Mistaken Identities (dp x dc)
Danny had been doing his thing, looking around, making sure he didn't alter anything in the past, minding his own business. Officially, this was supposed to be a trip to gather more blood blossom samples for Team Phantom to study, but he had ended up being a little sidetracked. Apparently though, puritan times made for beautiful forests, sue him if he was enjoying a moment of peace in his otherwise crazy life. So here he was, relaxing for the first time in way too long when this guy just barged into the clearing. Danny straightened up with a yelp which had the guy stopping in his tracks before he turned to look at Danny.
"Be not afraid, child. I mean you no harm," the man said.
Danny squinted as he looked up at the half-shadowed face of the man that seemed vaguely familiar.
"Boy?"
"Uh-" Danny managed as he realized he was supposed to answer. "Oh yeah, no problem, man."
The man tilted his head which directed Danny's attention to his weird buckle-hat. Sobering up as he recognized the clothes from his previous jaunt in the past where Sam had almost gotten burnt at the stake, he mentally congratulated himself for turning back into a human before his nap. He really didn't want to end up trapped in blood blossoms by witch-finders again.
"Are you lost?" The man said, as he edged closer. "Do you require aid?"
The halfa jumped to his feet. "Nope!" Danny said before letting out a nervous laugh. "No aid, I'm all good. Thanks though."
The man opened his mouth to say something before another voice, higher pitched stopped him. "You are back!" A woman wearing a simple dress, with a few birds fluttering around her like a Disney princess approached them.
"Annie," answered the man.
"Come," she said before leading him away with only a glance towards the teenager. The man let himself be dragged away, but not before a last few words. "If you are ever in need of assistance, please do not hesitate."
Danny waved his hand. "Yep. For sure, dude. Thanks!"
Then before the man had turned away completely, the woman grabbed his hat playfully which revealed his face completely to the weak moonlight, and coincidentally to Danny's view. The couple disappeared between the thick foliage as Danny sat, struck dumb with what he had just witnessed.
"Oh my god," he whispered to himself. "That was Bruce fucking Wayne."
Danny had seen enough rag magazines and newspapers with his face printed on the cover to recognize the billionaire for sure. What the hell was he doing in Puritan times? Then, it hit Danny like a brick. Natural portals. They weren't common, or stable and they'd been known to spirit away people randomly. Clearly, they also had some pretty severe side-effects including amnesia considering the old-timey speech pattern Mr. Wayne was using.
There was only one thing for it, Danny clearly had to bring Mr. Wayne back to the present. Not only because it was the right thing to do, but also because a missing billionaire was bound to attract a good amount of attention and if anyone connected this to the ghost zone... Well if the GIW was bad now, Danny didn't want to know what other kind of unsavoury people would pop up if ghosts were better-known. Just imagining the Justice League getting involved was giving Danny the shivers. No, the best thing to do was get Mr. Wayne back to his time and hope he wouldn't remember much of what had happened and wouldn't dig into it further.
Just as he was nodding to himself, he heard a scream coming from not too far away. He transformed before flying towards the noise, only to find the woman he'd seen before with Mr. Wayne being captured by a bunch of men wearing the same kinds of hat.
"She's a witch! Burn her!" He heard someone yell. "Hang her dead!" Someone else said.
This was giving Danny some major flashback to Sam's very own witch burning and without wasting a second, he phased the woman right out of their grips and flew them away from the angry mob.
As soon as he landed and let go of the woman, she turned to him and gripped his arm instead. "You have to help him!"
"Help who?" Danny asked, wincing.
"Mordecai!" she said, her grip tight.
"Is that the man who was with you earlier?" the teenager asked.
The woman nodded before pointing southeast. "He is in the caves, fighting the dragon!"
Danny didn't waste anytime before flying in the direction she had pointed to. Going intangible helped with speed, and he phased through the ground, going straight for the aforementioned cave. He just phased through when he caught sight of Mr. Wayne. As he got closer, he could feel some sort of energy radiating from the man. Just then, the energy started building up and Mr. Wayne started to go transparent. Panicking, Danny did the first thing he could think of and absorbed the mounting energy to himself. It felt like a shot of adrenaline except way, way stronger and for a moment everything blanked out, before the world came into focus again. When he looked around, he couldn't find a trace of Mr. Wayne, but from the energy left over he could tell exactly when he had landed. The Golden Age of Piracy.
"Goddamit!" Danny yelled as he once again felt Bruce Wayne slip through his grasp as he stole away the potent energy from the billionaire's body before it could follow wherever he was going next. First it had been pirates, then the Wild West and lastly it was 20th century Gotham, clearly the natural portal had been all kinds of fucked up for Mr. Wayne to have been dragged from time period to time period. It was a miracle he was even still alive, the poor man! Danny let out a harsh sigh as he parsed out through the information the energy had left him with. This time he'd gotten the information for the two next time-jumps, which meant, Danny could get ahead of this for once and finally catch Mr. Wayne before he could jump again.
With a steadying intake of breath, Danny took out the Infiniv-map and set his destination before he let himself follow through. As he got through he could hear a bunch of different voices, all talking over each other.
"-distortions mean what I think it-"
"-not fair!"
"-time is breaking-"
"-only leave his body once he's dead."
Danny paid no mind as he locked eyes on Mr. Wayne who was lying in Wonder Woman's arms, in a black bodysuit, looking worse for the wear. The same energy as before was emanating from him, though this time it was even stronger. Danny approached carefully, invisible before he put a hand onto Mr. Wayne's chest and concentrated on drawing all the energy into himself. It wasn't like the other times, the flow was faster and he was having trouble staying focused as more and more flew into him. His brows scrunched in concentration, and unbeknownst to him, the invisibility dropped.
All the heroes in the room turned to look at the suddenly appearing white-haired teen who had a hand on Batman's chest. As they stared in confusion, the teen started to glow. It grew brighter and brighter before everyone had to shield their eyes as there was a pulse of bright light that died down almost immediately after. Wonder Woman had to blink the spots out of her vision as she felt the weight in her arms start to shift and let out a groan. "Bruce!"
She set him down and helped him put his head between his knees, as she gently stroked his back. Superman settled on his other side while Red Robin just sat in front of him, still half-believing Bruce was really back.
"What happened?" Bruce mumbled. "The omega radiation, I thought-"
"I'd like to know that too," Green Lantern said before he turned towards the glowy kid who was still blinking his eyes as if to chase away afterimages.
"His energy signature is the same as Darkseid," Raven said, her own eyes having not left the teenager since he had appeared.
"You don't mean..." started Superman as all the heroes turned to look at the kid slowly. The latter finally looked up as if sensing he was the focus of many eyes and cringed as he met the combined stares of the Justice League.
"Yes," Raven answered. "This is Darkseid's son."
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How do you feel about Jack Drake?? What are your thoughts on him and Tim’s relationship?
Anon, I hope you were interested in a novel, because look, I am fascinated by Jack Drake. He’s key to a whole lot of what I find compelling about Tim as a character, and if I were in charge of DC, I’d bring him back to life. This would make Tim unhappy but would IMO make for good plotlines.
Jack and Tim’s relationship is Complicated (TM)...
Jack and Tim hug in Nightwing 20 / Jack impulsively yanks a TV out of the wall in Robin 45 / Tim grieves in Identity Crisis
“I could tell the truth. But I don’t.” - Robin 66
...and it involves a whole lot of Tim lying, and feeling guilty about lying, and thinking about telling the truth, and choosing again and again to keep lying.
And I think that’s great.
Below the cut:
Shorter version - key points about Jack
Really long version - my gentler take (vigilantism is choir and Jack loves sports) vs. my harsher take (Jack has some major flaws)
Final thoughts
Shorter version - key points about Jack:
He’s a bad parent. He’s self-centered, he consistently prioritizes his own comfort and interests over his son’s, and when upset, he does things like order Tim off to boarding school.
But he’s never a bad parent in an actionable way. He’s not like David Cain or Arthur Brown, who are abusive monsters. Jack’s not a monster! He just...kinda sucks.
He genuinely loves Tim. If Jack’s aware that Tim’s disappeared or is in trouble, he’s always worried and upset. He periodically resolves to be a better dad, and IMO he’s always sincere.
And Tim loves him, a lot. Tim’s protective of him and worries about him when he’s kidnapped or in danger, and when they’re reunited, Tim’s really relieved and usually hugs him (and Jack hugs back!).
...But they have very little in common, and that’s a problem. Jack doesn’t value the things that Tim values, or respect the people that Tim admires, or care about the things that Tim’s interested in. Tim lies to him a lot, but that’s partly because he correctly guesses Jack wouldn’t respond well if he knew the truth of what Tim’s up to.
The Batfamily is a surrogate family that Tim’s drawn to because of the ways his real family doesn’t meet his emotional needs…but also he feels guilty about that and disloyal. (And to the extent that his dad recognizes what’s going on, he's jealous and resentful!)
Very long version:
(LISTEN I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS)
Okay! So first: Jack’s a character who IMO is pretty up for interpretation. You can interpret him very charitably, and make excuses for the bad behavior, and fill in the blanks sympathetically when situations are ambiguous; or you can interpret him uncharitably, and emphasize the bad behavior. I don’t think either approach is invalid - it depends on what kind of story you’re interested in! I have enjoyed Bad Dad stories and also stories that redeem Jack.
My personal take on canon is that Jack and Tim’s relationship is in a gray area. Jack's definitely neglectful, and he does prioritize other things over Tim, but he’s never so bad that Tim can easily reject him, and he's never so bad that Bruce could justify taking Tim away. He's just...not great. Tim loves him, and feels loyal to him, but it’s a very mixed-up complicated love.
I have a gentler take and a harsher one which I switch between as the spirit moves me. xD
My Gentler Take (tl;dr: vigilantism is choir and Jack loves sports)
Here’s the core conflict: Jack and Tim are very different people with different values. Tim idolizes Bruce and Dick and vigilantism, and secretly gets involved, knowing his dad will hate it. He gets increasingly wrapped up in his secret world and lies to his dad...because if his dad finds out, he’ll make Tim quit.
This is a great setup for an ongoing comic. It’s practical, because it provides endless potential for plotlines, and it’s nicely thematic, because it maps closely onto relatable real-life situations with extracurricular activities:
Tim the drama nerd whose dad thinks he’s playing football and not in the school play;
Tim the closeted-queer kid secretly getting involved in his school’s politically-active Gay-Straight Alliance;
Tim the choir kid whose dad only values making money and wants him to go into the family business (and Tim keeps promising himself he'll give up choir soon, definitely soon, but maybe he'll stay in just a liiiittle longer, because they need him, you see, the last tenor left town, so...);
Tim the computer geek with the sports-obsessed dad (this one’s just canon);
etc. etc.
The extracurricular metaphor works pretty well for Tim’s relationship to vigilantism. Tim's involved in his "extracurricular" because he genuinely thinks it's important and fulfilling, and he values it and wants to be good at it. He idolizes Bruce and Dick because they're good at it. He's been collecting information about it since he was a little kid, and hiding it from his parents because he knows they wouldn't approve. And mayyyybe there's also an element of low-key rebellion against his dad, and maybe that's secretly part of the appeal. And yet also as Tim gets more and more invested, he starts to daydream: maybe I could tell my dad and he'd be proud of me and supportive. But he doesn't, because actually he knows his dad would be upset and angry and make him quit.
And - again, just like with lonely kids and extracurricular hobbies - one of the things that happens is that Tim starts getting his unfilled emotional needs met ... by people he knows through this secret hobby. And people like Bruce and Dick start turning into a surrogate family. Which Tim feels guilty about. And also as Tim gets more and more wrapped up in their world, he has to lie to his dad even more, which means the distance between Tim and his dad gets bigger and bigger and more and more unfixable.
I love this dilemma. It's simple, it's recognizable, it provides endless sources for conflict, and there's no obvious solution! Tim can't tell Jack: he'll make Tim quit! And Tim doesn't want to quit, because he loves choir / art / theater / whatever. Yeah, it’s difficult, and there are challenges, and sometimes he has doubts...but at the end of the day, he cares about it a lot. And everything he values is there, and all the people he admires and cares about are there, and all he wants in the world is to feel like he's one of them and belongs there. So he has to lie, even though he doesn't want to lie, and he feels guilty about it...
...but also he ends up lying more and more.
(Sidenote: I think it's important that Tim chooses to keep lying - Tim's narration often glosses this as "I have to lie to my dad," and that's certainly how it feels to Tim, but this... isn't quite true. He has to lie to his dad, because if he doesn't, his dad will get mad at him and try to stop him, not because he literally has no choice about it.)
Other Reasons Why I Like The "Secret Extracurricular" Interpretation
(tl;dr it complicates not just Tim's relationship with his dad, but also all his other relationships)
Tim's problems have some obvious parallels to Steph and Cass, who both become vigilantes while rejecting their evil supervillain dads. But Jack isn't evil. And that means the Tim-and-Jack relationship is ambiguous and complicated in ways that I like. Steph and Cass can just leave their Bad Dads in prison, and say good riddance, and feel very righteous and triumphant about it! Tim’s more complicated. Tim gets into vigilantism ostensibly out of duty and altruism, but secretly, he's also involved for straight-up selfish self-fulfillment reasons. He's lonely, and bored, and his life feels pointless, but he thinks that Bruce and Dick are cool and amazing and he wants to be a part of the things that they do. When his dad gets jealous of Tim’s relationship to Bruce, and feels like Tim’s looking for a surrogate family, he’s... not wrong.
And the ways in which Jack is not Actionably Bad complicate things from Bruce's POV. If Jack was a straight-up villain, it’d be an easy call to keep in touch when Jack finds out and makes Tim quit...but he’s not a villain, not really. So what do you do? Do you try to surreptitiously stay in touch with Tim even though you’re ignoring his dad’s express wishes and thus forcing Tim to sneak around? Do you respect his dad’s wishes and stay away from Tim even though you have a years-long relationship at this point?
Again: a bit similar to the extracurricular analogy. Say you’re the choir director and you’ve built this whole relationship with a kid in the choir, and you’re an important mentor to him and you care about him etc. etc. etc.... and then right before a big performance, his dad finds out he’s been secretly involved, and yanks him out. How would you react? Well, maybe kind of in some of the ways Bruce reacts. You replace him. You’re annoyed with him. You miss him. You want him to come back. You’re also worried about him. You’re upset with his dad. But also... what should you do, exactly?
Bruce and Alfred and Dick care about Tim as if he were part of their family, but he’s not part of their family, and there’s a lot of interesting tension there.
My Harsher Take
Jack never hits his son. But his temper is a big deal.
In his worst moments, he takes out his anger on Tim’s stuff - wrecking his room, or ripping his TV out of the wall and confiscating it. When he’s worried about Tim, he usually expresses that fear by yelling at him / punishing him / sending him away - threatening to send him to boarding school in Metropolis in Robin III, or threatening to send him to military school abroad in Robin 92, or actually forcing him to go to an all-boys' boarding school post-NML.
This is bad behavior! It is Not Good!
And you can easily connect the dots to a bunch of Tim’s terrible coping mechanisms, like the constant lying and or the fact that Tim’s go-to methods for dealing with interpersonal conflict are 1) repress it and pretend it never happened (most of his fights with Bruce), 2) withdraw from the relationship until he can pretend the conflict doesn’t exist (when his friends get mad at him in YJ, he quits the team for a while), or 3) literally run away from home.
Also, Jack is a Manly Man with firm opinions about how men behave vs. how women behave, and he thinks boys shouldn’t be scared and thinks Tim should date hot girls and pushes Tim to work out and wants him to play football and expresses period-typical sexism, etc. etc. etc. ... and though obviously this wasn’t what the writers had in mind at the time, all of that is certainly interesting to read backwards in the light of Tim as a queer character.
More Disorganized Thoughts on Jack Drake
Tim’s our hero, so we’re naturally more sympathetic to him, but it’s also true that relationships are a two-way street, and Tim doesn’t value any of the things his dad values, either. Jack at various points is shown to care about grades, business, money, boarding schools, archeology, football, a kind of macho bragging-about-dating-hot-women ethos, and a very public and performative kind of caring. Tim tends to respond with discomfort or disinterest or even disgust. When Jack gets on TV to try to rally the government to save his son from No Man’s Land, Tim isn’t touched—he’s mortified. When Jack makes some bad investments and loses money, Jack’s deeply upset and his self-image is majorly impacted, and far from being sympathetic, Tim’s annoyed and kind of contemptuous of the idea that this is a problem. Jack thinks fishing in the early morning and going to tennis matches is a fun father-son activity; Tim finds it exhausting and tedious. And so on.
This means that Tim often longs to be closer to his dad in theory, but this longing is more tied to fantasy than to reality. He rarely seems to enjoy spending time with His-Dad-The-Actual-Person. So for example, when Tim’s deadly ill with the Clench, he has an extremely poignant fever dream about telling his dad the truth and getting hugged…even as he insists in real-life to Alfred and Dick that he does not want them to tell his dad what’s going on.
The same is true of Jack, who IMO genuinely wants to be closer to his son and is continually declaring that he’s going to turn over a new leaf and get closer to his son…and just as continually backs out of activities or loses his temper when faced with spending time with his actual son.
Tim and his dad sadly get along best—by far—in Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder situations. When Jack gets kidnapped or is in danger, Tim worries for him (and Tim grieves him deeply when he dies). When Tim disappears or runs away, Jack’s genuinely worried about him. So e.g. they have a really moving emotional reunion and hug when the earthquake hits Gotham, and Tim panics about his dad’s safety and comes running home (and meanwhile Jack’s been panicked about Tim’s safety!). It’s the day-to-day, regular life stuff where they don’t connect.
Jack's written quite differently by different writers. Mostly, Tim's parents are at their least likable in his early appearances and early miniseries (this is where you get, for example, Jack and Janet being nasty at each other while a pained employee looks on, and Tim disappointed to once again get news of where his parents are via postcard - "I guess that sums them up! Never know where they’re going to be–or when–or even how long!” - and Tim alone on school break, and Bruce and Alfred thinking there's something weird going on with Tim's parents, etc. etc.). Jack's more sympathetic but still often unlikable in most of Tim's Robin solo, and he's almost invisible (but positively treated if he does show up) in Tim's team books.
For obvious reasons, Jack's remembered way more sympathetically after his death. Tim's completely devastated by Jack's murder, which he arrives moments too late to prevent, and he basically never gets over it. We see him grieving Jack again and again in Robin, and also in Teen Titans, and also in Resurrection, and again in the Halloween Special, and again in Batman: Blackest Night, and all the way up to the end of Red Robin. Tim also grieves for an extended time over Janet - he hallucinates a happy reunion with her when he's feverish in Contagion, and hallucinates her in the final issue of Robin, and the reveal-your-buried-emotions song in Robin 102 brings up his grief for her too (meanwhile, other characters dance or laugh or otherwise get giddy). Tim’s grief over his parents’ deaths is intense and long-lasting.
I'm not going to clip comic panels because this is long enough, but if you're curious, here's a nice and fairly lengthy compilation of comic panels with Tim and Jack.
If you're interested in a Jack-centric story with a softer-but-still-recognizably-canon take on Jack, I really like the way Jack’s narration is written in the one-shots Heart Humble (set shortly before Jack dies) and Never a Hero (Ra's resurrects him during Brucequest, and Jack's archeology skills turn out to be unexpectedly useful).
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hey, so. funny thing.
@whinysteve and i have been going insane for like two days because we couldn't find this one fic we really liked, and we both remembered reading it not so long ago but somehow neither of us could recall how it ended? and we kept saying that it's so GOOD and how the heck did it just disappear? well, after hours of losing my mind going through my ao3 history, the steve/tony tag with various keywords, the findingstony blog... it. it hit me that i can't find it because it doesn't exist. because it was the soulmates au idea you posted like two weeks ago where their words only show up after they've met their soulmate.
i thought you might find this amusing. 😩 (i do, but i also need to lie down for a bit because i will never know how steve fixed that mess)
hahahaha omg liv if this is your way of peer pressuring me into writing the whole fic i might actually do it??? because your ask has got me thinking about what would happen next.
that said, steve still hasn't figured out how to fix this mess. i'm very sorry about this.
(stonyclunks soulmates au part one here)
---
having been rescued by SHIELD, news of steve's recovery was immediately delivered to howard stark who, while not as involved with SHIELD as he used to be, still receives weekly reports as one of its co-founders.
he'd gone home that night and brought it up in the middle of cutting his steak. coincidentally, tony had been visiting that day and stayed for dinner, so he found out about captain america's miraculous resurrection before the general public did, and honestly, he had enough of hearing about how great this guy was growing up. he really didn't need to keep hearing about it as an adult after he'd finally worked through his issues with his dad and his obsession with a (not quite) dead war hero.
so after howard's announcement, tony politely requested howard refrain from talking about this guy with him.
"i know he's your friend, and you'll probably be spending a bit of time with him now that he's been found, and i'm really happy for you, but i think it would be better for our relationship if we could talk about literally anything but him," he'd said.
and, well. howard was trying. he knew he wasn't the best dad and he also wanted to do right by maria, who spent so many years torn between her son and her husband while trying to mend their relationship. they were finally in a relatively good place with each other which made maria happy. and to be frank, howard had actually come to really enjoy tony's company whenever he was home. he was quite happy too. so he agreed. they don't talk about steve and howard doesn't ask tony to meet steve.
that very night, tony made sure 'captain america' and 'steve rogers' were muted in all his news feeds and social channels.
he literally doesn't know a single thing about the man besides what he learned in his childhood, which he's blocked out. it's a peaceful two years of blissful ignorance.
fast forward to now, tony's packing up his suitcase and getting ready to check out of his hotel when he sees a text from his mom in their family group chat.
seems he's not quite the perfect role model you always made him out to be, howard 🤡, her message reads.
what follows is a link to an instagram post, and from the message preview he can see that it's steve rogers' profile, and under normal circumstances he wouldn't even bother clicking the link.
but 1) maria usually never brings up the man in tony's presence either, and 2) her comment made him laugh. so color tony intrigued.
he taps the link and sees the post. it's a picture of a coffee cup from the place he was at a week ago. the one where he got body slammed by his mysterious dick of a soulmate and unfairly yelled at for it.
he reads the caption and his legs give out under him.
i don't even know if you'll see this, but all i can do is hope. i'm sorry for the words that have made their mark on you. i know i don't deserve it, but i'm hoping you could give me a second chance. i won't yell at you this time, i promise. yours, a fucking asshole
one week ago, captain america was barely even a blip on tony's radar and that's how he preferred it. now, steve rogers is tony's mysterious dick of a soulmate.
what the fuck even is his life.
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