#and i think now we're done for good

[vwoop-prince]

YJ S3 Dick, still in the midst of his fever dream, hides underneath the 'souvenir' instead of behind some boxes, and accidentally opens the airlock trying to take care of the Parademons. The others get it to close... but not before Nightwing is thrown into space.

There, he stares at the ship holding his friends and mentors. There, he wishes more than anything that he can, somehow, survive. There, he tries to live, if only so his family don't have to bury him like Jason.

There, Nightwing dies, wanting to save everyone, even with the cold seeping into his bones far too quickly for a regular section of space.

Then, Dick opens his eyes to... Earth? There's a little house, and grass, and trees, but there's a bubble of green over it all. Outside of that green was an entire castle, one that looked like it should have far more support beams than it does for even a hope that it stays standing.

And the sky was swirling shades of that same green. It makes him think of Lazarus.

"Well, that's something you don't see every day." He whips his head behind him, a bit too fast for Earth's atmosphere, but it doesn't hurt him. Past the bubble of green was a blue-skinned adult in purple robes, the insides of a grandfather-clock fitted inside their torso, and a black staff with a stopwatch on its top. Beside them was a man with snow white hair, glowing green eyes, a crown of frozen fire dancing above his head, and the most galaxy-like cloak Dick's ever seen clasped to his shoulders. He's wearing... a hazmat suit? Maybe? The twinkling stars and odd lighting of wherever he is were giving him a bit of a headache.

But in front of those two, within this bubble, was...

"DICK!" Wally shouted with unrestrained glee, a blur overtaking his spot for barely a heartbeat before Dick's stuck in a crushing hug that he reciprocates once his brain stops feeling like its melting.

He doesn't know how long it took for them to calm down, but the man with the crown spoke up after a time, as Wally was still wiping their faces free of tears. "Welcome to the Infinite Realms, Nightwing." Dick barely even registered that he was still wearing his suit, but now it felt suffocating. "I suppose you're the one Clockwork was holding out for; There shouldn't've been enough Ectoplasm around you to form a Ghost, and your physical body's still in space. I can see why you like this one, though, Clockie," he states flippantly, turning to his companion. Almost like he didn't expect Dick to pay too close attention to what he was saying.

"Either way, there's two options for you." The man didn't let Dick swallow his tears and question anything. Dick's not sure if he's grateful or not. "First: Stay in the Realms permanently. You'll see Kid Flash whenever you want and learn to be a Ghost with the denizens of the Realms. Maybe find your parents."

"But..." Dick pulls away from Wally, keeping him at arms length, eyes flitting between them. The two outside the bubble were distinctly... ghost-like, so the mentions of 'Ghosts' make sense. But Wally looked... alive. A bit pale, a bit thin... but alive. Dick can't see any of his own skin to see if it was blue or tinted that way, but the Nightwing symbol on his chest kept flickering between its own blue and this 'Realms' green. "But--What about the others? What about you? Why can't you come home?" The last two, he focuses on Wally, because now he can feel a heartbeat beneath his gloves. Wally's alive. He's alive.

His friend just shrugs. "Something about their portals not fit for the living? I'm meant to wait for someone to figure out a permanent portal, but they won't tell me how long that'll take." Wally glares at the... 'Ghosts'? There was a heat to it, but it also seemed like this was a well-worn argument.

"The permanent portal was always an 'if', Wallace West. And that is entirely dependent on if Richard Grayson takes the second option," the clock Ghost--Clockwork?--speaks up. But instead of the adult Dick was expecting, there was an elderly Ghost in their place. Still with the time motif. Was that... more literal than Dick took it?

"Yes, the second option..." The crowned man glares daggers at Clockwork. The temperature dips below comfortable. Dick tries to blink the spaceship and stars out of his sight, withdrawing his arms from Wally to try and warm himself. Tries to remember he's not in space. "The second option is that you return to your body... changed. You'll be able to protect Earth better, stay with your alive family, save the Lost Ones... for a price."

Dick doesn't know if he should ignore the plural in 'Lost Ones'. He doesn't know if he's reading too much into how, in this Realm, apparently only his parents were able to be found. Where's Jason? He doesn't dare hope, but...

"What's the price?"

The man smiles and a ring of blue forms around his waist. It splits in two and travels up and down his body, replacing the cloak and whatever clothes he was actually wearing with a NASA shirt, worn jeans, and red sneakers actually duct taped together. The blue tint to his otherwise tan skin fades completely. His hair turns black. His eyes turn blue.

He was like a taller, slightly slimmer, way hotter version of Bruce.

The man walks through the bubble, but doesn't disturb the grass beneath his feet. "You become the Ghost King's vassal." Dick flinches away and almost hides behind Wally. "Not my idea! But, well... it is either this, or your permanent death."

"What does becoming a vassal do to him?" Wally asks, gently trying to stop Dick from breaking his ribs with how tightly he was hugging himself. Does he even have ribs?

"He gains my powers. Ice, electricity, invisibility, intangibility, flight... He becomes a Halfa. He becomes what I was, in life. Just... needing to make offerings to me, now and then. Something like that, at least. I give him powers, he gives me a chunk of, I don't know, chocolate once a week. Like a warlock."

Wally keeps talking to the man, keeps getting information that he knows he should pay attention to, but something in his chest screams to accept this deal, and he can't focus on anything else.

Nightwing can protect. He can return to life and go back to Blüdhaven, be the Vigilante they need. He can visit Gotham every now and then, help with cases and stop criminals from harming others. He can see his brother. He can see his friends. He can eat Alfred's cookies, and have little get-togethers with Babs and the Team--hell, he can argue with Bruce.

And all he has to do is... give an offering to this guy? The Ghost King? Every once in a while?

"There's no other price?" The King turns his attention to Dick. His eyes had shifted to a blue-green that almost hypnotize him. The green swirls, the blue forms and melts like snowflakes, and he can't look away.

He takes another step forward and Wally steps to the side. There was familiarity between them. Wally deferred to him. Dick can't quite tell why. Though, with how Wally hasn't once looked at Clockwork, maybe it's because he's... grounded? Are all speedsters in trouble with, what, the Ghost of Time? That... actually makes perfect sense.

"I'll be honest, Nightwing: You've impressed me." The weight behind the King's words lifts the ones that've been on his shoulders since he was nine. "You remind me of myself. Maybe, if I wasn't a Halfa... If I had a mentor... I could've been like you.

"Despite Clockwork's insistence over the years that I get back in touch with the living, I've held off. When he eventually suggested that I help create another Halfa, I locked him in his tower for twenty years. I didn't want anyone to go through what I had. But, now... I see that you won't. You can't. Even if you hide this deal--our shared powers... You'll still have people by your side. Strong people. Smart people. You can already handle yourself. And I'd love to see what you can do--who you can save--with my help."

There was maybe two inches between their faces when the King finishes speaking. Dick roves his eyes across the other's face, trying to find the common and familiar ticks that show lies and deceit and manipulation. All he finds is sincerity and genuine care.

Wally plays with his fingers from the corner of his eye, gaze hopeful as he looks between the two of them. Wally, who was alive and breathing and able to leave if he accepts. Eventually. Somehow.

Dick Grayson sends a quiet apology to his parents and hopes they will forgive him for being a little bit selfish.

"I accept."

He flings his eyes open. Above him, domino mask too wobbly to be properly secured anymore, was Robin crying and begging him to wake up. His hands were sloppily placed over his heart. Batman was trying to drag him away, the firm set of his jaw screaming grief.

Nightwing gasps once he registers his lungs burning.

There's a large cacophony of noise, multiple bright suits and people hounding over him, and the distinct artificial taste of slightly-too-much oxygen that the ship with the Parademons had. That he flew out of and died. He was still too cold.

Someone moves their arm beneath his knees and shoulder and Dick passes out.

(Dick 'Nightwing' Grayson dies in space. Ghost King Danny Phantom likes this too-human Hero. They split their souls in half, take one piece of the others, and all they know is that Phantom is now Nightwing's Patron Deity. Danny uses ice, for electricity killed him. Dick uses electricity, for ice killed him. They are opposites, and yet so incredibly similar. Clockwork was looking forward to when Danny starts putting off his paperwork to hang out with his new 'friend'.)

[softpine]

she's looking especially sacrificial lamb today 🥩

[malama-art]

liko and roy

[neolxzr]

and everybody is so trolled

(8 now)

[necrotic-nephilim]

for the ask game (i'm so happy you're still doing it!)

in a bit darker version of canon, one of the antikilling batfam members actually kills someone (i'm thinking dick or tim). maybe it's an accident, maybe the're spiraling and reach a breaking point or maybe something happened that irrevocably changed their worldview. how do they feel? do they cover it up? do they continue killing? who knows about it, who helps them cover it up, who joins them? how does bruce, the rest of the family and hero community react if they find out?

for the ask game!

ugh i LOVE when characters are pushed over the edge and have to deal with the consequences of their actions. especially Dick and Tim who are just. both so dedicated to their moral codes and having them shatter. you get both versions bc i have thoughts. we'll start with Tim

there are a lot of routes you can take Tim killing someone. but i specifically would have it happen right after the Titans of Tomorrow and/or Lonely Place of Living arc, where Tim faces an evil older version of himself who's very pro-murder and has led the Titans down this dark path as Batman. because that's what Tim's afraid of becoming. he's afraid of what being Batman would do to him, and he's afraid of whether this future is inevitable or not. so to have Tim in this mindset of hypervigilance of what he's capable of and he kills someone anyway? i'd love to toy with the "is the future inevitable or can we change it" concept. i like the idea Tim's kill is Captain Boomerang, given the death of his dad and all. Tim insists up and down to Bruce that he can handle this mission, it won't be too personal for him, he's fine. and the funny thing is, he feels fine. he's compartmentalizing all his feelings pretty well. so well, in fact, he doesn't realize he's killed Boomerang with his bare hands until it's already done, and there's blood everywhere and Tim has to figure out what to do. he has to cope with the inevitability of the future he's convinced he just set into motion.

he would know, realistically, there's no hiding it. especially not from *Bruce*, who knew Tim was on this mission. someone's going to notice Boomerang is missing sooner or later no matter how well Tim cleans up this crime scene. honestly, i think he'd call Helena. he's close to her, and she's pro-murder, making her the least likely to judge him for it. what he doesn't expect is that when she shows up, she takes the blame for it. she fully looks Batman in the eye and says she murdered the guy and somehow, Bruce buys it. Tim keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop. because more than just committing murder, it'd terrify Tim to get *away* with murder. to know it was just that easy, he had to call one person and it all went away. Helena doesn't even seem particularly bothered by taking claim for it, she's killed men for less and she thinks she's helping Tim with this, helping ease his conscious on the whole thing. she even tells Bruce that Tim tried to save Boomerang, that's why Tim is covered in the blood. it makes perfect sense to Bruce he doesn't think about it further. so Tim falls deeper into this spiral of knowing what he's gotten away with. and of course he doesn't open up to Helena about the Titans of Tomorrow stuff, so she has no idea how this could rattle Tim so much. why he doesn't believe her when she promises him this is just a one-off thing for him and she knows he won't do it again.

i think Tim's spiral would just keep going. it's one of those paradoxical things, where he is his own enemy. he's convinced himself he is this thing, so he's becoming it. what could've been just a one-off moment fo weakness with a man who hurt him and he got away with becomes an obsession. Tim can't stop considering how selfish it is, that he gets to kill Boomerang and yet everyone else has to live with the people who hurt them being alive. i think it'd be fun, if Tim turned to Tony Zucco, or someone similar who's hurt a member of the Batfamily. it's not a serious idea, it's a late night thought that plagues Tim. if he knows how he would do it, then he can avoid actually doing it. very "Opeidius trying not to fuck his mom" complex. but the more Tim tortures himself over it, the more he notices how easy this is for him. to plan out how he could murder just about anyone and plot a clean getaway for no one to even know there was foul play. he doesn't act on it. he refuses. but it consumes him. if he's awake, he's thinking about how he'd kill the people who hurt his family, and how easily he could get away with it.

eventually, Tim forces himself into early retirement. it's so sudden, no one expects Tim to just suddenly say he's hanging up the cape. everyone has at some point, gotten cold feet and insisted they were done with the life, but Tim. he really means it. he stops being a vigilante completely, he doesn't even like running comms. he starts to isolate himself just to be sure he won't get to close to someone to want to kill for them. no one can really get through to him and talk to him about what's going on, and it's been enough time since the Boomerang incident that no one, not even Helena, seems to put the pieces together about that being the catalyst to all of this. they want to respect his decision, but something is clearly wrong and no one can figure out what it is. they try to reach out but well. the world keeps turning. there are crises and villain attacks to deal with and eventually, it slips on everyone's mind to check on Tim because they have to save the world again.

in the end, it all comes back to that inevitability. Tim does kill again. who he kills and how he kills them doesn't even matter, and that's the worst part. he knows it doesn't matter because this was a path he set himself down bc he could never avoid it in the first place. he kills and he gets away with it, even when he's not a vigilante. he never would've ended up on this path if he hadn't seen his future self. grandfather paradox and all that. eventually, Bruce does find out. but by then it's too late, and Bruce has no real hard proof, just a suspicion he can't tell anyone else because everyone would just jump to Tim's defense. Tim has Bruce in a corner, and for once. Tim starts to kind of enjoy the game. madness spirals babey.

and of course, the Dick version

i know, with Dick, we all like to talk about that time Dick technically made the Joker's heart stop by beating him so badly. and sure, that's a fun canon moment. but it's the *Joker*, you know. i think Dick accidentally killing someone is far more fun if it's just. some henchmen. some low level villain who would've at best gotten a five year sentence for what the did. you can almost rationalize it, when it's the Joker. but when it's no one? it's just some guy? that's crunchy. that's far worse to handle. Dick wouldn't mean to do, it was the stars aligning for the worst situation. he doesn't pull his punches because he's tired and angry about something unrelated he doesn't even remember. and he just. keeps punching until some random guy is dead underneath him. and there's no bringing him back.

Dick would confess *immediately*. like, he'd firmly believe he needs to face consequences for what he did and it's the only way to rectify the situation. Bruce has taught him everybody deserves justice and Dick is sticking to those guns. he tells Bruce, he tells the Titans, hell, he even tries pretty hard to turn himself in to the police. of course no one will let him though. because it's *Dick*. they know it was an accident. they know Dick would never dream of doing that on purpose and that Dick shouldn't destroy his life for a mistake. and Dick is so torn up that no one will let him face real consequences. everyone tries to tell him stories of the people they failed to save, but to Dick, this is different. this isn't getting there too late and the bomb goes off, this is beating a man with his own fists until he felt the guy's chest cave in and still going anyway. the guilt eats Dick alive.

Dick would have a panic spiral, but very different to Tim's in the above. instead of being terrified and self isolating, Dick forces himself into overdrive. if he can't get anyone to let him face real consequences for what he did, then he has to make up for it. he has to save *every person* he can. he's overworking himself on this desperate need to be better. he knows it's unsustainable and so does everyone else, but Dick won't stop until he literally collapses. because if he had energy to kill someone, then he has to have energy to save someone.

there of course comes a breaking point. Dick stretches himself too thin and i think the culmination of it would be a long talk with Bruce. maybe Bruce opens up about the people he failed to save and they really discuss it all. Dick's guilt, his fear of himself, his anger, all of it. it's probably the closest Dick comes to therapy about all this. i do think. it's fun if some more unsavory people like Slade find out about what Dick did and try to use it as an in to manipulate Dick. pull the whole "you're no better than me, now we both know what you're capable of". and Dick has to fight that. he's stuck between a genuine support system and Slade or someone similar trying to drag him down. bc Dick knows he's not a killer, but deep down that voice inside of him is impossible to silence completely.

though i think Dick comes out stronger at the end of it, he would falter, for just a moment. he has a brief time where he almost gives in, or maybe he starts to give in. he agrees to be Slade's apprentice, unable to cope with his guilt. he's so close to killing again, but it's the light at the end of the tunnel, realizing he could never do this again. it snaps Dick out of it. he's never going to uproot the worst of the guilt from his chest but he's proven it to himself this isn't who he is. he's able to be stable again and it's all a growing moment. that said, it still haunts him. when Jason comes back from the dead, he hears whispers that Dick killed someone, and Jason holds it over his head in fights. villains know about it. maybe it even taints Dick's image, the whispers of how Nightwing beat a guy to death once. sure, he grows from it and all, but it never *quite* leaves him.

[ambitions-of-an-eccedentesiast]

question is... are you going to?

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[askdariusvogel]

What do you think about Crown’s little robin?

"...Her name piqued my interest when I first heard it. And I do wonder, why would such a pure soul like her ever choose to reside in a den of villains?"

"As for what I think of her..."

"I might have taken a liking to the Little Robin already — after all, we are the same birds of a feather, are we not?"

[hollowflight-propaganda]

I think it's time I change my bio to say it's been 11 years since I started to watch Ninjago.....

Gosh. Where's my senior discount on the lego sets, huh?

[hella1975]

just think this time tomorrow ill be publicly indecent in a spoons somewhere. i am so strong

[muselexum]

[stereotypical-jew]

okay. so. i did not vibe with the latest doctor who episode a lot? and idk why exactly. i did still enjoy it for the most part! do love that we're getting more explicit queer romance on the show, but idk it didn't feel...genuine? especially with the doctor saying that ruby's his best friend but then abandoning her to aliens for most of the episode. i'm like really feeling that the overarching plot must be about storytelling. like especially all the blatant references to bridgerton INCLUDING the bad guys and poker face covers. and the teaser line about it being the doctor's life they're playing out. i'm hoping that the arc is kind of about how something (pantheon character?) is kind of controlling the doctor/ruby's story to hit the beats it's supposed to bc its tv but is doing so in a non-organic way which is why the season feels so disjointed and very telling-not-showing. also the weird 6 month time jump between Space Babies and Boom. otherwise i'mgonna feel like it was just kind of poorly written. like! to be clear! i am still enjoying the show! but not as much as i have other seasons

[ronanlynchbf]

and then an overwhelming sense of dread apear.

[elftwink]

[covered in blood and viscera with tear tracks running down my grimy face] i sent email

[savage-rhi]

Having a B3 overdose be like

[tanicus-caesareth]

guarana drama, damage control

[carcarrot]

well that was a shortlived good feeling about my job