#so when it comes to the red hood thing Duke is like ‘don’t shoot first 🙄’ but also all bets are off when u step outta line bc the fact that | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

redhead-batgal · 3 years

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Type: One-shot

Pairing: Fem! and Vigilante! Reader x Damian Wayne/Robin

Content: Some angst and lots of Fluff, some cursing, violence and an oblivious reader. Aged up Damian, 15/16yrs old.

Y/N: Your Name, L/N: Last Name, V/N: Vigilante Name

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There is a moment when you realize that you love some one, there is also a moment when you realize you hate someone. However, it's the moment realizing that someone loves you that usually hits the hardest. Unfortunately, this was not the moment for you. Instead it was the moment you realized that Damian Wayne hated you.

And honestly it pissed you off. You had done nothing to warrant his hate, in fact the two of you had been friends until he decided to be a pompous ass. Your opinion might be a little bit jaded considering you were hopelessly in love with him... but that didn't mean he had any right to be a dick to you.

It had started with avoiding you, he would see you walk into a room and he would turn and leave it. Sometimes you would be walking towards him and he would turn around and begin heading in the opposite direction. It extended into ignoring you, you would try and talk to him and he would ignore you and walk away.

Once, he was having a conversation with Tim, Tim mentioned how you would be able to help out much better then he could. Damian looked to you for a moment and you raised an eyebrow almost in question. Then he shook his head before leaving the room muttering something about how he didn't really need the answer.

It was infuriating. Maddening really, being ignored and avoided. But you knew it was best to let Damian do what ever the hell he wanted and he'd regret it later. However, when he asked to be paired with someone else on patrol when you didn't even have to speak to each other, to say you nearly lost it was an understatement.

It was the reason you nearly got shot, your mind was clouded with violent thoughts, anger at Damian and at yourself for being so hurt at the rejection.

You and Red Hood were paired together for patrol. You were supposed to be watching the turf of a gang called the Scarlet Soldiers. Word was that a war was brewing between The Scarlet Soldiers and The Unseen Devils. While your mind was off arguing with itself and shouting curses at Damian, The Devils made their move.

You didn't even realize what exactly had happened, you remember Red Hood shouting at you to get moving then everything was a blur. The next thing you remember it a feeling like fire slicing your side, gun shots were ringing around you and you felt another slice across your cheek and left arm. Someone shouted for you to get down and you dropped to the ground almost in a trance.

It wasn't until the gunfire stopped and the slices felt like they were a blaze did you come out of the trance. Someone was yanking you to your feet, however it felt as though everything was muddled and distant. Someone began to shake you and suddenly your hearing cleared and you found yourself face to face with Robin.

"What the hell were you thinking?"

He seemed concerned but you wrote that off as the adrenaline pumping through your veins due to being shot at and the fact that you had gotten grazed at least three times.

Rolling your eyes you shoved him away.

"Oh fuck off," You snapped.

He did not in fact fuck off.

Instead, he grabbed onto your right arm, forcing you to face him once again. You shot him a glare but he returned you one that rivaled your own.

"You," He began almost as if he was restraining himself, "could have gotten yourself killed, V/N."

You couldn't believe it, was he seriously acting like he cared? That he was worried about you when you both knew that was the farthest from the truth.

Pressing a hand to your forehead you shook your head and weakly laughed, "Please don't start this shit with me right now."

He blinked in slight confusion and looked at you the confusion overtaking the apparent anger he had previously had.

"Excuse me?"

"Your bullshit," You began shooting him an irritated look, "already has a body count you don't need to add more to it."

That only seemed to confuse him more. He did not let go of your arm, instead he took a step closer to you, "What?"

"This- this fuckary about 'caring'."

You threw your hands up as you shook your head and effectively slipped from his grip. But it didn't matter, he was close. Close enough you could see a slight hitch in his breathing.

" I do care-" Robin began but you cut him off shaking your head.

"Don't you dare, don't even try saying that you give a fuck about me because we both know that's a damned lie." The words slipped off your tongue and you felt your heart raging in your chest.

You had unintentionally let your feelings, the ones you'd been trying your hardest to push back, to beat into nonexistence, shove themselves forwards. The pain you had felt, not only at the rejection he kept seeming to shove your way but because of your stupid love for him. No matter how hard you tried it seemed your dumb heart was saving all it's love for him.

It wasn't until you saw the shock on his face you realized that he, luckily, didn't see all that you felt. His face hardened and he took another step forwards. If he got any closer the two of you would be touching.

"What in the hell made you think that?" His voice was low, you could see him clenching his fists and you had a feeling was he not wearing his mask, his eyes would be blazing. You had made him angry.

Great. This was just perfect.

However you couldn't stop yourself from replying. You had gotten all your pain out on the table, why not throw the anger out there as well?

"YOU! You and your pompous assery! Avoiding me, ignoring me! Of course you don't care, it was obvious... why would you?" You found yourself nearly shouting as you lurched forwards, your voice cracking at the end.

He blinked a few times, the anger slowly leaving him. You could tell because his body began to relax and his fists unclenched. This made you even angrier. Taking in a breath to stop yourself from breaking the boy wonder's nose you realized how close the two of you were.

Well shit.

He was close enough you could make out the pattern on his mask and uniform. You could hear him breathing and had the sneaking suspicion if you were to let out a breath, he would be able to feel it. You could practically hear him in you head scolding you for ruining his outfit.

"Don't even breathe on it," He had told you when you first saw it, "it's very expensive."

"How much?" You had asked in curiosity.

He shot you a look then rolled his eyes and replied, "It's worth far more then you are."

The sight of him moving his hand brought you back to the present. Looking at him you found him studying you. Suddenly he sighed and shook his head. Your noses were almost brushing when he said,

"Well, I never said I didn't care, So don't go thinking that."

Before you could reply someone called your name causing the both of you to look in their direction. Nightwing was making his way towards you a concerned look on his face.

"V/N, are you alright?" He asked moving forwards, hands out as if to examine your wounds.

You noticed how Robin took a few not so subtle steps away from you and you waved a hand at Nightwing.

"Honestly I'm fine, it's just a couple of nicks. I'll be okay."

Robin snorted as if he disagreed and you shot him a slight glare. Turning back towards Nightwing you noticed how he gave Robin a worried look before meeting your gaze.

"Just to be safe, let's get you back to bat cave and let Agent A take a look."

Reluctantly you nodded and let Nightwing begin to drag you away, a strange feeling burning in your chest. You hadn't fully realized what Robin had said until then.

I never said I didn't care. So don't go thinking that

What on earth did he mean by that? You were thoroughly confused. He acted like he didn't care, then said things like this. You hoped you didn't get whiplash from this sudden personality change, however you knew that it was more likely that you were going to just end up getting hurt. Your heart had begun to sing a little song almost as soon as it heard his words.

I never said I didn't care

That must mean he does care, your heart cheered. Your feelings were confusing... very confusing. On one hand you were angry, on the other hand you heart seemed to be making you feel a bit fluttery.

The sharp sting of rubbing alcohol on your cuts yanked you out of your thoughts. Alfred stood in front of you gently cleaning the minor wounds you gained earlier. Meanwhile, Tim seemed to be explaining something he invented to Duke.

"What do you mean it might explode?" Duke asked still wearing at least half of his vigilante outfit.

Tim shrugged as he deposited another coffee cup into the overflowing trashcan near the bat computer.

"I'm like eighty-five percent sure it won't."

"Eighty-Five percent?!"

"Uh, Well more like seventy-seven."

"WHAT?!"

You knew under other circumstances you would have laughed an such an interaction. However after what happened you were lacking your usual humor and it didn't go unnoticed.

"Is everything alright Miss. Y/N?"

You blinked and look at Alfred. He was tending to the wound on your arm and gave you a expecting look.

"Oh, I- uh yeah. I mean it's not alright but nothing is really wrong." You explained with a shrug not wanting to get into it.

"Is that why Master Damian hasn't stopped staring at you?"

"Yea-Wait, what?"

You looked up and found, nearly on the other side of the bat cave stood Damian, clearly watching the progress of you being taken care. Three words popped into your head.

Overbearing Mother Hen.

This was nearly exactly like how things had been before Damian decided to turn into a dick... well more like a prick.

He would worry about any injuries you got, of course you felt the same about him, but it was strange to see him back up to his old ways... it made your heart do the weird fluttery thing again and you really didn't like it.

A stinging on your cheek caused you to wince. And you blinked once again back into reality.

"Apologizes Miss. Y/N."

You shrugged at Alfred, now deciding to focus on him... well for at least the moment.

"It's fine, it's the least I deserve for being an idiot."

Alfred raised an eyebrow as he pulled the cloth away, but other then that he didn’t react to your comment. Looking for a bandage in the first aid-kit, Alfred let out a slight hum. After a minute's search he pulled out a old looking band-aid.

"Unfortunately, Miss. Y/N this is the last band-aid we have."

In his hands Alfred had a pink hello kitty band-aid, it had tiny little hearts and hello kitty's face adorning it's surface. You didn't really mind, a band-aid is a band-aid after all.

Alfred place the band-aid on your face and you waggled your eyebrows remarking,

"It's alright, I don't mind, I think it give me a punk edge. What do you think?"

He replied without missing a beat as he began to clean up the area, "I think you should go and talk to Master Damian."

Of course he did, he probably had heard about your argument from someone or heard parts of it over the comms, the possibilities of him hearing about were endless after all.

Shaking your head you sighed, "Alright, alright, fine."

Hopping down off of the counter, you began to walk towards Damian. As you went you passed by Steph and Cass, who both shot you looks as you headed towards him.

"Nice band-aid!" Steph remarked as she shot you a wink.

You rolled your eyes smiling as you fought off a laugh. Giving her a thumbs up you continued to walk. Stopping in front of him you notice how he's giving you a strange look.

After a few moments of awkward silence and rolling from the ball of your foot to your heel you nodded and decided to break it.

"You are being really creepy you know, you should stop."

Damian blinked in surprise and his brooding look dropped as he gave you a confused one.

"How so?"

You didn't understand how he couldn't see that he was being weird, weird and creepy. Staring at someone relentlessly and not turning away when they look back at you is fairly weird.

"Just standing there staring," You explained waving a hand, "it's weird. Stop it."

Damian's face stiffed for a moment and his entire body tensed. You didn't know exactly what you did, but something you said clearly had upset him.

"Why am I scaring you?" He asked fairly curtly.

He- he thought that he could scare you? Something was clear wrong with him because he must have forgotten who you were and what you've seen.

You rolled your eyes and shook your head as you crossed your arms. Letting out a scoff you looked him dead in the eyes and gave him a tight smile.

"Do you really think you could scare me? Sweetheart, I've met babies that are scarier then you."

It occurred to you, after you said it that you called him sweetheart. For a few seconds panic began to ensue in your mind until you saw his natural scowl and the rolling of his eyes. He didn't take it as flirting as you feared, instead he took it as a taunt... or at least that's what it seemed like.

The scowl slips away from his face and instead he looks at you frustrated and he opened his mouth only to close it. Clearly he wanted to say something, what scared you was how much you wanted to know what it was.

You fiddled with your hands for a moment before he finally cleared his throat and spoke.

"I- I wanted.... I wanted to apologize for my behavior."

Initially shock came over you, was Damian Wayne... the Damian Wayne apologizing? It sure as hell was what he said and as far as you could tell it wasn't a joke. Then again you don't exactly know what he's apologizing for.

Pushing your surprise back you raised an eyebrow and inquired, "And why is that?"

He fidgeted for a moment before looking you in the eyes, he seemed upset- a look you knew meant he was not upset with you, but himself.

"Because I was not right to treat you the way I did."

Pardon? You were astounded. Not only was he actually apologizing, he was admitting he was wrong... well not even admitting it. He was saying it, you hadn't really told him his behavior was wrong more as told him it pissed you off. For half a second you felt the fluttery feeling but you shoved it back.

What exactly was he expecting to get from this apology? Did he expect you to instantly forgive him and for everything to go back to the way it was? Or did he expect you for forgive him and then you apologize for something? You didn't know and frankly were irritated at any of the possibilities.

"Okay and?"

He swallowed and you swear you could see his cheeks turning a light shade of pink.

"You are a very dear... friend of mine and I would hate to loose that friendship because of a fault on my part."

Your jaw nearly dropped, did he just call you a dear friend? Tonight was full of miracles. Your heart began fluttering again and you were to shocked to even try and stop it.

We're friends... dear friends, your heart began singing. But you cut it off before it could get any further. No, no you couldn't keep playing this game with yourself, with your heart and feelings. For your own sake you were going to force your heart to find someone else to love. No more saving all your love for him. You were going to find someone.... someone less of ass. However that didn't mean the two of you couldn't be friends.

He seemed genuine enough and seeing the kicked puppy dog expression on his face was seriously starting to wear you down.

"Ugh, fine." You sighed giving him a irritated look, "Just don't do it again alright? I really don't like pompous you, jackass you is much better."

Relief quickly appeared on Damian's face and he seemed to be fighting off a smile suddenly.

"Thank you... I'm assuming jackass me is the version you deem normal?"

Despite yourself you snorted, rolling your eyes you smiled and gave him a long look. He was an idiot and sometimes weird, but other times he could be kinda cute... alright more then kinda... wait did what he just said about being dear friends- was that an emotional speech? You couldn't help but tease him about it.

"Yup. By the way, I didn't know you were the emotional speech kind of guy."

He blinked and then his eyes narrowed and he leaned in towards you, his arms behind his back a strange look on his face.

"Well special circumstances call for special responses however if anyone ever finds out about this there won't be a body left for them to find." He muttered to you.

For some reason, you found this hysterically funny. You smiled at him and he gave you a confused look. Laughing you rolled your eyes.

"Okay, then."

A temptation washed over you and you gave Damian a look, he raised his eyebrows in confusion. You leaned in a bit more and for a moment you relished the surprised look in his eyes. Leaning in even more you quickly pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek, then you pulled away smiling.

His eyes widened and it was hard not to laugh at his expression.

"Did-did you just kiss me?" He asked clearly in shock

Laughing you shook your head in disbelief, it wasn't that shocking was it?

"It was only on the cheek, geeze. You do know that friends sometimes kiss each other like that right?"

He blinked twice and then he nodded and turned away from you his face turning all different shades of pink and red.

".... I do now." He replied nearly whispering.

It suddenly occurred to you that you had completely and totally flustered him. You tried to stop yourself but you really couldn't. A snort escaped you and you pressed a hand to your mouth to push back your giggles. Damian blinked a few times and your entire body shook.

"Oh no!" Jason shouted, "I think the demon spawn killed Y/N."

That did it, you burst into a fit of laughter. Your entire body shook and you nearly collapsed in on yourself.

"Oh my gosh," You said in between your laughing fits.

After a few seconds of you cackling and everyone staring at you in confusion, you were able to calm down... well it was more like a few minutes but that's besides the point. Wiping away imaginary tears you let out a sigh and smiled brightly at Damian. His face softens and he sighs slightly before straightening out.

"I hope you fully recover from your injuries L/N." He says in a strange tone, turning to leave.

"They were just scrapes." You reply, waving a hand as if to brush off.

He pauses for a moment and turns back to you. Tilting his head he looks you over.

"Regardless, I dislike seeing you hurt..." He softly says, he then blinked a few times as if he just realized what he said and he got an embarrassed look on his face. " Well goodnight."

In that instance it was almost like cupid shot an arrow straight at your mind, not your heart. Mainly because your heart was already certain about what it felt, your mind on the other hand was causing all the trouble. A warm feeling rushed over you and softly both in unison your heart and your mind began to sing.

It was then that you realized, at least for now, there wasn't really anyone else you could find yourself loving. Or at least feel the same way you do about him.

Damn it.

Sighing in defeat you watched him walk across the bat cave and slowly up the stairs. Shaking your head you watch him go and find yourself muttering under your breath.

"Looks like I'm saving all my love for you."

Fuck.

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readingalldaysleepingallnight · 3 years

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Buzzfeed Unsolved AU - Batfam

The batboys start the account as a joke at Dick’s insistence (family bonding!). The first video was Tim rant about an old case that couldn’t be solved. Jason recorded it as a joke. Barbara is the one that needled him (“What’d you mean the girl just messed with the elevator? What’s the point in that?” “THATS THE THING NO ONE F**KING KNOWS BABS!”). Dick cracked jokes (“Wow, guess she ghosted the ghost.” “IT CANT BE A GHOST DICK, OKAY?!”). Duke stared into the camera (“Help me.”). Stephanie ate waffles in the background and nodded along. Overall, it was pure chaos. When Jason posted it it went viral almost immediately.

Cue Dick setting up an official YouTube account, editing the first video then posting it (Duke’s face is slowly zoomed in on with the audio “Why are we still here? Just to suffer?” while he mouths “help me”).

They go on, doing a bunch of other cases and even supernatural ones. Damian and Jason are the ones, oddly enough, that are scared of ghosts. (“YOU CANT PUCH THEM YOU IDIOT!” Jason screeches. Damian nods, “They can take control of your body, there is no defense. It’s unnatural.”) In most of the videos Duke can be seen looking dead inside or just frustrated (“Why can’t my family just be normal?”). Tim presents all the cases, Barbara is his co-host, and Dick and Stephanie are the (intentional) comedic relief. Jason, Damian and Duke become the unintentional comedic relief. Case just shows up out of nowhere to make random ass comments (“I don’t think it’s possible to die like that? Can someone even die from that?” Dick asks and turns to Stephanie. She just shrugs. Cass just comes out of nowhere, “It is.” Cue the screaming. “WHERE THE F**K DID YOU COME FROM?!” Jason screams. “Oh hey Cass! How’ve you been?” Stephanie asks with a casual grin. Cass just tilts her hands in a ‘so-so’ gesture. Duke asking how the frick Cass knows that with utter terror. She smirks and fades into the shadows. “See you later Cass!” Cass becomes a Cryptid and Stephanie is known as the Cryptid whisper.).

Eventually they make a comment on the “creepy ass noises” in the manor. The audience begs them to investigate their own house. They do, of course. They creep through the house at night, recording the whole thing. Bumping into Bruce that’s just being a tired dad (“Why are you all up at 2 in the morning?” Dick glances at the rest of his siblings as he pushes Barbara’s wheelchair, “Uh, Ghost hunting?” Bruce sighs, pinching his nose before saying, “Fine, don’t tell me. Just clean up after yourselves.” There are memes about Bruce within 24 hours.). Jason at one point makes a joke about the theories that Wayne Enterprises funds Batman (“Maybe he just lives in our basement.” Jason snickers. Stephanie adds on, with a spot on impression of Bruce, “Batman, I’m gonna need you to pay the rent.” Jason chimes in with his own Batman impression, “I can’t this month. I don’t have a real job. I fight for justice!” Stephanie, “Yeah well, justice doesn’t pay the bills.” Jason, “Aren’t you a billionaire?” Stephanie, “Yeah, and you’re a free loader. Even my kids have jobs and one of them is twelve!”)

People latch onto the joke and make memes about the whole thing. Eventually they use this opportunity to make it so there’s less connections between them and their alter egos. Especially since some conspiracy theorist are getting so close yet so far.

They get recordings of Dick doing a backflip before slipping and landing on his ass (on purpose, they didn’t want to actually make him hurt himself).

They get Duke to say he hates the color yellow (“Signal is yellow though!” -Stephanie “And?” “Isn’t he cool?” -Dick “I prefer Black Bat. They’re pretty badass.”).

They get Jason trying to shoot a moving target, he barely clips the side of it (“Red Hood would be disappointed in you.” -Damian “Yeah, well, Red Hood can go suck an egg.” People now have a new meme of Red Hood being disappointed in anyone that misses a shot. It’s said after people miss throwing trash in trash cans.).

Stephanie is asked if she’d fight crime. (“Dude, when would I eat my waffles though?” “You eat your waffles at 3am?” “Obviously, no one can question your life choices if they can’t see you making them.” They actually track her down at 3am and find her eating waffles. Spoiler and Black Bat were spotted that night around the same time. None of the boys know how the girls did it so they’re kinda scared now.)

Barbara just looks down at her wheelchair then rushes after the cameraman. Cue screeching and running away from her. (“Okay, I think we lost her.” The camera is in selfie mode and shows the boys hiding in a guest room with Barbara in the background grinning. The video ends there. They stop posting for a few days, making their audience panic before posting a video with various bruises. “Barbara told us to stop asking stupid questions.”)

They ask Cass and she just looks straight at the camera before looking really confused. (The video is then explaining to Cass that people think she might be Spoiler or Black Bat. Cass tilts her head before shrugging, “Cool.” The video ends with the Dick saying that Cass takes the theories as a compliment even though she’s just a very silent person and accidentally scares people around the house.)

Damian is asked and he just pulls out a knife. (“Where’d you get that knife from, you little sh*t?” Jason asks. Damian just frowns before replying, “It’s Gotham.” “Hate to say this but the kid’s got a point.”). “Leaked footage” shows Damian watching what little videos there is of Robin fighting with a katana and trying to copy the stances.

They later post a clip of them sneaking around at night where they see a tall shadowy figure lurking in their house. (“Batman?!” The figure turns around to show Bruce in a Batman bathrobe, complete with little pointed ears. He’s holding a cup of coffee and looks half asleep.)

#batfam #buzzfeed unsolved au #Crack fic

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lady-literature · 3 years

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for us to collide (part 4)

anyway who actually expected me to end this thing in 4 chapters lol

rip me ig

After the not-so-impromptu interrogation courtesy of her friends (because there was no way they hadn’t planned that, it was too coordinated) Robin doesn’t stop by for two weeks.

Which is… fine. Marinette is plenty busy anyways. The extra time she has free now that she isn’t entertaining a bratty vigilante, goes to more productive uses of her time. Like watching bad horror movies with her friends and jeering at the horrible acting and special effects.

(Red Hood stops by in the middle of watching Grizzly Rage and proceeds to rant for twenty minutes about ‘shitty, unrealistic blood splatters’. Marinette has long since passed the point of being worried about it.)

So, yeah. She doesn’t see Robin.

But Damian, oddly enough, seeks her out.

It’s early, and there isn’t anyone else in the studio right now which means Marinette has her music blasting and she’s humming along as she hand paints silk for Clara’s dress. It’s loud and she’s in her zone, so it’s only by Tikki warning her that she realizes someone entered her sanctuary.

Her eyebrows raise when she sees who it is.

“Uh, bonjour Damian," she greets confusedly, reaching over to lower the volume on her speakers. "I hadn’t expected to see you here. Is there something you need?”

He stops before her workstation, only slightly bigger than the ones the rest of her staff use due to the sheer amount of open commissions she normally has. She has an actual office on this floor, but Chloé uses it more than she does. Marinette likes the open space and being around her designers more than she likes the privacy.

His eyes catch on the two bouquets of flowers she’s yet to take home, neither of which have even begun to wilt—and likely won’t. (She’ll have to take them home soon before people start asking questions.)

“I was called here by Father, but he’s currently indisposed. I’ve been told to wait.”

She waits a moment for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, she asks, “So you came to visit me?”

“Yours is the only tolerable presence to be found.” His lips purse, and he crosses his arms. “And that includes that imbecile Drake who is no doubt still in his office like the pitiful insomniac he is.”

Her tongue is already halfway around a joke about excuses—she didn’t befriend Felix for nothing, okay? She knows how people like Damian work—when she realizes what he just said.

“Wait. Tim’s been here all night?”

Damian snorts. “He certainly didn’t return to the manor.”

She’s out of her seat in an instant, frowning and muttering up a storm as she rummages through the storage cubes pushed up against the far wall. She has a blanket, pillow and plain cotton shirt in her hands before Damian registers that she even moved.

“I’m going to kill your brother,” she says simply. “Would you like to come with?”

She’s gotten closer to Tim since working in Wayne Tower. He’s a notorious recluse and rarely leaves his office when he’s in the building, but Marinette makes it a point to visit him during lunch and before she leaves for the night.

He isn’t one of her Waynes, but he is a Wayne and her Waynes love and care for him so there’s not much of a difference really. She does like to think they might be something close to friends at this point though. And if the way Tim comes down to visit whenever he ventures out of his office means something, she might even be right.

Another thing that should be noted, is that Marinette is very much a ‘ride or die’ kind of person when it comes to the people she cares about. She will ruthlessly bully her loved ones into taking better care of themselves on threat of death because she is the semi-hypocritical mom friend and damn proud of it.

Damian looks her up and down, eyes lingering on the items in her hands and the determined set to her jaw and says, “Of course.” Then he’s plucking her things from her hands, offering her his arm and saying, “Shall we?”

Marinette laughs as she loops her arm with his. “We shall.”

***

She spends ten minutes scolding Tim before wrangling him onto the couch in his office and wrapping him up in the blanket so tightly he’d need to be an escape artist to get out of it. He tries to struggle anyway, but Marinette has too much practice at this and he doesn’t stand a chance in hell.

Damian stands at her shoulder and smirks the entire time, eyes dancing with amusement as she forces the CEO of Wayne Enterprises to take a fucking nap. Then, she’s treated to the sound of his surprised laughter as she begins switching out all of Tim’s regular coffee for magic-decaf—not that Damian knows it’s magic.

(By the devilish smirk playing at his lips, she’s starting to think that maybe Damian really is just as sadistic as Duke and Jason say he is.)

***

Damian starts dropping by more often after that (read: starts dropping by at all). Not that Marinette minds. She quite likes his company, actually.

He normally stops by first thing in the morning when Marinette is the only one in the workshop, walking in like he owns the place. For the first couple days, he asks about Ladybug and the rest of Paris’ Court, claiming that he’s curious about them.

She answers them, but only as far as she’d answer them for any reporter and is careful not to give away any sensitive information not known to the public. He gets a bit frustrated at one point, complaining that she must know more, but she stays stubbornly silent about it and, sometimes, steers the conversation deftly to the Great Bat and his Flock instead.

He eventually stops asking about the Parisian superheroes and instead their morning conversations turn to a thousand random things. Complaints and anecdotes and a silly back and forth between the two.

Marinette’s never been much of a morning person but having Damian there to keep her company is… nice.

She almost finds herself looking forward to mornings now.

***

When her Waynes learn that she’s started a food kitchen and makes a habit of spending her weekend there, they immediately insist on joining her, despite her protests.

“You guys really don’t have to do this,” she says even though the three of them are already in their aprons and Cass is eyeing the boucher, Vivian, and her collection of knives with glittering interest.

Duke grins at her, “We know, M. But we want to.”

Jason finally turns back to her from where he’s been staring at the kitchen with something just shy of awe on his face. “You’re downright incredible, you know that?” he waves a hand out at the seating area, and then at the people in the kitchen assembling the healthiest and cost-efficient meals she and Felix could find after days spent researching. “I would’ve killed for something like this when I was on the streets.”

“It’s not just me who’s got this up and running-” she tries protesting but then Fiona, the woman Marinette actually put in charge of this place, is at her side and all but shoving the four of them into stations.

Marinette ends up by the pastries, like always, and she can see Jason making sandwiches. Duke's been roped into making eggs and bean casseroles and Cass, by some grace, actually ended up by Vivian and is having a blast cutting up all the meats as fast as she can.

They don’t stop until lunch, all four of them helping prepare meals for the upcoming week in bulk. After, they all go out for ice cream by the pier and Jason smears chocolate on her nose and Duke carries her around on his back when she complains about being tired.

Cass takes pictures of it all and later, Marinette gets them all printed out.

It ends up being a really good day.

***

The buzz from the charity gala and all the press regarding her and Damian’s non-existent relationship had calmed down weeks ago. There was still the odd article about Marinette being seen with her odd assortment of Waynes and the newspapers still called her ridiculous names when they got a picture, but it was about as close to normal as she gets.

The quiet lulled her into a false sense of security.

Ice Prince and Sweetheart Finally Seen on Date: Fairy Tale Romance or Publicity Stunt?

The ‘date’ in question was a coffee and lunch run for her designers and also Tim (because kwami knew he'd work through lunch if allowed).

Damian normally didn’t stay past Lilliane arriving in the morning (the poor dear was chronically late and always the last to arrive) but he hadn’t shown up until after she came that day and overcompensated by hours—which she hadn't minded. He kept to the fringes of her workspace and didn't distract her, instead focusing on his own thing. She wasn’t quite sure what he was up to, but she knew he was switching between his computer and sketchpad every so often.

(She's pretty sure he was hiding from Dick for some reason. He’s the only Wayne brother who doesn’t visit her at work, seeing as they have their bi-weekly gymnastic sessions; recently, with the addition of Mar’i, who still calls her ‘twin’ and whom Marinette still adores.)

And then lunch had rolled around, and it was Marinette’s turn to go out so she brought Damian with since he was still there.

They were out together for forty-five minutes. Tops.

“Why me?” she whines into the surface of her desk.

Damian, the asshole, just laughs at her and she can’t even be mad about it because he’s only just started laughing around her and not hiding behind so many of his walls. He laughs and Marinette knows it's precious so instead of shooting him the glower he deserves, she finds herself having to hide the smile slowly creeping on her face.

***

They’re splashed across the papers again less than a week later, only this time she has her Waynes there too.

Marinette's wearing her bright red sundress and she's somehow convinced Damian to wear a jacket with elaborate crowns and snowflakes embroidered up the sides. Because, as Chloé says: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

They see the camera this time and the photo splashed across the page the next day is of Marinette laughing with Jason’s arm slung across her shoulders as both he and Damian flip off the camera. Meanwhile, Duke and Cass stand just far enough in frame to capture their expressions of pain and amusement respectively.

(Marinette makes a mental note to order apology gift baskets for the PR department.)

There are a lot of headlines the next day about Marinette’s ‘harem of Waynes’ and how she’s a ‘horrible influence on such bright children’. She spends about ten minutes trying to decide whether she should be horrified or laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it and eventually decides on both.

Adrien, the little shit, sees the headline and immediately prints it out to hang in her kitchen.

It reappears every time she tries to take it down.

***

Gotham does not smile upon daytime heroes.

Not to say that Gotham really smiles on anyone, but it’s especially vicious to those that think they’re owed anything. She’s heard the way Gothamites talk about Superman and The Flash—it’s not exactly what one would call adoring.

But Ladybug's been a daytime hero her entire career and it is not difficult to see that there's something distinctly different about the way daytime heroes and Gotham’s vigilantes operate.

Something more vicious, maybe; something more restrained.

Without the light of day and without the people’s eyes watching them at every moment, the Gotham Bats have become something else entirely.

Signal, their Daytime Protector, is especially strange.

A bat who's meta, straddling the line between day and night. The Day Patrol, trained by the night.

Sometimes, when she and Signal talk about heroing, there is such an odd type of disconnect that it throws her. Nothing horrible or major, but little things she’s sure she wouldn’t notice if she wasn’t so intimately familiar with it all herself.

They don’t always talk about heroing though. After two months, Ladybug is proud to say she seems to be worming her way past his outer shell nicely. He tried so hard to keep his distance from her, but Ladybug’s always liked a challenge, and it isn’t long before she has him relaxing around her.

Well, for a definition of relax anyway. He's still a bat after all.

But then, it’s pretty easy to get past Signal’s barriers when she’s already had practice breaking through the more stubborn bats like Robin and, to an extent, Hood. Not that Signal, or any of the bats, know that.

Which, speaking of the bats, isn’t it a bit weird she’s only met three spread across two of her alter egos? As Ladybug, she’d expect to be hounded by a few of them but the only one she’s met is Signal. She can’t decide if it’s because he’s the only one that operates in the daylight, or if they just don’t want to spook her into running or something.

Either way, they’re going to start giving her a complex. She’s heard so much about the rest of the Batfamily, and not one of them even wants to meet her? Either her?

(Maybe Marinette should ask Robin and Hood what’s up with that? The way they talk about how nosy Red Robin is, she’s surprised he didn’t drop by months ago and- is it weird that she’s offended by vigilantes not prying into her private life?

…Probably.)

***

Marinette blinks, stopping dead in her tracks.

Damian's on her fainting couch, sketchpad in his lap as he waits for her.

“Why are you wearing a beanie?” she blurts out instead of greeting him like a normal person. "You never wear beanies."

Luckily, Damian scowls at her question rather than at her. It’s a subtle but very important difference.

“Sorry,” she apologizes anyway, putting her bag down. “I haven't had coffee yet.”

He hums, then nods to her desk where she finds a steaming to-go mug. Her face lights up and she quickly snatches it, breathing deeply the lovely aroma. “You’re a godsend.”

That brings a quirk to his lips, closer to a smirk than a smile, but progress nonetheless.

After a moment, where she sips at her overly sugary monstrosity—just the way she likes it, when had Damian even noticed that?—and he continues sketching she asks again. “Okay but, I actually am kinda curious. What’s up with the hat?”

He sighs heavily, closing his pad. “It’s… better than the alternative.”

Marinette snorts. “Alternative to what? A top hat?” But instead of snapping back like she expects, he just continues to frown. Immediately, her lips turn down into a concerned frown. “Is there something wrong?”

“Yes,” he grounds out and Marinette puts her coffee down. She’s just about to open her mouth and say something else when he reaches up and rips the beanie off his head.

For the second time in less than five minutes, she stops dead.

Marinette opens her mouth. Closes it. Blinks, but the scene doesn't change.

His hair is still blue.

Damian Wayne's hair is blue.

Damian Wayne’s hair is vibrantly electric blue.

Her hand shoots up to cover her mouth as she tries to stifle her giggles.

Damian’s scowl deepens. He moves to shove his ridiculous beanie back on his head but her hand snaps out before he can.

“No! No, I’m sorry I just-” she giggles again. “You looked so upset by it and you took me by surprise. I like it!”

He glares up at her, still sat on the fainting couch so it’s her who has the height advantage for once.

“Don’t patronize me.”

She rolls her eyes, the hand that wasn’t settled on his arm reaching up to touch the bright strands. It's slow enough that he can stop her, but he, surprisingly, makes no move to.

His hair is a lot softer than she expects it to be. But she supposes he didn’t use that gel stuff today, planning on keeping his hair under a hat the whole time.

“It looks good on you,” she says softly.

He snorts disbelievingly and she smacks his shoulder lightly. “It’s true! I swear you could look good in any color.” She clicks her tongue longingly. “I wish I had your skin tone. I’m too pale to wear pastels like I want.”

He wrinkles his nose at her. “Pastels?”

“Oh you hush,” she quips, finally pulling her hand from his hair. “Anyway, if you don’t like it, why’d you dye it blue in the first place?”

“I… lost a wager with Todd.”

She laughs, starting to move around and get ready for the day. She doesn’t have any meetings scheduled, which means she gets the whole day to create. She’s pretty excited about it.

“I should’ve guessed it was Jason’s doing.”

Damian shrugs, settling back into the cushions. He drapes himself across them in a way that’s effortlessly elegant and like he’s ready to be photographed for a magazine cover or something. Must all her friends be so pretty? It’s playing hell on her self-esteem.

“But blue is your favorite color, right? So there’s that at least.”

Damian hums. “Todd had threatened to dye it pink or some other equally garish color.”

“Hey!” she exclaims in mock outrage. “What’s wrong with pink? I’ve been wanting to dye my hair pink for ages.”

“Nothing. It’s just simply not a color I appreciate.” He makes a face. “Like orange.”

Marinette huffs, but there’s a smile on her lips. It's quiet for a moment, for long enough that she thinks the conversation's been dropped. But then-

“Why don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“Why haven’t you dyed your hair?” he repeats. “Your friends—Couffaine and… Kubdel? They both have colored hair.”

Marinette shrugs. “I dunno. Never got around to it I guess. I suppose I could do it now. Dye mine in solidarity,” she jokes. “Oh! We could match even! Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“I thought you wanted pink?”

“Well, yeah. But blue is nice too. Besides,” she smiles wryly over her shoulder, “you just said pink was ‘garish’.”

Damian frowns slightly, shaking his head, “On me, perhaps. But I think you’d look very fetching in pink.”

“Oh,” Marinette pauses, feeling her face grow warm at the sudden compliment. “Well- Uh, pink it is, then.”

***

(Damian watches the blush rise on her cheeks as she turns away to try and hide it. Yes, he can’t help but think, fetching in pink, indeed.)

***

Luka insists on being the one to dye her hair, citing that he’s the one who had dibs all these years, but Alix and Jason both all but demand to be there too.

Her bathroom is not big enough for all four of them to sit in.

Not a single one of them cares.

Cass and Duke ask for progress pics along with Uncle Jay, and all her Parisian friends cycle through standing at the bathroom door to see how it's going.

The constant stream of people looking at her makes her feel not unlike an animal at a zoo. (When she wryly tells this to Alix, all she gets is her friend cackling on the ground.)

But, after all the bleaching and conditioning and waiting, she stares into the mirror with soft pink hair the color of bubblegum and thinks, yeah, it was worth it.

She thinks it again when Damian walks in the next day and almost trips over his own feet.

(She’s also wearing her Robin themed sundress, complete with hood, matching boots and personal touches not found on the mass-produced version—but Marinette doesn’t know why that would be relevant.)

Her favorite reaction to her new hair color though is, by far, Mar’i’s.

Marinette doesn’t see the young Grayson until a week later when she’s invited to the monthly family dinner Alfred insists all the Waynes attend—which includes her now, apparently (she tries not to show how pleased she is by that).

She arrived with Damian, who was kind enough to pick Tim and her up from work, and Mar’i takes one look at Damian and her standing next to one another before she starts babbling excitedly about Lilo and Stitch and Angel. A character who is—apparently—Stitch’s girlfriend and the complimentary pink to his blue.

Marinette is momentarily surprised, but Mar’i’s enthusiasm is contagious and it isn’t long before the rest of the Waynes are teasingly calling them Angel and Stitch. Marinette thinks it’s all very funny and adorable.

Damian, on the other hand, most certainly does not and threatens everyone who calls him that ‘ridiculous nickname’ with graphic depictions of bodily harm.

‘Angel’, oddly enough, sticks for Marinette. She finds she kind of likes it.

***

Later, Damian asks her about nicknames.

Well, he calls them ‘asinine titles’ and doesn’t so much ask as demand she explain why she allows anyone to call her by them seeing as she has a ‘perfectly serviceable name,’ in his opinion.

Ignoring the fact that she’s heard Dick call him multiple nicknames he hadn’t protested to, she says, “Well, I guess it’s that everyone uses Marinette. A nickname is something… special. A little more personal, I guess. And, I dunno. My parents named me Marinette, but it’s nice to share something between other people. And it shows they care.”

Damian looks confused after she’s done, but also thoughtful. He doesn’t say anything to that and Marinette doesn’t really expect anything to come of it.

She's proven wrong when, a week later, Damian calls her Starling instead of Marinette.

(And the transition from Dupain-Cheng to Marinette had been enough to make her beam—this is just ridiculous.)

***

When Robin disappears a second time, Marinette doesn’t get the chance to notice his absence on her own. He’s only stopped showing up four days ago—which is longer than normal, but not unheard of—when she hears unfamiliar voices on her balcony.

Looking out, she finds three semi-familiar individuals clustered around the plate of treats she leaves out for Robin and Hood.

Nightwing and Red Robin are both stuffing their faces full of the fruit tarts she had made while Spoiler glares at them and seems to be cursing the fact that her mask covers her mouth the same way Hood always does when she makes those raspberry scones he likes.

The scene is… odd. For many reasons but most pressingly that their arrival has come out of nowhere.

“Well,” Nightwing explains when she asks, “We wanted to visit ages ago, but baby bird threatened to stab us all if we tried.”

“He’s very… particular about you,” Red Robin tacks on while Spoiler nods sagely like she hasn’t crafted some strange straw monstrosity just so she can drink tea while still wearing her mask. Red Robin has one too, but his for the aesthetic rather than out of necessity.

Marinette stares at the three of them. “That… does not explain why you are here now.”

“Robin can’t stop us now, obviously,” Red Robin says casually, like he hasn't just kicked her heart into high gear with a few words.

“What? Why?” she demands, trying very hard not to sound panicked. “Is he okay? Was he hurt?”

Red Robin blinks, going quiet in that way Hood and Robin do when they’re judging her just a bit. She hates this family.

“No, he’s… fine.”

“B’s just benched him for the time being,” Nightwing helpfully supplies, amusement flickering at the edges of his lips. “He’s a little too… conspicuous at the moment.”

Marinette’s shoulders relax even as her brows furrow. Conspicuous? What in the world is that supposed to mean?

“Does that mean he won’t be coming around for a while?” she asks before she can think better of it.

The three vigilantes in front of her share a look before Spoiler says, “Probably. But the gremlin’s never been one to sit still so who knows?” she smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners as she leans toward Marinette conspiratorially. “But don’t worry. We can keep you company in the meantime!”

“We’re much better company than the demon anyway. Certainly less insulting.”

“Oh, he’s not that bad. He’s an ass, for sure, but you can tell when he means it and when he’s just stumbling over himself.” Marinette smiles fondly, “For someone so dignified, he trips over his tongue quite often.”

Now the vigilantes are really staring at her. She’s starting to feel pretty uncomfortable about it all when Nightwing beams at her, jumping up from his seat to sweep her into a hug. It startles her, but she doesn’t push him away, instead laughing at the sudden affection.

“Oh you really are perfect!” he exclaims, setting her down and still grinning like an absolute lunatic.

She’s smiling, because Nightwing’s joy is infectious, but she's even more confused than before. And then, before she can ask what he means, Red Robin’s wrist computer lights up—and damn, isn’t that cool? Marinette wonders if Tikki could do something like that for the Ladybug suit—and the three are moving to swing back out into the night.

She waves them off and they all promise to visit again.

Marinette shakes her head before going back inside with the empty pastry plate and four empty mugs.

***

Damian knows of Marinette’s friends of course. It'd take more effort not to when she talks about them every chance she gets and tells him all the wild stories about their escapades and misadventures.

(They also all came up in the background check he ran on her when they first met.)

Most of her friends are exceedingly normal oddly enough. Well, they’re all mildly famous and the leaders of their various fields, but they’re just civilians.

The only exceptions being, Bourgeois, Agreste, and Graham de Vanily.

Bourgeois is a former hero like Marinette, only she doesn't seem to still be in contact with the Parisian Court. All the articles he could find spoke about how Queen Bee was deemed unfit for her mantle and later replaced by the new bee hero, Ambrosia. Agreste was caught up in the scandal of his father being Hawkmoth, but he was found innocent and ignorant of his father's crimes (something Damian made sure to confirm). He now works at and is being groomed to own the bakery Marinette's parents run, seeing as their daughter has little interest to do it herself.

And finally, Graham de Vanily, Agreste's cousin, has a history of causing trouble wherever he goes. Nothing villainous, and rarely even malicious, but there's something about him that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Not everything is as it seems with the Graham de Vanily heir.

Besides those three outliers, Marinette's friends seem to be untouched by the vigilante life. Which means he thinks they must be utterly boring.

Only, when her friends start coming around to visit and drag her out for lunch or some other random outing, Damian keeps finding himself baffled by each of them.

They act strangely and with a dangerous air none of them should possess, except for Tsurugi. The questions they ask him are strange and the jokes they make have no sense. He's been warned about how he better treat Marinette so many times, he's started to lose count. (Which is ridiculous. He treats her just fine and would never intentionally harm her. What are they trying to insinuate?)

But, by far, his most memorable encounter is with Lahiffe. A veritable wolf in sheep's clothing.

Marinette is excitedly babbling about her newest idea for her summer collection, pressed up against him on the chaise and practically shoving her sketches in his face as she demands his critique and thoughts.

Her hands are waving every which way and, on more than one occasion, he has to quickly lean back so she doesn't hit him in the face.

He’s focusing on what she’s saying so much—because she has a habit of forgetting things if she doesn’t write them down and needs someone to remind her of the ideas she had at a later time—that he doesn’t even realize Lahiffe is there until he clears his throat.

Marinette jumps, almost elbowing him in the stomach. “Nino!” she shouts, springing up and flinging herself at the other man who catches her like this is something she does often.

“Heya, Nettie.”

“Wait- what are you doing here? You’re not-” she jolts back to look at Lahiffe’s amused expression. “Oh kwami, is it time already? Shit. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m so sorry! I have to give this one thing to Publishing but then I promise we can go, okay? Like, just five minutes!”

She's already moving before she finishes speaking, sweeping up papers and rearranging files and putting things away with all the swiftness and agility of a speedster. Damian watches her go about her routine, occasionally handing her something she’s dropped or pointing out a thing she’s missed, weaving around her chaos with practiced ease.

Then she’s sweeping out of the office with a distracted “be right back!” and he’s alone with Lahiffe.

The second Marinette leaves, the man’s attention swings onto him with a strange weight. For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything and Damian’s hackles raise with every passing second.

He doesn’t snap at him though, because he’s one of Marinette’s friends. Insulting him would only serve to make her upset and that’s something Damian's been trying to avoid causing as of late.

“Man,” Lahiffe says at last. “Alix wasn’t kidding about the whole besotted thing, huh?”

Damian rears back, straightening up to his full height. “I beg your pardon?”

Lahiffe laughs and waves his hand about like that’s supposed to mean something. “Ah, no need to be embarrassed about it, dude. You’re far from the first of us to fall for her charms.”

“What.”

“Yeah, we've all been there. I think over half of the Paris crew crushed on her at some point, including myself. None of us are into her like that anymore, so as long as you treat her right, you got nothing to worry about."

“I’m not- I'm not interested in Marinette,” Damian tries to protest but Lahiffe just calmly steamrolls over him.

“Nah. Everyone loves Nettie. It’s universal law or something. First, there was me and Adrien, then Luka—who she actually liked back for a while there but are now practically siblings. Chloé liked her in collége, but she hadn’t really come to terms with that at the time. Alix might’ve, but she’s pretty grey-ace and fluctuates on the romance points, so who knows.

“Oh! And Nath. He also snagged a date with her, but he was an Akuma at the time so I’m not technically sure that it counts. And he’s with Marc now anyway. Thinking of adopting a kid, last I heard. Anyway- my point was: everyone loves Nettie. And don’t bother trying to fight it, because it only makes her pull of gravity worse.”

Lahiffe then claps him on the shoulder like their talk amiable and not the most confusing speech Damian’s ever heard.

And then he doesn’t even get to say anything to that because Marinette is sprinting back through the door, grabbing her jacket and bag, telling him goodbye, and dragging Lahiffe out to who knows where.

Damian stands there longer than he cares to admit trying to make the world make sense again.

***

A week and a half after she learned Robin was benched, Damian catches her staring off into space as she doodles tiny robins in the margins of her sketchbook.

He gives her an odd look when she scrambles to hide them, blushing hotly and babbling about how she’s “Just fine! Nothing to worry about! I’m just, maybe, perhaps, a little worried for a friend even though I shouldn’t be, because his family says he’s just fine and-”

He looks contemplative when he leaves that day, but he didn’t ask about her outburst, so she extends the same courtesy to him.

***

That night, Robin returns.

“What,” she says around the laughter threatening to bubble out of her throat, “are you wearing?”

Robin scowls from behind the full cowl he has on that she’s pretty sure belongs to Red Robin. It makes him look a whole ten years older and she can’t get over how ridiculous he looks. If he keeps doing stupid things with his face while wearing that monstrosity, she is definitely going to laugh at him.

“What are you wearing?” he shoots back petulantly.

She blinks in confusion, then realizes she’s still wearing her Red Hood inspired jacket right now. Tan colored fake leather with fuzzy, red inner lining, done with all the same pockets, buttons, and zippers Red Hood has on his own jacket. It looks almost exactly like the jacket she fixed for him all that time ago, except she's also added a soft, crimson hood and his own personal bat symbol stitched across her shoulder blades.

As far as things she's designed goes, this is one of her simpler ones. It's nothing like the elaborate creations she makes for the Ambrosia or Ryuko themed items.

But Red Hood was a simple kind of person, and she likes that it’s reflected in her work.

Robin doesn't seem to agree if the poorly concealed disdain on his face means anything.

“What?” she asks teasingly, “You jealous?”

He scoffs and looks off to the side. “Of course not. I simply do not understand why you’d want anything to do with that simpleton. Especially not when I know you have clothing articles referencing far superior individuals.”

She snorts good-naturedly, "What 'individuals'? You mean you?"

The way he raises his nose self importantly is answer enough, and she can't stop herself from rolling his eyes. "Well, it's certainly a start. But I'm not the only one."

"Oh, yeah? And who else is marvelous enough to stand on the same level as you?"

"Multimouse."

Her mouth goes dry, and she can tell Robin is pointedly not looking at her.

“Come inside,” she blurts in lieu of all the things she really wants to say—which are mostly just embarrassing variations of I missed you. “I can, uh, make us tea. If you want.”

It's the first time she’s ever invited him inside and she can see the small bit of shock on his face—well, what she can see of it anyway—before he schools it.

“Yes,” he says in a tone of voice that implies it was his idea in the first place. “That sounds… good.”

She steps aside, allowing him to pass her by into the flat. Only instead of just walking past her, he stops halfway through the doorway and stares at her. She’s about to ask what’s wrong when he reaches out with his hand to gently grab a lock of her hair.

“Pink suits you, by the way.”

She quirks her lips, “Yeah? You don’t think it’s… too much?”

The corners of his mouth turn down, “Absolutely not. You look…” he trails off, mouth flattening into a line and dropping his hand.

She blinks at the odd behavior. “Nice?” she offers tentatively.

He nods, but it’s a little jerky and strange. But before she can ask about it, he’s already turning to enter her flat like he owns the place, remarking about her choices of tea and if she’s finally acquired an ‘adequate teapot’.

She shakes off the moment and goes in to follow him before he wrecks her kitchen in his careless search for tea supplies.

***

MinnieMouse: COME GET YALL JUICE

and by juice i mean me

I still do not have an american license

JaneAustenStanAccount: what do we get out of it?

MinnieMouse: ???

the pleasure of my company??

also youre literally the one that invited me to watch megamind

JaneAustenStanAccount: and??

daisyduke: shut up jay

we all know youre soft for M stop tryin to play tough

MinnieMouse: this is why duke is my favorite

he’s a living callout post

swanlake: :(

MinnieMouse: second favorite

im so sorry cass ily

swanlake: :)

daisyduke: i aint even mad

JaneAustenStanAccount: I AM

guys wtf

MinnieMouse: you brought this on yourself

maybe you should be nicer to me

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

daisyduke: ‘get fucked jason’ -marinette 2k20

btw im omw for you now

MinnieMouse: thnx ur the best

also im bringing scones as movie snack

daisyduke: noice

swanlake: !!!

JaneAustenStanAccount: FUCK YEAH!!!

MinnieMouse: you dont get any Jay

JaneAustenStanAccount: >:(

i hate it here

***

Marinette doesn’t know a lot about Robin’s past, which she assumes is by design. Secret identities don’t lead well to handing out details and concrete information about one’s personal life.

But, she thinks, one would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to not see that whatever facsimile of a childhood Robin had was about eight different levels of fucked up.

It’s in the vague allusions to ‘training’ and the scorn filled way he says the word ‘mother’. It’s in the not-quite-confusion—because whatever family he has is better now, at least—of Marinette telling him about her own parents. About the happy memories she’s shared with them, of learning to bake bread and croissants and macaroons under the loving guidance of her father and practicing delicate designs and frosting techniques with her mother.

So, yeah. She knows he’s kind of messed up and definitely checks off the childhood trauma box that’s apparently one of the requirements for being her friend.

So when Robin suddenly decides to go against everything she’s learned about him up until this point and actually share something about himself—and when that thing he shares just so happens to be a story from his childhood—well… Marinette wouldn’t say she’s prepared, but she’s not- prepared.

He’s in her kitchen, because Marinette has learned her lesson about bleeding vigilantes on her couch, and she’s pretty sure he could’ve gone back to the Cave for this, but he came here for whatever reason. (Was closer, he said. Marinette doesn’t know if she believes him.)

She’s cleaning the knife wound on his arm, and she has his cape laid out across her island. There’s a hole in it she plans on sewing back up after she finishes sewing the hole in her reckless vigilante back up.

“You need to be more careful,” she scolds. “You’re lucky this didn’t nick something important.”

“It's hardly the worst wound I’ve ever acquired,” he tells her in a tone of voice that he probably thinks is reasonable. “At seven years old I had to dig a bullet out of my side in the middle of a Himilayan snowstorm while still making it back to base with time to spare after having successfully assassinated a Russian ambassador.”

Marinette pauses where she’s smoothing the gauze onto his bicep. Her eyes flick up to his, and she sees the exact moment he seems to realize what he just told her. He’s gone utterly still beneath her hands, with terror or worry or the effort it takes not to bolt out the window immediately, she doesn’t know.

“That’s horrifying,” she tells him as she finishes securing the obnoxiously bright bandage, “Never tell me that story again.”

She then drops a kiss onto his bicep, subtly imbuing it with enough luck that it will keep off any infection—the wound was filthy when he came in, seriously, was he in a sewer?—and pats his cheek warmly before moving to clean up all her supplies.

She feels his eyes on her the rest of the night, but every time she turns to him, she can’t tell what he’s thinking. All she knows is that he seems… softer, in a way.

***

Three days after Marinette’s unexpected look into Robin’s past, she finds a box on her desk. It’s a jewelry box, and the only reason she doesn’t immediately freak out is the fact that it lacks any of the miracle box markings.

Still, she opens it hesitantly, and inside, she finds a necklace. A completely normal, non-magical necklace that’s simple and pretty and very much shaped like a tiny toy mouse.

There is no note.

***

(Lahiffe was right.

The Earth spins around the sun. The sky is blue.

Everyone loves Marinette.)

***

The necklace is obviously supposed to be a reference to her Multimouse days, but that doesn’t exactly narrow down who could have left it for her.

Or well, it does, but all the people it narrows down to don’t make any sense.

Multimouse is a badly kept secret, but it’s still a secret. Most people outside Paris don’t know about her and the people in Paris didn’t exactly recognize her off the street either.

Her Court knows, obviously, and so do the Waynes and the bats. But her Court wouldn’t leave her mouse themed gifts, they tend toward ladybugs or their own animal motif as a gift (the amount of cat and bee themed items she owns is ludicrous).

Which leaves the Waynes and the bats.

But her Waynes wouldn’t leave the gift on her desk, and they certainly wouldn’t forget to put a note, so Duke, Jason, and Cass are out.

She must stand there thinking about it too long, because then Jeremy's walking in, just as bright and early as ever.

He sees her holding the box and his face turns a strange mix of curious and outraged. “Is it your birthday? I swear, Boss if you didn't tell us it was your birthday-”

“No, Jeremy,” she says, amused despite her confusion. “That’s not for a while yet. I found this when I walked in,” she shakes the box slightly for emphasis, “but there wasn’t a note.”

“Oh.” A smile slowly spreads across Jeremy’s face. “Oh?” he purrs, waggling his eyebrows at her. “Does the boss have a secret admirer?”

Marinette blinks and- what?

“What? No. I can’t- That doesn’t-” she splutters but Jeremy just laughs and walks over to his station to start setting up for the day, leaving Marinette to her breakdown.

Because this can’t have been left by a secret admirer. That’s just crazy.

There are exactly two people who could’ve left this for her and neither of them would be an admirer of any kind. And she wouldn’t want them to be anyway because that would be stupid and ridiculous and weird.

She doesn’t like Robin or Damian like that…

Right?

***

(It’s impossible not to love her, he realizes, mostly by accident.

She loves, wholeheartedly and unafraid and so much more than Damian had ever thought one person could. She loves with a ferocity and passion no person deserves or can match.

And Damian, foolishly, loves and wishes to be loved by her anyway.)

***

There are roses on her desk the next day, potted and still healthy.

The day after that, there’s a box of expensive chocolates. Like, the kind only Adrien, Felix, and Chloé buy without a second thought. The gossip has spread far enough that all of her designers know about the gifts and probably-admirer.

On the fourth day, there is a box full of high-quality pencils and a new sketchbook, one with nice thick drafting paper, but small enough to fit in her favored bag. Her name is embossed across the front, along with her personal motif of delicate apple blossoms.

On the fifth day, she shows up to find there is only a drawing, which should point to it being Damian, but drawing-her is holding a robin in her cupped palms which cannot be a coincidence. Drawing-her also looks serene and beautiful with her mouth curved slightly and her eyes gentle and soft and Marinette is as touched by the image as she is frustrated by it.

There are hair sticks on the sixth, and delicate pins shaped like flowers on the seventh. Another stunning drawing of her on the eighth, a bottle of wine older than Master Fu on the ninth, the softest cashmere blanket on the tenth, a basket of sweet floral lotions, a glass statue of a bird in flight—she gets so many gifts, Marinette has to stop keeping count.

It’s somewhere around day six that her designers must’ve ratted on her to either Felix or Chloé because it’s not long after that, that all of her friends learn about the gifts and start being terrifically unhelpful about the whole situation.

They each try to give her advice, which would be sweet if it wasn’t all equally terrible and conflicting.

They’re also placing bets on who they think her admirer is, Damian or Robin. They’re trying to be discreet about it—which means they’re failing miserably.

Marinette, admittedly, never expected any different from them.

***

Marinette begins watching Damian in the mornings with a newfound interest.

The gifts are always there before she arrives, which means they're also there before Damian arrives, so she’s in a prime position to catch his reaction.

Or, she would be, if he ever reacted. He barely glances at them and never says anything unless the gift is particularly obnoxious, like the giant stuffed mouse she found sitting in her chair last week. (It was almost as big as she was. Adrien, Nino, and Alix had ended up on the floor from laughing so hard when they’d seen it.)

Damian almost never comments on the gift she received that day, but whenever she uses or wears something that her mysterious admirer had gotten for her, he makes sure to compliment her. Which would be very suspicious except that Robin does the same thing.

It’s just- they’re both so frustratingly silent about it all! Marinette is this close to just grabbing one or both of them by the shoulders and just shaking until they tell the truth.

It’s driving her insane! Before the necklace appeared on her desk, she didn’t even know that she liked Robin and Damian.

And now she’s overanalyzing their nonreactions. She hates it.

It feels too much like she’s back in collège, trying to sort out her feelings for Adrien and Chat. (Who ended up being the same person—which was just very inconsiderate of him, really. The least he could do is let her angst have meaning dammit!)

And- ugh. What if she doesn't even like either of them? What if her mind is just making her think she does because the idea of them liking her was presented? What then? Or what about the fact that the two boys are also ridiculously similar when she thinks about it. What if she only likes one and is just projecting her feelings onto the other because her mind associates the two?

Oh, she doesn’t like that thought. That thought makes her feel upset and like she wants to cry into a tub of ice cream.

Nino happily indulges her and doesn't even complain when she eats her way through his stash of mint chip as she dramatically complains about stupidly confusing boys.

Honestly, she may as well be back in lycée.

***

(What Marinette does not realize in the midst of all her careful analysis of his reactions, is that it’s not the gifts he’s focused on.

When she wears the necklace and hair sticks, she misses the way his eyes linger on the slope of her neck. As she cares for her roses, she doesn’t notice the way he follows the easy nimbleness of her fingers. She uses her sketchbook and eats the expensive chocolates and doesn’t pay attention to the way he steals glances at her lips. She doesn't see the way his hands twitch when she ventures just near enough to touch.

(She exists next to him, in any form or light, and he is captivated by her very presence.)

Marinette looks, but it is in all the wrong places.)

***

Strangely enough, it’s Signal who helps her with her internal crisis—completely unintentionally and in a very roundabout way—but he helps all the same.

He’s taken an… interest, she supposes, in her magic. One that is entirely his own and has very little to do with that Bat from what she can tell.

His abilities and hers stem from different origins, but she would be lying if she said his weren’t oddly complementary to her own. His precognition abilities stemming from his photokinesis has been useful on more than one occasion regarding the experimental spell matrices she, Tikki, and Nooroo have been testing out.

The magic is normally invisible to people without a Miraculous, but Signal seems to have little trouble seeing what she’s doing, even if he can’t interact with it the way she can.

(There is also the fact that she seems… more when he is around. Days that he spends watching her do her work go by faster and smoother than when he is away. Her magic is easier, and her mind spins with ideas and creations faster.

It’s an odd phenomenon and Ladybug is looking into it.)

There has been more than one occasion where Signal had warned her of the matrix’s imminent collapse with enough time for her to prepare herself for its blowback.

The version she’s working on today is their fifth iteration. It’s supposed to pull the miasma out of the building, filter it through her and Tikki’s own magical energy, before flowing back into the brickwork. Marinette had thought of the idea while talking with Nooroo.

If she can get it to work, it will shift the misfortune into good luck and order and release it back into the environment. Then she’ll only need to cleanse strategic portions of the city in a lattice network, and the creative and destructive energies will mix from there, balancing themselves without much input from her at all.

Of course, that’s only if she can actually get it to work. It’s been almost a month and this is the fifth version and it’s already collapsed on her three times in the last hour. Signal must see the frustration on her face and has taken to trying to distract her with small talk.

She’s very thankful for it, actually. If he wasn’t doing that, she would probably start screaming right here and now, on this random rooftop in the residential district. Which would just be very startling and embarrassing for everyone involved, so. You know. Glad she doesn’t have to do that.

Eventually, she asks him, apropos of nothing, “You’re a detective right?”

He pauses, and blinks at her, likely trying to follow the train of thought that led her to that question. She assumes he did not find it because when he speaks, he still sounds confused.

“Yes? I guess that’s technically what I am.”

“So you’re good at figuring out who’s behind a crime?”

Signal only looks more confused. “Yeah? But Ladybug, what-”

“Great, so. Hypothetically, if you had two suspects for a—well it’s not a crime. A… thing? Situation. How would you figure out which one of them is actually behind the… situation?”

Signal’s lips quirk, just a bit despite his confusion. “I think I’m gonna need a little more to go on than just ‘a situation,’ LB.”

Ladybug purses her lips and stares down at the light weaving intricate patterns in the space between her palms. Slowly, carefully, she tells him, “There are items being left where a person can find them. But the identity of the person leaving them and their intentions are unknown.”

“Are the items dangerous?” he asks worriedly.

Ladybug shakes her head. “No. They're more like gifts.”

“Are the gifts unwanted or creepy? Unsettling? Threatening?”

Another head shake. “Just confusing and… thoughtful.”

“Someone is leaving you thoughtful gifts and you're worried about that… why?” Signal asks, slowly and disbelievingly.

“It’s because I- wait! I’m not the person!” she panics, causing the magic to spark dangerously in her hands but she barely notices. “The person doesn’t even exist. It was a hypothetical question!”

Signal stares at her. She can’t see his eyes or the top half of his face, but she just knows he’s raising his eyebrow judgingly at her.

“Stop that!” she snaps. “Stop being perceptive! I have enough perceptive people in my life so knock it off!”

Signal laughs like the horrible person he is. “But don’t you need me to be perceptive? That’s like, a requirement to be a detective.”

“Stop it,” she says again, mulishly and very childish.

And isn’t that an odd thought to have? Ladybug being childish.

How novel. Ladybug has never once been childish. She can’t afford to be, because when she is behind the mask, she is all the most important parts of herself. She is the Grand Guardian, is the one who must be in control at all times because she has an entire team to keep safe and alive.

Behind the mask, she’s all of her greatest responsibilities.

But here, in Gotham and with Signal, she is none of those things to him. She is simply another hero, that is his age and very much like him in ways so few are. Ladybug, in the moments she spends with Signal, is probably the closest she has ever been to carefree while in the mask.

It’s as comforting a thought as it is terrifying.

Signal raises his hands in surrender, but his lips are still quirked in amusement.

Ladybug regrets starting this conversation.

She regrets it even more when, five minutes later, Signal manages to pull the rest of the story from her… along with a name.

She realizes her mistake a second too late to stop herself, and then all she can do is watch.

She watches, with ever-growing horror, as Signal slowly puts the pieces together. She watches, as her whole secret identity starts unraveling around her for the first time ever. She watches, stricken, as Signal opens his mouth to speak.

And then she grabs both sides of his head and Orders him to sleep.

***

The second Marinette bespells him, she regrets it.

She was panicking, okay? And Marinette panicking is very different from Ladybug panicking and truly, she creates messes just by existing.

Nooroo flies out of his hiding place to make distressed noises at the now unconscious Signal with her, which is… actually kinda soothing, if not exactly helpful.

At least she knows she’s not the only one upset right now.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no!” Nooroo frets, flitting around her head with agitated wings. Hers aren’t much better, if she’s being honest. “What are we going to do, Guardian? He knows who you are! This is bad.”

Marinette worries her thumb between her teeth, shifting her weight from foot to foot. With a thought, she's back in her civvies and Tikki is perched on her shoulder, blinking at the scene she’s suddenly a part of.

“Well,” Tikki says, sounding far too calm for the situation. “This isn’t ideal.”

The laugh that escapes Marinette is on the edge of hysterical. “You think?”

“It’s not ideal,” Tikki repeats firmly, “But neither is it a disaster.”

Nooroo lands on her other shoulder as she kneels down beside Signal to rearrange his limbs to not be so uncomfortable. “But he's unpredictable!” he argues, curling into the side of her neck like she will hide him from the world. “We don’t know what he’ll do with this information!”

Tikki hums thoughtfully. “Then we will have to ask. There are far worse people we could have been revealed to. We're lucky it was a friend rather than foe.”

“You think so?” Marinette asks softly, voice barely louder than a whisper.

She knows the Bat’s flock are good people. Many of them are her friends, or people she hopes to call friends soon.

But she doesn't know if these people Marinette calls friends could be Ladybug’s allies.

The bats hoard secrets like black holes, and perhaps they would keep hers just as well, but they could just as easily use it against her. Batman barely tolerates her presence, she can tell by the way Signal talks sometimes, and it is no small stretch of the imagination that he would use this to try and kick her out of Gotham.

Marinette cannot, as a Guardian, leave Gotham.

But more importantly, she doesn’t want to leave Gotham. It’s… her home now. Her friends are here. Her family is here. Robin and Hood and the other bats are here. Damian and all her Waynes are here.

Leaving Gotham would not only make her sick and jittery at the imbalance, but it would break her heart.

If, when Signal tells Batman, he reacts poorly, there is so much that Marinette is set up to lose. And that terrifies her.

Some of that thought process must show on her face—or perhaps Nooroo has just picked up on the turmoil in her chest—because the two Kwami are pressed on either side of her face, nuzzling and hugging as much of her as they can reach.

“We’ll make it through this, Marinette,” Tikki says firmly, no room for argument. “Don’t worry so much. Both of you. Everything will turn out just fine, you’ll see.”

***

@bluesimani @how-to-fuction-properly @chocolatecatstheron @mystery-5-5 @nickristus-dreamer @mochegato @thenillabean @animegirlweeb @novaloptr @darkdaysandfakesmiles @optimistically-pessimistic0524 @clumsy-owl-4178 @g-arya @undecisioned @smolplantmum @blackmagicforever @i-wanna-be-a-ninja @wannajointhecrabcult @paintedhope7 @redscarlet95 @roselynfey @ira-sairain @lozzybowe @tumbling-down-hills-and-stuff @2confused-2doanything @pepelachanel @too0bsessedformyowngood @miraculouspenta @itsmeevie01 @corabeth11 @jalaluvsu

#maribat #daminette #ml x dc #my typewriter #for us to collide

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a-wayne-at-heart-too · 4 years

Text

Ask...

Damian: *yelling from across the hall* I'd punish you for that tasteless comment, Drake!

Damian: But... -Tt- It's admittedly not easy from this far.

Damian: Just... Just don't get sick, okay?

Tim: *grinning* Didn't realize you cared.

Damian: Shut up! Or I’ll send my cat to do the job for me! *slams his bedroom door shut*

>>> *** <<<

Tim: *rolls his eyes, not looking up from his laptop* Cass, I know you’re there.

Cass: *hangs upside down from the ceiling* Oh, sorry! I forgot my ballet shoes in one of the gym bags I borrowed from you --

Tim: Yeah, but you don’t have to crawl on my ceiling. You only need to be at least six feet away, not six feet above.

>>> *** <<<

Tim: *walks past Jason in the kitchen, unintentionally brushing against his arm*

Red Hood: Are you crazy, Tim?! I just came from patrol! Crane? Nygma? Who knows what I brought home with me! At least give me time to wear my mask first, it's got a filter and everything. *fumbles with his pockets, finds his nontoxic sanitizer and sprays Tim with it* Shoo! Scat! No, you know what? You've got to eat to get stronger, so -- MOVE! *tries his darndest not to brush against him*

Red Hood: *mumbling to himself as he walks away* What was I thinking? I shouldn't have come here!

>>> *** <<<

Tim: *sends a text message* Wanna hang out?

Steph: *replies* Babe, what part of me trying to save your life don’t you get?

>>> *** <<<

Duke: *kicking* He shoots, he scores!

Tim: *watches in agony as the ball goes past him and into the goal*

Duke: *pumps his fist in the air* YEEEEESSSSS! 1-0 in favor of Thomas!

Tim: *offers to bump fists* Good game, my man. But maybe next time we play something else? Maybe some D&D?

Duke: *bumps fists with him* Haha! Or maybe you should just practice your soccer moves.

Tim: See ya around, Duke.

Duke: *doffs an imaginary hat* Take care, dude. Till a real game.

Tim: *turns off his hologram generator*

>>> *** <<<

Barbara [e-mail]: Here’s a list of every possible article (that isn’t fake) about this disease. You don’t need to cross-reference them since I already did that (duh), but you could if you’re bored. I’ve also got previously unreleased intel from S.T.A.R. Labs, and by “got”, of course I meant “hacked” --

Tim: *shuts his laptop and chuckles to himself* Already got ‘em, Babs.

>>> *** <<<

Dick: *knocking on Tim's bedroom door* Hey, Tim? Buddy? Are you feeling okay? I could call Dr. Thompkins if...

Tim [from inside the room]: *working on some cold cases* I'm fine, Dick.

Dick: Okay, well... I'm sorry you can't have dinner with us right now. Alf offered to bring your food up for you. We just wanna make sure nothing happens to you, you know?

Tim: *sighs* I know, Dick.

Dick: ... We miss you.

Tim: ... I miss you, too, Dick.

>>> *** <<<

Bruce: Don't. Remove. It.

Tim: *struggling to walk while wearing a state-of-the-art Bubble Bat Boy suit, which automatically assembles gliding pads on its feet* This is ridiculous, Bruce --

Bruce: Not as ridiculous as my allowing you to risk your life.

Tim: Really? Now you worry about me risking my --

Bruce: *clears his throat roughly* Like I said, until that vaccine from Wayne R&D passes every single testing phase, you’re staying in that thing and at home.

Tim: *groans*

>>> *** <<<

Later at the Wayne Manor rooftop...

Kon: Wow.

Tim: *in his bubble suit* I know, right?

Kon: *pokes at the bubble, which generates a force field in reaction* So, when are you gonna tell 'em?

Tim: *adjusts the IV line supplying him liquid caffeine* About the spleen I grew in the Titans lab using stolen Cadmus tech?

Kon: Well, yeah.

Tim: Ehhh... *shrugs* Maybe when I get really tired of this suit. Besides... it’s been quiet. Almost peaceful. I’m still enjoying all of it.

Tim: Alfred knows, though. He performed the surgery. Helps me get out of this thing when I want to go on patrol.

Kon: Huh.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

I guess you could say that, @tenaciouspeacesandwich . Thanks for this ask!

#ask #bruce wayne #dick grayson #jason todd #tim drake #damian wayne #barbara gordon #stephanie brown #cassandra cain #duke thomas #alfred pennyworth #leslie thompkins #conner kent #appreciation post #mine #big brother of the year #caffeinated crusader #grumpy old kid #hug monster

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calpops · 4 years

Text

shatter | c.h.

Distance brings problems to the surface of your relationship with Calum. A break feels like the only option. You hold onto hope that it will bring you back together and that if it’s meant to be it will be.

1.5k words

dates with cal masterlist

<< >>

Your heart sinks as Calum sighs and sets himself on the edge of the couch cushion; three places away from you. Usually he’d settle completely at your side, pull you into him and let your head rest against his chest, grin as your fingers tapped the rhythm of his heart against his ribs and know you were both finally home for the night. The moon would have usually guided you both to bed but tonight it casts haunting shadows that cut across Calum’s somber face. You swallow down a lump in your throat and play with your hands set in your lap.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” He asks, voice tight and trying not to break.

“I think it’s what we need,” you explain and try to convince him and yourself.

Things had gotten rocky between you as band responsibilites took off and distance made everything hazy. He was gone and busy, you were home and alone. You convinced yourself that when things calmed down and he was home more it would be different. Things would go back to the way they were before he left. It would go back to feeling like home. But they stayed distant. He was still gone; celebrating the success, riding out the highs of all the successes his hard work brought. You were happy for him. But, you were still alone, not one for parties or late nights. You were shaken by the disturbance that entered your lives and lent you realizations. You felt like three different people all in the same breath. There was you when you were with him, you when he was away, and you somewhere in between those times. You weren’t sure who that was anymore.

“A break,” he said around a sigh. “You really think we need a break?”

“It already feels like we’re in the middle of one,” you admit and feel your heart crash. You hate to admit it but the truth has never been easy to admit. “You’ve been gone for so long.”

“I’m home now,” he insists and doesn’t understand—you can’t fault him for that, you haven’t explained yourself all that well.

“Not really. You’re still gone almost every night. When you are here it’s different. There’s a disconnect. It’s not like it used to be. I don’t know if I can handle how it is right now. I don’t know—it’s me, it’s me, it has to be me. I’m just”—Calum moves to you and cuts off the bubble of hysteria you can actively feel rising in your chest. He grabs your hands and soothes you.

“If you need a break I can stay with Ashton for a while,” he says and you can see the heartbreak and crash of emotions that sweep through his eyes. He frowns, you hear his breath catch in his throat and you turn away from him; unable to witness how much this is hurting him. “You’re right. I haven’t been around. It’s been different.”

“I want to get back to normal, but I don’t know how.”

“Time. Communicating. This… this is the first step,” Calum said and though the realization was painful for both of you it was necessary and held a splinter of hope for the future. “Thank you for telling me. I want to get back to what we had too. If this is how you think we should do it then I’ll do it. I’m sure Ashton won’t mind if I crash with him, for a while.”

A while held a certain promise that things would recover. It held heart and hope and a certainty that sounded unbreakable. You don’t know how long a while might last, what challenges might crop up in the face of a break or how feelings might change. Something sits heavy on your chest. You are asking for a break and now you feel you need to afford Calum his freedom in the meantime.

“You can see other people, if you want,” you say though it burns from the tip of your tongue to the bottom of your heart.

He shakes his head. “I don’t want that. I don’t want anyone but you.”

“I just need time to find me again,” you say but the sentence breaks in the middle and though it feels the break has begun Calum pulls you to him and offers you comfort.

“When you find yourself, I’ll be waiting.”

***

Days without Calum bleed on in a heartbreaking haze. He wasn’t around much before the break became official but now there’s no waiting around for the possibility of a late night call or an early morning surprise of him walking through the door. He took a few suitcases of things with him—clothes, his bass, journals and when you come upon the empty nightstand on his side of the bed you realize he took a photo of you two he snapped on your first anniversary. Duke went with him to Ashton’s and without the click of his claws on hardwood or the low hum of Calum’s bass the house is much too silent for your liking.

There’s no more waiting around for him or the crushing disappointment of missed calls. There’s no more aching over his absence and wondering if he preferred being out than being with you. It was your choice and now you can only hope he isn’t hurting the way you were. All of the absences also mean there is no more play fighting for the remote or making jokes while making breakfast. There’s no more erratic heart beats and smiles that leave you with wildfires of warmth blazing through your blood. There’s no more Calum.

He surprises you one day, shows up on the doorstep with a timid knock and bashful eyes.

“I need to get some things,” he admits and you realize more time has slipped past than you thought if he’s in need of extra things from the house.

You can sense his anxiety as he collects what he needs; note the hesitation as he reaches for shared things. Your worlds have become so intertwined it’s hard to tell what’s yours and what’s his. Separation becomes a fine line; a hairline fracture in the glass house you’ve built around each other. You hope you both don’t shatter as a consequence.

He leaves you all too soon—not before reminding you he loves you and breaking your heart in the same breath—it enforces a hollow hole that drives it’s way further through your heart. His reappearance shifts your perspective and keeps you up for nights on end. You feel the cool side of the bed is much colder now, you notice the fridge and cupboards are way too stocked with food and the coffee table is lonely without music magazines and picks discarded all over it.

It’s during a late night when you can’t sleep that you find yourself wandering the house. Pacing up and down the halls and feeling nervous energy bite through you. Your pacing isn’t enough. You leave the house with no real destination in mind but are not surprised when you pull up to a familiar abode. The lights are out but you wind up on the doorstep without hesitation, ring the doorbell and hear a bark that sets your already flickering nerves ablaze. The door opens to Ashton who rubs at his tired eyes but takes you in and gives you a sympathetic smile. He doesn’t complain about the late hour. Only invites you in and stalks off so that Calum might take his place.

You come face to face with him; curls mussed from sleep and eyes red rimmed. Your heart lurches at the sight and the distance he doesn’t seem to want to close.

“I think I’ve realized something,” you begin with around a forlorn sigh filled with regret.

“What’s that?” He asks barely above a whisper and you hear the hope that beats through each syllable.

“I’m my best me when I’m with you,” you admit and clap your hands together to get them to stop shaking.

He stays still; stoic and calm and it shoots uncertainty through you.

“I shouldn’t have come—I’m sorry,” you say in a sudden realization. It’s not fair of you to show up in the middle of the night with all of your regrets clouded around you. You start to turn around and rush out the door but his voice stops you.

“Sweetheart don’t leave.”

His term of endearment reserved solely for you beats your heart a little faster, fills it with hope and makes your eyes burn. You look down, willing yourself not to cry, not to shatter when you’re so close to bringing you both back together.

“Not without me,” Calum adds on and pieces together cracking shards of your relationship.

“You’ll come home?” You ask.

He nods.

“You’ll stay?” You ask again and hold your breath.

“I left once already. I’m not doing that again.”

You let out your breath and let go of all your hesitations and close the distance between you. He welcomes you with everything he has. You feel at home in his arms.

“I’ve missed you,” you mumble against his chest and finally slow tears to fall; tears of relief and love.

“I’ll get my stuff tomorrow. Let’s just grab Duke and go home.”

You nod, though you’re pretty sure just being in his embrace again feels more like home than your house ever could.

<< >>

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considermewhelmed · 3 years

Text

Achilles Come Down by Gang of Youths- Tim Drake

TW: attempted su*c*de/su*c*dal thoughts, anxiety, depression.

a/n: hey remember in the Master when I said these would be short fics? Ha. Yeah. Me too. Good times.

Tag list: @river9noble

Master

“Achilles, Achilles, Achilles come down/Won’t you get up off, get up off the roof?/You’re scaring us and all of us/Some of us love you/Achilles it’s not much but there’s proof.”

“You may feel no purpose/Nor a point for existing/It’s all just conjecture and gloom/And there may not be meaning/So find one and seize it/Do not waste yourself on this roof/Hear those bells ring deep in the soul/Chiming away for a moment/Feel your breath course frankly below/And see life as a worthy opponent.”

Tim stood on the edge of the building, overlooking the city. His cape billowed lightly in the cool air, and he took a deep breath.

‘Red Robin, report.’ Barbra’s voice asked in his ear.

Tim remained silent, his eyes scanning the streets, but his mind far away.

‘Red Robin, report.’ She repeated.

‘Red Robin, are you okay?’

A new voice broke onto the comms.

Dick.

He had been thinking a lot. About Dick. And Damian. Bruce. Steph. Babs. Duke. Luke. Cass. Kate even. There were just… so many of them. So many. One less surely wouldn’t matter?

He imagined he wouldn’t get a huge memorial like the one for Jason in the batcave- he was choosing this, he did it himself, there was no honour in that. He didn’t mind though, he wasn’t sure he even cared to be remembered.

They barely remembered him alive, why would death help?

He wondered how long it would take them to forget him. The voice is the first thing you forget about a person, when was the last time he talked to them all?

‘Red Robin, where are you?’ Dick.

‘Is his comm offline?’ Steph.

‘No, it’s online. It should be working. Receiver and all.’ Barbra.

‘Red Robin?’ Dick.

He looked down. He’d survived some pretty unlikely things, but this was too much. Too high. There was no way his heart could take his fall, let alone the pavement below waiting for his body. It called his name, whispering the promises of sweet relief with every breeze, the streetlight spotlight marking his entrance to his final bow.

‘Can you get his tracker online?’ Dick.

‘Red Robin, come in.’ Bruce.

‘No. He’s bypassed the security.’ Barbra.

‘Really Drake?’ Damian. ‘Sneaking off during patrol?’

‘Red Robin, report.’ Bruce- and Tim imagined he sounded worried in the way only Batman could be.

‘Where was his route?’ Dick.

Tim tuned them out, but couldn’t bring himself to turn the comms off completely. He didn’t have the heart to be alone- he was selfish and desperate.

He shrugged off the cape, letting it fall to the rooftop, and quietly unclipped his utility belt. He wished he felt scared, or sad, or anything, but instead he just felt numb. Human instinct should be trying to get him back safely to the solid roof behind him, but instead he just swayed in the wind, as if even his own body was impartial to the decision.

He closed his eyes and sighed quietly, rolling his shoulders back, resigning to his fate. There was no use in fighting anymore.

That was it. He felt something. Tired.

Not just tired. Exhausted. Bone deep exhaustion, the kind of exhaustion that made even sleeping a chore. Tears gathered in his eyes, and with each drop his mask got looser and looser. He thought of something to say- some sort of goodbye. Not for them, but for him, for closure. His own eulogy. Last words, maybe?

Did he deserve last words when the villain he lost to was his own mind? Internal, eternal, and inevitable? It was a dance he’d been a part of for far too long and he was just tired.

“Hey Replacement.”

Tim expected his whole body to go rigid, for his instinct to take over, for any kind of fight to bubble up inside him, itching to get out. He and Jason reconciled, sure, but sometimes when he caught him off guard, Tim still had the same knee-jerk reaction.

Instead, his body just stood there, open and unarmed. It solidified his resolve- even his instincts knew it was over. The idea that Jason could easily shoot him, or push him off the roof didn’t scare him.

Why would it?

He could hear Jason’s quiet, heavy steps as the older boy approached.

‘Red Hood, status, have you found him?’

Dick’s voice came over the comms.

Tim didn’t look at Jason. There was a soft click.

“No, not yet. I’ll keep looking. Just cover my area Dickhead.” Jason said before the soft click happened again.

The two boys were quiet for a minute.

Behind him, Tim could hear the familiar whirring of the mechanics- mechanics he helped design -that indicated the removal of Jason’s Red Hood helmet. A thump after indicated Jason had opted to ditch it on the roof.

Normally, Tim would yell at him for being so careless with his equipment, especially since Tim worked hard on the last updates, but he couldn’t even find his voice.

He heard the clatter of weapons hitting the ground, and Jason stepped closer.

“Come on Timmy,” Jason said softly, and Tim’s chest tightened at the nickname. “You’re shaking. You gotta be freezing.”

It wasn’t until Jason said something that Tim realized he was vibrating. Even the air was unforgiving in Gotham, and somewhere between his decision to step on the ledge and the loss of his cape, it turned into an icy grip that cut through the thin material of his suit.

The wind stung his face where the tears had started to slip beneath his mask. His knees buckled and he sucked in a sharp breath of air.

“I can’t.” He choked out, his hand gripping at his chest. “I- I can’t move.”

‘Red Robin?’ Dick’s voice cut through the comms. ‘Come on buddy, where are you, I’ll come get you.’

Tim couldn’t hear him over the roar of his own blood in his ears, and took his comm out of his ear, throwing it off to the side.

It was then he caught sight of Jason, and was shocked by the lack of not only helmet, but mask as well. Jason’s eyes had a green shine to them- a side effect of the pit -and they were trained on Tim.

Jason held out his hand to Tim. “Take my hand baby bird.” He murmured.

“No,” Tim cried. “I want- I should- I have to- I’m going to fall Jason-”

“No.” Jason said sternly. “No you won’t.”

Tim inched closer to the ledge. “It doesn’t matter-”

“Of course it matters dipshit, you matter. I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

Tim’s lip trembled and a sob tore from his throat as his knees gave out from under him and for a split second he was falling-

And the next he was wrapped in a tight hug.

Tim reached out instinctually and grabbed onto whatever he could hold, staying as close as possible to the smell of leather, gun polish and sweat, a surprisingly comforting combination.

Maybe it was just because it meant safety.

“I’ve got you baby bird,” Jason mumbled, and he could feel Jason bury his nose in Tim’s hair. “I’ve got you.”

“I’m sorry,” He sputtered through his tears. “I’m sorry, Jay, I’m sorry,” A whole new breakdown washed over him, and he couldn’t get a grip on his emotions.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Jason scolded him lightly, and rubbed little circles on his back. “I’ve got you.”

“I was going to do it,” Tim cried.

“I know.” Jason whispered.

“They hate me. They’re going to hate me more!” Tim whimpered. “I can’t- I don’t want-”

“I know.” Jason repeated. “But no one hates you, Tim,” He promised. “Hell, even Barbra threatened to get out here to find you.”

Tim buried his face in Jason’s chest and just stayed there. “I’m nothing more than a placeholder,” He mumbled. “I’m a pretender. A replacement.” He sniffled. “I didn’t- I didn’t even want to be Robin. God. I wanted Dick to be Robin. Batman needs Robin.” He was close to hysterics, and god Jason still didn’t know what to do.

“Maybe,” Jason agreed. “But Bruce Wayne needs Tim Drake.” Jason said quietly. “I’m pretty sure the old man would be lost without you Timmy.”

Tim shook his head and Jason snorted. “You set up the system in the batcave, make sure the Wayne business is intact and running smoothly, you’ve updated all the security, you always make sure there’s coffee in the manor, and no one makes him smile with bad jokes like you do.”

Tim stayed quiet, and Jason alternated between rubbing his back and running his hand through Tim’s hair. The boys stood there for as long as Tim needed to and Jason realized how small Tim was because Jesus Christ this was just a kid in a costume and he just wanted to be loved.

“Can we go back to the Manor?” Jason murmured. “My bike’s not far.”

Tim didn’t move.

“We can watch a movie?” He suggested. “I’ll let you pick.”

“Why are you being so nice?” Tim mumbled.

“Well… I could punch you instead if you’d like. Not sure that’ll make you feel better though.” He offered, and was rewarded by the smallest, quietest laugh. “C’mon, we can raid the kitchen.”

“You aren’t going to make me talk?” Tim asked.

Jason shook his head, tightening his grip on him. “I’m not going to make you talk about anything you don’t want to baby bird.” He said softly. “But if you want to do that, I’m here for that too.”

Tim tightened his own grip and kept close- Jason was keeping him grounded and that’s all that mattered. “What was it like?” He whispered.

Jason was quiet for a long moment, and Tim regretted asking almost immediately.

“Long.” Jason decided. “Dark. Quiet.”

“Good quiet?”

“No.” Jason said softly. “Too quiet.”

“I’m sorry.” Tim whispered.

“Me too,” Jason mumbled. “You’re not alone Timbo. I’m right here, alright?”

Tim nodded and pulled away after a moment when he felt like he could stand on his own. Jason collected their things and handed Tim his mask, cape and belt, putting his own mask and helmet back on, clipping his holsters on.

The ride back was quiet- Tim’s comm must have busted when it hit the roof, and if Jason heard anything he wasn’t giving it away. Jason came up with some half-assed lie about what happened to Barbra and the other Bats over the comms, and immediately claimed the living room for him and Tim, heading upstairs.

Tim was asleep by the end of the opening credits, tucked safely into the side of his big brother.

Maybe Tim couldn’t fight the villain in his head on his own, but having someone like Jason Todd on your side certainly made it easier.

#thebatfamplaylist #tim drake #red robin #jason todd #red hood #batman #bruce wayne #dc #dc comics #dick grayson #nightwing #damian wayne #Robin #barbra gordon #oracle #sorry this is so sad

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oceanera12 · 3 years

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Bat Family and Therapy

Already talked about Bruce in a previous post (here) so let’s hop on the Bat kids!

When Dick comes around, Bruce puts him in therapy. Very similar to Bruce’s it involves CBT and group therapy sessions. Bruce asks Dick about how it went after every session and makes sure to talk about his own experiences in a very casual way to show “this is normal, it isn’t bad to be in therapy”. Dick always handled his parent’s deaths better than Bruce so I don’t think much would change except now he’s going with Bruce to the weekly Victim/Witness Support Group. Later, he starts up a group therapy session with the Teen Titan’s/Teen heroes because THEY NEED TO TALK.

Barbra would have just a standard therapist when she first starts as Batgirl, at Bruce’s insistence. You see some things when you are on patrol, okay? Standing appointment, once a month, nothing too crazy. And then Joker comes and shoots her in the back. Now there’s physical therapy on top of the bi-weekly appointment for PTSD and having her life turned upside down. Barbra attends with no protests and does her homework because she’s cool like that.

Jason would resist the idea of talking about his feelings to anyone. I think Diana would be the one to finally convince him that “Hey, your biological Dad was abusive and you found your Mom dead on the ground. That’s not normal and you need to deal with it.” Jason's therapy would be different from Bruce and Dicks due to the other issues (more focus on trusting people and abuse/neglect), but Bruce would still ask how it went, etc. Bruce is also willing to sit and listen when Jason needs it, an offer the boy wouldn’t take up at first but eventually come around to it as time passes on. Coming back from the dead would definitely mess with his head sooo... not really sure where Jay would stand in the future. Maybe a few years after the Red Hood he’d go hunt down Diana.

Tim is a tricky one. His parents, while not abusive, were definitely negligent. For the first few years working as Robin, I’m pretty sure he would deny the need for it. Probably when Jason tries to kill him and Damian jumps on that train a little bit later is when Tim finally admits, “Okay, he has some issues and should probably talk to someone about it.” Tim definitely deals with self-worth issues and needs to sleep, something his therapist reminds him constantly. Maybe Tim gets improved sleeping habits in this universe (a miracle in itself).

Stephanie is hesitant at first but once she grows familiar with her therapist, she just lets it all out. She definitely keeps somethings to herself, but her therapist is patient and is never pushy about what she wants and does not want to talk about.

Cass has a different kind of therapy session involving her scribbling down in a notebook and drawing a lot of pictures. She’s slow going but it is definitely helping

Damian NEEDS to talk to someone, but he really doesn’t want to. He probably threatens his therapist and maybe almost kills them a few times because “HE’S FINE, STOP TALKING IN CIRCLES.” It takes Dick dragging him to his appointments and threatening to sit in for him to behave himself and even then Damian does not fully open up for YEARS because he’s prideful like that.

Duke had been in therapy before he even joined the mad house of Bat children. When Bruce brought it up he’s just like: “Oh, I used to have a standing appointment every Monday morning with my therapist and it was really helpful. I’m totally up for it so you don’t need to worry.” And Bruce is just: “Oh thank goodness I don’t have to drag another reluctant child through this kicking and screaming.”

Alfred. Yes, he needs it and no, you cannot change my mind on this. This man needs to TALK to someone.

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peppersonironi · 4 years

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How I Picture a Batfam Age Reversal

I’m going to write this as a fic (And I want to go on into a young justice world where dick forms the team and his siblings are protective) but here is the outline in bullet points in case anyone is interested. Please note this is VERY first draft.

Ages (At end) & Order:

Damian- 24

Duke- 21

Stephanie- 20

Tim- 21

Cassandra- 19

Jason- 19

Barbara- 15

Dick- 13

Damian is Ten when he is sent to live w/ his father. Bruce is 30.

They don’t really work well together at first. But Selina, Alfred, and Clark somehow get it through Bruce’s thick skull that he has to care for this child.

Damian keeps sneaking out on patrol, against B’s wishes. Eventually, he let’s Damian join and tells him to choose a name (Not what we meant, Bruce!)

Damian wants to go for something like Shadow, or Demon, but Bruce puts his foot down. He says that Damian shouldn’t try to be darkness.

Damian is pouting in the gardens when he finds a wounded robin. It’s wing is broken. He demands that the animal should be taken to a shelter, and carries it in his hand the whole way there.

The bird makes it, and Damian demands to be called Robin. He designs his suit, going slightly more colorful. “I might be called Robin, but I am NOT wearing brown, Pennyworth.”

Bruce introduces him to Superboy (Jon, note: less age dif) and the pair are close friends.

He is Robin for a little over seven years before he begins to fight with Bruce about being allowed to patrol alone, and being his own hero. (basically what happened w/ Dick).

Damian leaves Gotham, opting to claim Bludhaven. Jon joins him. He suggests they call each other Nightwing and Flamebird. Damian thinks it’s a bit childish, but he can’t say no to Jon. They’re costumes are here. (done by @hyperactive-lectiophile! Fantastic job!)

They eventually realize they’re in love w/ each other, all while trying to figure their lives out. Damian briefly tries to join the police. He hates it. Eventually, he enrolls in BH college for a major in Art and a minor in business.

Later in Gotham, the We Are Robin/Robin War stuff happens. Long story short, Duke is adopted.

Damian is angry to find out he has a new brother, goes to Gotham to yell at Bruce, but then meets Duke. They bond, and are close siblings. Damian makes his father promise to not adopt any more strays.

Stephanie Brown wants to stop her Father, so she sews up a costume and goes out as Batgirl. Bruce is apprehensive at first, but his family basically yells at him to train the poor girl before she gets hurt.

He does, and after Steph meets Damian, who she absolutely adores (He loves her too. The way she pisses his father off is legendary), Stephanie decides she wants to be Robin. Batgirl was good for dealing with her father, but she wants to belong to this new family, and, w/ Damian’s blessing, she makes a new costume.

Unfortunately, after a while, Stephanie is killed by Black Mask (her death is faked, like in the comics, but the Fam doesn’t know)

Enter Tim Drake. Batman has been going crazy over grief, and not even Nightwing, Catwoman (this is SOOOO batcat, btw) or The Signal can calm him down. Tim steps right up, and demands to be robin.

Damian and Bruce fight over this. Surprisingly, Damian is the one who thinks Tim should be given a chance. He sees how his father has been acting. Damian knows that Tim must be brilliant to figure out their identities, and thinks that should count for something. Duke takes his side, knowing that it takes guts to talk to batman, and be willing to join him. Bruce, meanwhile, is a constant chant of “no more dead robins”. After a while, and lots of arguing, Tim takes his place as Robin. They redesign the suit, and he takes his place as robin.

It’s little while after this that Stephanie comes back. Tim offers Robin back, but Stephanie declines. They talk and grow closer. At one point they talk about Stephanie’s new moniker. She says she doesn’t want to be Batgirl either. She wants something new. Tim suggests Spoiler (Bad pun turned brilliant idea?).

Cassandra Cain arrives on the scene next. She saves the commissioner’s life (like No Man’s Land, minus No Man’s Land), and Stephanie immediately imprints on this tiny assassin child (So do the rest of the family, but Steph claims the fourteen-year old first. She and Bruce fight over custody.). She offers Cass Batgirl. Gotham gained a new vigilante, and Bruce Wayne adopted a new child. (Faster than the comics, I KNOW. But Cass deserves happiness)

Everyone loves their new sister, and everyone spoils her. Duke is the one to take her to a ballet the first time. She immediately begs to be put into lessons.

Somewhere in here Tim’s mom dies and his dad is in a coma. Bruce takes him in.

Eventually, Bruce decides to offer Tim Red Robin, hoping to avoid the strife he had with Damian. (Like in the comics, Bruce was going to give Jason Red Robin)

Tim is unsure of this, and puts off deciding. Then little Jason Peter Todd decides to jack the tires of the batmobile and is immediately taken in.

Everyone is captivated by the tiniest addition to their family, but it's also at this time that Jack Drake finds out about Robin and forces Tim to quit. Tim gives Jason his blessing to become Robin.

Everyone pitches in on helping train the newest Robin. Damian teaches the kid things he learned from the league (non-lethal things, since Damian loves this kid), Duke teaches him escrima fighting, Stephanie (Much to Bruce’s dismay) has a full seminar of the delicacies of glitter bomb making. Tim teaches the kid hacking, when he can get away from his dad.

Unfortunately, when Jason has been Robin for almost a year, he is killed by the Joker.

The family is torn apart by greif. But this time around, Bruce has a much larger support system. All of them lean on each other.

The only time that Damian ever broke his no-kill rule while living with his father was to kill the Joker. He hunted and murdered the clown, sparing Harley. He had been friends with Quinzel since he was Robin, and knew how the Joker treated her. Harley became the batfam’s honorary aunt after this.

Bruce was too emotionally tired to fight with Damian over his actions, so no one said anything. Eventually, Bruce and Damian did argue. Damian refused to apologize,, though he did promise his father to never kill again. Their relationship was strained for a while, but they worked through it.

Less than a year later, Jack Drake dies, and Tim comes back onto the vigilante scene. He refuses to become Robin, however, choosing to take Bruce up on his offer and become Red Robin. He designs his own suit, and the world seems to slowly become normal. Or some semblance of it.

One night, the circus is in town and the whole family (except Alfred) is home. Duke, Tim, and Steph drag Bruce, Cass, and Damian to go see it.

It is on this night that Dick Grayson’s parents fall to their death. Dick is sent to live in juvi, meanwhile Bruce tries to adopt Dick. He succeeds, and the manor once again has a bright young child running through it’s halls.

Dick figures out the secret identities of his family and instantly demands to be allowed out. He wants to take down Zucko, and won’t settle for every single member hunting for him. Dick wants to take down his parent’s murdered himself. He tries to sneak out multiple times, but is always stopped.

Damian talks to Dick (They are extremely close) and explains the origins of Robin. He says that the mantle was born out of a want to distance himself from the revenge and violence of the league. Dick cries when he learns this and says that his own parents used to call him Robin. He suggests that the mantle is more than a personal need. Robin is Family.

Damian almost immediately demands that Dick be trained and help catch Zucko. Bruce is confused, as before, Damian was strongly against letting a nine-year-old fight crime. Damian explains (after much cajoling. He might be more emotionally open and healthy than when he first arrived in the manor, but the kid is still constipated) what Dick had said, and that Damian understands the kid’s need for direction. “When I first came here, I needed Robin. I might not have known it, but I did. Richard needs Robin now, as well.”

The family took sides on the issue, but eventually Dick (with the aid of his puppy-dog-eyes™) won everyone over. He got his own Robin costume, and they caught Zucko.

Dick refused to stop being Robin, and so Gotham gained a new bird.

Dick was Robin for almost two years when The Red Hood made his appearance in Gotham. No one knew what he wanted, as he didn’t seem to do much beyond killing criminals. They thought he was a vigilante at first, but then he began to take over the criminal underbelly of Gotham, regulating crime. On top of that, Red Hood targeted Robin. Attacking the boy wonder when no one else was around. After the red helmeted rogue let loose a few hints about the league of shadows, Damian interrogated his mother, who explained the identity of The Red Hood, and how she had set him on Gotham.

As soon as the family figured out the newcomer’s identity, and the reason he was alive Damian tracked him down. He knew how to deal with pit rage from his childhood, and brought the lost bird back to the nest.

The family was whole for the first time in years. Jason was still angry and resentful, but he had his family back. Jason was grateful for Damian taking revenge for him, and they were once again close.

Slowly, Jason let everyone back in, including Bruce. Dick is wary at first of this new older brother, but the little chicken nugget quickly warms up to Jason, and even convinces him to teach him how to shoot a gun (In secret, of course, Dami and Bruce would blow a gasket). Jason couldn’t resist the kid. It was physically impossible.

A year later, Cass decides to pursue dance as her career. She gets a job with the Hong Kong Ballet company. She moves there, and decides to take a new moniker: Black Bat. Her family is so proud of her, but they miss her dearly. Duke visits often, bringing new back to the family.

The absence of Batgirl is filled after a while by Barbara Gordan. She makes her own costume and starts going out. Once again, Stephanie Brown adopts a smol bean (Well, not legally. The commissioner is still alive) and outfits her with a more Gotham-friendly suit and weaponry (I.e. heavy kevlar and leather)

Babs is taken whole-heartedly into the fold, and is made an honorary sister.

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batfam-rewrites · 4 years

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Batfam During Quarantine: 27 Minutes

Dick: Good morning adopted dad!

Bruce: *grunts*

Tim: Bruce is so stressed out. Yesterday I watched him stare at a page load for 1 second and he screamed his head off. He almost destroyed the computer.

Jason: I literally saw him counting grey hairs the other day. Whatever it is it must be Tim’s fault.

Tim: Don’t you blame this on me....

Dick: *speaks over Tim* Okay so anyway, here’s the challenge, *speaks a bit lower* first person to make Bruce smile gets to drive the Batmobile on their next patrol.

Cassandra: Awesome, how do we decide who.......

Jason: *walks over to Bruce*

Cassandra: Never mind.

Jason: Hey Bruuuuuce.

Bruce: *glares at Jason while slurping coffee*

Jason: Want some breakfast? *turns on stove* How about some eggs!

Bruce: What do you want?

Jason: Nothing! Just to see my *pauses a bit* old man smile.

Bruce: I will shank you.

Jason: Loving this new color on you? You should be pissed off all the time.

Bruce: Go away.

Jason: Okay......d.....d...da...

Alfred: Don’t burst a blood vessel Jason.

Jason: No, I can do this. Da......d.a....dad *sighs and puts his hand on the stove* AHHH, FUCKER!

Bruce: Jason, are you okay!

Jason: GET AWAY FROM ME, I CAN DO THIS BY MYSELF BRUCE! *quickly runs to the bathroom to run cold water over his hand*

Duke: Well that was entertaining!

Cassandra: *lays head on Bruce’s shoulder and hugs him*

Bruce: *hugs Cassandra back but no smile*

Damian: Father, I brought you a gift. *pulls out a picture of the entire batfamily together*

Bruce: *Bruce smiles* Thanks Damian, that’s really thoughtful of you.

Damian: *turns towards everyone and points* YES SUCK IT LOSERS!

Daily Briefing

Dick: Okay, so we have reached a low point of criminal activity for Gotham City which is a good thing.

Cassandra: A bit funny how it took a pandemic to make Gotham a bit peaceful.

Dick: Exactly my point. Now, with that said, we will still be doing patrols starting at 11. Tim, this is your week on sanitation duty. Throughout the day we will train a bit harder than normal. There will be scheduled times and you will each have partners. Try to train no less than two and a half hours a day. Training should include sparing, cardio, strength, and tumbling. Try to spar with someone new every week.

Dick: Also Jason, you remember when you said you wish you could fall like me.

Jason: I was being sarcastic.

Dick: I will finally be teaching you how to do pommel horse 1 hour a week like you asked.

Jason: I will kill you.

Duke: Being honest, I’d like to try high bar and floor. I feel it will be very beneficial for me in the long run.

Dick: Awesome! You got it. Now everyone has until tomorrow to pick their partner, I know my partner will be Jason.

Jason: Fuck you.

Dick: Also, last thing before I make the training schedules and routines, I need to address something. There are quite a lot of people in Gotham City still refusing to wear mask. During the day lets try to hand out mask with our own designs on them to everyone who we come across during the day. I already ordered them and they should be here by Saturday, so that is something we will be doing starting next week.

*alarm sounds off in the batcave*

Alfred: It would seem there is a fire at Wayne Tower on the thirty-second floor.

Dick: Alright, Duke, Jason, and I will go to check it out. Everyone else do what you would normally do.

Tim and Bruce

Tim: Hey Bruce, I brought you some coffee!

Bruce: How many cups have you had?

Tim: Three large cups.

Bruce: After......

Tim: *mumbles* The five cups I had with breakfast.

Bruce: There we go.

Tim: Okay so what are we doing?

Bruce: Someone is trying to hack into my server. If they do so they will have unlimited knowledge of the companies upcoming projects, along with the identities of our persona’s.

Tim: How long do we have?

Bruce: 27 minutes. Try to locate the hackers location.

Nightwing, Red Hood, and The Signal

They all rushed to the thirtieth floor to help out and find that the firemen are ready to head to the floor. The three heroes turned on their oxygen tanks and they charged in with the firefighters. Half of the entire floor was covered in flames. They noticed a conference room with a few people inside and Jason rushed to the door, pulling out his guns. He shot the door several times before kicking it down and escorting the people out. After that there wasn’t much left for them to do so they went back down.

Fire Officer: Nightbird, that is the dumbest thing I have ever seen anyone do.

Jason: *laughs*

Dick: Thanks.

Fire Officer: Lets get you all checked.

Jason: The mask stay on though.

Alfred and Julia

Alfred: What are we watching

Julia: Well, I thought that with both of us being former spies, I thought we could watch an American film franchise called Mission Impossible.

Alfred: And tear it apart by it’s inaccuracies!

Julia: Yes!

Alfred: Sounds wonderful!

Nightwing, Red Hood, and The Signal

Time- 19:37

Medic: They seem fine, no way of telling for sure though without their mask off.

Duke: So we’re good to go, awesome!

Fire Officer: The fire upstairs has been put out.

Dick: Good.

Tim: Dick, are you still at Wayne Tower?

Dick: Yes, what’s up?

Tim: We’re dealing with a hacker trying to get into the server at Wayne Inc. The hacker is inside the building. We have 16 minutes and 55 seconds......

Dick: Say no more! We’re on it!

Fire Officer: There’s been another fire across town. Lets move out!

Dick: Duke, investigate the fire upstairs. If I’m not mistaken, it should be arson.

Duke: Got it.

Dick: Jason, stay here there is a hacker inside the building, You have 16 minutes to find the person or else Batman is doomed.

Jason: I guess I’ll look.

Dick: GO! NOW!

Jason: Got it Nightbird!

Nightwing

Dick follows the fire fighters down to the floor and tells the guard to let no one in or out of the building. He rides his motor cycle, tailing the fire trucks to the scene of the next fire. He runs into the apartment complex, turning the oxygen tank on. He notices the first floor is clear so he rushes up the stairs to notice the flames stretched out across it. He dives through them and hears pounding on one of the doors. He sees the other residents and grabs two children, takes out his grappling hook, and shoots it towards the ceiling. He leads them down and has them run out of the building. He gets back up to the scond floor and takes the parents and lets them run out as well. When he saw them leave, he jumped back up to the second floor and ran into the door 3 times before finally breaking it down. The flames were now getting closer. He get back up and saw Barbara giving him a hand up.

Barbara: Need some help?

The Signal

Duke: What do you smell?

Fire Marshall: Alcohol.

Duke: Exactly.

Fire Marshall: So.... why did you ask?

Duke: Just wanted to check. Red Hood, Red Robin, Nightwing. Our hunch was right. We have an arsonist inside the building. Some witnesses have said they saw a maintenance worker carrying bottles of vodka in his cart. If I had to assume, both fires are a distraction from finding the hacker meaning there is an accomplice to whoever is in the building.

Jason: Good, now I’m pretty sure I speak for Nightbird when I say this, start helping me search for this bastard.

Duke: On it.

Tim and Bruce

Time- 10:17

Harper: I came as fast as I could.

Bruce: Good, set up your computer.

Harper: Why isn’t Alfred helping?

Bruce: Shut up and get to work.

Harper and Bruce try to fight off the hacker as well as they could.

Harper: Awesome!

Bruce: Not good enough though.

Tim: What’s up?

Harper: We bought ourselves a few extra minutes.

Tim: Nice.

Time- 13:38

Nightwing and Batgirl

Dick: Damn, you’re a sight for sore eyes!

Barbara: Come on! We have one more floor!

The two rush to get the last residents out of the building. The flames were starting to be extinguished by the fire fighters outside of the building. Parts of the ceiling began to collapse as they made it to the top floor. Grabbing the residents they set them down on the floor and rushed to the exit, only to find it blocked by parts of the ceiling.

Dick: Stand back! Batgirl, help me clear the exit.

The two move the rubble out of the way and the residents flee the building. Both ask the authorities if they needed help, but were turned down. When the fire was put out, both walked in, and under the heavy smell of smoke, was also the scent of alcohol.

Red Hood and The Signal

Time- 8:47

Jason was on the twentieth floor, searching, when he got the announcement.

Tim: THE HACKER IS ON THE FORTY-FOURTH FLOOR!!!

Jason: Signal, where are you?

Duke: Fortieth!

Jason: I’ll see you on the forty-four!

Jason rushed up the stairway and ran up to the forty-fourth floor to see Duke there taking on three men. Jason then pulled out his pistols and shot all three with non-lethal rounds.

Duke: Had to take away my fun, didn’t you?

Jason: Yes!

Tim: Did you guys get them?

Duke: All hostiles are taken down.

Tim: Awesome!

Alfred, Julia, Stephanie, Cassandra, and Selina

Alfred: Why would he choose the safe house. If this were reality Ethan would have already been arrested.

Stephanie: Alfred, we love you to death, but your ruining an amazing movie.

Julia: The movie ruined itself by it’s inaccuracies. Plus this is our bonding time, you guys weren’t even invited!

Selina: Yeah, but you guys took the only copy and once we saw you watching it, we just really wanted to watch it, too.

Harper: Oh, cool! Mind if I join?

Alfred: *sighs* The more the merrier.

Nightwing and Batgirl

Dick: Alright, our guy lives in apartment 22 on 1807 Zics Street. Let’s head there now and see if we can find him.

Barbara: Lets head there. Want to get something to eat after?

Dick: Definitely.

Dick and Barbara get on their motorcycles and drove to the apartment where they found the arsonist. They tied him to a lamppost and Barbara informed the GCPD the location of the arsonist.

Dick: So, how has your dad been doing?

Barbara: Not too bad. He’s been a bit under pressure but he’s doing fine. How is it being a dad at the mansion?

Dick: Ohhh god. I had the thought once and decided to leave that duty to Alfred.

Barbara: *Barbara laughs*

Dick: I help him a bit. It’s been so difficult acting like a grown up. I had to seriously step in when Alfred called Jason “Master Todd”

Barbara: Please explain further?

Dick: Well, because Jason is, well, Jason, he lost his shit because he’s “not a snooty ass rich motherfucker, Alfred!”

Barbara: Damn, I could so see that.

Dick: Yeah, and it doesn’t help that Bruce totally lost the ability to interact with other people. The other day Damian was acting up and Bruce picked him up and shouted “WHERE’S THE OFF BUTTON!”

Barbara: *laughs harder*

Dick: *laughs himself* You should have been there, it was funnier in person.

The two stare at the sky for a bit as they watch the sun set. Barbara leans her head on Dick’s shoulder and they both relax.

Dick: I love you Babs.

Barbara: I love you too, Dick.

Dick

They both left the rooftop they were sitting on at around 8:30. Dick had missed Barbara so much and was glad to have been able to see her. He didn’t care he broke one of Bruce’s rules. It wasn’t like Bruce was going to remember anything from the first week anyway. He got into the batcave and began creating workouts for everyone. He then went to the bathroom and took a shower in the batcave, and then went upstairs. He walked into the media room to see Alfred and Julia spending time as a family.

Dick: Aw, isn’t this sweet!

Julia: Get the fuck out Dick!

Dick: Damn, okay.

Dick then walked into the kitchen to see everyone in there.

Tim: Someone took long getting back to the mansion.

Stephanie: What happened.

Dick: I met up with Babs.

Everyone: WHAT!!!!

Damian: No fair. If I knew I could have been with Jon this entire time I would have!

Selina: You’re not able to Damian, and you knew you weren’t suppose to interact with anyone outside of the mansion.

Dick: Chill. Everything is fine. We’re more likely to get sick on patrol then by hanging out with each other. What’s up with Alfred and Julia?

Jason: They got tired of everyone ruining their family bonding time so they kicked us out.

Dick: That makes sense.

There was a knock at the door, so Dick goes to open it.

Dick: Helloooo...............

Helena: Hey Dick, you look great!

Dick slams the door shut and covers the door.

Jason: *shoves Dick to the side and opens the door* Hey, Helena! It is so awesome to see you! What are you doing here?

Helena: I’m here to stay and help. Where should I put my bags?

Jason: You could put them in Dick’s room for right now! You remember where that is, right?

Helena: Yep!

Dick: coolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcool coolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcoolcool. *starts falling to the floor*

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nikkialena · 3 years

Text

More Than Just A Number .2

after two heated rounds it came down to a tie and you surprisingly were enjoying yourself. But it was late or at least you thought so kinda hard to tell when your in space calling it a night you retired to your quarters, giving your face a quick wash the rag got snagged on one of your various horns with a frustrated sigh you glared at the little things and grabbed your saber. However before you could give yourself a little makeover your comlink went off, “hey [n/n] got time to talk” Anakin asked sounding a littler perkier than usual tossing your saber on the bed you plopped down on its edge. “Yea shoot” you mumbled plopping on the bed face first you spent the rest of the night listening to Anakin talk about his relationship with Padme which you didn’t really mind listening to, when you woke you had managed to roll off the bed and hit the floor with the blanket wrapped around you like a burrito. Getting up you quickly showered avoiding looking in the mirror at all cost, you hated your reflection it was ugly and freaky like nightmare fuel, with your awkward white patch around your right eye your different colored eyes and your devil horns you were picture of disgust rumor even has it your parents gave you to the jedi for that reason alone. You weren’t sure if it was true but all the other padawans seemed to really believe it at the time, leaving your room you hit poor Rex with the door knocking him to the floor because you were so distracted by your thoughts, “Captain Rex I’m so sorry” you admitted bashfully as you helped him to his feet and brushed him off, “that’s quite alright accidents happen “ he said with a soft laugh you tried to use the force to see if he was lying but he seemed bubbly you apologized again and you felt him shift from neutral to slightly uncomfortable. “Really it’s no problem ma’- I mean [Y/N]” You smiled softly letting out a short breath “okay so uh where are you going?” He stiffened at your question which was odd and you swore you could feel a little unease wafting off of him, “to meet general Anakin in the cockpit” he replied swiftly but judging off the aura coming off of him you could tell he’d just lied and that peeked your interest. Since Rex was one of the most honest and honorable people you’d heard of “really now” you mused staring deep into his pretty golden eyes, he held your gaze for about two minutes before briskly excusing himself and walking away you thought about following him but decided against and instead went to the cockpit. Anakin greeted you with a half wave while conversing with Ahsoka “whatcha whispering about?” Anakin turned to you with a somewhat soft smile “our first mission together in forever we gotta rescue a spy from the planet Tiliti he has some valuable information on a new project count Duke is working on”, “sounds fun” you said sarcastically crossing your arms. He had this weird look on your face like he was about to ask you something personal and you tensed up, “whatever it is you want me to do I’m not doing it” you stated firmly he let out a sigh only confirming your suspicion that he was up to something, “well the base is located in a nightclub” he muttered softly. You nodded slowly urging him to go on and he played with his fingers “that means we have to dress properly….and you have to ditch the jedi robe”, you sucked a breath through your teeth as your heart jumped into your throat “no I won’t do It you’ll have to go without me” you turned to leave but he held you with the force ticking you off. “I know you did not just use the force on me” you spat venomously glaring daggers into his soul a couple of clones paused whatever they were doing to watch the little hissyfit you were having, “I know you don’t like taking off your hood but I wouldn’t ask you if lives weren’t in danger “ he stared you in the eye a look of seriousness crossing his face. You sighed in defeat slumping your shoulders and turning for your room to get ready, “why doesn’t she like taking off her hood” Rex and Ahsoka asked simultaneously watching you disappear around the hall, Anakin blushed softly chuckling nervously “funny story you’ll laugh at this”. “Really master” Ahsoka gave him a pointed look while shaking her head as they got off the shuttle Anakin threw his hands in the air, “I was young dumb and in love okay” he whisper shouted, waiting outside the club for you to arrive. You’d decided not to arrive together to avoid suspicion so he arrived first with Ahsoka and you’d arrived second with Rex, stepping off another shuttle you swallowed thickly, it had only been a couple of minutes since you’d arrived on planet and you were already drawing attention to yourself. People gasped and stared at you all the while you trembled with unease, you’d decided to wear a simple slim fit powder blue backless dress with a tight waist flowing bottom and short sleeves, although it didn’t make you feel any better about yourself. You’d tried to wrap your horns in a scarf or something but Anakin protested it and your horns kept shredding holes into the scarf so you reluctantly left, Anakin kept telling you how beautiful you looked but you knew he was only saying that to soothe his guilty conscious when Ahsoka said it you could feel it’s sincerity. But when Rex said it; butterflies danced in your stomach and electricity shot through your spine like lightning, your entire body flushed and you’d choked on the drink you’d been sipping, he’d said it with such fervor and passion that you almost believed him for a second. You’d tried to see if he was lying through the force but he wasn’t; you felt nothing but compassion and honesty shining from him, which made you blush more “ready general “ he whispered in your ear snapping you out of your daze, Rex stood next to you shoulder brushing yours as his fingers slowly interlocked with yours. You were going as a couple while Anakin and Ahsoka were going as siblings which was pretty accurate, they always seemed like a big brother and a little sister to you. Or in some cases the other way around, you squeezed his hand and basked in the warmth slowly seeping into your cold fingers “ready you” mumbled more like a question, as the four of you entered the building you were greeted by blinding neons lights deafening music and the strange scent of alcohol sex and street drugs. Anakin and Ahsoka kinda spread out looking for anything suspicious while you tried to press yourself into the farthest corner you could fine so you wouldn’t be bothered, you also kept an eye out for anything odd while watching people roll against each other in a sea of bodies, Rex had also split leaving you alone in the corner. After about five minutes of standing in a corner you started getting strange looks so you went to the bar and ordered a drink a simple whisky on rocks, sipping your drink slowly you saw Ahsoka ascend the stairs with Anakin and a guy in black while giving you a knowing nod you sauntered over to the dancefloor simply to keep others from following suit. You were starting to get bored and sensed Rex’s boredom to so you walked over to him and offered him a hand “wanna dance captain or do you have two left feet” you teased, he looked at a bit shocked that you were asking him contemplating it for a second he gingerly took your hand in his own “I’ll have you know I have two right feet” he commented. You felt a little spark shoot through your fingertips as they brushed his but blamed it on the whisky you’d downed, however his fingers left whitehot trails as they grazed your lower back finding their way to your hips and pulling you closer. Your breathing hitched in your throat as he pulled you so close you could smell his woody pine scent, you trembled softly at how intoxicating it was allowed your eyes to flutter close for a moment, he was a true gentleman never letting his hand explore further than your waist while the other held your hand so tightly that you could feel his pulse. You could since that he was beyond nervous as his eyes focused on yours his body movements were a bit awkward and stiff so you decided to take the lead, “easy there tiger dancings easy just follow my lead” you whispered as your hands looped around his neck, you rolled your hips to the beat and his were quick to follow as the beat accelerated . His hands stayed stiffly at your waist you rolled your eyes “you can move your hands captain just don’t get any funny ideas” you teased making him blush, if he wasn’t nervous before he most definitely was now, he just responded with a little nod he grabbed your hand and spun you before forcefully pulling you back so you collided with his broad chest. You swung your hips from side to side as he seemed to get the hang of it occasionally spinning you ever now and then, you quickly worked up a sweat as his hands explored every inch of your body and your ass began grinding somewhere near his crotch. You were so lost in the heat of the moment and appeal of the dance that neither of you seemed to notice the crowd slowly forming to watch you dance, or at least that was until Anakin and Ahsoka quickly flew down the stairs carrying a wounded looking togruta Anakin locked eyes with you and his brows raised all the way up as he mouthed ‘get it’ you rolled your eyes as Rex dipped you trying to give Anakin and Ahsoka time to flee with the wounded spy. You locked eyes with him as he stared down at you an unreadable emotion flickered behind his eyes as his lips crashed aggressively into yours, you eagerly kissed back sliding your lips over his in a relentless battle for dominance, he gingerly grazed your lower lip with his teeth earning a soft moan from you as you parted for air. The small crowd around you had burst into whoops and catcalls and cheers as your face turned as red as tomato,you both took a different exit outside where Anakin and Ahsoka waited patiently, Ahsoka had a amazed look on her face while Anakin's lips stretched into a devilish smirk as his head snapped between you and Rex “great idea master that was quick thinking we might’ve been a little screwed without you and your mad dancing skills”. You nodded briskly and began speed walking towards the shuttle Anakin caught up with you and threw his arm around your neck “yea and that kiss was gold almost looked real” he teased, you shoved his arm off and flicked his forehead “well it wasn’t it was just for the mission now can we please get out of here before someone spots us” you whisper spat. Anakin just looked at you with a knowing smirk as he walked passed he turned to you for a quick moment “just know….that I ship it” making your cheeks burn in embarrassment, “there’s nothing to ship moron” he entered the ship with a laugh mumbling yeah right while Rex had lingered behind the whole time. You gave a quick glance his way to try and see what he was feeling but he was just plain neutral, you weren’t sure if you were relieved or disappointed not having dissected the kiss yourself, shrugging your shoulders you walked inside brushing it off for another time.

#star wars #anakin and ahsoka #captain rex x reader #obi wan kenobi #yoda #fluff #kiss

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daemoninwhiteround2 · 4 years

Note

Does Zantana ever explain what happed in the magic mirror verse??? Or does only Jay know that he was erased? Is there any solution??

Now, Jason is the first person to admit that he's not the detective of the family, but he is able to put 'was hit with magic's together with 'family doesn't know me/appear to have been erased from history' and come up with 'it's probably the magic's fault'. Getting the Bats to call Zatanna is more difficult, but they give in easier when he's able to describe the fight they all just had nigh on perfectly. (Also lets him move 'teleported to a different dimension' much further down the probability list.)

Zatanna remembers him, which goes a long way to making the rest of the Bats relax. Bruce doesn't, of course--Jason can basically see his brain ticking over as he comes up with multiple reasons why this might have happened, Zatanna could be compromised, maybe it's not really Zatanna--but the others flip from being stand offish to curious. Zatanna grabs the stuff she needs to run some tests, hair, a bit of blood, that sort of thing, and retreats to the laboratory part of the Cave, leaving Jason at the questionable mercy of a group of notoriously paranoid individuals.

It's ... weird. Jason ... The last time Jason was the centre of everyone's focus like this was probably just after things were really popping off as Red Hood. But they're not ... They're all just curious. Damian offers to spar with him, and tuts irritability when Dick intervenes before Jason can accept. Cass gives him a once over--what she sees, Jason has no idea--smiles, pats him twice on the cheek and trots over to where Bruce hovers, clearly torn between which stranger-to-the-Cave he should be menacing. She pats Bruce twice on the cheek as well, and Jason does his best not to roll his eyes at how Bruce relaxes. Sure, his and Zatanna's word doesn't mean shit, but when Cass...

No, that's not fair to Cass. He's a stranger right now, and Zatanna is both magic and not tightly tied to the Bats, of course Bruce is edgy.

(And yeah, Bruce would also trust Cass over Jason even if he did remember Jason, but that's still on Bruce, not Cass.)

"So!" Dick chirps. "'Died on the job, got better'?"

Aww fuck, he really did lead with that, didn't he? "Uh, yeah, it was this whole..." he trails off, desperate to find some way to spin it, but, "thing," he finishes weakly.

Dick's eyes flick over his chest, his thighs, and Jason does his best not to bristle too obviously. They've gotten rid of his weapons, what more does he want?

"You a meta?"

"What? No, you know Bruce, he'd never let a meta be Robin."

"Uh-"

"Yeah yeah, I know about Duke, but that's now. He'd never let a meta be Robin back then."

It's not so much that Bruce has chilled in his old age as his orphan hording tendencies have gotten worse.

Dick scratches the back of his head and huffs a laugh. "Point."

There's a long beat of silence. Dick keeps on looking him over. Jason has no idea what he's trying to find.

Finally, Dick says, "So you were Robin after me?"

"Yup. You'd fucked off to the Titans like ... Six months beforehand, I wanna say? The Batmobile was parked in the Alley--it was, you know," he waves his hand in a circle, the way Dick grimaces lets him know that Dick knows why the Batmobile would be in Crime Alley, "anyway, I saw it there unguarded and thought, I could sell those tyres, so I-"

"You jacked the Batmobile?" Tim interrupts. He sounds utterly delighted. It's ... weird.

"Yeah. Well. Tried to. Batman came out of no where as I was working on the fourth. I hit him in the gut with my tyre iron and took off. He hunted me down, and to make a long story short, took me home."

It's so weird to tell them this story. Hell, Jason isn't sure he's ever told anyone this story. Superheroes just knew he was Robin, they either didn't need to know or didn't bother asking about the how and why. For obvious reasons, civilians couldn't be told that he met his new dad guardian while said guardian was dressed as a giant bat.

Jason's memory from that time isn't the best (getting hit in the head repeatedly by a crowbar and then blown up will give you traumatic brain injuries that affect your long term memory, who knew?) but he's relatively certain that he didn't tell Dick. He doesn't think he'd want to admit to it. That doesn't mean Dick didn't know, of course, but he didn't hear it from Jason. And, for even more obvious reasons, he never told any of the more recent additions.

Dick's head shoot up. His expression goes from realisation to mild apology as he says, "Oh, wait, is there someone we should call? Or, is there someone you want to call?"

Jason grunts, thinks. Zatanna remembers him, but the Bats don't. He and Zatanna don't exactly interact much, so it's a crap shot, but might as well try. "Yeah, thanks. Can I have my phone back?" He doesn't know if they'll remember him, but he doesn't want to leave them worried if they do.

Tim winces very slightly. "We, uh, while we were operating under the impression that you'd broken into the Cave, we might have taken apart your electronics so we could get at the tracker in them and disable it?"

Jason can feel the muscle above his eye spasm. "Of course." He turns to Dick. "Don't suppose I can borrow your phone?"

Dick hands over an unlocked burner phone without a word.

Jason takes a couple of paces back as he dials Roy's number from memory. Of all his outlaws, Roy's most likely to pick up.

"Yeah?" Roy answers. There's loud banging in the background, weird and echoy, and Bizarro's familiar voice.

"Hey, Roy, it's-"

"Jason! Holy shit, am I glad to hear from you!" Sounds go muffled and Jason can faintly hear Roy yelling, "it's Jason!" and the banging stops. His next words come through loud and clear. "You alright? The news showed you taking a blast to the gut."

Jason raises his eyebrows. "Really? Which channel?" If he can show the others a clip of them working together, a clip from an unbiased source, then maybe...

"Uh, can't remember--hey, Kori, what channel were we-"

He's cut off, sounds go distant again for a second, and then:

"Jason."

Pure warmth and gladness. No one says his name like Koriand'r does.

"Hey Kori. Sorry to worry you."

"We were not concerned until no one answered your phone."

"Sorry, yeah, magic did a number on the others, they don't remember me, and-"

Kori laughs. "I can guess what happened. We were on our way already, we will arrive in Gotham in three hours."

"Aww, Kori, no, you don't-"

"We do," she says simply, and really, that's that. Kori's an unstoppable force.

He cuts his losses. "Thanks, Kori. I'll see you soon."

"Goodbye Jason."

He hangs up and turns to face the Bats, who do their best to look like they haven't been listening in--hell, knowing Bruce, the cell was probably bugged.

"The Outlaws will be here in three hours."

"Good," Zatanna says before anyone else. She walks over and looks ... grim. Fuck. "We need to talk."

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jinmukangwrites · 4 years

Text

Whumptober Day 3

Forced to their knees | Held at Gunpoint

Warnings: Canon typical violence

Ao3

-o-o-o-o-

Jason wakes up to a hand pressing down on his shoulder. Immediately, he's awake. His eyes fly open and his hand snatches the gun he keeps under his pillow like the cliche paranoid lone-wolf characters always do in the movies. Except Jason does it unironically. There’s been many times he’s woken up to an unfamiliar and leering face. A gun normally forced them to back off.

And this time is no different. Well, except the face that backs up this time, hands raising in the air in surrender, isn’t one of ill intentions. It’s of familiarity. Of goofy, lopsided, apologetic smiles and familiar eyes.

"Dick," Jason grumbles, letting the tension fall in his frame as he lowers the gun ever so slightly. Not all the way. Dick should know better than to wake Jason up so suddenly, especially if Jason's crashing in one of his safe houses in the bad parts of town like he’s doing now. Jason won't shoot him, and the idiot knows that there were only rubber bullets filling the chamber of his pistol, but it’s the thought that counts. right?

Within moments, his sleepy, adrenalin filled find catches up to him.

Dick is in his room. Dick.

Holy crap.

"Where the heck have you been?" Jason hisses, throwing off the layers of his blankets to stand up. The chilled morning air hits his bare chest, but thankfully he previously decided to hit the hay in sweats. "It's been three weeks since anyone's heard from you."

Dick shrugs, lowering his arms and keeping his stupid bright, wide smile consistent as he leans nonchalantly against the wall. "Here and there. Secret stuff, ya know?"

Jason scoffs. Yeah. He knows. Stupid Grayson and his stupid undercover missions he doesn't bother to tell anybody about. And the worst part is, Jason was actually worried about him. Everyone was. Even Bruce, seemingly, even though now Jason suspects the old man is in on it.

Fuck. Jason thought they were fine with this undercover crap years ago, after the Spyral escapade and all that shiz.

Well. Apparently, not. A swell of anger enters his throat. He lifts his weapon.

"Are you gonna elaborate on that? Or are ya just gonna stand there and watch me shirtless like a creep?"

"That's actually why I'm here, Jay," Dick says with a sigh. "To elaborate. Something… came up. I need your help."

Jason now decides to lower his gun, dropping it onto the rumpled sheets above his now depressingly-empty-of-his-sleeping-body bed.

He would love to tell Dick to go screw himself and then go back to bed. The entire family has been busting their butts with worry, trying to figure out where he's gone off to, and of course it just ends up being a super secret undercover mission. If Jason had half a mind, he'd punch Dick then drive to the manor and lock Bruce into the manor’s barn with Tim's dirty laundry for the rest of the day.

Tim might disagree, but everyone besides him has come to the conclusion that Tim's body odor is the worst . Yes they rank each other's body odor. They're boys and Cass , what do you expect? Jason holds the record of best smelling body odor and Duke can shoot his urine off the roof of the manor the furthest. It's known facts of the family.

Anyway, he gives Dick an unimpressed glare, his blood beginning to boil at the sheepish look on his face. How can he stand there knowing that everyone's been frantically looking for him and look sheepish about it?

"Go tell Daddio then, I'm not interested to deal with your bullcrap," he grumbles. "You're in this together, dig yourself out of whatever hole you've fallen in together."

"Bruce can't know," Dick says quickly. Too quickly. Sharply like he's... worried. That grabs Jason's attention. The golden boy… doesn't want to tell Bruce something?

Jason lifts an eyebrow and Dick sighs, his smile finally dropping just a bit as he reaches an arm up to rub the back of his neck. "There's a new smuggling group in town and I was put in charge of going in undercover to get information. The thing is, they found out that there was a mole. They don't know who it is, but they also don't think it's me. They trust me. But there's a woman who works with them who they do suspect. I haven't seen her in three days."

"And that means you can't go to Bruce… why?"

Dick gives him a look like Jason's not understanding something. He scowls, sighs again, then sticks his hands into his jean pockets. "They're cracking down on the signals we're putting out now. Checking our phones and such. I can't call Bruce otherwise they'll figure me out. And I can't drive to the manor because there's a higher chance of me being tracked."

"Payphone, then."

Now Dick doesn't bother to hide an annoyed expression. "Look. You're the closest and the easiest to contact. And… and this is my mission. Mine alone. I can't…"

He can't fail it.

Jason gets it.

He hates that he does.

Jason exhales sharply, already deciding he's going to regret this. "What's the plan?"

Dick's bright, plastered smile returns along with a glint in his stupid blue eyes. "I overheard some higher-ups talking about an abandoned lot by Gotham Bay, and I saw a boat covered in a tarp in one of the warehouses they use. I think they're going to drop her in the bay. We just need to get there and take them out in a way that won't lead to suspicion. Just Nightwing and Red Hood saving a girl about to be drowned out of the goodness of their hearts."

"Bold of you to assume I have a heart," Jason grunts, "but sounds solid enough. Anything about these guys I need to know about? Names? Titles? You're being awfully vague."

"Sorry, Jay-lad," Dick says smoothly, and the nickname rings in Jason's ears. "Can't have the bats catching on."

-o-o-o-o-

Jay-lad.

Jason launches himself over a two story roof down towards the empty roads lining the bay. Sometimes, during the summer, there'll be parties and picnics in the parks circumferencing the ocean, but they're few and far between. Never that much fun. Especially when it starts to rain for the twenty-billionth time that day and a dead body washes in on the shore.

Jay-lad ?

Nightwing lands besides Jason. All smiles and perfect teeth like always. The brightness of his smile shines even in the dim, harsh light of Gotham's half-assed lampposts. Ahead of them is what definitely could be described as an abandoned lot. In Jason's opinion, it looks more like someone tried to build a department store on the shore and forgot the tide exists. It's half submerged, walls rotting and the roof caved in. Graffiti of all kinds litter the walls, no attempt by anyone to ever clear it up.

Did Dick really call him Jay-lad ?

To the side of the building is a boat, floating softly right where it's just deep enough to do so. It's tied to the building though, not going anywhere for a little while longer.

Dick's never called him Jay-lad before. That's… that's Bruce's thing. Jason's always been Little Wing, or Jay bird . Names he's always hated, but might have been secretly proud of a few times in his life. Names he’s always hated, but they were Dick’s nicknames for him.

"They might be in the building trying to get last minute information out of her," Dick says, his voice still way too happy. All smiles. Perfect teeth. Jason didn't think it was odd a few hours earlier, but now it's grating on his nerves in such a specific way that he can't help but search for all the little things that's bothering him about Dick right now.

For one, the nickname.

For two, the happy go lucky attitude. The guy is optimistic, sure, but he knows when business is business . Business includes saving a woman wrongfully accused of being a spy in a group of criminals he was spying on. He should be full of guilt and anger right about now. Dick's a martyr, and he hates it when people are being hurt for something he's done.

For numero three, the way he flips over the roofs. Or well, the lack of flips. Jason didn't see him flip once . Just jump, land, jump, land, keeping up pace with Jason and not making any useless chatter along the way.

Dick's been gone for three weeks, and he comes back with a vague excuse with holes and acts… wrong.

It must be in Jason's head. It has to be.

"So we go in through the windows and get her out before we have to swim to get her," Jason says and Dick nods his head.

"Let's go," Dick says, rushing forward just like that. No jokes, no verbal announcements of why they're doing this, no keep safes .

Let's go. Just that.

Something is wrong.

Something is wrong and Jason can't figure out what.

So he goes along. Follows Dick towards the building and watches the dim windows for any movement. There's none. Which is strange. Normally, when a Gotham villain wants to get rid of a mole, they do it rather dramatically and over the top. Gotham criminals are rather proud of that status, and when someone enters their ranks pretending to be one of them they take it as a personal offence.

Regardless of that, when Dick chooses a window closest to the shore and begins wading through the water, Jason trails after, his hands twitching for the guns on his hips.

By the time they make it to the window, they're mid-thigh deep in chillingly freezing water. Dick makes a signal for Jason to stay put for a second, looks in the window, then opens it to climb through. Jason waits in the ice-cold water for Dick's signal, trying not to think about what the salt water is going to do to his pants but also definitely thinking about what he's going to do to Dick if his pants are ruined.

"Clear," comes Dick's voice after a solid minute of waiting. Jason releases an uneasy breath, ready to get out of the ocean but also still feeling like something is very, very off about this entire situation.

Jason shoves the doubts to the back of his mind, grabs onto the ledge of the window, then hefts himself up.

The first thing he notices when he enters the room is that it's dark. Empty. Dust lingering in the air. The next thing he notices is that Dick is nowhere to be seen.

The third thing is that Dick is, in fact, here, but he makes himself known by jamming a fist into Jason's throat and grabbing the collar of his leather jacket. Before Jason can recover from the attack on his neck and catch his breath, he's shoved against the far wall, away from the window.

Away from escape.

Anger puddles in Jason's gut.

"What the hell ," he snarls, his voice scratching, as he ducks under another swing. Dick's fist rams into the wall, resulting in the wall gaining some shining new cracks. The force of the punch was definitely enough to break fingers, even if properly thrown, but Dick doesn't even flinch. Just reals around with a frown on his lips and a downward, furious tilt to his brow. Jason grabs his guns, aiming them at the man he's just begun to consider family again. Dick stops in his tracks at the sight of the weapons being aimed at him and glares.

"This isn't anything personal, Jay-lad," Dick says slowly, but he doesn't make any moves to back off or surrender. He just stands there. Heartless milky eyes staring through his mask.

"There ya go again, calling me that," Jason hisses, keeping his aims steady towards Dick's chest.

"I always call you that," Dick says, and Jason almost sees green.

"No you don't," he growls. "You've never called me that. And you've been acting weird all night. Off. And now you're attacking me? What the fuck is going on?!"

And for the first time in a very long ass time, Jason watches the one expression that doesn't look pretty on Dick pass on his face. Frustration. Annoyance. Rage.

It's an expression Jason hasn't seen in years . Not since Jason was still in his early teens and still believed Robin gave him magic. Not since Dick and Bruce were at each other's throats whenever they were anywhere near each other for whatever reason. The downturn to his lips, the crinkling under his eyes, the scrunching of his nose, the sneer. It's not a good expression on Dick.

It's a terrifying one.

"You'll have to find out, wontcha, hoodie?"

And Dick charges. Teeth bared, fists clenched. Jason just manages to block the next punch with the back of his arm. He lashes out with his free hand, the one holding the gun, and attempts to toss a pistol whip. He succeeds, smacking his cheekbone with a crack . Dick's cries out, stumbling back a step before charging again, fire in his normally cool eyes.

Jason tries to hit him again, but Dick anticipates the move, hitting Jason on the inside of his arm with enough force for Jason to accidentally let go of the weapon. The gun goes sliding across the weathered floor, clanking against the far wall. He doesn't go for it, just shifts to a more hands on approach to take care of this. He throws his fist, hitting Dick along the jaw, but Dick retaliates by throwing a leg up and kicking Jason right in the gut. Jason gasps, pissed now that his breath has been knocked out of him two times now, and immediately kicks back.

The fight continues. Hits here, kicks there. There's no quips. No banter. Just the sound of panting breaths and the dull thuds of blows being exchanged.

Jason goes to smack Dick's ears and disorientate him, however he doesn't get to finish his blow. Dick ducks under his arm and slams his entire body weight into Jason's stomach. Arms wrap around Jason's middle, sending them both to the floor. He shouts when his back lands roughly on the ground and his head thunks in the inside of his helmet, but he immediately begins to shove Dick off from him.

He succeeds in that regard. But Dick almost rolls off of Jason himself, getting to his feet in a blink of an eye and sprinting for the other side of the room.

Jason realizes why the moment Dick bends down and snatches up Jason's lost weapon.

The gun.

For a second, Jason almost believes that Dick will smile, drop the weapon, and say this was all some huge test or spar. But then, Dick lifts the gun, aims with accuracy, and squeezes his finger on the trigger.

Jason has a blink of an eye to roll out of the way of the first bullet, but the second one hits him right in the thigh.

And he knows he has rubber bullets. They're not meant to be deadly.

But they sure as hell are painful.

Immediately, it feels like someone took a baseball bat to his leg. He tries to stand up, but his leg persistently wants to buckle. He manages to scramble to his feet, using the wall as support, but then there's another blast from his stupid fucking gun and he stumbles. Next thing he knows, a hand grabs his shoulder and pulls him down, slamming his stomach against a bony knee heartlessly. He falls to his knees, gasping for air, hardly aware of the hand that goes to the hidden latch at the back of his helmet until there's a hiss and air hits his skin.

The barrel of his own gun presses against his head as the hand still on his shoulder squeezes. Jason sucks in air, then glares up at Dick who's wearing a triumphant smirk.

"Not so tough now, are ya?" Dick says, and Jason snarls. He goes to stand up, but the gun presses harder against his skull. A rubber bullet is still a bullet when at point blank. He stills.

"What the hell is going on?!" He growls, and Dick smirks.

"You've been raised by the world's greatest detective, right?" Dick asks, his voice singsong. "Figure it out."

And Jason hates that. Everything Dick is saying. Doing. Acting. It all feels fake. Practiced. Like he's playing a part but not playing it completely. Like the backup actor for when the lead one calls out right before a performance.

Acting. Fake. Practiced. Wrong. Different.

Holy shit.

"You're not Dick," Jason acuses, the realization slamming into him like a truck. This isn't Dick. It's so clear now. He's so dumb for not realizing earlier. It's all been some sort of set up. And maybe it was easy to look past the strange actions because he was, dare he say it, relieved that Dick was okay and alive and standing in his bedroom after three weeks of being missing. Three weeks and counting now. "Who are you?!"

The fake laughs, twisting the barrel of the gun against Jason's head. Jason has no doubt he'll shoot it. "My name isn't important. What is important is that I'm wearing the face of the most trusted guy in the superhero world. You were the field test, Hood. Looks like besides a few hiccups here and there, I'm ready for the big league."

Jason stills. Hiccups ? This guy, whoever he is, knows things that he shouldn't. Secret identities. Nicknames. Personalities. He's had to get his information from somewhere. And three weeks seems like a pretty realistic timeframe to get that kind of information.

"Where's Dick. The real one. He in a room like this too?"

Because he can't be dead. He can't be.

"Course he is," the fake replies, "have him stuffed away somewhere you'll see soon. Seems like there's information he got wrong and left out, enough to get you suspicious of me. That's fine though, he was pretty tight lipped at first. He loosened up after a few days. We'll just keep trying on the both of you. I think I'll be able to fool Batman himself soon enough."

And shit. If that isn't a scary thought. Because it seems… true. Believable. Like Bruce can actually be fooled by this man that looks exactly like Dick.

"This isn't going to work," Jason says, instead of voicing his real thoughts.

The fake's grin widens.

"It already is."

Then, he brings the gun back, smacking it against Jason's forehead with a snap.

Jason goes down hard, and he wonders as consciousness begins to fleet, how long it will take the rest of the family to realize something is wrong.

With the chirping of laughter that sounds so familiar to Dick's that it makes Jason's stomach churn, his eyes shut against his will, and darkness embraces him warmly.

-o-o-o-o-

Reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated!

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general-rusty · 4 years

Text

Hazbin AU Swap

Alastor the host to hell's 6th most popular radio station, out got of him apartment to see the ruins from his balcony. He clears his throat and started to sing.

Chasing Happiness ♪ At the end of the journey there's happiness ♪ ♪ And to find it, how often I’ve tried ♪ ♪ But my life is a race ♪ ♪ Just a wild goose chase ♪ ♪ And my hopes, they were just a lie♪ ♪ Why have I always been a failure ♪ ♪ What could the reason be ♪ ♪ I wonder if the world's to blame ♪ ♪ I wonder if it could be me ♪ ♪ I'm always looking for hope♪ ♪ searching them with my tears♪ ♪ My schemes are just like all my dreams ♪ ♪ Ending every year♪ ♪ Some fellows look and find the sunshine ♪ ♪ I always look and find the rain ♪ ♪ Some fellows make a winning sometime ♪ ♪ I never even make the game ♪ ♪ Believe me ♪ ♪ I'm always looking for hope♪ ♪ Waiting to find the happiness♪ ♪ In vain ♪

In the streets of Hell

A Demon falls from the sky and lands on the ground. "Oh, I’m alive. I’m alive!" He said

A motorcycle runs him over and stop to drop off a leatherjacket wearing Niffty. "Heh. Thanks for the fun time, hot stuff." A male raccoon demon said.

"Yeah, yeah, listen. Keep this discreet, hear me? I can’t let it get out I’m offering my services to creeps on the street. It was a quick cash grab, ya got it?" Niffty said

The Raccoon scoffs, "Whatever you say, slut!" He laughs

"Ouch, ooh, such an insult! Let me know when you come up with something creative to call me you sack of poorly packaged horse shit. Tell the mrs' I said hi. Schnookums." Niffty quipped

The motorcycle rides off

Niffty brush the dust off of herself. A hooded demon grab the cash out of Niffty's hand "Yoink!"

"Hey!" Niffty shouted

"Up yours, midget!" The hooded demon shouted. A rock falls onto the hooded demon.

Niffty gasps, "Oh my god! My money! Dang it!" She shouted

Up on Ms Cherri's ship.

"HAHAHA! THOSE WEAK SINNERS WONT DARE TOUCH MY TERRITORY OF DESTRUCTION! A WISE DECISION, THE POWER OF MY EXPLOSIVES ARE UNMATCHED! NOW ONE, ONE COULD COMPARE TO THE LIKENESS OF I!" Ms Cherri laughed. Cherri now wears a ugly red pantsuit.

"Gee, that is pretty good, boss!" One of Cherri's cherryboi yuppie minions said

"Yeah! You really showed them what for!" another Cherryboi said

"I loved it when you blow them up them with your grenade launcher." said a Cherryboi

"I wish she’d shoot me with her grenade launcher." cried a Cherryboi

Another Cherryboy pat his Cherrybrother's back.

"IN A FEW DAYS ILL DESTROY THE ENTIRE EAST SIDE OF THE PENTAGRAM! HELL WILL BE RUINED! AND EVERY ONE WILL FEAR THE NAME OF MS. CH-" Ms Cherri yelled.

"SSSLUT!" A wise guy shouted.

"DAFUQ!? WHO SAID THAT! WHAT DID YOU SAID SHITTY EXCUSE FOR A FRUIT!? SPEAK THE FUCK UP!" Cherri threatened.

A explosive egg bot was YEETED through the windshield and explodes in front of everyone.

Pentious now in patches and his top hat is a now flat cap, jumps through the hole in the windshield, "You looking for a fight, filthy whore? why won't you take your little whore house nonsense of my territory before I sssmasssh it." a support beam falls on to a cherryboi. "more..." Pentious threatened.

"OH YOU WANNA GO GRANDPA!? I HOPE YOU LIKE GUNPOWDER BECAUSE THAT'S ALL YOU WILL GET!" Cherri shouted while her Cherrybois surround Pentious.

The morning report. Two demons were at the desk. A oppressive suited man with white combed to the side hair and a gasmask for a face. And a frail white blonde woman with red eyes. "Good afternoon! I’m Tommy Trench." Tommy announced.

"And I’m Kate Killjoy. Chaos at a pentagram city today as a turf war is raging on the east side. Between notable Queen pin Ms Cherri Bomb and self-proclaimed wise guy Pentious." Kate reported.

"That’s right Kate! After the recent extermination, many areas are now up for grabs! Demons all over Hell are already duking it out to gain new territory!" Tommy reported.

"Those two seem to really be going at it, huh?" Kate repiled.

"Looks like they’re fighting tooth and nail for that hot spot!" Tommy pulls a tooth and nail out of the mug, place them on the desk, and smash them with his fist.

"And I’d sure love to get my hot spot nailed by him." Kate giggles.

Tommy chuckles, "You sure are a big pussy whore, Kate. Or should I say-" Tommy pours coffee onto Kate's crotch -Burnt Pussy."

"Not again!" Kate cried. Kate curled up in pain.

"Coming up next, we have an exclusive interview with the host of Hell’s 6th most popular radio, who’s here to discuss his brand-new passion project! All that and more, after the break!" Tommy crushes the mug. "Suck it up you little bi-"

Backstage.

Alastor now a lot more tender and tweak like, and Husk which is wearing a withered red and black leisure suit. "Okay. You remember what to say?" Husk ask.

Alastor took a deep breath. "Okay! Let’s do this!"

"Look at me, and I’ll mouth it to you." Husk said.

"Come on, Husker! I know all of the currant slang terms! I just feel like we need to- I don’t know, make things sound more glamour and darb-" Alastor gasp, "Oh! What if I-"

"-sing a song about it?" Husk said.

Alastor chuckles, "You knew I was gonna say that."

"Because you're like a book. But please don’t fucking sing. This is serious." Husk stated

"Well you know, I’m better at expressing myself and my goals through song! It's my job after all." Alastor said.

"But this isn’t like the radio, Al." Husk

"Okay I’ll just have to resort to my impeccable improve skills." Alastor said with a southern bell accent.

Now with Tommy Trench.

Alastor walks up to Tommy. "Hi! I’m Alastor." holds out his hand.

"Tommy Trench." Tommy drops the cigarette and stomps on it. "I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but that's a horseshit lie. You can put that away." Alastor pulls his hand back. "I don’t touch the mixes. I have standards."

"Yeah? How’s uh- how’s that working out for ya?" Alastor asked while a support beam falls down onto a crewman. "Can someone help me!" the crewman screamed in pain.

"Look, my time is money, so I’ll keep this short. We’re not here because we wanted you here, you’re here because Rodney couldn’t make it for his dating show."

Alastor looked past Tommy's shoulder to see Kate rolling her eyes.

"You might be some radio bigshot, but that doesn’t mean shit to me. I’m too rich and too influential to give a flying fuck about what some tux-wearing F list radio host wants to advertise." Tommy got into Alastor's face.

"But I-" Alastor stuttered.

"-So don’t get funny with me buddy, or I will fucking end you." Tommy threatened.

"And we’re live!" A crewman shouted.

Tommy ran back to his seat and Alastor walks to his seat. "Welcome back! So, Alex-" Alastor interrupts, "It’s Alastor."

"Whatever. Tell us about this new passion project you’ve been insistently pestering our news station about!" Tommy grips the handgun in his jacket.

Alastor clears his throat, "As most of you know, I have been here in Hell since 1933, and if you remember life wasn't easy back then, but as you can see life is a lot worse here than it was there. I always tried to see the good in everything around me. Hell is my home, and you are my people. We-" Tommy shoots a bug with that handgun. Blood splashes onto Alastor's face. "We just went through another extermination. We lost so many souls, and it breaks my heart to see my people being slaughtered every year. No one is even given a chance! I can’t stand idly by while the place I live is subjected to such violence! So, I’ve been thinking. Isn’t there a more humane way to hinder overpopulation here in Hell? Perhaps we can create an alternative way to change souls through… redemption? Well I think yes. So that’s what this project aims to achieve! Ladies and gentlemen, I’m opening the first of its kind! A hotel that rehabilitates sinners!" Alastor announce.

...

"Y’know? ‘Cause hotels are for people passing through… temporarily."

In a dive bar in the hick part of hell. A bear demon laughes, "Is this guy for real? He thinks, you hear what this city boy thinks? he-' short laugh "-Oh, he’s nuts."

The camera man spoke up. "Stupid nig-"

Husk uppercuts the camera man.

"Look, every single one of you has something good deep down inside. I know you do. Maybe I’m not getting through to you." Alastor said

Husk sighs "Oh no."

Alastor snaps his fingers to bring his jazz band in.

♪ We have a dream ♪ ♪ We wish to tell ♪ ♪ And it’s just ball ♪ ♪ ‘Cause you’re one of a kind ♪ ♪ A charming demon belle! ♪ ♪ Now let’s give these burning fools a place to dwell ♪ ♪ (Take it, boys!) ♪ ♪ (Boo!) ♪ ♪ Inside of every demon is a cause ♪ ♪ We’ll dress ‘em up and give them a smile! ♪ ♪ (With a smile!) ♪ ♪ And we’ll chlorinate this cesspool ♪ ♪ With some old redemption flair ♪ ♪ And show these guys some proper class and style! ♪ ♪ (What’s in style?) ♪ ♪ (Oh!) ♪ ♪ Here below the ground ♪ ♪ I’m sure your plan is sound! ♪ ♪ They’ll spend a little time ♪ ♪ Down at this Happy Ho-- ♪

Random demon: "Shut the fuck up! That is shit!"

Everyone laughs uncontrollably.

"What in the nine circles makes you think a single denizen of Hell would give two shits about becoming a better person? You have no proof that this little experiment even works! You want people to be good just… because?" Tommy and Kate laughs.

"Well, we have a patron already who believes in our cause, and she’s shown incredible progress!" Alastor shouted

"Oh? And who might that be?" Tommy asked.

"Oh, just someone named… Niffty." Alastor replied.

"The porn star?" Kate asked.

Tommy slowly turns around pointing that handgun at Kate. "You fucking would, Kate." Tommy turns back around. "In any case, that’s not even an accomplishment. I’m sure you can get that hooker to do anything with enough booger sugar and lube."

"Oh, I beg to differ. She’s been behaved, clean, and out of trouble for 2 weeks now." Alastor replied.

"Breaking news!" Shouted a crewman

Tommy pushed Alastor away. "We are receiving word that a new player has entered the ongoing turf war! Let’s go to the live feed!"

Shows Niffty kicking Cherryboi ass.

"Di Mi!." Alastor whispered.

"Dee Me indeed! It looks like the one who just joined the battle is none other than-" gasp "-porn actress Niffty! What a juicy coincidence! You must feel really stupid right now." Tommy said

Tommy and Kate laugh. "Ratings!"

Alastor gasped, "Don’t look at this!" He tried to hid the window on the greenscreen.

"Well, it sure looks like your little project is dead on arrival. Tell us, how does it feel to be such a total failure?" Tommy asked.

"Yeah? Well- how does it feel that I got your pen, huh? Dick?!" Alastor shouted.

Tommy went silent.

Alastor nervously laughs, "Sorry." Put the pen back.

Kate runs away while Tommy got the flamethrower

Back in the streets

"Hey thanks for the backup, Niffts!" Pentious shouted.

"You kiddin'? This is the best action I've seen in ages!" Niffty replied.

Pentious throws a egg bomb. "Where have you been anyways? I thought you died or something."

"Oh I wish! I've been staying at this dirty hotel on the other side of town. Some guys let me stay rent free if I play nice His words, not mine. These assholes are no fun! I’ve been clean for two weeks!" Niffty answered.

"Holy crap." Pentious replied.

"Well, sorta clean. As clean as you can get with a shitload of Bolivian marching powder." Niffty replied.

Cherri whips and ties Niffty up in a vine.

"Oh, harder mommy!" Niffty moaned.

Cherri gasp, "Daughter?!"

Niffty raise the brow in a "Da fuck?" way.

"You douches have no style! In war, the side remembered is the side with the most style." Cherri pop her collar up.

"Or the side that ain’t 6 feet under." Pentious replied.

"Speaking of style, what's up with the colors, it's red this and red that. Is it that time of the month?" Pentious quipped.

"Oh, well, that’s none of your goddamn business, now is it?" Cherri shouted.

"Oh yeah we're not suppose to talk about that." Niffty quipped.

"I’m going to blow you to bits!" Cherri threatened.

"Hm! Kinky!" Niffty quipped.

"Oh, not like that! creep!" Cherri replied.

Cherriyboi shoots at Niffty with a vine net gun.

"Not so cocky now, are we?" Cherri threatened.

"Y’know, you really gotta watch what comes out of your mouth. I’ve been making these sex jokes the whole-" Cherri pulls out a smg "-TIME! And it’s obvious ya ain’t catchin’ on-" Niffty kicks Cherri, takes her gun and shoots at the Cherryboi. "-I mean, it’s just SAD!

"So think you’re gonna get in a lot of trouble for this?" Pentious asked.

"Eh, what’s one little brawl gonna cause?" Niffty asked.

Back in the newsroom.

Alastor and Tommy are going at it fisticuffs, while the flamethrower is blowing fire to the right of the desk.

Kate runs into view of the camera while on fire. "Why won’t anyone help me?!" She screams.

Back in the streets. "Glad ya haven’t changed. You know you’re my favorite gal to party with!" Pentious shouted.

"You know it, you slimy snake. You ready to finish this?" Niffty asked.

"Hell yeah, baby." Pentious answered.

Niffty, Pentious, Ms Cherri, CherryBois, Alastor, Tommy, and Kate yelling in a 4 screen split.

In the Limo driving to the hotel Niffty was playing with the window

Husk carving a wooden steak and giving Niffty the death stare.

Niffty looks up to Husk, "What?"

"What? What?! What were you fucking doing?!" Husk shouted.

Niffty sighs, "Look I owed my snake buddy a solid! Isn’t that a “redeeming quality"? Helping pals with stuff?" Niffty shouted.

"Not with turf wars that result in genocide!" Husk shouted.

"Eh, you win some, you lose a few hundred, plus didn't you caused a Genocide." Niffty snickers.

Husk throws the wooden steak at Niffty which pierced throw the window.

"Aw come on, I had to! My credibility was on the line-" Niffty sighs "-I mean, what kind of reputation would I have if people found out I was trying to go clean? It just throws out my entire persona."

"Your credibility? What about the hotel? Your little stunt made us look like fucking clowns!" Husk shouted.

"No no no, hon. Clowns are funny! I made you look… uh, sad! And pathetic! Like an orphan, with no arms, or legs… Uh… oh, with progeria! Great! Now I’m bummed thinking about it! This thing have any liquor?" Niffty asked.

"Can you please just try to take this seriously?" Husk asked.

"Fine, I’ll try, just don’t bitch to your mother while you're fucking her." Niffty quipped.

"What was that you trying to be?" Husk got up and pulled out his knife.

"Whatever pisses you off the most. Is there seriously no liquor in here?!" Niffty shouted.

"I’m gonna kill her." Husk sat back down.

"Too late, hon. Wait, would that make me double dead? And where exactly do I go, to double Hell? Sorry, you’re stuck with me, bitch. Get used to it." Niffty laughs.

"Fucking bitch!" Husk mumbled.

"Listen, who cares if some jagoffs got hurt? Most of them are ugly freaks. Look around! Got a bunch of fuckin’ harlequin babies down here." Niffty said.

"You’re one to talk." Husk quipped.

"Hey! This body is flawless! Everyone wants some of me, and I’ve got the creepy fan letters to prove it!" Niffty pulls out a letter with stains.

"That was really not swell y’know, Niffty" Alastor said.

"Not Sweel?! After that trainwreck, there is no way anyone is gonna wanna stay at the hotel. All thanks to you and your selfish bullshit!" Husk shouted.

"Does that mean I don’t have a free room anymore?" Niffty asked.

Husk pulls the knife out again.

"Ah, well, shucks." Niffty snaps.

"Hey, come on, we don’t know if things are over yet. Try to relax, Husker. It’ll be okay!" Alastor reassured.

At the Happy Hotel

The three open the door. Husk sat down on to the couch to look at his hands, his mind goes back to the war.

Niffty went to the fridge to get a beer. "It’s probably a good idea to get some actual food in this place. Y’know, to feed all the wayward souls ya got in here." Niffty laughed, but then it became nervous laughter, and then she just stops.

Alastor went out to talk to his boss. "Hey Boss. Um, I know I keep calling, and you must want that kale paid back. But um, the interview isn't sitting pretty and... I don’t know if I’m going to make a difference. I don’t know what I’m doing. I could really use some advice, Boss. I think you're right about me. A-anyway, I’ll stop talking before this gets long." Alastor went back in.

A knock to the tune of Come On Eileen was on the door.

Alastor opens the door to see Charlie in her demon form.

"Hell-"

Alastor slams the door, and then open it again to see if he just saw that.

-o."

Alastor slams the door again. "Hey Husker?

"What?!" Husk asked.

"The Musical Demon is at the door!" Alastor nervously answered.

"Holy shit what?!" Husk drops the knife.

"Uh, who?" Niffty asked

"What should I do?" Alastor asked.

"Well, don’t let that bitch in!" Husk shouted

Alastor slowly opens the door.

"May I speak now?" Charlie asked.

"You may-" Alastor said.

"Charlie, pleasure to be meeting you, sweetheart, quite a pleasure. Excuse my visit, but I saw your riot on news and I just couldn’t resist. What a performance! Why, I haven’t been that entertained since the Great White show of 2003. Ah so many bodies." Charlie introduced

"Stop right there!" Husk pointed a M16 at Charlie. "I know your game. And I’m not gonna let you hurt anyone here, you spunky, quirky, musical harlot!" Husk threatened.

Charlie laughs slightly, "Hon, if I wanted to hurt anyone here... I would have done so already...." spooky demonic stuff pops up and then goes away. "No, I’m here because I want to help!"

"Say what now?" Alastor asked.

"Help!" Charlie exclaimed.

"Um, you want to help?" Alastor asked.

"With this ridiculous thing you’re trying to do! This hotel! I want to help you run it." Charlie exclaimed.

"Uh… why?" Alastor asked.

Charlie laughs, "Why does anyone do anything? Sheer, absolute boredom! I’ve lacked inspiration for decades! My work became mundane, lacking focus, aimless! I’ve come to crave a new form of entertainment!"

"Does getting into a fist fight with a upstage reporter count as entertainment?" Alastor asked.

Charlie laughs, "Absolutely, it's reality. After all, the world is a stage! And the stage is a world of entertainment!"

"So, does this mean that you think it’s possible to rehabilitate a demon?" Alastor asked.

Charlie laughs, "Ha no. That’s wacky nonsense! Redemption, oh the non-existent humanity! Nononono, I don’t think there’s anything left that could save such loathsome sinners! The chance given was the life they lived before; the punishment is this! There is no undoing what is done!"

"So then, why do you want to help me if you don’t believe in my cause?" Alastor asked.

"Consider it an investment in ongoing entertainment for myself! I want to watch the scum of the world struggle to climb up the hill of betterment! Only to repeatedly trip and tumble down to the fiery pit of failure." Charlie stated.

"Right?" Alastor nervously asked.

"Yes indeedy! I see big things coming your way, and who better to help than I…" Charlie exclaimed.

With Husk and Niffty.

"Ah, so uh, what’s the deal with Smiles over there?" Niffty asked.

"Wait, you’ve never heard of her before? You’ve been here longer than me!" Husk shouted.

"Only for a decade." Niffty replied.

"The Musical Demon, one of the most powerful fuckers Hell has ever seen?" Husk stated.

"Eh, not big on politics." Niffty answered.

"Some fuckin' time ago, Charlie was let out of Lucifer's castle she rampaged the fuck out of everything and then she started podcasting her carnage through fucking songs people started calling her, the music demon.. That kind of raw power had never been harnessed by a mortal soul before. Strange song and dense numbers would play on the radio paired with terrifying screams and cries for help. She'd force victims to join in and those who wouldn't or couldn't got the worst of it. Sinners started calling her the Musical Demon. (How fucking original!) Many have speculated what unimaginable force enabled her to rival our world’s most ancient and destructive evils. But one thing’s for sure: She’s an unpredictable source of danger, a wicked spirit of mystery, and a violent monster of chaos the likes of which we can’t risk getting involved with unless we want to end up erased." Husk annoyingly exclaims.

"Bash ears much?" Niffty silently laughs, "She looks like a cinnamon roll princess!"

"Well, I don’t trust her!" Husk spat.

"To be fair, do you trust anyone?" Niffty asked. "Anyone."

Husk went to Alastor.

"Al, man, listen to me. You can’t believe this girl! She isn’t just a happy face! She’s a dealmaker, pure evil! She's Lucifer's daughter! She can’t be redeemed! And is most likely looking for a way to destroy everything we’re trying to do. And we don't want that." Husk stated.

"I know she’s bad, and I know she probably doesn’t wanna change, but the whole point of this is to give people a chance! To have faith things will be better! How can I turn someone away? I can’t. It goes against everything I’m trying to do. Everything I believe in. I would be like them back then. Just trust me. I can take care of myself." Alastor stated.

"Alastor, whatever you do, do not make a deal with him!" Shouted.

"Don’t worry, I picked up one thing from them. “Ya don’t take shit from rich folk!” Okay, so… Charlotte. You’re sketchy, and you clearly see what I’m trying to do here is a joke. But I don’t. I think everyone deserves a chance to prove they can be better. So, I’m taking your offer to help. On the condition that there be no tricks or voodoo strings attached." Alastor nervously said.

"So it’s a deal then?" Charlie asked.

Alastor takes a gulp before he shakes her burning hot hands. Her hand burns Alastor's hand like a hot stove. Alastor cries in pain.

Charlie let go of Alastor hand and went to Husk.

Alastor went to the fridge to get something to cool his hand.

"Smile, my boy! You know you’re never fully dressed without one!" Charlie stated. "So where is your hotel staff?" She asked.

"Uh, well…" Alastor points to Husk and Niffty with his good hand.

Husk growls.

"Oh ho ho ho, you’re going to need more than that." Charlie stated.

"And what can you do you quirky cutie?" Charlie asked Niffty.

"I can finger you to heaven." Niffty replied.

"Maybe not..." Charlie said.

"Your loss." Niffty stated.

"Well this just won’t do! I suppose I can cash in a few favors to liven things up!" Charlie snaps, which cleans the fireplace and light up a fire in it. Charlie then pulled out a tall and dark demon from the fireplace. Charlie then shake it a little to get rid of the soot which reveals our white and pink Spider Boi Angel Dust.

"This tall friend is Angel!" Charlie said.

"Hello, my name is angel, it been along time since I saw any guy... IS ANYONE HERE GAY!? sorry, that was rude... OH MY! this place is disgusting, it really need the fabulous touch, which is weird cause I'm sure at least one of you is gay..." Angel went all around the room with his 6 arms cleaning and remodeling everything.

Charlie snaps again.

A gray female demon was at a bar talking to a male demon, "Okay that will be $50 for a hand- wohhhhhh" All kinds of demonic shit goes around Vaggie "¿Que demonios?" Vaggie notices Charlie, "YOU!"

"Veggie sweat heart glad you could make it!" Charlie exclaims and then hugs

"Don't you veggie me! I was working!" Vaggie pushed Charlie away.

"Good to see you to!" Charlie laughed

"What do you want?" Vaggie asked.

"Well sweaty I'm doing some charity work and I took it upon my self to volunteer your Service!" Charlie answered.

"Are you joking!?" Vaggie asked.

"No, I don't think so! I thought you could be the new face of this fine establishment!" Charlie points to a pole. "With your fine smile and "past experience" this job was made for you!" Charlie stated.

"IM AINT DOING NO CHAIRTY WORK DO I LOOK LIKE SOME KIND OF A FUCKING JOKE!?" Vaggie shouted.

"Maybe, but don't worry,I can make it more rewarding, if you wish." Charlie projects all of the cute good times they had back then.

"What!? you can think you can buy me with a wink and some good memories!? Well you can!" Vaggie got up to the stage

"Hey hey, heyheyhey! NO! No pole dancing we're meant to be a place that discourages sin! Not some kind of… casino, brothel, man-cave-" Husk ranted.

Niffty jumps on Husk. "Shut up! Shut! Up! We are keeping this." Niffty pointed to Vaggie. "Hey." Niffty flirted to Vaggie

"¡Vete a la mierda!" Vaggie said.

"Sounds sexy." Niffty flirted.

Alastor went up the the stage, "Hello there my scantily dressed friend! Welcome to this fine or at least with your help soon to be fine hotel!" Alastor introduced himself.

"I lost the ability to love years ago, so unless you got cash you're not worth my time." Vaggie stated.

"So, what do you think?" Charlie asked.

"This is the Bees Knees!" Alastor bellowed.

"It’s… fine." Husk stated.

Charlie went in for a hug with Alastor and Husk, "This is going to be very fun!" Charlie clears her throat and push Husk away. ♪ You have a dream ♪ ♪ You wish to tell ♪ ♪ And it’s just laughable ♪ ♪ But hey sir, what the hell! ♪ ♪ ‘Cause you’re one of a kind ♪ ♪ A charming pal! ♪ ♪ Now let’s give these burning fools a place to dwell ♪ ♪ Inside of every demon is a waste ♪ ♪ But we’ll dress ‘em up for now with just a smile! ♪ ♪ And we’ll chlorinate this cesspool ♪ ♪ With some old redemption flair ♪ ♪ And show these simpletons some proper class and style! ♪ ♪ Here below the ground ♪ ♪ I’m sure your plan is sound! ♪ ♪ They’ll spend a little time ♪ ♪ Down at this Hazbin Ho-- ♪

A explosion outside blast the door off and hit Angel.

Everyone walked out to see what was happening

"Ha! Well well well, look who it is harboring the musical freak! We meet yet again, Charlie!" Cherri shouted.

"Do I know you?" Charlie asked.

"Oh, yes you do! And this time, I have the element of- surprise!" Cherri maniacal laughs "I’m so evil!"

Charlie snaps to bring up her goat goons to destroy the ship.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa whoa whoa!" Cherri started to scream as the goats started to destroy her ship and murder her Cherrybois.

Two of the goats grab Cherri and threw her at the wall. "Oh, that hurt!" Cherri screams.

The Goats took control of the ship and pilot it into the cracks where they came from.

The ship explodes when it got into the crack.

"Well I’m starved! Who wants some cake? My father once showed me a wonderful recipe for cake! In fact, they named it after him! You could say the kick was right out of Hell! Yes sir, this is the start of some real changes down here!" Charlie laughes

"The show starts! Now... Stay tuned." Charlie snaps changing the sign from, "Happy." to "Hazbin."

#hazbinhotel #hazbin hotel #hazbin #hazbin charlie #hazbin angel dust #hazbin niffty #hazbin sir pentious #hazbin alastor #hazbin husk #hazbin cherri bomb #hazbin characters #hazbin katie killjoy #hazbin tom trench

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xiaodejunletsact · 5 years

Text

say it | dong sicheng

word count: 4,021

genre: royalty!au, princess!reader, servant/ best friend!sicheng, fluff and lil bit of angst and smut.

warnings: attempted sexual assault (nothing to graphic but still), violence, implied sex (well, kinda just sex)

author’s note: hey!! so i literally pulled this out of my ass as a little present for all of my followers as a thank you for getting me to 1K followers!!! i can’t thank you guys enough for supporting my work and i can’t believe im already at 1k what the fuckk. anyway,, i wrote this little au for y’all just a warning; its not very good since i wrote it so last minute but i still hope you guys enjoy it. actor!xiaojun is going to be done soon so please look forward to it!! once again thank you :)

synopsis: after years of not knowing what the feelings stirring in your heart for the young servant boy you know as your best friend were, an incident with a disgusting duke and the moonlight on sicheng’s face help you find your answer.

The only thing more suffocating than the corset wrapped tightly around your waist was the predatory stare the Duke of the neighboring kingdom was giving you from across the dining table.

Out of all the potential suitors your mother has picked in her 4 months of searching, this one was surely one of the worst; he was evidently almost twice your age; the top his shiny head was beginning to appear beneath the three pathetic strands brushed over to conceal the clear sign of his age. His hands were free of calluses and his neat nails were clear indication of the amount of work this man does in his everyday life. Once you finally look at his face, you realize that you have found the worst part of him: his eyes. The light blue of them that is usually seen as beautiful leans more towards grey causing an almost lifeless and frightening affect upon them, they’re hooded as they stare back at you; the shivers that go up your spine force you to look away, redirecting your gaze to your hands.

You smile when you see the neatly bent wire wrapped around your index finger, the helix shape it made as it circled your finger takes you back to the moment you received the makeshift ring.

You hadn’t known Sicheng very well at the time but you knew that he came from a poor family, your mother had taken in with the exchange of them doing the labor and work around the palace. He was only 16 when you met him for the first time, black hair falling slightly over his eyes as he frantically apologizes for god knows what only to stopped by your gentle hand on his, telling him it’s okay. He visibly calms at this before standing up straighter, trying hard to rebalance all the tray of pots and dishes he carries in his shaky hands. You can tell he’s struggling, but he covers up his failed attempts to calm down with a sweet (and slightly embarrassed) smile. That’s when you decide that you liked Sicheng. Maybe not in a romantic way, but in a way that you knew you wanted to spend more time with the young servant boy.

Which you did by following around the boy as he did his chores and asking him any questions that popped into your head, which he tried to answer the best he could while he body was racked with nerves. However, after a while, the conversation started to flow easier, Sicheng started to ask you questions back and openly display an emotion other than stoic. He would laugh out loud and even nudge your shoulder from time to time in playful gesture. Sicheng realizes he likes you too.

That’s why one day, as you two side by side down the palace halls on the way to the kitchen, Sicheng pulls a silver object of the pocket of his worn out pants and brings it up to your face. “My mother told me that my father gave her a ring as a promise to forever be loyal to her and… I just wanted you to know that I will forever be loyal to you, princess y/n.”

It’s difficult to explain the emotions that were going through you at the moment but they lead up to you happily throwing your arms around the boy, squeezing him tight enough that he can feel the genuine appreciation for the thoughtful gift. You don’t see is Sicheng’s face becoming beet red as you wrap your arms around him but you feel his arms wrap around you slowly, hesitantly, and his head lean on top of yours. When you slip the ring onto your index finger with a fond smile on your face, Sicheng has to look down at his feet to ensure that he hasn’t elevated off the ground and is floating above your head because of how happy he is.

“Is there something you find humorous, my lady?” You immediately snap out of your daydream as the taunting voice of the Duke brings you back to reality. You almost roll your eyes but smile politely, shaking your head.

“No, not particularly.”

“You were smiling just seconds ago.”

“Was I? I must have done it unconsciously.” You almost sighed in relief as he seems to buy it, nodding his head and standing up.

“Shall we take a walk around the palace?” He walks around the table and towards the exit of the dining room, not awaiting your response. You reluctantly stand get on your feet, sending reassuring smiles to the maids you sent apologetic ones you way before leaving the room.

“It’s a bit dusty on this shelf don’t you think?” The man’s white finger comes down on the counter in a swiping motion, picking up the grand total of about 4 dust particles. He shows you he clean finger as he makes a disgusted face. You think you might die.

That is, until you see a familiar face turning the corner. You feel relief rush through your body as you see the black hair you know so well. The voice of the Duke drowns out once again as you watch Sicheng dust a painting at the end of the hall. He has changed since the time you first met, he’s taller and slimmer. The baby face you once knew is long gone, replaced with sharp angles. The broadness of his shoulder has surely reached maximum capacity by this point, and you it quickly turns into one of those moments where you begin to wonder when did Sicheng get so… hot? These days you often catch yourself staring at him but so did every other normal person in the castle. While you were busy thinking about the hotness of your best friend your potential suitor has taken the liberty of calling him over to dust the shelves on the palace walls.

Sicheng’s presence is like a lavender candle, the closer he gets the more relaxed and at ease you feel. You nearly jump of joy when he’s right beside you. “Yes, your majesty?”

“Clean these shelves, boy. The person who did who did clearly didn’t know what they were doing because these shelves are filthy.”

You nearly snort at his statement, seeing as that you and Sicheng had dusted the shelves together that same morning.

“Of course.” Sicheng replies, carefully maneuvering the duster around the designs of the fancy shelf, cleaning off whatever it is the Duke has seen. Meanwhile the Duke goes off about the time he spent studying in Spain, and this conversation, much like the others gets drowned out. This time, by the outline of Sicheng’s back muscles through his white shirt as he dusts those shelves like a pro.

“Princess, your mind is awfully distant today.” The old man shoots you an accusing and annoyed look that shoots between you and Sicheng. You realize that he had caught you staring at the servant and was now giving you a judgemental look. “Is there something you need from this servant boy?”

Sicheng finally turns towards, keeping a straight face while making eye contact with you for the first time since you entered the hall. (Sicheng was told to not interact with you with suitors came to visit since it could put them off.) The Duke must see the corners of your lips tug slightly into a soft smile at the interaction because he suddenly steps between you two, clearing his throat simultaneously reminding you of his question. “Not right now.” But there is. You need him to get you out of here, you need him to whisk you away to the garden so you can water plants together and be at peace. Though you would never say any of these things to the old man because he would realize that you needed Sicheng in a way very different to the one he had thought of.

He watches you with suspicious eyes as you try your best to not show any of the emotions running through you right now, which proves to be harder than you expected. What with the scrutinizing gaze of the Duke and Sicheng’s gentle smile peering over his shoulder.

“Shall we continue the tour?” You suggested, desperate to move to a different topic of conversation. Thankfully, the man agrees and walks ahead of you, only after sending a dirty look Sicheng’s way.

“This is my bedroom.” You trace your hand across the intricate design of the familiar door, slowly moving past it to next room only to be stopped by the Duke’s hand on your arm, pulling you back. The second you meet his eyes you wish you could run away. The pale blue, dead looking eyes you hate so much stare back at you, this time, they hold a predatory feel. His intentions clear.

“I would love to see it.” You gulp, thinking of ways to politely decline his offer. However, you have no time to do so since the man is suddenly opening your door and dragging you into the room.

He examines the room with a somewhat judgmental look. Frowning slightly as he sees the odd knick knacks and artifacts you had collected with Sicheng over the years lining your window sills and filling up the majority of your desk. “This is very…interesting.”

You notice the wince in his voice as he says the words still, you force a smile. “Thank you, I got them from a good friend of mine.”

“Sit on the bed with me, princess.”

You feel your body go rigid when he says those words. Sweat begins to pool around the neck of your dress and you become hyper aware of all your surroundings. You’re nearly shaking as the man pulls you to the bed. No matter how hard you try, you can’t find it in you fight back. You don’t know why. Maybe fear. But you seem to become his puppet for a moment as he sits you down next to him on you nearly made bed.

“You know princess,” The man whispers into your ear causing shivers of disgust to go down your spine, you feel like you might cry as he moves even closer to you. His breath fanning your neck in a way that makes you sick. “I can’t be your suitor until I see what you have to offer.”

You feel yourself begin to feel sick and even then, you do nothing to stop it. It’s like you’ve lost full control of your body. Tears start running down your cheeks as the man leans forward and presses a sloppy kiss on your neck. You curl away in disgust, causing the man to look at you with an offended look.

And that’s when you see the familiar shoes from under your door frame.

“Sicheng!” You shoot up, pushing the man’s hands off of you. “Please, help!” The Duke’s hands are immediately on you again although now, they are over your mouth, being used to silence you. You try desperately to push away but his grip on you is tight. That is, until his hands are being pried off of you and his body is thrown on the floor in front of you. Suddenly you feel a pair of rough yet soft hands of either side of your face.

“Y/N?”

It’s only when you open your eyes that you realize that they were closed to begin with. The sight of Sicheng’s eyes calms you almost immediately (you were almost positive he was your remedy). His worried eyes bore into yours as he wipes away your tears with his thumbs. “Y/n, what happened? What did he do to you?”

You can only hiccup as you recall the event, the helplessness you felt and the pure disgust the memory brings you. Sicheng watches in concern as you sob in his hands, anger rushes through his blood as he turns to the man lying on the floor. Crouching down to his level, he grabs a fistful of the man’s expensive dress shirt. “What did you do to her?”

You don’t think you’ve ever seen Sicheng this angry. His forearm is bulging from the tight grip he has on the man’s shirt, the veins on his flushed neck protruding as he clenches his jaw at the man under him. “What did you do to the princess?” He repeats through clenched teeth.

The Duke stays quiet beneath him before daring to utter the words with a laugh: “Just sampling the goods.”

Before you know it, Sicheng’s fist was connecting with the side of the man's jaw. Only to be followed by another and another. Until two of the guards who had heard the commotion came running in, they both woke together to detach Sicheng from the bloodied man. Who stands up and sends Sicheng a threading glare before turning your way. He laughs incredulously in your direction and leaves the room with the little dignity he had left.

Once the Queen catches word of the incident, the Duke is banned from ever setting foot in the kingdom again, and she promises you to not bring in any more potential suitors for the time being. Saying she wanted to give you some time to recover from the traumatic incident.

And although she is grateful for the fact that he had stopped the Duke from taking advantage of you, The Queen was adamant on carrying out punishments. Sicheng was told not to interact with you while the suitors were here much less in such a violent manner. Even though the Queen loved Sicheng almost as much as you she did give him the weak punishment of staying two weeks in the underground servants quarters. Which moved his duties from the main palace floor to the kitchen and stables, which were inarguably the hardest jobs to perform around the palace, although you felt guilty for your friend, you knew you’re mother was only giving him a light punishment compared to what she could’ve done, so you stay quiet. Sicheng assured you that he would be fine down there but even then you found yourself sneaking out of your room at half past 1 with your thick duvet wrapped around your head, dragging behind you on your way down to the underground servants quarters.

When you reach the room Sicheng was staying in, you turn the doorknob gently as to not make too much noise. Then you’re met with makes your heart ache slightly. Sicheng is lying on a small bed with his bare back facing you, nothing but a thin sheet covering his legs. He shivers slightly as a cool breeze comes through the window and brushes against his body.

“Sicheng.”

The poor frightened boy shoots up from his bed at the sight of your unexpected presence. His hand falls over his heart as his eyes widen, his breathing calming down as he realizes it’s just you. “You scared me.”

You giggle, “I can see that.”

Seeing you like this makes Sicheng heart flutter, duvet wrapped around your head and sweet giggles leaving your lips. He nearly becomes mush as he remembers that this is a sight only he gets to see, and a memory that will be just his forever. He smiles, “What are you doing here?”

“I just can’t stand the thought of you being alone down here. It’s really chilly tonight too.” Your words scause Sicheng to smile once again, he scoots over until he’s against the wall to make room for you. You lay your body next to him and throw your duvet over the two of you. Sicheng sighs as he’s engulfed by the warmth of the duvet and your body, he then nuzzles his head into the covers cutely.

The bed is smaller than you thought it would be; you and Sicheng were practically pressed against each other. (Not than either of you were complaining.) The feeling of his bare skin under the covers causes your heart to race.

Once you’ve both settled in, facing each other as your eyes take in his face and his yours, a comfortable silence settles. The moonlight coming in through the window looks extra beautiful when it’s draped across your face, Sicheng thinks. His hand reaches up to stroke your cheek softly in an affection gesture that is not rare between you two.

“Thank you for stopping that guy yesterday,” you break the silence with the words you’ve hadn’t gotten the chance to say, “You’re my hero, Sicheng.” Though your words are childish, you couldn’t have meant them more. Without Sicheng, you would be nowhere. Those words were the only ones even remotely close to doing justice to the gratitude and love you feel for the boy laying across from you. Who smiles slightly at your words.

“You don’t have to thank me, princess. You know I would do anything for you.” It’s your turn to smile as he gazes down at you affectionately. You bring your hand up to his face and show him your ring.

“My most loyal companion.” He chuckles lightly before taking your hand in his and laying them, intertwined, between your bodies. “I want to give you something too, so you can remember that I will also always be loyal to you, Sicheng.”

Sicheng smiles but shakes his head politely, “You coming all the way down here in the middle of the night just because you thought I would be lonely was enough to remind me of your loyalty.”

You chuckle before looking up at Sicheng’s face once again. Then, it’s like the scene begins play in slow motion, the soft smile he’s wearing tugs your heartstrings a specific way, the moonlight in his eyes twinkle a bit brighter and it dawns on you…

Sicheng was your best friend. Sicheng was the one you could confide in the most. Sicheng has always taken care of you and helped you through your hardest times. Sicheng was someone you could always count on. Sicheng is the love of your life.

You’re in love with Sicheng.

The feeling had always been there, but you never knew what exactly it was that you were feeling.

The realization crashes into you like a wrecking ball, and the boy in question seems to notice. “What’s wrong?” Concern has seeped into the features of his face and you desperately wanted it to go away and be replaced with the gentle smile he was wearing moments ago. “You face turned serious all of the sudden.”

Another silence washes over the two of you as watch him be for another few minutes, processing the new found information. You know there’s no time like the present, there is no man like the one across from you and there’s no chance you’re going to let this perfect moment pass.

“Sicheng?”

“Hmm?”

“How would you feel if I told you I was in love with you?”

The boy immediately sits up on the small bed, eyes wide giving you dejavú to the moment you walked into the room earlier that night. “What?”

You swallow the lump in your throat as you realize that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. All that courage you felt just minutes ago nowhere to be see. “I’m… I’m in love with you.”

You avoid his gaze that is currently burning holes into the side of your head. You attempt to hide your blushing face under the covers only to have them pulled down by Sicheng, who pulls you into a kiss that was gentle enough to send you mind reeling but hard enough that you feel all the oxygen in your lungs leaving. Leaving you breathless.

You can’t believe this is happening.

Neither can Sicheng.

As you pull away and look Sicheng’s glassy eyes and swollen lips, everything feels so dreamy, you have a hard time believing this is real.

Sicheng decides to speak first, “Are you really in love with me?”

Your eyes quickly become teary like his, you nod. “I am, Sicheng.”

A laugh escapes his lips as a tear falls out of his eye, though he wipes it away quickly. “You’re in love with me. I can’t believe… you love me back.” The sincerity that stares back you as reaches up to wipe away the tear that had fallen from the corner of your eye.

The room is filled with the sound of soft sniffles and the love that radiates off of your bodies. Which settles for a few minutes until Sicheng decides to break the silence.

“It won’t be easy for us, you know.” His words carry a worrisome tone that reminds you of the fact that you are the princess, and (even though you didn’t see him as one) Sicheng was in fact a servant in the castle. You were supposed to marry a rich prince that would benefit the political affairs of your kingdom, Sicheng can’t do that.

But Sicheng can make you laugh like no other, he can ease your stress and cure your sadness like it’s his specialty. Sicheng can protect you and keep you safe from the world.

Sicheng takes care of the older maids when they fall sick, he helps people around the town with their chores when he has finished his own, he always thinks about the people around him before he thinks about himself. He doesn’t have anything to offer other then a heart of gold and good intentions.

What better person is there to be king?

“I know,” you bring your hand up to stroke his messy black hair, running your fingers through it before letting it fall back to its original place on his forehead. “We will have fights and people won’t agree with our relationship, we will have to be strong Sicheng. It will be worth it in the end.”

A closed lipped smile makes its way onto Sicheng’s face and he pulls you closer to him, his hand grips the back of your nightshirt tightly as presses your foreheads together. His breath fans on your mouth as he whispers the words he can now say whenever he pleases, “I love you.”

You chuckle and say them back. You say it again and again and again until his lips are back on yours. You keep saying as his kisses reach your neck and jaw, this time with a breathy tone to them; elated and breathless at the feeling of his warm mouth on your neck.

You say it when he finally finds his rightful place between your legs, hands on your hips as he slowly enters you, the sheets thrown off your bodies because of the increasing heat radiating off the two of you. “My Queen.” He sighs as he looks down at you, his eyes are hooded and lust filled, messy hair sticking to his forehead. Sweat drips down his chest and toned abdomen causing your mouth water.

You say it with your hands in his hair as his sweaty body crashes onto yours, your breaths meet and mix between you before he leans forward and presses one last long kiss on your swollen lips.

His sleepy smile is the last thing you before you fall fast asleep that night, Sicheng’s arm around your waist pulling you against him so he could feel you while he slept.

The Queen chuckles slightly as she walks into her daughter’s bedroom only to find it empty and the duvet missing. She figured you would end up in the underground servants quarters with Sicheng. You always did have a pull towards that boy, as did he for you.

Sighing, she leaves the room towards her office in the castle where her maid sits at the desk writing. “Darling, will you please send a message to the Southern prince who was supposed to come here in 3 weeks? Tell him to not go through the hassle of traveling all the way up here.” The Queen sees the confused look on the woman’s face and clarifies her words, “I think Princess Y/N has already found what she has been searching for.”

#nct scenarios #nct wayv #nct #sicheng #wayv scenarios #winwin #dong sicheng #nct imagines #nct smut #nct fluff #nct dream #nct 127 scenarios #nct 127 #wayv #nct hard hours #nct soft hours

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whetstonefires · 4 years

Text

Okay, it’s been about a year but here is the second-to-last of the fics I signed up to write for the go-fund-cee drive! For @jes-cher, who has been lovely and understanding about my choice paralysis bullshit.

I’ll be posting a shorter, darker Jason-focused one later, as apology for slow. Ten months of beating my head against my first idea for this prompt before it occurred to me I could just. Write something else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a great idea if it’s clearly not getting written! 😌 Rip.

(Anon who’s the only one left, please feel free to contact me with a new prompt if you’re no longer interested in your original request after this amount of time, or have justifiably lost faith in my ability to execute it, as I chronicled my battle with Lobdell’s writing style, and would prefer I give you 10,000 words of something else. I’ll still post what I have written for that prompt already!)

-&-

Gotham wasn’t actually that bad a city. Steph had actually lived in a few different ones now, and visited lots, and for all the crap her hometown got, it stood up pretty well. The architecture was nice; good balance of eras, a unified aesthetic with a lot of variety to keep it interesting.

The street system wasn’t ideal, especially in the old parts of town, but they didn’t have any of the traffic nightmares of New York or, really, most of the rest of the metro belt. Only Metropolis did a better job at avoiding gridlock.

Public transit was robust and reached most of the city, and while the buses weren’t wonderful they weren’t bad. Sometimes they were even on time. The libraries and schools were all pretty well funded, because the Wayne Foundation made up the tax shortfall in districts with below average income. The street lights usually worked, and the cops were a lot more chill than most places unless they thought you were a supervillain, in which case they still probably wouldn’t shoot you, even if maybe they probably should.

The supervillain problem was worse than average, she could admit that, but crime as a whole actually wasn’t. Air pollution had been really bad forty years ago, and the river still wasn’t anywhere you’d like to swim, but that was true of a lot of places, and their reputations didn’t linger like this. She’d been to Paris! Gotham sanitation workers were about 400% more successful, and they kept working through frankly ludicrous conditions! Possibly they were paid really well, she didn’t know.

The weather, though. She’d give the world that one. Gotham’s weather was consistently terrible, awful, no-good, and deserved everything anyone had ever said about it.

Which made it actually really weird that their supervillain problem featured someone with a plant theme.

“Move somewhere tropical, Eisley!” she groused, as she swung to the next roof, careful of her footing. “Cultivate jungles! Save the planet! Stop making us come out in the freezing rain to deal with your unseasonable bullshit.”

She paused for a second on her last rooftop perch, both to gather herself and in case Ivy took the cue. She often did. Supervillains in general seemed to have a hard time resisting a straight line—which Steph could relate to, honestly. And she’d caught Batman holding back his entrance for the most ironic dramatic moment before, so it wasn’t just a villain thing.

No villain attack, which was good, because Steph was on her own out here. This was hopefully just a scouting mission. Probably Poison Ivy wasn’t even here.

This afternoon, just after lunch, as Steph was getting off work, every park in the city had suddenly erupted with enormous…growths. They were tree-shaped, thirty feet high with little crinkled green leaf things at the top, but from what inspection had been done so far seemed more like fungus than anything. The spreading limbs had a weird rubbery texture.

Steph was calling them Doom Broccolis.

Whatever they were, they were suspicious as heck, and in response to their appearance Batman had immediately rallied the troops. Which had quickly led to the discovery that Red Robin was missing, and had been for at least eleven hours. He’d never checked in last night.

The troops had promptly been rallied even more urgently, and dispersed across the city to its various infested green spaces.

So Steph’s mission, like everyone’s, was twofold—see if she could learn anything about Ivy’s scheme in time to foil it, and search for any sign of Tim. If they were lucky, he’d just dropped out of contact voluntarily for unrelated reasons and could be yelled at later. If not… Well. If not, he needed them.

She’d been telling herself all the way here that she appreciated that Duke and Damian were the ones who’d been sent out with each other as backup, that she was respected and trusted to operate solo and that was a good thing. The practical side of her would really prefer backup please, and the insecure one kept murmuring that maybe what it really proved was Batman cared less if she died.

Batgirl gave herself a little shake. Shut up, little voice, she told it, and mentally squashed the slug of it under her heel. She adjusted her gas mask to make sure the seal was tight. Time to get her reconnoiter on.

And hopefully not have to fight the most powerful metahuman in Gotham by herself on unfavorable terrain, in the freezing rain. That would be really great.

There was almost no sound as she crept through the nasty rubbery grove that had erupted in the long narrow triangle that was Hyde Park.

The broccolis themselves were silent, not even creaking or rustling in the occasional gusts that drove the freezing rain at an angle, and city traffic and all the sounds of people were hushed on a day like today, between the weather and the large-scale supervillain incident. Everyone who could be was either out of town or at home, stuffing newspaper into any cracks in case of spores.

After an unenlightening loop around about half the perimeter, Steph was forced to drop to ground level and forge her way into enemy territory. The doom broccolis had avoided uprooting any existing trees or large shrubs, which meant the spacing was slightly uneven and in some places there was no easy way through on foot, but for the most part they were far enough apart to leave plenty of corridors of sky for Steph to stay out under—cover from line of sight wasn’t worth putting herself directly below the things, if she could help it.

Fairly quickly, she noticed something that had not been in the photos from the main infestation in Robinson Park, forty minutes ago.

She clicked her comm on. “Hey,” she murmured just above the subvocal range, for the throat mic. She’d mostly gotten the knack of subvocalizing rather than whispering, which didn’t engage the vocal cords and which the microphone pasted to her neck therefore didn’t pick up well. “Is anybody else seeing…fruit? On the broccolis?”

There was a second of dead air, and then Red Hood said, with a grimace you could hear, “yeah. Like…huge brown cherries, on a couple of ‘em.”

“The ones here are more or less mushroom colored,” reported Signal from Finger Park. “But kind of like cherries, yeah.”

“Don’t touch them,” warned Batman, with the condescending Dad-instinct need to tell everyone things they already knew. Steph was in the middle of rolling her eyes when she rounded another broccoli and froze dead.

“Holy crap.” The broccoli mushroom tree at the middle of Hyde Park was bearing fruit that wasn’t shaped like cherries at all. Batgirl’s first thought had been holy shit it’s people, but then she’d taken her second look, and now it was worse. “Team,” she said, trying to keep her voice professional, “I… think I found Red Robin.”

Because dangling from the central broccoli, by dark hair that turned into green stems just before joining the bough, were seven still vaguely formless figures, torsos partially sheathed in giant green leaves like Ivy wore sometimes for modesty, and with arms and legs looking just barely stuck together. Like a partly melted wax figure, or dragon fruit that wasn’t quite ripe. The fingers and toes were mostly fused, and greenish at the tips. The faces were kind of melty too, hopefully enough so that they wouldn’t be a sure match against a photo to a stranger, but not so much that Steph couldn’t instantly recognize the lines of one of the faces she knew best in the world.

There were seven under-ripe Tim Drakes growing from a broccoli tree.

A clamor of demands for clarification was starting in her comm, and she crept forward as she waited for Batman and Oracle to quiet them all down. There was a bulge halfway up the meaty-looking trunk. “I said ‘think,’” she murmured, studying the nearest Tim-fruit for signs it was actually the real one, “because this broccoli—”

Something slammed into her from the side before she could say any more, heavy and cold and leaving her head ringing and her stupid gas mask flying away, and the combination of experience and instinct only barely let her leap and handspring with the blow, just fast enough to avoid the grasp of the thing that had struck her.

Her boots and glove almost skidded in the freezing-rain-on-grass and left her wiping out, but the jagged rubber treads she’d selected specifically for moments like this saved the day.

Steph made a three-point landing and stared up at Poison Ivy, standing looking thunderous on the top of a huge coil of some sort of vine, several more of them lashing around her like octopus arms. Steph couldn’t even tell which one had hit her.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit, Steph thought, and grinned.

“Gotta try harder than that, Pam!”

No one was talking in her ear. The ear she’d been smacked in. She reached up to check. Yeah, the comm had had it.

She couldn’t be sure about the throat mic—the stick-on patch it was under was still in place but she was pretty sure it got most if not all of its broadcast strength from the earbud unit, so it probably wasn’t transmitting to the others anymore but it might be. She’d keep that in mind to a) pass info just in case and b) try not to embarrass herself, in case there was a silent audience.

Ivy didn’t go straight for the kill, so Steph took the time to readjust her stance into a slightly more upright, flexible posture that kept both her hands free, though she didn’t bother to straighten her cape, which had gotten flipped forward over her right shoulder while she was flipping around.

“You’re planting dude-trees now, Pam?” She and Ivy absolutely weren’t on close enough terms to use first names, even if the meta lady had currently been on the upswing and working with the Birds of Prey again, instead of on a sharp down and terrorizing the city. “What, real guys not listening to you anymore?”

“Human beings are disgusting resource sinks,” Ivy said, in a tone of abstracted disgust that didn’t omen well for her losing her head and making a mistake. “Especially men. I’ve always been working on alternatives. Sadly,” she gave a shallow sigh, inspecting her nails, “the ones I’ve developed have always been…limited.”

Steph nodded sagely. “The veggieburger problem,” she agreed. “Hard to get a plant to do the job of meat.”

Ivy glared. Hah. That one got her. “My new varietal,” she snapped, “will overcome that problem. Each specimen engulfs and consumes one large mammal, and produces fruits that mimic the full intelligence and abilities of the prey sample, in a vegetable form completely loyal to me.”

Steph gaped, because one, that was the most terrifying thing Ivy had done in years, and two, consumes was a very very alarming word in this context. “The Doom Broccolis are carnivorous?” she did not actually squeak. She really hoped her throat mic was still working. Even if it wasn’t, though, backup should be incoming.

Ivy rolled her eyes. “They are not even distantly related to broccoli. And yes, although the digestion process doesn’t really set in until the fruits ripen; the early experiments failed to reproduce cognitive function accurately, due to the breakdown of key tissues.”

Whew. So Tim had…at least a little time left, probably. Steph looked uneasily around the grove of horrible flesh fungus. “I don’t see any loyal broccoli people,” she said. Maybe they were off guarding the other parks?

Ivy scowled. “Of course not. The early cultivars weren’t large enough for human trials, obviously.”

…so there were loyal vegetable guinea pigs or something. Sometimes it was easy to forget Ivy had once been an actual lab scientist.

“So wait, you haven’t actually done a person before and you start with—him?” Steph caught herself at the last second; she didn’t know which identity Tim had been caught in.

“Why not? Red Robin is an excellent specimen. Good balance of strength, strategy, and unlike Batman actually takes direction.” Ivy made a sour face, like her inability to control any version of Batman for long was a thorn in her side.

“Is that what you think,” said Steph, who had had the experience of trying to control Tim Drake. He did try to be accommodating, about most things, usually, and he did take direction better than Batman, for what that was worth, but in the end he’d always go off and do whatever he thought best, no matter what, and possibly let you yell at him about it later.

If anyone could take stock of his preconceived values and identity issues and think his way into a twisty workaround for inbuilt loyalty programming in order to fuck over his creator, she’d bet it would be a perfect copy of Tim.

“Also I caught him skulking around my newest greenhouses,” Ivy shrugged. “Waste not, want not. Recycling is good for the Earth.”

Haha, Ivy had just called Tim garbage. Harsh. But as interesting as it would be to see if the veggie-Tims actually did go rogue, them waking up would mean Tim was now actively dying if not already dead. So no. Not that funny.

Steph caught the enemy’s eyes shuttling subtly toward the central broccoli with its heavy burden of fruit. Aha. Just as she had suspected. (As of like…six seconds ago.)

Poison Ivy had been keeping Batgirl talking, buying time for her Tims to ripen.

Steph appreciated the compliment of putting off the fight rather than counting on being able to end it quickly, but she’d been buying time, too. And unlike Ivy, she was done shopping.

Her Batgirl cape wasn’t nearly as wide cut as her Spoiler cloak had been, not as good for hiding things in, but she’d contrived to use its cover to take out and arm nine individual exploding batarangs while they talked. That was more than she carried normally, or even would be allowed to carry normally, but when you were fighting evil trees more ordinance tended to be called-for, and Batman had issued a supply.

Without wasting time, she started throwing. Her aim had never been especially exact, something Damian liked to give her a hard time about, but here all she had to hit was ‘an entire tree.’ No fiddly precision targets today. She had to aim for the ones not showing fruit or trunk bulges, which she was going to have to trust didn’t have people inside, rather than having just recently acquired very tiny people—this seemed like a safe bet since Ivy tended to be soft on kids.

Not enough to stop periodically trying to destroy humanity for their sake, but enough that it was hard to imagine her hurting one face to face.

“No!” Ivy shouted. She got points for not leaping toward the blinking explosives to try to stop them, sending vines striking like snakes instead, but she was too busy doing that to get away from the bomb that had landed only about five feet away from her.

The blast blew her off her feet, and clear off her pedestal of green. She’d managed to remotely yank two of the batarangs out before they went off, saving those doom fungi, but Steph wasn’t worried about that; she’d successfully set the supervillain up for the kind of fatal misjudgment in defense of plants Batman always said was the surest way to beat her, and now she charged in to make the most of it.

She got there in plenty of time to really put her weight behind a punch hammering down into Ivy’s face, then kicked her in the chest, heel driving in just below the collarbone. Ivy gave a very human uph and pained expression, though she didn’t fall, and Steph went for another kick, this one more carefully aimed.

This was a mistake. One green-tinted hand came up and closed around her ankle like a Venus flytrap made of carbon steel, and in one sharp uncoiling move Eisley rose to her feet and with a twist of her whole torso flung Steph head over heels across the grove.

She realized somewhere between getting thrown and suppressing the urge to vomit as she gyroed upside-down that she’d been thrown straight for one of the remaining undamaged, unfruiting tree-things. Could see the surface getting sort of…gelatinous in preparation for her impact, which was so many flavors of no.

Her hands didn’t fumble at her belt, courtesy of many hours of drills and live practice, even as instinct screamed for rush and now now now.

Her grapple caught in one of the spreading ‘boughs’ at the top of another broccoli, and she tugged the line to send herself swinging out on a long arc just short of making contact with the fungus that wanted to eat her.

She peppered the air in front of her with ordinary, nonexplosive Batarangs as she came back around on the end of the wire—Ivy smacked these casually aside, but it made enough of a distraction that Pam didn’t notice in time the moment when Steph got her backup grapple into a different tree, and accelerated.

Going for a kick would have been the smart, safe option, but Steph was rarely smart and almost never safe, so instead of slamming her full body weight heel-first into the supervillain and hoping it stuck this time, she grabbed with the full strength of endless thigh workouts and dragged Ivy clear off her feet.

Ivy’s plants were protective, but they tended to rely heavily on her for targeting anything that wasn’t right in front of them, so keeping her disoriented was a good idea if you could manage it. It said so in her file. So this part, the grabbing, had been an actual plan, even if one it had taken about two seconds to make, and even if ‘hit the supervillain essentially with your crotch’ was probably a combat recommendation no one would make ever.

The next part was sheer impulse, based on how much easier Ivy was to move than expected—maybe her punch resistance wasn’t so much physical density as some sort of supernatural rootedness, and if you could get her off the ground it stopped working?

Steph released the retraction mechanism on her secondary grapple and let it start paying out again, an instant before she hit the max-strength retract button on her original grapple, the one that was still in her other hand, and gripping a bough halfway across the grove.

Her right shoulder screamed, but Ivy let out a startled choking sound as their trajectory wrenched around out of the arc Steph had been carrying her into headfirst, and shot the other way. Which meant she was still discombobulated, which meant Steph still had the upper hand, shoulder or no.

Steph picked the right moment as they went rocketing back, and let go. Momentum kept Ivy flying, and none of her plants reacted to catch her in midair before she landed. Right on target.

Ivy sank headfirst into her own carnivorous fungus tree, in the gelatinous patch where she’d tried to throw Steph. Her legs kicked once, and then fell still. “See how you like it!” Steph shouted, which was perhaps not the wittiest repartee ever, but she didn’t care.

She landed, staggering a little because her shoulder might be dislocated a little bit and was definitely killing her. And normally she wouldn’t turn her back on a villain just because she’d gotten one good hit and they hadn’t immediately gotten up again, but what she’d been fighting for this whole time was time, because the window of opportunity to stop Tim Drake-Wayne from being reduced to protein goo and the pattern for a bunch of veggie-copies was closing fast. This wasn’t a defeat-top-rank-supervillain-solo mission, this was a rescue mission.

She pelted back toward the relevant tree, holding up the elbow of her bad arm with the opposite hand against the jolt. How to get him out? With two good arms she could have climbed or grappled up to the level of the bulge that represented the broccoli’s prey and started cutting, but it would be hard to get good leverage. Was there a better option?

One of the Tim-fruits twitched on its stem. Fuck it.

Steph recalled the grapple-end of her holdout gun from where it had been since she use it to get the drop on Ivy, fired it into the gummy-looking limbs of the Tim tree, and hauled herself up. She needed to start carrying a better cutting implement than a Batarang, how did Midnight Boy Scout not mandate that already, but for now she gripped one swoopy sharp black wing awkwardly in her gauntleted left hand, braced toes and knees against the nasty cool-flesh stem, and put all the strength her bad arm had into cutting through the tough husk.

It wouldn’t cut.

More of the Tims were starting to move. Their copy nervous systems booting up or whatever.

The whole tree seemed like it was twitching, and then she realized it was, or rather just the lump under her feet was, and she pulled back her Batarang just in time for something thin and yellow to burst out through the surface of the Doom Broccoli, and disappear, leaving an almost invisibly thin slash that dribbled a transparent greenish fluid that reminded Steph of aloe vera gel but smelled more like old mango and artichoke.

The rubbery husk was being sliced up from the soft, inner side with the hawks-head emblem that belonged in the middle of Red Robin’s chest, which wouldn’t you know was a holdout throwing star thing after all, just like his R used to be. She should’ve known.

Talk about impractical shapes for a knife.

“Keep going, you’ve almost got this.”

Whether he heard her or not, he went on thrashing and slashing, and Steph with her Batarang tore as best she could with her bad arm at the shreds between cuts, trying to get them to snap and let all the thin slashes add up to one hole large enough to escape through.

The Tim-fruits were still twitching. Would they fall to the ground and then peel their limbs free like they were breaking out of husks, and get up and start walking around? Or would they need to get all the way to looking like functioning humans before detaching from the stems?

A whole arm burst out in a rush of goo. They were going to make it.

The fingers of the nearest fruit came unstuck, one by one, curling around air the way Tim curled his around a staff.

And then he was out, headfirst and gooey.

“Man, Ex-Boyfriend Wonder,” Steph sighed, as she let him grab onto her and lowered them on a slowly paying-out jumpline, helping him reach the ground with slightly more dignity than clawing his way down the slime-encrusted ruptured stem of his prison would have allowed, assuming he hadn’t just landed face-first and died. “Why’d you have to go breaking yourself loose at the last second like that? I was supposed to be the hero!”

“Believe me, you—pbbbft—were,” Tim answered, pausing partway to spit out a mouthful of sap-gel that he must somehow have been breathing in there. “I’d never have even managed to wake up if you hadn’t turned up to distract Ivy and make such a racket. I could feel her speeding it up, toughening up the…things, pushing.” The shiver was understated enough Steph might not have noticed it if he hadn’t been clinging to her waist. She eyed the Tim fruits. They’d stopped moving. Good?

Feet on the ground, Tim brushed fruitlessly at the slime all over his costume, then obviously gave it up as a bad job. “Where is she?” he asked, looking around.

“Over there.” Steph landed too, and pointed to where Ivy was still embedded head-first in a broccoli.

She’d disappeared up to the waist, and didn’t seem to be making any effort to get out. In fact, as they watched she seemed to sink in another centimeter.

“Okay, that’s a bit better than a distraction,” Tim acknowledged. “But also I don’t think we should let her finish. I don’t want to fight a dozen vegetable Poison Ivys.”

“Don’t like to eat your vegetables?” Steph teased, even as she sized up the situation—should they pull Ivy out, probably the faster option but then they’d probably have to fight her some more right away, or try cutting down the Doom Broccoli with her still in it, more thorough?

“Yeah actually I’m not going to be able to look any cabbage varietals in the face for the next six months,” said Tim, apparently agreeing they were broccoli regardless of their creator’s opinion and the mango smell, “but come on. It’s never good when villains start to spawn. Chiraxes was bad enough.”

“Blegh,” Steph admitted. The duplicate Drury Walkers had at least had a super short lifespan and been self-disposing. “Okay, I’m all out of bombs. You?” Probably a dumb question, given all his storage space had been confiscated.

“Ivy took my belt and everything in my bandoliers,” Red Robin admitted, touching the cape closure thing at the top of them, where he’d shoved his little sigil-thing back into place in spite of all the goo. His stupid little gimmicks would be easier to make fun of if they worked out less often, lucky stiff.

“But she left that.” Because Tim had all the luck when it came to details like that. “And your mask?” Not that Ivy had ever cared much about things like the Bats’ secret identities.

He shrugged. “I guess she didn’t expect it to be relevant long.” Anything she wanted to know from or about him, the copies could have told her, soon enough. And he wouldn’t have mattered, once he was dead.

This had been another close one; Steph got those feelings out with a little shiver of her own. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s do something about Ivy. Everybody else should be here soon.”

“Backup,” Tim sighed, pushing his hair back from his face and having it stick that way, messily moussed with doom fungus glop. “I love having backup.”

“Sure didn’t act like it back in the day.”

“I am an older and wiser man now. Who values being alive and made of the original meat products.”

Steph stole a glance over her shoulder at the Tim tree. “…I’m really glad those things aren’t waking up.”

“Me too. Think of the ethical implications.”

Steph side-eyed him, not sure whether that was intentional humor or not, then decided it didn’t matter and elbowed him in the ribs anyway. She immediately broke into a run to avoid any counter-attacks, bad arm carefully supported once again. “Race you to the supervillain!”

#stephanie brown #tim drake #pamela eisley #batfam #supervillain fight #rescue mission #prompt #gofundcee #jes-cher #doom broccolis #my fic #batman fic #fanfic #winter weather #capes #shoulder injury

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