@f4nd0m-fun here (I hope they allow us to ask with secondary blogs soon)
Just how wild do you like your Batfam cryptids? I've got ideas for days.
One is a wing fic where all the bats essentially end up half demon. Thomas and Martha make a deal with Alfred to help fix the city and clean up the curses and everything, and. Alfred asks for 'the souls of your descendants' at the point, not caring much for humanity but hoping to get ahead of those pesky demons in his soul collection (so and so said he has Constantine's soul but that's only a piece! What about a bunch of souls that have been tainted by the spirit of a city that has never had reason to hope? Now those are some rare and dark souls).
The Waynes were hoping he'd take their souls instead but he refuses (maybe they're too full of hope or something) but, over time, he grows attached and ends up giving Bruce a shard of his power, allowing him to transform into a demonic winged form based on an animal for his protection after his parents die. When he's young the form is a snowy owl, but once he come back and became Batman his wings have changed. Each of the babies is the same way. As Robin, they gain their baby wings, but, once they move to a new name, their wings evolve.
'The Demon's Head' isn't just a fancy title, the Al'ghul's are demon descended, so Damien is at least a quarter demon even at the beginning, but Alfred's power can't be passed genetically like they thought, so he was born grounded. In this, he shows up sooner, Talkia asking Jason to take Damien with him to his father since she knows her father will kill him for being wingless.
Tim, poor baby. He couldn't fly as Robin because his wings were a shattered mimicry of Jason's Robin wings. He felt like he was in the shadow of the previous Robin, making the 'replacement' nickname sting even more, but, eventually, he grows into the wings of a cardinal and learns to fly.
I'm not sure if Alfred marks Barbara as his person, but if not, maybe he regrets not doing so, thinking that she might not have ended up paralyzed if he'd given her power. But also she's not really considered a 'Wayne descendant' life the kids Bruce adopted, so he'd have to directly make the deal with her. Maybe he does this with Stephanie when she comes along, still thinking about how Barbara might've been better off with a deal. Also, he keeps trying to hold off on gathering their souls because he's grown attached. I figure he'd probably end up wanting to turn them into proper demons too tho when they eventually die but, for now, until the city has been restored (if it ever will be), the Batfam is essentially immortal, and Alfred might be pulling some strings so no one realizes the Waynes are as well. As a side note, I debated Alfred x Lady Gotham for this story.
-
Then I had a dpxdc version of this where the wings were still demonic in origin but basically Scarecrow and Bruce are many many family lines removed cousins from an ancestor who was siblings with Jack Nightingale. On top of that, Danny had wings but they got charred when he was electrocuted. This one also has Clock x Pariah and they have wings due to something to do with ghosts, Danny gets a cloak made out of their feathers while his ghost side slowly grows its own wings (but he'll never have wings as a living again).
-----
Sorry for the long send, I got a bit carried away, but if you want I can dig up my AU again and share what I have for the wings at least, not sure what else I've got written down.
#colony of bats AU
Honestly I love both of these ideas, but what if they were say, combined.
Alfred gifts Bruce a shard of his power- everyone knows the Waynes have wings, even if in most cases too small to fly. But the wings are feathered, usually bright and flashy for the men who inherit the trait.
Which means they're very identifiable. But like you said, Alfred gets (ugh) attached to this little mortal. He's practically raised him and honestly thinks it's adorable watching him manipulate the other richfolk at galas into thinking he's such a "polite young man."
Bruce is practically his baby!
So he gifts him a bit of his blood (which we know via Constantine can extend ones lifespan including giving them a bit of healing) and an itty bitty piece of his own power. Just enough for Bruce to be able to willingly call upon it.
Just enough for him to disappear into shadows. Just enough for his eyes to gain a hint of an unholy glow. Just enough for a hint of claws.
Just enough for feathered wings to shift into jagged mimicries of his own.
You know what could be an interesting thing? The wings are Realms in origin. We know the FentonNightingales separated into the Fentons and Nightingales some time after Jack, so whose to say that the Nightingales didn't get into magic. Perhaps they were given a gift to thank them after a bit of protection or assistance.
And the infinite realms are well, infinite. It attaches to all worlds, including say the more demonic ones. But whose to say none of the Fentons made a deal or three in the generations following. They were witch hunters after all, perhaps they need something to keep up with the "traitors" of their bloodline.
Perhaps a deal which resulted in those matching wings.
Now, how could they find out their relation with the Fentons? While there could be the adoption route, what if instead it was right after Danny's accident.
He died screaming, visibly got electrocuted, his wings are torched, there's no way they're not taking him to the hospital. Which means things like blood tests, maybe even a donated organ or two because someone doesn't get blasted with that much electricity without consequences.
Which, it's the batfamily, they definitely have alarms set up for any sort of family pings for both themselves and their rogues. Just in case.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also had no idea where to put it but if this includes demons and ghosts feeding on fear, or emotions in general, then Scarecrow could be instinctively attempting to feed and grow his wings. Also he deserves raven or rook wings. Maybe a jay's if you wanna go for color.
Oh my gosh, even if Alfred and Gotham don't get together, they definitely have tea together and spar. They're definitely co-parenting either platonically or romantically, it doesn't matter this is their specialist lil boy.
Who then brings even more of the specialist lil ones ever!
God I love the implications of Clockwork and Pariah creating a cloak of wings for a ghostling for them to use as their feathers slowly grow back. Love what that implies for the culture of the ghost zone.
Love the idea of it maybe having an influence on Danny's wings in ghost form since a ghost's appearance is influenced by their image about themself.
126 notes
·
View notes
Summerfest Day 2 - SECRET
All the air in the room shivers and gusts like an expulsion of breath; the sluggish, oil-slick water below resumes its flowing; Arabella, liquid metal curled lacelike over her skin, starts laughing.
It’s dark, in this dank cavern. Karliah left the lamp she carried outside and did not suggest lighting another. Perhaps it would be sacrilege. For several minutes, all had been shadow; but now if Arabella squints, she can vaguely make out the motion of the water, the distant shine of filigreed armour, the bird-mark on the floor. She can make out Karliah on the middle plinth and Brynjolf on the distant one; she can make out the cracked stone below her; she sinks down, low, into a crouch, hood pulled down over her forehead, and cackles. It echoes in her mouth, against the fabric-smoothness of her mask.
“Well,” says Brynjolf’s voice, blankly, from across the room, and again, “well.”
“The first meeting can be… overwhelming,” Karliah says, tactful. Like Arabella’s cracked under the pressure of watching someone talk to a big not-light in a hole so soggy-stale it feels as familiar as the cistern. She is still laughing – she can’t help it (it’s either funny or it’s very serious, and she’d rather not take it seriously) – as she rolls her shoulders back the way she practiced in the armoury, lets the metallic carapace unravel itself, shrinking and sinking again into her skin, to the cold metal mark she pressed like tattoo ink into the back of her neck. (She’s been branded – she’s been gulled – perhaps she should be taking it seriously, but it’s so ridiculous that she doesn’t want to.) The armour goes away. She can, just about, see her skin again.
She is still laughing, birdlike high and delighted.
Brynjolf shakes his head – she catches it only because of the way his eyes glint in the mask – and says, “Didn’t wake up this morning thinking I’d be meeting a Daedric Prince.” He sounds very deliberately careless; taking everything, very intentionally, in stride. “Suppose I’m honoured.”
“Oh, yes,” Arabella crows, “most honoured bargaining chip –” and she goes off in peals of laughter again. Her language is bleeding into Bos, a little – she’s getting her grammar mixed up in her head, blending her words in ways that should give them layers but instead just turns them to gibberish. Most-honoured, ill-weighted, played like lamb-tendon lute-strings, all an unintelligible mess of sounds. It’s all so patently ridiculous.
Brynjolf pauses, asks, “Does this happen, often?” with a nigh-audible furrow of the brow.
“Arabella,” Karliah says. “Arabella. What, the hysterics? No, or, I’ve never – Arabella, pull it together.”
“Lest your Lady think –” and the rest of it is lost to scrambled syntax, but then Arabella wipes her mouth – probably smudging her paint, she realises after the fact, damn it – and stands up straight and says, gleeful, “You liar. Well done.”
“Are you listening, now?” Karliah asks; when she moves, she gleams, ever-faint.
Arabella echoes, “Will you tell us, now? You’ve been so dreadfully surreptitious.”
Karliah gleams again. “I’ve been sworn to secrecy. I’m sorry I’ve had to mete out information so slowly. But now that you’ve transacted the oath –”
“Such a vague oath,” Arabella remarks, shark-toothed.
“I would like to hear more about the oath,” Brynjolf puts in, “and whatever else, but do we have to have this out in the dark?”
“I would like to hear about how it’s supposed to make us more powerful,” Arabella says, “and why I can’t feel any bloody difference.”
Karliah moves – coils her fingers, maybe, so her armour can slink off to puddle in her hand, pulled night-dark in toward the mark at her wrists – and Arabella can see her a little better, then, a ghostlike shape standing ill-defined on the platform. “That,” she says, soft-voiced, “relates to what I was going to say; Mercer’s –”
“Do you feel a difference, Brynjolf?” Arabella calls.
Sharply, Karliah says, “Stop interrupting.”
The water burbles quiet below them. Arabella’s smile is pinned so broadly to her face that her cheeks sting.
“We’re going back into the hall,” Brynjolf decides. His armour sloughs off as he starts picking his way back down the shadow-cracked stone. Halfway down, he looks over, his face a smudge in the dark. “No. But it’s new.”
“New indeed,” Arabella agrees, the soles of her shoes ringing against the marks in the stone; she holds her arms steady for balance as she steps onto the spit of rock. “Whatever power we expect, Karliah – it won’t come up until we’ve made amends with your goddess, will it?”
She is so very spectral, in the dark. Blue-grey, distant-pale. “Nocturnal’s favour alone is a powerful thing,” she says, clipped. “It will give us an edge.”
“Will it,” Arabella says. It is not a question. She is putting considerable effort into not giggling again.
Even in the dark, even without the masks, she can just about catch the shine of Karliah’s eyes as she looks at her. There is a lengthy pause. “It might.”
Brynjolf, a shadow almost at the end of his stone-spit tightrope, pauses. “Ah,” he says, and then, faintly disgruntled, “Really?”
“She played us well,” Arabella tells him with airy unconcern; her teeth scratch against the meat of her lip. “Very cleverly. I bought it just about enough.”
“It might help,” Karliah insists, dogged; “I – I hope it will. And I couldn’t tell you the whole truth if you remained outsiders – we would have been ineffective, barely a chance –”
Arabella slides the last half-metre of damp stone on the flat soles of her shoes, skirt flaring, hair in her mouth. She says into the dank cavern, “You sold us to curry favour.”
“Yes,” Karliah snaps; she strides down back to the ground, quick and practiced, a blur against the stone. “Yes, all right – we need her favour if we’re going to be able to return what Mercer stole, which you still won’t let me tell you about, we need – it’s been a decade.” (Arabella remembers the thick patterns of dust in these strange halls.) “It’s been a decade, Arabella, this is my life, and if bringing it back isn’t – maybe it won’t help! But I told you, it’s business.” She tosses her head; she’s still hooded, and it’s still dark, so this conveys very little. “Yes. I negotiated acquittal. And if you want to be angry about it, that’s fine, but do it less obtrusively so we can actually start –”
“I’m not angry,” Arabella says, and she licks her teeth. Karliah looks at her; in the dark, her eyes don’t flash. Her face is an ink-smudge. Arabella grins. “I just wanted you to admit it. That’s truly astoundingly selfish.”
“In fairness,” Brynjolf says, before Karliah has a chance to rail at that, and he gestures, quick and loose and just fast enough for her eyes to register it, to the lax little circle they stand in, like the points of a lopsided triangle. “Would you expect anything less?”
It’s still so dark – so little light comes in even through the entryway – but the water sounds cold and quick as it runs, and Arabella is good at taking up all manner of sensory space. “Touché,” she says through beaming teeth; shrugs, exaggerated, the motion rippling the metalline mark pressed into the back of her neck. “Really, Karliah, I don’t mind. Nocturnal can have my soul. What worth is it to me?”
23 notes
·
View notes