#but he’ll always be Bruce

[ghost-bxrd]

I'm reading the whole Mockingjay fluffy/hilarious headcanons, but defaulting to horror...

Am I the only one who thinks Jason, himself very messed up, teaching a mini Bruce that killing is okay if it's a "bad guy" is going to end with a lot more bodies than even Red Hood would be okay with?

Yeah, Bruce is a smart kid, but he is an eight year old kid, and very traumatized. Kids tend towards binary good guys and bad guys thinking. Elite kid Bruce is... not that likely to get why some bad guys should be spared, or why he can't have fun with (torture) all the bad guys.

I'm picturing Mockingjay killing some teenaged would-be mugger in Crime Alley and being utterly puzzled why Jason thinks this bad guy didn't deserve death.

He was just hungry and desperate? He needed the money to live? Well, some bad guy who was hungry and desperate killed his mom and dad! Would Jason have helped Joe Chill escape if they had caught him?

In Antithesis of Magic Bruce is currently ten! (I think. I haven’t checked but he’s either ten or eleven)

Very young, I agree. But despite his age he has a good sense of right and wrong, and all Jason’s influence did was make him become more flexible in how to deal with the really bad people.

Right now we’re still at the very beginning of the story, and there’s a massive amount of world building and character development still ahead of us. However, Bruce does not kill people himself. And he doesn’t like Jason doing so, either. He understands why Jason does it, and he trusts him enough to only kill the people who truly deserve it, but at the core of it all Bruce would still opt to take the non-lethal route. Which means he probably won’t fall into the rabbit hole too deeply.

Jason and Bruce balance each other out like that. With Bruce’s insistence on keeping it to necessary kills only, and Jason’s refusal to stop killing. A fragile balance, yes. But also one that allows them to harmonize as well as they do.

[bruciemilf]

Bruce: Parenthood is a spectrum.

Clark: Explain that.

Bruce: Sometimes, my kids make me so proud I almost like myself.

Bruce: Other times, I say ‘Well. At least they’re not doing crack cocaine’

[frownyalfred]

the way to painfully revert every Batkid to Robin in .5 seconds is for Bruce to get injured doing something he wouldn’t have ever done if they hadn’t fucked up. like throwing himself off a ledge to catch them when they misjudged a grapple line, or diving in front of them at the last second to take a hit they didn’t see in time. and suddenly they’re 12 again and Batman is bleeding and it’s their fault. it’s their fault, if they had just been better—

[everwalldigan]

Something about the Jason’s favourite spots being rooftops overlooking Gotham because of a combination of him being scared of confinement and small spaces and being in a body that feels too big and wrong for him (it would be to anyone who wakes up as a 6 foot+ shit brick house when they last thing they remember is being a gangly 15 year old who hasn’t had their growth spurt yet). Like almost every room feels suffocating but being on a rooftop overlooking Gotham will never fail to make him feel small and it’s one of the few things that remained constant in the roller coaster that is his life

[atomicowboy]

okay FINE i’ll draw them

[caffienatedtree]

“Have you ever thought of,” Clark cocks his head and tries to find the right words, “well, after?”

“After what?” Bruce responds, ten pages deep into the thick stack of files he somehow acquired on the new alien species that just showed up.

“After Batman.”

Bruce answers immediately, “no.”

“Because I was thinking you know,” Bruce snorts but Clark just keeps going as if he didn’t hear, “maybe we could find a nice house, a dog, and-“

“The good old American dream? That’s unexpectedly cliche of you Boy Scout,” Bruce’s lips twitch up just the slightest bit. Nobody else would’ve seen it, but Clark did. Because Clark has super vision, super everything really, but he also spends way too much of his time staring at that stupidly handsome face.

“But doesn’t it sound nice? Someone else will keep the peace and we could just relax for once,” he lets out a wistful sigh. Clark envies his Ma and Pa, most Sundays if he has time to spare he’ll fly back over to Kansas for lunch or brunch with his parents and enjoy a break from the city. He loves metropolis, he truly does, yet he sometimes feels like he’s swimming through mud. Just barely trudging through life. His days are a cycle of writing articles, fighting crimes, getting an hour or two of sleep, and back at it again. Rarely does he get to sit down and talk to Bruce like this without being interrupted by some crisis or another.

“Keep reading,” comes Bruce’s sharp rebuke.

“Yeah, yeah, just think about it though.”

- - -

​Clark doesnt think about this conversation again until a week later when he finds a key on his coffee table. He checks the doors, the windows, the security camera, and doesn’t find anything, but he knows it’s Bruce’s doing somehow. Under the key is a the address to a house in Smallville, Kansas, and a short note scrawled onto paper. “It sounds nice.”

[lemonlimestar]

rip tim drake u would’ve loved meal prepping

[weirdo-from-bonesborough]

Someone on Twitter confused Jason for Dick and asked why he was going grey before Bruce and I can NOT stop thinking about it

[batgeance]

really very interested in exploring the dichotomy of bruce wayne and the batman and how bruce himself at this moment sees the two as entirely separate persons despite knowing damn well that the goals of both should align even though the paths of either are completely different

[godblooded]

while we’re here and it’s everyone’s reminder i write bruce, i hate the waynes were secretly terrible plot. i hate-hate it and i won’t fuck with it. i don’t fuck with the whole ‘bruce’s terrible ancestor killed someone and didn’t actually found gotham’. I just personally do. not. fuck. with. it.

bruce’s trauma is centered around his grief for his mother and his father. it’s too cruel to me to rip out from under him the only thing he’s ever had, and to destroy it when he literally had no one else? nah.

the best parts of bruce were things he learned from his mother and his father. were they complicated people, did bruce’s father absolutely kill in a belief he was protecting his mother? yes. but they were good people who fundamentally wanted to be better, to do better.

bruce inherits this from them both.

[roobylavender]

hey! question:

so i started following you for talia al ghul (amazing taste in characters btw) and I feel like the quote "you are ever my passion" is said by her to bruce. but I also feel like this quote has existed for FAR LONGER than talia and maybe i think talia said it bc i started following you for her. so where's it actually from and why did you choose it

i’m not sure if greg rucka got the quote from somewhere else but as far as it pertains to my own personal use the words are talia’s from dc #750!

[ghost-bxrd]

Ok I had a really stupid idea and had to share, Talon!Dick calling Jason as Red Hood "Red Hoot". It's so dumb but it has me giggling to myself

Lmao Dick is such a little shit sometimes he’d totally do this just because he knows it makes Jay flush with embarrassment lol

[daydreamerdrew]

The Hulk! (1978) #26

[avayarising]

Oh fantastic idea. Original Danny is still in Amity Park and has no idea. Vlad has temporarily moved to Gotham so he doesn’t find out. He’ll move back once his new Daniel is more stable and fully loyal. Then he’ll replace Danny with his loyal clone, who will proceed to parent-trap Maddie.

It’s foolproof.

Except for the part where Danny is instinctively suspicious of Vlad.

DPXDC Prompt #28

Damian didn’t know what to think of the new kid Daniel Masters, he seemed clumsy and aloof, not really the kind he saw himself hanging around or getting to know… the weird part is when Masters pulls him into a lone classroom at lunch time,

“Listen, I know the Wayne’s are somehow tied back to Batman. Something’s wrong a couple of days ago I woke up with no memories, Vlad Masters claims that he’s my father but something doesn’t add up and he also makes me wear this weird belt, I have no clue what it does but he locked it and it shocks me a little to touch it, can you help me?”

of course this causes Damian to get a little overprotective of his new friend…

[everwalldigan]

To anyone who thinks Bruce has a clear and consistent favourite child I raise you this: it is infinitely funnier for Bruce to have a complicated and elaborate “ranking” system of his kids that only he’s privy to.

Picture this: Batman, dosed with truth serum, gets asked as a gag from one of the goons holding him captive who his favourite bat-vigilante is and instead of giving a straight answer, he launches into this whole explanation about the ranking system and who’s in the current lead, who’s hanging behind, etc. At some point (this is a mystery to everyone involved) a whiteboard appears and he starts explaining his system like he’s a football coach before an important match. Out of nowhere he starts pulling out little cardboard cutouts of his kids and pins them to the board. At some point the red string comes out.

Jason hasn’t killed someone in a week? Automatically promoted to favourite. Tim hasn’t caused an international incident in the past month? Puts him a few points ahead that keep decreasing the longer he refuses real sleep (20 minute power naps don’t count Tim! Says powernap inventor Bruce Wayne). Cass gave him a hug this morning and wished him a good day? Favourite until he gets a call from dick telling him (without shouting!!!!) that he’ll be there for this week’s Sunday dinner. Duke accidentally scratches the Batmobile? Demoted to the “in trouble” zone (which, honestly, that’s where his kids spend most of the time in😭). Damian did not attempt to free all the animals in the zoo they visited? Favourite. Until Bruce found out he was just trying to conceal the cat hidden in his room that Bruce explicitly forbade him from keeping.

Dick arrives at the family dinner with a busted shoulder and a bruise the size of Texas on his face? Gets demoted so far down that even azraeil scores higher than him. He’s in the “in trouble” zone for a constant month after that. Oh one of them survived an almost death? Favourite for at least the next week. At least. Multiple people survive an almost death? EVERYONES the favourite. The least favourite is the growing grey hairs on his head.

The end of day results are decided by who bothers to wish him goodnight and if all of them have fucked up in some way the past week then Jon (Kent) becomes the automatic favourite until someone cracks a joke that Bruce actually finds funny.

The favourite child changes daily, hourly even, and his kids are aware this system exists and keep trying to crack the code but he always Knows and just smirks smugly.

[ideas-ideasideasideas]

Batman gives each of his Robins a different code to use when they’re in trouble and need immediate extraction. He promises that when they call, he’ll drop everything just to get to them, come hell or high water.

Jason, during his time with the League, shares his code with Damian, to be used “only in the direst of circumstances, when you have exhausted all other options.” He doesn’t know if Bruce will answer, given how fractured their relationship was before he died, but it is better than nothing. Every tool counts when they live such dangerous lives.

Damian uses it exactly once, and Bruce, who still feels the loss of his son like a yawning chasm in his chest, responds to it even though he knows it can’t be Jason because Jason’s dead. What he finds, instead of Jason, is a boy in League garbs, drenched in blood from the tips of his midnight-black hair to his too-small feet, with a face that Bruce sees himself and Talia in, requesting asylum from a grandfather who wishes to possess his body. Bruce doesn’t question how this boy who is so clearly his son knew the code. Talia al Ghul is resourceful and places family above all; the code is not beyond her abilities to discover, and she is not above using Bruce’s desperate love for his dead son to ensure that hers does not meet the same fate.

Bruce takes Damian in, because of course he does, and since Jason is dead he allows Damian to keep using the code. After all, it’s not like Jason is alive to use it, right? If someone uses the code, there’s no one it could be but Damian, right?

The next time the code is used, Bruce traces the location to Gotham even though Damian was supposed to be in Bludhaven visiting Dick. But whatever happened that resulted in Damian being in Gotham can wait, because he has already failed one son and he will not fail another, his son is in trouble and he needs to get to him, he needs to—

What he finds, instead of Damian, is a boy (just eighteen, too young, but also too old, but also he will always be a boy to him) in League garbs, drenched in blood from the tips of his midnight-black hair to his too-large feet (when had he gotten so big), wearing the face of his dead son.

(Who, maybe, just maybe, may no longer be so dead.)