#ch. jason todd

[sundrunked]

❛ i don’t think i’ve ever seen you smile. ❜ ( rachel / jason ) / @demongemz !

jason shrugged slightly, something almost self-conscious in the tense line of his shoulders. "well, you ever given me a reason to ? " he wasn't made of stone, he was just ... reserved. he'd put it that way. didn't like the idea of someone paying attention to how he looked anyways. "what do you care if i smile anyways ? "

[hanasnx]

MINORS DNI 18+

! ── BABY DADDY!JASON TODD who can't come around more than once or twice a year. His way of life isn't sustainable for a home, and it certainly isn't safe for a daughter. You and him decided it was best to part ways before that positive pregnancy test, and since he discovered a kid he helped make it didn't change his level of involvement. He's got a lot of eyes on him, and he can't draw attention to anything important to him.

! ── Your daughter adores him. She squeals with delight every time he visits, running full barrel towards him so he can scoop her up. Unbeknownst to her your concern with how he found you again, and how he broke in to the apartment. Apparently running and hiding is not enough when you face the Red Hood. You reluctantly greet him with a half-assed kiss on the cheek, wrapping your arm around his neck to incline him towards you. Your daughter on his hip takes full advantage of hugging you both at the same time, and pressed against your former lover makes you tight-lipped.

! ── He's dangerous for a number of reasons that span beyond what any angry enemy of his would do if they found out where he's been going. You're most afraid of what he's able to make you do the longer you're with him. Only able to hold onto your anger for so long until he melts that cold exterior and somehow convinces you to let him warm your bed again.

! ── He's got it down to a science. As soon as you give him that scathing look, he tells your daughter to run along because "Mommy and Daddy have to talk." while she thoughtfully strokes his chin with her little hand, only to nod with an audible sigh, shaking out her wild hair she won't let you brush. With a little push to her back, she scampers off to her room and he stands to his full height. "I just wanted to see her." he tells you, with that pleading tone you've fallen for countlessly because he knows you're going to say: "It's not safe." for the thousandth time.

! ── He'll tower over you, incline towards you while you scold him under your breath. A hushed argument ensues that your daughter tries to listen in on, and can only hear bits and pieces about how she's not owned, and her dad should get to see her. Stuff she doesn't understand, especially because she can't understand his lack of presence being such a complicated thing when she has no sense of object permanence. If a dad refuses to be there more, it's a problem. You want to cut Jason out completely. That's not fair, as he'll tell you, to the daughter you get to keep.

! ── It's in the way he stands next to you. He's so much taller than you, broader, and muscled. He bulks up more and more every time you see him. He doesn't use his size to intimidate you, rather takes advantage of something else. Big hands stuffed in his back pockets make his leather jacket sit on his wide shoulders exquisitely. His hair is windblown from his motorbike and just the smell of him has a dangerous Pavlov effect on you. Like your eyes want to flutter as they roll into the back of your head and lightning shoots straight down to your core, stinging at the memory of what it's like to be filled by him. The longer you're with him, the thinner your resolve becomes. It evaporates in front of you as he sweeps a hand through his hair, and his posture slacks. "C'mon." he drags out the word playfully, advancing on you. Your hand interrupts him, bracing on his firm chest to keep him from coming closer. "Can't we talk about something else? You're getting me all worked up. Missed you."

You roll your jaw, that resolve slipping. Addicted to him, you're reticent as his tongue darts out to wet his lips while he's eyeing yours. "Jay..." you murmur, and he can hear the defeat in your voice.

! ── "Lucky we got a sitter, huh?" Jason's smug voice cuts through the wet sounds of sex that fills the room. "Now I get some time with my other little girl." That sick delight causes you to reach back, weakly banging your fist against his thigh. He snickers, wolfish and husky resounding from the back of his throat. "Mommy's been missing me, huh? Can feel her clenching down on me like a fuckin' vice."

His thick cock hurts stretching you out, but you needed that pain. There's something about Jason that keeps you saying yes, and it pushed through your requirement of foreplay, unbuckling that belt in haste, comfort be damned you wanted that dick. You're on all fours and he's giving it to you from the back, just how you like it, fucking you like a dog while his hand tangles all up in your hair. He yanks you back by it, and you can't even think of what to say other than mindless pleasured babbles.

"You let me do this every time I come over. Seems like you fuck with me or something." It's true, regardless of the cruel insults you've thrown at him to get him to stay away from you, it's all because you can't say no to him. It's the reason you got pregnant, it's the reason you can't run away far enough, and it's the reason you fuck him every time he comes to visit the kid he helped make.

[batfamilycentral]

Jason Todd in The Boy Wonder #2 (2024), art by Juni Ba.

[sundrunked]

jason had never been one to bottle his feelings up. maybe, even without all of the memories that had sharpened him, he still had a tendency to turn any of the more vulnerable ones --- sadness, hurt --- into anger before he let them show, but fuck if they didn't show. he'd tell you straight to your face if you pissed him off. or enact some deranged revenge plan first, then do the talking. he was clever, strategic, but ruled by his heart one way or another. "so you don't upset anyone ? seriously ? playing doormat & venting via depressing park ballad isn't gonna do you any good."

HE KNEW WHAT HE HAD TO DO. DID THAT MAKE HIM.. STUBBORN? perhaps he did, but.. the guilt? the guilt was swallowing him whole and right now, he didn't know what to do about it. he was not selfish. wasn't he the reason why all of that had HAPPENED? yes, he had been and.. if he could do something to make all of this right? he would do it. wouldn't he? "eh, something like that, but.. i always vent through my music. that way? i don't really upset anyone," and these days? oh, he had a tendency to think... too much. he snorted. "nah. if only it were as simple as that." was that because he sang about the same person EVERY single time? that he always thought of her? MAYBE. HE COULDN'T STOP. HE DIDN'T THINK THAT HE WOULD EVER KNOW HOW TO."

@sundrunked

[geneticdriftwood]

persephone's in hell; a rooftop conversation

for @mysterycitrus

persephone's in hell, @mysterycitrus // white winter hymnal, fleet foxes // assorted dc comics

[dcmultiverse]

Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown and Carrie Kelley in BATMAN: CAPED CRUSADER (2024)

[goatsghost]

i love how, in every universe, no matter how much jason hates bruce or wants to distance himself from the family, he still loves alfred just as much as he always has

[bruciemilf]

Jason @ Dick after the fucker conveniently didn't tell him Bruce actually DID want to and TRIED to kill the clown but he had political immunity due to being the ambassador of Iran and Clark stopped him to avoid a war:

[thesandsofelsweyr]

⚠️ cw: smut (⚤)

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asks, hating that uncertain quaver that stains his tone.

She takes a step toward him, taking his hands in her cuffed ones, then lifts them to her lips and kisses them softly. "Yes baby," she purrs.

Reflexively his hand drops to her throat and wraps around it, jerking her face up to his, her eyes to his. Words slip out before he even realizes what he's saying. "Yes what?" he growls. He trained me well.

A smile stretches across her lips. "Yes sir."

[sundrunked]

welcome to london, JASON TODD ! did anyone ever tell you that you look just like BENJAMIN WADSWORTH ? well, no matter, we hear that you are 22 & working as a SELF-DEFENSE INSTRUCTOR. we also hear that you currently DON’T HAVE your memories from DC COMICS & have a tendency to be CLEVER as well as AGGRESSIVE.

stats

name jason peter todd

nicknames / aliases robin ii, the red hood

age twenty-two

pronouns he / him

sexuality he is not going to think about that ( bisexual )

height 6'0"

hair color black

eye color green

relationship status single

profession self-defense instructor, also volunteers at local shelters

continuity dc comics. i often pick & choose what's canon post utrh & tend to ignore a lot of the newer things. really not a fan of lobdell's outlaws run. more than happy to adapt to fit other dc writers & talk about arcs we want to keep in, dynamics we want to build, etc ! comics are messy so i keep it flexible lol wiki if you're curious

memories

jason remembers nothing about his old life in gotham. because of it, he's brighter than he was : he was a sweet kid before his death, & he doesn't have all of that spark yet, but the lack of trauma & the rage it caused has taken a weight off of him. he's active in the community, volunteering at shelters & teaching kids self defense. he's still a snarky little bastard, quick to fight & dangerously clever in it, & he's found himself with a hell of a lot of questions lately. where he got all these scars for one, & why he feels like he's missing something, something important, something that might just kill him.

mini bio

jason lost his parents young & was eventually adopted by billionaire bruce wayne after he was caught trying to steal the hubcaps from the batmobile. he became the second robin, fighting crime at batman's side for a few years until a betrayal he's shared the details of with no one led to his violent death at age fifteen at the hands of a gotham villain called the joker.

& then jason came back. two years later, he crawled his way out of the grave, left to wander the streets for months as an amnesiac before he was taken in by talia al ghul & had his memories restored by the lazarus pit --- the same pit that turned his eyes an eerie green & gave him a hell of a lot of muscle that doesn't match his young face. finding that the joker lived & he had never been properly avenged, jason trained all around the world to become a better killer & returned to gotham as the red hood.

jason is now gotham's most violent vigilante, the antithesis of batman's no-kill ideology. he's not as violently hostile as he used to be to the adoptive family that grew in his absence, but he's not looking to make friends.

[sundrunked]

"can't say no to a deal like that," he agreed, nodding slightly. he'd never been one to drink much, but he didn't mind a little every now & then. it'd been a long day, he could use a break. he'd never been one for much company, either, but. he could try. she'd been friendly, & she was buying. "i like whiskey, but i'm not all that picky. i'll have what you're having."

@sundrunked - ❛ i'm not drunk enough for this. ❜

donna smirked playfully at the other. "sounds to me like we need to remedy that then, don't you think? how about we make sure we're both drunk enough? first drinks on me!" she offered with a wiggle of her brows. she missed her best friends. missed getting drunk with them and making fools of themselves. while rosie and tanya may not be here? donna could make some friends here. some people to keep close to her. "what's your poison?"

[hanasnx]

Hop hop 🐇 strutting around Jay's apartment in nothing but panties and his leather jacket that's still warm from his body 🐇 hop hop

-doe 🐾

JASON TODD shirtless and in gray sweatpants and a thin silver chain around his neck, manspreading in his seat as he annotates on some blueprints. The Bat left quite an impression on him, including his knack for being thorough. The cap of his sharpie sits between his teeth, the soft squeaking of the marker scribbling on parchment filling the room. Even though you got laid this morning, you should be good, but instead you’re especially needy. He’d gotten back a little bit ago from picking up those blueprints, and the leather bike jacket he wore on his motorcycle ride had been thrown on the bed haphazardly. Crawling out in just your undies, you were chilly, so you put the jacket on. It sat on your shoulders like a curtain. Heavy, and huge, and stiff. Still warm from his body heat, it provided enough protection to pad out to see him.

It takes him a second to notice you, and when he does, that famous grin stretches onto his lips. Hopelessly attractive with defined dimples and smile lines that could kill, crookedly smiling at you with that cap in between his pearly white teeth. “What’re you doin’ over there, baby? C’mere.” He snips the cap from his mouth between his fingers like a cigarette, and you obediently come to his beckoning hand and inviting lap. You sit on his thigh, and the rigid material of the jacket stands up on its own. He snickers at you. “Whose jacket is that, babycakes?”

Timidly, you concede, “My Jay’s…”

It amuses him further, giving you a soft look with a flash of his raised brows. “Yeah? S’your Jay’s?” he mimics your melodic response in a twinge of a mocking tone out of endearment. “It’s, uh, little big for you, huh? Your Jay a big guy?” He wasn’t gonna let this go, and you fidget with your hands, looking up at him with those glossy doe-eyes. While he talks, a single finger moves aside the leather to get a peek at your bare chest.

“Huge.” you tell him with stars in your eyes, gesturing size with your hands, and it makes him laugh again, particularly inclined to adore you with a kiss on your cheek.

[rookiesbookies]

Sorry yall! I havent written DC in a long time and I only recently fell back in love with it. I wrote this based on this tiktok

This is really just me breaking down Jason’s death, what surrounds it, the effects, what happened after, and his relationships before and after. Its kinda angsty but like it hurts you and comforts you at the same time, let me know how I did!

When Jason died, Bruce had imagined the after math before. He knew the toll it would take on him even before it happened.

It was like pushing through the swirling winds of a sand storm. The air was dangerous to breathe and cutting his skin. He was suffocating in quick sand, the weight of it all too heavy. The world became bleak and dry of emotions, not a mirage in sight even to trick him.

Bruce had used the thought of his death to bring him to sanity when experiencing fear toxin. By pushing the worst thought possible, the thing that scared him the most instead of his easiest fear to trigger, he could trick his mind into taking back control.

It was a scare tactic he used on himself in the field as well, making sure the scope the place out before even thinking of taking Jason in.

Dick was acrobatic, he was fluid like cats and water. He had incredible luck, skill, and experience before he came into Bruce’s life.

Jason didn’t.

Bruce wholeheartedly believed Jason’s luck was solely spent up when Jason fell into Bruce’s life. Like a stray cat that you take in because you find it eating the plants you keep in the balcony.

Bruce was the luckiest thing to happen to Jason. And that scared him.

When Jason’s actual death came. Bruce was blindsided. He was torn up.

The last conversation he had with his son was a fight, an argument. Something that he could have avoided if he had just held his son and been an adult. But he didn’t.

For the first time in a long time, Bruce was back in a church. Dick, a raging fire of anger, stood next to him- Alfred on his other side.

The funeral was relatively small. Bruce didn’t want to invite a bunch of elites to this. It was only the three, a few of Jason’s friends from school or the alley, and a few heroes and side kicks that knew him.

Bruce, Batman, the human gargoyle, did everything the keep himself together. Clark offered to help him slip out.

Bruce kept it a closed casket funeral for his own sake.

When everyone had left, Alfred ushered Dick, now a young man, away.

Bruce knelt by the casket and just put his hand on it. Tears silently flowing from his eyes as his fist balled up. He sat like that for hours.

Even before that, it took Alfred hours to pry Jason’s body from Bruce’s arms when he first found him and brought him back. It took days for Alfred to convince Bruce to sent the body off so they could get closure and cause of death.

Jason wasn’t Bruce’s greatest failure, his death was.

Bruce’s greatest fear came true.

It all got so much worse after Jason came back.

Bruce’s guilt was over flowing, like a small child walking with a cup too full in shaking hands.

When Jason came back to the mansion, Bruce felt like he was seeing a ghost. The buffer, angrier ghost of his sweet son.

Dick’s anger only got worse it seemed. Jason’s anger would sit and stew, Dick would snap. Jason’s was slow and calculated, Dick’s was improvised and bash.

Jason wanted revenge, Dick wanted to avenge.

Dick’s anger would come in waves, he was so excited to have his little brother back, until he saw Jason.

The 5’9”, scrawny, 16 year old was now 6’2” and would bench Dick as a warm up. He wasn’t his little brother, the malnourished kid that he taught how to be a kid, this was a totally different animal.

Dick began to tear up, not realizing exactly how much of Jason’s life he had missed at the difference.

Alfred had been crying, but only when he was away from everyone.

He had celebrated each of Jason’s birthdays even when his name was treated like a slur by Bruce, not wanting to hear about the son he fail. Every year he would bake a batch of Jason’s favorite cupcakes, he’d put one by in the kitchen and open the window. He’s serve the rest as that nights dessert, Bruce would be celebrating and not knowing. Or maybe he did and he just didn’t care. By the time Alfred would come back to have his own dinner, Jason’s cupcake’s candle would have been blown out by the wind.

Jason didn’t have the capacity when he came back to the mansion. He had hoped the Robin mantle died with him. He prayed no children would be risked or subjected to that danger again.

But then he saw Tim. Misguided anger on Jason’s part led to an unfortunate relationship for the two of them for the whole time Jason was adjusting to life back.

All in all, no one knew what they were doing and it was incredibly difficult for them all to adjust.

When Damian arrived, they hit it off almost immediately.

Damian had someone who spoke fluent Arabic, Bruce only spoke a broken version and Dick and Tim had no idea. Damian also had someone who trained in the league who wasn’t his father.

Jason and Damian had met a few times while Jason was training but Damian was just too young. He was about 6 years old and Jason was still too crazy so Talia and Ra’s kept them mostly separate.

While Damian always had the stronger bond with Dick, Jason was by far the brother he looked up to the most.

Jason was always in town, unlike Dick, and Jason was so similar to Damian.

Bruce still felt as though he kept failing Jason, but when Damian joined the family, Bruce knew Jason didn’t feel so alone anymore and Damian didn’t feel as alone either.

[sundrunked]

"it's your problem because if that camera of yours goes anywhere near this direction i'll beat you with it," he replied easily, glancing up from his latest battered paperback. he liked this park bench, thank you very much, & he was here first, with little patience for amateur cinematographers. he gave a faint, sardonic smile at his movie pun. "when's the last time you actually read a book ? "

❝ i’ve decided to remain here and read instead. ❞ to richie, from jason

"YEAH? AND THAT IS ... MY PROBLEM HOW?" richie did not even look up. he had been messing around and getting ready to film something new and.. well, he had never let anything get in the way of his movies before, had he? absolutely not. it had already happened once and he had died for it and he was not amused. "reading's for boring as fuck people, mate. movies are more of my scene, y'know? PUN COMPLETELY INTENDED OR ... SOMETHING?" @sundrunked

[plainclothesdisaster]

Red Knight Chapter 2 - Dead End

DP x DC | Dead on Main

Jason Todd encounters one Danny Fenton in the streets of Gotham and suddenly he's thrown into a world of ghosts and monsters. Will he embrace this life? Or will it just end up with him dead again?

Read on AO3 | Beginning | < Prev | Next >

---

No way Jason was going to call that number. He was busy with Black Mask. So long as there was no trouble, he didn’t need to get involved in meta business. And he certainly didn’t need help from one. He was absolutely fine.

He could have told Bruce and the others to keep an eye out, but what would he have said? Be on the lookout for a generic dude who can tell if you died? Yeah, not worth ringing alarm bells. He went back to his work.

Days later when Jason shot a would-be robber in the leg, he was totally calm. Weeks later when he pushed a rival crime boss off the back of a moving truck— definitely still keeping it together. A month later when he held one of Joker’s pawns by the head and smashed his skull to the cement again and again and again and the rage roared like an ocean in his ears— okay maybe he was missing the easy peace he’d enjoyed those first few days after confronting that stranger in the alley. He’d gotten so used to the rage that he’d forgotten what it was like to live without it.

Back in his apartment that night Jason scrubbed the blood off his hands. He didn’t think about the crumpled receipt he’d stashed in a kitchen drawer a month ago and hadn’t dared look at since.

As he laid down to try to sleep he could still feel the new weight in his chest but now an old anger clawed at it again like a ravenous beast. Uncomfortably aware of it now, like when someone reminds you you’re breathing. What had that stranger done to him?

That doesn’t mean we’re totally human either.

We’re.

Jason felt different since coming back from the dead, that was obvious. But taking a dip in the Pit didn’t make people metas. Not like that guy. Jason couldn’t walk through walls or disappear. At least he didn’t think he could.

He thought of the stranger’s— of Danny’s easy cheeky smile. Totally unthreatened. Jason’s heart twisted with rage and something else.

He pushed himself out of bed and got suited up again. No use laying here with his blood on fire. The chill of the empty streets would have to serve as a balm.

Later he’d blame his carelessness on his frazzled state of mind. But regardless of the cause, Black Mask’s goons caught him in their trap with maddening ease. One minute he was following a mark on the street, the next he was jumped from behind, tied up, knocked out.

He came back to consciousness in a small windowless room, tied to a chair with a hefty amount of rope. The sharp tang of metal and the weight of sweat hung in the air. Three goons with guns hovered over him. They’d taken his helmet but left the domino mask. So considerate of them.

“We’ve got some questions for you,” the head goon said, smiling with stained teeth.

Jason’s vision went red. Rage, rage, rage. There was no room for thoughts in his head, only the loud wailing of his anger. These goons were dead, deader than dead. Except at this rate so would he.

He felt a gun to press into his temple. He bared his teeth. Anger howled within him. The guy was talking but Jason didn’t hear their questions, he just wanted to kill them.

Then suddenly the howling stopped. A familiar quietude settled beneath his heart. It took his eyes a moment to focus and then he saw him there, inexplicably also inside the safe room, standing behind the goons. The stranger from the alley. Danny.

“I was starting to think you’d never call.” Danny smiled, all sunshine. What the fuck. How was he here?

His captors turned with a variety of shouts, guns out and primed against the new intruder. Danny didn’t react. He didn’t take his eyes off Jason.

“I didn’t.” Jason breathed. It felt like his heart had stopped.

“You’re like me. I never expected you to.” Jason caught a flash of fangs under Danny’s lips and his pulse skipped. “Good thing I was in the area.”

Then a goon grabbed for Danny’s arm. Jason half-shouted a warning but Danny was quicker. He nailed his assailant with a fist to the chest that sent him smashing back into the wall. The second thug swung his gun around and got a shot off. Jason swore it hit Danny in the leg but Danny didn’t flinch. Instead grabbed the gun and kneed the guy in the stomach so hard it lifted him off the ground. Danny turned just as the head good aimed a shot right between his eyes. Gunfire. Jason braced for the blood splatter, but it didn’t come. Instead Danny grabbed the guy by the throat and slammed him to the floor. The goons didn’t move.

When Danny looked back up at Jason his eyes glowed with that same ethereal intensity he saw before. Jason felt a thrum of energy from deep within him like a second pulse. Like calling to like.

He stared mutely as Danny rose. He should have been dead twice over. A foreign reverence leapt to the forefront of Jason’s mind, he didn’t know from where. Who the hell was this guy?

“You wanna get out of here?” Danny asked.

“Uh, yeah.”

Danny didn’t hesitate. He touched Jason on the shoulder and the ropes fell off him with the same slippery feeling he had when Danny had put a hand through his chest. He lead him through the door (literally through it) and out onto the street where a motorcycle waited.

Danny tossed Jason the keys.

“See ya round?” Danny turned to walk off. Like he’d just run an errand and not shown up out of nowhere in the middle of the night and beaten half the life out of some of the Narrows’ meanest thugs.

“Wait.” Jason stopped him. “What the hell is up with the guardian angel act? Who the fuck are you? What did you do to me?”

Danny turned back and smiled. “You want to get something to eat?”

//

Danny didn’t start talking again until they were seated across from each other in a booth at a 24 hour diner, two steaming cups of coffee between them. Jason had begrudgingly acquiesced to the offer of food. He guessed it was somewhat better than having this conversation at gunpoint. Not like that would have worked anyway, judging by how it went last time. This, at least, might get him some answers

“So, you died right?” Danny began.

Jason’s grip tightened on the handle of his mug. “You are supposed to be the one answering questions.”

“And I will! But you’re going to have to help me understand a bit too. You’re a unique case.”

Jason didn’t know whether that was a good or bad thing. “Yeah I died," he huffed. "Didn’t stick though.”

“How?”

Jason raised an eyebrow. He half expected Danny to know all about his death, seeing as he seemed to know so much else about him.

“A clown with a crowbar turned my lights out. Lazarus Pit turned them back on.” At Danny’s confused look, he continued: “Lazarus pit. Glowing pool? Impossible healing waters?”

“Oh is that what you call those pools of rancid ectoplasm beneath the city? I suppose that would be just enough to do it.”

Rancid ectoplasm sounded like another can of worms but that would have to wait. “Do what?”

“Keep you half alive.”

“What do you mean half alive?”

Danny took a big sip of coffee. “When I was fourteen my parents built a portal in our basement. It led to what is basically the realm of the dead. It didn’t work at first, until I went in and accidentally turned it on. The portal opened on top of me, which wasn’t great for my overall health and well-being per se. It killed me but not all the way. Instead I became half ghost.”

“Ghost.” Jason half chuckled and waited for the punch line.

Danny looked straight at Jason with those intense blue eyes, completely serious. “Ghost, specter, phantom, whatever you want to call it. I’m part ghost and you are too.”

Jason blinked. “Bullshit.”

That made Danny laugh. “I usually am pretty secretive about my whole deal but maybe I can be more lax if that’s the reaction I’ll get.”

Jason grumbled. The waitress came by and put a steaming plate of hashbrowns on the table between them.

Danny leaned back in the booth. “Okay, well if you don’t believe me— since coming back have you been stronger than a normal human should be? Faster? Get hurt less bad and heal quicker when you do?”

Jason frowned. “Side effects from the Pit.”

Danny raised a knowing eyebrow. “Uh huh. If that’s what you want to call it.” He grabbed a hashbrown and took a bite, continuing to talk between chews. “The weird thing is you should be able to do so much more. But now that I know you were doused in corrupted ectoplasm it’s making more sense.”

Jason narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean more?”

Danny extended his hand intangibly through Jason’s coffee. He waggled his fingers for show.

“Intangibility. Invisibility. Flight. You should at least have basics like those.”

Basics huh. Dying didn’t magically make him able to fly, of that he was certain. Not that superpowers wouldn’t be convenient, they weren’t exactly Jason’s brand.

“But I think what the problem is is you’re running around with a half formed core. I did my best to stabilize it the last time we met but I’m not an expert in these things.”

“Core?” Why did every sentence out of Danny’s mouth have to make less sense than the one before?

Danny tapped his chest in the same spot Jason felt the now-comforting weight in his own. “Ghosts don’t have a heart. We have cores, which are metaphorically the same thing.

“Half ghost cores are weird in their own right. But yours feels especially weird. It’s like… spiky when it should be smooth. And soft when it should be hard. Does that make sense?”

Of course it didn’t. Jason wasn’t here for a supernatural biology lesson. But that wasn’t important. “And you— what you did— made it… quiet. How?”

Danny flipped his hand up on the table and suddenly a glowing green ball of energy hovered in his palm. “Pure ectoplasmic energy to cleanse out the corrupted stuff. But it’s temporary. It’s worn off since I last saw you. I think your core generates corrupted ectoplasm. And that I can’t fix by myself. At least not here.”

“Where then?”

Danny’s face turned sheepish. “You remember that realm of the dead I mentioned?” He closed his fist, extinguishing the light. Jason leaned back.

None of this seemed believable. Jason had died and come back to life, he accepted that impossibility. But all this even more impossible stuff about ghosts and ectoplasm and realms of the dead— that was pushing it.

None of it changed the fact that Danny knew too much about him, and worse, he seemed to have some kind of power that affected him. There was too much he wasn’t saying. And now he wanted to take him to a different dimension to fix something that Jason still wasn’t convinced actually existed. Yeah, no.

“Why do you even care? What do you want from me?”

Danny shrugged. “I just want to help.”

“Why?”

“Because I can. It’s hard for me to ignore someone like you. Someone like me.”

The worst part was that he seemed genuine. But Jason wasn’t so naive to think that even if Danny said he wanted nothing in return that there wouldn’t be some other strings attached down the line. He sat back in the booth and folded his arms.

“Nah I’m good.”

A hint of a frown flashed across Danny’s face as his response. He didn’t push any further and Jason felt a small relief. He didn’t want this to end in violence, not just because (for the first time in a long time) he wasn’t sure the violence would end in his favor.

“Thanks for the coffee,” said Jason. “I’m gonna head home.”

“You still have my number right? It’s an open offer.” Danny wasn’t great at hiding his disappointment. Jason almost felt a twinge of regret.

He pushed himself up from the booth and left.

Next >

[weirdo-from-bonesborough]

I refuse to believe Tim only snuck out at night to go to Gotham. He definitely fucked around in the city on weekends and summertime. A bunch of people from Crime Alley to Robinson Park who know him as “the one weird kid” + friends he used to hang out on various playgrounds with as kid.

No kid adventurous enough to decide to sneak out at night in the first place, let alone do any of the shit Tim has done, is gonna be satisfied staying cooped up in a lonely manor.

Also, Tim must love Gotham. He must. Sure, maybe Tim’s obsession with Batman and Robin started with him just wanting to see some cool gymnastics and fights, but Tim absolutely believed Bruce and Dick and Jason were heroes. Else, why would he care about Bruce self destructing? It’s sad to see anyone suffering, especially someone you look up to, but Tim must have been genuinely upset at how Bruce was treating people to try that hard to get Bruce to stop. Tim knew he could get hurt, and he knew he would have to stop Bruce from going too far, but he became Robin anyways. And he kept fighting every day even though he was put through the ringer over and over and over again. Robin can’t just be a job for him. There’s no way he doesn’t love his city…

Sorry I got distracted. What I’m really trying to say is that I think Jason and Tim should keep accidentally having mutual friends from before they were Robins/Waynes.