#war tw | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nerdpoe · 1 year

Text

Like Facing off Against C'Thulu, but it's Really Just your Fears. Part 3

Part one, Part two, Part four, AO3

Sorry about the wait, stress and life happened, and also this chapter is gonna be a bit different. Sorry if it doesn't follow the flow of the previous two, feel free to ignore this one if you didn't like it.

Dick felt himself crawling towards wakefulness, and the second he realized he was waking up his body forced him to be fully aware.

Painfully so.

The ache was vicious, his skin burned on the inside, and his stomach muscles wouldn’t stop twitching; the memory of being cut open making his own insides flinch.

It was a terrifying feeling, when each movement made his skin pull against the stitches holding him together.

But he recognized the lights above him, the smells around him. The chittering of bats and the gentle hum of electronics, the echoes of a cavern dark and deep enough to hide one of the world’s biggest secrets.

He was home. He was also very, very drugged.

His attempt to sit up instead resulted in one hand lazily swatting himself in his own face. Some kind soul delicately lifted his wayward hand and gently set it on his side.

Dr. Thompkins' relieved face was the first thing his bleary eyes made out.

“Welcome to the world of the waking, sleeping beauty,” she said, brushing his bangs out of his face.

Dick hummed, enjoying the feeling of a kind touch.

It helped to banish the ghosts of hands that were tracing his ribs.

Against his will, his eyes closed.

He was still very much awake, though.

“To prevent you from doing something monumentally stupid, yes, the boy was saved from his parents,” she continued, noticing his need for contact and leaving her hand where it was, “He is currently upstairs, still settling in. I believe Tim is showing him how to use the online high school they found.”

Dick knew that if he was not drugged up to his ears, the feeling of joy at the news that the kid would be able to continue his education would not have been as muted as it was.

“Bruce is fostering him right now, and it seems to be going well. Slow, but well.”

There was another set of steps walking into the room, but Dick couldn’t bring himself to turn his head away from the gentle hand laid on it.

“The boys…parents have been escorted to Arkham. Our only hope of them being there doing any good is if they turn on their fellow inmates during the next outbreak.”

Dick agreed, and also agreed with whoever had put their hand in his own. He squeezed it lightly, taking note of its size.

Damian!

The precise steps that walked in after Damian, along with the shuffling of the blankets being rearranged…

Alfred!

Two of his favorite people! This was so much better than being asleep.

“His name is Daniel, he goes by Danny; he’s a meta,” Damian’s voice cut through, steady for all that his hand in Dick’s was not, “He possesses super hearing and super strength at a minimum, so we felt it pertinent that he be made aware of our vigilante status before a miscommunication could drive him to an unsafe situation.”

That did make sense. Damian was so smart. Dick was so proud of his little brother.

“As for you; you’ve been in a small coma for around two weeks,” Leslie said, her hand removing itself from his forehead heedless of his pitiful whine, “Your body needs to heal, Dick. I’m sorry, but with physical therapy and how long we will need to wait until we can even begin to attempt that, you’re looking at being benched for a good seven to nine months.”

Well,

“Fuck.”

“Master Dick, language!”

~~~~~~

Sam hadn’t been there when she’d needed to be.

And she knew that even past her Dying Day, she would never forgive herself for that.

She’d been out sick when Danny had finally broken down, had been snippy with her mother and gotten her phone taken away when he’d reached out to her, and had been asleep when his shit parents had finally taken the hint that no one wanted them in Amity and fled.

And they’d taken Danny with them.

So she may have lost it.

Possibly.

The past few months had been full of interesting new experiences for her; Domestic Terrorism, starting riots, getting arrested, committing assault, getting arrested again, performing unauthorized demolition, almost getting arrested a third time by the GIW instead of the cops…

Just girl things, really.

Paulina had actually been with her every step of the way, and hey; they actually really got along when it came to burning down repressive regimes. Paulina knew how to make a fantastic molotov cocktail, and Sam had loads of unwanted clothing she needed to get rid of that could be used for scraps.

But after causing so much chaos, the entire town was now starting to get behind her. They didn’t give a shit about ghosts, but they wanted the GIW out of their home.

But they needed help to do that, and to get that help then that firewall and media blackout had to go.

Which was where Tucker had stepped in.

Tucker had locked himself in his house after the Fentons had run away, obsessed with finding Danny through any means necessary. He’d thrown himself into cyberspace, and had been essentially chucking himself at the firewalls the GIW had set up around all of Amity. Mostly it ended in excruciating headaches that Sam couldn’t do anything to help with, except to just be there for him while he recovered.

But it had finally gotten one result, the exact one they’d needed.

The firewall was hosted on one server.

Just one.

Stupid, but useful for them, and that was what mattered.

It had taken a week to plan the massive riot currently distracting the entire GIW-every single citizen that was willing was using their Liminal abilities out in the open for the sole purpose of being destructive.

Distraction firmly in place, she grabbed Valerie, grabbed Tucker and dragged him away from his hovel, and forced Vlad to comply.

Blackmail did wonders when dealing with rich megalomaniac assholes, although given his face when she’d mentioned Danny, there was a very real chance she hadn’t needed the blackmail at all. She knew he knew something, but she didn’t want to know. It was a feeling she had; if she was told, she would break, and at that moment, she could not afford any weakness.

Together, they’d broken into the Ghost Investigation Ward HQ in Amity and forced the tech blackout curtain to burn to the ground.

Every tweet, every Youtube video, every TikTok, every Paranormal Investigator that had ever been blocked had had their posts stored, apparently to be used in evidence as ‘treason against the state’.

A stupid oversight, but the GIW appeared to make it a habit to excel in physical violence without the brains to back it up.

It had only taken Tucker fifteen minutes to have every single Twitter account send out all of those blocked tweets at the same time, absolutely flooding the Justice League Official with notifications and getting nearly everyone suspended for suspected bot use.

Youtube was suddenly absolutely filled with videos of people interviewing ghosts, insights into ghost culture, amateur scientists who hadn’t been allowed to leave Amity clumsily recording their findings of Liminality in Mortals.

TikTok was filled with teenagers making memes with Ghosts, Ghosts themselves making memes with stolen phones, and clips of pure unadulterated violence from the GIW chasing them both down.

Sam took a moment to appreciate the comments and retweets, watching as the internet denizens collectively went from curious and puzzled to absolutely furious.

Good.

Why should she be the only one angry?

It was time the world knew.

Then her phone pinged, an alert coming through from outside of the Amity area.

Jazz could wait, they needed to ensure the flow of information was uninterrupted.

But it pinged again.

And again.

Then Tucker’s phone pinged.

Sighing at the intrusion, Sam pulled out the brick of a phone she insisted on keeping-and her mind screeched to a halt.

Danny.

He said he was in Gotham, that he was fine, that he was staying with a Foster family and was recovering. The texts dated back by two weeks, and the texts after that were Danny just…talking about normal family stuff. He was seeing a therapist, seeing an actual doctor for his physical needs, getting used to having siblings again, eating regular meals, not being chased every day of his life just for existing.

Learning to live again.

Sam didn’t realize she was crying until Vlad, coughing awkwardly, offered her a handkerchief.

He was okay.

Danny was safe.

~~~~~~

Bruce was watching on from the batcomputer as Danny and Dick reunited.

Danny had been unsure of himself at first, but Dick had beckoned him closer and worked his charm, citing that if he’d been able to sit up then he’d juggle for the traumatized teen.

Danny had, instead, juggled random medical supplies for Dick. They’d hit it off from there, and got on like a house on fire.

Tim was at work, Damian and Duke were at school, Steph and Cass had left citing that they “had to leave this testosterone-infested house and get some fresh air”, which meant they were probably working with Oracle on a case they were trying to hide from him.

He’d figure out what it was, of course, but if they wanted to handle it on their own he’d leave them to their own devices. Unless it was the fighting ring. No one was allowed to approach human traffickers alone, no matter how loudly Jason complained.

Bruce frowned and his hands hovered over the keyboard. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to just take a quick peek-

His phone pinged.

A message from Tim.

Another ping, a different tone; one from Duke.

Tim again.

Duke again, four times in a row.

A message from Steph.

Damian eight times in a row.

Tim again.

Jason?

A whopping twenty-eight from Jason, all in a row.

What on earth was-?

A call, Barbara’s name on the screen.

He glanced over at Dick and Danny as he answered the call; Dick, still hopped up on pain meds, hadn’t noticed.

Danny had, though.

His head had turned enough to keep Bruce in his line of sight through the window.

“Yes? Is someone hurt?”

“Bruce, you need to check twitter. Danny’s hometown? The weird one I couldn’t get past the firewalls on? Yeah, someone on the inside took down the media blackout. It’s been a hotbed of Crimes against Humanity, violations of meta and Alien rights, violations of Basic Rights, and I don’t even know how many treaties with other dimensions this place has broken.”

Bruce hadn’t been aware he was standing until the faint conversation between Danny and Dick came to an abrupt halt.

“Human experimentation, alien experimentation, coverups, abuse of power; Bruce, this is bad. Amity is going to need League presence to protect the citizens while the government gets this sorted out. There’s already fighting in the streets, I wouldn’t be surprised if casualties have already started.”

“I’ll go to the tower as soon as I can.”

Bruce disconnected the call and made his way over to the medbay, opening the door to the mostly sound-proofed room.

He had to take care of something very important first.

“Danny,” he started, ridding his voice of the edge it had gained and deliberately softening it, “Someone took down the media blackout on Amity, and the internet is having a field day with it. I’d like you to stay off of social media, but I’m not going to order you not to go on it; just be aware that there are some pretty disturbing things out there right now.”

He would never forbid this child from being able to access social media; the day Bruce became like Danny’s parents in any way he’d sign over the custody of all his legal children to Clark. He couldn't forbid the boy from basic social interaction for his age group. He would never isolate him like that.

Danny had just started trusting them; he’d fallen asleep in front of Bruce for the first time yesterday, and had actually talked back to Jason when they’d been in one of their morbid debates, not an ounce of fear in his face.

He would hate for Danny to have come so far, only to have it all negated with one badly timed peek into TikTok.

Danny stared at him with wide eyes, his hand tightening around Dick’s.

“What media blackout?”

Oh.

He hadn’t…

No way.

“Didn’t you wonder why the League was never called to help out your hometown?”

Please, please, please-

“I mean, the government was there, and they were pretty-uh. Pretty…efficient, in finding abnormalities.” As he spoke, Danny’s face grew pale and his gaze dropped.

Damn it, damn them, and damn every person that had ever failed this boy.

Bruce pulled up a chair and sat down, silencing his phone and sliding it into his pocket.

“Danny, what do you know of meta rights?”

Danny’s confused look just grew.

“What’s a meta?”

Bruce closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and attempted to center himself. Danny didn’t know he was called a meta, and given the severity of what Oracle had just told him, had most likely been told that he deserved to be punished for existing.

It was difficult to ask for help when one didn’t even know there was help available.

“You, and I heavily suspect the majority of people in your hometown. You all fall under various laws designed to protect metas, to ensure that you are not abused or discriminated against.”

There was a shaky inhale, and Bruce opened his eyes to Dick rubbing circles with his thumb onto the back of Danny’s hand.

Danny was crying.

“So Sam and Tucker won’t be taken?”

Bruce knew those names, knew they were friends of his youngest charge. He hadn’t known they were metas, which begged the question; was Amity Park a city made up entirely of metas?

The concept was a bit too much for Bruce to consider, so he steered away from it and focused on the child in front of him.

“No. They have just as much right to security and safety as the next citizen. As do you.”

Danny shook his head, ignoring when Dick tried to gain his attention to reaffirm what Bruce had just said.

“But I’m not a meta; I’m only half human.”

Bruce took another deep breath, trying and failing to reign in his anger. He was not successful, and Dick took advantage of his silence to step in.

“Danny, you have abilities beyond being human; that makes you a meta by legal definition,” Dick explained quietly, anger hiding behind the sympathy in his voice, “So you deserve just as many protections as Duke.”

Danny’s eyes grew wide.

“So I can talk about Duke’s powers and he won’t be-he’ll be safe? He won’t get hurt?”

Bruce took out his phone and sent a text to Clark.

He would have to miss this particular mission, regardless of what he had told Barbara.

He had a previous victim of Amity Park right in front of him, and his priority was to ensure that Danny learned all the legal ways he was entitled to protection by the law.

Besides, as long as he stipulated that Diana be in charge, it would be fine. That was the beauty of being a part of a much larger team; the rare instance he was otherwise occupied, there were others to step in.

He would send over Red Robin though, just in case. And Orphan. Oracle was already overlooking the situation, she wouldn’t mind orchestrating rescue and containment, surely?

Instructions sent, he slipped his phone into his pocket and looked back to Dick and Danny.

“Do you want to go over the laws concerning metas, Danny?” He asked, leaning forward and resting a hand lightly on the boy’s shoulder.

Danny nodded.

Bruce nodded back, grabbed the tablet Dick had been using to entertain himself, pulled up documentaries about the history of meta rights, and began.

~~~~~~

The streets of Amity Park were filled with a rolling mass of people and ghosts, all fighting against government agents in pure white suits. If there had been order, it was no longer present.

Buildings were on fire, the few adults who still had their rationality were trying to either shepherd or shield the small children that had gotten caught in the crosshairs, corpses were lying on the street only to have the ghost of that person jump up and dive right back into the frenzy, and the few unlucky enough to get caught were being dragged screaming into vans.

The ghosts were clearly against the Guys in White, but also had no regard for the humans in their presence. The humans, likewise, were using weapons clearly meant for ghosts against the Guys in White, damaging their allies in the process.

The streets were one big free-for-all, and no one was coming out on top.

Even if the Justice League could round up the humans and give them proper orders, the ghosts were a risk as entities with unknown powers who were prone to severe emotional outbursts. Which, in turn, made the humans nervous, and more likely to keep anti-ghost weapons on them, which started the whole cycle over.

It was a mess.

Red Robin maneuvered the batplane over a football field, the only clear place of landing.

Orphan was behind Red Robin, across from Red Hood, and he could hear the leather creaking in her gloves with how hard she was gripping the armrests.

And Red Hood, who had snuck on board because there was no way in fuck he was letting his siblings into a warzone alone, calmly switched out his rubber bullets for real ones.

This was not the kind of situation where a minor ouchie would keep the baddies down.

This had to be permanent.

He’d try for nonlethal shots where he could, but he’d seen the lengths the Guys in White were willing to go through the windshield. He would have to work in the background and rely on the chaos to divert the League’s attention away from his existence, but it was doable.

“Stand up, Pretender; we have work to do.”

There was no way Bruce had known how bad it was, or he would never have sent anyone other than himself. Large bad guys? No problem. But this?

This was war, plain and simple.

How lucky for Red Hood, then, that his little Pretender was far more violent that Bruce would ever know. The piles of Ra’s soldier’s corpses were a testament to that. If there was anyone else better suited for a battleground, it was Robin, and the kid had a very important math test in twenty minutes.

Orphan joined him at the door, and after a few seconds Red Robin joined them.

He shoved all the spare, useless thoughts to the back of his head and made his way off the plane.

He stepped into …something. Something wet, that stuck to his shoes, and smelled like stagnant water and copper. The grass was overgrown and wet with a mix of green and red liquid, and just from his position alone he could see the corpses of at least twenty white suited agents.

Whoever had laid them out had done a damn good job, but Hood had a feeling that whoever had done it was probably no longer among the living.

He looked at Red Robin and nodded.

Red Robin lightly touched the communicator in his ear and started working with Oracle to find out where they would be needed the most.

Hood, meanwhile, was distracted.

For all that this place was drenched in terror and pain, it felt…homey. It felt like he was home, or close to it.

Like a piece of him that had been missing was nearby.

He felt, for the first time since his rebirth, almost complete.

The Lazarus pit was humming in the back of his mind, a constant presence of satisfaction pushing against what his humanity was telling him was very, very wrong. Why did this scene satisfy him? It was carnage, it wasn’t meant to generate this feeling of…of being pleased-

Orphan lightly tapped his arm, motioning with her head towards a large, fuckall knight.

The knight just in turn just stood there. Staring at them. Staring at him, specifically.

Hood quietly shifted so that he was in front of Red Robin; a bo staff would do fuckall to that metal armor, and Hood would have to provide the opening for RR’s other tricks to come into play.

The head tilted, the trio of Bats braced themselves, and-

“My Prince!”

What?

“Your father still sleeps, locked in eternal slumber, but if you give us an order we will gladly obey!”

The knight was clearly looking at Hood. Hood tilted his head minutely at RR, but the bird shrugged his shoulders.

“What makes you say I’m the Prince you’re looking for?”

Buy time; he had to buy time for either Red Robin to figure something out, Orphan to sneak up on the knight, or one of the Big Hitters from the League to arrive.

“You, and all who have been baptized in the blood of the King Himself and survived, have passed judgment and taken his bloodline unto yourselves.”

There was a whole hell of a lot that Hood did not understand about what had just been said, but he had a feeling it was something he didn’t want to know. This ghost seemed powerful, if not unhinged, so he could just send the guy away so he wouldn’t have to contaminate his ears with Shit He Did Not Need To Hear.

“Great; help defend against the Guys in White and tell the other ghosts to cooperate with the Justice League.”

The knight jackknifed up, and bowed.

“Your Will shall be done!”

And the knight…was gone. Just, poof! Disappeared.

Hood groaned and raised a hand to rub the bridge of his nose, only to hit himself in the helmet.

Fuck.

What was he supposed to do with that information?

“Well, Your Royal Liegely Highness Prince Red Hood Sir, Constantine says we need to get to the town square,” Red Robin gave an overly extravagant bow, pointing towards Orphan who was already almost out of the football field.

Hood ignored him and stalked towards Orphan.

He was never going to live this shit down.

“Also, My Royal Princley Liege, how the fuck are we going to explain you to the League?”

Fuck, he would have to be front and center to issue orders.

What a shit day.

Okay, so the idea behind this is that the Lazarus Pits, the mains ones the side ones the random ones-they're all Pariah Darks blood/ectoplasm. As he is King of the Infinite Realms, they're pretty powerful, so they can heal and, in certain cases, revive.

Provided you survive them.

If you survive them, you get a piece of Pariah Dark in you and a guarantee that you will become a ghost destined for the Zone. Every alive person and dead person who has been in the pits are viewed as legal Princes and Princesses by the Ghost Zone.

So by Ghost Zone standards, Ra's and Jason are related. Ra's and Damian are still grandfather and grandson, but both are Princes.

Danny Defeating Pariah did not count, as he had to use an external suit to do it and could not rely fully on his own power. What Danny did do is prove himself worthy to be Fright Knights Page and Successor.

Idk, weird idea, decided to roll with it, gonna need one more chapter to close this baby out

@skulld3mort-1fan @zelabee @waspsarebetterthanbeesanyways @ailithnight @randomkiddoscrewingaround @apointlessbox @pyramaniac @emergentpanda-blog @pastalavistamf @gin2212 @beacedocrime @spectralstardustandphantomnights @introvert-even-on-the-internet @candeartist422 @icarusinstatic @overtherose @toomanyfandoms11 @redhoneysugarorange @vythika96 @blueflipflops @undead-essence @readerzj @rainbowbunny0159 @cursedzucchini @firegirl108 @malice-of-the-sunrise @cryptid-fisherman @terzatheunderscorerima @avelnfear @amercurio @ritzocha @the-archer-goddess

#phanfic #internalcthulufic #dpxdc #dcxdp #dp x dc #dc x dp #whoops #almost forgot #results of vivisection #gore tw #corpses tw #war tw

263 notes · View notes