#Random Gothamite

[mzminola]

Because something superhero comics, noir, and fanfic all have in common is leaning into soap opera convolutedness, @alexmaybe & I have come up with the Bruce Wayne Spawn Shell Game AU, in which the middle kids are all biologically Bruce’s.

(Dick really is John & Mary Grayson’s, and Damian is Talia’s direct clone.)

No one finds this out until Batman!Bruce & Robin!Damian are fighting a magic user who has heard rumors that Robin is Batman’s son (rumors started by Damian’s not so quiet comments about being The Blood Son). The mage gloats that they’re going to use a “teleport everyone with X trait to me” spell to yank Robin over, and use the disorientation of teleportation to take him hostage. “I will summon Batman’s direct blood descendents! Mwa ha ha ha!”

Cue Damian staying firmly at Bruce’s side, while Cass in street wear with bubble tea, Jason doing gear maintenance, a random college student studying for exams, and Tim in his pajamas pop out of the ether all within a yard of the mage.

The mage regrets their life choices.

~

Now, how did we get here?

Firstly, during the years Bruce is doing his world tour of Learning Batman Skills while still swinging in and out of Gotham, Bruce is seeking physical activity to make his brain shut up, and also seeking intimacy but keeping too many secrets to let himself actually get close to people, so he is sleeping with Even More People Than In His Batman Years. He remembers condoms but always doesn’t use them perfectly.

Bruce meets Sandra & Carolyn Wu-San at their dojo in Brooklyn. Some time later when David Cain coerces Sandra into reproductive sex, she seeks out every male martial artist she vaguely respected or thought had potential to sleep with them too as a Fuck You to undermine Cain’s scheme without openly breaking their deal.

Bruce has a one-night stand with pre-transition Willis Todd, both of them just giving their first (legal) name, no contact info. Figuring out several months later that he’s pregnant but no clue how to find the other father, Willis, who does want kids someday, weighs the pros and cons of “having trouble making ends meet right now, can I support a kid?” with “everyone says pregnancy would be harder later in transition,” and opts to have Jason now.

Sheila Haywood is either a friend or a bribable hospital worker (or both) who agrees to put her name down as the mom so Willis can legally be his kid’s dad without any complicated paperwork. Willis and Catherine never got around to telling Jason before both of them died. When Jason showed up at the camp thinking Sheila was his bio-mom she rolled with it, figuring she could get details of why he thought that later, and then unfortunately [canon ensued].

It won’t be until the spell incident happens that Bruce puts together one night stand Wilhelmina with Why do the pictures of Willis Todd look kinda familiar? Because he definitely never slept with Catherine or Sheila.

Bruce meets, befriends and sleeps with Janet Drake while going on an archaeological research binge. He’s also still having a lot of random bar and nightclub hook-ups.

Some months later, while Jack is out of town on a business trip, Janet complains to Bruce that Jack really wants a son, but the latest ultrasound shows a female fetus. Janet really doesn’t want to deal with pregnancy ever again, but Jack isn’t open to adoption, and ugh if only Janet could just swap this one for a male infant. It would be so easy to nudge Jack into an archeology dig closer to the due date, he’d never have to know!

(No, neither Bruce nor Janet have thought maybe Bruce got Janet pregnant instead of Jack.)

“You’ve got this knack for finding odd things at just the right moment, Brucie…”

Janet knows it’s a long shot, and dubiously ethical because adoption records exist for good reason, and if they can’t find a baby that works she’ll just have to dig her heels in with Jack against trying for a son, but if Bruce could find a baby…

Bruce makes no promises other than keeping an eye and ear out.

Anyway, Bruce isn’t Batman yet, but he’s home between tutors on his World Tour and venturing into the city in various disguises to learn more about Gotham’s underworld, and getting into trouble. So it is Bruce Wayne with a fresh concussion, not a drunk Brucie, who stumbles into an alley to vomit and finds a baby in a dumpster.

It’s a very full dumpster, one half of the lid broken off. An orange cat (who may or may not be Teekl returning a future favor) is curled around the newborn baby boy. The infant has a shock of hair as dark as Janet’s.

Concussed Bruce walks all the way to the Drake townhouse marveling at the tiny hand gripping his finger so tight.

Janet schedules a C-section. Bruce forges Timothy Jackson Drake’s birth certificate and arranges the adoption of Janet’s daughter by a family in Oregon. He keeps tabs on them over the years, preparing a Wayne Foundation scholarship to the college of her choice someday.

~

Back to the magic incident: Nightwing and Batwoman were on their way there as back-up when the mage cast the summoning spell, so Dick is able to hug Damian as the kid bluescreens about Not Being The Blood Son.

Bruce awkwardly explains that yes, he ran Damian’s DNA when Talia dropped him off, but when he realized Damian was Talia’s direct clone, he also realized Talia was taking steps to ensure her child escaped the League of Assassins, by attaching him to one of the few people on the planet who can go toe to toe with (and even defeat) her father. Bruce opted to go along with Talia’s choice.

Kate has gotten popcorn from somewhere, munching on it while Bruce desperately thinks back to his Mega Ho Years to figure out how everyone else happened.

Cass is feeling a vindictive sort of smugness about not being David Cain’s bio-kid. He’s still her dad, but he only got part of what he wanted from Shiva.

Jason is pissed at Bruce for not figuring it out earlier, but kinda relieved that Sheila wasn't actually his mom.

The freshman college student from Oregon is really annoyed, she was at study group and she CANNOT fail this class!!! Now she’s on the entire opposite coast???

Tim is having some feelings about how fucking soap opera his origins turn out to be. Bruce slept with his mom Janet, but also she wasn’t his birth mom, he was adopted and no one told him??? Who the heck is his other birth parent??? What were the odds of his apparent bio-parent Bruce being the one to find him??? Wait, was finding baby Tim in a dumpster why younger!Bruce suddenly had Wayne Enterprises put money into improving and proliferating Safe Drop-Off Sites in Gotham???

(He is Not Thinking About his complicated relationship with Jack.)

~

Tim, when things are just starting to quiet down: “Wait, so does Talia have XY chromosomes, or does Damian have XX? Because I’ve done a lot of of cloning lab work, and—”

Damian: “Don’t talk about my mother’s chromosomes, dumpster baby.”

Tim: >:(

Bruce, very tired: “Damian, don’t call your brother a dumpster baby.”

Damian, indignant: “But you just told us you found him in a dumpster as an infant!”

Freshman college student: “Dude, it’s still fucking rude? Like how would you like being called a test tube baby?”

Damian: /draws sword/

Dick, pushing sword back into sheath: “No drawing weapons on civilians. Or calling Tim rude things. Tim, I think any chromosome questions are Talia and Damian’s personal medical business, so please don’t speculate on them.”

Tim, sarcastically: “Sorry, I forgot medical privacy exists after how you all reacted to the spleen thing.”

Freshman college student: “Spleen thing?”

Tim: “Don’t worry, it’s not genetic. Speaking of, B, you’re gonna have to update, like, all our medical history now.”

Bruce, even more tired: "Hn."

[bluerosefox]

Phantomish Rogues

Team Phantom get ripped from their home universe into the DCverse. With no money or real ID's in this world. Now thats a problem.

Another big problem is that Danny is badly injured and his core kinda put him into a deep cryo sleep. He needs to rest and gather ectoplasm.

Bigger problem Team Phantom have no clue how to get home because they don't know how to decode the Fenton Portal blue-prints, not even Jazz who at the time didn't pay attention to her parents portal work anymore by the time they finished it. The only one who does have an idea is Danny!

Biggest problem, they landed in a place called Gotham that seems to be overrun with actual villains and heroes? (vigilantes). And for some odd reason many of them seem to find them no matter where the Team goes to hide.

Until they can get their hands on a safe space, tech, and money, Team Phantom might have to go a bit Rogue/Villainous if they wanna keep Danny safe until he wakes up.

[fanaticalthings]

Jason only resorts to his emergency signal when he's 0.1 seconds away from death and only when he's 100% reaching raw desperation levels of survival

BUT he also uses it when he's faced with the most mild of inconveniences, so the batfam are always stressed when they get his panic signal because is he about to fucking die or was he just locked out of the family Netflix account?

And obviously they can't take ANY chances, so it's always a 50/50 on whether the night ends with the fam huddled in the medbay of the cave, or whether all of them are fully costumed, weapons sharpened and ready to throw hands in Jason's apartment and Jason's just casually lounging on his couch like "Oh hey guys, I'm out of flour, can one of you run to get some?" with the most annoying shit-eating grin you've ever seen.

[hijinxinprogress]

Civilian Gothamites realizing they can get vengeance through Sword!Robin

Gothamites figuring out if they happen to mention a rogue treating animals poorly within hearing range of sword!Robin that rogue will be in custody with at least four fractures and a concussion and Damian being completely aware that like 63% of these people are lying but it’s the only way he can get experience with the nonlethal takedowns he’s experimenting with bc everyone keeps complaining about how he treats his opponents and allies 

Like he’s guiding a civilian to safety and they mention that “this would be the worst thing to happen to me today if riddler didn’t stab my fucking cat” and this civilian does not own a cat but they did own a car that was just paid off but riddler fucking crushed it with a stupid ass hot air balloon that’s shaped like a fucking question mark and Damian is aware of this bc he was the one that verified the insurance claim (but he’s been looking for a reason to punch Nygma in the throat since his last Arkham escape when he called Damian a moron)

And he also knows that if he plays along with it and says ‘as if I’d let that gaudy and tactless imbecile get away with committing such atrocities’ when prompted that he’ll get away with barely a slap on the wrist like he gets three half hearted but long lectures he’s not going to listen to and an online sensitivity training seminar he goads Tim into completing (Damian and Tim 100% try to trick each other into doing work they don’t want to do and full heartedly believe the other has no idea what they’re doing)

Bruce’s tendency for finding small crashouts at risk of becoming future rogues in Gotham and deciding they need love & supervision but what actually happens bc he’s so fucking awkward is they get almost the same amount of supervision just with like an hour of intense helicopter parenting a week but honestly besides that they just have more money and resources to do fuck shit

Tim 🤝🏾 Damian: using the manipulation tactics they learned from their mothers then later improved on with help from an assassin cult and bat/cape interrogation questioning techniques on the homies

[ravenlilyrose]

One of my absolute favorite Gotham vigilante/rogue dynamics is when it's like:

Rogue helps Robin with his homework while holding him hostage.

[siltyriver]

that one ‘siblings or dating?’ game but it’s literally any of the Wayne’s dating Danny and every single person who tries fails the question bc Danny looks so much like a Wayne and Bruce adopts lookalikes at an alarming rate so of course they’re siblings, right?

[puppetmaster13u]

Slowly rotating designs for the meat marionette bodies.

Only sketched Dick & Bruce for now, but I like to think that they're partially made from their own blood. Any corpse that doesn't make it to the morgue, human or animal, might get dragged down by tendrils Gemini Home Entertainment style to the Hive.

Apologies if I am spamming, but what do you think @phoenixcatch7? Tried to make Dick look slightly more mammalian or avian compared to Bruce but idk if that came through lol.

[lazaruswitch]

was thinking about jane gardner au specifically jane and isabel and was all <333 bc bc bc !!! jaysabel!!!

but here's the thing. jane is a redhead isabel is blonde. jane is a green lantern and isabel sometimes gets caught up in shenanigans so she gets to have a cool outfit and a smth heavy to hit ppl and aliens with. gothamites will look at them and go oh i didn't know other places had their own harlivy that's cool ig a win for the lesbians and all

[ace-in-gotham]

People having y/n moments.

Meanwhile, the only thing I am having IS MENTALA BREKDOWNS FROM EXAMS!

In other words, if I disappear for several days, I am fine, just cosplaying a goblin. Unless it's more than a week in that case, I have been kidnapped.

[beechaotic]

Alright, me and the Meta Crew are all arguing over names for The Cat We Somehow Got. So, uh…what do you think of the names?

These are what we’ve narrowed it down to, so this is what you’re getting.

[delicatebatharmony]

In therapy, talking about things I feel like I can’t control. Meant to mention the name of my local police force. Accidentally said GCPD instead.

I’m clearly in too deep 🤦‍♀️

[thebitchthatcleansarkham]

Riveting conversation with bestie @diary-of-some-random-gothamite

[qcomicsy]

People I think should kill the Joker:

Generally? Harley. But that's an easy answer.

You know who I really want to kill the joker?

A random gothamite. Not a villain. Not a known character. Not Bruce. Not Jason and for the love of god Not Grayson.

I want to see gotham reacting to the shit it's being put upon them. I want to see the city fighting back. I want to see someone who is so so sick of that crazy bastard going around making everyone's life miserable, everyone's fears real.

The person might not even like batman, might not be trained nor in weaponry or combat, hell they don't give a fuck about villains or superheros. They just want to this nightmare to stop.

Batman is right there fighting joker, the middle of the city a whole fucking show, everyone is scared, but still watching it. It went so many times but it's still mesmerizing. Joker is laughing a couple of meters away from Batman, blood on his teeth. Batman is catching his breath, blood on his fist. And then when he last expect. A shot.

Bam

Right in his forehead. It's quick so quick that most people don't even see it. The screams just start when the man's finds the ground.

And then deep silence. I couldn't be? Could be? There's no way, that's devil incarnated. But it's isn't moving. Fuck, Joker isn't moving?

Batman looks behind the corpse and there's just a random person holding a gun. They're in shock, not even tears on their face. It's over.

Almost anticlimactic. That's it. There was joker and now it isn't.

It shouldn't be that easy but it is.

He was just a man after all and now he's dead.

The poor sould is going to be arrested. And tomorrow people will have to go to work. The subway is going to keep moving. The pigeons keep chirping and villains keep bringing chaos.

All that.

Joker is dead.

[you-need-not-apply]

You folks know me too well at this point

I want the Joker killed. But not by any of the Batfam. It's gotta be just some guy with a shotgun.

Bruce thinks it was Jason. Jason is convinced it was Tim. Dick and Damian are both absolutely positive it was Alfred.

[sistertotheknowitall]

Masterpost

“But to the BatFam? That is just Some Guy. A random dude - if you will.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’m missing my spleen.”

“Oh cool, yeah, missing organs suck. I’m missing a kidney and part of my liver. Oh! And my gallbladder but that was more of a necessary evil, it was like, poisoning me or something.” Danny was so focused on applying pressure to his wound (and maybe being a bit too light headed) that he didn’t notice how silent his friend had gotten. Like-wise the comms had gone equally quiet as Gotham’s vigilante family realized that they knew very little about this kid.

It was concerning how quickly they all started to see him as a friend considering it was them as vigilantes he interacted with the most. Tim was the only one who saw him frequently when out of the suit because he was a regular at Danny’s day job. (He worked as a barista in the coffee shop Tim favored.) The others saw him occasionally but more often than not it was just in passing. Steph, Duke, and Dick had to stop themselves from approaching him on the street.

It was odd, one day he had just moved to Gotham, seeming to appear out of nowhere, and then the next he was a constant presence in their lives. Usually armed and ready with a concerning or odd quip, it had started with him being another victim of the city’s petty criminals and had snowballed from there.

Now it wasn’t like the bats saw Danny everyday, but it was expected that he would cross paths with at least three of them before the end of the week. They ran into him more often than any other Gothamite, including the criminals and rouges they fought.

At first the constant meetings by “coincidence” was suspicious. If he wasn’t the one being saved from a mugging, kidnapping, or city wide villain assault, then he was near by and trying to help.

(“Trying to help” usually meant drawing attention to himself so the original victim could escape. Once it had meant Danny armed with a baseball bat against four grown men. Bruce and Dick have tried to talk to him about putting himself in harms way but the kid is surprisingly elusive when he wants to be. Yet, even when avoiding Batman and his eldest, Danny could be found on the patrol route of another family member.)

But honestly? The guy seemed just as exhausted as they were of seeing each other. By the twelfth time in a month, Danny had accused them of stalking him.

The background check Bruce and Tim had run came back clean and he never seemed to be involved in the various criminal activities. He was just there, a weirdly unlucky bystander. So as far as Dick and the others could see, Danny was a completely normal dude. He just said strange things and wasn’t intimidated by them, he actually made it a point to be unhelpful sometimes. When trying to learn his name he gave them the run around for two months. (“I know about stranger danger. I don’t care how often you say you’re the ‘good guys.’ I’m not falling for it.”)

On one memorable occasion Danny had disappeared for a week and a half. When they started to assume the worse, he popped back up behind the counter at work. Tim had relaxed significantly when he entered the shop to Danny organizing pastries in the display case. Once he’d placed his order, the young CEO asked Danny if he’d been on vacation. To which Danny had just sighed and told Tim “I wish, but no I was called to court to handle some affairs I couldn’t get out of.” (After a check to see if Danny had gotten charged with something and coming back empty, Tim had concluded that it was an odd way to say he had had jury duty.)

Thinking about it now, outside a stray comment or two, Danny didn’t talk about himself or his life. They knew he didn’t have a good relationship with his parents, “they were much more goal oriented than that joke of a kidnapper, but I think drugs do that to a person.” (It was still unclear if he meant his parents were kidnappers themselves or on drugs.) They knew he had an older sister who would “kill me again if she finds out I was in another bank robbery.” They also knew he was, possibly, depressed after last week’s comment of “is it considered murder if you’re already dead but, like, still alive?” (Damian had saved him from a drug ring but after another “baby ninja” comment the young Robin had threatened to give Danny back to his would-be murderers.)

Dick knew Danny was a weird guy who never wanted to elaborate on the things he said. (Jason was still confused on what he meant by “rotted milk soul.”) That didn’t mean the comments themselves didn’t say a lot about him. And tonight’s comment, accompanied by the prominent and jagged autopsy scars, said more than Danny was probably willing to share.

Part one

[azulhood]

Conversations between best friends has often led to some reckless/stupid/not thought out at all decisions. Like one conversation the amity park trio had where Danny said that he couldn't see Tucker as a doctor (the medical kind) to which Tucker responded with "Alright, bet." and enrolled in medical school. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Bruce Wayne and Tucker Foley somehow by coincidence *cough* clockwork* became friends. And stayed friends even after Bruce dropped out and Tucker went on to finish med school. It was a strange friendship that was mainly just Bruce calling Tucker from the weirdest locations and asking things "Out of curiosity, if an immortal nutjob wanted you to marry his daughter and become his heir what would you do? uh-huh, uh-huh, really? ok, thanks." and meeting up for coffee every now and then. It was during one of these coffee meet-ups that Bruce confessed that he wanted to adopt a recently orphaned child by the name of Richard. There was currently push back from people who didn't think 'Brucie Wayne' would be a good parent and from others who didn't want a random kid having a chance to inherit the Wayne fortune, the media was also having a field day. Everyone kept asking him to "reconsider" and doing everything they can to stall/stop the adoption process. Tucker, being the good friend he was, said "Don't worry, I got this" Stood up from the cafe table, walked to the nearest library and politely asked to use one of their computers, spent a good ten minutes on it, printed something out on the library's printer, walked back to the cafe where he left Bruce waiting. And finally, he handed over the paper with the words "Take this." and continued drinking his now cold coffee. Bruce was, understandably, confused. "What is-" "Trust me, it'll work." Tucker assured him. That is how Bruce Wayne adopted one Richard 'Dick' Grayson.

And after that, Bruce went to Tucker whenever he came across a kid that he wanted to adopt, which was often. It's one reason why Tucker will do everything in his power to make sure Danny and Bruce never meet for fear that the Gothamite might try to add the Halfa to the growing army of children. Aka

Tucker Foley is The Guy