Drake Siblings
Have I read this prompt somewhere or was this a fever dream from my bored mind.
What if, now hear me out.
What if we bring up Dana Winters-Drake (whose confirmed to at least be alive in the DC verse but no one knows where she actually is)
What if instead of when she had a mental breakdown and getting committed to an Bludhaven clinc she wandered away before anyone noticed and by the time Tim or anyone did notice a lot of stuff started happening at once in both Gotham and Bludhaven (Steph dying, The Bludhaven crisis, etc etc)
Tim still tries to find her though but even with best resources it was like she just disappeared into the wilderness and the stress of trying to handle more and more problems get worse.
So when out of the blue, a couple of years later, he gets a call from an unknown number. On his private, only for friends and family, phone and when he answers he meet with a young girls voice on the other end.
A very young, maybe six or seven, girl who informs him about his apparently half-brother Danny Drake-Fenton. And how she loves Danny so, so, so much but knows her home is dangerous for him to be in.
Tim is stunned and before he could question her, she says Danny is Dana and Jack's baby and that her parents had adopted him years ago and put Dana's stuff that the hospital had away for him to look at when he was older but she just had to fight off their lunch from eating her brother and she knows he needs a better place to live and so she snooped around and found Dana's diary and that she had to unscramble the nonsense Dana wrote and found Tim's number with the words 'tell him about his brother Danny' hidden in it. And-
But before she could keep rambling she hears Danny screaming "JAZZY THE MILK WENT BAD AGAIN AND HISSED AT ME!"
Tim is left with silence after hearing Jazz yell to Danny to lock the fridge and step out of the kitchen as she gets the bat.
2K notes
·
View notes
You know what? You know what I think?
I think that if we lived as we were meant to, in larger intimate ("extended family") groups and with more shared labor and time to do it (UBI NOW) people like me would not feel so useless and burdensome because there would be people around to help and to do what neurodivergent people can't while making valuable space for the neurodivergent to do what they ARE good at.
The way we live right now, all right, the way we live right now forces units of two adults to be able to do EVERYTHING or PAY to have someone come do it for them. I have to do the housework. I have to do it! But I am having to do a million different things and most of them I am not good at. I suck at them.
I wouldn't feel like shit, okay, if I had more than one other person around who was not a child and who could do the things I can't, like do the yard and cook and do repairs and basic maintenance; and someone else to split everything else that I like but is too much for me. It would free me to do what I am good at and enjoy. Cleaning, as in the sink and toilet, the windows, the blinds. Taking out trash. Folding, hanging, and sorting laundry.
But because all the shit I can do often relies on other shit being done first, and I can't do or have trouble doing those things, the shit I can do often can't be done. And even the shit I can do, I can't do ALL of it. So I can't keep up, and things get very bad.
We aren't meant to live like this. We are not meant to live like this.
That thought hurts so much because being able to flee the birth family is integral to survival for so many people. I'm so afraid that living in larger family groups would create more opportunities for, say, queer kids to be isolated, rejected, bullied, and abused. But if we gave people enough money to survive, and stopped considering children the property of their parents with no system in place to help them escape bad situations except a system that is often just as bad, just different.
I'm aware that communes and collectives aren't all that successful and are kind of a joke. I don't mean that. I mean a fundamental shift to multigenerational families where taking in "strays" (which my family did) is also normalized so people escaping abuse into existing households was accepted, with these families centered in maybe a couple of different larger residences so not everyone has to buy and maintain their own fucking washing machine and vacuum cleaner, and so people can benefit from large group meals that yield leftovers, and so child and elder care can also be centralized.
Then disabled people and the neurodivergent and sick and injured people, and pregnant people, and grieving people, would not have to either labor through all those stressors or consign themselves to living off an unlivable pittance or being put under legal guardianship.
I'm not saying anything new. People live like this in other parts of the world and maybe it sucks and I am wrong. But I'm just really mad right now because I can either do laundry or clean the sink but not both, and I really think we could improve society somewhat by making it so I did not have to choose one without sacrificing the other.
321 notes
·
View notes
have been toying with the idea of an au wherein shen jiu, after burning down the qiu household and running away, comes across xie lian rather than wu yanzi poaching him immediately afterwards:
i'd imagine in this verse he runs away to town rather than immediately being found in the aftermath of what he's done. at this point, shen jiu would be too paranoid to consider reaching out for directions to cang qiong mountain even if he wanted to make it there: what if they knew what he did? or figured it out if he did know? (if he even had the mind to think of these things through his panic)
he doesn't want to end up begging on the streets again, though—too alike his childhood and last time he was in that position, shen jiu ended up with the qius in the first place
so he takes refuge in temples that he comes across, stealing food when he can before moving to a different part of the rather large town he's ended up in so there's no clear pattern of when he shows up at whichever food stall
despite not holding that same respect and unwavering belief in gods (how could he, after everything he's gone through? shouldn't they have stepped in, sometime? what god would let him suffer as he did, separating him from the only person he loved?) he knows better than to try them, and begrudgingly thanks them for the shelter (because this he did appreciate, at the very least, if nothing else)
winter hits hard when it does, and shen jiu, after spending so many years in the qiu household, forgot how the cold seeps into your skin and bones without solid walls to keep out the frigid breeze.
he quickly falls ill with nothing to protect him from the elements but his threadbare clothing, and when he grows ill, he becomes slow. shen jiu nearly gets caught stealing, running away before he can be dragged to a town guard for his offence, but earning himself a nasty wound to his leg as he retreated
sickness + the cold + the wound leave him weak and wanting: missing qi-ge, reminiscing on nights where they'd curl up together for warmth, still cold but not alone, the two of them steady against the storm that raged on ahead of them
fever-ridden and teetering close to death, shen jiu wanders into a temple late at night and sinks to his knees, falling to his side, heart-rate slowing. in his delirium, he misses the figure taking shelter from the storm in the corner, watching him
shen jiu wakes up (he doesn't expect to), warm while he hears the wind whistle. he's still in that temple from earlier, but it's considerably... cozier. a small fire warms the inside and his clothes aren't as damp against his cold skin. his fever's broken, too—he doesn't know how long it's been, but he's glad he didn't die: never realized that he wanted to live until he was close to forfeiting his right to
here is where he meets his accidental saviour: xie lian stood over a slowly bubbling pot of stew that smells heavenly to shen jiu—he'd eat just about anything at this point, starved
his immediate distrust of xie lian stops him from being truly excited about his appearance
their relationship is veryyy shaky at the very beginning: shen jiu refuses to trust him and xie lian refuses to abandon this strange child he found on the verge of death
(there's a strange sort of bond built up when you nurse someone back to life, dragging them away from the brink of death and xie lian isn't interested, but he's curious about this kid who stumbled into his temple at the dead of night on a midnight in winter)
shen jiu's torn between distrust and this desire for company he didn't know he possessed; after being alone with no one but the qiu household [before he went on his massacre] he didn't realized how much he wanted to share space with someone who wasn't actively hurting him until he was afforded the opportunity to experience non-violent company with xie lian
his distrust slowly declines when he finds out that xie lian is a cultivator. despite being arguably too old to learn cultivation to the fullest extent he could have if he started a few years earlier, he still desperately wants to learn
xie lian, perceptive as ever, slowly starts teaching him bits and pieces of the basics, teaches him to meditate, takes care to keep his distance when it looks like shen jiu's getting overwhelmed
shen jiu can't help but get attached. he hates it
shen jiu decides to test xie lian before resigning himself to this
he was snappy, impatient, and argued with xie lian, when he came over, one day, waiting for some form of punishment to come, bristling like a spooked cat.
nothing came of his experiment but a slight frown from xie lian, which made shen jiu feel almost bad—xie lian almost reminded him of qi-ge, which made him feel doubly bad because he desperately wants to find him
shen jiu came to xie lian the next day with a pastry [that he stole] as an apology. and a request:
"teach me how to cultivate so i can be a disciple at the cang qiong sect"
xie lian agrees easily enough: he's been around shen jiu to see that despite the late start, he has potential to be great [especially untouched by wu yanzi and his twisted form of cultivation]
shen jiu throws himself into his studies, working himself to the bone
xie lian is concerned by this and after trying to soften the load of his work doesn't make shen jiu slow down, he becomes stern: warns him against trying to chase too much frivolously
this leads to a breakdown of sorts—where shen jiu gets angry, dismissive, before becoming upset. the average emotional depth of a teenager but, like, 4 times worse because of the circumstances
xie lian coaxes the story out of shen jiu here; qi-ge [the first time he's mentioned aloud by name], the qiu household [only the barest of details. shen jiu refuses to dwell], and the night shen jiu made qi-ge leave, as well as qi-ge's promise to come back
shen jiu finishes by telling xie lian he needs to make it back to qi-ge, needs to see if he's still alive, he's been selfish for sticking around as long
shen jiu tells xie lian that he needs to figure out as much as he can, as fast as he can, so he can leave and make his way to cang qiong mountain with some sort of base knowledge to make it in. and that he's not sorry for pushing himself because he doesn't have time
xie lian is quiet for a while
puts a comforting hand on shen jiu's shoulder and tells him he understands; he knows someone who would do anything to make it back to the one they loved, understands the pain that comes when time and distance separates the two
however, xie lian tells him, he can't let shen jiu push himself. he'll only stunt his progress by hurting himself rather than speed things up
shen jiu is ready to argue again before xie lian offers to make the trip with him
shen jiu doesn't believe it at first—who would bother with helping him for this long if they weren't getting anything out of it? he already found this hard to believe, let alone the fact that xie lian would drop everything to travel with him for weeks on end
xie lian doesn't shake in his resolve, though. shen jiu figures out he's being serious and wants to argue, but he's just—relieved
so many people have stood as roadblocks on his path back to qi-ge; xie lian might be the first person actively trying to help them
it almost reignites hope in him; someone other than him believes in them. someone other than shen jiu thinks they'll make it back to each other and succeed in reuniting. xie lian's faith in him is like a gust of wind beneath his wings
he agrees to their road trip
[xie lian makes sure to tell his beloved he'll be away for a while]
[shen jiu doesn't notice that xie lian buys steamed buns off the same stranger in nearly every town they stop by for a night of rest in the following few weeks]
[xie lian notices, years later, when shen qingqiu doesn't recognize him upon their first meeting in decades. shen yuan doesn't know xie lian, but xie lian knows this isn't shen jiu, anymore]
191 notes
·
View notes