeting the guy yesterday, so he guesses they’re even now. 

“So, I mean, I don’t usually look like that? It is my true form or whatever, but I’m not really… I don’t hang about in it too often. Gives people the heebie jeebies, y’know? I don’t want to scare people out of nowhere, especially not for a first meeting! But I was about to go to sleep last night when you summoned me, and I wanted to shift my form a little just to be more formal about the whole thing, but I guess I let the whole thing go by accident, and I didn’t realise at all until I got home. And if I was in that form by accident- I usually go with ghostspeak during summonings ‘cause it’s easier in that way and there’s usually translation sigils embedded in the circle- but if I was in that form by accident, then I was probably using a different dialect to the one I thought I was, so if I sounded kind of off, then that’s why. Again, really sorry about that. This was totally not how I wanted my first impression with the Justice League to go. You’re all really cool, y’know? I wanted to get off on the right foot and not the ‘let’s fight each other’ foot.”

Constantine blinks, opens his mouth, closes his mouth, and then blinks again. He’s sure there’s a reasonable response to this that can be expressed in a sentence somewhere, but right now he’s too enamoured with how utterly absurd this is. He genuinely, honestly does not know what’s worse: that this kid can turn into that, or that he can turn into that and it’s so natural he doesn’t even notice. 

Still, as consistent as the sun sets, Batman’s the first one to break the stupor, interjecting with narrowed eyes. “How do we know you’re not a threat to us? We don’t even know who you are.”

“Uh,” The kid splutters. “I didn’t introduce myself. My name’s Danny.”

“Danny.” Batman replies flatly. 

“It’s a nice name!” Danny, apparently, defends, looking about as stupefied as someone can without eyes on their face. The dinky little crown drifts after him when he moves his head. “And, um, I don’t know how to prove I’m not a threat? I mean, I closed up that Lazarus Pit for you, if that counts as being helpful in a non-threatening way?”

If anything, Constantine would think that makes someone more threatening. “You said you wanted a favour for it, that you were going to ‘find your recompense’.”

“No I didn’t?” Danny says incredulously, before he pauses and his lips part in an O. “Right, translation error, duh. I uh, didn’t actually say that, that’s just how the sigils took it I think. You don’t owe me anything. It might be nice to get some help if I’m ever in a bind or something, but we didn’t make a deal or a pact or anything, you just asked for help, so I helped. 

His brain completely shuts down, blue-screen style. This isn’t how this type of thing goes. There’s no way this is that easy. “You seriously don’t want anything.” 

“I mean, an autograph might be nice. My friend thinks you and batman are cool.”

“You don’t think the rest of us are cool?” Flash complains, because that’s exactly what he’s supposed to be getting out of this conversation and not how utterly insane it is. 

Danny, the kid that’s going to be giving him nightmares and is already giving him migraines, has the audacity to look embarrassed. “I think you’re cool; obviously you’re all cool, you’re the Justice League! My friend’s just into the edgier members, I guess? She’s goth.”

“Oh? So who’s your favourite?” Why is no one acknowledging that the incomprehensible cosmic horror just called him edgy. Why are they just moving past this. 

“…Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern. I really like space.”

Yeah, no shit, he’s made of it. 

Constantine genuinely wants to pass out. He wants Batman to get him over the head with a batarang; he wants Superman to tap him on the forehead and give him a concussion, just- anything not to be here right now. This might not even be the weirdest thing that’s happened to him, but he’s hating every minute of it. This kid’s talking and existing like it’s nothing but even as the conversation begins to border on casual the atmosphere is still thick, nearly physical with the chill and the chiming of bells and the way something shifts every time those peacock feathers waver behind him. 

Right now, John really, truly does not care if this entity’s playing some kind of twisted long con to trick them into sacrificing their souls or something equally as horrifying. He just wants to go home and forget anything ever happened. “So, you’re not a malicious entity.” Constantine states finally, putting an end to any further back-and-forth that he’d managed to tune out. 

“I promise you I’m not.” Danny replies seriously, even as his features shift back to something more human-looking that only seems like it’s trying and failing to hide something bigger underneath it now. 

Constantine puts his hands in his pockets, and turns straight to the door. “Brilliant news. I’m leaving now. I hope we never have to see each other again.” The League and that kid can do whatever they want, but Constantine swears on everything he holds sacred that he’s not touching any of it with a ten-foot pole. He never wants to have to deal with anything like this again, and he is never agreeing to do Batman another favour. 

[ktkat99]

Reverse Robins prompt if you're looking

Batman swears he doesn't want a partner. Until he meets Damian. Talia drops him off to be raised by Bruce and, as Bruce has no other kids, the two are free to train as they pleased. Damian grows up and moves out, taking his own section of Gotham to protect under his new, adult identity.

Batman, struggling to get himself reaccustomed to working without a partner, meets Tim.

Tim knows who they are and has been following them, taking pics and copying their moves to teach himself martial arts for years.

He's seen Batman having trouble and insists that he needs a new Robin.

Him.

After protesting and trying to chase him away, Bruce finds out just how alone Tim is at home and decides to take him up on it.

Damian feels replaced and is immediately antagonistic to Tim.

He hates how happy the damn kid always is.

He hates how Bruce is spending more time training him.

He hates how Alfred has changed typical meals that Bruce liked to remove seafood, which Tim is allergic to.

When Tim asks to train with him, Damian goes far too hard on him.

When Tim sleeps over and eventually moves in, having officially been adopted, Damian wastes no opportunity to remind him who the Blood Son is, and tell Tim that he's just a stand-in. Basically cannon fodder. Bruce didn't *really* love him. He'd just needed a soldier.

Over the next few years, Tim gradually grows stronger, but also more withdrawn and depressed.

Bruce takes in Jason and Tim starts going solo on patrol, but he always makes time to train/hang out with/play with Jason, wanting to be the big brother Damian had never been to him.

And then one night Tim never returns to the cave.

There's no call.

No heads up.

No distress signal.

No one knows where he is.

No one can find him.

Damian insists Tim must have just left and openly mocks him for trying to get attention or having not had the spine to quit face to face.

Until Damian finds him three weeks later, having been captured, tortured, and turned into Joker Jr.

Damian is horrified and ends up killing the Joker to save Tim, but its too late.

Tim dies in his arms waiting for help to arrive.

They're all grieving and devastated, but no one besides Jason blames Damian for Tim's death to his face, making Damian feel even worse.

He blames himself for not helping search for Tim.

He blames himself for failing to save him.

He blames himself for being a bully, rather than a brother.

He finally has to take a break from being a vigilante and moves back to Nanda Parbat, throwing himself into his training and confessing what happened to his mother and grandfather.

When he's feeling able to resume his job again, Damian moves back to the manor and life goes on as much as it can.

They all still miss Tim.

But they're learning to live without him.

Talia and Ra's, seeing how rattled and off his game Damian was, decide to follow him back to Gotham, steal Tim's body, and see if they can revive him in a Lazarus Pit.

Tim comes back to life, but instead of returning home immediately, he watches them from a distance.

Damian has moved back home to the manor, despite having an apartment in the city.

Despite Bruce still having Jason.

Tim remembers how Damian used to treat him, all because he was adopted, and gets angry.

He becomes Red Hood, but while Jason!Red Hood's problem was that he wasn't avenged, Tim!Red Hood is more concerned with saving Jason from the abuse he had to endure from Damian.

He breaks into the manor one night as Red Hood, making sure to avoid every trap and alarm while still leaving obvious signs all over the cave and the manor, wanting to send the message 'I know you're Batman. I was in your house while you were asleep. I'm dangerous, and I know all your tricks.'

And then he goes upstairs to kidnap Jason.

Jason is overjoyed to find out Tim is alive, but right as Tim's about to take him and leave, another little kid is suddenly in the room.

Jason explains that Dick recently lost his family and Bruce took him in.

Tim knows he has to save both boys, but now is also even more caught off guard.

He'd spent so long trying to tell Damian that he was wrong, that Bruce really did love him like a son.

But the fact that he'd not only been replaced, but Bruce was still sending kids into battle, even after what happened to him was too much.

Tim tries to kidnap them both, but Dick, who's never met Tim before, gets scared and runs to Damians room for help.

Damian fights off the intruder, but then Tim's helmet falls off/Jason says his name/Damian recognizes the fighting style/he somehow finds out that he's fighting Tim and freezes, allowing him to escape.

Damian is shocked that Tim's alive and he and Bruce work to find him and bring him home.

Only, Tim doesn't want to come home.

Not when Damian is there.

Not with Bruce and Alfred, who never did enough to protect him.

But...

He finally accepts, solely to protect Jason and Dick.

So the family gets to work towards the second chance they never thought they'd get, Tim gets a family who loves him, and Jason and Dick get a very protective older brother.

[faeriekit]

Health and Hybrids (V)👽👻💚

[I can't remember the original prompt posters  for the life of me but here's a mashup between a cryptid!Danny, presumed-alien!Danny, dp x dc, and whatever prompt made the one body horror meat grinder fic.]

PART ONE is here PART TWO is here PART THREE is here PART FOUR is here and this is part five💚 Ao3 Is here for all parts

Where we last left off... Batman had a meeting! Danny acquired age appropriate enrichment toys. All is well. You know. Except for the everything else. But it’s fine and MM is on his way so it’ll all be great soon for sure! :)

Trigger warnings for this story:  body horror | gore | post-dissection fic | dehumanization (probably) |  my awful attempts at following DC canon. On with the show.

💚👻👽👻💚

One…Morning? Evening?

Well. One day, Danny rediscovers his tongue.

Most of the muscle is there. Things taste better after he remembers how to taste.

(If everything tastes like iron, well…Danny tries to ignore that.)

Its main function is social. When Danny needs the quiet humans he can’t see to Shut Up or Go Away!, it is now within his power to blow a raspberry.

A slightly bloody raspberry. But still! A success! And when the fuzzy red human buzzes and whines about scaring them off, Danny blows it one too.

If all it does is make the human cry more, hey. That’s not Danny’s business.

*

The buzzy human comes back with its friends, with fresh sheets, spilling nervousembaras!sednervous all over the room.

Blech. Danny saves himself the trouble and phases through his bed and through the floor below. He does not need to be grabbed again.

He has more energy than he used to. It gets him farther than he’s used to; by the time he finds and works his way through an apple, a pear, and a whole plate of chicken wings, he’s still not sleepy.

…Huh. He rolls over underneath his usual haunt: a conference table. He isn’t feeling the urge to drop into his core. He’s achy, sure, and his limbs hurt and his mouth hurts from eating and he can’t see, but also…

Is Danny bored? Is he finally well enough to be bored of being sick and injured?? That’s. Is that progress? Is it…regression??

Danny sulks under his conference table (his now) with a pile of chicken bones and a few stems and doesn’t know what to do.

If he goes back to his bed…will the sheets already be done? Will people be waiting to get him? Did he lose his…ugh, he doesn’t want to think of them as toys. His…enrichment? Educational tools?

…Okay they might be toys. Whatever. When Danny feels better, he’ll grab something more age appropriate. Maybe he’ll get them from his—

Danny flinches.

…From his house.

If he can get there.

Whatever. He doesn’t want to think about that right now. He wants to figure out how to get rid of his trash without revealing his location. Or leave his conference table shelter.

Danny drums his claws against the low-pile carpet that stretches below him. Should he stay? Rest up? Wait for the threats to his admittedly-kinda-pathetic territory to leave? Should he…go get more food? Should he explore more? He feels all kinds of sore and tired but his head mostly feels clear. Maybe if he—

There’s a hissing noise. Danny bristles. He hisses in like, but—oh. It’s a door.

…Oh. It’s the door.

Uh oh. That’s um. That’s.

Uh oh.

Danny quickly pretends that he hadn’t hissed. He invisibly pushes the top of his head through the thick wood of the conference table. They shouldn’t be able to see anything if he peeks.

Well. Unless they can? But if they can, that’s. Uh. That’s a whole new problem.

Several tall, colorful, adult humans walk into the room. He can’t quite tell how many. Just a bunch. And they’re tall. But hey, they’re color coordinated for easier determination, at least.

Danny lowers himself back down through the table. Should he leave? Will they see him if he tries to leave? Can they spot him?

He sits and worries and he dithers as the humans slowly surround the table and the hidden ghost underneath. Should he…should he go through the floor? Will they know he’s there? Is it even safe to get back to his cot yet?

Feet start appearing underneath the table. Danny shies away from them. He pulls his chicken bones away from them too; if they step on one, they might notice him.

Then everything gets quiet. There’s only one quiet, droning voice.

So maybe Danny peeks again.

There’s a giant shadow at the front. It’s probably human. It has black arms and black legs and a patch of what is probably skin in his very fuzzy vision. It stands beside a lit screen.

Danny squints.

…Oh. He can’t quite tell what it’s about, or what’s exactly is being shown on the screen, but he knows what a powerpoint presentation is supposed to look like: a person, a lot of talking, a screen, and a lot of people listening. They’re just…talking. They’re not even talking about Danny.

Okay. He’ll rest under the table. It seems…safe enough for now.

It’s better to listen to human heartbeats and breathing in a room than it is to sit in his silent one, waiting for some new horror to break the everpresent quiet. Danny lays on his belly, nose to the carpet, and counts how many feet are under the table. (There are sixteen feet.) Some humans are wearing real shoes, with inch-thick soles of hard rubber at the bottom. Some are wearing things that look like shoes, but are too flexible, with soft soles that bend and curl as they flex under the table. Very few of them have laces or fixtures. Huh.

A wrapper falls. Danny watches the ball of foil flutter to the floor, at peace with his position, tired of inspecting shoes. And then a face pops down.

Danny freezes. (It’s not the smartest move.)

The face that popped down probably sees him back, considering how still it goes. And then, very slowly, so slowly, a hand reaches down. Danny flinches back, and—

…It grabs the wrapper. The adult carefully gets back up. The face disappears.

Danny doesn’t move. Danny doesn’t leave. Danny doesn’t breathe.

He waits. The human slowly goes back to tapping its toes, wiggling in its seat—and vibrating, in a way that says bored/bored/bored the way the younger human sometimes does.

…No one says anything. No one does anything. No one jumps under the table to get him, there isn’t a break in the speaker that indicates identifying Danny as Present, or as A Problem. Danny is simply…hidden.

He should leave. It would be smart to leave. Danny would be safer if he left.

But also.

Maybe.

This might be the first time he’s been so close to humans in so long.

They don’t know he’s here. It should be…safe. If he just. Listens to the indistinct sound of human voices. Let them wash over him, like a radio left on in the other room.

Danny’s sated. He’s achy. He’s bored. He’s sad. He’s lonely.

…He stays.

He doesn’t notice his humming or the quiet purr in his chest before the hand comes back down again. Danny flinches away from it, the hum guttering to a stop where it had laid.

There’s something about its hand. The hand came down, before, but now there’s something more to it. Another color—a darker color. It’s hard to tell in the shadow underneath the desk. Maybe a—green? A blue? Maybe?

The hand shifts, just a little. And then the thing comes flying at him. Danny jolts backwards, digging his claws into the mere millimeters of carpeting underneath him, and—

Oh. The thing isn’t moving. It hasn’t even exploded.

Danny reaches out a hand. Taps it, gently. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t attack him. It doesn’t excrete anything acidic or bite him. He sniffs it, just to be doubly sure, and nope. It smells like plastic. The wrapper crunches under his hands, even when everything sounds mute and muffled. The noise is borderline imaginary, so Danny can’t exactly tell what it sounds like when he plays with the little plastic flaps.

He can tell what it is now, though. The food bar goes down whole, wrapper and all, into his gullet.

Nice. The outside tastes bad, of course, but it’s nice.

The hand goes away, and no one bothers Danny. It’s nice. There are voices, but they aren’t yelling. They aren’t mean to him. They aren’t talking about what his insides look like or how bad he is or how to take more pieces off of him.

…Danny’s core thrums evenly. Peacefully. Maybe he will want that nap after all. His body gets kind of grouchy when it comes to plastic. He can pretend that it isn’t grumpy with his improvised diet with a nap.

Danny curls up on the floor, core beating along with the quick and even taptaptaptaptap fluttering of a too-quick human heart, and settles in for a quiet one.

(When he wakes up again, no one is around to see him throw out his chicken bones in the tiny trash receptacle by the doorway.)

(His toys and new sheets are all there when Danny gets back to his cot.)

(He’s too relieved to do anything but take a second nap.)

*

“So,” Wally tries, leaning against the wall. “The… Alien? Extraterrestrial?”

Barry shrugs. Fishes a cheeto out of his bag. “Bart’s been calling it a ghoul. They crashed half a mile off the Kent farm a little after you popped out of the Speedforce; there’s a huge chance something happened to them as part of the temporal anomaly.”

“Happened as in…?”

“Yeah.” Barry takes another cheeto. “Bad.”

And theeeere is the visible guilt. There isn’t exactly any great way for Wally to feel after his unintentional resurrection led to an unintentional…something else.

“…Ah.”

Barry shrugs. There isn’t anything they can do about it; short of rewinding time and shoving Wally back into the Speedforce, which has been shoved off the table with a great deal of force by all of the man’s former teammates, there’s no way to undo the accident that landed the poor alien smacking straight into good-old-fashioned American dirt.

“Don’t worry about the way it happened. It wasn’t your fault, and it sure wasn’t intentional on your part,” Barry points out, and offers the bag of Cheetos towards Wally. The snack is gone in microseconds. The curse of speedsters is really footing the bill of all their emotional eating.

“So, they’re…do we know what they are? Because they definitely shapeshifted fangs as soon as I found their little—whatever that is. Container? Unit? Under the table.” Wally traces the vague shape of the thing’s cerulean heart in the air. “One second I was holding a glass paperweight, and the next I was on the opposite end of a very angry shadow-snake. I think they would have done worse than bit me if it hadn’t had a clear escape route out of there.”

Barry balls the empty bag and shoves it into a pocket. If he litters in the Watchtower, it’s going to be water cooler gossip for years. Bats would never let anyone defile his super cool, super-secret base with garbage without his own form of petty revenge. “Medical says it likely serves as an organ for him,” he says instead, since monologue about how inconvenient it is to be held responsible for his own actions wouldn’t be professional. “So. Think of it less as a container; think of it more as a turtle shell. Medical is pretty sure it’s a part of their body. Messing with it would really hurt them.”

“Yeowch.”

“Mmhmm. One micro-sec.” Barry darts out and away from his nephew; he just remembered he has bottled smoothies in his room. In the time it takes him to fetch two from his mini-fridge—one of his favorite flavor and one of Wally’s—and circle back, the dust motes in the air have hardly even realized he’s gone. They hardly drift even upon his return. “Here.”

Wally catches it easily. To anyone else, Barry would barely have blinked away. To any other Speedster…Barry knows intimately how lethargic and thick time feels against his skull. Slowing down to a mortal, human speed can feel maddening. Sore. Viscerally and bone-shatteringly wrong in his skin, maybe.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” Barry would do that and more for his family.

They drink their smoothies.

“You know,” Barry breaks back in, the thoughts of their previous conversation looming lightly in his mind, “Medical says that the fact that we sometimes see their—let’s call it a core—is really, really bad. It’s not a shock that they’re hiding. It would be like climbing in a closet when you’re so vulnerable that you don’t feel like you can defend yourself.”

The rim of Wally’s smoothie bottle drops from his lips. The man frowns. “Oh?”

Barry shrugs. “Imagine losing your skull so that your brain is exposed all the time. Imagine being a cell and having your cell wall break so your nucleus is exposed?”

They both wince at the image.

“Oh boy. And Bart is…playing? With that entity?”

His uncle snorts. “You tell me. I think you’ve seen more of them than I have at the moment. All I did was catch them hanging out in a conference room. I have to admit, the purring can get a little loud in the…” he makes a vague gesture that could mean anything from room to atmosphere to Speedforce.

Wally’s been mostly of the same mind—the physics of the entity, whatever they are, aren’t specifically third-dimensional. It might be related to how they only sometimes manifest, or how they manifest with only partial corporeality.

“It’s been at least some play and some games for him, I’m sure,” Wally admits, a smile pulling at his mouth nevertheless. “I spotted him going through a stim toy website before he suddenly and mysteriously had a mission on the other side of the planet. But I think most of his concern is the…”

Wally winces at the thought of the myriad of medical issues the entity’s faced since his arrival to Earth. Barry’s wince stretches to match. They both saw the report.

“…So it’s been a lot of food on Bart’s part. A lot of managing his care of them too; Superboy and Rob aren’t the most straightforward team in the world, but I think they’re largely keeping Bart in check on this one— not that they’re on base as much as Bart is.”

Wally smiles. It’s not a very happy smile, or very relieved of his earlier guilt, but it’s a smile nevertheless. That’s fine. Barry’ll work on the rest on Sunday; they’re due for a good luncheon out somewhere nice. Their JLA-approved food budget can foot the bill. Maybe…Indian? There’s got to be good food in Delhi they haven’t tried yet.

“At least J’onn’s back on base next week.” Wally sighs, crooked and a little weary. “Maybe this will finally get them to stop running every time someone gets within forty feet of them. Like, they realize they’re losing vital fluids, right? Wait, is Bart even giving them any water?”

“…I’m going to hold off on that worrying thought. I have a different one I’m sweating over. Do we even know if Bart will let our resident telepath get within forty feet of his new playmate?”

Wally groans, face in his hands. Barry can’t help but laugh a little—perhaps tinged with desperation.

Sidekicks. Always with the new problems. At least last time they had this problem, Kon could talk.

[itshype]

Please don’t pet me! I am working! (DC x DP)

The Service Animal Cujo notfic that I, personally requested but just like my extremely cringe Batman x Witcher fic, I have to do everything myself. I wrote this but held off during DC x DP week because I’m not participating in that. If I keep writing these, I’ll have to make a masterpost or probably whack them up on Ao3 for archive purposes at some point but for now: Here is the Space Obsessed Danny story and Here is the Kingmaker Danny story! CW for mention of panic attacks in this one!

So! Let’s get going. Danny died. He can’t stop thinking it. He was dead. He’s walking and talking now but he knows deep in his soul that everything’s different now. He was dead and somehow nothing has changed? He feels like something of his journey to hell itself should be visible in his skin – something more than the small exit scar on his left foot. Another dimension was opened through his body and his hairstyle didn’t even shift?

Sam and Tucker are just as freaked out as he is, but they aren’t nearly as frightened. The ghost powers and Halfa stigma won’t come until later, but right now Danny is having difficulty even considering the possibility of leaving the house. With Danny in such bad condition emotionally, there’s no way to cover up what happened, and Jazz takes them all to the hospital.

Now, I know in a lot of fanfics Danny has weird physiology even in human form (lower body temp, slower pulse etc) but I don’t remember any of that being canon so I’m ignoring it. And if it is canon then I am exercising my right to debone the original show like a small chicken and use it to make a flavourful stock.

So, Danny checks out with the doctors except for a weirdly tiny burn but he is having like 5 concurrent panic attacks about everything from “there’s nothing after we die”, “The electricity cooked me”, “Life has no meaning”, maybe even throw in a fun “I came back wrong”.

Hell, maybe he does have weirdly low vitals, but the rapid pulse is countering his slow heartbeat and decreased blood pressure etc. Up to you!

Danny probably ends up being sedated if he can’t calm down but by then there is a different issue. The doctors Fenton have arrived. Now, I think it’s no stretch of the imagination to say that under the wrong circumstances they would dissect Phantom if they got their hands on him but also I know they somewhat care for their children and canon has shown more than once that under good circumstances that they could accept Danny.

When his ghost sense goes off for the first time it’s pretty obvious. He’s in a hospital and instead of a tiny little whisp of silver breath; it’s like a fogbank creeping along a moor, its sea mist rolling in from the horizon of his mouth and whiting out his private hospital room. No one can see two meters in front of their own face, and it takes over a minute to fade. Sam screams out for Danny and tries to grab his hand where she knows it was but can no longer see. Tucker starts at the sound and drops his device, screeching gratingly at the clattering plastic of his PDA hitting linoleum, hard.

When the mist finally evaporates, the Fentons want to take him home immediately and run tests. They think the ghostly influence is ‘obvious’ but the 68-year-old nurse, Beatrice stands like a 5-foot-nothing wall of solid rock and won’t let them touch him. Jazz also angles herself between her parents and the door so if they did somehow manage to get their hands on Danny, they wouldn’t be able to leave without steamrolling her. Then the heartrate monitor goes wild as Danny panics about being a guinea pig for his parents’ less-than-lukewarm lab safety practices and they back off without further interruptions.

That’s the point when it hits them that everything that has happened to Danny is their fault. His accident was because of them, he’s melting down because of them, both of their children genuinely believe that they will hurt Danny just because he’s having weird ghostly side effects to almost dying in a ghost portal. One they built.

It’s a few hours later when they breach the subject of going home, of at the very least making a decision about school even if that decision is to formally take a leave of absence. Sam and Tucker’s parents had made them go home and he’s a lot calmer now but at this stage, his weird ghost powers are causing problems. It seems to the orderlies and nurses that his anxiety is getting worse because he’s turning intangible through cups and cutlery – making it look like he’s shaking so hard he can’t even hold a single cup, and is flat out refusing to eat.  

Even though it’s been less than a day it looks like Danny’s shock is just getting worse. He phases through his bed right as Beatrice and his parents walk through and they think he’s hiding under there out of fear. He tries to explain, confused, and disoriented and deep in denial. Jazz shuts him up. She doesn’t know completely what’s going on, but she knows enough, and she isn’t letting 12 hours of changed behaviour force her to blindly trust her parents.

Beatrice is most concerned. It hasn’t been very long but there’s no reasonable cause for his steep and steady decline. No reason outside of something-something-ghosts.  

That’s when the first few pamphlets come out about therapy animals. They require some time to be trained and the middle of nowhere Amity Park doesn’t exactly have a pool to choose from, but it’s okay to adopt a younger animal and train it themselves.

Danny looks at the pictures of the fluffy bunnies and alert-eared dogs with big, glistening eyes. Then puts them down. There’s no way an animal would be safe in his house.

That’s when the ghosts attack. Danny isn’t the only spectre with a ghost sense and these ghosts are less human due to a lack of ectoplasm. Obviously, the silver fog reappears, and, in his terror, Danny drops to the next floor of the hospital, glitching through his bed and the floor underneath it. He crashes painfully in the middle of the gift shop.

His parents reach the conclusion that due to his extreme ectoplasm contamination; he’s developed a serious allergy to ectoplasmic weaponry, including things like ectoblasts that ghosts have naturally. They’re not…the wrongest that they could be. Unfortunately, they decide that Evil Ghosts TM can sense this weakness and are trying to kill their poor baby boy. Everyone else is freaking out about ghosts being visibly proven but the Fentons knew ghosts were real with zero doubts so they’re rolling with it.

Now, due to the knowledge that he died, Danny is having difficulty worrying about other things like catching up with schoolwork, his weird new allergies/powers or even Dash.

BTW KUDOS to anyone still reading, I know this part was really long, but I really felt like I couldn’t just flim flam over the details of why Danny would need an emotional support/service animal even if it’s fictional.

First day back at school, the Lunch Lady attacks. Danny barely eeks out a win just like in canon.

His parents decide that this is because of the allergies and the ghosts being able to sense Danny’s weakness as I said above. And they take it upon themselves to root out the problem at its source, to find all the ghosts who could hurt their son and imprison them, partly for Danny’s safety and partly for study. Not even they are sure where the divide is between their two loyalties.

So, they look to their now-functioning portal.

Unfortunately, they were massively underprepared, and they don’t come back.

 Jazz sees the locked lab door and leaves them to it, making dinner and making sure Danny knows she wants him to be at school.

He doesn’t go, she lets him not go.

Two days later the boredom is worse than his fear. He goes to school. Danny, Sam and Tucker enter like a single unit. Dash tries some shit and either:

Jazz emerges and smacks his head hard enough he loses vision for several seconds – long enough for her to knee him hard enough to put the continuance of the Baxter lineage into question.

Danny starts panicking again. The teachers always want to side with Dash but him openly attacking a kid who was just in the hospital who doesn’t even lift a finger in defence of himself is beyond the limits of any sane adult’s “boys will be boys”.

Doesn’t really matter, the point is that he’s not looking to fuck around any time soon now that he’s already found out. But he did in fact attack Danny.

Danny goes home. His first attempt at school following his death has failed.

Tucker, separately, goes to a garage sale to buy old electronics to use in his PDA upgrades. He buys a boxful of weird lab equipment that definitely has a microchip or two. When he opens it at Danny’s house as an effort to distract him, a small pink teddy falls out. No one notices it bounce beneath the sofa. Sam or Jazz brings up the support animal idea again but is reminded of the whole “our house is a toxic waste site” thing and backs off.

Weeks pass, Danny develops his ghost powers and Jazz realises their parents are actually missing. She submits a missing person report mentioning the switched-on portal – the lab door was locked from the inside.

So, when Danny wakes up one day and there’s a glowing green dog already with a collar and a toy he thinks “ah yes, a dog that my sibling has procured for me as we discussed many times to help me cope with my own mortality, the near-constant ghost attacks and my parents who vanished.”

So, he puts a leash on Cujo who is happily chewing on his little pink teddy and takes him off to school while Jazz is using her first free period to go bother the local cops about their parents. (Why haven’t they been taken in by child protective services? Either:

Because I said so

Jazz is 18

Jazz used her improbable psychology powers to bamboozle the social worker into leaving)

Everyone at school loves Cujo. He gets all the love and does a very good job of dragging Danny away from ghost attacks (so he can fight them!!)

Jazz doesn’t find out about Cujo until the afternoon but probably lets the whole thing lie because it’s a great solution.

This could go on for some time. Both Danny and Phantom have Cujo but as Phantom Cujo stays in his big form so there’s no connection made. Canon mostly proceeds as normal except the parents aren’t there and there’s no huge issue with Valerie.

Realistically, a fair few high schoolers are probably also on the hunt for a pet ghost dog because if Danny and Danny both have one there must be heaps going around. Danny is also worried about his parents and periodically looks for them but that isn’t the focus of this story so I won’t go into a lot of detail – just clarifying that he’s not a sociopath who finds out his parents are missing and goes “oh ok”.

This could be its own story but let’s get to the DC part now!!

Eventually the Justice League connects the two calls, one about the ghost dog and one about the parents disappearing through a portal. Maybe Valerie complains, or even fanon favourite Wes contacts the authorities about the ghost dog with no official training or certification. Either way the JLA algorithm picks up these two very strange claims from one town and send someone to investigate.

But I mean, parents vanishing from a locked room and a green dog aren’t exactly world ending stuff, so instead of sending an actual busy superhero they send one of the kid heroes.

Now a lot of people will go ahead and put Damian into this. But I don’t really care for him in a dynamic with Danny. But I have another vigilante in mind, one who is less animal crazy, but more dog focused and also has issues with being seen as an actual person.

That's right, it's Conner Kent. And his faithful alien dog Krypto. I've seen a few fics where Danny adopts him, but you know what other family member should think you're an actual person? Your significant other. This could totally be a friendship thing no problem, but I do feel like some versions of canon Connor Kent would get on great with Danny.

Without the looming, repeated threat of vivisection, I think Danny would be a lot more chill about his secret identity and would probably disclose Cujo’s origins to Superboy. Once Connor knows about Cujo (Phantom’s dog) being able to shrink, he can see Danny with the dog once and connect all the necessary dots. Because I stand by the fact that the main reason Danny’s secret ID isn’t discovered more is because there’s no reason for a dead person to have a secret identity but once the concept is introduced then it’s pretty simple. Connor can hang out with Phantom while Phantom does ghost fights because the Kryptonian can’t really contribute but he’s there for moral support.

Eventually, Danny reveals to Connor that he himself was cloned before and talks excitedly about his clone who he considers a cousin. I definitely think without the parents there that Dani would visit more even if she has an obsession with travel, wanderlust or freedom that prevents her from permanently moving in.

This knowledge makes him very upset about how he was treated by his genetic donors, and Connor decides to move in with the Fenton siblings (without really asking the Fenton siblings) and decides that he’ll commute to the watchtower/titans tower/mount justice (depending on which version of canon he’s in sorry I can’t be bothered to figure it out).

Unfortunately, on top of not asking the Fentons, he doesn’t notify or ask anyone in the caped community. So as far as any of them are concerned, Connor went on a minor mission to investigate some missing people and is now himself missing.

Just as a caveat because I don’t feel like getting into an argument today, I used the terms both “service animal” and “emotional support animal” even though in most countries these are not interchangeable legal definitions. I use it in a non-legal way here because emotionally helping Danny – especially when that emotional stress causes physical damage is a service, and also there is the potential for Cujo to help Danny in other physical ways.

Also, there is definitely room here for Dani being buds with Match. I think that'd be neat.

If I could draw, I would make art of Cujo and Krypto being besties but I cannot so just picture it for two seconds. Done? Great, thanks!

[damianbugs]

Honestly I would love a Jason Todd comic that focused on confronting his world view, like yes it's easy to put a bullet through the head of every criminal but, the world isn't so black and white, sometimes criminals either have no choice/it goes deeper than that. Similar to how utrh questions Bruce's morality (nothing really came of it) I want a comic where Jason's world view is also questioned.

He really has a lot of potential but idk DC keeps fumbling. I'd like to know your thoughts on how you would handle a Jason storyline, I love your metas.

oh how i mourn the disappointing horror of everything under the red hood could have been... for both bruce and jason!

if i were to handle a jason comic, i would disregard everything ever written after under the red hood and related stories. as much as i enjoy jason joining the batfam and rebuilding bridges in fanon works, i much prefer jason becoming a permanent member of the gotham rouge gallery and staying batman's kind-of-enemy in canon.

what i think utrh was setting up was Jason Todd, Ultimate Foe of Bruce Wayne. jason is a incredibly smart and cunning character, who planned to the smallest detail in order to get his desired outcome. nothing he did was by accident. but more importantly, his unwavering and concrete code can only be rivalled by batman, and so, they will constantly be at odds. if utrh taught us anything, it is that jason and bruce are always going to be plagued by what they lost in each other, and as a result, will never find their way back to what they once were.

they will now forever exist as consequences of each other, no matter what.

by doing this to his story, jason finally has the chance to grow as his own character, independent from the batfam;

one of the biggest problems with how dc is handling jason is that they want him to be this angry, violent and unsociable person while also trying to convince everyone that he is not angry and not violent and very sociable with the batfam. this causes the disparity in his writing, either with inconsistencies or just downright character assassination.

if he was kept as gotham's anti-hero, then this gives him the freedom to find his own code that is no longer dependent on batman's overarching one. utrh jason kills indiscriminately because it's what solves the problem that batman's never been able to fix: crime. jason, who is young, and betrayed, and for all that he is intelligent, he is naive and claims he's the long term solution to batman's short term one. unfortunately, killing criminals to stop criminals from existing works until, like you said, comes a situation where the world isn't so black and white.

jason knows this, probably better than anyone. he comes from poverty and homelessness, lost his parents to drugs and sickness and violence. many of his stories as robin highlight how, unlike batman, jason is able to see people for who they are and not just their actions, offering a empathetic insight that batman, for all he is kind, can never truly grasp.

as red hood, i think a combination of the lazarus pit, his training, and his murderer, batman's seemingly disregard for him, how the world moves on while jason is stuck, has made him forget this kindness he had in him. that he still has. so we need a story where it is pulled out of him and he is forced to battle what he's always known.

i think this question of jason's morality was what zdarsky was TRYING to do with Cheer (Batman Urban Legends #1-#6), but it fell flat due to the terrible portrayal of Robin Jason. The story itself of jason killing someone and bruce reacting to it left a lot to be desired (as always). not to mention how out of all the criminals jason could've been shown to kill, having it be a dealer who is also an addict is rather... tone deaf on jason's own moral code. the killing was also not calculated or "for the greater good" and was instead a rage-filled thoughtless killing which, again, is a gross misunderstanding of jason's moral code and intelligence.

so we almost had it, a story where jason has to fight someone more stubborn than batman — himself. as a character in batman's rouge gallery, this horrifying realisation of who he shares that title with, the determination to be better not because of batman, but because jason himself has realised he can do more by doing less of what he's been doing.

i don't know if i would rule out jason killing people entirely, since it is such an integral deconstruction of who he was as robin and who he is now as red hood, but i would like to think he changes how he holds his weapons. less of "i kill because it's the only way to fix this" and more "i kill because sometimes it's the best thing i can do to fix this". a very subtle but still problematic change that isolates him from ever joining the batfam.

it might seem sort of cruel, that my ideal jason story makes him lonely and more of a villian, but i think that is the sort of tragic path his character is forced to adopt. he made this bed when he returned to gotham with retribution in his plans and hurt in his heart, and now he must lie in.

there is always the potential for him to be happy, to have his family and friends and be the sort of hero he was as a teenager — but to get there, it needs to get worse before it can get better. that's what dc failed with jason, skipping the internal turmoil and drama and harsh reality checks and skipping straight to the part where he has a family again.

plus, batman's rouge gallery teach lessons to batman. poison ivy, harley, two face, strange, riddler and (annoyingly) even the joker play crucial roles to who batman is as a hero and constantly force him to challenge his code.

jason teaches the biggest lesson of all — that batman is bruce wayne. he had the potential to be the driving force that changed bruce's character forever, because red hood is a reflection that batman created all on his own, not by being batman, but by being bruce wayne. and this fact would have given jason the chance to be more than just that.

[sadiewayne]

disclaimer, i cannot write movies, this is just how i want the batman 2 to go

ok

we get a batman fight, dark and gritty but not as much as the batman 1, which then bleeds into some bruce wayne philanthropist stuff, not massively brucie wayne but it's creeping in there and we see that bruce is trying to help rebuild gotham but better ( we see this throughout the movie btw, just little snippets)

and then we see it from a distance, no people, but whisperings about something

anyway, in this endeavour to make gotham better haly's circus comes to gotham and we get shots of bruce in the audience and then the graysons die and we get more shots of the audience including one lingering on a little toddler with black floppy hair and blue eyes

batman appears and comforts dick and that's the last of that

then we cut to bruce trying to do some stuff at WE and he goes out onto a balcony or a rooftop to take a phone call or something (maybe as batman from jim gordon) and then he gets attacked by the assassin, and we don't really see the assassin in full, just a black mass with some gold flashes, and idk how but the assassin gets interrupted and jumps off the roof and bruce is still alive

so he's trying to figure out who or what that was and is looking at it on the bat computer (maybe he got some of it's clothing or something he can track) and gets a ping so goes to investigate and on the way he bumps into this little 9 year old who's on the rooftop of some building (hmmmm i wonder who it is)

it's dick, he's trying to track down the man who killed his parents (you knew this) and bruce is like "nO don't do that it's dangerous" and dick is like "but someone needs to"

anyway bruce takes dick back to the orphanage or wherever he is and has lost the trail for the assassin

this happens multiple times (montage time bois) and we see bruce finding dick on patrol, on rooftops and in dangerous situations and basically his dad senses are tingling and he decides to foster dick, so goes and picks him up and takes him to the manor

note: dick does not know that bruce is batman

anyway, bruce catches dick. trying to sneak out one night and the conversation goes like:

bruce: whatchadoin? dick: finding the man who killed my parents, people like that shouldn't be in the world" bruce: you want to kill him dick: justice bruce: murder isn't justice, it's revenge

he takes dick back to bed and goes out to finally track down the assassin BUT during this he get's a call from alfred going "bruce, dick is missing" so bruce is freaking out bc he's had this child for less than a day and he's lost him until a ransom comes up telling bruce wayne to go to x location

so he does and he himself gets kidnapped but he escapes once he's wher he should be, he suits up (bc he managed to get the suit there, either under his stupid coat or something i'm not good at this)

he finds his way to this arena where dick is being held but he's not tied up or anything, he's just kind of stood there, and there's the assassin, stood there, looking at him through golden goggles (how else would you describe it)

and surrounding them on a higher level are loads of people in black dresses and suits and white masks that resemble barn owls

it's the motherfuckin' court of owls

and bruce is like "i saved bruce wayne, i'm here to take the boy back home" and the person near dick is like "how about we let the boy choose, back to bruce wayne, where you will be paraded around as his community service project, or with us, where we can train you to get justice for your parents deaths, to take his life like he took you parents lives, and also that dude in the weird owl costume is your undead great-great-grandfather" and dick is stood there trying to choose and bruce says "murder isn't justice, it's revenge" and dick has his little lightbulb "omg bruce wayne is batman" moment, flashback to batman being the only person to comfort him at the circus, and he chooses bruce (obviously)

bruce fights the court and wins (badly injured tho) and they go home

we get a short shot of the court still existing like the gray son of gotham will be ours" and then we go to wayne manor, a few weeks later

dick is swinging from a chandelier and bruce calls for him to get down, he does and runs over to bruce and alfred in the sitting room and he's like "can i see it yet?" and bruce takes him to the batcave, dick bounces around before coming back to bruce

and bruce is like "we will find the man who killed your parents and make sure he is put away for life" and dick is like "we?" and bruce is like "yes"

dick takes the oath, which ends with the bruce calling him robin,

credits roll

[recreationalfanfics]

Yandere Bane Headcanons:

- Not very likely to kidnap you, unless the Batman notices his dangerous obsession with you and tries to take you away from him, but other than that; he would try to avoid kidnapping you. Not to mention that considering his past with growing up as a Prisoner on Peña Duro, he would feel incredibly guilty if he had to lock up his darling but would do it if he believed it was in your best interest.

- That's because he has resources and contacts all over the world, not to mention that Bane's mind works at far greater levels than the average human brain. He KNOWS your psychology, he has observed you long enough to know how you think and what exact thoughts go through your mind. If you ran away, it would not be long before he found you. Honestly, the longest you could escape from him without the help of the Batman would be 3 days, possibly 5 if he takes a day or two to plan out your little reunion with him.

- Bane doesn't like to punish you, he rather hates it. You aren't meant to cower under his touch, you're meant to lean in to it. To seek it out for protection, for when you have lonely nights and need his body close to yours, and to feel how he treats you so gently and softly compared to most others.

- Instead, if you do something bad that he doesn't like, he gently reminds you that it would take no effort to hunt down your loved ones and thats all he has to say. You stare at him as your imagination runs wild at what this hulking brute could do and when he sees that his threat has finally sunk in, he reminds you that it depends solely on you and your behavior if he'll make good of his threat or not. He then turns around and walks away, leaving you alone with your thoughts. You'll make the right choice and be more compliant from there, he's sure of it.

- Bane just really isn't a sadistic yandere to me, given his past, he doesn't want to break you nor does he want to hurt you, deep down; he truly does love you. So while he may not be a threat to YOU, he is a threat to those who he perceives to be threats or bad influences on you. They will be taken care of swiftly and without your knowledge.

- He will romance you naturally and considering his affinity for books, I garuntee you that he'll be hard to resist. Yes you will be put off by the fact he's a literal war criminal, terrorist, and supervillain...you also are not blind. He is a very fine specimen of a man, the accent and his softened behavior towards you definetly doesn't make it any easier for you to resist him. Even then, he is a man of substance and intelligence so there will definetly be an intellectual attraction in which you can talk to him about anything and he will engage with you about it.

- He is a prominent figure in the criminal underworld and holds a respectable reputation among other assassins and mercenaries, basically, no one is going to mess with you and if they do, they will die a lot sooner than they expected to.

- Okay but in the comics, after he uses venom, he canonically gets sleepy so not really a yandere thing but after using venom, he would most definetly seek you out to be his teddy bear. Holding you close to him as his strong grip keeps you in place as he begins to doze off.

[spacedace]

I had more thoughts about my "Elle is the Ancient of the Speedforce" au idea so I'm gonna dump them here in bullet point format:

Elle decides to formally claim the Flash Fam as part of her Court, no one thinks much of this outside of "Oh that's neat" until it comes out that if anything happens to Elle, the FlashFam becomes the new Royal Family of Speedforce and that due to weird Infinite Realms laws Bart is the next in line for the mantle of Ancient of the Spaceforce

Elle can use any Speedster as a portal. She just decides who she wants to see and just comes crawling put of their chests like a god damn horror movie. It doesn't hurt the Speedster at all (it actually gives them a power boost for a bit) but it is absolutely fucking terrifying to witness this eldritch entity burst its way out of the Speedster in question. The FlashFam uses this as the ultimate intimidation tactic. It's super effective.

Now that they are in direct contact with the Speedforce itself (in a way) the Speedsters can get away with So Much Shit that they didn’t used to. Elle can now just pull them out of her core if they end up going to fast and now that they have someone who has the Ancient of Time on speed dial (ha) they get a heads up on what that particular attempt to fuck with time will result in

Technically Diana & the FlashFam are cousins now. The family reunions get a little wild. Batman has no idea how he's supposed to make contingencies for this shit

Anytime any of the Speedsters are having issues with the Speedforce they call Elle and she helps them figure it out and get it under control. Sometimes to help calm them down she will pull the Speedforce away from them completely

Elle decides that her Speedsters all need therapy. Jazz won't do it because since they're family now it'd be a conflict of interests but a few Yetis from the Far Frozen step up to help.

Anytime it looks like there is something truly world ending about to go down thr FlashFam call Elle to help out. Since she looks like a tiny twelve year old girl it results in a lot of funny moments of the Biggest Big Bads being like "This is all you got?" Seconds before having their faces melted off.

The reason Bart is Elle's heir is because he "inherited" Elle's. (And therefore Danny's) ability to duplicate.

Everyone finally chills out about the idea of Bart being Elle's heir only to discover that being her heir also makes him second in line for the throne of the Infinite Realms.

Constantine - once he stops having a panic attack about it - does try to sell his soul to each of the Speedsters just to see if it would work. It does, but since they technically out rank everyone else he's sold his soul too, anyone who has a soul contract with Constantine takes this to mean the new members of the Royal Family want *all* of Constantine's soul and hand thier contracts over to try and gain favor. Constantine now constantly feels like he's on the brink of having an adrenaline crash and no one will buy his soul off him anymore because no one wants to piss off the new royals lol

[blorb-el]

Don’t know if you made a post on this but what’s your opinion on DCAU Clark and how unapproachable(?) they made him in the later JL/JLU series without ever resolving it? Like I know the Cadmus arc hinges on him never considering himself a possible threat but it seems there was room for no much introspection outside a couple moments (that were later backtracked).

I've had like 6 half finished posts about this buried deep in the drafts for a year because I have capital B Brain Rot about this, but every time I tried to write it out I got six sentences in and wanted to rewatch the entire DCAU in order to get my facts straight. This time I'm resisting the urge, so forgive me if I forget specific episodes

Also, unfortunately for you, it’s nanowrimo, which means my brain is in Type All The Words Mode, and not Communicate Effectively and Succinctly Mode, and also I need a break from WSBF chapter 8, so. You’re getting a 3.5k essay sort of answering this question but not really. you will see

Thank you to my fellow lawyer for the defense of Rectangle Clark @januariat for helping to put this together

I do rewatch STAS and JL a fair amount, but much less JLU, so I actually don’t have much to say about the specific execution there. I’m planning on rewatching it soon. But for now…

To me it boils down to two answers. The Doylist answer, and what I think the writers really did have in mind, is that they came up with the Cadmus plot, knew it was an absolute banger of a storyline, and decided that it was worth compromising Superman's personality in order to write a good story. which is not something I can fault them for - as a fanfic writer, I make the same calculated tradeoffs every time I set out to write a fic. Characters are tools for narrative, even if these particular characters come with an additional weight of the tradition of collaborative storytelling that their most effective stories honor.

However, I do think it’s possible to, post-hoc, cobble together a Watsonian, narratively satisfying (if fucked up and sad) character arc for DCAU Clark if you also take STAS and JL into account. I think the key to understanding his character arc is his relationship with control. Throughout STAS, JL, and JLU, and then one more time in Batman Beyond for good measure, over and over again, he's manipulated and his powers and body are used as resources for other people. Obviously that’s not much of an excuse for becoming more authoritarian/overbearing/etc, Fascism Is Bad and I personally think a more IC superman would retreat more than double down (as in Kingdom Come), but looking at the totality of things that have happened to him before Cadmus, it's a little more understandable why he'd get close to snapping under the strain. Here's my personal reading of his arc, and the events that might have led to Clark behaving so irrationally in JLU.

cut for sheer length, but also mentions of manipulation, sexual assault, victim blaming, that sort of thing

One of the recurring themes in the DCAU is villains dehumanizing, depowering, and/or manipulating Clark. In STAS, Parasite, Lex via Bizarro, Talia and Ra’s al Ghul use him as a source for their own power. The Preserver and Maxima treat him like some exotic prize, disregarding his wishes. Jax-Ur and Mala use him and then betray him. But the most impactful, by far, is Darkseid.

In Apokolips Now, Darkseid defeats Clark, puts his bleeding body into public stocks, and drags him through the middle of Metropolis. Clark’s only rescued by the last minute intervention of the New Gods, and as a parting shot Darkseid murders Clark’s friend in front of everyone. Even though Clark prevents Earth from turning into Apokolips, it’s a huge emotional loss, and they don’t shy away from showing his rage and helplessness. But it’s when Darkseid returns in Legacy, the finale of STAS, that Clark’s life truly takes a turn for the worse.

Forgive me if this is all plot recap to you, anon, but I feel like a lot of people don’t know that STAS ends with Clark being mind controlled, heavily implied to be sexually assaulted, and forced to try to take over the Earth, killing god knows how many people in the process. When the military finally brings him down with a Kryptonite warhead and imprisons him, they nearly kill Supergirl in the process. Then Lex almost gives him a lethal injection, with a US general looking on, implying that the government approves of killing him. Lois breaks him out, he tries to get help for Kara from Dr. Hamilton, and then goes to Apokolips. Most fights in STAS have him shrug off blows. He ends this one bleeding from his mouth, looking almost dead. When he finally casts down Darkseid, tells the Hunger Dogs (the slaves on Apokolips) that they’re free… they turn away from Superman. They cluster around Darkseid to protect and heal him.

Those universal truths of a lot of Superman stories, that goodness and liberty and the American Way* always win? They don't in STAS. A representative of the US government (as far as he knows) has tried to kill him. He lost his temper and spoke in a harsh tone of voice once, because Kara was dying and he was hurt and desperate, and now his friend Dr. Hamilton, the man he trusted to repair the Kryptonian ship, study his body and his powers, one of the people who knew him best in STAS, is afraid of him - and, as we find out later, takes immediate, drastic, and violating action against Kara and against him. The series ends with the small town man standing on the roof of the Planet, hearing people hate and fear him, wondering how people will ever trust him again.

*I hate this phrase personally when used as a Superman Motto, but it's used here as a contrast to the fascistic imagery of Apokolips Now and Legacy (as well as Brave New World, which, hoo boy, we aren’t even getting into that one).

Six months (iirc) after the STAS finale, in Secret Origins, the US government has agreed to let a visibly older and wearier Superman help disarm the nuclear stockpile - only for this to backfire on him because it was a Plot by the White Martians. Clark’s let down the country again. He’s helped aliens invade again, and to make matters worse, he sped away in the middle of an attack to break into an official government facility to free J'onn. Clark founds the Justice League beginning from a place of personal failure, as a check on himself. Clark has power and wants to help people with it, but he’s been turned against people he cares about, and has twice now failed to protect the world. It’s worth noting that Legacy put him into the world stage; before, in STAS, I can’t think of any true worldwide threats besides maybe Jax-Ur and Mala.

Most of the rest of season 1 of JL isn’t particularly Clark-focused, although he does appear in a lot of episodes, but the themes of some of these episodes are potentially relevant to understanding his character later, so: brief bullet point summaries.

During In Blackest Night, Clark sees his respected colleague turn himself into an authority that turns out to be incompetent investigators looking for a scapegoat. Interesting. Surrendering to governmental authority/oversight didn’t turn out too well here. 

During The Enemy Below, on Clark’s advice, Aquaman tries to solve his problems peacefully with diplomacy and is immediately shot in a life threatening assassination attempt.  Peaceful diplomacy doesn't work so well for him.

During Injustice for All, Lex is dying of cancer. Clark tries to reach out and is rebuffed, with Lex going on to try to found a team to kill him and the rest of the League.

During Paradise Lost, Clark sees his respected colleague turn herself into the authorities and immediately get banished from her home for the crime of trying to save it with all the resources she had at her disposal. Interesting. Surrendering to governmental authority/oversight didn’t turn out too well here, again. 

During War World, Clark’s again captured for exploitation. This is essentially a retread of The Main Man from STAS, doubling down on how some people see him as a thing to be exploited.

During Fury, Clark’s completely ineffective at preventing an attempted genocide of half the world’s population.

Season 2 opens with Twilight, one of the most important episodes for understanding Clark’s mindset during the Cadmus arc. Imagine, if you will, the above happening to you. Darkseid shows up at your workplace. And the man you’ve worked with the longest, your friend, your ally, tells you to cry him a river, build him a bridge, and get over it. Tells you to get over being brainwashed, manipulated, and humiliated. Tells you to get over having your broken and bleeding body paraded around the streets of Metropolis, tells you to get over having your friend killed in front of you for trying to defend you, tells you to get over almost getting your cousin killed. Sure, Brainiac is a planetary-scale threat; Darkseid and Apokolips are in real trouble. Clark was wrong to write off Apokolips and its people, and the League should absolutely have intervened in the situation. But the way Bruce went about it was… one of the harshest things DCAU Bruce has ever done, and one of the only times the narrative seems to actually agree that he was an asshole about it. And even then, you really need the context of STAS to understand why Clark is so furious and hurt in this scene.

Clark relents and goes along with Bruce’s plan to trust Darkseid, only to end up betrayed again, the whole ruse just another ploy for Brainiac to gain control of Clark, torture him, and use Clark’s body to upgrade himself. Clark had spared Darkseid back on Apokolips at the end of Legacy, on Kara’s advice. But now Darkseid’s come after him, again. Used him again to put not only Earth but who knows how many other worlds at risk, now that Brainiac’s even more powerful. It’s the downfall of Krypton, over and over again. And when Clark goes to end it, I think he doesn’t care that the base is about to go, as long as Darkseid goes down with it. That isn’t a price Bruce is willing to pay, so he teleports Clark out. And he’s wrong, again. “No one could have survived that.” Well… no, Bruce. Darkseid does, and Clark knows it.

During Tabula Rasa, Lex manipulates Amazo the exact way he tried to use Bizarro. Clark once again fails to guard against a terrible, potentially world-ending threat, and in fact makes the situation worse by his very presence.

Then we come to Only a Dream, another key episode in understanding this version of Superman. Clark’s deepest fear is that his powers will keep on growing beyond his ability to control them, eventually destroying everything around him. In his nightmare He kills Lois and Jimmy, destroys the Daily Planet, and grows into a brutish, hulking, clumsy figure, first crying out for someone to help him, and then losing hope. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He goes back to the Kent farm and curls up in the spaceship in the fetal position, convinced that he’s only going to hurt anyone who tries to help. Is it any wonder, since that’s literally what’s happened to him in Legacy? Is it any wonder that he’d want to give up, to retreat? If we’re to take the World of Cardboard speech literally, he’s already having to focus on this restraint every day, in every interaction. This is my personal explanation/hc as to why in every single fight he lets himself get knocked around a bit first; he’s calibrating how hard he can hit back without doing irrevocable damage. Anyway. Deeply fucked up 2 minutes of horror. Wish they’d explored this a little bit more in later seasons.

Then, directly after this, it’s A Better World. After we’ve just seen that his worst nightmare is hurting people by being unable to control his powers, we come face to face with a world where he’s hurt people by the precise and controlled application of his powers. Justice Lord Clark uses the same Superman Robots we saw Kara use in Legacy. He’s become quite adept at his lobotomization techniques. Later on in JLU, we see ‘our’ universe’s Clark attempt to lobotomize Doomsday the exact same way Justice Lord Superman did. Again, Clark fails to protect the world from himself, and to make matters worse, the guy to save the day is Lex Luthor. I’d be a little miffed if the maniac who wants to kill me so so bad turned out to be instrumental in saving the world and now I owe him some unspecified favor in the future. Clark’s met with failure and distrust trying to fix things his way, now he tries to do things in an uncharacteristically sneaky way and… gets met with more dislike and distrust.

Eclipsed continues this trend of hurting his friends; he’s temporarily mind controlled and hurts Wally.

In The Terror Beyond, he fucks up and puts the world in danger again, all because from his point of view, he tried to prevent Solomon Grundy being manipulated and used (like he himself has been used over and over again).

In Secret Society, his frustration comes to a peak, amplified by Grodd’s telepathic manipulation. He’s been trying to do his best, but he snaps that he’s had better luck fighting armies alone (dubious plural there, but he did pretty much evaporate an army in Legacy, so at least once, ok) and that he’s had to hold back his abilities in order to be on the League. Again if we take the World of Cardboard speech at face value, this is true, and we see it in the episode when he accidentally hurts Shayera with heat vision despite shouting a warning beforehand. It’s also telling how other members of the League have the ability to constantly voice doubts about its usefulness and cohesiveness as an organization (hi Bruce) but when he expresses the same doubts everyone gasps. When he expresses his doubt and frustration, when he steps away, the organization that’s collectively saved the world several times falls apart; they’re reliant on him, and he has to be aware of the entire existence of the League as an extra burden of responsibility.

Since both this episode and the Cadmus arc as a whole are meant to show his flaws as a leader, it’s worth examining the foundations of that leadership as established in the DCAU. Clark’s the leader of the League, but narratively, Bruce is its brains and its ethics and Wally is its heart. As a result, Clark is filling the role of leader of the League without the narrative scaffolding that gives him the respect comics incarnations of the character are generally accorded. (I’m admittedly only drawing here from the JLA runs I’ve personally read, Morrison/Porter 90’s JLA and the early Fox/Sekowsky 60’s JLA). Superman might not technically be the First Superhero according to these continuities, but he is respected as though he is (and as we comic book nerds know him to be). The League in these comics treat him as something of an ethical standard bearer, a primus inter pares, as well as being the muscle. In the DCAU, Batman, having founded the DCAU with BTAS, is the First Superhero, and the entire plotline of the Justice Lords centers Wally as the emotional anchor of the team. Clark doesn’t have that pre-established stature. What really qualifies him to be the leader, besides the fact that Bruce doesn’t want to do it? His position seems precarious, relying more on Superman’s pre-established reputation than his actual onscreen characterization. Centering Bruce and Wally are legitimate creative choices I don’t even necessarily disagree with, but it means Clark-as-leader functions quite differently than more traditional JL structures.

Hereafter is something of a healing point for him. It’s a little fucked up that Superman almost bashes Vandal Savage’s head in with a rock, but you take what you can get at this point. He comes out of it fine, but everyone else is forced to reckon with what he means to them. Hereafter coming directly after Secret Society is a very good reunification for the League. Shame about what’s gonna happen in three episodes.

In Wild Cards, he’s useful to address the immediate threat but ineffective to stop the real, countrywide (worldwide?) threat. (I should note that of course I don’t expect every episode’s threat to be solved by Clark; I’m just pointing out a trend that I think his character would perceive as failures on his part. If the writers ever let him reflect.)

JL ends as it began, with another massive alien invasion that Clark helped facilitate in Starcrossed, by working with the Thanagarians during the first part of their plan. As a fellow exile, a fellow alien, he’s hurt and angry with Shayera’s betrayal… even though, in the end, in probably one of his best moments, he votes to allow her to stay in the League.

(Sidenote: almost every interaction Clark has had with other aliens have been despotic societies or individuals: Jax-Ur and Mala, Apokolips, Maxima’s planet, War World, and now Thanagar. The Guardians built robotic police/foot soldiers to enforce their will. Even New Genesis is ruled by a benevolent dictator. Martian society is nearly extinct, overrun by… more alien despots, surviving only with J'onn. Argoan society is nearly extinct, surviving only with Kara. At least Lobo isn’t a fascist? Small consolation.)

JLU begins after a short time skip. I’m not as familiar with JLU episodes since it’s been a while since I’ve watched them, so I’m not going to attempt an episode-by-episode breakdown. Also this post is already way too long. But the point of this post is to look at Clark’s overall arc until this point, and see how it informs his decisions in JLU. For a more JLU-specific informed point of view check this post by januariat!

What we have is a man who naturally wants to take responsibility on his own shoulders, a doer and a fixer who wants to get into the ring and solve problems, who wants to use his abilities to help, being confronted over and over again with a string of personal failures, manipulation, and betrayal. When he tries to set a boundary about not being willing to help the man who took over his body and forced him against his home in Twilight, he’s told to get over it by his most trusted ally. When his deepest fears are revealed in Only a Dream, we see them having been already realized in Legacy. And when he’s presented with his dream of a peaceful life farming, a family that loves him, and no responsibility to save the world, it’s ripped away from him in For The Man Who Has Everything.

Ultimately, I don’t have a good answer for exactly how he doubles down in JLU S2, because I need to rewatch all of it with this understanding of the character. But I think you can see the shape of a traditional Superman character in there, trying and trying again and again to do the right thing, putting himself on the line - only instead of learning from his experiences and letting them inform his actions, he’s carrying the weight of years of suppressed trauma while trying to hold up the entire Justice League. This long, long run of failure, manipulation, betrayal, and distrust adds up. And there’s only so much weight one person can hold on their shoulders, even if they are a Superman.

(And then as the nice little capstone to his story, in Batman Beyond's The Call, he’s kept under alien mind control for years! With the way Starro clings to his chest, he probably hasn’t been touched in years! Trapped in his own mind, forced to watch as yet another alien species uses him as a tool to hurt his own teammates and invade the Earth! And that’s the last we see of DCAU Clark! What a fun little ending to his character arc that doesn’t make me go insane whenever I think about it. Very very very normal about this.)

[zahri-melitor]

Prodigal:

I see why this is so liked. Dick thinks he’s failing under the crushing levels of expectation. Tim’s just delighted to be here with his hero (who wants to work with him!). The wrangling as their working relationship finally starts up.

Dick deferring on occasion to Tim as Tim has the on-the-ground current knowledge of the situation in Gotham, while still taking the lead and being the senior partner in the team up. Dick also having the combo of “uh who is Harold? And Ace? And why do we have a subway rocket now?” contrasted with him just getting the Manor household back up and running.

There is just so much Two Face in this, which makes sense because at this point Dent really has been heavily set up as one of Dick’s major Gotham Rogues. Dick getting to replay the no-win Judge scenario AGAIN, because repeated imagery is where it’s at. (And he gets to find a solution this time, when he’s Batman protecting a Robin, when he’s replayed this situation in his mind so many times over the years)

I love the Dick and Tim “we have different opinions on whether this killer is Azrael” bit of the storyline and agreeing that the best solution is to pursue BOTH hunches (to see who is the better detective). Dick finds Azrael but Tim finds the killer. They both succeed! Brothers!

Also Dick and Bruce FINALLY TALK about everything since Dick left the Robin mantle. Who knew using your words could help. (That’s the way it is. Between fathers and sons) Dick’s FACE at being called a ‘son’ even as he refers to Bruce as ‘dad’ in passing to Tim back in the first issue of Prodigal. He can joke about it, but he’s not used to the words happening in emotional moments.

Note: the art contrast between the heavily stylised art for Tim’s sections of Robin #13 compared to the very realistic art used for Dick and Bruce’s conversation gives this all more weight. I love when they use art differences effectively.

[iamnotthere-idonotdie]

adored, pt. 3

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synopsis: reader and bruce continue spending time together, but a tragedy in gotham city seems to change his mind about whether this can work

warnings: bruce wayne (battinson) x reader, no explicit description of sex, one use of “fuck”

a/n: final part of this story, i was hoping to incorporate this idea that bruce is concerned about the safety of being with him, he knows his role as the batman is dangerous and anyone in association with him is in danger too, maybe he wouldn’t actually think this way but i always thought he’d be concerned about getting too close to people, again maybe that’s ooc but that’s just where my mind went, i was inspired this time by the song i won’t let you go by snow patrol (yes from the divergent soundtrack) so here’s the playlist link again if you’d like, as always sorry about the typos that are probably here

thanks by the way for the likes on the first two parts! i didn’t even think anyone would read these let alone like them so i appreciate it :) i’m working on a few other stories that are also bruce wayne/batman x reader so i’m excited to get those out, i’m hoping that over time and with more practice i’ll get better at writing, so i guess just bear with me as i work on it!

edit: link to part 2 and part 1

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you finally make your way out of bruce’s bed in the morning. you find your way out of the twisted sheets and step into the cold hardwood floor. bruce isn’t there, he must already be awake. you rub your eyes as you try to adjust to the sunlight creeping through the gap in the almost closed curtains. bruce walks in, holding two mugs of what you’re hoping is hot coffee. he hands you one and sits next to you on the bed. the two of you stay there for a while, sipping your coffee, silent, just like the last time you met.

“how are you feeling?” he asks. you think he’s still concerned about last night, about the paparazzi.

“i’m good. very good” you smile and rest your head on his shoulder.

“me too” he says softly, as he wraps his arm around you.

the rest of the day is spent with the two of you laying in bed, talking, kissing, him falling asleep multiple times. he seems exhausted, so you let him sleep, then he wakes up and pretend-scolds you for letting him drift off again. it’s a perfect day, with just each other.

sunset comes around and you almost ask if you can stay another night. before you get the chance though, bruce comes up to you and hands you a set of new pajamas and some other clothes. he says he asked his butler to go out and buy you some extra things to wear.

“thank you, you didn’t need to do this.”

“you only have your outfit from last night.”

“i could’ve gone home.”

“i didn’t want you to.”

this night is spent similarly to last, with the two of you spending it under covers, together. you think to yourself that you don’t want this weekend to ever end. you want to always stay, right here, with him.

the next morning though, bruce’s mood has shifted. you wake up alone again, but this time you’re not met with a cup of coffee. you’re not met with a good morning, a smile, nothing. you change into one of the outfits bruce gave you and find him downstairs in the living room, reading through some folder. he quickly closes it when he notices you and it sets it down on the table he’s standing next to.

you look at the television on the wall that’s playing the news, and see an anchor talking in a concerned tone.

“last night, on the edge of town, blue ridge factory suffered a sudden explosion. eleven are dead and 19 more are injured, including 3 currently in intensive care. law enforcement are still unsure about the cause of the explosion, and though they suspect it was accidental, they are not ruling out foul play.”

“oh my god,” you say in shock. “that’s so horrible.”

bruce walks towards you slowly, keeping his eyes on the television.

“what happened, do you think? do you think it really was an accident?” you ask him. you can feel a lump in your throat. all those poor people, their families.

“i don’t know.” he quietly replies.

“it’s just so sad. maybe the batman can help them with the investigation. he helped with the riddler.”

bruce just continues staring at the television.

“yeah. maybe.” he says flatly.

he walks out of the room, taking the folder from the table with him.

you’re still horrified at what happened at the factory, but you’re now also confused at bruce’s reaction to it. maybe he’s just more upset about it than you thought. you stay there, watching the news, and a few minutes later bruce comes back, no folder in hand.

“alfred can take you back home today whenever you want.” he says flatly.

you turn to him, surprised at the sudden change in mood.

“oh.. okay.”

“something just came up that i need to take care of.”

“alright.”

you get up from the couch and head towards the door. figuring that what he really means is that you should go, now. bruce’s butler has packed up your things and is coming down the stairs with it now. you pause for a moment at the door, then turn back to look at bruce.

“i had a good time this weekend. thank you.”

bruce slowly walks towards you, then gently puts his hand on your face.

“i did too.” and he kisses you. you can’t help but sense a sadness in his eyes as he says goodbye. you walk out the door, get into the car, and drive away. all the while hoping, praying, begging, that this goodbye is the last.

…

it’s been five days. no word from bruce. you’ve woken up every day hoping that this wasn’t it, that you wouldn’t become just an every-two-week hookup.

you’re sitting there at your desk, at your same job, waiting, like everyday, for 5pm to come so you can leave. you of course haven’t gone back to the bar. in fact you haven’t gone much of anywhere besides work. you just don’t see the point.

you look at the clock and see 4:59 blinking at you. as you start to gather your things, you hear the door swing open. you sigh, ready to put on a happy face for this annoying person who decided to walk in right as you’re closing. you look up from your bag though, and it’s bruce.

you’re shocked. what was he doing here?

“hi,” he says quietly.

“hi,” your reply.

“i need to speak with you” he looks concerned.

fuck. this is it.

“okay, do you want to talk here?”

“we can go back to my place.”

“okay.”

you get up from your desk and follow him outside to his car. luckily, no one’s there with cameras so you don’t have to worry about being in the news again.

after a minute of riding, bruce reaches over and puts your hand in his, silently. you hold his back and he squeezes slightly, and you feel butterflies in your stomach.

when you get back to his home, you’re appalled to see vans and a crowd of people waiting outside the gate.

“oh my god,” you say as you stare out the window at them. “what are they doing here?”

bruce seems just as confused as he looks at them too.

“someone must have seen me leave with you at work,” you start thinking out loud. “and they all decided to come here and wait for us to come.”

bruce just stays silent, clearly angry that they’ve come to his home.

you pull into the long driveway and the two of you do your best to get inside as quick as possible. you sit in the same living room as you did before, and you wait to see if bruce is going to tell you what he needed to talk to you about. he just comes and sits down next to you.

“so… what did you want to talk about?” you ask, trying to approach this delicately in case it’s going to turn into a sensitive conversation.

“it’s about this. about us.”

you wait for it, for the end.

“i don’t think it’s a good idea.”

you just sit there for a moment. you knew it was coming, but it doesn’t take away from the sting of hearing him say it out loud.

“is it because of the press?”

“partially but… no it’s just… not…”

he stutters over his words.

“what is it? is it me?”

“no… it’s…”

“then what bruce? if you’re going to cut this off then i at least deserve to know why.”

he sighs and gets up from the couch. you sit there still, looking up at him, waiting for an answer.

“i’m not safe.”

…what? what does he mean he’s not safe?

“being with me, is not safe. the paparazzi, the press, all of that can be handled. it’s the others who are the issue… i have a lot of enemies being me, having this,” he gestures around him. “and a lot of those enemies take their hatred into their own hands. i can only do so much to protect you from it. you’re not safe with me.” his voice trails off with sadness as you just look at him.

that seems a bit dramatic to you. sure he’s had issues with people before, threats and the like, but he’s always been okay. why is he now starting to get worried?

“i’m not afraid of all that. i’ll be okay.”

“i can’t guarantee that. and i can’t knowingly put you in harms way. the one thing those people know how to do is hurt, and if they see us, then they’ll try to use you against me. and i can’t allow that to happen to you.” his voice starts to rise a bit and you can tell he’s getting more and more upset.

“bruce…”

“i’m sorry.”

he looks at you with tears in his eyes and you stand up to comfort him, but he swiftly walks out of the room, leaving you to contemplate everything he just said. his butler slowly approaches you and asks if you’d like a ride home. all you do is nod as he takes you out the back door to the garage where you can leave without being seen by the hoard out front.

you cry the whole drive home. you cry over bruce, over losing him, over what he said to you. when you stop at your apartment, alfred looks in the mirror at you.

“i’m sorry about this. bruce is… well, he has some trouble letting people in. and when he does, he tries to do everything he can to not lose them. even if that means pushing them away.”

you look back at him, wondering if that’s really true.

“thank you for the ride, sir.”

“anytime.” he smiles sadly at you and you leave the car and head up to your apartment. crying in here has become an all too common practice for you. you lay in bed, tears flowing, and you eventually cry yourself to sleep.

…

it’s day six since you had that talk with bruce. day six of trying to forget him. but when he’s the richest, most famous man in the city, it becomes quite difficult to avoid reminders.

as you sit in your living room, drinking a glass of wine, in and out of crying fits, you suddenly get the urge to snap out of this self-pity and get dressed up. something about putting on a nice outfit makes you feel better, even if there’s no where to go and no one to see.

but once you get the outfit on, you get a weird feeling. you don’t know why, but something’s telling you to go the bar. maybe you need to go once by yourself to get some closure. maybe you want to listen to the music. maybe you just want a stronger drink. but for whatever reason, you leave your apartment and get a taxi there.

it’s pretty crowded tonight, your usual table is taken by a young couple. you sit at a different spot across the room, giving you a clearer view of the door. you try not to look at it as you sip your drink, but every time the door swings open, you can’t help but glance over to see who it is. it’s never him. hours go by. couples have come and gone. the band has switched to a more quiet setlist. you’re on your third drink. and you miss him. by god, do you miss him. you miss dancing. you miss his bed. you miss his rare smiles. you start to feel the tears again as you see the door open out of the corner of your eye. surely another person has left, leaving you in a near-empty bar. but you look over and you see him. he stands there for a moment, and you just look at each other.

without thinking you stand up, walk over to him, and kiss him. he holds you tightly and you fall into him, letting his embrace overwhelm you. you finally pull away from each other and you notice the camera flashes outside through the windows. you look up at him and he smiles.

“we can handle them.” he says.

“yes, we can.”

“we can handle whatever anyone throws at us.”

“yes, we can.”

he starts to pull away but you continue holding, willing him to not let you go, not yet.

he puts his arms around you again and holds you tight.

“i’m here. i won’t let you go.”

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