#Well he's his Father's son after all | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

spotaus · 5 months ago

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Woah!!! Ec-4o.Verse reference?? Bringing you Geno! (With a bunch of notes that are intelligible off to the sides-)

Cropped versions for easier reading/zooming! But to be more fun about it, here's a Lore Recap for each design! (I'd say these designs are from... hmm, a hundred years or so? He's a Boss Monster so he lives a lot longer.)

(Tw: Mentions of Death, Self-Loathing, Mental Illness, and I feel a few other things)

Pre-War:

Geno was a normal guy, had a dayjob, but was beloved by his friends for being a Programmer. He was lazy, had awful work ethic, but would pump out amazing quality work for cheap as long as he was given the time to do things at his own pace. He has a passion for Psychology, but was awful socially, so he designed programs that mimicked mental illnesses in Test Ectos (ectos not embedded with personalities or magic) so people could research mental health without risking patient wellness. He made A.Z. too, the first real mimicry of mental illnesses in children. Geno got attached and kept A.Z. himself, the last prototype of the code. The finalized ones can be found anywhere, but he kept A.Z. around, and even though A.Z. wasn't sentient it was such a good mimicry, Geno practically treated him like a son.

Geno was known for his work, and was contacted by the government of his country to come and work on a big nation-wide upgrade they were planning to improve ecto functionality. Again and again Geno simply ignored their letters, emails, chats, and attempts to call. It wasn't his field of study, so he could care less. So, all that led to the government sending people to confiscate A.Z. from Geno and shut down his workshop under the pretenses of 'unethical programming methods'. He was forced to relocate, and A.Z. was basically held as blackmail to force Geno into working. (Since A.Z. wasn't sentient, he was simply property, and therefore there was no legal issues with the government taking him.)

Before/During the War:

In this time, Geno was among hundreds of other talented people from all across the country who were 'recruited' to work on this project. People who didn't comply with orders went missing, loved ones were "lost" and life projects destroyed. Geno was part of the Programming team (there were also Medical, Bio-Enhineering, and Engineering teams) and he was initially supposed to just shut off the programs within an Ecto that gave them emotion protocols, even the ones infused with magic.

But, as things went on, he was told to do more and more. He was involved in more marketing and branding and announcements. He was made to be on screen, be the face of the change. His background was good for publicity (man who studied ways to harmlessly study mental health) and he was supposedly trustworthy. By day he'd stand up beside someone and listen to them implore people to bring their ectos in for this quality of life upgrade to their nearest government office. By night he'd be slaving away infront of code, being forced to find a way to make these robots kill people. Just enough people. To nullify themselves when it was all over. I'm his despair he tried to make it so that their emotion drives would at least register these events as something positive, so they felt no distress if they were sentient. He tried so hard to stop but any backlash did nothing. So he kept his head down and worked quietly.

And then he was transferred locations. Somewhere closer to the heart of the operation. He met Sci, a man unaware of the Culling Orders or the heartache, because they government had been treating him well. He was a bio-engineer, and his project (nicknamed Fresh) was like if a self-healing code was a living thing and could slow, or even heal, wounds. The government wanted it, in the case that it could unlock immortality. Sci was getting funding and a cushy life. Geno realized Fresh was the best way he coukd possibly end all of this war that was in the works. For good.

So he poured hid heart and soul into finishing that code. "A change of heart prompted by wanting so desperately for his prized project, AZ, to be saved" He claimed. There were a few useful bots that filled through the office. He offered to install code that would prevent the Culling Order from activating inside them since they were going to be preserved. While adding code he added failsafes and kill codes and important information from his and others work he wanted saved. He added the names of every researcher he knew had been drafted into this unwillingly. He did it in secret, so entrenched in code only another programmer would notice.

And then the war started, and Sci learned the truth, and people started dying. Geno had to convince Sci to help him after that. Sci feared being killed. He feared not being able to finish his work. He feared not being protected from the pain and destruction outside. It was a long plenty of *years* that Geno had to configure just the right plan, just the right way to ensure that Sci abd Fresh would survive it. That the rest of the base would be no threat and that it'd stop the Ectos and the Culling Code.

And then he did it. He put an end to the war, at the price of all the power on the continent running to every piece of tech, and at the price of his own arm and eye.

Post-War:

Geno was disfigured. He knew that to make an EMP large enough to cut off all electricity, he would need to overload his own master consol to the point of battery meltdown. An explosion. He didn't tell Sci. Only mentioned he'd need Fresh on-hand. So when it exploded, his left arm (non-dominent just like he planned), his chest, and the right side of his skull (his left eye was better) were demolished in the blast and dusted near instantly. Sci and Fresh managed to save his life, and Sci, resident Bio-Engineer, was able to replace his missing limbs and his wounds with spare ecto parts over the course of a few weeks.

Geno was slow to recover, nearly on the verge of falling down during recovery (He didn't know where they'd stored A.Z. if he was even still in-tact, he had been the reason so many humans and monsters had died, and now to reverse his mistake he'd taken out the electricity the country had been relying on for the past thousands of years.) But he pushed through. He was Determined. He needed to get to the four robots he embedded information and failsafes into. But they were scattered across the country for aafe-keeping. Incase he'd failed. So he has to hunt them down.

As soon as he can he leaves. Sci stays. Geno promises he'll come back (he doesn't). Geno takes a medical uniform, packs the supply belt with programming tools, and moves out. He enters the main story while on this trek to hunt down his Ectos. Not a single one is where they should've been, and he can't help but be furious, praying to a non-existant God that they weren't scrapped by heathens out for parts or destroyed in a rage by scared survivors.

Looking for the four? One day their trackers finally Light up again. One by one. All in the same location. And Geno follows it like a moth to the flame.

#utmv #utmv sans #utmv art #my art #spot!drawn #ec 4o!geno #ec-4o.verse #Geno sans #I loved designing him so much #Geno has always been a character with a full storyline in ec-4o and like- I never added in Classic #so Geno fills yhat role too!#back in the day he was a lazy programmer who did favors for organizations he liked on his own time. it was nice #and then the trauma hit #I really wanted him to hive off that Classic energy in the first one and by the end he settles into a more recognizable 'Geno' vibe #also!!! he's a father!!!#he's been a father for a long time too. since the start.#the moment I added asylum (AZ) I knew that Geno was the reason he existed and cared for him #and to spoil it: he does eventually grieve the loss of AZ. he regrets not fighting more to save him. and after he's settled down and has a #new life? well. guess what Blue found on one of his outings? or! more like who!!!#Geno is a sad older guy with ptsd and depression and all the traumas #but he gets 2 cool boyfriends and getd his son back so like.... it all turns out fine?#ec-4o!A.Z.#ec-4o!AZ #utmv au #fun fact: I always have to add the notes on the art for these now because my brain throws my info out the windows smh

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bongo-clash · 1 year ago

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He finds out three years after he first stepped into his parents’ portal why he hasn’t changed a minute since. Clockwork, Time, had looked at him with a strange sort of heartbreak; the kind that had always known this was going to happen—the empathy of understanding becoming something you’d never considered someone could be. That something had happened, completely out of your control, and changed you irrevocably.

“We all must experience ourselves, first,” Clockwork had said, infinitely old, infinitely young. “Perhaps not in the way you had to, and I understand the change is jarring, but there is not a thing that could’ve been done to prevent it. This was always meant to happen to you, Danny. I’m sorry.”

Because Danny wasn’t human anymore, and maybe never was, but is now a force of nature regardless. Clockwork was right that the change was earth-shaking, but he’d had no other choice than to acclimate. He never had, apparently.

Maybe it’d have been easier if he could change his own reflection. He didn’t have a ghost form anymore; there was no need for the pretence. His hair was streaked with white, eyes a constant kaleidoscope between sky blue and a terrible green, but there was little other difference. His cheeks still held that early-teenage baby fat. He hadn’t grown a single inch.

The living will see him in innumerable forms, but to his own eyes, he will always be that fourteen-year-old boy who would never grow old enough graduate or learn to drive, forever the visage of that child who stepped into the portal and came out Death instead of dead.

He’d had long enough to get over it, at least. Time and Death were intrinsic to one another, after all; any amount of time was enough for him.

Danny (he still called himself, because the universe could take a lot, but he’d decided that it would never take his name) had seen a lot, since then. He inhabited every corner of every universe, existed even in the most unreachable spaces, and found every manner of being. He’d witnessed things far beyond the supernatural of a small town in Illinois—things he might have never known existed otherwise. Danny had seen everything that could possibly exist as it was created, and would see everything as it fell. Taken in hand demons, curled a palm around dragons, walked gods to somewhere beyond the pantheon. He still remembered the first time he had to take a strike to a universe and cut straight through.

(He’d taken everyone he’d ever met in Amity, in time. Every one surprised to see him, and still somehow it broke his heart, but it was nice to know them one last time. Sam had cried and yelled, Tucker had held his hand the whole way, and Jazz had said barely anything at all.)

Life went on, Death went on.

You would think, after everything, he’d find no interest in mortals, but there was always something, someone that managed to catch his eye, now and then. They were scientists, usually—people creating things to save lives, as many as they could, dedicating their whole existence to alleviating the suffering of others. He never liked when they died, but he liked to meet them. They never seemed to expect how proud he was of them.

“I don’t get it,” One had said, “I’ve been trying to prevent death my whole life—isn’t that the opposite of what you want?”

“There’s a difference between aiding and cheating,” He’d told them with a curling smile, a butterfly hanging gently from his finger; it’d died outside the window of the surgeon’s house at the same time, crushed underneath a toddler’s foot. “I will never abide those who try to cheat inevitability, butevery life you’ve saved, you saved fair and square. I would not have dared to touch them.”

They’d sighed, heavy and tired and ready to rest. “I wish I could tell them I’m going to be okay.”

“They’ll know in time,” Danny had reassured, watching the butterfly go. “Patience is just the nature of it.”

You would think, after everything, he’d find no interest in mortals, and yet, he’d found himself—just as a whole city had found itself—captivated by a family named simply ‘the Waynes’.

They’d been an odd bunch right from the start. He’d taken many people of high standing, and they had the tendency to try and refute him, run as if the destiny of their soul didn’t await them on every side, try and intimidate him with things that couldn’t possibly follow them where they were going. But the Waynes had been an anomalous figure in the trend. Some had talked his ear half-off and he’d walked arm-in-arm to the end with every single one of them, amicable as any old friend. It seemed as if they’d known Death all their life, and it broke his heart whenever they met their demise but he was forever eager to hear what they had to say. The Waynes always had a story.

Thomas had been a doctor. Martha had every decent charity in Gotham in her chequebook. They’d both had little moments, in their lives, where they could’ve died but missed the opportunity by just a hair—same as everyone else—and he’d wondered how they’d feel, in the end. Wondered what these Waynes would say.

He walks down the alleyway of a theatre, the whole world painted shades of red and blue, with a little boy crying over a pair of death-still bodies, clutching at spilled pearls. Thomas and Martha are trying with everything they have to reassure someone who can’t hear a word they say.

“I’m sorry it happened this way,” Danny says, and the couple turns around in tandem.

Both pause, silent until they truly realise he’s looking at them and not through them. “You can see us?” Martha breathes—or, well, recalls the act of breathing. “You- are you here for us?”

Danny steps forward. “I’m here for everything in the end, but right now, I’m here for you, yes.”

“…I never thought Death would look like this.” Thomas says quietly.

“And how do I look to you?”

“Young,” Thomas tells him. “A little boy, not older than sixteen; you have black hair but there’s white in it.”

Danny tilts his head a tad. “My eyes?”

“One blue, one green.”

“It’s not often people see me that way,” Danny says, with an old sort of smile, worn like a cliffside eroded by tide. “But you Waynes have always been a bit different, haven’t you?”

They don’t speak for a little while after that, but Danny is patient. The three of them watch as police officers finally exit their vehicles, finding the youngest Wayne and belatedly attempting to shield him from the scene.

Martha turns to Danny again, then, but her gaze is fixed solely on her son. “I don’t want to leave him,” She admits, voice wet with heartache. “He’s so young, we weren’t meant to leave him alone so soon.”

“He won’t be alone,” He replies, soft in that way it always is when good people go. “He has your butler, doesn’t he? Mr. Pennyworth would sooner fight me himself than leave your boy to the dogs, I’m sure. And while you can’t be present in a way he’ll know, you can still watch over—in a way, he can’t ever be left alone then.”

Danny waits as the Waynes console each other, standing over themselves until the bodies are at last lifted from the floor. The little boy leaves with the broken pearls in hand.

“Your family is excited to see you,” He says to them both, an offer. “They have so much to tell you.”

Thomas looks him in the eyes with a gaze that knows its fate. “And we can watch over our son there?”

“You can watch over your son with all of them; they already love him almost as much as you do.”

And just like every Wayne before him, he takes them from the alley—one of each arm looped in his own—and they talk with him quietly as they venture into the After together, an entire joint family tree waiting eagerly beyond.

Danny encounters the youngest Wayne again a good handful of decades later, but he isn’t there for him. Bruce cannot see him at all, and neither can the little boy whose parents have just fallen from a cut line. Another set of parents dying before their children can grow old enough not to need them so deeply, even if they will never truly stop needing them; he sees it all the time, yet the sympathy aching in his chest never fades.

He lets John and Mary stay to make sure that their little Robin will be okay. Bruce Wayne holds him protectively away from the cameras and the crowds, makes sure his gaze doesn’t face the pair of body bags being loaded away. They tell him they are terrified to leave him in such a big world, and he tells them that Bruce will understand what he is going through.

“And Thomas and Martha will understand how you feel,” He says. “They can tell you everything, if you’d like.”

“Please.” Mary says, and they do not go arm-in-arm with him, but when he gestures a direction, they walk ahead into the end, both taking one final leap toward the door.

He finds himself in Crime Alley more often than he finds himself in the same place as Batman and Robin, and he’s as grateful for it as he isn’t. He doesn’t like to think of John and Mary’s little Robin being exposed to any more death than he already has been, but at the very least, Dick has someone there to help him.

Danny and Catherine Todd watch as her son discovers her body in the living room and feels for a pulse, finding nothing but limp hands. They watch as he kneels by the sofa at her head, weeping over unseeing eyes. Catherine kneels beside him, trying desperately to tell him she’s still here.

She isn’t, though.

“I’m sorry, there’s nothing more you can do for him.” He tells her quietly, stood just a short distance back. It’s not the first time he’s had to lead an addict away from the family they leave behind—certainly not the first in Gotham—and it’s an awful thing on every end. They don’t often mean to go, but they do anyway, and now Jason Todd is beginning to realise that he’s been left alone in an apartment he can’t live in anymore.

Catherine stares at him with urgent grief in her eyes. “His father can’t take him, the foster system in Gotham’s half a front for trafficking rings—isn’t there something you can do?”

“No,” He tells her (remembers the way his parents had begged a forgiveness from him on their way out. Remembers the way he’d forgiven them so long ago, but could never forget the cruelty he’d faced from their prejudice; remembers that it was cathartic, still, to hear the guilt. Jason Todd won’t get that for a while yet). “I’m afraid this is just the way it is. This is the cycle, I’m only one spoke in the wheel of nature, Mrs. Todd. That cannot be changed.”

“But he’ll be okay, won’t he? Please, my baby will live?”

He wishes he could tell her it was going to be okay, but a baby bird has just died outside their apartment, trapped fast in the pipes for just a moment too long.

“Everyone will live for a time, Mrs. Todd. I lack the discretion to choose how long that time is, but everyone lives.”

Catherine cries the whole way across. Jason leaves with a backpack out the window to streets that will try to eat him alive. Danny cups a baby bird in his hands, and soothes it on the way out.

Willis Todd dies in a prison cafeteria, gotten by a makeshift knife one of the inmates had hidden away from the guards.

Danny asks if he would like to say hello to Catherine. The man grimaces and says “No, best not.”

The rest of the walk is utterly silent.

Felipe Garzonas is not killed by Robin, but they were on the same roof before the man fell off, and from a distance it sure would look like it. Danny pretends his grip on the criminal’s wrist isn’t harsher than he’d usually allow when their exit is heralded by the desperate pleas of a little hero, begging his mentor to believe him.

Danny arrives to the rattling aftershocks of an explosion.

The shards of what used to be warehouse walls are scattered across the ground, and the standing remains are still smoking. Jason hasn’t even noticed he’s dead yet; he’s curled up against the floor, trembling amongst ashes and his own broken bones. He approaches slowly, loud enough to be heard but quiet enough not to come across as aggressive. They’re barely ten metres from where the bomb went off, but the whole world around them is still, as if knowing something—someone—is about to leave.

(That someone will arrive too late to see it.)

“You were so brave.” Danny whispers over the smouldering silence, infinitely gentle, crouching down a couple of feet away from where the boy lies prone. He’s taken ones so much younger than this, but these years—fourteen, fifteen—are a particular kind of heartache to Danny. Just a year older than he’d been.

Jason flinches at the sound, then flinches again at the shock of finding that his body can move of his own accord. He looks up suddenly, head whipping around. “It- it doesn’t hurt?” He blurts, confused at the sight of Danny standing there in the wreckage.

“No,” Danny says softly. “The hardest part is over, now, it can’t hurt you anymore.”

The boy stills for some number of seconds, eyes going wide beneath his domino mask, before understanding fills his frame. His voice is hoarse with the realisation. “…I’m dead, aren’t I?”

“You did the best that you could.” He replies, answer and non-answer wrapped into one horrible, horrible truth. Because this little boy died crowding over a mother who betrayed him for the tiny chance that she might survive where he knew he himself wouldn’t, and now both their bodies lie parallel in the aftermath, separated and still.

Not for the first time, Danny wishes he could do more than make the aftermath kinder.

He stares at Danny for a little longer, seeming lost. “I don’t know what’s supposed to happen now.” He admits quietly, like it’s something to be ashamed of, like he’s not fifteen and so small for fifteen, laying right in the epicentre of his own personal tragedy. “I thought—I thought Batman…”

I thought Batman would get here in time. I thought Batman would save me. He doesn’t say it, but Danny knows that aching disbelief, has seen it a thousand times, never quite like this.

“He tried everything he could to get here. People can only ever try.” Danny says, and maybe it’s a little blunt, but he knows the boy in front of him doesn’t want to be told a lie, doesn’t want to be told there was never a way to save him. Batman could’ve been here—if he’d realised something was wrong, if he’d known to leave sooner—but this time, he hadn’t been. They both know Bruce Wayne is only a man, can only save so many.

They sit on that in a brief silence, before Jason’s head snaps up like a whip cracking. “I’m not going to Hell, am I?” He asks suddenly, voice hoarse with the desperation to get the words out. Danny would laugh, but he doesn’t think it’s all that funny, so the smile he gives in response is just a touch sad.

“No, Jason,” He says, hand reaching out but not clasping anything, just lingering in the small space between them. “If you deserve to go to any kind of Hell, I don’t think anyone on Earth would be getting into anywhere good. No, you’ve got some people waiting for you next door. They’re—well, they’re heartbroken that it came to be like this, but they’re so proud of you.”

“Your grandparents.” Danny continues when Jason tilts his head, and the boy lights up when he realises that means Thomas and Martha Wayne. “Your mother.”

“Sheila?” He asks, but the name is sour and painful on his tongue.

Danny shakes his head. “Catherine.”

“Oh.” Jason replies, and his whole face falls into something infinitely exhausted, like falling into bed again after a long-stretching patrol, like he’s ready for the rest he’d expected to come for him so much sooner. “Yeah,” He says, voice small, hesitantly reaching for his hand. “Yeah, I want to see my mom.”

Danny doesn’t always hum, when he’s leading people away, but he does it when he thinks it’ll help, when someone needs it. Some tune that perhaps sounds a little like a lullaby follows Jason away into a world that he knows will be kind to the boy in a way life was not, and only Danny sees the shadowed silhouette on the horizon, finally arriving.

(He isn’t there when Jason Todd comes back to life, clawing at satin and wood and soil to gorge himself on rain and open air. He isn’t there, but he feels it happen, and understands that it was meant to happen. Jason hasn’t cheated Death so much as had an extended conversation with him, and Danny would be a hypocrite to chase after someone the universe had altered for something that wasn’t in his control at all.)

(Privately, though, he still wishes that they’d just left him to rest. Why do they always have to pick on the kids?)

(He’d been young, too. He’d been so young.)

Danny loves the heroes, the surgeons, the scientists. Danny loves any mortal trying to prevent death in the only human way they can, that fight him tooth and nail for the sake of someone else. He roots for them, always—and he can never hesitate to take them when they lose the fight, but he never wants them to lose. Death loves the rebellion of life.

He cannot say the same for cheaters, however, and there is a man named Ra’s al Ghul who is trying to outrun mortality.

The man—Head of the Demon, he calls himself—has succeeded for six hundred years, submerging himself eagerly in the lurid runoff of the After the moment his hair begins to grey once more, never letting a hint of the time catch up with him. He does it only for himself, hoards his Pits jealously, unrelenting in his secrecy and not so much as offering it to his own flesh and blood without his hand being forced.

Ra’s al Ghul has extended long past nature; Danny has been cheated for far too long. But today, on a day where the Bats and his Birds infiltrate his lair for information, the Head of the Demon abandons his bathing for just a second too many, and Danny has never hesitated to take a good man—this one, he has loomed over for centuries in anticipation.

He is going to enjoy this for all that it’s worth.

One delighted hand breaching the waters, Danny rises from the Pit as a force of nature writhing, and he knows—because the wells of the After are the closest to Death the living can get without taking his hand—that every single person in the room can see him.

The fighting pauses as the cold of his presence clings to the walls. Collectively, the group step back in the face of a new threat, forgoing their occupation with the others as they recenter their weapons towards him. All of them but Jason, Red Hood, who steps back three paces with arms still at his sides, recognition blooming across his face regardless of whether he’s seeing the same face he had at fifteen. No one else seems to notice the reaction.

“Who are you?” Ra’s al Ghul barks, sword shining green in the water’s light. “Why did you come from my Lazarus Pit?”

Danny cannot help the grin that splits his face, infinitely pleased. “Oh, yours, is it? How presumptuous. I should expect nothing less from the man who’s been borrowing so much time.”

The man doesn’t twitch, but his eyes narrow. “You did not answer my question—do you claim to ownthe Lazarus Pit yourself?”

“Perhaps,” Danny hums, tilting his head so-and-so. “But the waters will matter very little to you from now on. You made a mistake, Ra’s al Ghul; you took too long.”

Confusion lines the air only for a moment, as the dots begin to connect. ��His hair’s going white.” Red Robin speaks up suddenly, looking at the two of them, gears turning wildly in his head.

“He’s finally dead.” Red Hood says at the same time, and it’s this comment the whole room turns to.

Batman looks at his second son with an assessing gaze roiling underneath the white-out eyes. “Hood, explain.” He demands shortly.

Jason takes his helmet off, and the domino remains beneath, but the weight of the gesture is the same, revealing. Strangely, he doesn’t look afraid.

“That’s Death.” He tells his family. And for the first time in six centuries, Ra’s al Ghul’s grip on his sword wavers.

Danny watches as Batman turns to assess him once again, catching the vigilante’s fists tightening at his sides, uncertain but all the same steadfast. Disappointed is… not the right word for what he feels about that, because Danny loves the heroes and the surgeons and the scientists, but he doesn’t think the man understands what’s happening quite yet. What has to happen, now that he’s here.

He nods to the Batman, but keeps his eyes turned towards the Demon Head, trying not to look eager. “You are a good man, Dark Knight. I admire a being who does not deign to take matters of death into their own hands, but this is not a fight,” He mutters, though his voice echoes deafeningly across the room’s expanse. Danny knows for fact—no matter what form he takes to the gaze of Ra’s al Ghul—that his eyes glow green, green, green. “This is only nature.”

Two things happen, in the space of a moment too short for most people to grasp. Ra’s al Ghul attempts to point his sword at Death, and when he’s faced only with a wave of sudden weakness and a knowing grin, his foot slides back behind him in a stumbling sprint.

It’s funny how quickly a man who acted as if death could not touch him runs at the sight of it inevitably appearing. He doesn’t get far—not even to the door—because Danny said this was not a fight, and nor is it a chase. He’s already caught up; there’s not much running from that.

There is bleak horror and enthralled fascination etched in tandem across the vigilantes’ faces. It seems none of them so much as blink as Danny drifts towards the Demon Head, clasping at an ankle when the man—bizarre contrast to the immortal he’d thought himself before—tumbles to the floor, rapidly ageing hands scrambling for shaky purchase against an earth that will not find him. Danny can see it, almost like shedding layers; the way that time makes up for its neglect on this body.

The man shouts threats of absolution, extermination, in a voice that struggles to hold itself, but Danny is barely listening. With one final yank against his ankle, the Head of the Demon is consumed by the After for the final time.

Danny does not revel in the loss of life, but this feels nothing short of vindication.

Death rises again not long afterwards, to the sight of a group that know him so well—have felt him all their existence—without ever having met him at all.

Well, with one notable exception.

Jason Todd is bigger than he ever would’ve been without dying, stronger than that childhood of malnutrition ever would have allowed. There’s an anger to him now that’s different than the old kind, but still, somehow, distinctly his.It’s the kind that is completely, undeniably alive.

His family stands in front of him, protective.

“Ra’s is the only one you were here for.” Batman says, bordering on growling. It’s tinged with the desperation of a father than cannot lose another son; cannot lose the same son more than once—more than he already has, with everything that was taken, changed the first time.

His arm is stretched as if to keep all his children behind him, but Jason, looking hard at Death, moves forward, weaving around it so there’s nothing else between them. His voice is even as he speaks, not shaking at all. “Was I meant to come bacK?” He asks, as a red helmet glints in his palms.

“I can only ever take; I can never give people back,” Death admits, even as the vigilantes behind tense like wires. “But if you are here, then you are meant to be here. I have no control over that.”

“So… you’re not going to take him?” Nightwing breathes, unwinding, just slightly, in shaky relief.

“I’m only sorry he had to be taken in the first place.” He replies.

Jason looks back to his father, then, and finds Bruce’s expression seconds from unravelling. He loves his children, Danny knows, because he can feel the ache that tracks fracture lines along Batman’s heart at the thought of his kids being taken before him. Because he knows that this is a man who would fight nature for his son’s life. And because he’s Death, and—really, he’s Grief, as well.

“I never asked you before,” Danny asks airily. “But what did I look like, to you?”

Jason is stood beside them, now—five minutes from walking out of this facility with everyone else in tow, to a manor several thousand miles away full of people that love him. And he says to Death: “I didn’t realise it then, but you looked like Willis, the first time. You look like a kid now, though—a teenager, with white and black hair.”

He tilts his head. “My eyes?”

“One blue, one green.”

Danny smiles, a warmer one than he’s usually able to provide, but he can’t quite stop himself. “You Waynes have always been a little different.” He says, almost a laugh. “And it’s been nice to meet you. I’ll see you again, someday.”

He doesn’t leave them anymore time to dwell. With that same smile, he vanishes from sight like fog dispersing, and lets them take the time to leave. The Waynes will not live peaceful lives—may not even live happy ones—but there will be joy in the in-betweens of their tragedies, and everything they are will rebound into the end of the universe—if only because Danny doesn’t think he’ll ever forget them.

No, they may not live peaceful lives—but, by God, will they live.

Quick Dp x Dc thingy.

We need more unhinged Danny. I don't mean silly unhinged, i mean terrifying, reaper like, Danny.

Imagine Danny but based on Death from Puss in Boots.

I can imagine this is a Danny that was pushed too far, not far enough to be Dan, but far enough to abandon a lot of his loved ones (not Jazz and Dani), and become more of an anti hero.

He can eventually encounter anyone from the dc universe. I personally like the idea of the Bats realising there is something going on at the Lazerous and then when they get there Danny emerges from the pit. He's there to pick up a soul, and that soul is Ras. Just murks that man with little to no effort scaring everyone.

#tw death #Started writing this all the way back in March but only just managed to finish it now lmao!!#I'm not sure if this is quite what the prompt was getting at but I had fun writing it!!!#(If OP doesn't want additions though I'll take this down!!)#For context: Death looked like Willis to Jason when he died the first time #Because I have this Image in my head of Willis just looking at his son #Just Knowing he and Catherine were going out of the picture one way or another #And telling Jason bluntly the streets were probably going to kill him before he even got old enough to drink #Not so much deliberately cruel as unforgivingly honest #And Jason trying to live well just to spite him- Especially when he gets adopted #But when he dies just thinking: guess he was right about one thing after all.#Death to Jason was his first father #ANYWAY #dpxdc #dpxdc fanfic #Bongo's Writing!!!#Man it feels like I haven't posted anything to that tag in Ages lmao!!

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