#Tim has an existential crisis over (probably?) fae food

[scarlett-green-rose]

Tim wasn't always obsessed with Batman, strange as that may be to believe.

No, Tim was raised on fairytales that his first nanny - his best nanny - whispered to him as an infant and then a toddler, before his mother fired her for feeding him "nonsensical drivel." He fed on Irish folklore that he could weasel out of the head gardener and roughly translated Slavic stories that his wife remembered. He learned how to read from forgotten books in the manor's library about fae and their courts and trickster ways.

It was actually what lead him to obsess over Batman in the first place. Childish dreams of fairies and the opportunity to see one - not meet one, he had to be in danger for that and Tim wasn't stupid - in person, driving him into Gotham's streets.

He made sure that he wore iron around his neck, kept salt in his pockets and rubbed marigold water on his eyes before he left the house. 9 years old and wide-eyed as he watched Batman and Robin fly across the sky on impossible wings and disappear into thin air, from the rusty fire escape he'd managed to scramble onto.

-

Tim was 10 when he started to lose faith on folktales. When he replaced the cold chain of iron with a camera and bagged salt with undeveloped photos. He kept the marigolds though, growing in a tiny pot in his bedroom where he hid the key to the room where he developed his photos. He didn't know why, but he did.

Even when Robin - Dick - accidentally revealed that Batman and Robin were just as human as he was.

-

Tim was 13 when he finally gave his marigolds away. Leaving the pot in front of Jason's grave, before he finally took off to knock on the Wayne Manor's door.

"Despair and grief over the loss of love"

"Winning the affections of someone through hard work"

"Remembering and celebrating the dead"

"Sacred offerings to the Gods."

That was what his books said about marigolds. He hopes his Robin - not the first, but his Robin, the one who gave Tim flowers himself when he was crying over his mother's grave - understood.

-

Tim was 15 and bleeding from a bullet wound when he found out that Jason didn't want to.

-

Tim was 16 when he goes through his books for the first time in years and reads,

"Desire for wealth" and "cruelty and coldness due to jealousy"

and thinks that maybe Jason misunderstood, instead.

-

Tim was 17 when he finds Jason baking in the kitchen 2:30 in the morning while looking for coffee. Jason's eyes a blazing green as he kneaded dough on the counter top while the oven hummed behind him.

Tim didn't know why, but he stayed. Taking a seat nearby, as he watched the other somehow gently but aggressively work the dough together before Jason began to cut circles out of it with a cutter.

The pastries - Tim doesn't know enough baking to guess and Jason didn't say - were in the oven when Tim began to ramble about his obsession with folktales as a child and how he first thought that Batman was fae when he'd first heard of him. 20 minutes later, Tim was laughing, and failing to defend his child-self from joking mockery, while Jason pressed a plate of warm scones and hot coffee into his hands.

It's the first time that he's had Jason's cooking.

It's also the first time that he's ever had food that was better than Alfred's, but he thinks that the way that Jason's eyes were a brilliant blue by the time Tim trudged his way to his room with another cup of coffee was worth more mention than that.

-

Tim was 18 when his laptop pings in the middle of a business meeting that he can't excuse himself out of. It's an emergency dossier that Constantine wrote on a "ghost" named Danny Phantom and the Infinite Realms.

Phantom has green eyes and white windswept hair that makes him look even younger than he probably is. He looks kind of familiar, but it makes some sort of sense that he does, even if Tim's never met him before. According to Constantine, he's the closest thing to a "fae" that you could in the world, and it's easier to trust someone that you know compared to someone you don't.

Th rest of the dossier is filled with important information on Phantom and what Constantine knows of the Realms itself, but it's nothing that personally requires Tim's immediate attention, so he files the information away and focuses back on his job.

It's three days later when Damian challenges him for first dibs on Jason's cookies, while Jason himself sits nearby as his eyes faded back to a calmer blue that Tim realises why Phantom looked so familiar.

He and Jason have the same shade of green eyes.

TW for mild unreality

So in a lot of DP x DC crossovers I notice that everyone instantly makes the connection of infinite realms = ghosts. But what if they didn't? I mean, to most humans ghost equals dead person. Not everyone in the infinite realms is dead.

Instead, what if everyone thought it was a realm similar to the Fae Realms? A place where everything is only as real as you want it to be, where the land itself lives and breathes and changes it's form every which when. Perhaps that's why the Fentons think of ghosts as mischievous semi-sentient tricksters, they misread some older texts talking about them.

And they could be right in a way. What if dead ghosts are actually the souls of people who caught the attention of the realms/someone in them and so the realms grabbed their soul upon death to keep. If liminality means you're a guaranteed ghost then maybe that's the realms' way of keeping track of Interesting People so they know when they're up for grabs (they were patient and let you live out your life without interference, it's only polite).

But then, why are ghosts so quick to jump to fistfights now instead of battles of wit? Well that's because of Pariah Dark. The older kings were all the cleverest, the smartest, and perhaps Pariah was clever in a way (he turned a battle of wits he would surely lose into a battle of power after all, and that takes some wit in and of itself) but he valued power and physical might more and so the realms changed to reflect that. And then Danny came along. A small baby child who beat Pariah AT HIS OWN GAME. A child who employs both might and wit in equal measure because he knows the value of both. That small child, king of Ice and Snow, Little Prince, Boy King, a Strategist, a Warrior, that tiny kid is now the King. And the realms change once more to reflect that.

So when Danny is crowned King the ghost zone goes back to being similar to Faerie, only with more fights because Danny is not afraid to straight up punch someone (he's kinda feral like that).

So on the DC side of things maybe there's a summoning (accidental or cult induced), or Danny ends up in the watchtower/Gotham/important place, or maybe the League decide they have enough time to scout out Amity Park and figure out what's going on. They meet Danny, who calls himself a ghost, and are like "You're not like the other ghosts I've met but I don't know enough to refute that" and eventually it gets back to Constantine about this "ghost" boy, and he FREAKS OUT. This is an Infinite Realms denizen, a people similar to Unseelie Sidhe in all the legends, him being a ghost just means he was (or would be, time likes to wander in the realms. Sometimes the present is the future and that past has Not Yet Occurred) interesting enough to nab when he died! And they've been TALKING to him?? That's how you get their attention! You don't want their attention! It's bad enough that Red Hood has a guaranteed fast track there with the sheer amount of Realms Energy swirling around him ever since his resurrection he doesn't need any more people putting up massive I AM HERE signs willy nilly! Just because most denizens are willing to wait until you die to try and steal you away, that doesn't mean that all of them are. And now that Pariah Dark is gone, and the New King is perfectly willing to entertain wit and humor in his court once more, well. It's free real estate.

TLDR the Infinite Realms are Fae-Adjacent and Constantine is Terrified.

I-

this is just incredible. I have no words. I am in awe.