#'need to write a fic where steph kills her dad'

[luvo27]

look finding out that steph kills her dad wasn't a trope genuinely really rocked me ok. like its been an unstated truth of the world in my mind for literally over a real life year

[rainbowfoxes]

I can normally deal with people not reading the comics, because not everyone has the means to or even the desire to, and that's okay! The cartoons and a lot of the shows are great, and I can typically adjust to the different continuities being referenced quick enough.

But the one thing that gets me every time in fics written by people who aren't familiar with the comics is the timeline. It is always incredibly wonky and all over the place and just. Incorrect. Sometimes it makes me laugh, sometimes it makes me 🙃, and others I have to leave right now immediately.

So in the interest of saving myself (and perhaps others) a ???? reaction in the future, here is a (very) rough and non-exhaustive order of events for the Bat Clan. The time between these events are variable, but this is the general order of things.

Thomas and Martha Wayne are murdered

Bruce goes on his training trip

Bruce comes back and begins his whole I Am The Night shtick

The Grayson family is murdered

Bruce fosters Dick

Dick debuts as Robin

Justice League/ Super Friends/ whatever group is formed

Dick forms the Teen Titans with Donna, Garth, Roy, and Wally.

Dick leaves Gotham (either for college, or because of an argument with Bruce)

Sometimes more Titans things happen. They also break up at some point

Raven forms the second iteration of the Teen Titans to fight her father. The team is comprised of Dick, Raven, Donna, Wally, Kori, Gar, and Vic.

Jason steals the tires off the Batmobile, thwarts his own grandmother's attempts at robbing a museum, and is adopted by Bruce. He is also made Robin - Note that oftentimes Dick is still Robin at this time as well.

Babs gets shot by the Joker for her dad and Bruce's man pain. She becomes Oracle as a result.

Jason and Bruce have a fight, and Jason goes to find his biological mother.

Jason is betrayed by his supposed mother and murdered by the Joker.

Tim shows up and does his "Batman needs Robin" Thing.

Jason crawls himself out of his grave and promptly gets hit by a car. Don't worry, we'll check in with him later.

Tim's mom is murdered and his father left in a coma that he eventually recovers from.

Knightfall happens - Bane breaks Bruce's back, Jean-Paul Valley is Batman for a minute and so is Dick.

Contagion happens - some dumbass releases a super plague on the city but it's okay because they make a vaccine that everyone gets because it's 1996 and no one has given Jenny McCarthy the opportunity to start the Anti-Vax movement yet.

Legacy happens - It's break through cases this time but don't worry, they fix it because this is comic books and people have two braincells to rub together.

Dick goes to Blüdhaven!!! This is the big one for me tbh. Please stop putting him in the Blüd while Jason is alive, I beg of you. You're killing me.

Cataclysm happens - a massive earthquake hits Gotham, and it is Very Bad. The US government decides to abandon the city and kill anyone trying to leave or enter after a certain date. Because that's an entirely reasonable thing to do. This leads to.....

No Mans Land - the approximate year that the city was cut off from the rest of the country. Lots of shit happens during this time - Cassandra Cain debuts, Stephanie Brown has her baby, Tim goes to boarding school, Sarah Essen-Gordon dies. If there is the only one comic book arc you read, please let it be this one.

Bruce is framed for the murder of Vesper Fairchild - not really important in the grand scheme of things but I love Vesper and you should too.

Hush happens - basically Tommy Elliot has Problems and also Jason shows up but not really but yest really (hi thank you retcons). It's a thing. Read the wikipedia page it's actually very helpful.

Tim's dad finds out that he's Robin and forces him to retire.

The next couple of things happen right on top of each other so - Blockbuster sets fire to Haly's circus and blows up Dick's apartment building and a bunch of other bad things. Tarantula kills Blockbuster and rapes Dick while he's in shock.

Immediately afterwards War Games starts - Steph starts a gang war to prove her worth to Bruce, gets murdered but not really by Black Mask, it's a whole thing.

Side bar - why did no one warn me about Black Mask killing Orpheus - a Black vigilante - and then impersonating him with full Blackface? Everyone talks about what he did to Steph but I really think we need to talk about what he did to Orpheus. Also if you haven't read War Games yet, here are some accurate trigger warnings for it: blackface, sexualized murder of a teenaged girl, a school shooting where a child dies.

Tim comes back as Robin.

Under the Red Hood happens - Jason comes back to Gotham, kills some guys, tries to kill Tim, does his whole Thing. You've probably seen the movie but I also recommend you read the comics it's v good and every time I read Jason's final speech I start crying.

Damian shows up

Final Crisis happens and Bruce "dies" aka gets lost in time, so the boys duke it out over who gets to be Batman. Tim goes on his murder mystery tour. Jason goes to prison but not before adopting a weird little girl named Sasha. Dick is left with Batman.

Oops turns out Steph isn't dead she's back and she's Batgirl now and low-key co-parenting Damian with Dick. It's very cute.

Cass is off being Black Bat in Hong Kong and I miss her.

Bruce comes back, Tim is Vindicated, Jason escapes prison and rides off into the sunset with Sasha to go Cause Problems on Purpose. Dick steps down from Batman. Damian continues to be a murder baby and I love him.

And that's not nearly everything but close enough for fic writing purposes up until Flashpoint. I definitely missed things, so feel free to add on. I also again beg you - please stop putting Dick in the Blüd when Jason is still alive, it makes my blood pressure spike every time I see it. You're killing me guys. Pls.

[thatasianstereotype]

Father, This Is Your Future Son-In-Law.

A short little side companion fic to my Adrien x Damian series. 

First: Fuck. I’m Gay. 

Second: Damn, You’re Looking Fine. 

Third: Shit. I Got To Deal With This Bitch (Again).

I’m still working on the fourth and final part of the series (it won’t be as long of a wait as Part 3). But I wanted to write how the Batfam reacted to their youngest suddenly getting a boyfriend while abroad. 

Creative liberties were taken. Also, this is a crack writing. 

The Demon Spawn who has gotten better at not attacking people at first sight but still just tolerates people. And his holier-than-thou attitude is still there with his love for throwing insults around like free candy. 

This is the kid that manages to snag a pure cinnamon roll sunshine as a boyfriend?

This angry grumpy child? 

Needless to say, the Batfam is in disbelief.

.

.

.

“What?” Bruce thought that the Teen Titans mission in Europe was done. “Why do you want to stay in Paris longer? Is something wrong?”

“No Father. I have simply found someone I wish to court. I will be spending time in Paris to see how best to present myself as an exceptional suitor that is all. Give my regards to Grayson that I will be missing Family Night but that I will make it up by introducing him to his future brother-in-law soon.” 

Bruce was too much in shock to answer when Damian hung up. 

“DICK!” 

“I think it’s cute that Dami is getting a boyfriend.” 

“Dick, you oblivious and naive child, you are completely missing the point.” 

Dick rolled his eyes. “Look, I’m pretty sure Damian isn’t actually going to marry someone right now.”

“He said ‘future brother-in-law’ inferring that this courtship he wants to initiate will end in a wedding.” 

“I think you are reading too much into this, B.” 

“And you are not reading enough. Have I taught you nothing at all?

“You taught me paranoia.” 

“I taught you to be prepared for every kind of situation.”

“Pretty sure the possibility of your 17-year-old son getting hitched in Paris can be ruled out.” 

“Where did I go wrong with you?” 

And Dick rolled his eyes once again at Bruce’s dramatic-ness. This. This is where Damian gets it from. 

.

Ever the peace keeper in this dysfunctional trainwreck of a family, Dick managed to stop Bruce from flying to Paris. But much to their frustrations (even Dick’s who wanted to know who captured his baby bro’s heart), Damian did not tell them the name of his potential boyfriend. 

.

All in all, Damian spent about two months and a half in Paris before coming back home to Gotham. And the Batfam could see a difference right away. 

Damian was happy. He smiled (it was a little one but it had Dick squealing in joy) more and he was more tolerate of his brothers and schoolmates. 

“We should’ve shipped him off to Paris earlier if he comes back like this.” 

Tim was still staring at Damian like he was an alien. The demon spawn still insulted him every other day but hasn’t threatened to kill him at all since he came back. No ripping out his intestines to feed to the vultures or throwing him off a building for the rats to feast on. It was nice. Although a little part of him felt slightly unnerving. He doesn’t have any contingency plans involving a Nice!Damian. 

Dick shook his head fondly at his little brother, taking away his coffee full of too much caffeine and replacing it with decaf. He has truly ascended to motherhood. “Well, I think it’s nice that Little D found love.”

“In the city of love. Is no one paying attention to that part?” Jason munched on one of Alfred’s cookies. “Cause I think that’s hilarious. I thought Baby Bat would’ve choked on all the happiness and bright clean air there.”

Dick whacked his arm. “Stop being mean to Dami.”

“But Dickie. It’s how I show affection.” 

.

Adrien Agreste was the son of the supervillain Hawk Moth that have terrorizing Paris for the last 3 years. Batman was not at all pleased to hear that the Parisian heroes called for help and the Justice League turned them away. People have paid for that. Dearly. 

“So his mom’s dead and his dad’s a criminal?” Jason looked over Bruce’s shoulder at the BatComputer. “Kid’ll fit right in with our family. Demon sure knows how to pick them.”

“Hnn.” Bruce grunted. 

“I mean with you dating Selina, a notorious thief and doing the thing with Talia, a very dangerously lethal assassin, it’s no wonder where your son got his taste from.” 

“Jason.” Bruce grunted in a warning tone. 

“I mean when I’m right, I’m right.”

.

“Ok.” Tim started off tonight’s Family Meeting (excluding Damian), the topic being one certain ex-assassin’s love interest. “Looking further into the Agreste kid shows he clearly did not take after his villainous dad. He is one of Paris’ teenage models and have a huge fanbase dedicated to how pure and sweet he is. He is a literal walking ray of sunshine.” 

“How the fuck did that sunshine child tame our literal feral demon brother?” Jason said. Always the VIP asking the important questions here.

Tim actually had an answer for that. He pulled out several charts and data on his laptop and showed it to the others. “Looking further into Adrien, I have found evidence that he is the cat-themed superhero Chat Noir. Being a loveable and touch-starved kitten appealed to the demon brat’s almost non-existent affections.” 

“Timmy, Dami is capable of love.” Dick said in a disappointed voice. 

“I said almost non-existent, didn’t I?” Tim waved the Mom’s disappointment away. “But you guys have got to see this.” 

He pulled up a video of Chat Noir and Ladybug on the big screen. They watched him using his signature move: cataclysm. No one spoke for a few minutes as they processed the sheer destructive powers of the hero.

“You know what.” Jason broke the silence. “I have no more questions. I can kind of see how Agreste is the demon’s type.” 

What baby assassin wouldn’t be turned on by the literal godly destructive powers the baby kitten held in his hands? 

Dick, the only one wanting to keep things semi-PG here, smacked the back of his head. 

.

“Baby brother.” Cass greeted. She is back home from her Hong Kong trip and heard all about the famous Adrien Agreste. She thought it was adorable and that Adrien and Damian made a cute couple. 

“Hello, Cassandra.” 

She peered down at the list he was currently making. She gestured towards it with a confused look. 

“I am compiling a list of tasks that needs to be done before my Chaton and new sister-in-law come to Gotham. Only the best for them after all. 

Her eyes lit up. “New sister?”

“Yes. My mon amour’s sister will be our new one.” He pulled out a picture of her on his phone for Cass to see. “Her name is Marinette and she will be a fine addition to the family.” 

“Baby sister.” Cass said happily. She was always up for new family members. 

“Yes. I imagine you two will get along the best.” 

But she couldn’t help but notice that with all the preparations he is making, even if it is for his boyfriend and new sister, is a bit —how would Steph say it?— overkill. 

Her coal black eyes were sharp as she observed his body language. “You very serious on this. Why?” 

He can never hide anything from his sister. “I wish for them to have a good impression of our family so that their family will not be disincline to reject my proposal for marriage.”

“Marriage?” She was still quite unfamiliar with some words in English. 

“It means that you will be getting another brother too.” 

.

“We will wed.” 

Dick hasn’t even finished his cereal yet. He looked over at Damian’s serious expression. “Did you even ask him yet?” 

“I will present myself as an extraordinary suitor that he will be more inclined to say yes when I ask.” 

“At least you’re treating your man right.”

Damian took offense. “Why wouldn’t I treat my mon amour with anything but the upmost respect and love?”

“I didn’t mean it like that, Little D. I’m just glad you’re in a good relationship and from what I can see, Adrien adores you very much.”

Damian smiled. “I adore my Chaton a great deal as well. Would you like to come with me to pick out a ring?

Dick could just hear Bruce’s voice in his head saying he shouldn’t be encouraging this. But come on, this was his baby brother who grew up learning how to hurt people finding a precious loving relationship for himself and he will be damned if he doesn’t support this. 

“Of course. I’ll be honored to help.”

His baby brother brightened before he launched into a rant. 

“I’m having trouble finding the perfect gem to complement his eyes. They are a certain shade of forest green you see. And many jewelry stores do me a great disservice by not having that certain shade or having utterly appalling quality for what my Chaton deserves.” 

Previous

Next

.

.

.

Taglist: 

@iglowinggemma28 @iz-bell-saiah @nach0ava @roselynfey @mochinek0 @wannajointhecrabcult

[peppersonironi]

How I Picture a Batfam Age Reversal

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

Ages (At end) & Order:

Damian- 24

Duke- 21

Stephanie- 20

Tim- 21

Cassandra- 19

Jason- 19

Barbara- 15

Dick- 13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[bigskydreaming]

Making this its own post because replying to the ask got so weirdly formatted I can’t even. Oh tumblr. You work so well.

@themessofthecentury  asked:

jsksjf my tumblr notifs are bugging and i didnt see your post but!!! The patron Saint of Robins?? I am much intrigue!!

(This is from this ask game, just....gotten to late, lololol. And I still have more I’m getting to, no worries. Just had a rough couple days is all, laid me up a bit.)

Okay, so The Patron Saint of Robins is kinda like the situation at the end of Grayson, except also not at all. And actually this is one of my older WIPs, and according to Scrivener I started it in 2015 afhislfhalhfalf, so it really has nothing to do with that. Also, its Young Justice-verse, but for two specific reasons:

1) YJ-verse is my go-to for Good Dad Bruce Wayne, when I don’t want to actually tackle the issues I have with his and his kids’ dynamic in comic book canon. I don’t carry over things like the adoption issue or the Robin succession into YJ fics, as I don’t think there’s anything that suggests they’re ever a specific issue in YJ and I don’t feel a need to make them one. So pretty much anything and everything I write in YJ goes with the backstory that Dick’s already adopted by Season One, and he’s the one to grant each later Robin permission to use the mantle, with no conflict over that, and more of a pre-Crisis transition to Nightwing than the post-Crisis firing from Robin. And this fic inherently needs Good Dad Bruce Wayne to work, lol.

2) I needed Klarion the Witch-Boy. Who of course exists in comic book canon, but is muuuuuch different there, and I just needed him to be a little demonic evil shithead, who sets everything in motion to get payback on the heroes for thwarting the Light in Season One, and he targets Robin due to being the oft-cited ‘first of the baby brat heroes’ and the ‘heart of the cape community.’

You don’t really need to be familiar with YJ canon at all for this one, as it goes sharply AU from after Season One, and only faintly and vaguely references specific events from that season. And I use my own YJ-ized version of the Titans as much as the actual YJ Team.

So basically, the plot of this one is to take revenge on the heroes for spoiling his game in Season One, Klarion plays a new game, by putting a chaos curse on Robin. It essentially erases him from peoples’ memories, though he’s perfectly able to make new ones. If he re-introduces himself to someone ask Dick Grayson, for instance, they don’t suddenly remember who Dick Grayson is or was, but they don’t forget about him again from that point onward, its like they meet him for the first time as a stranger.

But the curse part of things is only Batman can break it and restore everyone’s memories of Dick and his actual history, and only by identifying him for who he really is. And Dick can’t be part of breaking his own curse or else it seals it and makes it permanent and unbreakable forever.

Which of course leaves Dick completely miserable at first, understandably, and Bruce (and everyone else Dick knows, to varying different degrees) feeling some kind of loss but with no idea what it is they think or feel that they’re missing. Dick makes some half-hearted attempts at starting a new life for himself in Gotham, and in the process befriends a street kid named Jason Todd, though Dick introduces himself to Jason with just the name Robin.

The way the curse operates is it restitches together peoples’ memories to cover up the gaps where memories of him would go. So for instance, even though Jason never knew Dick before the curse, he was familiar with Batman and Robin just as much as any Gothammite was.....but due to the curse, the name Robin, upon meeting Dick, had no special meaning to him or anyone else. As far as he knew, Batman had always operated on his own in Gotham, the first teen superhero was that Speedy kid in Star City, etc. So when Jason first meets Dick, he just thinks he’s some dude whose name happens to be Robin.

Eventually, because Dick’s been kinda torturing himself by spying on Bruce just to ‘keep an eye on him’ and still watch his back, and he’s recognized by now that Bruce is mourning his loss without even knowing that he’s missing something....so Dick, who has also kinda come to see Jason as a little brother figure due to watching out for him as well....decides to kill two birds with one stone, unfortunate pun not intended. (Jason doesn’t die in this one, lol). Basically, Dick puts in motion the chain of events that lead Jason to stealing Batman’s tires, because he doesn’t know EXACTLY what Bruce will do but he knows it’ll get his attention in a big way and Bruce will take it from there.

One thing leads to another, Jason ends up living with Bruce and when eventually he wants to be trained by Bruce so he can do what he does and protect kids like he used to be.....when asked to pick a name....Jason names himself after the guy who always looked out for him, and who led to him being found by Bruce in the first place. He doesn’t know that his friend ‘Robin’ steered him towards those tires deliberately, just to bring him and Bruce into contact, but he does credit him with making the suggestion that ‘inadvertently’ (as far as he knows) enabled his and Bruce’s introduction, and so he names himself in honor of the boy who helped him and who he tried to track down again to similarly help, after Bruce adopted him, but was never able to find again.

Over the years, Dick also ends up steering Tim, Cass, Duke and Damian to Bruce in different ways than comic book canon (Steph and Babs’ debuts remain their own, as family adjacent but not family specifically) and thus is integral to the forming of the Batfam and has a connection with them even before the curse ultimately ends up broken and he’s able to reclaim his full identity. And each of them end up Robin at least briefly, like Steph is never Robin in this AU, and sticks with Spoiler, whereas Cass IS briefly Robin before becoming Batgirl after Babs. I did this for a few different reasons...

One, I really like that Cass is never Robin in main continuity as it creates a different dynamic between her and Dick than most of their siblings have, BUT I’ve always been curious to play around what Cass-as-Robin might even be like, just for an AU. Two, part of the Black Bat and Batgirl but never Robin sequence of mantles for Cass in the comic book continuity is like.....although it doesn’t get explored nearly enough, Babs was as much a kind of mother figure for Cass as Bruce was a father figure, despite Babs’ young age. So it makes more sense for Cass to stick more to just Bat-mantles than to ever be a Robin in the comic books. But in YJ, Babs is even younger, and just way too young to have the specific kind of dynamic that leads to that in the comic books, so its not as unreasonable IMO for her to have a different dynamic in her early days in the family here, before becoming closer with Babs and taking up the Batgirl mantle after she moves on to become Oracle.

And then also, and this is also the primary reason for making Duke a Robin briefly, before Damian is old enough....I got hung up on the title and it just didn’t work as well if it was Robins + Cass and Duke, lololol. See, in addition to helping steer the family into the points of introduction that make them a family, over the years he also acts as like, a guardian angel figure to the various family members, looking out for them and interceding in times of extreme danger, like when Jason is almost killed by the Joker. He’s always in disguise, but the kids eventually compare notes and realize there’s a singular figure behind each of their introductions to Bruce and the guy swooping out of nowhere to save their behinds whenever they’re most in danger, and Jason eventually connects this back to the guy who apparently NOT so coincidentally suggested he go after the Batmobile’s tires that fateful night, and the kids end up jokingly/not-so-jokingly referring to this figure as the Patron Saint of Robins. (Shout-out to the occasional mentions/allusions of Jason’s Catholicism).

They never tell Bruce about this figure (at least before Bruce starts to put together clues on his own), because they all figured out that for whatever reason, this person despite wanting them all to meet Bruce seems to want to avoid Bruce himself, and they kinda want to respect that as a kind of payback for his help, and also like....Bruce, even a kinder, gentler Bruce, is still Bruce. And when Bruce is gonna Bruce, that means Batparanoia. And all of them for various reasons DO trust that this guy has nothing but good intentions towards them, and so they don’t want to like....ruin or tarnish the positivity they associate with his intercession in their lives with paranoia or treating him like a bad guy. Which ultimately is really just smoke and mirrors for saying that he’s kinda a ‘just for them’ secret. Its a Robin thing.

(Until its not).

Because meanwhile, Dick, in between meeting the various Batfam members and pulling strings and looking out for them from the shadows, at first travels the world looking for ways to break his curse. But when ultimately its clear that the only way to break it is the loophole built into it already, Bruce identifying him for who he really is, but without Dick doing anything to steer him towards the answer, Dick settles into a new hero identity as Nightwing, and forms the Teen Titans, a public group of young superheroes (minus Roy and Wally, unfortunately, but still with Donna, Garth, Raven, Kory, ignoring season 3 Vic and also Terra because AU redemption arc what what, etc). And the Teen Titans avoid both the Young Justice Team and the Justlce League with EXTREME measures, much to the other heroes’ confusion and aggravation, because in the early days of the Titans, in a moment of what he’d term weakness, on one of his ‘bad days,’ Dick tells them enough of his story that they’re able to put together a good sense of what happened and who he really is by reading between the lines and what he leaves unsaid....

BUT as a result, all end up extremely committed to not mixing and mingling casually with the rest of the cape community because they don’t want to risk dropping any hints about the guy under Nightwing’s mask, in case that might count as steering Batman towards clues and seal the curse for good. So I have a lot of fun with having the Titans just nope out of the scene the second the bad guys are defeated even when they have to team up with other heroes, leaving the other heroes confused as hell and trying not to be all ‘WHY DON’T YOU LIKE US??”

Anyway, so yeah, that’s the gist of this one, lol. With it of course following the eventual plot that like...the Batfam starts to Detect and put things together.

ANYWHO!

Snippet

Damian versus Klarion: Round One

“Aww, its adorable that you think you’re in my league,” the Witch-Boy cooed in an absolute mockery of sympathy. Damian bristled, but before he could do anything more than that, he was faced with a much more pressing matter as reality completely lost its mind.

The walls of the cavern fell away in an instant, only to be replaced with a whirling dervish of winds all around them, as if they now stood in the center of a cyclone that bled red and silver and black. It shrieked and wailed in a chorus of voices just on the other side of being comprehensible, a symphony of the damned that set every nerve in Damian’s body aflame with a primal instinct to get out, to find silence, to be anywhere but here.

He’d barely staggered a step backwards when the ground erupted beneath him, splitting apart into jagged obsidian shards that bobbed precariously in the sea of magma barely glimpsed through cracks now spiderwebbing their way across the floor. Spears of lightning burst upwards through them, stabbing impossibly at the heavens rather than raining down from them. They hissed and crackled as they flickered like forked serpent tongues of electric violet and black. The forks becoming branches, the pillars of sky-shattering light transforming into the trunks of great trees that grew upwards and outward, weaving a canopy overhead. One that wept violently red leaves that fell gently to the ground, only to hiss and bubble like acid once they did.

“See, normally this is when I’d hit someone with a little razzle-dazzle like this,” Klarion called out over the song of madness he’d created, as it crooned and careened wildly all around them. He snapped his fingers, and in the span of a second it all ceased. Reality reaffirmed itself, and all was right with the world once more…except now the two of them stood at the end of a hallway in Wayne Manor.

Damian stumbled, the sudden reappearance of firm ground paradoxically being the thing to challenge his balance. The demon boy standing beside him crooked his thumb and forefinger in the semblance of a gun, the smile pasted across his face one of wickedly gleeful malice.

“But you, kiddo, you’re special. Cuz there’s nothing I could do to you now that could top what I’ve already done, so why try when I can just savor the moment instead?”

“What are you babbling about?” Damian demanded roughly. In the wake of what the Witch-Boy had just conjured up with nothing more than a gesture, he was keenly aware of how flimsy a shield his bravado made. He just had absolutely no idea what else to fall back on.

Klarion only threw back his head and laughed though, skipping merrily down the hall as he did.

“I know something you don’t know,” he sing-songed and Damian lost what little grasp of his patience he’d managed to hang onto.

“You overestimate my need for an answer. Attempt to intimidate me all you wish, but I have no desire to indulge your little game any further.”

Klarion jerked to a stop and spun around, his face screwed into a childish pout. He stomped his foot, petulance personified. “I’m not intimidating you anymore, I’m gloating! Ugh, you’re so stupid! They’re completely different, how can you not tell?”

Every light in the hallway flickered and fizzed abruptly. The walls wavered, bubbled, momentarily molten as if made of wax.

Again Damian was reminded just how mercurial this being he was faced with was, and how dangerous. Perhaps, as Father would say, this was not the time to indulge his own instinctive inclinations. Or as Todd would put it, just because you’re already fucked, that’s no reason to fuck yourself over more than you have to.

Crude as his older brother was, there was occasional merit to his…pithiness. Not that he would be admitting that any time soon, of course.

“Fine. What is it you wish to gloat about then?” Damian grated out. The appeasement, such as it was, tried its best to stick in his throat before finally clawing its way free. But at least it proved worth the effort when the godling’s mood reverted back to impishness as readily as with the flip of a switch.

“Well. Its like this, you see.” Klarion said. He dragged it out as he folded both legs underneath him to sit cross-legged in the air, plopping his head into his hands. “I did a baaaaaaaaaaaaad, bad thing to your family, a loooooong time ago. And none of you have done anything about it, because you don’t even know! Isn’t that funny? Doesn’t matter how big a hero Daddy Bats is if he doesn’t even know what needs saving huh? Little Catch-22 there, you might say.”

“Yes. Quite hysterical,” Damian said dryly. “So what is it you claim to have done then?”

The Witch-Boy just sat there, regarding him with amusement, and the seconds marched on into minutes. Damian’s skin crawled. Prickling with impatience and possibly something…more. He wasn’t quite ready to name it anxiety or something as melodramatic as all that yet. In fact, he’d rather not put a name to it at all, but today did not appear to be a day for configuring things to his liking.  

Klarion’s wicked grin grew as if sensing his thoughts, though to the best of his knowledge (and Damian did quickly ransack the library of his memory just to be sure) there was no indication telepathy was included among the Chaos Lord’s many, many powers. And still that detestable smile stretched slowly wider all the same, in perfect synchronization with the rising tide of Damian’s unease. Perhaps the Witch-Boy’s file was in need of annotation.

“How many doors would you say are in this hallway?”

“What? Seven.” Damian snapped out his answer, annoyed by the non sequitur. Not to mention baffled. Was it too much to expect even a semblance of linear thought from the Chaos brat?

“Are you suuuuuuure?” The Witch-Boy stretched his query out obnoxiously. “Maybe you should count again. Just for kicks and giggles.”

Damian throttled back each and every retort attempting to spring to his lips, stuffing them back down and cramming a lid on everything he most dearly wished to say to this most vexing of…shitheads. Once again, it appeared as though nothing less than Todd’s preferred form of nomenclature would suffice. Wonderful. On top of everything else Damian had to deal with today, he seemed to be finding common ground with the man all over the place. Was there no end to the indignities he must suffer?

But marshaling his own formidable willpower, Damian took a deep breath and indulged the Chaos Lord, glancing his eyes down the length of the hallway and counting out each doorway one by one. There was his own room of course, with Cassandra’s to the right of his, and the room Brown used when staying over to the right of hers. That was three. Then there was Thomas directly across from his own room, with Drake to his right and Todd just beyond that, with Father’s room at the very end of the hall, his master suite staggered and with no direct opposite like the others. Seven.

Except all of a sudden there was a door directly opposite his father’s. For a total of eight.

Damian’s brow furrowed in consternation. The faint whispers of uncertainty already seeded throughout him bore fruit, ripening into poisonous stabbings of doubt.

“That’s not real,” he stated with as much conviction as he could muster.

The Witch-Boy’s smile only grew wider still. “Isn’t it, though?”

“There’s never been a door there before,” Damian persisted, striding confidently down the hall towards it. The Chaos Lord flitted ahead of him, inverting til he was upside down and skipping merrily once more, though this time from the ceiling.

“Or has it been there all along?” He sing-songed some more.

“I would think we might have noticed if it had been,” Damian growled.

“Yes, you’d think, wouldn’t you? You are all supposed to be a family of detectives, I thought. Makes you wonder…if you could miss this, what else might you have failed to notice?”

Damian snarled to himself and did his best to shut out the demon boy’s prattling. He quickened his strides, eating up the length of the hallway in his haste to reach its end. He wasn’t sure what opening the door would prove, let alone what bewilderment the godling had conjured on its other side, but it appeared the only end to this game of his was through it, so let there be an end to it already.

And yet, for all his certainty - or best facsimile of it - he couldn’t help but pause once he reached the door in question. His hand hovered within reach of its brass knob, but some instinct, some…caution, held him at bay. As much as he wanted to dismiss all this as just one more of the Chaos Lord’s inane charades, there was a tension in the air that felt too weighty to be the product of just magical conjuring. Something more was in play here. Real forces were at work. His father might disdain magic, but Damian had been around enough of it himself to know when true power had been raised. And the span of empty space between his hand and this hither-to-unseen doorknob held more of it than Damian had felt throughout all the mad warpings Klarion had made of reality thus far.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Klarion asked from somewhere overhead. His voice, usually pitched to carry, was so soft for a moment Damian mistook it for his own inner doubts. “Some doors are easier to open than to close again, you know.”

Even knowing the goading for what it was couldn’t stop Damian then, and with a simple breath to fortify himself, he reached for the knob, spun it once, and shoved the door open all in a single sharp movement.

The Witch-Boy giggled up above.

The door swung wide, a forceful arc that should have revealed anything and everything within it all at once; the better to react quickly to whatever that might be. Fine in principle, perfect in execution, but thwarted by one small detail:

There was nothing on the other side.

And not in the sense of it being just an empty room, but true nothingness. A pitch-black abyss darker than the deepest night, yawning forth from the doorway in a vast, impenetrable shroud. Nor was anything hidden in the darkness, Damian knew, even if just intuitively. He could feel it, that he stood on the edge of an impossible cliff, that there was nothing beyond this threshold but an aching chasm of emptiness and loss. The surety of it hung in the air, thick and heavy, a miasma that seeped through to his side of the doorway and clung to him like the moisture of a fog beads upon the skin.

Klarion’s head suddenly popped up alongside him, hovering just over his shoulder.

Albeit still upside down.

“Well that doesn’t seem right,” he mused, tapping at his lips with a forefinger. “What do you suppose is meant to be in there?”

The last of Damian’s brittle patience shattered.

“Enough! What is the meaning of all this, demon? Speak plainly, for once in your miserable existence!”

His self-preservation instincts and the reminder of just who it was he was shouting at kicked in too little too late, but he wouldn’t take his exasperated fury back even if he could. He was who he was after all. But fortunately, that described the Witch-Boy just as accurately, and rather take offense or perceive any actual threat from Damian’s rage, the Chaos Lord just shrieked with laughter and sprung backwards. He flipped right side up, still hovering in mid-air, and clapped his hands with glee.

“Oh, I should have done this ages ago,” Klarion sang out. “Why, you’re almost as fun as he used to be. Back before he got all droll and serious, that is. He’s no fun at all anymore, nothing like this. Never wants to play, always just running back to his tower with that little bitch of a demoness.”

His face soured like he’d just sucked on a lemon. But rather than stop there, his countenance kept morphing into an increasingly savage scowl, the longer he ranted. The hallway was suddenly sweltering, baking with unseen heat that twisted the air into shimmering ribbons. The small horns sprouting from his forehead burst into scimitars of flame that cut through those ribbons and set them similarly ablaze.

“Always putting on airs like she’s some kind of royalty, just because her Daddy Dearest put the fear into a few peasants back in the day,” the Witch-Boy snarled viciously. “As if that’s enough to put her on par with the likes of me. No one is the likes of me. NO ONE!”

Reality itself quaked with the force of his shout. White-blue flames spat forth and crescendoed down the length of the corridor, splashing against its walls and searing them to a crisp. Damian braced himself for all the good it would do, keenly aware of the void still gaping hungrily behind his back, but before the fire could become an actual danger to him as well, all was quiet once more.

Silence hung in the air much like the demon boy, poised yet motionless. Suspended. Waiting.

And then Klarion simply inhaled and brushed his hands down the front of his garments, smoothing out the wrinkles as he reclaimed his calm. The corridor restored itself to its former self, curtains of vintage reality unrolling from the ceiling to the floor as though papering over the damage. Damian felt rather than saw when the portal behind him swung shut and was replaced with the expanse of ivory paint and ornate sconces he was used to seeing in its place.

“I am one of a kind, after all,” Klarion finally remarked. It was a casual drawl offered forth almost off-handedly, as if more a reminder to himself than uttered for anyone else’s sake. He used one hand to spell out letters in the air. They appeared and vanished again in bursts of fireworks and fluorescent flame. “U-N-I-Q-U-E.”

“As I, apparently, am not,” Damian said, seizing upon the Chaos Lord’s restored calm and good cheer. “Who is this ‘he’ you mentioned? If I’m to be pitted against him as entertainment in your eyes, might I at least know his name?”

“Nuh-uh-uh,” the Witch-Boy scolded. He wagged his finger at Damian. “No spoilers. That’s not how the game is played.”

Keenly aware of the boy’s power once more, Damian gritted his teeth and pressed on. “Well, if there are to be rules, shouldn’t I at least know what those are?”

Klarion sucked in a deep breath, drawing himself up along with his inhalation as though preparing for some great speech…and instead just toppling backward, flopping onto an extravagant fainting couch that suddenly appeared beneath him, though similarly floating in the air.

“I can’t recall at the moment.” His now-faint voice drifted up from where he lay buried amid a mountain of pillows. “I’ve had a terribly exhausting day. But you’re supposed to be a detective, remember? Go…I don’t know. Detect things.”

He flapped an arm at Damian dismissively, and then crooked a finger into a twirling motion that set his divan to spinning in lazy circles.

“Isn’t life grand?” Klarion sighed fondly. “With all its twists and turns, its eddies and swirls. I mean, take the two of us. Scant hours ago, we were mortal enemies, and just look at us now.”

The Witch-Boy lazily rolled his head to the side as the couch drifted to bring him face-to-face with Damian. His lips spread wide in that malevolent, wicked grin of his once again, but somehow it managed to be even wider than any he’d shown off before. His eyes blazed with a hellish inner light, and his voice, when next he spoke, dropped deep into a demonic register. A bass that boomed forth and set Damian’s very bones to rattling.

“Ain’t we got fun?”

[maychorian]

i am not a comic follower, and aside from jasons return i am unaware of how any of the boys ended up dead/revived but still see it mentioned a lot in fics (still largely confused on why dick needed to be batman for a while) would you be so kind as to give me a summery?

Gosh, there’s a lot. And I haven’t read all the stuff in the reboots, so this will be incomplete.

Basically Jason was the first one to die, back in the early eighties. It was very shocking for the comics community, even though characters die in comics and come back pretty frequently. For a while it was even a saying that everyone comes back in comics except for two people: Jason Todd and Ben Parker from the Spider-Man comics, because those two deaths made too much of an impact and changed things too much to be reversed. Then, of course, they did bring Jason back, so that saying isn’t true anymore.

So Jason died, and it had a huge impact on Bruce and the entire DC continuity. If Jason hadn’t been killed that way, we probably wouldn’t have Tim Drake at all, or if we did the character would be very different. Tim was always in Jason’s shadow, from the moment he appeared. We have about twenty years of comics, which I see as a golden age, wherein Tim, Dick, and Bruce were a very effective trio. Dick was in Bludhaven for much of that, but he came back to Gotham frequently to work with Batman and Robin. And Batman also had a bunch of other supporting heroes in Gotham, like Batgirl and Oracle and Huntress and Azrael, and then Dinah and the Birds of Prey, and even Catwoman when she didn’t feel like being a villain at the moment. Batfamily comics were a whole interconnected web of stories with interesting character and plot-lines.

Then they decided to toy with the idea of Jason coming back, with the Hush series. Hush is a very good storyline, imo, but I think the way it was so well-received put the idea of bringing Jason back for real into the writers’ heads, and I’m not convinced it was a good move. In Hush, it seems like they face Jason Todd as a villain, back from the dead. He takes Tim hostage as revenge for “replacing” him and almost slices his throat, but Catwoman saves him. Later it’s revealed that that was Clayface all along, and Jason was never alive after all. It was all a mind game to mess with Bruce’s head, like the rest of that storyline.

But then later we got Under the Red Hood, with Jason actually coming back from the dead, and they retconned it so that really was Jason, and he just traded places with Clayface to make it look like it wasn’t him. It was kind of nonsensical, because Under the Red Hood was all about Jason coming back and being angry and going full villain and trying to get revenge on those who had hurt him, especially Bruce and the Joker, so why wouldn’t he have just come back for real in the Hush storyline? But anyway, not the point.

Under the Red Hood was a well-written series, and it was well received by fans. So now DC had all the go-ahead they needed to start killing Robins and bringing them back willy nilly, and it got really stupid really fast.

You asked about the boys, so I won’t talk too much about Stephanie here, but it was sort of similar with her. She was a character who had been part of Tim and Bruce’s stable of allies for a long time, and she was Robin briefly when Tim’s dad found out he was Robin and forced him to retire, and then she was killed in a gang war that she accidentally started. It was a pretty shocking moment and actually had some impact on the series and on the characters, especially Bruce and Tim. But then they retconned it so her death was fake all along (which really REALLY threw the character of Leslie Thompkins under the bus, lemme tell ya), and her returning didn’t make even close to the splash that Jason returning did. Still, it was widely regarded as a good move, because her death was really skeevy and gross, and comics fans were generally happy that it had been reversed.

But see, that set a pattern. Now Bruce’s kids could get killed and brought back to life at any time, and both the writers and the fans knew it. It no longer has any impact, in my opinion, because we all know it isn’t going to stick. That’s the way I feel about the fact that Alfred is currently dead in canon--there’s no way it’s real. It has absolutely no emotional impact on me, because it’s stupid and ridiculous and I refuse to acknowledge it. 

The next thing that happened was that Bruce “died” (was actually thrown back in time by a big bad alien), and Dick had to take over as Batman. That was when Dick made Damian Robin and basically demoted Tim, or at least that was the way Tim saw it, though Dick didn’t mean it that way. Tim was the only one who believed that Bruce was alive, and he went on his whole journey to bring him back, and somehow when the dust settled he ended up more isolated than ever.

And that was where the pre-New52 storyline ended. I’ve only read a few story arcs in the reboots, so I’m not as familiar with that era, but I know some basic plot points just from reading summaries and panels on tumblr.

At some point people thought Dick was dead, but he was never really dead. It was another faked death, and he went undercover with Spyral? A whole spy thing? Yeah, I didn’t read that one. Still, bad move to kill another Robin, but at least the readers knew all along that he wasn’t really dead, even if his family (besides Bruce, who knew he wasn’t dead) had to grieve him.

Then Damian was killed, and that was a “real” death, in that he actually died. And his soul went to hell??? And Bruce took a posse, including Tim, and went down and got his soul back and revived him. I don’t think this death had even close to the impact of Jason or even Steph’s did, because at that point comics readers had to KNOW there was no way Damian was staying dead.

And later Tim looked like he was dead, too, shot up by a billion drone bullets, but just a few panels later readers knew he wasn’t dead because he’d been captured and taken to space prison because his brain was too big and too special and he was going to mess things up for the bad guys. So at least DC knew not to even pretend that he was dead for a whole issue, because they knew it would have no impact.

So yeah, at this point pretty much every member of the Batfam has been “killed” and brought back to life, except Cass and Duke, I’m pretty sure. Well, Alfred is dead at the moment, but I’m sure it’s temporary.

I hope that helps. I didn’t really attempt to write this in a coherent way. Because DC comics aren’t really coherent, and I have a lot of contempt for their choices, so I don’t think they deserve that much effort from me, haha. 

And yes, I still love the characters despite the bad writing they’ve been subjected to.

[youngjusticeslut]

Crushed

Whoops okay so one lucky anon happened to inspire me into writing my first Bluepulse fic. What can I do? Anyway, I hope y’all enjoy!

Fandom: Young Justice Links: FF.net // AO3 Characters:  Bart Allen, Jaime Reyes, Cassie Sandsmark, Cissie King-Jones, Stephanie Brown, Traci Thurston Ships: Bluepulse, implies Wonderbird Summary: Bart doesn't know what a crush is. Luckily he has Cassie, Traci, Steph and Cissie to explain it to him. Rating: T Word Count: 1960 Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters.

It had been a difficult mission; they’d been split up into three squadrons, each responsible for a different assignment. Wonder Girl, Spoiler and Static had been sent to investigate one of Lex’s product warehouses. Arrowette, Robin and Beast Boy were responsible for watching over the Detroit branch of Star Labs. Traci, Blue Beetle and him got sidetracked from their recon assignment when Sportsmaster had come out to play. By the time M’gann had finished debriefing them, they were left groaning and needing a break.

“Hey, BB!” Bart called, wrapping an arm around Jaime. “What say you and I celebrate the end of a totally crash mission with some sundaes? My treat.”

Jaime narrowed his eyes, yellow from his armor. “I really don’t think you know what the words ‘my treat’ mean.”

“Sure I do,” Bart insisted.

“Bart, ‘my treat’ means that you pay.”

Bart’s face fell. “Oh. You sure?”

“Positive, Hermano. Besides, I can’t. Virgil invited some of the guys back to his place for some video games and I said I’d go.” Jaime maneuvered himself out from under Bart’s arm and shot him an apologetic look. “He would have invited you, but… you know,” he trailed off.

Oh yes, Bart knew very well why he wouldn’t be welcome back to Virgil’s anytime soon. The last time he’d gone for a guys’ night, he’d gotten too excited and accidentally broke the ceiling fan in the kitchen. Virgil’s parents hadn’t been too happy with him, and it took a tremendous amount of mediation from both Barry and the Garricks to get him on their good side again.

“No, no, it’s crash. I get it,” Bart waved off, trying his best to look indifferent. He must have succeeded, for Jaime grinned and nudged his shoulder. The sensation made his stomach buzz, a feeling that was all too familiar.

“Next time, Hermano. I’ll text you later,” he promised before following Tim and Virgil to the zeta tubes. Bart watched him go, the buzzing in his stomach settling to one of unease; the all too familiar sensation of not being invited somewhere.

“-rented the Notebook? Come on, there has to be a better-”

“Name one.”

“Literally any-” “You can’t name a better movie, because it’s impossible,” Cassie said proudly, hands on her hips. Bart immediately turned to the new conversation. The girls stood in a circle, masks off and hoods down.

“Whatever. I’ll find a better one, and then you are going to eat your words Cassie Sandsmark,” Steph warned with a smirk.

“Bart?” Traci called. The girls all turned to look at the speedster, and he rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment at being caught eavesdropping. “Weren’t you going to go with the boys?”

“I wasn’t invited.”

Cissie’s eyes widened in surprise. “What?”

“Is it the Virgil thing?” Cassie asked.

“Yupperino. So that leaves me… without plans for the evening,” he ended lamely. “It’s cool, I’ll go hang with my dad and aunt.”

“Bart, you gotta stop calling them that before Iris kills you,” Traci chuckled. “We’re having a slumber party, if you wanna join.”

“It wouldn’t be weird?”

“Weird? No way, it’d be totally crash,” Steph said, ruffling his hair affectionately. “Cassie’s insisting we watch the Notebook, but I’ll find a better movie.”

“There is no better movie. The Notebook is so retro. It’s the pinnacle of all romantic comedies. I think I read that somewhere in the future.”

“Ha,” Cassie smirked, crossing her arms. “Then it’s settled. You’re hanging with us tonight.”

--

Hanging out with the girls was so much better than being with the guys.

Within an hour of arriving at Cassie’s place, they were all in their pajamas with Korean sheet masks on their faces. Cassie had generously lended him one of her oversized t-shirts, so he sat in that and his boxers as Traci painted his toenails a vibrant ocean blue. None of the girls really seemed to mind his presence which made him feel all the better. It was exactly the pick-me-up he needed after the mission.

“So,” Cassie said as she hooked her laptop up to the TV in the living room. “Would you guys kill me if I talked about how utterly dorky Tim is?”

“For the third time today? Yes,” Steph cut in, tossing another piece of popcorn in her mouth.

Cissie looked up from painting her own fingernails. “What did he do?”

“He left me a love letter,” Cassie said with an enormous grin on her face. “It was filled with Star Wars puns and was the absolute nerdiest thing I’d ever read in my life but…” she squealed and shook a little with delight. “I just have such a crush on him!”

“Can you call it a crush if you’ve been dating over two years?” Traci pointed out.

“What’s a crush?”

For the second time that evening, the girls all turned to look at Bart. Only this time, they seemed surprised.

“You don’t know what a crush is?” Cissie asked.

“Not a clue.”

“That’s impossible. I’m sure you know what a crush is.”

“Sorry Traci, no comprendo. Must be an outdated term in the future.”

“Someone’s been picking up some Spanish from Jaime,” Steph whispered to Cassie, who snickered.

Bart’s cheeks tinged pink and he looked down to his blue toenails. “So is anyone going to explain to me what a crush is?”

Cassie took a seat next to him, pursing her lips in an effort to figure out how to best explain it to him. “Let’s see. A crush is like… when you feel really strongly about someone. You get like a weird feeling in your stomach, and you really want them to like you back. When they do, it’s like the best feeling ever,” she concluded.

The blush on Bart’s cheeks only deepened. “...Oh. So that’s what it’s called.”

Steph raised a brow. “No way. You have a crush on someone.”

“Ooh, do tell! You gotta tell. It’s a girls’ night rule,” Cissie insisted, immediately scooting closer to Bart. The speedster wasn’t sure what to say, all the girls were staring at him so intently. He wasn’t aware that it had been such a secret.

Bart shrugged, toying a bit with his fingers. “It’s Jaime.” He grinned a bit. “Thought everyone already knew.”

Traci didn’t look surprised, but the three blondes all stared at him, jaws slightly agape. “You’re gay?” Cissie asked.

“Doy.”

Cassie squealed, immediately pulling him into a tight hug. “I’m so proud of you! Never in a million years would I have guessed that you’d be coming out to us tonight.”

“Coming out? You guys gotta stop using outdated lingo,” Bart sputtered, trying his best to breathe under Cassie’s crushing hug. Steph eventually pulled her away, and he gave her a look of desperate gratitude.

“Do people not come out in the future?” Cissie asked, grabbing a twizzler off Cassie’s bed.

“Not really.”

“Moving on,” Traci declared, crossing her legs underneath her. “I assume you haven’t told him yet.”

Bart peeled the sticky sheet mask from his face, tossing it in the direction of the garbage and missing. He’d pick it up later. “Why would I? I don’t think he feels the same way.”

“You don’t know that,” Steph scoffed. “You guys both spend every minute together. It’s a definite possibility that he could feel the same.”

Cassie nodded, finally managing to set up the movie on the TV. “I think Steph’s right. Plus, you’ll never know if you don’t try.”

“Thank you, almighty motivational poster,” Cissie teased, groaning when a throw pillow hit her head right after. “You should definitely say something, Bart. Pining over a crush is so not the mood in 2019.”

Bart looked away from them, plucking at a few loose threads in Cassie’s rug. Sure, it all sounded great and dandy in theory. In reality, not so much. “And what if he says he doesn’t feel the same? He could think I’m a freak and then never talk to me again.”

“Um, Bart,” Steph cleared her throat, a hand on her hip and a shit-eating smirk on her lips. “Pretty sure he already thinks you’re a freak.”

“Stephanie!” Tracie snapped. “Asshole Venmo, immediately.” Steph rolled her eyes and pulled out her phone, starting to Venmo each of the girls two dollars. She was the worst at this game, no wonder she was always so broke.

“I think what Steph was trying to say,” Cissie eased gently, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Is that you guys are best friends. I don’t think he’d be so quick to cut you off.”

“And even if he did, you’d have all of us to kick his ass,” Cassie noted, flexing her bicep with a smirk.

“Yeah, pretty sure M’gann could wipe his brain out, make him forget the whole thing,” Traci added. Bart listened to them all with a wary expression; now he wasn’t sure if he felt better, or worse.

--

“I can’t believe you had a sleepover with the girls last night. Cassie’s mom was cool with it?”

Bart sat across from Jaime at a diner in El Paso. Jaime had offered to come to his side for breakfast, but Bart insisted that Texas breakfasts were far superior to Central City’s. Besides, if Jaime rejected him, then he wouldn’t be the one left behind. His heart was pounding a mile a minute as he watched Jaime finish off his coffee, unable to tear his eyes away from him.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah, she was totally crash. Made us snacks and everything,” Bart replied, trying to ground himself. “I had a good time.”

“Really? What’d you guys do?”

Bart organized the sugar packets in their little box, arranging them by color. “We just talked. Did face masks, watched movies and stuff. It was actually really fun. I’ve already been invited to the next one.”

Jaime’s face softened and he took Bart’s hand. “You know, I forgot to tell you. Virgil’s mom asked where you were last night. I think it’s safe to say you’ll be invited to the next one.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. I tried texted you, but your phone was dead last night. I’m glad you had a good time with the girls, though. Did you find out any juicy secrets?” he asked, raising a brow.

“Funny you should mention that,” Bart said. He took a deep breath, his stomach acting up again but he needed to get it out. “Look, there’s something I want to tell you.”

Jaime leaned back in his seat. “Okay, shoot.”

“I have a crush on you. I think that’s the right way to say it. Actually, I’m still a little unclear on the usage of the word, I may not be understanding it right,” Bart rambled. “But the bottom line is that I like you. A lot. And it’s totally crash if you don’t feel the same. I promise I won’t be moded. I just had to get it out.”

“Finally.”

Bart looked up from the sugar packets. “Finally?”

“Yeah, Hermano. I’ve been waiting for you to say something for ages.” Jaime grinned and lifted up their hands, still entwined. “Khaji-Da has been driving me nuts forever, trying to get me to make the first move. I kept having to tell him that I was waiting for you to be ready.”

“Really?”

“Really. Guess I should stop calling you Hermano, though. It’s kinda weird,” Jaime admitted.

Bart pouted. “But I liked Hermano.”

“I’ll come up with a better one. Lo prometo.” Jaime scooted closer until he was at the edge of his seat. The only thing separating them was the small table and their coffee mugs. “Should we get the bill and get out of here?”

Bart grinned, pulling out some cash from his wallet. “My treat.”

[prettyyoungtragedy]

Dramatic Mornings! (Bucky x Reader)

Prompt 11 -  “I could have died!” “don’t be so dramatic, it’s a paper cut,” 

 Bucky x Reader

Summary: Bucky and the reader have a weird FWB relationship!

 A/N: I love this lil fic! I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I loved writing it! This is a one-shot for #buchonians1k #buchonianswritingchallenge @buchonians (CONGRATS ON 1K STEPH!!!)

 Word Count: 1999

 Warnings: Swearing? Its FLUFFLY? And angsty!

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Y/N screamed across the hallway of the compound, storming towards his bedroom, you were ready to murder him.

Steve popped his head out of the bathroom, “What’s going on?” he asked puzzled as you storm passed him, your hair a mess, billowing behind you.

You ignore him as you storm passed him and start banging on Bucky’s bedroom room, “Open up, you fucking asshole.” You shouted pounding your fist on the door.

So, here’s the thing, Bucky Barnes and you were, as people like to say ‘friends-with-benefits’, you simultaneously despised and adored each other. and in this moment, you despised him, Bucky and Sam had drunkenly wrecked your living room while you were away on a mission, given you had been gone for almost a month but needless to say there was puke, booze, and empty bottle everywhere. Your Christmas tree which had cost a pretty penny was now ruined, all the presents beneath it half opened or trashed, and your poor Akita was pink. Why they were in your apartment you had no idea, but you were going to murder someone, starting with Bucky.

Bucky flung open his bedroom door, revealing his bare muscular torso, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Ugh, why are you yelling?” he said groggily, brushing his black hair out of his eyes,

You could see he had been drinking, even though he looked like shit he was still gorgeous. “You wrecked my apartment!”  you exclaimed, you were kind of yelling in his face, standing inches from him but you didn’t care.

“Oh, that…” His vice trailed off, and he scratched the back of his head with his metal arm,

“Yes that!” you yelled, it was 6am in the morning in the compound most of the team were still asleep, but you didn’t care. You had to sleep at the compound because they had wrecked your apartment and mind you, it was a gorgeously furnished (by Pepper Potts herself) in cream, beige and glass. Tony had set it up for you knowing you needed space away from the compound more so than anyone else.

“You could have at least asked me before you drank all my booze and ruined my home!” you continued to yell, “And I swear to god I found women’s underwear on my bed!”

Bucky covered his face tiredly with one hand as you continued your tirade at him, you felt a little bad for yelling at him so early but all that vanished when you saw a girl in his bed. You stopped your rant and looked at him, you weren’t hurt just amazed that he had slept with another woman. Maybe you were a little hurt, because you thought you were special but after all he was Bucky Barnes, smooth, charming, devastatingly handsome Bucky Barnes.

Sam, Steve and Wanda ventured out of their rooms, to see what the commotion as about, in time to see you walking away from Bucky’s room door, the expression on your face practically scream get the fuck out of my way.

Steve turned to Sam, “Oh boy, I told you this sort of thing was going to happen.” He muttered shaking his head,

“I thought we had more time, how were we supposed to know she would be back sooner than we thought.” Sam replied facepalming himself,

Wanda swatted Sam on the arm, “Did you let Bucky sleep with another girl?” She hissed at him,

“I thought we all brought a girl home last night,” Sam replied, pointedly looking at Steve

“Nope, I put her drunk self in a cab and sent her home,” Steve said, looking very proud of himself

“Ugh, you’re so good, it makes me sick.” said Sam, making a choking gesture,

Wanda giggled, but then stopped short when she saw you walking back up the hallway towards Bucky’s room once. “Oh no…” murmured Steve when he followed Wanda’s gaze to Y/N,

“Oh my god, does she have a gun?” Steve said bewildered,

“Oh my shit!” Sam swore when he saw you aim the gun at Bucky’s bedroom door, before any of them had time to dash out of the way or even stop you, you emptied the entire clip into the door in quick succession.

From inside the room, you hear a scream and Bucky swear loudly. Sounds of falling and then rapid footsteps rushing away from the door. You were satisfied with yourself, you dropped the clip out of the magazine, and tossed the gun to the ground. You whirl around and look at an openmouthed, Steve, Sam and Wanda.

“What?” you ask nonchalantly, “I just wanted to scare her.” You shrug. Sometimes your jealous tendencies had a habit of manifesting themselves in the form of a crazy assassin who emptied the clip of a handgun in the door of her would be fuck buddy.

“Are you insane?!” Steve exclaimed as you walked towards them, Sam and Wanda still in shock, you hear footfalls as Tony and Pepper came running down the hallway, eyes wide with fear as to what was happening.

“Oh relax, I didn’t hit either of them, I just wanted to scare her.” You say rolling your eyes at Steve,

Tony marched up to you and looked you over once, you could feel his dad like lecture coming, he was about to start yelling at you about your irresponsibility etc.

“Y/N,” He started pinching the bridge of his nose, but before he could continue, Bucky came flying out of his room with a murderous look on his face, he pointed directly at you.

“You fucking psychopath!” He yelled at you, “Have you lost your goddamn mind?! There is a fucking civilian in there!” he bellowed, marching up to you.

You crossed your arms over your chest, refusing to back away from his aggressive stance. “You wrecked my apartment!” you screamed back at him,

“You tried to shoot me!” he lifted his hand up showing an evidently bleeding cut where one of the bullets had grazed him, “I could have died!”

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, it’s a papercut,” you respond upon seeing his cut,

“Okay, both of you that’s enough both of you!” Pepper interjected, to your surprise. She never got involved when you and Bucky had one of your arguments.

“Yes, I think we should remove the civilian from this situation,” Said Steve, nodding at the frightened skinny blonde girl who stood in the doorway of Bucky’s room, clutching her belongings.

A few minutes later, Tony and Steve walked out Bucky’s frightened one-night stand apologizing profusely for your behavior. The poor girl kept saying she didn’t know Bucky had a girlfriend to which both just shook their head and said it wasn’t her fault.

You sat in the conference room across from Bucky, glaring angrily at him. Steve, and tony returned and took a seat at the table along with Sam, Wanda, and Pepper, the only four that had been in the compound during the incident. You knew this was probably going to be an intervention for your anger issues.

“Alright,” Tony said, sighing deeply, “I have had it up to my eyeballs with the two of you, I swear, it like I house two teenagers who won’t stop fucking and fighting each other.”

“He started it!” you exclaim, but Steve cut you off before you could finish,

“I don’t care who started it, Y/N you fired a loaded weapon at a civilian.” He said morosely,

“Exactly! She’s crazy!” Bucky agreed, you shot him a filthy look and opened your mouth to retort back at him but Pepper interjected,

“You ruined her home, and you” she said, looking at Sam “sex in her bed so you’re partly to blame for this, you know.”

“What, how is this my fault,” he defended himself, but you were still stuck on the fact that Sam had sex in your bed,

“YOU HAD SEX IN MY BED?!” You screeched at him, jumping to your feet.

“Y/N, whoa look it was a mistake,” Sam said quickly, “We were drunk,”

“Oh my god that’s even worse!” you wail,

“Sit down both of you,” Pepper sighed, “You all need to act like adults, Y/N and Bucky, you two fix whatever is going on, Screw each other’s brains out, break each others faces I don’t care, just sort it out! The rest of you are going to go to Y/N’s apartment and clean it up because I did not furnish that apartment with the best furniture in god damn New York for you children who call yourselves Avengers to ruin it.”,

Everyone had begun to protest but Pepper whistled loudly, shutting them all up. “I didn’t say you had an option, now get out!”

“You heard her!” Tony exclaimed motioning for all of you to exit the room,

You all scrambled out of your seats, and left the room. Wanda, Sam, Steve, Bucky and yourself all headed for the garage, looking rather like children who had just been scolded by their parents. Which in this case kind of felt like it,

Upon arriving at your apartment, you saw that it had already been cleaned up. everything was back in its place, the entire apartment looked untouched once more. You could only have assumed Tony had cleaned it up for you while you were busy trying to kill Bucky for throwing a party at your place to begin with but that didn’t make any sense. Since Pepper had sent you all here to clean it up.

“Who cleaned up?” Steve asked looking around in confusion,

“How did anyone even get in here?” Wanda asked, taking a seat on one of the white chairs,

You looked around at your pristinely clean apartment, your Christmas tree was up again and all the presents wrapped, and then it hit you. Bucky had done this, and you felt instant regret for the way you had reacted. You weren’t supposed to come here first this morning and he obviously didn’t know you were coming home so soon, but he was going to clean his mess up, and as much as you wanted to murder him (You did kind of try to kill him) in that moment you just felt kind of guilty.

You turn around and looked at him, he had a small smirk on his face. “How?” you asked him to try to hide your smile,

“Cleaning service, which happens to be in your building by the way,” Bucky said smugly,

Sam chuckled and took a seat on the couch beside Steve, all three of them waiting for you two to kiss and make up.

“You still ruined my home,” You pointed out,

“Did I though?” he retorted with a smirk,

“You slept with another woman,” you cross your arms over your chest, that had mainly been the reason you shot down his door.

“I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to sleep with other women,” he shot back,

“Well you aren’t,” you flip your hair over your shoulder, the sexual tension clearly growing between the two of you

“I didn’t know we were exclusive,” he said huskily, moving closer toward you.

“I mean isn’t it obvious?!” you snapped at him, his face now inches from yours,

“No, actually it isn’t obvious, you are infuriating!” Buck replied, backing you against the counter

“And you’re a fucking child.” You replied softly, biting your lip as you look into his dazzling icy blue eyes,

“You’re insane,” he whispers brushing his lips against yours, “But by god, I fucking adore you.”

Both of you had completely forgotten, Sam, Steve and Wanda sat on the couch watching this whole situation unfold, as Bucky lifted you up and carried you to the bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him.

“Uhhh…do you think they know we are still here?” Sam asked, looking at Steve and Wanda,

“No, no they do not, and if they do they do not care” Steve said raising his eyebrows, even though he wasn’t surprised by the two of you at all.

Wanda just laughed.

Taadaa! I hope you like it!

[luvo27]

hang on wait a minute what do you MEAN i've actually only written one fic where steph kills her dad??????

[thing-you-do-with-that-thing]

Heathen

Characters: Y/N (reader), Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Castiel, Mary Winchester, brief mentions of: Secret Service, Lucifer, Cole Trenton, Amara, Chuck Shurley, Ellen and Jo Harvelle, Charlie Bradbury, Kevin Tran, John Winchester, Bobby Singer.

Pairing: Dean x reader

Warnings: Self Loathing, self blame, canon typical violence, character deaths (not grafic and only the ones from canon), We are in Dean’s head and it gets dark in there so angst. S12 Spoilers.   

Wordcount: 2100ish

A/N: This one is written for @impalaimagining’s 1 k Follower Celebration Challenge. I chose the song Heathens by Twenty One Pilots - I also had a gif which I have used under the cut (the Demon!Dean) - Sorry I didn’t use it that much. I decided to stay closer to the feel the lyrics gave me instead.

This fic is also very much inspired by a this first gif which @torn-and-frayed sent me to write a blurb for. I promised you it would be a fic Steph so here it is!

Thanks to my sweet, amazing co-wayward scandi bitch Maggie aka @winchesterswoonathon for betaing this angsty mess for me.

***My fics are not to be saved nor posted on any other sites without my express written permission.***

THIS IS NOT BY ANY MEANS HOW I SEE DEAN. IT IS WRITTEN FROM HIS POV AND IT IS HIS TWISTED VERSION OF WHO HE IS.

It had taken 5 guards to throw Dean in that cell. He had been beyond pissed when they had separated him and Sam. His brother had been taken from him last, only a few months ago, and now he was seeing it happen right in front of his eyes once again. The idiots they had just saved from Lucifer were dragging him and his brother to a place Dean doubted anyone but a select few knew existed. He and Sam didn’t belong there. They kept the world safe, they didn’t add to its horrors.

That had been what was running through Dean’s mind when he made the first five marks on the wall. He had taken solace in the fact that Cas and Y/N had gotten away with Kelly, before the secret service busted through the door. He had taken solace in the fact that Y/N was safe. Cas would make sure nothing happened to her. No matter how long it took Dean to get out of this God forsaken hole, get to his brother and get out. Cas would keep Y/N safe.

When Dean had assured himself of the truth, of her safety, his mind had gone to Sam. His little brother had been through so much. The hits had kept right on coming ever since he was 6 months old and still he stayed strong. He kept seeing the best in people, even in Dean, when there had been nothing good to see. When he had been a demon, Sam had saved him. He had saved the world from Dean’s darkness. He had saved the world from Lucifer and still he was locked up in here, just like Dean. Sam didn’t deserve any of this. He deserved normality and a life, which he would probably never get, but Dean needed him to be free at the very least. Free and safe, with Y/N and Cas. To hell with himself. He would manage. He always did.

Dean wasn’t pure, not like Sam and Y/N. He was weak and selfish. Dean remembered his time in hell, but it wasn’t the feeling of his soul being torn to shreds, it wasn’t the feeling of blades carving into his very essence that were weighing down on him. It was how easy he had given in. The 30 years of torture weren’t what gave him nightmares, the 10 following them were. It was those 10 years that made it so abundantly clear to Dean that he really did belong in here. It was the years of slicing and carving innocent men and women into something unrecognizable. It was the torture he inflicted on the people he had sworn to protect. The darkness inside of Dean had not been removed with the mark, because it had always been there. Dean had enjoyed the pain he inflicted. Dean had loved killing and had he not been dragged back into this life, a part of him was sure he would still have ended up in this place. He was a murderer, that was who he was. Dean belonged behind bars, Sammy did not. Dean swore he would get his brother out of this place no matter what it took as he carved the next five marks into the wall.

Dean remembered how he had blamed the red angry mark on his arm for all the people had killed. He remembered how he had used her to forget, and how she had let him. A tear fell from Dean’s eye as he remembered ignoring and pretending to be asleep when her body had started shaking next to his. He knew she cried for him, and because of what he had done, to her. She didn’t cry for the things he had done to Sam, to the people they were interrogating on their cases, or Metatron. She had cried because she loved him and because she thought she was losing him. Back then, Dean had thought he was losing himself and that the mark was changing him, but now as he put the five next marks on the wall, he knew. The mark hadn’t changed him. It hadn’t turned him into a killer. It had just made him into more of what he already was. It had shown him the psychopath that he was hiding beneath all his well constructed walls. Dean belonged in here, where the world was safe from him. Where Y/N was safe from him.

Thinking about her was hard. To start with, all he had wanted was to have her back in his arms, selfishly. That was how he had always been with her. He had used her to get over the wounds he carried with him from hell. He had let her piece him back together when Sam had dived into the cage. He remembered how twisted he had been when he had returned from purgatory and how she hadn’t cared. She had held him every night. She had been the light that had showed him the way back to the real world. A world where he couldn’t live from kill to kill. A world that wasn’t black and white and red. A world Dean once again had to learn how to be human in. A world where he couldn’t let his true colors shine through.

Dean thought about her as he made the next five marks on the wall. He thought about how she had never once given up on him. He remembered the control she had always seemed to have over the darkness in him, even when the mark had turned his eyes pitch black, her voice had prevented him from killing.

Had she not shown up. Had her scream not sounded through the alley, Dean would have killed Cole. Had she not distracted him and made his eyes flash back to bright green in an instant, as he remembered what it felt like to love her, Sam would never had been able to capture him. Even when the demon in him had robbed him of any trace of the humanity he had ever possessed, she had been his light. Even when he had gone dark enough that he had been able to kill Sam without hesitation, all he had been able to do to her was knock her out, leaving her unconscious on the floor as he trailed through the halls of the Bunker with a hammer in his hand, searching for his little brother. She had never left him. She had been right there beside him, loving him through it all. Refusing to see what Dean now knew to be true. The Darkness was not forced upon him, it was in him. Part of him. It always had been.

Amara had know that, that had been why she had wanted him. Not because he was her opposite, like Chuck. That had been how Y/N had explained it, as she had held him one night, promising him she wouldn’t leave. Telling him how strong he was and that she believed in him. Dean had let her words impower him then, but now he knew they had been false. Dean was dark. Amara had seen the darkness in him and that had been why she had wanted him. Not because he was her contrast, but because he was like her. Dean didn’t deserve Y/N. One day if he was free, he would get her killed. If not by his own hand, then because someone wanted to see him hurt. Dean knew he couldn’t lose her, not only because he loved her and wanted her safe. If she died he would snap. She was the dam that kept his darkness in check. If that was broken, Dean would be the murderer he knew himself to be. Not even Sam could stop that.

Dean carved the next five marks into the wall thinking of how he never made her happy. Sure he made her smile and laugh. He made her shiver and moan his name, whenever he had showed her without words just how much he loved her. He had made her tear up when he had said those words to her. Still he didn’t make her happy. He brought pain to her life. Worry and heartbreak. He had seen her lose her dad, who had been like a second parent to him, because of him. Bobby had died trying to help him and Sam. He had seen her lose his own father, who had been like a second parent to her, because of a deal John had made to save Dean. He had seen her lose their mutual friends, all dead because of him. Ellen, Jo, Kevin, Charlie… All people she had loved, that had died because Dean hadn’t been able to keep them safe. Hell, he hadn’t even been able to keep himself safe. He had died himself, over and over. Everytime he came back, he had selfishly sought her out. Rather than letting her grief and move on, he had needed her so he had dragged her back into a life he didn’t wanna lead on his own. Just like he had Sam. They both deserved better. They deserved to be happy. Without him there to screw everything up.

When Dean carved the next five marks into the wall he had made up his mind. He was where he belonged. He was going to find a way to get his brother out of here, but he wasn’t leaving. Sam, Cas, his mom, Y/N… they all deserved better than him. They deserved to be free of the pain he caused them. He’d always screwed everything up, but not anymore. In here he couldn’t break anything or anyone else. If he was in here, they would be better off. They didn’t need him and he was done being selfish. Dean was right where he belonged and he was staying put.

Y/N’s PoV - 6 weeks after the brother’s were captured

You flung the book across the room, screaming out your anger. Castiel fell down in his chair, looking like a defeated hopeless child. He blamed himself for this, you knew that. You didn’t, but you also didn’t have the strength to put his mind at ease, not now. Not when the man you considered your brother was missing. Not when he and the man you loved more than anything, more than your own life, was locked up God knows where. Not when there wasn’t a damn thing you could do to help them. Not when you didn’t even know where they were.

“Y/N try and stay calm,” Mary’s shooting voice sounded next to you and her hand rested on your arm. “They have only been gone…”

“6 weeks, 2 days and 10 hours,” Cas finished her sentence in a defeated voice. He felt the same despair you did. He knew the brothers as well as you. He knew why you were hurting this badly.

“We will find them,” Mary insisted with the same stubborn expression on her face, you had seen countless times in Dean “You, me and Castiel. We’ll find them.” Mary tried to assure you, but her words didn’t help. You let yourself fall down onto the chair next to Cas, before you looked up at Mary.

“You don’t understand. I can’t lose Dean,” you tried to explain, but Mary just send you a reassuring smile.

“It’s the Government Y/N. They are not going to kill them. They are safe, just missing,” her voice was calm, but still her words angered you. More than they should, but your emotions were running high.

“You don’t know them Mary! Sam he will be fine. He has been through worse, but Dean… I’d rather they tortured him. If they have him in isolation, he will be alone in his own mind. I’m not sure there is anything worse for Dean.” You saw the hurt, worried expression on Mary’s face, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care.

The room went quiet as Mary sat down across from you. Her and Cas both of them staring into their own nothingness as your mind went to Dean. Sitting alone in a dark, cold room with his own guilt and self blame, convincing himself he was everything you knew he wasn’t. Convincing himself the world and you were better off without him, and that he was right where he belonged. A silent tear fell from your eyes as you feared you had lost him to himself, maybe for good this time.

Dean Tag Team:

@mysupernaturalfics @blacktithe7 @percywinchester27 @quiddy-writes @jpadjackles @supernatural-jackles @supernaturalyobessed @loveitsallineed @starswirlblitz @revwinchester @aprofoundbondwithdean @skathan-omaha @feelmyroarrrr @torn-and-frayed @kayteonline @sinceriouslyamellpadalecki @mysteriouslyme81 @ayeeitsemry @curliesallovertheplace @docharleythegeekqueen  @winchesterprincessbride @faith-in-dean @ellen-reincarnated1967  @winchestdiaries @adriellej @moonstar86 @atc74 @knittingknerdy @tia58 @nikolanna @cyranodebergerac @lycangirl44 @brooke-supernatural16 @yoursmilemakesmeloveyou @melonberri @just-a-touch-of-sass-and-fandoms @alexafromthefandom @stilinski15 @thatonehaspanicchick @roxy-davenport @phoenixia67 @bringmesomepie56 @thebunkerismyhome @salvachester @chaos-and-the-calm67 @jasminwild @anokhi07 @mrswhozeewhatsis @lilyleely @smoothdogsgirl @angelkurenai @chickenmcsade @covarrubiasalex @deanxfuckingadorablexwinchester @charliebradbury1104 @chelseypaigeake @katrena7 @thecynicalnerd @nichelle-my-belle @mouselovesmusic @lucifer-ismy-bae @dreamilyjensen @sleepywinchester @tanithlowisabamf @deansleather  @katnharper @ashleymalfoy @secretlyfurrydragon @winchesterswoonathon @fangirl1802 @buckysmetallicstump @staticbirdy @spn-fan-girl-173 @jensen-gal @tas898 @iamnotsaneatall @waywardjoy @arryn-nyx @like-a-bag-of-potatoes

[bigskydreaming]

kai06leaf replied to your post:

Ended up all night, with sleep derailed by a RUDE...

Um I had asked for a link for your batman related works?:)

Oh score, this is actually weirdly timely then! FlashinthePan is my Batfam pseudonym (https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlashInThePan/works), its just it hasn’t been useful for much other than to use my bookmarks page there as a fics rec list. Since the only other things still up on it are the YJ WIP I haven’t updated in a couple years and an elephant’s graveyard collection for the random ficlets I often write on here while forgetting they’re usually long enough to be actual one-shots...and that I then forget to actually add to that one, that I created for the specific purpose of putting all those in one place. My mind. Its just....*staggers at the Legend of it all*

I’ve been on a pretty committed “No more posting unfinished WIPs kick” for the past couple years but am finally at a point where I have stuff to post without cheating, so that streak officially ends today, when I finish my read-through of the first fic* in question and hit publish. “The Requiem Rites of Robins,” the ten chapter first story in an AU Battle For the Cowl fix-it series, “A Legacy of Robins,” with TRRoR being roughly 40K, focuses on Dick and Jason and their issues with each other and Bruce’s believed death, picking up and going AU at an indeterminate time not long after the end of BFTC. 

Specific goals of focus with this particular fic were addressing Bruce’s bullshit last will and testament to Jason (ugh), the eternally unremarked upon moment that was Dick watching his brother refuse to take his hand and instead fall to what at the time must have seemed very likely to be Jason’s second death, in a pretty fucked up parallel to his parents’ death (ugh), various other unaddressed issues between the brothers that kept them making like they were Cain and Abel instead of two people who loved each other and very much could use each other while grieving for their father or even just pretending they weren’t....and also steadfastly jumping their combined train of events well off the tracks before Morrison’s whole...”Jason” thing ever happened at all (ugh).

Just a headsup for readers for whom certain characterizations of Bruce are a dealbreaker - full disclosure, this fic and its sequels do consider various less pleasant moments between Bruce and his two eldest to be in character and canon, with NTT #55 and the ending to UTRH the most touched upon and relevant. For what its worth, my intention there (and hopefully my execution of things) was not to vilify or bash Bruce, or to make it at all a question of whether or not both really loved Bruce and he them. 

To be clear...I do categorize Bruce’s actions towards Dick and Jason at those times/specific others as abusive, but a huge part of my reason for even writing this particular fic was to explore and examine the reality of loving a parent even despite a history of actually abusive behavior on their parts. Of how to mourn for someone you loved at some times and hated at others, who was both the person who made you feel whole again and the one who made you at other times feel the most broken. 

Especially when you’re two people who pride themselves on being heroes, who are ‘supposed to know’ that there’s no defense, no excuse for some of the things their father did, but that doesn’t always change or erase how much they want to. And who are both looking for an answer in the other, as to how they’re supposed to live with the fact that deep down, there’s a part of them that will always still be those ten and twelve year old orphan boys who came to believe their father was a man who could literally do the impossible...even mend what was broken, make things right with them and the world as they knew it just like he’d managed once before, when he’d first come into their lives and they’d been just as certain then that there were no more happy moments in their futures at all. 

And with the both of them still, even after everything, having held onto that secret hope that someday he was going to find the secret loophole, the magic words that let them forgive him, that let them let the past all just be in the past and the future all that really mattered, that their best days as a family weren’t all behind them yet and there was still time for things to be different, for him to be different....because their dad wasn’t like other ordinary dads, their dad was the Batman, he was a superhero.....

....who was also still just a man, and sometimes men die with their most important deeds still left incomplete.

This first story is centered firmly on just Dick and Jason, because I have a tendency to let things get too widespread and expansive plot-wise the more characters I focus on, and because this first story, about mourning Bruce and finding a way to move on, needed to be just Dick and Jason, although Cass and Tim and Damian, as well as Steph and Babs and Alfred all have things in the wake of his believed death that IMO they needed explored, and that were never explored in canon. But Dick and Jason had to be the first two and a solo act except for each other, especially as this series is still geared towards Bruce’s eventual return, and just to a much different status quo....because the thing about Dick and Jason at this specific point in time, is that they were quite possibly the only two people in the world who would ever have the relationship with Bruce that they did, to see him the way they both at times did, and nobody else ever fully grasped. 

They knew him at his highest and his lowest points, the best parts of him and the worst, the center of their whole universes and the destroyer of them....and for them, at this place and time, its about being forced to realize that for as much as come between them over the years, they each are the only ones who will ever fully be able to speak to the entirety of their father as not just Bruce Wayne, the Batman, the myth and the legend, but Bruce the man, the flawed father who was supposed to be better than his worst mistakes with them, because he was supposed to be a hero. 

Even as close as others were to Bruce, there were specific slants to the light they saw him in....for Alfred, even when making his worst mistakes, he was still his son, for Cass he was still the father who fought her personal demon not because of what he wanted her to be but so that she could be who she wanted to be, for Tim, he was imperfect but still larger than life, the hero he’d still first only come to know through the lens of a camera from a great distance, a perspective he’d yet to entirely shake, and for Damian he was still largely a figure of make believe, a bed time story he’d been told all his life. 

There’s an inherent goodness, a nobleness around the idea of Bruce for most others in his life, that defies coming face to face with the realities his failings could be.....which only Dick and Jason could ultimately attest to, as losing the ability to keep sight of that innate shine was why they’d found themselves so disillusioned by their father at the lowest points between them. And so in a lot of ways, the ultimate goal of writing this fic was trying to get Dick and Jason to a point where they could share their full, messy, complicated as hell feelings about their father with each other, but simultaneously feel a need to preserve the way each of their siblings still saw him, because the truth is that if there’d been someone who could have preserved that shine for their own eyes, to keep their memories of him clear and unobstructed by complication....they would have been glad to have been left just missing Bruce their father, and not the mess of feelings forever tied up in a Gordian knot upon by his death.

So yeah. LOL. That’s the link to my Batfam works, though there hasn’t been much on their for ages, but stay tuned for Chapter One of The Requiem Rites of Robins, later today.

“In the wild, a group of robins is called a round. But Gotham’s birds have always been of a different sort, something entirely unique. And the only proper plural for them, I’ve found, is a legacy.”

An investigation leads the newly minted Batman to London, alone and without Robin’s back-up for the trip. In the past couple months, Dick Grayson has barely found time to breathe, let alone to grieve for his father and come to terms with his new role as the Dark Knight’s successor. But his distracted state leaves him vulnerable, and when a new villain’s one-man war threatens to make a casualty of him too, he’s left with no alternative but to work side by side with his rescuer - at other times better known as his brother, his successor, and a couple times his would-be killer.

(Their family always has been one of over-achievers. And if you’re going to pick a pair of brothers to play compare and contrast against with that in mind, its hard to go wrong with something biblical.)

But Dick seeming no more happy about it than he is, doesn’t do much to pick up Jason’s mood. He’s come to London for his own reasons, and no, he’s still not inclined to share. Curiosity killed the cat, but he’s sure Selina wouldn’t mind if innate nosiness knocked off a few birds here and there as well. Well-earned paranoia aside, however, secrets and cynicism can only carry them so far when the two are forced to rely on each other to fight their way free of a city turned death-trap. Both are keenly aware that the last time they’d fought side by side like this, they’d been all the way back on the other side of Jason’s first untimely death. And as far as potential omens go, that one’s about as shitty as they come.

But a mixed curse and blessing are nothing new for them, and so that’s not just a painful reminder, but also proof that things were different once. That the brothers they’ve become were not always the brothers they were supposed to be. It was time and pain and bloody loss that weighed them both down so much further than the altitudes that came most naturally....not fate, or destiny, or even them. And as their new enemy forces them deeper and deeper below ground, it becomes all the more clear there’s only one skill in either of the brothers’ arsenals that will see them through to the other side of all this: 

And only if they can not just remember, but rediscover, how to shed all of that and finally fly free again.