#the kids would Never think less of her for her injury they know how terrifyingly capable she is..they just love her so much

[spacedlexi]

crying thinking about the ericson kids being like.. overly protective of clem post-amputation not because they think any less of her but because they just want to protect her the same way she protected them 😭

[lexosaurus]

maddie and jack inviting danny into the lab to test their new invention.

"So, uh, how do I know if its working, exactly?"

"Oh, you'll know. Fire away Danny-o!"

The raven-haired teen nodded once, though his hands were still grasping the cold metal of their new Fenton-brand invention gingerly as he narrowed a wary eye.

Well, taking a shot wouldn't hurt. At least he wasn't at the firing end. Danny fumbled with the device a bit before aiming at the target before him; A small ghost, roughly the size of a fist or a baseball.

Knowing his parents, (And boy did he know them,) their ecto-technology was never quite condensed enough to completely obliterate a ghost in a single shot, much less any lasting wounds. The most injury a shot from their ectoblasters gave him were first degree burns and bruises that could compete with Jupiter's spot. So, harmful, yes. But nothing that should destroy.

With complete trust in this, Danny pulled the trigger.

The first revelation that something became horridly, terrifyingly wrong was the sibilant whine.

It was near a murmur, yet swiftly rose to have likelihood akin to a pained wheeze, then a much more obvious groan. The blob flopped and squirmed despite no obvious injury, and Danny didn't even realize the unwarranted grimace that had come to spread on his features.

Groaning became garbled moans, and moans became unsettling, hitched... Noises that panged the kid's heart.

Beside him, Jack had a delighted yip! "Great job, son! Our new weapon is working like pie! Speaking of, we should go for some pie,"

"But, its... The ghost. It looks like its in pain." A jarbled shriek seemed to respond.

"And that how you know it works!"

Maddie, who had been busy scratching away with a ballpoint, hummed a pleased tone. "I thought we explained it to you and Jazz this morning, sweetheart?"

"Explained what?"

"The invention!" The soft click of a capped pen, the dry heaves from the cage before them. "Your dad and I couldn't figure out how to harness condensed ecto energy capable of punching a hole right into a ghost's core without potentially overheating our weaponry."

"But we discovered that we could... Force the molecular bonds to detach themselves. Now, the atoms themselves keep reattaching, so we haven't figured out how to completely break down a sample of ectoplasm..."

"But the theory is— was— that if we can make it so the ghost is constantly being broken down and put together again on a molecular level, it will create enough physical pain to stun the ghost!" A cherry-lipped grin spread under her tinted goggles. A gargle resounded from the cage.

"Your—" Danny's stomach twisted. "Just going to let it... Sit like that? Let it break down and put itself back together endlessly?"

Jack boasted a laugh. "Sick and twisted of you, son! But don't worry," He kneeled closer to the cage, where the blob shivered and flopped. "It should be unstable enough that a single poke—"

Jack peeked two fingers into the surface of the blob's skin and was immediately met with a fine coverage of dripping, green ectoplasm.

"... And it'll break completely! Wow, I think some of it got in my mouth."

"Of course, we believe the effects will be much stronger on a larger ghost."

"Now if only we could catch one of those humanoid specters!"

"I wonder how much ectoplasm would explode if we tried this on that Phantom menace..."

Holy shit!

Amazing. I love this. Perfect angst, and delivered right to my doorstep. 👏👏👏

[always-and-forever-a-killjoy]

Building Home Chapter 4

Hey fuckers and welcome to another chapter of Building Home! I've decided to switch to posting on Saturdays because Fridays are always chaotic, just a heads up, but I'll still be posting regularly for at least another six weeks, hopefully longer if I get my ass together enough to write the last six chapters of this in those six weeks (or at least like, Chapter 11 and 12). Anyways, the song for last week was so big/so small from dear evan hansen. This week's isn't quite so tricky, I don't think!

Title: Building Home

Chapter Title: I’ll keep you safe inside

Chapter Wordcount: 2263

Chapter Summary:

The crew settles into living with Autumn Assassin and the house of soup crew, and the Analog Wars suck ass.

POV: Dr. Death Defying

Warnings: Injury mentions, death mentions.. (If you want to know what parts to skip, go to the end notes on AO3- I also put a brief summary of any important info in those parts. Stay safe!)

Taglist: @wishiwasthemoon-tonight @sleevesareforlosers @stressed-depressed-emo-mess @tasteofamnesia @dagger-queen​ @no-braincells-here @piratecherricola (message me, send an ask, or reblog/reply to one of my posts if you want to be added or removed)

AO3 Link

Chapter 1 AO3 Link

Chapter 1 Tumblr Post

Chapter 2 Tumblr Post

Chapter 3 Tumblr Post

(Actual fic under the cut)

They stayed with Autumn Assassin for a while longer, talking with the killjoys of the household and generally having a better time than just living alone. It was a little strange to have three of them in one small room, but none of them minded much. 

“I shared a room with my sister in Battery City,” Cherri Cola told the others. D restrained any surprise from showing on his face- Cherri almost never volunteered information about himself, and especially not his past. It was something killjoys didn’t talk about much and rarely shared with anyone except their crew. So D just nodded in acceptance.

“D and I are used to sharing,” Lily agreed. “So we’ll just have to stick it out,”

Autumn Assassin, meanwhile, had taken Cherri under their wing. They had the common trait of being an excellent shot, and Autumn had managed to get him a much nicer ray gun. 

“Scarecrow model,” They informed him. 

Cherri nodded as they positioned his hands on the new ray gun. “Right. Look around what you’re aiming at, keep your hands in this position and steady as you can, and don’t hesitate. Hesitation will kill you, kid.”

D was watching the lesson just like he had watched Lily teach Cherri, making sure Autumn wasn’t too rough. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the other killjoy- White Lily trusted them, and that was good enough for him- but he wanted to make sure Cherri’s wound healed properly as well. So he was sitting and watching as they taught Cherri how to shoot better than ever before. Cherri was taking to the lessons eagerly, wanting to learn how to fight. 

“Don’t hesitate,” he repeated, and pulled the trigger. 

Autumn Assassin whooped as the can fell. “Good shot, kid!”

Cherri was grinning as he glanced back at D. “A hundred and sixty.”

“I saw,” D grinned back. “That’s pretty fucking incredible, Cherri.”

“He’s a quick one,” Autumn agreed. “Needs to work on his hand-to-hand combat and reactions in the heat of battle, but he’s a good shot.”

“I’ll do hand to hand if you want to teach me,” Cherri offered quietly.

“Of course I do, kid, you’re a quick learner and frankly a lot of fun to teach.”

Cherri’s grin grew even wider. “I’m seventeen.”

“And I’m almost thirty, what’s your point? You’re a kid to me, even if you kick ass at shooting and probably other things too.”

“Fair.”

“Ready to kick some ass?”

“Yeah!”

“Be careful of your stitches,” D warned, but it wasn’t his place to stop Cherri. 

“I will be, don’t worry. I don’t feel like getting hurt again,” the other said dryly.

“Good, I don’t want you to get hurt either.”

“Overprotective,” Cherri said with an eye roll, but he was smiling. 

“I’d rather not have one of my best friends die because he was an idiot and ripped his stitches, thank you very much.”

“I’ll be careful.”

Cherri was…less than careful, in D’s opinion, but he didn’t rip any stitches while training with Autumn Assassin so that was a something, at least. He did, however, get very good at fighting with a variety of weapons, including but not limited to knives, ray guns, older style guns, and even simple hand-to-hand combat. Autumn Assassin’s name included ‘assassin’ for a reason, and it wasn’t that they could poison people.

Meanwhile, D and Lily dedicated their time to the radio station and recruiting more people. Killjoys had started to settle in other houses and buildings in this little town area, given how intact many of them were. It was becoming a whole little community, arsonists and crash queens living next to medics and some of the most peaceful rebels. So while Autumn Assassin was teaching Cherri to be terrifyingly good at fighting, D and Lily were wandering the area and getting to know the killjoys there.

They met Legolas Greenleaf, fantasy nerd and excellent maker of crepes, apparently, although given that it was the desert they couldn’t really verify that. He and his crew dressed like fantasy elves and kicked draculoid ass while shouting things like ‘dishonor on your lineage!’ and ‘spawn of Morgoth!’. There was also Tommy Chow Mein, who both of them knew from the wars and was running a little general store out of what had once been the town’s general store, and his assistant was a kid called Penny Pincher who had copper-colored hair and was a bit younger than Cherri.

The variety of killjoys in the town ranged from a short, grouchy killjoy who simply went by ‘Fuck’ and was one of the best medics out there to a tall, freckled killjoy called Angel Kisses who was an absolute sweetheart but would absolutely fuck you up. Ages ranged from some of the oldest soldiers of the Helium Wars (“I’m damn near forty.”) to the younger siblings and even children of some killjoys (“She’s a bit under a year, just barely weaned but we had to get her out of Battery City.”) From the news others brought in, they knew this wasn’t the only community of killjoys, but it was by far the largest. Here was where the center of the rebellion would be for another few years, and the unsuspecting Autumn Assassin’s house was at the center of it all.

Their house was already somewhat of a town hub, being the most intact and the one with the most residents, and Autumn Assassin seemed to encourage this.

“What with the amount of people here, we’ve always got extra food, and extra rooms for travelers. We’ve got the resources, might as well use them. And I don’t mind these dumbasses hanging around the living room, they bring some life to the place.” That was what they told D when he asked about it, leaning against the counter as the two of them watched the chaos unfold in their living room like it did almost every day. 

“They certainly do bring life. Also chaos.”

Autumn Assassin cackled. “That’s true. Nothing wrong with a bit of chaos, though. We are killjoys, after all.”

“True, we are.” D frowned. “Do you worry about Lil and I bringing bli down on your head?”

“If you do, we’ll tell them to fuck off.” Their face grew more serious. “I’m not kidding, though, Doctor Death. We give no fucks about Better Living, and we do give some fucks about you and your little crew. I worry a little about putting the younger members of the house in danger, but all of them knew what they were getting into. And all of them know how to fight.”

“I’m assuming you taught them?”

“How did you guess?” Their voice was utterly deadpan. “Not all of them, but yeah. I insist on teaching everyone who comes through some basic hand-to-hand combat and how to shoot a ray gun, if they don’t know. It’s my way of keeping them safe. Like your radio station.”

It was true, 109 in the sky had many goals, but one of them was keeping the killjoys safe and informed. The more they knew about upcoming dangers, the better they could fight back, and WKIL served as a hub of information. Killjoys radioed in or brought news of whatever they had found, from a supply truck that had been raided and had some extra supplies to exterminators coming to the desert. Code words were a part of this too, a cobbled together mixture of killjoy slang and actual code that served as yet another line of defense. Even if Better Living Industries figured out how to listen in, it wasn’t as if they would understand half the words being said, and Dr. Death Defying knew they had to keep it that way. Secrecy was essential to a successful rebellion, as Lily had put it. So the code was an important part of running the radio station, alongside the technology and the consistent news.

Even as they began to travel around again, taking the news van to broadcast from different Zones as a way of confusing Better Living Industries, they continued to return to Autumn Assassin’s house and the town around it as a home base. The room that Autumn Assassin had given them at the very start was theirs permanently now, and Autumn always kept it open for them. Sometimes they would be gone a day or two, sometimes an entire week or even a month or more. It depended on how close they thought Better Living Industries was to catching on, and traveling around seemed to be working as a method of confusing the corporation. In addition to the FM radio station of WKIL, multiple AM stations had sprung up that took the info from D’s daily broadcast and spread it over a wider range. Their signal was much easier to interfere with, which was why the original WKIL was an FM station, but it got the news out to the entirety of the Zones, providing an invaluable service. 

So the rebellion continued to grow, month after month, until the Zones were alive with killjoys and color, loud noise and firefights. Cherri’s training at the hands of Autumn Assassin had only made him more bold, much to D’s worry, but he had to admit that Cherri’s borderline insane antics were a very effective method. He was one of the few killjoys unafraid to fight almost any level of Better Living Industries employee, and one of the most effective at it too.

Lily, meanwhile, was working on organizing larger raids and even attacking Battery City itself. D was her right hand, as always, but he was also occupied with the radio station and other things. So Cherri had stepped partially into their role, accompanying Lily when she went on missions and standing by her side as a very effective deterrent against exterminators. Better Living Industries had intensified their efforts to find Lily and D, and Cherri was now top of their wanted lists as well. He had gone from an unremarkable and frankly unintimidating sixteen-year-old to one of the finest shots in the desert and a highly wanted killjoy, the name Cherri Cola whispered almost as often as you could hear whispers of Dr. Death Defying or White Lily.

He had gained a reputation for being one of few killjoys who usually worked alone, often taking on missions solo (and giving D and Lily a heart attack when he stumbled back in with a stab wound or ray gun shot, bruised and battered). That wouldn’t change until their last few crew members joined up, and even then, Cherri was fiercely independent both as a fighter and a person. He was loyal, that was for sure, willing to fight just about anything for D or Lily, but he would always prefer solo raids or missions.

That scared D shitless, but they couldn’t stop him and they trusted Cherri to keep himself safe, to an extent. He was still more reckless than D or Lily would like, but neither of them could really blame him. 

“I don’t know what he’s running from, but there’s something.” That was Lily, plunking down in a chair next to them.

“We’re all running from something, aren’t we?”

“Dark but true.”

The two of them knew what each other was running from better than anyone else. Both somewhat happy children back in Battery City, there was nothing in their childhood that they ran from, only a faint sense of nostalgia, but the war they had fought in had changed them both in ways they didn’t like to think about. There was a past there to run from, horrors to set right. D knew that Lily had a sense that she needed to put things right, needed to atone in some way for her deeds during the Helium Wars. If that atonement, that fight, took her life, she would accept it as such. 

It might have been selfish of him, but he would not atone. They were trying, of course, to make the world a better place, fighting for the future they believed in, but the past was the past, and D refused to die for the crimes he had committed then. He had fought to survive for long enough that he wasn’t giving up now, regardless of what fate would be just for them. The best they could and would do now was fight for the future, not die for the past. 

It wasn’t easy for him either, watching young killjoys fight and be injured and even die, but he had to believe in what they were fighting and dying for. They would break the stranglehold of Better Living Industries, they would live free and bring the same for their children and all the generations that would come after them. All this wasn’t for nothing.

That was what D told themself as they watched Cherri curl into a ball in the corner of the room, protecting the slash on his side like a wounded animal. That was what they repeated when Lily’s sobs shook the mattress at night, keeping the others awake even if they didn’t dare break the silence of the room. D just prayed the others’ spirits wouldn’t end up as broken as their bodies after claps.

This pattern continued, day after day and week after week as their missions got more dangerous and Cherri grew even more reckless and solitary. It wouldn’t be truly broken until far after the final few members of their crew arrived, but the one who arrived next did by far the most towards that end.

[lunaraen]

Romeo and/or Xara ask meme

Spell a character’s name in my askbox and I’ll tell you my headcanons…

R: What are their hands like?

Xara’s quick to point out that Romeo has hands that are soft, that he’s clunky with at first, hands that make it clear he’s never done a day of “real” work in his life. A while after everyone works on getting things back to normal and healing their own worlds and communities, though, he gets better with them, even if they’re decently nicked due to more than a couple of clumsy mishaps while building.

O: What would it take to break them, inside and out?

While he wasn’t fond of losing his powers at the time, he’s very willing to admit soon after that it was easily for the best. Romeo’s much less fond of thinking about how they were removed; the punches didn’t feel great, but Jesse getting in a few good punches that Romeo well deserved isn’t what bothers him either.

He will never feel comfortable about thinking of or remembering his form glitching out the way it did, trapping him briefly in Fred’s form and making him directly face the place where it all began.

M: What is their favourite dessert?

It’s a close tie between ice cream and cupcakes, because he loves how cold and refreshing ice cream is, especially given his prior fire/lava theme, but cupcakes are delicious and also slightly adorable and they are one of his favorite things about being “normal” again.

E: How are they with children?

Avoidant. Not that he’d just abandon a kid if he ended up in charge or watching them, but he’ll do his best to make sure that never happens, and most people are very willing to work with him to make sure it doesn’t because they don’t want him being in charge of kids either.

O: What would it take to break them, inside and out?

Getting his power back would horrify him.

Getting them back just to return to his old habits, to act and become the way he once was, would shatter him, whether he realizes it while in the throes of readjusting to his powers or when they’re taken away again.

&

X: What’s their most petty little secret?

Fred’s last words were to her, not Romeo. What Xara isn’t too keen to let Romeo know, at least not until reconstruction is well underway and he’s gained some of her trust back, is that those last words involved asking Xara to go easy on Romeo and not blame him too much.

A: What are/were this character’s best subjects in school?

She was best at learning how to fight, when Fred started teaching them to spar.

R: What are their hands like?

Xara’s hands are fairly big, though she will forever hate her paper-thin nails. They’re well scarred, marked by injuries and accidents alike, but still fairly flexible, and her punches are almost as terrifyingly powerful as her axes.

A: What are/were this character’s best subjects in school?

Her second best subject was learning how to fly, how to soar above everything and how to hover just a little off the ground. She misses it a lot.

[rorykillmore]

✍ ⚠ ♨ for heather c, ☺ ☘ ❤ for siobhan, ☕ ☂ for trish, ⌚ ♿ ⚠ for madeline

for heather c ;

already did the handwriting one! so…

⚠ : How does your muse react to possibly dangerous situations? Do they face them head-on, or do they plan out their actions first?

heather is… used to not having much to be afraid of (even if that may not be the case now), and that paired with her temperament means she’s. well. not always good at fully recognizing how dangerous something might be (as someone may or may not have already pointed out to her,)

she’s headstrong at best and immediately and aggressively confrontational at worst, and she’s also not very good at… choosing her words carefully or backing down down from a situation even when she probably should. and being real a lot of her coping mechanisms are kind of deliberately borderline-endangering to begin with (which is oftentimes kind of standard for someone who’s been working through a neglectful situation).

long story short this all makes her particularly likely to get herself into trouble when it comes to a place like denny, especially when she’s so frequently on edge (hint: fear does not make her much less volatile than anger does)

♨ : Does your muse have good table manners? How do they feel about bad table manners? 

i don’t think heather goes out of her way to practice like, fucking pristine etiquette or anything, like she’s not living her life like she’s in the princess diaries, but i also feel like people with really bad table manners is probably one of her pet peeves. imagine having to eat with like… kurt and ram at any given time,

so yeah she’s pretty much just a typical teenage girl about it. she’s hardly overly fancy but she’s about as neat and meticulous as she is with everything else, and very quickly gets annoyed if someone is too Rowdy in comparison.  too bad she missed weekly beacon heights dinners with judar and hakuryuu,

for siobhan ;

☺ : What is your muse’s smile like? Do they smile often? 

siobhan pulls off a more masterful ‘fake-polite business smile’ than most people on denny would probably believe, given her history at catco and how intent she once was on moving up through the ranks there. buuut these days you’re much more likely to catch one of her trademark smirks – oftentimes biting and meant to instigate, sometimes (with people she tolerates better) just amused, but always relatively detached from true sincerity.

an actual, genuine smile from her is much more rare (i feel like probably only stardust is successful in occasionally pulling them out of her, and that’s very occasionally), and surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly, if you really know her) kind of clumsy. she has a pretty smile, if also a very contained one, but with how obviously unused to it she is it tends to be more endearing than anything.

☘ : Does your muse believe in luck? How about fate?

well she’s irish, so,

nah but yeah, siobhan was raised on a lot of little luck-based superstitions, though more at the hands of her aunt and grandmother than her parents themselves. they’re not the sort of things she ever took particularly seriously, once she grew out of them, although…

…well, now that she’s the victim of an actual ancient banshee curse, she tends to give things like that a little more weight. you can never be too careful!

though i think she’s definitely less inclined to believe in any concept of ‘fate’ because that’s dumb and corny, though at least then she would have something to blame for all the shit that tends to happen to her.

❤ : What are your muse’s thoughts on love? If they are not in a relationship, do they believe that they will ever find a perfect someone for them?

hmmmmmmm Bad.

siobhan is unmistakably kind of bitter when it comes to this particular thing. platonic love his hard enough for her to grapple with (or, you know, acknowledge the existence of at all) and romantic love is. well.

she’s been on denny for over a year so she’s not so much hung up on winn anymore but it still kind of… stings to think about, sometimes.she has a hard time believing that people care about her in general , so the fact that she almost did with him and then felt she was betrayed is in many ways a. difficult thing to recover from. so the idea of pursuing someone romantically makes her kind of defensive and scornful, and given that time’s been running out for her for awhile now, it’s not really something she’s thought about to begin with.

i can’t wait for her to marry rocket!

for trish ;

☕ : Does your muse prefer coffee or tea?

either or both, really! she has more of a preference for tea if pressed to pick and usually stocks her apartment with several different varieties at any given time, but she’s hardly opposed to stopping at a good cafe for some coffee.  most days as long as she gets some caffeine in her… that’s what matters in the end. she’s one of those people who is not particularly pleasant if she’s deprived of caffeine in the mornings.

☂  : Does your muse like rain?

to be specific, she likes the feeling of being inside and warm on like… a cool, fall rainy day. she likes the sound of thunder, and rain against window panes, and the warmth of firelight against a grey cloudy sky outside. but actually being caught outside in the rain is, no, not ideal.

i mean… there’s a part of her that wants to revel in things like that just a little, but it’s difficult for her to indulge it. there’s a lot of ways growing up in the industry will mess you up as a kid, even under the best of circumstances, so (often times in spite of herself) she retains habits like constantly watching what she eats, how she looks, whether or not her hair and make up are ruined by a sudden new york city downpour… you get the idea.

madeline ;

⌚ : Is your muse good with keeping on schedule for meetings, appointments, or events, or are they always late? Or, are they always a bit early?

as a mother of two children who’s also working a parttime job, madeline is… terrifyingly good at scheduling things and making and keeping appointments. even when she has to juggle several of them in a week, she has like, a photographic memory for what times things start and she is always a few minutes early (with the exception of when she wants to make a point of making a dramatic entrance, of course!).

you can generally count on her to get where she needs to be, or to get you where you need to be, on time. also she will willingly handle all phone calls and appointment making for denny kids with phone anxiety if asked so she is, personally, my dream mom,

♿ : Has your muse had any injuries in the past?

honestly she was something of a tomboy growing up, so back then she was used to having scrapes and bruises and sprains and what have you. she spent a lot of time outside. she was into sports (particularly like… fucking tennis or something, i forget what the book mentioned specifically).

more recently there was the infamous ankle injury that she sustained yelling at a bunch of teenagers in the middle of the street (as you do), which funnily enough is the whole reason she became friends with jane. looking back, she’s pretty grateful for that one (though some people from town will claim that it’s the whole reason everything spiraled into disaster and i guess… technically… they’re not wrong?)

when she came to denny she was a little banged up from a pretty dire recent encounter, but she’s had time to heal since then. most of the time madeline is pretty stoic about her injuries. she might occasionally boast about them, but she rarely complains.

⚠ : How does your muse react to possibly dangerous situations? Do they face them head-on, or do they plan out their actions first?

for all of madeline’s tendencies to immediately be confrontational and be unafraid of starting discourse, she’s not used to very serious, life-threatening danger. so you’d think that would mean that suddenly coming up against it would quell her… readiness a little, but…

well, you never really know how you’re going to react to those situations until you’re in them, and suffice to say that madeline now knows. her immediate reaction when [vague spoilers] perry fucking lost it was to leap in and try to defend her friends against someone a lot more physically powerful, in spite of knowing exactly what he was capable of by that point. it wasn’t something she thought about, it was just something she did – and would do again. when it comes down to dire circumstances, the odd don’t really matter to her, if someone she cares about is at stake. she’s a real mama bear.

all of that being said, though, in more mundane Discourse Situations she can be a very meticulous and sometimes terrifyingly thorough planner. someone please stop her

[ocelysium]

A Step to the Past Pt. 2

Summary: On one painfully meaningful day for Jason, he make some mistakes and is unable to fix them before the Joker strikes, causing havoc in his life and the life of a very important person.

Type: Angst

Warnings: Violence, death implications

Word Count: 1030

Tags: @saramdeuli @the-singing-canary @dc-comics-imagines @royslittleharper @melyaliz @schninner-writes-some-stuff @kori-the-cutie

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 2 [LILY’S POV] | PART 3 | PART 4

MASTERLIST

Everything was excruciatingly painful. Damian had been through a lot, but pain will still be pain and it sucked. He laid there, panting and trying to get a grip. A few feet away from him lay Lily, unconscious and frighteningly unmoving. The Joker had did a number on both of them with that crowbar of his, but while Damian was given more of a beating he was used to it, Lily wasn’t.

A shudder swept through his body when he remembered the torture they endured. Her screams were still ringing in his ears and he knew it would haunt him for a very long time. He was furious, but more than anything he was scared for her. He tried to get close to her, but his body was telling him otherwise.

The Joker was long gone and he left a bomb with a timer for the world to see. Damian heard about this particular tactic, and the fact that he was doing it again--with Lily no less--was sickening to say the least. Damian was more than devastated, but even he knew the amount of grief this would put Jason through was immeasurable. His father and brothers would be the same for they would lose him again, this time in the same way that they lost one of their own.

Everything about this situation disgusted him to the core. The Joker had a unique talent for doing that, crafting perfectly horrifying plans that hit every one of their buttons.

Suddenly, Lily began to shift. A groan echoed through the warehouse and Lily rolled onto her back, crying out in pain.

“Ummi!” Damian called out in a pained voice. Lily turned her head very slowly towards him and a horrified look overtook her face.

“D-Dami!” she gasped. He once again attempted to get up, but it was no use. Instead, he saw Lily lifting herself up. Watching her struggle and hearing her winces and groans hurt almost as much as the injuries itself.

“Save your strength Ummi.” Damian tried to protest, but Lily already made her decision. She slowly and painfully crawled over to where the youngest Wayne was. As soon as she got there, she sat up and took hold of his body. He bit back a cry as she brought him to her chest, cradling him like a child.

“Oh Dami, I’m so sorry.” she sobbed. “I’m sorry he hurt you. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.”

“I-It’s okay.” Damian stammered. “But we must hurry. The bomb--” Damian glanced at the time and his stomach dropped. They only had a minute left and the door was locked. Even if they made it to the door and picked it, they wouldn’t be able to get away fast enough with their injuries.

Lily followed Damian’s gaze and her eyes hardened. “No…” she breathed, knowing how the story went all too well. “T-That monster…”

“Dammit!” he exclaimed, feeling nothing but disappointment. He should’ve protected her. He was Robin for god’s sake! He was the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul, grandson of Ra’s al Ghul. He was trained by the League and he couldn’t even stop that clown from taking them. He should’ve noticed that it was coming.

Lily was shaking and Damian thought she was frightened, but the look on her face told a different story. She held fear, the same fear he saw, but it was overshadowed by a strange sense of determination. She held him closer and shifted--stiffly--so that her entire body was covering him.

“Do you trust me, Damian?” she whispered into his ear, her voice shaky but her tone somewhat comforting.

“Always.” he answered without hesitation. Lily smiled and kissed the top of his head affectionately.

“Then please believe me when I tell you this; I will not allow you to die.”

It was a race against time and Jason hated the fact that he knew it. Everyone was racing to the warehouse on the opposite side of the city and knowing the date, Jason had an uncomfortable assumption to what The Joker was planning all along.

His heart was beating rapidly in his chest and he tried not to think of what may’ve already happened. He was worried about Damian, he had grown somewhat attached to the kid even if he would rather die than admit it. Besides, he was so young, he didn't deserve any of this.

However, the person that occupied his thoughts right now was Lily. Damian could handle whatever torture The Joker had planned. Lily, on the other hand, might not. Just the thought of her getting hurt made his heart ache. He didn't think he could forgive himself for letting her get taken. He would never allow himself happiness again if her last memory of him was him walking out on her.

The warehouse came into view and it was terrifyingly similar to where he died. They--Dick and Bruce--climbed out of the Batmobile and they all ran towards the warehouse.

Just as they were getting close, it suddenly exploded. Pieces of wood and debris flew in all directions. The fire and smoke created grotesque shadows that danced on the ground. The light, heat and sheer force of the explosion was so strong it sent the vigilantes flying back.

Jason was the last to be back on his feet, having been the closest to the warehouse when the explosion occurred. He heard Dick yell something, but there was still a ringing in Jason’s ears. Seeing the flaming building, it felt as if his heart had stopped beating. He could barely find his breath.

“No…”

This was much too similar to his fate. The realization that both his younger brother and the love of his life was now gone finally made itself known to him and there weren't words that could describe the despair he felt.

“NO!” He screamed, repeating the word over and over, along with Damian and Lily’s names. Dick was crying and doing the same while Bruce could only stare ahead, still in complete shock.

Jason fell to his knees, unable to hold himself up any longer. Tears shamelessly fell from his face.

It was over. They were gone.