#helena bruce roleswap au

[havendance]

Okay, the full write-up for the Helena Bertinelli - Bruce Wayne Role Swap AU:

The Bertrands are an old Gotham family, old enough that they can trace their roots back to the city's founding. Of course, they usually don't because if you go back that far, you find that they used to be the Bertinellis are a branch of the Gotham mob that bought their way to legitimacy. There are still Bertinellis out there in Gotham, still running the old family business.

When Helena Bertrand is eight, her parents are killed after a night at the theater in a mugging gone wrong.

All of Gotham's most prominent families are intermarried to an extreme. Helena spends the next nine years being shuffled around from distant relative to distant relative, all of whom are try to set her up with their sons so as to get their hands on her sizable inheritance.

Gotham's elite are rotten to the core, a fact that Helena learns intimately as she grows up. She immortalizes her parents in her head as the only good people among them. (They weren't. The Bertrands were just as crooked as the rest, she was just too young to see it.

It'd be easiest if Helena could just write the whole city off, but she can't. The problem is that she loves Gotham. She loves it with the simple irrational love of a child who can't help but keep loving even after the city stabbed her in the heart.

At 17, she leaves Gotham. She runs away with as much money as she could manage to scrape together and spends the next four years living by her wits, learning from whoever's willing to teach her, preparing herself mind and body for a crusade to clean up Gotham.

While with the League of Assassins, she meets Talia. The two have a deep friendship that evolves into something deeper, though neither of them, if pressed, can articulate exactly what it is between them.

At 21, she returns to Gotham, finally old enough to touch her inheritance. She moves into Bertrand manor which has remained untouched for the past 13 years.

Helena lives alone. She keeps to a few main rooms of the manor, doesn't hire any staff, turns the cave below into her crime fighting lair, and begins her crusade, taking on the mantle of the Bat.

For two years, the Bertrand heir is a recluse. She sleeps and trains during the day. At night, she goes out as the Bat, tearing through the streets of Gotham. The only people she regularly talks with are her tentative ally, Jim Gordon, and a back-alley doctor she pays not to ask too many questions.

She just has major Battison vibes during this era of her life.

The Bat is styled intentionally androgynous. She is a living shadow, a creature of the night covered head to toe in black fabric and body armor. It's not like she went out the first night, planning for it, but in the dark, it's hard for her foes to tell that she's a woman. Rumors fly fast and she decides to encourage them. Fear and mystery are both weapons she can use.

(Not to mention, it provides another layer of security for her secret identity)

And like, I think that Helena is also very aware of the way that she was perceived and underestimated as a girl growing up. Of the ways that women can be hurt. She spent four years traveling the world on her own. I'm not comfortable saying whether or not anything happened to her, but she's definitely aware of it.

Just, the dichotomy between the mask of the Huntress and the scared little girl she feels like underneath is something I find really compelling about Helena as a character. The inhuman androgyny of the Bat is a way to play with that from a different angle.

The status quo changes one summer night when Helena goes to the circus on a whim and watches two people fall to their deaths.

The Bat meets a young boy sneaking out on the rooftops at night, searching for the man who killed his parents.

By the end of the week, Helena Bertrand has emerged from her seclusion to take in the orphaned son of the flying Graysons. At night, a brightly colored shadow begins to appear, alongside the dark form of the Bat.

Taking in Dick Grayson changes a lot. Helena Bertrand begins to partake in society again. She emerges as a ditz, a silly and naive pretty face. Someone who's a sucker for a sob story. She’s lovely little Lena, every bit as beautiful as her namesake, Helen of Troy.

She doesn't have the same playboy reputation as Bruce did. Both because of the differences in how society perceives women and also because I'm feeling the ace vibes for her in this AU.

Meanwhile, Bertrand Manor begins to transform from a house still haunted by a years old tragedy into a home. The majority remains closed up, (it's far too much space for a single women and her young ward) but Helena opens up more of the rooms and hires some staff to come by a few times a week to cook and clean. The windows are open more often and with Dick's laughter echoing down the hallways, the place begins to feel alive again.

I don't want to be like, Helena's more emotionally competent than Bruce because she's a woman, but uh, she's a more emotionally intelligent parent than Bruce.

Look, it's not hard to be less emotionally constipated than Bruce Wayne. Helena in this AU, may not be a teacher, but she also wasn't raised by an extremely repressed, British butler. She's not a perfect parent by any means, but she can actually tell her kids she loves them, like, with actual words.

Also I just want some of those softer vibes for this AU.

Anyway, because of this, she doesn't fire Dick from Robin. He makes the decision that he's outgrown the mantle on his own.

(Also, sidenote, but I think she starts taking a  couple of college classes when Dick goes off to college in this AU, out of solidarity. She's always been a little interested in it, even if she never ended up attending what with running away from home to go on her world-wide Bat training tour.)

And then she finds a kid stealing the Batmobile's tires and Dick, how do you feel about siblings? No, stop laughing! I don't have empty nest syndrome, shut up!

So Helena adopts Jason Todd, and Dick passes on the Robin mantle and everything's swell! They're happy and lets just leave them like that for now!

Let's flash back a little. Back when Dick was still Robin and coming back from his first semester of college to announce that actually higher education wasn't for him and he was dropping out, and also thinking about a new mantle, one Bruce Wayne was also coming back from his first semester for winter break.

Thomas Wayne is a mob doctor, a good one too. Good enough that he does work for all the families of Gotham and they respect his idealistic position of neutrality.

In the streets of Gotham though, tensions are rising. War breaks out between the five families and on a cold December day, the fighting boils over into Wayne's practice. Bruce is the only survivor. Both of his parents and his younger brother Allen (10 and with the sort of attitude you knew meant he was going to rule the world one day) die.

Bruce goes into hiding, fearing that someone will come back to finish the job. He swears vengeance on the men who killed his family, on all the mobs of Gotham.

To this end, he tracks down an old family friend: ex-spy, part time butler, actor, and mercenary: Alfred Pennyworth. Alfred agrees to take Bruce under his tutelage.

Bruce spends the next few months in a training montage and emerges no longer the weak young man who watched his family die, but wearing a new mask: that of the *Huntsman*!

He proceeds to track down and kill the people behind his family's deaths. He continues to act as a vigilante afterwards until, hmmm, let's say a close call with death either for him or Alfred leads him to decide to leave Gotham behind and go with Alfred to England. He attempts to hang up the cave and live a normal life.

Unfortunately, we have to go back to Helena and Jason. All good things must come to an end. @alternis wondered in the tags of my previous post about how Death in a Family would change and while I definitely feel like there would be differences, I have also not read Death in the Family, so I'm not going to comment on that at this time. Someone who has read the arc feel free to add on.

Jason still dies in the end though because his fate was predetermined by a phone poll. It destroys Helena.

After the initial rush of rage, after Superman has to stop her from killing the Joker and causing a diplomatic incident or whatever happens in DitF, Helena sinks into depression and despair.

She barely moves, only eats because the staff are still coming by to feed her. Occasionally she puts on the Bat and goes out into Gotham, fighting the same battles by rote. She's acting on autopilot without regard to whether she lives or dies.

Dick returns from space and he tries to reach out to her, to find solace in their mutual grief, but Helena isn't letting anyone in and Dick just lost a brother. He can't do everything on his own. He goes back to the Titans -- his support network.

There, in the aftermath of Jason's death, is the closest Helena ever comes to retiring the Bat. What is the point of going out every night? Of fighting this endless crusade if she couldn't save the person who mattered the most?

Enter Tim Drake! It's time for a Lonely Place of Dying.

Dick shows up like, 'I encountered a wild Tim at the circus and he's your problem now.' Tim's like 'the Bat needs a Robin', and Helena's like 'there is no more Robin, not anymore.'

Something, something, Tim pushes Helena to remember/rediscover the drive behind the mission and ends up as Robin.

Tim isn't Helena's son. He has parents and she could never be a mother. Not again, not after Jason. They're partners and they build a partnership that works.

(Side Note: Thinking about the difference in how Jack Drake interacts with Helena vs how he interacts with Bruce. He doesn't feel threatened by her in the same way because of sexism. He also doesn't respect her, probably spends some time flirting with her. Helena finds him annoying and dislikes him immensely but puts up with him for Tim's sake.)

Terrible comics arc where Helena starts to develop feelings for Jack and feels guilty because he's married that everyone just chooses to ignore

But back to Bruce! After getting through about six years worth of school in half that time, he has given up on living a new life away from Gotham. He returns to the city and gets a job as a high school teacher.

What does he teach? Idk, I'm thinking either science or history.

Bruce is that one teacher who's the toughest teacher in the school and you love him or hate him. He is a good teacher, but he also has incredibly high standards.

Cry of the Huntress (Huntsman) still happens! Bruce Wayne is minding his own business when Robin shows up and is like, 'Hi Bruce Wayne! Yes I found out your secret identity. Yest it was easy. You have a very distinctive origin story or whatever. We should team up now!' And Bruce just has to deal with it now.

Love triangle where Dick and Bruce are rivals for Barbara’s affections

And I think that's where I'm going to leave off this AU for now. (This already almost 2k, so...) (Surprisingly enough I don't feel compelled to dig into No Man's Land in this AU) (yet...)

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

Various Batman AUs

by Havendance

Batman AUs crossposted from my tumblr for archival purposes.

Latest AUs added: Reverse Robins AU where Stephanie Brown's the first Robin Helena Bertinelli Bruce Wayne Roleswap AU

Words: 7086, Chapters: 4/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen

Characters: Helena Bertinelli, Stephanie Brown, Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson

Additional Tags: practically everyone gets at least mentioned at one point or another, Reverse Robins AU, Role Swap AU, One Shot Collection, AU ideas, fic summaries, bullet points, not sure the best way to tag this...

source https://archiveofourown.org/works/46273534

[havendance]

The Prince Who Runs Through the Night

AO3

Fandom: Batman

Wordcount: 2509

Summary:

The figure that stepped out of the shadows and into the flickering light from the fireplace was Talia, holding something in her arms.

“Why are you here?” Helena asked. She didn't need any more pity, any more people pretending they knew how she felt, that they could understand her grief. She had lost her son. Nothing anyone could do was going to make it better.

“I need your help, beloved.”

Helena Bertinelli & Talia al Guhl in a Helena Bertinelli - Bruce Wayne roleswap AU.

Written for the Helena Bruce roleswap au. Happy Valentines day I guess. (Title picked solely on vibes and not the content of the episode I stole it from)

(See I can actually write fic about stuff other than No Man's Land...)

Excerpt:

There was someone else in the manor. Helena was aware enough to register the fact, but couldn't bring herself to care about who it was or what they wanted. She doubted it was Dick, not after the argument they'd had. It wasn't any of the staff, not at this hour night. Maybe it was a burglar. Maybe they'd come in and kill her. But then she'd be with Jason, so did it really matter?

The figure that stepped out of the shadows and into the flickering light from the fireplace was none of those. Instead it was Talia, holding something in her arms.

Helena went back to staring at the fire. “Why are you here?” She didn't need any more pity, any more people pretending they knew how she felt, that they could understand her grief. She had lost her son. Nothing anyone could do was going to make it better.

“I need your help, beloved.”

“I don't know why you'd want it.”

A sigh. Footsteps drew closer. Helena still didn't look up. “You are the best suited for this.”

“I'll only let you down!” Helena snapped, finally looking up.

The bundle in Talia's arms began to cry.

“Hush, hush my dear.” Helena could only stare as Talia began to rock the baby in her arms. “Your mother's here.”

“You have a baby.”

“Yes.”

“He's yours?”

She nodded.

“Who's the father?”

Talia pursed her lips. “He's not important.”

Helena's brain was starting to turn for the first time in what felt like ages. “Did he—”

“Beloved.” Talia cut her off. “It is none of your concern.” She took a deep breath and then there was a baby being placed in Helena's arms. She found herself shifting automatically, muscle memory taking over as she adjusted her grip.

“Talia, I—”

“Listen,” Talia said, voice low but in a tone that broke no argument. “You know as well as I what the league is like. I can not raise him.” Then, softer. “He's your son now.”

Helena found herself looking down, staring at the sleeping face of the boy she was holding. He was so small, his features so delicate. He was so breakable. She was going to break him. “Talia, I can't.”

“You are the only one I can trust with this.”

“Jason is dead because of me,” Helena said. “I got my son killed and you trust me with yours?” She knew her voice sounded desperate. She felt desperate, everything spinning out of control.

“If you let anything happen to him, I will destroy you.” She leaned down, her hand stroking at the few strands of wispy hair on his head. “But there are few others who can hold their own against father as you do.” Then she straightened up, looking Helena dead in the eye. “Beloved, if you hold dear the love we share, you will do this for me. You will give him the life he deserves.”

Helena breathed out. She felt... tired, not much of anything. A baby meant a lot of things. It meant so much that she would need to worry about later. She'd need to come up with a story, a reason that she had an infant out of nowhere. She knew that she had to say yes. “What's his name?”

“Damian. You'll do it then?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.” Talia bent down, kissing first Damian on his forehead, then standing up and kissing Helena on her cheek. “I am in your debt.”

Helena nodded, unable to say anything while looking down at the baby in her arms. At her son and, God, she wasn't ready to be a mother again. She didn't think she'd ever be ready to be a mother again except now she had to be.

Talia left at some point, retreating back into the shadows, back to the league, leaving Helena alone with Damian, still trying to grapple with the way her life had changed. She needed to call her housekeeper, to ask her to get formula and diapers and all the things that babies needed that she didn't have. She needed to start forging documents and laying the groundwork for whatever story she was going to tell. None of that felt achievable just now though, Damian weighing her down far more than his slight weight should be able to. Just a little longer. She'd stay sitting just a little longer.

[havendance]

I love your Helena and Bruce role swap au but I hope Bruce still adopts someone or has Damian because I need him to still be a dilf

Fair enough!

The simplest way to do this would be to give James Cooper, Helena’s canonical child from the 1989 series. Bruce Wayne now has to deal with a child prodigy orphan kid! It’s right up his alley.

However James basically disappears from canon after that, so I’m largely ignoring him in this AU, but you could definitely have a version of it where he sticks around. Bruce begins to raise a child to fight crime :)

Part of me is inclined to give Bruce Damian in this AU. I’ve been mainly focusing on dick-jason-early tim eras of comics, so I haven’t given much thought to Damian yet. He meets Talia somehow, ends up with a young assassin son. Bruce doesn’t have his no-killing code in this AU since he’s filling the Huntress role, so seeing the contrast in how he raises Damian could be interesting.

Of course, the thing about this AU, is that Helena met Talia while she was with training with the league and the two formed a deep undefinable bond. So if Talia shows up with Bruce’s kid then Helena’s totally going to be like ‘You slept with Bruce? That punk kid my son’s age? wtf?’ (Dick and Bruce are roughly the same age in this au).

Actually, wait, I really like this idea: Damian’s other parent isn’t Helena (through vague comic psuedo-science) or Bruce. It’s someone else, it doesn’t really matter (I know Ra’s was trying to marry Talia off to Bane at one point, idk). But Talia shows up with this baby on Helena’s doorstep, like ‘I can’t raise this child in the league. I’m entrusting my son to you because I know that you’ll be better to give him a better life than I could. Take care of him’ and now Helena has a new son!

(Jason’s dead. Helena’s mourning and now she has a baby to take of. The son of one of her closest friends except no one can ever know that child is anyone other than her’s by a mysterious father because if they do then Damian will be in danger. The press is having a field day and when Tim shows up at Haley’s circus he gets roped into babysitting.)

ahhh, I’m sorry. I realize I’ve ended up back with Bruce childless. I just find Bruce in this sort of young punk, childless state to be a really fascinating part of this AU for me. Feel free to come up with your own take that does have him ending up with kids though! I by no means hold the monopoly on Bruce-Helena role swaps. (In fact I would love it more people came up with them 😊)

[havendance]

Thinking about the dick helena roleswap au again. See when DC comics writers give Helena batman daddy issues it's silly and lame. But when I do it, it's sexy and cool.

[havendance]

Helena Bertinelli/Dick Grayson Role Swap AU

I know I said I didn’t actually want to think about the hypothetical Helena Bertinelli Dick Grayson role swap au, but it turned out I lied and actually I do have a lot of thoughts on it. I still feel like making Bruce Helena’s actual father could go really wrong really easily, but there’s a lot that’s really interesting about her being the first Robin.

Batman is a few years into his crusade and fighting a war on the mobs of Gotham when the Bertinelli massacre takes place.

He is in the middle of an aggressive campaign of surveillance when, perched on a distant rooftop, he watches through the living room window as a masked man bursts in through the door and rains down a hail of bullets.

It’s over as soon as it began, but Bruce could even think of helping.

Batman descends down into the room and finds that it’s not completely filled with the dead. There is a single survivor — a little girl, trembling and quietly crying — curled up next to her mother’s dead body, her dress stained with her mother’s blood.

He picks her up off the ground, wraps her in his cape, and makes a promise that he will bring to justice whoever did this.

(He would’ve gone after the masked man anyway, to understand the disruption in the mafia’s status quo if nothing else, but now it weighs more heavily on him with a promise made to a little girl, a girl who reminds him of himself.)

Helena remembers Batman sweeping her up. He blocked out the nightmare that surrounded her and it felt safe. That’s what stuck with her for the longest time, even when her actual relationship with Bruce began to devolve, that the Batman felt like safety.

Eventually the police come and Helena is put into the custody of her Uncle, Tomaso Passemote. As the city outside begins to devolve into all out war between the five families, Helena begins to have constant nightmares. She wanders the halls of her Uncle’s home when she can’t sleep.

One night, she overhears a conversation between her uncle and other man and she learns that he was the one who ordered her family’s massacre. SCared for her life, she runs away into Gotham to try and find Batman. Her Uncle’s men find her first.

(Meanwhile, Batman is investigating, but he has a lot on his plate what with the city on the verge of war.)

Helena was a sheltered child, but even then, even at her young age, she understood Omerta, that code of silence. You resolve things internally. You take blood for blood. That was the moral of the stories she was told as a child. The anecdotes and bragging of her father and uncles, the gruesome stories her older brother delighted in, the reassurances of her mother when she was frightened or hurt.

Helena is afraid, feels afraid all the time. She’s afraid that any day her uncle could come and finish what he started. She spends so much time being afraid that she comes out the other end and knows that she has to do something, anything, to make it stop.

So she takes that fear, her childlike, bone-deep understanding of omerta, and her brother's pocket knife and tries to be brave.

Batman finally finds her on the roof of Passemoto’s home, curled up outside her bedroom window.

“My uncle’s going to kill me,” she confesses to him. “So I need to kill him first.”

Batman is alarmed by this, but he manages to get the story from her and manages to convince her to wait.

They confront Passemoto together. He confesses to the truth. Helena tries to stab him. He attacks her back. Batman intervenes. By the time they’re separated,she’s stabbed him a couple of times (non-lethally). Batman strings up Passemoto for the police and holds Helena as she cries.

Bruce Wayne takes Helena Bertinelli in. It raises all sorts of rumors — about the ties between the Waynes and the mob, about illegitimate children, never mind that the dates don’t make sense — but he does trust anywhere else to keep her safe, and he’s grown attached.

Helen’a nightmares don’t stop with the arrest of her Uncle. They don’t stop until Bruce lets her in on the secret and teaches her how to defend herself.

She becomes Robin, dancing through the night at Batman’s side.

Helena is Bruce’s first child. She is the model, the prototype, the guinea pig for all that comes after. The standards were always the highest for her. On one level, she is certain that he never forgot where she came from, born in the blood and corruption of the mob, that he found her on a rooftop with a knife, ready to use it.

She has a deep empathy for the victims they interact with. It’s an empathy that manifests in anger at the people who harmed them. Batman is always getting on her for going too far, drawing too close to the line.

Helena is close to Dr Thomkins. While there are ideological differences between them, Leslie serves as a mother figure in her life. Neither Bruce nor Alfred, for all their extensive collective knowledge, have any idea how to handle a teenage girl going through puberty.

She joins the teen titans, forms deep friendships, saves the world a couple dozen times overs, has a couple teen relationships, and gets embroiled deeply in teen drama. Meanwhile, things between her and Bruce are growing more and more tense.

Helena is close friends with Kory. There something about the way the alien princess is so deeply in tune with her her emotions, the way she loves and feels and hates fully and without reserve. It’s a burning fire that simultaneously attracts and repulses. Hlena wants to be like Kory; she’s afraid of who’ll she’ll be if she is.

Things come to a head when Helena is seventeen and shot by the Joker. Batman fires her from Robin, kicks her out. She goes to metropolis and hears the story of Nightwing from Superman, leaves metropolis again.

She doesn’t go back to Gotham afterwards, doesn’t go back to the titans either. Instead she hitchhikes with no real destination in mind, trying to figure herself out. 

She ends up in Chicago. Helena spends the last of her money to rent a crappy apartment, gets a job as a waitress, and starts to piece together a new identity for herself.

A side-note on costumes: the Robin costume she wore was practically the same except maybe with a little skirt. (We’re going with the canon that Bruce designed the identity.) The Nightwing costume she wears is more different since she designed it herself. I think it’s a cross between Nightwing’s modern blue and black costume and the black and purple Huntress costume — the one with pants. We’re keeping the cape and using purple rather than blue.

The first night she goes out as Nightwing, she makes the choice that Nightwing isn’t a hero who kills. It’s a choice she makes, not Batman.

Eventually, she rejoins the Titans and continues to have wild adventures and boatloads of young adult drama. She probably has a few costume changes, maybe tries out a silly midriff baring costume for a week, idk.

Meanwhile, Bruce has obtained another Robin, a boy named Jason who he actually adopts. (Helena was never adopted because millionaire playboy adopts pre-teen girl is just not a good look.)

The thing about Helena and Jason’s relationship is that it started off poorly and by the time they start to work past the way it began, it’s too late.

Helena didn’t have any warning before seeing the news in the paper and it’s hard for her to separate her conflict with Bruce from her feelings about him and their relationship..

Additionally, Jason reminds her very much of her younger self. She watches him with Bruce and she sees her childhood playing out again. She sees Bruce making all the same mistakes.

And then Jason dies and it’s, well, it’s hard.

But, let’s switch tracks. It’s time to look at Dick Grayson.

The flying Grayson’s Gotham performance does not got terribly wrong when Dick first flies through the air with them. He grows up at Haley’s, performing on the trapeze with parents across the globe.

They come back to Gotham for one final performance before Dick’s due to break up the act. He’s getting older, he wants to spread his own wings. He’s nearly an adult, he wants to finally give college a shot and stop dragging his feet before it’s too late. 

The Gotham performance is very final. John and Mary fall to their deaths and Dick, the only survivor, the one who knows the truth of what happened — that it was the mob, not an accident — he goes on the run.

You meet all sorts of interesting people as a member of a traveling circus. Dick tracks down one such character who gives him a crossbow and teaches him to shoot, to track, to kill; how to refine his athletic prowess into something deadlier.

He calls himself the Huntsman and sets out to find the man who killed his parents.

Dick kills Zucco and stays in Gotham past that, continuing an uphill battle against the mob as he also begins to form a vigilante presence in Gotham.

This era comes to a close when an incident involving a gang with a backyard nuke leaves him with custody of a young kid named James who’s too smart for his own good. He retreats to Europe where he spends the next couple years with a circus.

Meanwhile, back in Gotham, Tim Drake has entered the scene! Idk how he knows their vigilante identities in this AU. Maybe Helena saved his life as a civilian when he was a little kid and he was convinced that she had to be Robin because she was awesome and Robin was awesome, and look, he was like 5, nobody expected him to actually be right.

Anyway, some form of A lonely Place of Dying happens and Tim becomes the third Robin.

Helena resents Tim at first. After all the drama of her and Jason’s Robin careers, here Batman finally has a Robin he doesn’t have to parent. He doesn’t need to tell Tim to be less violent. He never needs to worry that Tim’s going to kill someone. Tim’s from a nice family. Tim’s everything Batman wanted in a Robin and now he finally has it.

(it’s not as simple as that of course, but emotions aren’t always rational.)

She largely tries to avoid him.

Meanwhile, Dick Grayson has discovered that vigilantism is harder to quit than any drug and decides to return to Gotham. He, uh, leaves James with the circus where he’s been unofficially adopted by half the people there and where his mechanical inventions are really bringing in the crowds.

In Gotham, while a few less than stellar interactions with Batman lead him to deciding to relocate down the river to Bludhaven, before that happens he teams up with none other than Robin/Tim.

That’s right, it’s time for Robin III: Cry of the Huntsman.

Teaming up with Robin leads the kid to casually reveal that he knows Dick’s secret identity, and then, less casually, reveal that the reason he knows is that he used to go to Haley’s circus whenever it came to Gotham, including that final time.

So yeah, that’s apparently a thing. When Dick relocates to Bludhaven, Robin periodically shows up to keep bothering him. It’s a good thing he’s got a soft spot for kids.

Anyway, Bane shows up and Bruce gets his back broken. Blah blah blah, knightquest

Tim sneaks off to New York where the Titans are currently in the process of imploding to complain to Helena and off to bludhaven to complain to Dick, neither of which can do much to help. Dick is unwilling to get involved in all that batshit and Helena has her own problems and Bruce issues standing in the way.

But, before I forget, a brief tangent on Dick and killing. Part of a role swap au is figuring out what changes and what stays the same and I think in this AU, Dick and Helena end up in rather similar places in their opinions on killing. Helena chooses non lethal methods from a matter of personal code and choice, but she isn’t opposed to the idea of death as justice. Dick, after that first killing of his parent’s murderer, does not like to kill. He prefers and believes in justice in other ways. He does, however, accept that lethal force is a tool necessary to use on occasion, which is enough of a distinction to put him at odds with Batman.

(Though, saying that, Batman does treat him better than he does the Huntress in canon because sexism.)

But back to Knightfall. We get through Knightquest and Knightsend and stuff which brings us to the important part: Prodigal.

Helena never expected to be asked to be Batman, but it still stung that Bruce picked JPV and all his insanity of all people. When he asks her to fill in for him when he goes off to do whatever it is he goes off to do, she wonders just why he didn’t ask her the first time. Was it because she was a girl? Is it because he still doesn’t trust her? When she asks, he says it’s because she was living her own life, but she can’t quite believe him.

No one’s going to mistake Helena’s Bat for Batman, which changes some of the plot points of Prodigal, but not the important part of Tim and Helan bonding.

Tim grows on Helena throughout; she feels less resentment, more fondness. She can see the devotion he has to the ideas of the mantle and she sees that he can finally give Bruce what she could never and what Jason can no longer: an heir to the Bat.

Anyway, we’re going to skip ahead to No Man’s Land because I do have a brand. Dick and Helena don’t have a one night stand because I said so.

So, No Man’s Land. Dick is, wait, I left him in Bludhaven. Umm, he moves back to Gotham to help after the quake and decided to stay when No Man’s land was declared, and you know what? He’s entering his Batman era.

Dick looks at Gotham without Batman and decides, why not me?

You know what else dick is up to in No Man’s Land: Enemies to Lovers arc with Barbara Gordon.

When Barbara sees Dick as Batman, she’s initially hostile to him, but is convinced to enter into a grudging partnership with him. Proximity and the life and death stakes of No Man’s Land lead to the relationship between them becoming something deeper.

Of course, Batman shows up and throws a hissy fit and Dick goes back to being the Huntsman, but he keeps working with Oracle.

What’s Helena up to in this? Hmmm, she’s taking Batman’s place on the Justice League while he’s disappearing on his month’s long guilt trip and attending Tim’s parent teacher conference for him. Until she gets called into No Man’s Land that is.

I think that, due to the fact that they’re more similar in this AU, Dick and Helena get along much better. They have a certain respect for each other. So, when Helena shows up in No Man’s Land, I think there’s a fun trio dynamic with Helena, Dick, and Babs.

Anyway, when No Man’s Land ends. Barbara recruits her hot new boyfriend to join the Birds of Prey, a fact that Dinah gives her no end of shit for.

And I think that’s where I’m going to leave off for this one.

That was a lie, I need to go back to this idea of Tim as the heir to Batman.

Look, I respect a woman’s right to become Batman, but I also like engaging with canon on the level of what stupid decisions would DC make in this universe? So, this AU gets the theme of primogeniture, particularly of the eldest son variety.

In a way, Helena’s Batman arc in Prodigal serves to show that she cannot be Batman’s heir and to set up Tim as the true heir instead.

Throughout Tim's time as Robin, there is this throughline that Batman is pushing him to be more like him, to push him beyond Robin. Narratively, Tim is pushed up at the expense of Jason and Helena’s times as Robin. They were too violent, they were too emotional. Tim is like Bruce, caring when he needs to be, and analytic when it serves him better. His desire to one day return to ordinary life is portrayed as a flaw to be overcome. As for Tim, he views his future with a certain amount of trepidation while at the same time accepting its inevitability.

Tim Drake was introduced as this character with an innate understanding of what Batman and Robin mean. Him going from Robin to Batman is a natural extension of that.

It is with this subtext and history that we reach the Batman reborn era. The moral of the prodigal arc is that Helena can stand in for Batman, but not replace him. They need to maintain the illusion that Batman is the same as he always was. That much is clear to Tim, and so, he picks up the heavy weight of the legacy that’s been prepared for him.

Tim is Batman, Damian becomes Robin, and Helena remains as Nightwing, serving as some much needed support for Tim.

Umm, let’s say that Barbara stumbles across evidence that Burce isn’t really dead, so she sends her hot antihero boyfriend as well as Cass, who is looking for an opportunity for redemption following her unfortunate evil arc, off after it so that’s how we get Brucequest.

Meanwhile, Stephanie is still Batgirl I guess. Her relationship with Tim, already in an off-again phase, is further stymied by the fact he’s Batman now because kissing Batman is just weird and wrong.

Damian feels much more threatened by Tim in this AU because of the whole primogeniture, heir to the Batman thing. He does come to respect him over their time working together, especially when Tim expresses openness to the idea of Damian being the ultimate inheritor of Batman one day.

While Tim is taking on the masked inheritance of their father, Helena takes on the civilian side, taking control of Wayne enterprises and serving the socialite role.

She also, alongside Tim, works to take care of Damian. He doesn’t respect her in the beginning either, but she kicks his ass a few times and he comes around. He also comes to respect her understanding of lethal force and her decision not to use it. She also gets the chance to finally use the teaching degree she got in bits and pieces and homeschools him.

Anyway, Batman comes back, Tim moves on to a new mantle because he can’t go back to being Robin after being Batman, the universe resets, etc, etc

This is really where I’m going to stop now.

[havendance]

Making major waves in the Helena dick roleswap AU because the flying Graysons got to live an extra eight years and an entirely different cohort of people watched them fall to their deaths.

[havendance]

The thing about the helena dick roleswap au is that unlike Dick, Helena was born in Gotham. Gotham's her home. As Nightwing, she's an exile. Gotham isn't big enough for both her and Bruce and she is the one who is pushed out. She is the one who can't return. And that means that the post war games era is, for all that she's depressed and going through it, a homecoming for her. She has returned to birthright and it's eating her alive.

[havendance]

Reborn era in the helena dick roleswap au I think Tim probably gets Morrison-ified in Batman and Robin because he's the one who becomes Batman (see themes of primogeniture (firstborn son kind)) while Dini writes Helena as part of his rich gotham family history/politics storylines because she's filling Bruce's shoes in the roles of society darling and butting heads with Tommy Eliot while Tim's having a million and one breakdowns about taking on the Batman mantle and being a mentor to Damian (who respects him not at all) and also probably having a very awkward relationship with Stephanie Brown because I don't know if everything that happened at the end of the Robin run happened in this universe, but at minimum, he's Batman which is going to put in cramp in anything. I kind of think it shouldn't have happened so that the number one issue that's causing a cramp in their relationship is not 'Batman told me to blow you up and now you're upset and don't want me to be a vigilante' but 'kissing Batman is really weird and also you're dealing with your grief poorly and we're both different in these new mantles and its' hard to navigate.'

[havendance]

Sasha Bordeaux Tim Drake Roleswap AU

Because it turns out I have a lot more thoughts on this.

Following Jason’s tragic death in Ethiopia, Bruce Wayne is coping extremely poorly. After a rather public reminder of his grief spiral—I don’t know a car accident or something—the Wayne Enterprises board of directors gets nervous and saddles Bruce with a bodyguard.

Bruce does not like this any more than he does when they pull this move on him in canon post-NML. However, he is also depressed and puts up less of a fight.

Sasha Bordeaux finds herself saddled with keeping alive a very slippery, very depressed man who will disappear on her and return with injuries he doesn’t hide particularly well or bother to explain.

Sasha is a professional. She uncovers Bruce’s secret identity fairly quickly (Bruce is very much not doing well and his secret keeping skills are at an all time low probably) and proceeds to force herself onto his team.

She was hired to keep Bruce alive and if that means she also has to keep Batman alive, then so be it.

After about a week of her following Batman around and involving herself in his business, Bruce relents and begins training Sasha in an attempt to scare her off. It doesn’t work.

Sasha Bordeaux does not become Robin. She is initially a nameless vigilante fighting at Batman’s side. Eventually, she picks up the moniker of Shadow for the way she follows him around.

She also does not have that same bone-deep commitment to the code that Batman and his other allies do. You know the jokes about how Tim only doesn’t kill because Batman says so? That’s more accurate for Sasha here.

That is not to say she’d kill people like crazy if it weren’t for Batman, but she is an adult professional and in a field where sometimes lethal force is necessary. If the decision comes down between her client’s life and the life of their attacker, she will protect her client. She respects and understands Bruce’s reason for his code, and as long as she is acting as a vigilante, she will abide by it, but her refusal to completely believe in it is a source of tension between her and Bruce.

Her attitude towards vigilantism is also different. She is learning from Batman and she fights alongside him, but she is not his sidekick. She is his employee. Her first and foremost priority is him. As time goes on, she does come to value and become more invested in the other parts of vigilantism, but her first priority always remains Bruce.

Having Sasha around does help pull Bruce out of his rut because he now has to think about having another person around him. Sasha’s lack of complete buy-in with his code also forces him to be more aware of it in his own actions.

Tim’s superpower is networking. Sasha’s is not. As a result of this, Bruce remains more isolated in his crime fighting. Without Tim there to drag Dick back, their relationship is much more distant and strained. While they eventually reconcile from the aftermath of Jason’s death, I don’t think they get to the point where Bruce formally adopts him. Likewise, he’ll work with Oracle, but they’re both far more likely to just do their own thing.

Without Tim, Helena doesn’t really make it to the point of ‘in and out’ of Batman’s circle. She stays solidly on the outside. She remains on the Justice League reserves, but she doesn’t have her JLA membership in this AU. Eventually though, she still does join up with the Birds of Prey.

Similarly, Stephanie doesn’t really have any of the teaming up with Tim that she does. All she’s got is her own gumption and Batman telling her to stop.

Let’s take a moment to talk about Knightfall. Jean-Paul Valley happens. Bruce tells Sasha to get him trained up and she does. Bruce still makes him Batman.

When he goes off to rescue Dr Kinsolving though, she refuses to stay behind and keep an eye on Jean-Paul and instead accompanies him. She’s his bodyguard after all, not Jean-Paul Valley’s.

This results in things going downhill even quicker for poor JPV.

To me, this results in Helena having a precursor to her No Man’s Land arc where she realizes that someone needs to step up, but I feel like it’s more likely that she just thinks that Batman’s rally gone off the rails, steers clear of him, and judges him for being so high and mighty for her crossing the line when he’s like this now.

Anyway, Bruce gets magicured and comes back to Gotham. He does call in Dick for help (Dick is still annoyed about the Azbats thing but he comes when called). Prodigal doesn’t happen.

Sasha eventually joins Bruce’s cast of love interests. Since they’re on the same side, there isn’t the inherent drama of Selina or Talia, but I’m sure Bruce can find a way to make it tragic.

Hmm, I’m not interested in retelling canon except Tim’s not there so we’re going to skip ahead some.

Sasha follows Bruce on his No Man’s Land guilt-bender which probably has more guilt since she’s standing there all the time judging him. She also breaks up with him. Because he’s in his guilt-bender era.

We’ve got to build isolation mode Bruce, so let’s say, somewhere during the climax of No Man’s Land, Sasha needs to kill someone, which sparks conflict—

No wait, better idea. Bruce and Dick are at a disagreement over Dick’s decision to join the police force. Officer Down drives them further apart and also results in Alfred deciding to pack up and move in with Dick instead. Barbara is also mad at Bruce because of Officer Down.

When Hugo Strange does attack Wayne Enterprises, Sasha is put in the position where the only option she can see is to shoot to kill.

This leads to a huge argument between her and Bruce where they probably have one of those “you’re fired” “well, I quit” exchanges and she storms out.

They are still, of course, tragically in love though. (I am not the hugest fan of Sasha/Bruce but it has grown on me.)

What happens to Sasha after this? Hmm, let’s say Barbara recruits her for the Birds of Prey because she knows all their secrets and is still a part of this now..

This one of the few times that Sasha is ever a team player. She mainly sticks with Bruce. The only exception is the Outsiders when it’s Bruce’s team. She probably takes over them instead of Alfred (I still think that was the silly sort of comics stupid) which Bruce is in his ‘dead’ era.

But now, it’s time to talk about Tim. For that, we go all the way back to the beginning: Haly’s Circus, the night the Graysons fell.

Tim needs to be an adult in this AU for plot reasons, so we’ll say he was the same age as Dick. Acrobatics was just the latest in a long string of interests his parents had encouraged, so when he met Dick, that was one of the coolest things ever.

And then the Graysons fall to their deaths.

This leaves Tim with recurring nightmares and a new obsession with death and the Batman, something that his parents are uncomfortable with.

One night when Tim’s in high school, while he’s out late with his friends, in places they shouldn’t be, they get into more trouble than they can handle and Robin saves them.

Robin uses a quadruple somersault.

Tim keeps the knowledge close and never talks about it.

Towards the end of his freshman year of college, his parents are killed in a car accident while abroad. He ends up taking his inheritance, dropping out of school and doing his own mini Batman training tour, going here and there, doing odd jobs, learning from whoever will teach him, and doing a class here or there.

He does manage to scrape enough credits and motivation together to get a degree, right around the time No Man’s Land is ending. He’s still pretty aimless, so when he hears that the board is hiring a personal assistant for Bruce Wayne, he applies.

Bruce is in self-isolation mode and absolutely does not want yet another person foisted upon him by the board. Unfortunately, Tim is just as tenacious as Sasha was, he kind of reminds Bruce of Dick (who he misses because he’s sabotaged that relationship so hard), and so, when Tim inadvertently lets on that he knows Bruce’s secret, he starts teaching Tim vigilantism as well. Because he’s also pretty lonely.

Tim is enthusiastic about all of this and is also trying to encourage Bruce to reconnect to people with mixed results. I think he does succeed at getting Bruce and Dick to talk for once in their lives, but most of the time Bruce is not particularly inclined to listen to him and also he had some pretty bad arguments with people.

So Bruce is still on his own when he is framed for murder. Tim, as his live-in personal assistant, is also there and arrested.

Blah blah blah Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive happens. Dick, who has recently reconnected with Bruce a little more, is like ‘that’s my emotionally distant father figure who I refuse to believe could commit murder’. Sasha also does not believe it due to their previous conflicts and ends up coming back to help the investigation.

They clear his name, but before they can get Tim out, he gets his death faked in prison and recruited by Checkmate.

Bruce still gets very upset by this because, while Tim was kind of annoying, he also reminded him of Dick and the fact that he is dead is hitting some really sore spots for him so he terrorizes Checkmate until they cough Tim up to tell him that he wants to stay.

Tim has been looking for purpose and Checkmate gives him that. It was cool, fighting with Batman, but he was also very much aware that he was coming from outside and Bruce has people supporting him now, so he doesn’t need Tim.

We’re going to skip ahead again to CheckOut because THIS is the big Dick & Tim teamup in this AU.

Tim has done all the OMAC project stuff, he tried to organize a coup against Maxwell Lord to mixed results, he got OMAC-ifified, and he got promoted to Black King afterward despite his youth because he has an A-tier networking game.

And now Checkmate wants to take on Oolong Island, but they can’t because politics, so Tim suggests they Shanghai the Outsiders for a number of practical reasons, but mainly because he is still a major Nightwing fan.

He’s over here like ‘we’ll kidnap everyone except Nightwing because clearly Nightwing is too amazing and awesome for us to kidnap so instead we’ll lure him to us.’

And they like fight and Nightwing recognizes him as that guy who was working with Batman before because of his fighting style and they banter their way across this teamup. I  don’t think Tim ever tells him about watching his parents die because Tim does in fact have tact in that regard, but he has a great time getting to team up with Nightwing. Except for all the torture of course.

But back to Sasha, when Bruce dies, Nightwing takes over as Batman and makes Damian the first new Robin since Jason.

I know I said Sasha probably ended up in charge of the Outsiders, but also I think she should do the Bruce-quest as being one of the most attached to Bruce.

Sasha and Alfred team up maybe?

Anyway, I think I’m going to call it here because this is still plenty long. 

[havendance]

A Lonely Place of Dying

Companion piece to this. Also takes place in the helena dick roleswap au.

--

There was a kid in Helena’s apartment. Young, maybe in middle school, dark hair, nicely dressed if a bit grubby. Standing frozen where he’d been poking at the photo album Donna had given her, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“Who are you?” Helena demanded. “And what are you doing in my apartment?” He wasn’t what she’d been expecting to find when she came back to find her door unlocked.

The kid jumped back. “I’m sorry!” he said. “I know I shouldn’t have broken in but I didn’t know where you were or when you’d come back and it’s important! It’s really important.”

Helena sighed. “Look, I don’t care what game you’re playing here, kid, but you’ve thirty seconds to get out of here before I call the cops.” She probably wouldn’t actually call the cops, just kick him out herself, but he didn’t need to know that.

“No! I promise this is, umm. Look, Batman needs you!” he blurted out,

“Excuse me?” Helena schooled her face to look like she thought the kid was crazy rather than reflect the spike of adrenaline his words had sent rushing through her.

The boy nodded. “I know you’re—” he glanced around furtively before whispering “—Nightwing and I know that Bruce Wayne is—” back to whispering “—Batman.”

Helena made sure the door was shut behind her. This was not the time to panic. “Who told you?” she demanded. If this was another one of Deathstroke’s games—

The boy had taken off his backpack. He looked up from where he was rummaging through it. “No one!” he said. “I figured it— I mean, it’s not important. I promise I never told anyone.”

“Who did you say you were again?”

“It’s not important.” He dug out a paper folder, shoved it into her hands. “Batman needs you.”

Helena opened it automatically. “Look—” she started to say before looking down and seeing just what was inside. It was Batman: pictures of Batman taken from far too close, amateur enough that it was probably the kid that had taken them. And wasn’t that a comforting thought?

“He’s been bad, really bad since Ja—” he stopped himself. “Since Robin died. I think he’s going to get himself killed.”

Helena flipped through: Batman looking beat to hell. Batman falling off the reservoir. Batman, soaking wet, staggering over to the Batmobile. She’d heard it was bad, heard the rumors that they were thinking of taking down the Batsignal. It was different seeing it. “Where did you get these?”

The boy shrugged. “I took them.” That’s what she was afraid of. They were far too close to the action to be comfortable. Batman should’ve seen him. The fact that he hadn’t was a whole other bad sign on its own. “He needs Robin. To hold him back. To remind him why he does it.”

“Robin’s dead, kid,” Helena said bluntly.

“You used to be Robin. If you go back to being Robin, you can help him. Robin’s the light to Batman’s darkness. He needs it. He needs you.”

That startled a bitter laugh out of her. “Batman’s made it perfectly clear that he doesn’t need me.” He’d made that clear after Jason, before Jason. Again and again. The wonder wasn’t that he’d fired her, but that she’d managed to last so long before he did.

“No,” the kid sounded almost heartbroken. He’d probably only ever seen the pretty picture they’d put on and not the ugliness underneath. “He raised you! He taught you everything you know. You were Batman and Robin. Can you really just abandon him like that?” He sounded so certain about all of it. That it meant something.

Helena sighed. The kid’s certainty was contagious. There had been good times there along with the bad. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll swing by and see if I can give him a hand. But as Nightwing. I’m not becoming Robin again. I can’t become Robin again.”

The kid sagged in relief. “Thank you,” he said. He started to eye her door.

Helena made a decision. “And you’re coming with me.”

“What?”

She smiled. “You’ve still got some explaining to do, kid.”

—

It took a couple of hours to drive from New York to Gotham. The kid (who’s name she still didn’t have) seemed content to sit in silence, but Helena wasn’t about to let him off that easily.

“So,” she said, after she’d made it out of the city traffic and onto the freeway, “You never told me your name.”

He shrugged. “It’s not important.” He was hugging his back to his chest, staring straight ahead out the front window. “I’m just doing this and then you’ll never see me again. You don’t need to know.”

Helena sincerely doubted that. “You know a lot of big secrets kid. That’s not just something we can let go.”

“Oh.” It sounded like that was occuring to him for the first time. “Even if I promise never to tell anyone? Or are you going to brainwipe me? I promise I won’t tell!”

Helena sighed. “No one’s going to brainwipe you. Just, how did you even figure it out in the first place?”

“Oh, that. It’s kind of silly,” he said. “I don’t think you need to worry about anyone else doing it.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Well, you saved my life once,” he said, softly.

“I’ve saved lots of people.”

“As Helena Bertinelli, I mean, not Robin.”

“Oh?”

But she didn’t need to encourage him, he was already telling the story.

“I was 5,” he said. “There was this children’s event I think, some sort of fundraiser, at the Opera House and my parents had taken me. Two Face attacked in the middle.”

It was beginning to sound familiar.

“I don’t remember exactly what happened, but he grabbed me as a hostage I think. He was flipping his coin when you attacked him. You came out of nowhere and hit him with a fire extinguisher.”

Oh, she did remember that. She’d been twelve, with three years of Robin under her belt. Two Face had separated the children from the adults and she’d been there with none of Robin’s usual tools when he announced he was going to start killing people if his demands weren’t met. When he’d pulled out the coin.

“You were crying,” she remembered. “I gave you his coin.” She’d known his name then; she could almost remember it now, at the edge of her memory.

“I still have it,” he said fondly. “I thought you were the coolest ever after that. You were so brave.”

Helena had been terrified. Afterwards, Bruce had yelled at her about it, with the cold voice she’d learnt meant that he was afraid too. And afterwards, he’d held her so tight he thought he would never let her go.

“—and afterwards, I was convinced you had to be Robin because you were so cool.” Helena glanced over to see that he had an absentminded smile on his face. “I was only five. It was kind of silly.”

“It was right.”

“Yeah, but that was just luck. I mean, I looked for other evidence when I got older, and if you know what you’re looking for, you can see the connections, but like. I just got lucky. I mean, I was just a kid.”

He was still a kid, Helena didn’t point out. Instead she said, “All the secrecy, and it’s undone by a child’s guess. Impressive.” If Bruce weren’t currently trying to destroy himself, she’d almost be looking forward to seeing his reaction to it.

“Yeah. I wrote you a thank you note afterwards,” the kid added as an afterthought, “I don’t know if you ever got it.”

She had. It had featured an illustration of her attacking Two Face in crayon and a polite note that had clearly been written out by the kid’s parents, but he had painstakingly signed his name in crayon underneath. What had it been…

“Tim Drake!” She exclaimed at last.

The kid startled. “What?”

“That was your name. Tim Drake.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. I guess I couldn’t keep it a secret forever.”

“Nope,” Helena said. “You do realize I’m a detective?”

“Yeah,” the kid— Tim— sounded sheepish.

That thank you note he’d sent was probably still lying around somewhere. Maybe she could get Alfred to dig it up.

[havendance]

Enough Reverse Robin AUs, we need to start writing Helena Bertinelli-Bruce Wayne roleswaps

[havendance]

i noticed that you have people being robin before/without dick doing it first in your roleswap and reverse aus (which are amazing by the way, the helena and bruce swap in particular isn't something i expected at all and it was so so good), so i was wondering where you have robin originate from in your head seeing as a lot of later stuff tends to have it come from dick's mom. is it from bruce or?

It really depends on the AU. I do like using it as the name that Dick's mom called him, and in my reverse robins AU where Steph's the oldest, I do have her use a different name. Other times I think it's simpler to just keep using Robin even if Dick wasn't the first Robin, going off of older comics where Bruce came up with the name, like in my Helena-Dick roleswap AU.

[havendance]

Because I am thinking about the Helena Dick Roleswap AU again, and like these pages from Gotham Knights (Thanks to scintilly for finding them for me)

Dick (narration): You're not an easy man to be close to, Bruce. As much as you care about any of us, any of THIS, I know you'd trade it all in a hearteat if you could have your parents back. And I've never really admitted this to anyone, but I don't think I would. Trade, I mean. And I don't think I'm ready to see your face if I TOLD you that. Which is why I'm never gonna send this letter. I miss my parents with my whole heart, Batman I do. But I wouldn't trade this for the world. Love, Dick

And like, in terms of Helena because the Graysons were good people. The Bertinellis? Not so much. In the AU where she's the one who's taken in by Bruce after being orphaned, how much does that weigh on her? If her family had not died, who would she have become? She wouldn't be Robin. Would she be caught up in the cesspit of the mob?

Bruce can be controlling. His standards are impossibly high. Helena already feels like she's on the edge of failing him. Like he judges where she came from, like he's afraid of who she could become. She's torn between the fact that she loved her parents and misses them, and the fact that part of her can't help but classify her family's deaths as a good thing that happened to her. It was terrible. It saved her. It shaped her. She misses them. She's scared of who she would've become if they were still alive.

[havendance]

You know what, a self-indulgent poll because I'm curious:

Links to AUs:

Jack Drake extended coma au

The one where Steph's the oldest

Helena Bruce roleswap au

Helena Barbara roleswap au

Helena Dick roleswap au

Barbara Jason swap au

Everyone dies during Batman: Legacy

Dick dies, Jason lives AU

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

Various Batman AUs

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/QGIZVSs

by Havendance

Batman AUs crossposted from my tumblr for archival purposes.

Latest AUs added: Reverse Robins AU where Stephanie Brown's the first Robin Helena Bertinelli Bruce Wayne Roleswap AU

Words: 7086, Chapters: 4/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen

Characters: Helena Bertinelli, Stephanie Brown, Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson

Additional Tags: practically everyone gets at least mentioned at one point or another, Reverse Robins AU, Role Swap AU, One Shot Collection, AU ideas, fic summaries, bullet points, not sure the best way to tag this...

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/QGIZVSs