bat-therapy

[bat-therapy]

i feel somewhat obligated to mention that my last post was intended to be a scattered idea dump and very quickly turned into... pretty heavy angst. HE DOESN'T DIE I PROMISE!! he gets better!!! and his family is there to support him!!! it just.. takes a while to get there!

[bat-therapy]

a bird's wings

warnings: gun violence (it's jason. what did you expect)

Dick doesn't fall.

It's become somewhat of an ongoing bit within the family. He's trained for such a long time ("too long," Tim complains, immediately after falling off a set of bars) that it's become almost second nature. He moves with the ease of decades of practice. His body had been trained almost from birth to be more flexible, to move his weight at the strangest angles, to keep stretching beyond his limits - all with a smile on his face.

It doesn't matter what League-inspired traps Damian leaves on the stairs, silently watching and analyzing the way in which Dick barely spares razor a passing glance as he simply bends out of the way. It doesn't matter if Cass tries for a well-timed shove down the stairs when his body is positioned just the wrong way, not when Dick simply vaults over the bannister, balancing on the rail with one hand for just long enough that Cass knows it's intentional, the cocky bastard. It doesn't matter how many of them team up against him - and they have tried.

Even when he does fall - as he tells his family constantly, he does fall - it's an elegant thing. If his hand slips, it's quickly replaced by another, redirecting him through the air, moving with a wind that only exists for him. When his feet don't meet the ground quite like he expected, his momentum carries him into a roll that looks just as intentional as his original movement. His mistakes are erased in the space between heartbeats, expression unwavering, a true performer.

In fact, Dick is so agile that Duke, when they first met, had wholeheartedly believed that he had to be a meta-human. Sure, there are plenty of flexible and agile people out there, but it's unnerving how he moves. His joints bend too far; his ligaments stretch beyond Duke's comfort. In a moment of curiosity, Duke asked Jason and Tim. Jason's expression didn't change (dying internally), and Tim made an odd choking noise (swallowing his own laughter). Duke interpreted these as (Jason) he was correct in his belief, which was no laughing matter, and (Tim) Duke should not know about Dick's meta-human status. It took years (and a blood test in the Batcave) for Duke to believe that Dick was actually a very unusual human.

Bruce, in his quietest moments, thinks it's magic. Years ago, lives ago, Jason had described being Robin as magic. And, of course, the role does hold its own power, but Dick's magic has always been his own. He was magic before he was Robin, and he was Bruce's son - a title that carried its own kind of magic.

That magic extended to his nights out on patrol, particularly when he was with Red Hood and Robin. Of course, he often found himself Batman's patrol route - Nightwing, Red Hood, and Robin tagging along just for shits. Hell, Nightwing wasn't even supposed to be out - not when he'd had so many consecutive night patrols - but with so many of them, what could go wrong?

That night, the four of them cornered a criminal on a rooftop. Even after clambering up a fire escape, Nightwing's breathing had barely changed, Batman's was easily concealed, Robin had tested a new grappling hook, and no one is quite sure how breathing works for Red Hood after some oddities in the Lazarus Pit.

Instead of surrendering, the desperate, stupid man had sprinted directly at them, firing a gun wildly with one hand and screaming at the top of his lungs. Nightwing sidestepped easily, having seen similar idiocy in Bludhaven. What he wasn't expecting was to step into Robin. He adjusted, angling his body to the side to plant his other foot--

--which landed on Batman's cape, right as the older man was turning to watch the criminal run. The material pulled out from under him just in time for the criminal to impact Nightwing directly. On its own, it would barely be enough to move him, and even still, Nightwing watches as the man bounces off him directly into Red Hood's grasp.

But in this moment, in the perfect cascade of errors, Nightwing stumbles backwards off the roof.

Nightwing doesn't panic immediately. He twists his body, turning his stumble into a somersault without a second thought. He looks down, trying to find something, but there are no windows. No ledges. He is too far away from the fire escape. It is a solid, brick wall, and there is nothing for him to grab onto.

And Dick falls.

It's never the fall that hurts, he knows. Falling is so close to flying, and he spreads his arms like a bird about to take flight. For a heartbeat, he's a child being tossed in the air, he's a teenager slipping off a trapeze bar, and he knows there is something below him. Strong arms and laughter, a net that will bend with his inertia.

The only thing beneath him is concrete.

When his body hits the ground, it makes far too loud of a sound for a man who had always seemed lighter than air.

Out of everyone, that night, Oracle hears the impact the most clearly. Through his earpiece, she hears the clean snap of small bones, she hears the dull thud of a now-limp body, she hears a sharp gasp of air being forced out of lungs - all compressed into one, horrific heartbeat. She listens to rattling breaths get quieter and quieter until she can't hear them at all.

Bruce feels the impact in his throat, caught somewhere between his head and his heart. That's his boy, on the ground, but his other children are still up, still staring down the now-damned soul that had grounded their Nightwing. It takes him a moment to react, barking to Oracle to send medics to their location as he stalks towards the criminal.

Jason takes a more direct approach: a bullet through the man's skull. He doesn't have the same hold-ups as Bruce about killing, not when this man is responsible for hurting his brother. It is violence, simple and honest. It is protection, raw and vulgar.

Damian is the first to make it to Dick's side, practically leaping off the rooftop. He has learned enough, between volunteering at a hospital and what one learns when trained by Ra's al Ghul. He checks for a pulse, checks for breathing. He stabilizes Dick's neck, holding in place. His hands are small, but they do not shake, even when his muscles begin aching. He does not let them shake. Damian looks almost feral, teeth gritted and bared, silhouetted above Dick's body in off-putting streetlamp fluorescents. "No one touches him," he hisses. He only relinquishes his hold when the medics arrive. His hands curl into fists, fingernails biting into his palms

It is a quiet night in the Wayne manor that night. All of the siblings sit vigil around Dick. They all refuse to leave his side, barely moving, even when Alfred delivers pillows and blankets. Dick's face is slack and expressionless, and the sight feels like a blade to the chest. No one knows if he knows they are there.

Oracle clings to the sound of his laugh, pulling up old files. The last thing she hears from Dick will not be the sound of blood in his lungs. Jason fidgets with the shell of the bullet he put through the criminal's skull. Damian holds a medical textbook open in front of him, but he does not turn a page. His gaze is stuck on Dick's eyelids, waiting for them to move.

Here, surrounded by his family, Dick has never seemed more painfully, awfully human.

[bat-therapy]

nobody will ever speak ill of my son ever again he volunteers at the HOSPITAL bless him

also one step closer to dr damian wayne bc i think there’s beautiful writing in ra’s going from a doctor to an assassin raising his grandchild to be an assassin but damian wants to be a healer 😔

put that boy in med school

[bat-therapy]

more Jason stuff

Jason loves mechanical engineering. Even when he was a kid he chose to do jobs that involved learning and knowing engineering, and so after he was adopted he focused more on actually learning different types of engineering. Mechanical, civil, industrial, electrical, for some reason nuclear, he took the time to learn most if not all of these. and due to that. Bruce got worried when Jason returned as the Red Hood and started giving his goons gear and weapons on par with Batman. The crooks now had a way to effectively take him out, so he spent most of his time focusing on the red hood and his operations compared to concentrating on all his villains equally. Tim and dick helped out, and it wasn't until Tim saw the resemblance of some of the wiring that he realized it might be Jason, as the weapons and tools they were using also matched the blueprints Jason made.

[bat-therapy]

from the twt poll i did!!<3

[bat-therapy]

multilingual batkids. they learn each others languages so they can mix and match. for example:

tim in french: have you figured out how we’re gonna tell b we’re not going to that gala yet?

damian in arabic: no i thought that was thomas’ job?

duke french: me? no jason said he’d do something

jason in arabic: hey don’t drag me into this!

dick in romani: i’m gonna kill him i really i am

steph in russian: who are we killing?

dick in english: ah! nobody! wait i didn’t know you spoke romani

tim in greek: you’re an asshole

jason in english: wait my greek is rusty say it again slowly

tim in greek: you’re an asshole

jason: …. you motherfucker

cass signing: nice drawing

damian in chinese: thank you

dick yelling at bruce about something he did

jason in spanish: what language is he speaking right now?

tim also in spanish: uh all of them i think

jason: does bruce even know-

tim: no he doesn’t

[bat-therapy]

Jason's thing about being able to see into the future, except it only shows slightly useable information.

It's going to rain around Thursday, so he should wear a coat or carry an umbrella with him, except it's almost always raining in Gotham and most gothamites can detect when it's gonna rain by vibes alone.

Poison Ivy is going to scape from Arkham, but he only gets four minutes of pre knowledge about it and by the time he finished putting his suit, she's already out.

Stephanie will have an emergency while they're patrolling together, but he has no idea of when, so Red Hood is just carrying around pads and tampons whenever Spoiler is nearby.

His kitchen aid over mixed his batter and his brownie will end up flat, as the brownies are already on the oven.

He will face some sort of danger in two weeks time, which just happens to be during Damian's birthday party and he's on edge expecting something to happen, just for Damian to get mad at him, because he's on edge, and they fight over it.

[bat-therapy]

I feel like the batfam are kinda like bees. 

“They shouldn't proportionally be able to fly, but they don't know that”

They shouldn't be able to do all the things they do and survive, keep up with metas, not sleep, go to school for any length of time, have a secret identity, move so silently, sneak up on supers, have glowing eyes, do seven consecutive backflips, make batman laugh-

[bat-therapy]

I love the hc that Tim never really stopped taking pictures of heroes and vigilantes even after he became Robin. Not even out of hero worship or anything-- he just found it fun. In fact, being Robin just made this hobby easier to do. He has them separated in folders and definitely has blackmail photos included.

The first time Tim met the Justice League one of his first reactions was to sneakily take at least one picture of each of them. Clark vaguely heard a camera shutter but he could never find any cameras or camera owners.

Sometimes Bruce comes to him and asks for specific pictures of members of the JL doing things they shouldn't be doing i.e Barry ditching a meeting cause he was eating Chipotle in the Watchtower kitchen. No one knows how Bruce gets the pictures except for the other Batfam members.

Tim is the god of blackmail right behind Babs. You need older blackmail or videos? Go to Babs. But Good quality blackmail photos? Tim is your guy.

He has at least 4 folders full of pictures of Dick specifically. One for his time as Robin, one for Nightwing, one for Discowing and one for just Dick.

He also manages to have pictures he definitely should not have because how did you get into the cave before you were Robin, Tim, but he refuses to elaborate on those. i.e Robin Jason out of costume, cozily reading at the batcomputer ("seriously, Tim, that's creepy"), Dick when he first adopted Haley ("were you there when I rescued her?!"), Damian training with the League of Assassins ("how the hell did you get that"), Duke back during the We Are Robin movement ("I do not remember you pulling out any cameras what the hell")

[bat-therapy]

has anybody ever written a fic about jason time traveling back to the period just after his death? like for whatever reason he gets thrown back in time (maybe he's physically there, maybe it's more of a fly on the wall situation), but jason is there.

maybe he sees bruce cradle his body as he walks out of the warehouse ruins. maybe he arrives after and just gets to witness just how broken and unravelled bruce becomes.

he sees bruce almost beating joker to death before clark stops him.

he sees dick storming in, furious and hurt that bruce didn't tell him. furious that he didn't get to attend his funeral.

he sees when tim arrives and tries to keep bruce together by first trying to get dick to become robin again and when that doesn't work by becoming robin himself.

he sees alfred suggest the glass case standing as a memorial to him in the cave, sees him saying "a good soldier" and feeling like he got punched in the stomach. because it wasn't bruce, it wasn't bruce.

he sees dick beating joker to death because joker taunted him with jason's name while threatening tim. sees bruce resuscitate joker, not because he wants him to live but because he doesn't want dick to live with having killed someone.

just jason actually getting to witness the deep grief his family experienced after his death and making him see them in a new light. jason understanding them better.

but still believing that some people deserve to die, but he might understand why they don't want to be the ones to take that step

[bat-therapy]

j u s t g o n n a s t a n d t h e r e a n d w a t c h

m e B U R N ?

[bat-therapy]

AU where Tim, age nine, walked three miles to his neighbor’s house, held up his bleeding hand to Alfred, and asked if he could please have a bandaid. He got stitches instead, and a hug from Dick, who squeezed him tight and asked, “Can we keep him?”

And then Tim never went home again.

He learns gymnastics with Dick and reads in the library with Jason. He shows Alfred how to reset the wifi and rambles on to Bruce about his latest obsession (shipwrecks), and he never sees his parents again.

Behind the scenes, there was a kid left alone in a mansion while a whole international incident played out. It included a kidnapping, a ransom, a failed hostage negotiation, and two dead parents never coming home.

It pokes at a wound in Bruce when he is told about the Drakes and he has always been productive in tragedy. He knows how to shove the hurt away and build something strong on top of it.

The adoption was seamless. The sell of the Drake Estate was effortless. The trust for Tim. The memorial. The scholarships in Jack and Janet’s names. Bruce does it all methodical and singleminded.

And somewhere. Somehow. They forget to tell Tim.

Sometimes he misses his mom and dad. He misses his old room and being alone in a big house, but months turn to years and he likes it here. He really does. He has brothers here and Alfred, and they say they’re his family. He likes that.

They said they wanted to keep him, so they kept him. Kept him forever.

Then Damian is there.

Tim comes home and there’s a new boy, about the age he was when they got him. Tim asks in a whisper, “Did they take you too?”

[bat-therapy]

It's raining nonstop where I am so I'm just picturing the Batfam during a flood.

Red Robin uploads a TikTok from the safety of a roof saying "watch him go!" As Red Hood keeps trying to drive his bike against the current. A big wave comes by and he's slowly dragged downhill. The caption reads "don't drive during floods".

Batman and Robin are on the ground helping civilians out of cars when the intensity doubles and in minutes Damian goes from wading knee deep in the water to swimming. The emergency batfloaties get triggered and he floats away as Bruce fails to grab him by half an inch. "Robin serenely drifting in the current" becomes a meme.

Someone takes a picture of a very flustered spoiler trying to squeeze the water out of her cape. The second she lets go the weight of the water makes her fall ass over backwards. Black Bat ends up giving her her waterproof cape.

Signal makes mirages of sharks in the water to scare the shit out of any criminals. Oracle uploads the recordings with Benny hill as background music. Bludhaven escapes the worst of the storm and Nightwing sends pictures to the group chat patting the barely wet concrete just to rub it in. He still slips on a puddle and eats shit, Barbara sends that to the group chat.

[bat-therapy]

Damian has a jagged scar across his stomach and when the bats see it for the first time they try to unlock his Tragic Backstory about how he got it and Damian just scowls and refuses to speak whenever they bring it up so they all assume its a really sore spot to do with some kind of childhood trauma at the league, until Red Hood shows up in Crime Alley, starts working with the bats, catches wind of this, and mercilessly informs them that when Damian was 8 he insisted on helping him carry some new LOA weapons down the stairs and he tripped and ate shit with a serrated javelin in his hands.

Damian reveals Jason's identity out of spite.

[bat-therapy]

hacking shit and running lives from the comfort of his bed

[bat-therapy]

Bruce says that his "true self" is his disguise. But Dick doesn't believe him.

Bruce keeps saying how important it is to notice the little details. And Dick does. He notices how Bruce's shoulders relax when they make it home after patrol, the slight change in tone as he tells Dick to wash up and head to bed. He notices how Bruce rolls his eyes at his puns, with a slight smirk that he tries to hide. How he ruffles Dick's hair and calls him "chum". Whatever the hell that means.

Most damning of all, Dick knows how Bruce peaks in on him after he's done in the Batcave. It scared Dick at first, for this... stranger to watch him while he slept. But one night, Dick decided to stay up a bit longer to finish a chapter in his psychology textbook Bruce made him read. If he finished it tonight, then he would have the next day free from Bruce's homework.

He startled a bit when the door creaked open. "Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." Bruce whispered. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Bruce shrugged. "I just... saw the light on and wanted to make sure you're okay."

"I'm fine." Dick reassured.

"Okay. Not too much longer though." Bruce quietly shut the door behind him.

"Batman's the mask, huh?" Dick thought to himself, turning back to the last paragraph. "Yeah, right."

[bat-therapy]

Tim: You know how you worry about me constantly?

Bruce: … Yes?

Tim, trying to ease Bruce into the "i don't have a spleen talk" and failing: Well now you have a reason to