#[I figure Jason might not actually realize his clothes look different >w>

[dramatisperscnae]

@hubrisse

truth be told, jason had never expected to be given a ring. no one does, he figures, but it still happens. the one that latched onto his finger is red and felt like death for a good second; if he had to guess, he'd say it killed him briefly in the most excruciating way, blood turning into acid, until the pain in itself made him pass out. for a man with his pain tolerance, that definitely spells out a bad fate. when he comes to, jason finds himself on top of a burned out body, which by the items left behind by its bearer would likely be either a goon of the clown or the clown itself. the murder doesn't really faze him as much as the lack of clarity or recollection on how it happened. he doesn't like not knowing. he doesn't like feeling like a stranger in his own mind, but just like the fog settled, it vanished like magic. staring at the brilliant red band on his finger, he considers removing it as he gathers his bearings. his mind races through options as he distances himself from the crime, not quite digesting the sudden load of information thrown his way easily. by the time he's near his closest safehouse, he feels the bond tug. looking upwards, he sees a shock of green. it makes sense, in jason's head. lanterns must have a sensor or an alarm system for this sort of thing. it barely registers then that the bond itself had been the alarm in question. "hey, picasso. this is the bad part of the neighborhood. should be careful." speaking hurts a little, throat raw in a way he can't quite explain and, truthfully, isn't sure if he wants to.

Death is an eerie feeling no matter how it comes. Kyle wishes he didn't know that first-hand, but he does.

It's even worse when it's not yours.

There are few things that can break Kyle's concentration without effort, but feeling the sudden death of his soulmate has the young Lantern quite literally falling out of the sky for the handful of seconds it takes him to refocus his will and make a beeline for Gotham out of sheer desperation. As rocky as their relationship has always been, Kyle's grown far fonder of his soulmate than he's dared actually voice, and if something's happened to Jason…

Hs jaw tightens, his ring sending him moving even faster. The bond isn't broken, so Jason is still alive, but something major has still happened and for all Kyle knows his soulmate is now lying at the bottom of a sewer somewhere bleeding out, or worse.

It's only once he gets closer that he realizes it's or worse.

There's another Lantern here. His ring pings with the information. A Red Lantern, though why any of them would be here on Earth Kyle has no idea. The Reds usually don't go actively causing trouble, and it's pretty well known that Sector 2814 has a constant Green presence of at least one in-sector - and usually actively on Earth - which has been enough to keep most other Lanterns away. Maybe this one got lost, or doesn't care, or got bored enough, and oh god if this has something to do with whatever's happened to Jason…

Kyle's scanning, both with the ring and the bond, and quickly zeroes in on his soulmate's presence. Diving out of the sky he all but tackles Jason in a tight hug, relief pouring off him.

Prematurely, as it turns out.

"Oh thank god, the bond, I felt-," Kyle starts, knowing he's bordering on babbling but unable to fully help himself as he pulls back to take a better look at Jason. At Jason's new look. At the information his ring is currently screaming about. He's found Jason, right enough. But he's also found the Red Lantern. Kyle's eyes widen, face paling a shade or two.

"Oh no…"

[nokomiss]

@deadtedkord replied to your post “I’m still up for taking fic prompts! Let me know if there’s something...”

not to pop up w angst but maybe something about either bruce or steph keeping tabs on steph's adopted baby years down the line. not getting involved just, checking in every now and again to make sure that kid is safe and happy and never has to know the pain that they do. make me CRY 2020

Okay this skirts the line of ‘not getting involved’ as steph’s baby does make an appearance but this wouldn’t leave me alone! hope you enjoy <3

*

It was a slow night in Gotham, which just… didn’t feel right to Steph. So instead of cutting her Batgirl patrol short and heading home to study for the midterm she had in two days, she hit up the comms to see if anyone else needed a hand.  

Robin and Nightwing were fine, apparently eating falafels and chatting with some stray cats after interrupting a carjacking.  Tim was off with Young Justice, Jason was with the Outlaws, Babs was doing some fairly intense cold-case research that Steph knew would end with her sneezing over some dusty police file and Cass was having a movie night with Alfred.  

Steph finally asked Bruce, knowing that he always had something going on.

Being left out of a case is fine -- they all do their own investigations, there’s nothing at all unusual about that -- but there was something about the sharpness of Bruce’s voice when he said, “You’re not needed, Batgirl,” that hit Steph the wrong way.

It had felt personal, in a way things between them hadn’t in a long while.

So Steph did what she did best: ignored the hell out of Bruce’s pettiness and showed up anyway.

Immediately she could tell that she wasn’t actually needed.  The kidnappers weren’t exactly supervillain material.  The kids were unharmed and locked in a room together.

She couldn’t figure out why Bruce had tried to keep her away.

She helped zip-tie the kidnappers, who Bruce had dealt with quickly and easily while she’d still been assessing the situation and trying to find whatever hidden threat she was meant to stay away from.

And it was Bruce that she was dealing with, she realized suddenly. There was a stiffness in his shoulders, a tightness in his jaw showing that he was uncomfortable with something, and that wasn’t a Batman trait at all.  

Only the fact that the kidnappers were still conscious -- albeit dazed -- kept her from asking what was up. 

“You can go now,” Bruce said. He still hadn’t unlocked the door the kids were behind, even though Steph knew that they’d been there for hours. 

“What? There are like five kids in there,” Steph said. “I’ll help. Kids love Batgirl.”

That strange twist of his mouth again, and then Bruce said, “Okay.”

It sounded almost like he was trying to convince himself that it was a good idea.

Steph rolled her eyes as she unlocked the door. The kids themselves were totally unharmed, and the kidnappers had clearly known what they were doing in one respect: the room was stocked in juice boxes and tablets, and the kids were for the most part calmly playing games.  They ranged between roughly four and six years old, and there were loud gasps of joy when Batgirl and Batman barged into the room.

There was no clear-cut demographic of the children -- two boys, three girls, a variety of ethnicities, though Steph noticed they all wore nice clothes, clearly no hand-me-downs, and their shoes were trendy and had clean soles.  Chosen for their parents’ wallet size instead of anything more nefarious, most likely, which made Steph relieved.  

Steph’s checking the kids over, making sure everyone’s physically and mentally good when one of the girls says, “Thank you for saving us, Batgirl!”

Steph looks at her directly for the first time and felt her heart drop.

She knew that face. She’d seen it a thousand times, she’d seen it in the pictures her mom still had hanging in the hallway from her childhood. The same eyes, the same baby-fine blonde hair, the same wide smile. Other things were different -- she couldn’t stop staring, couldn’t stop seeing the shape of her mom’s jaw, her dad’s ears, and her loser ex-boyfriend Dean’s freckles and eyebrows.  

It felt like she was frozen, like the way she felt in dreams sometimes, like the air itself had solidified and moving just took too much effort.  

She could feel Bruce’s presence behind her, heard the rumble of his voice letting the kids knew that their parents would be so proud of how brave they were being, that the bad people were going to jail, that help was on its way.

She blinked, and everything rushed back into focus. And she was still standing there, dressed as Batgirl, while the girl she’d given birth to beamed up at Batman like he was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen.

“You’re welcome,” Steph tells her daughter. 

The girl smiles and flings her arms around Steph’s waist.  Her face is pressed into Steph’s belly, just inches away from the c-section scar, and Steph rests her hand on her back, wishes that she wasn’t wearing gloves so that she could feel how warm and alive and present she was.  

It’s a moment she never thought she’d have - that she’d never really wanted to have, if she’s honest, because she knew that if she held her daughter she might never let go -- and it’s over before she knows it.  The girl lets go, hurries back to the other kids, beaming and saying, “I hugged Batgirl!” like it’s the biggest accomplishment of her life.

One look at Bruce and what she already knows is true is confirmed beyond a doubt; he’s watching her carefully, like she’s something that might break. Like she’s in danger of doing something dumb.

She shook her head lightly at him, trying to show without words that she’s not going to break, that she’s not going to try to do something stupid, that she’s-- 

That she’s happy and sad and trying very, very hard not to think about the fact that her daughter is four years old and has survived her first kidnapping.  

They lead the kids out of the room, shielding them from the kidnappers with their capes. Bruce lets her accompany her daughter, holding her hand and marveling at the way her little fingers curled perfectly into Steph’s, the way her daughter held her head high, tears unshed.  

“You are so, so brave,” Steph tells her, because she’s never going to have this chance again, and she’s wearing a mask, and her daughter is looking at her with something akin to hero-worship in her eyes. Steph remembers being little and seeing Batman and the way the thought of heroes out there making the world safer had made her feel, and it twists something inside all sharp and intense to think of her daughter feeling that when looking at Steph. “Always remember that. You’re incredible, and your parents are so lucky to have you.” Quieter, because she had the chance, and she knew better than to squander a chance -- “Your mother’s so proud of you.”

“She’s gonna be, I didn’t cry hardly at all,” the girl says, and Steph’s heart twists again, because there’s sweetness and love and pride in her expression at the thought of her mom seeing how brave she was. This is a girl who is happy, who is loved, who will have the best possible life.

Steph smiled at her as widely as she could and waved, not trusting her voice. 

Before she leaves, she sees a woman break through the line of cops and cry out, “Hope!”

Steph’s daughter runs into the woman’s arms, and just like that, the spell is broken, and she’s not Steph’s daughter anymore. She’s someone else’s daughter, a woman who is sobbing with relief that her little girl is unharmed, who is clinging her daughter so tight that the girl -- Hope, her name is Hope -- is pushing away at her, is laughing and talking a mile a minute about her ordeal, and Steph hears her voice, crystal-clear, say, “Batgirl rescued me, Momma, she said I was brave.”

Steph barely makes it out of sight -- there’s a building, two blocks over, and the roof has an abandoned, overgrown garden, and Steph likes to go there, sometimes. She’s standing in the overgrown garden and Bruce is hugging her, and she’s laughing and crying all at once. 

“Hope,” she says into Bruce’s chest, conscious of the fact that minutes before, she’d been holding her own daughter like this. “You knew that already, didn’t you?”

“You know I’ve been keeping track of her.” Bruce’s voice is gentle,  “Do you want to know anything else?”

Steph shakes her head, still pressed tight against the Batsuit -- the smell of kevlar and sweat and faintly, leather -- but then asks, terrified of the answer, “That-- she hasn’t had experiences like that before, right?”

She doesn’t even really want to know the answer, doesn’t want to know if her daughter had been doomed from the start, if her bad luck was somehow genetic, but Bruce replies. “She’s never been targeted before, no. She handled herself admirably.”

“She did, didn’t she?” Steph said, obscurely proud. She doesn’t really want to but she lets go of Bruce, steps back to sit on a wrought-iron bench.  In the daylight it would be scorching hot, but at night, the metal is cool and inviting.  

Bruce sits beside her.

“I know I shouldn’t have gone,” Steph says, because acknowledging her own fuck-ups is something she’s used to, “and I’m glad you tried to keep me away.”

“I didn’t intend for you to find out about this,” Bruce said. “I know the topic is… painful.”

Steph opened her mouth to tell Bruce he had no idea, to try to put to words the conflicting swirl of emotions-- not regret, exactly, because she knew with bone-deep certainty that she’d made the right decision to not raise her daughter, to keep her away from the wreckage that had been her life the past few years, but a more abstract feeling of sadness that the circumstances had been necessary at all in the first place. A wish of what might have been, had she been older, had she been prepared, had she not grown up the way she had.  A thought that at some point in the future, things might be different.

But then she realized that Bruce, out of everyone, actually would understand. He had children. 

“My mom told me,” Steph began, unsure as to how Bruce would take this, but knowing she had to set the words free that were bubbling up in her throat, “that kids, whether or not they were yours, are the one thing in the world guaranteed to break your heart.  Because you want so much for them, you want them to have everything that you never had, that could never possibly be, and that-- that it’s impossible. You can’t remake the world, can’t make it a kinder place. You just have to live with it. That loving a child meant pinning your heart to your sleeve, and having to suffer the consequences.”

Bruce didn’t say anything, but reached over and clasped her hand in his own. 

“I think-- I think she might have been wrong. About not being and to remake the world, because that’s what we do every night. And she was right, but… I know she didn’t want me to go through everything I had.” Looking back, she’d been a lot younger than she’d realized when she’d been pregnant. Just a few scant years older than Damian, and he was so firmly a child in her mind that it made her reconsider all those feelings she’d had at the time of being grown-up.  She hadn’t felt it at the time, but she was older now, had a world of experiences that shone a light on exactly how young she’d been when she’d gotten pregnant.

She knew that to Bruce, she likely still was a child. Right now, she didn’t feel it. 

“Like, I knew she was out in the world before,” Steph said. “But now… She’s real, in a way that she wasn’t before.”

“Her life is significantly safer than ours,” Bruce said, reassuringly. She could hear the truth of it in his voice, trusted him on this.  Then he said, “I knew you didn’t want to see her.” There was no condemnation in his voice, only understanding, but Steph felt compelled to defend herself anyway. 

“I wanted to see her so badly,” she said. She couldn’t look at Bruce, just looked at the tangle of dying plants around them, at the Gotham skyline, all soft lights and sharp edges, beyond that. “It felt like losing part of myself at first, but I knew… I knew what her life would be if I kept her. What my life would be.”  She took a deep breath. “If I’d held her, and wasn’t strong enough to let her go afterwards, I would have been condemning us both.”

Now it seemed unfathomable. She wouldn’t be Batgirl now, she knew that much. Would never have been Robin. Spoiler might have been laid to the wayside, like it had when she’d been pregnant, but she remembered how she’d longed to go out in the night even when her belly made her waddle and struggle to sit up. Likely she still would have figured out a way.

But she wouldn’t have taken the risks she had. Wouldn’t have thrown herself into things as wildly. She probably wouldn’t have died, wouldn’t have broken her mother’s heart, wouldn’t have caused all the grief she could still sometimes see in Tim and Cass’s face when it was alluded to.

Instead, she knew the path her life would have taken: trying at first to stay in school, but working long hours. Her mom being forced to babysit every spare moment, life turning into a never ending scheduling conflict. Quitting school in favor of a minimum wage paycheck and abandoning hope of becoming something greater, something more. She might have managed a nursing degree, her own mother had with an infant at home, but she’d seen that path, too. 

She wouldn’t be here, now: sitting on a rooftop with Batman, filled with a flurry of might-have-beens, having just saved a roomful of children who looked up to her with something akin to worship. Wouldn’t be worrying about a midterm in biology. 

And the woman she’d seen, the one who’d loved her daughter enough to elbow her way through a police line, wouldn’t have that. 

“She looked so loved,” Steph said.

“She has good parents,” Bruce said. “She’s taken care of. Cherished.”

“She seemed okay, and the kidnappers were jokes, but they didn’t… this isn’t going to hurt her, is it?”  Steph had been kidnapped plenty, had been involved in various criminal acts even younger, and she knew it had skewed the way she looked at the world. 

“She attends a preschool,” Bruce said. “They were meant to be going on a field trip to a farm outside of town. One of the kidnappers disguised themselves as the van driver, while the others distracted the teachers. One of the other children on board’s father is the director of a medical group, I understand that there are delays with getting treatment for the child of one of the kidnappers. She was never harmed.”

Oh. That explained the juice boxes, they loved their own child enough to do something desperate to save them.

“That kid’s going to get the treatment it needs, right?” Steph already knew the answer but asked anyway.

“They’ll get a letter from Wayne Memorial this week,” Bruce confirmed.

Steph had another question, one that Bruce likely wouldn’t answer. Shouldn’t answer, but she wanted confirmation. “Did… Does it feel different, with Damian, from the others?”

Bruce took a minute to think, long enough that she knew he was answering her underlying question with care. “At first. The others, I chose. I brought them in, I thought it through, I knew them and wanted them in my life. Wanted to make a home for them. I didn’t choose him. And at first, if anything, it was harder.”

Steph listened. She wasn’t sure if Bruce had ever spoken of this out loud.

“But then it was like he’d always been a part of my life, just like the others, a part that was irreplaceable and unique but that I loved in the same way.” 

That settled something within her, something she hadn’t realized was bothering her. 

A long pause, then Steph broke the silence. “How do you do it?”

Bruce looked at her, waiting for clarification.

“Send your kids out there every night,” Steph said.  She could still feel the way her heart had dropped when she’d realized that her daughter was in danger, and couldn’t fathom what it would be like knowing her child was out trying to punch supervillains in the face. “Doesn’t it scare you?”

“Every day,” Bruce said. “Every night.”

She wondered if he was thinking about Jason’s death, about all the close calls. About how Damian flung himself into danger so recklessly, like he still believed he was invincible. The way all kids thought they were invincible. About Dick, Tim, Cass. About all of his children, choosing the fight over safety every time.

 She wondered if he was thinking about her in Leslie’s clinic, clutching his hand and dying.

Bruce continued, looking down at their currently clasped hands. “I have faith in their ability to keep themselves as safe as possible. I train them as best I can, make sure they have the best equipment. Try to always know where they are, in case I can help. But mostly… your mother was right. Having kids is putting a piece of yourself out in the world and not knowing if it’s safe or not, and being grateful for every day that it is.”

He’d been careful with his words, never said you, but Steph could feel the weight of a small fortune’s worth of equipment and technology in her suit, in her belt. The communicators that shared her location. 

The way he’d tried to protect her by trying to keep her away tonight, so that she wouldn’t have to face this complicated churn of emotions.

She rested her head on his shoulder and mumbled, “Thank you. For everything.”

She felt him shift, and the slightest hint of pressure as he pressed a kiss into the top of her cowl.  

“There’s a file, if you want to know more about her.”

She’d known that, from the moment she’d made him promise to keep her baby safe.  She knew Bruce didn’t do half-measures, that he took each promise he made as a lifelong commitment.  She’d known that, and she’d never consciously thought about it, because it was too much. “No, I think-- I think I saw enough.”

She’d seen a child deeply loved, a child that was brave and beautiful and bright.  That flung herself at heroes, safe in the knowledge that they were only there to help.

She’d seen all she needed to know that her daughter was living the life she’d hoped to have herself as a child. That she was living the life that Steph had hoped for when she’d signed those papers.  

That this was one glorious instance of one of her choices going exactly right.

[love-shru-mystery]

You really are something. (Jughead Jones Imagine)

A/N: SO THIS IS MY FIRST IMAGINE, I HOPE YOU LIKE IT.

Your parents recently called you and asked you to move in with them in a town called Riverdale which was far away from New York. You tried to refuse them but they didn’t took ‘no’ for an answer. You were doing just fine living alone in New York completing your school but your parents had different plans for you. They wanted you to complete your last year in Riverdale. You weren’t ready to leave all your friends there in New York but you couldn’t say no to your parents also; after all it has been really long since you met them. They were too busy in their work that they hardly had anytime left for you. You accept everything without saying a word and so they send you to a hostel where you could study as they always travel. Finally your parents settled, they thought Riverdale was a perfect place to settle, and now they want the same for you.

__x__x__x__x__

 You walked inside your new massive home. You looked around your surroundings which were filled with expensive furniture, a chandelier, massive vase and beautiful portraits. Everything was so expensive that for a second you doubted that it was even your house but your doubts cleared when you saw your mother walking down from the stairs with a grin on her face, seeing her made you realize how much you actually missed her. She embraced you in a long blissful hug murmuring how much she missed and how sorry she was for not meeting you sooner. You hugged her back, atleast she realized her mistake which made you really happy and you forgot everything about that.

Your dad was thrilled to see you too and apologized just like your mom. You were happy that you were home living with your parents now. The town seemed really nice and you can’t wait to explore more of this town, but you have to get ready for your school which was starting day after tomorrow. You had one day to settle your clothes and everything.

The days passed quickly and it was the first day of your school. You were in no mood to attend a new school but you didn’t show it. The town was small and your home was near your school so you decided to walk. There were lots of staring from other students but you ignored them and kept on walking till you reached the inside of the school. There was lots of bustle coming from the corridor as students walked past you giving you an odd look. Was someone new in the town or in the school was that rare?

“Excuse me?” You stopped a girl who had blond here which was tied up in a tight ponytail and had an innocent look, you instantly liked the girl.

“Yes?” Her voice was sweet but urgent, she seemed like she was in a hurry.

“I won’t take much of your time co-” You were cut off by her loud sigh. You looked at her. She was smiling which made you quite nervous.

“You are (Y/N) (Y/L/N).” She said somehow recognizing you, “Sorry I thought I was late, I am Betty Cooper your peer mentor. I was supposed to give you a tour, I am so sorry. I was just looking for you.” “That’s ok…totally fine.” You smiled at her. Guess you just stopped the correct person.

Betty showed you around and explained you about your classes, you were happy to have her company and she was happy to have yours. You walked towards the lunch area with Betty. She took you to her friends.

“Guys, this is (Y/N), new student. (Y/N) meet my friends Archie, Veronica, Kevin and Jughead.” She introduced you to everyone sitting on the table. Archie was the red-haired guy who had a perfect face structure. Veronica had jet black hair, she was the rich kind of girl but seemed nice to you. Kevin seemed sweet and you could tell that Kevin was gay, you always wanted a gay friend and then there was Jughead who had this intimidating yet a handsome face, he was wearing a crown shaped beanie which suited him so well. You almost dozed off looking at him but Betty patted your back and asked you sit down. You sat down next to Archie and Jughead next to him typing frantically on his laptop; he was the only one who didn’t notice your presence.

“Hey Juggy, stop writing for a second and meet our new student. Don’t be rude.” Betty scolds him for his lack of presence which amused you. After few more typing, he finally closed his laptop and looked at you. Something flashed in his eyes you couldn’t quite put your finger on but it was definitely the same thing that happened to you when you saw him. After staring at you for a while, he waved at you and gave you a smile which weakened your knee but before he could notice what effect he had on you, you quickly waved at him and looked away. The others looked at you both suspiciously but let it go after a while. While eating your lunch you could feel his gaze on you now and then, you yourself look at him and sometimes your eyes would meet and both of you look away instantly.

Later Betty asked you join them at Pop’s and you couldn’t refuse as it would seem rude. So you agree to go with her. You entered Pop’s, it was a diner which gave you a home like feeling. It felt so good, you were glad that you agreed to come here with everyone. Everyone was already sitting on the booth; they made seats when they saw you and Betty. Somehow you find yourself sitting next to Jughead and suddenly a blush crept on your face.

“So (Y/N), your first day at school was good?” Archie asked giving you a smile.

“Yeah, I met you all.” You replied honestly to which he just grinned at you. It was such a strange feeling that you didn’t felt at New York before, it was a good kind of feeling or maybe it was because you were sitting next to Jughead.

“Why did you come here? Did you know about this place?” It was Jughead, and you couldn’t help and noticed his deep voice which was so good for your ears.

“No, I didn’t. I was in New York as long as I can remember. Mom and Dad travelled a lot so I was mostly left alone but now they are finally settled here because they think this the perfect place.” You briefed them about your life. Jughead was watching you intensely which didn’t help the situation you were in right now. He was looking at something else like trying to figure you out.

“You know about what happened here?” Veronica asked with a nervous laugh. You got confused so you shook your head.

“Jason Blossom, Cheryl Blossom’s brother was recently murdered near the lake. He was shot, and since then the town is in dread. The murderer is roaming freely. I saw Jason body floating in the river with a bullet in his head” Kevin explained it in his ghostly voice, at first you thought he was joking but then you looked at everyone’s gloomy faces and you realized he wasn’t joking. You gulped shaking in fear as a shiver ran down your body.

“Hey, stop scaring her.” Jughead came at your defense which made you feel giddy from the inside but you know you just wanted to go home and call it a night.

“I-I think I better head home, it’s late.” You said grabbing your things as you got up.

Jughead offered to walk with you but you refused and Jughead being him didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. You waved everyone goodbye. Kevin was feeling guilty but you just shook your head and said you were tiered. You and Jughead walked together down the street. It was cold but having Jughead walk beside you made you warm.

“I am so sorry about Kevin, it is still fresh about Jason and everything…he didn’t know what he was saying.” Jughead said putting his hands inside his jeans pocket.

“How come my parents didn’t tell me? This is so bad, what happened to Jason and murdered…I mean I just moved here without knowing anything about this town, not that I regret moving here. I just-”

“Wow! I thought you were a quiet one.” He chuckled, his attempt to make you laugh which worked. You blushed a little as his shoulders brushed yours.

“So anything else I should know about this town?” You asked trying to keep up with the conversation.

“Except for the frequent murders? Nah, I don’t think so.” He looked at you with serious look but failed when he looked the horror on you face and burst out laughing which made you sigh in relief and you hit him on the shoulders playfully.

“Don’t joke about such things.” You said chuckling a bit.

“Fine, it was not a very good joke I admit but a guy can try.” He said smirking down at you which made him look so much hotter than his usual self. You didn’t know this feeling but you were happy with whatever this was.

“So, Jughead?” you started,

“Yes Juliet?” He said showing of his smirk.

“I heard from Betty that you are working on a novel?” you said.

“Yeah, I am working on a novel. I think it’s coming along well. You want to read it?” Jughead asked surprising himself, he never let anyone read his novel but something about you made him want to.

“Yeah I would love to read your novel. I am a book freak.” I said squealing a little bit.

He smiled at you which made a tight knot in your stomach. You hated this feeling but loved it as well.

“You know everyone is really happy to meet you, especially Ronnie because before you she had the tag of the new girl but now you are the new girl.” He grinned.

You chuckled, “I am happy to meet them too. I was worried before coming here. I thought I might not be able to fit in.”

“I know this is rather personal but are you happy you know leaving New York and living with your parents?”

“At first I was very sad because I had to leave my friends and everything but after seeing mom and dad, and hearing them apologizing to me that they didn’t gave me enough time made me realize that somewhere I did miss them while I was in New York. Plus this place is rather cool I think I’ll be able to survive here.” You smiled looking up at him. He was staring at you like he was when both of your eyes met for the first time.

“You really are something.” He said which made your cheeks red. You were glad that it was dark and he couldn’t see how flustered you were. While talking you didn’t even realize when you both reached your home.

You sighed, “Thank you for walking with me.”

“I couldn’t just let a girl walk alone when there is a killer on loose.” He said making you laugh.

“And what about you?” You asked raising your eyebrows at him.

“I am Jughead Jones the third, nothing can happen to me.” He said and you both erupted in laughter.

“Thanks again, I will see you around.” You said waving at him.

“Wait.” He called and came in front of you. “I was wondering if you would like to go to Pop’s with me sometimes, you know just you and me.”

“Are you asking me on a date on my first day?” You chuckled at his sweet move.

“Yes Juliet, I think I am.” He smirked.

“I would love to go on a date with you Romeo.” You said and he laughed shaking his head a bit.

“You really are something.” He muttered but you heard it. With that he went away and in that second you knew it was going to be more than just one date and you can’t wait to find out about it.

[topmixtrends]

FOR THE KARL MARX Bicentennial Forum, Jason Barker spoke to Clive Coleman, co-writer with Richard Bean of Young Marx, a play about Marx and his family’s early years in London. The play opened at the Bridge Theatre in London on October 27 and ran until December 31, 2017. It was directed by the Royal National Theatre’s former artistic director Sir Nicholas Hytner, and starred Rory Kinnear in the lead role, Oliver Chris as Engels, and Nancy Carroll as Marx’s wife Jenny von Westphalen.

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JASON BARKER: Many people will be familiar with your TV credits on The Bill and Spitting Image. How did you come to co-write a play about Karl Marx, which seems like a different proposition entirely?

CLIVE COLEMAN: As a writing partnership Richard [Bean, co-writer] and I go back a long way. We used to write comedy together in the mid-1990s. We wrote a sketch show called Control Group Six for BBC Radio 4, so we’d always been in touch. Richard became a well-known playwright and I went on to work for the BBC as its legal correspondent. We worked together on a play about phone hacking called Great Britain within five days of the verdict in the big criminal phone hacking trial in which Rebekah Brooks was acquitted and Andy Coulson convicted. [1] We worked on that in 2014 and wanted to do something else. Then Richard was approached initially to write the libretto for an opera about Karl Marx. That didn’t happen for various reasons but through talking to him about it we started reading around Marx — we read a number of biographies — and were just amazed by the fact that in 1850, as a young man, all the things you would never have imagined of this imposing figure — this bust in Highgate Cemetery — actually happened to him. He lived the most extraordinary life. All the incidents in the play actually happened. He did apply for a job on the railway as a clerk, he did have terrible boils on his backside, he fathered a child illegitimately with his housekeeper, and he lived in absolutely penurious circumstances. At one point the Prussian spy who was spying on him reported back to Berlin that Marx hadn’t left his Soho apartment for five days. Why? Because he’d pawned all of his own clothes; he was too poor to leave the house. So there was a ready-made door-slamming farce right there, with bailiffs banging on the door and his beautiful German wife fobbing them off while he hid in the cupboard. There was an amazing collection of ingredients that we thought would make a fantastic play. Initially we thought of it as a pure farce. Then we backtracked slightly because when you’re putting a genius on the stage farce is actually too slight a vehicle … That was basically it. I think we slightly fell in love with the young Marx because he was such an amazing character. Flawed but charismatic, energetic, crackling with intelligence, and the kind of person to whom things happened and who made things happen. So the character we found magnetic and fascinating.

I agree that farce is too slight a vehicle for Marx. But I could have imagined the play as an opera. You focus on a lot of material that lends itself to melodrama.

The producers were keen to have an opera with Freddy Demuth, who was Marx’s illegitimate son, grown up, but we fastened on 1850 as the play’s setting because it was a time when an awful lot was happening. We really wanted to focus on Marx as a young man, the one people don’t really know about. Some of the information has been hidden from the public …

Almost certainly a lot was censored by Marx’s daughters, maybe self-censored.

Yes. People are more comfortable thinking about him as an austere and iconic figure who gave birth to communism then Stalinism, et cetera. No one’s thought about lifting the curtain and looking at the life he was living, all the normal problems, so for us this presented an irresistible opportunity. No one’s written a play about Marx and put it on the English stage, even though he lived in England for the majority of his adult life.

In focusing on the young Marx you’re perhaps contradicting the audience’s expectations, both of the image of the man as well as Marxology. It’s easier to think of Marx as a great thinker when we’re presented with him as this sedentary old sage with a big beard in the way that all the Victorian sages are presented: Darwin, Dickens, et cetera. Did you deliberately set out to smash this image?

The thing that comes across if you read Marx’s letters, particularly those to Engels, is how funny he was; witty, funny, very well read. He would quote Shakespeare at length, he knew poetry, literature. He and Engels would ridicule their opponents, quite cruelly, actually. I’m not sure that this ritualistic side to Marx and this caustic wit ever really left him; I’m not sure he became so different to the way he was previously in terms of his sense of mischief and ribaldry. That bust of him at Highgate Cemetery — somewhat strangely — casts a long shadow. I happen to believe that lurking in the background there’s a real person. One of the things that draws you to him is this incredible intellectual energy he had. Maybe that magnetism is in some respect what makes him into a leader. If there was a room with five hundred people in it and he walked in you’d know he was there. He was someone who drew your attention. That energy was something that everyone found attractive. So in that sense I don’t think there was a deliberate effort to smash the image of him as an older man.

I’d like to come back to the question of farce. Young Marx is a very dynamic play and there’s a lot of outrageous physical comedy, like the fight scene in the British Museum, where Marx meets Charles Darwin (apparently without realizing who he is). But the mood of the play shifts with the death of Marx’s son, at which point it becomes a tragedy; Marx realizes the error of his ways and makes peace with the chaos. In reality, of course, when his son Guido dies in 1850, it turns out to be only the beginning of a long sequence of tragic events. In 1851 his wife Jenny gives birth to a daughter, Franziska, who only survives a year; then Edgar, his eldest son, dies in 1855. And for the next 15 years Marx is still persecuted much as he was before by bailiffs and landlords, and he doesn’t make serious headway on his “economics shit” for years. Even after Das Kapital is published in 1867 he complains to Engels that he’s never been in more dire financial straits and feels like he’s at death’s door. In 1860 he writes a work entitled Herr Vogt, which is this huge exposé of an obscure German activist who, years later in 1870, turns out to be a spy of Napoleon III. By this point Engels is almost tearing his hair out, imploring Marx to finish his book on capital. But he can’t. In this sense one could say that the farce is never-ending. Why did you decide to curtail the farce at the point you did, in 1850 or thereabouts, when in reality it had only just got going? 

In any piece of drama or comedy, when you’re dealing with such a full and eventful life, you have to bite off a digestible chunk. But you’re absolutely right, we compressed a lot. The Marxes lost several children, whereas we focused on Fawksey. In fact it was Edgar who lived up until just before he was eight years old, who Marx absolutely adored, and who was a brilliant Artful Dodger–type character. He would stand outside their Soho apartment and fob the debt-collectors off as well. All of that is equally great material but we wanted to get as much of his young life into as short a period as we could. So much happened in 1850; that year draws in all of the incidents that took place around it. You’ve only got two hours on stage. Had it been a box-set TV series we could have expanded it. You mention how he felt as if he was at death’s door. He was frequently ill due to a terrible lifestyle of smoking cigars and drinking far too much but also just getting through the run-of-the-mill everyday things of life. As writers, we had to make a decision about what a reasonable chunk of his life is, and if there were great things that happened outside of that then which ones we should try and work into that space.

I suppose the staging of the play might also have encouraged that compression. Young Marx is performed at the Bridge Theatre in London, a purpose-built brand-new state-of-the-art theater on the Thames at Tower Bridge. You have this fantastic revolving stage that allows the action to change locations in an instant, from Soho to Brussels, and which serves the piece very well. Did knowing you had that machinery at your fingertips influence the way you wrote the play?

It started quite raw. The Marxes lived in two rooms in London’s Soho in what’s now the Quo Vadis restaurant. We knew we wanted to have scenes in the Red Lion, where the Communist League met. We also knew that we wanted the duel scene, which actually took place in Antwerp, and where Konrad Schramm went to fight August Willich on Marx’s behalf. Schramm was grazed by a bullet, everyone thought he was dead, and then he turned up in Soho a few days later. But, actually, the truth is we wrote the play and Mark Thompson, the brilliant set designer, came up with this amazing revolving set. There were still a few scenes that the director cut. But we wanted the London of the time, which was a dirty, grubby Soho, awash with émigrés and revolutionaries from the 1848 revolutions in Europe. So we wanted this Dickensian pea-souper type of London together with this fetid atmosphere of revolutionaries plotting and planning. And also factions splitting. At least one of the communist factions wanted to spark revolution through pure violence. Marx never wanted that and believed things would happen through a historical process. It was all those things together that led to the way in which it was staged.

Whenever I fall into conversations with people about Marx, people always tend to express the same opinion. Armchair enthusiasts, people who haven’t read him much, or at all, usually start by insisting that while they admire Marx and agree wholeheartedly with his ideas in theory, they don’t see how they could possibly work in practice. I’m curious to know whether you’ve had similar conversations with people and whether you share the sentiment. The reason I ask is because that skepticism doesn’t come across in the play at all. Overall it ends up feeling optimistic and dispenses with the lunacy, along with the cliched idea that Marx is a utopian fantasist, irresponsible, nothing but a drunken raver, et cetera.

I’m someone who’s sympathetic to the man and his dilemmas. Marx was a young man married to a beautiful German aristocrat who was four years his senior. He was living in difficult, penurious circumstances, managing a young family and trying to hold a political movement together through the Communist League at a time when it was splitting up. So he had a lot on his plate! But can I answer the question in a slightly different way?

Sure.

Put it this way. A play about Karl Marx cannot avoid his writings. It would be absurd to try to do that. No one goes to the theater to have two hours of Marx’s theories rammed down their throat. That would not be a particularly entertaining evening. But we wanted to tackle his writings and we thought long and hard about finding ways and the right speeches in order for him to do that. So there’s a scene in the play where they’re making breakfast and Marx has an epiphany, and it’s through making breakfast that he manages to expound upon alienation. Something like alienation is a difficult concept to get across and we wanted to find ways to ground things like that in situations that might have sparked his imagination and enabled him to come up with them. And especially in those domestic situations. But I don’t think we ever took on or made a value judgment about whether these concepts were workable in practice. It was a moment in time. It was 1850. So no one had really put any of this stuff into practice. We were many years away from him actually completing Das Kapital. He’d been working on it for about five years and hadn’t done much, I think. So that wasn’t the focus of the play. I’ve slightly dodged your question there.

I think it’s fair to say that Marx in 1850 is an unusual character. At the time he was experimenting with communism and socialism, which were still fairly minority underground sects. He doesn’t know how things are going to work out, he’s grappling with it all; even though Marx’s “theory” is itself a practical undertaking. He’s not an abstract theorist.

There was one speech we put in the play and which I was very keen to have in. Marx had a great optimism that history would play out in a particular way and in the speech at the Red Lion he says there will be a time when the money’s eaten itself, banks will be bust, there will be no money to pay the police or the army and so we won’t need a revolution; we shall simply walk in and take over. There was also another speech we put in. Although he had this optimism, capitalism has clearly turned out to be hugely elastic and shape-shifting. It hits one crisis then it finds a way, whether through the invention of credit cards or state intervention to prop up banks. So in actual fact it’s proved to be a very powerful foe and perhaps more so than Marx imagined. So in the play he gives another speech when he’s at his nadir and in which he describes capitalism as a seven-headed hydra that can never be beaten. And I wonder whether he ever thought like that. Did he ever consider: What if I’m wrong about this? What if the enemy is more powerful than I thought? I take the view that anyone who believes so much in something must at some point reflect and think: what if the thing is more difficult to beat than I ever imagined?

It’s the Marx bicentennial this year and Marx’s ideas about class struggle and economic exploitation are still live issues. I wonder whether this explains why there have been so few TV or theater dramatizations of Marx’s life. Do you think producers are frightened, not so much of Marx, but of what he represents? Or do you think there’s a more innocent explanation? In passing I’ve heard it said that the Raoul Peck movie The Young Karl Marx has been struggling to secure an English distributor, which may go some way toward explaining why more Marx films don’t get made. Clearly it can’t be for lack of a good story, or one that’s worth telling. 

I don’t think there’s a big capitalist conspiracy to blunt any drama about Karl Marx. There have been lots of documentaries and books. I think it’s because people associate him so much with the writings and the history that followed it. And for a lot of people that’s a bit of a turn off.

But it’s still very visual. Your play has a great visual language in terms of the spies and all these archetypes you have in it. It’s interesting that the Marx story should remain so overwhelmingly on the page.

Well, having said that the Young Marx play has been on about a thousand cinema screens on National Theatre Live, so it has been seen in cinemas. There may end up being a film of the play. Who knows? You have these sleeping giants. For years and years, when I was writing sitcom, everyone said you cannot write a sitcom about people being in an office. People are in an office all day and they do not want to come home and sit for another half an hour and watch people in an office. And then Ricky Gervais wrote The Office. Sometimes you have a long period where people think things aren’t doable. Then suddenly times change, attitudes change, and those things become popular. So you never know. This may be a time when people are going to look again at Karl Marx. He certainly deserves a look.

And as a dialectical thinker of contraries he’s perhaps the greatest sleeping giant of them all. One should never say never with Marx.

Well, exactly. Maybe we’ve helped to start something new.

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Jason Barker is professor of English at Kyung Hee University, South Korea. He is the writer-director of the German documentary Marx Reloaded and author of the novel Marx Returns.

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[1] In 2011, it emerged that The News of the World, a mass circulation UK tabloid Sunday newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, had hired a private investigator to hack into the phone records of Milly Dowler, a young British teenager who went missing in March 2002, and whose body was eventually discovered six months later. In July 2011, it was reported that during the period of Dowler’s disappearance, during which the newspaper supported a public campaign to find her, the private investigator and journalists from the paper listened to voice messages left on her phone, and deleted others in order to free space for new incoming messages. This created the false impression that Dowler was still alive. Following pubic outrage the paper ceased publication in July 2011. In 2013, former editors of The News of the World, including Brooks and Coulson, were prosecuted for their involvement in the related phone-hacking scandal.

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