The Wayne doll house
Have some haunted doll au, since it's been bubbling away in my mind.
The bat cave is large and sprawling, many layers and tunnels and hollowed out cracks in the walls. It takes many years to fully reinforce to prevent stray kids from tripping into stagnant waters or fall down crags as he once did. The doll cave, as it becomes known, is in one of the deepest, darkest corners, one where the lights of the furnished caverns above don't reach.
It's one late night sitting at the computer when it suddenly occurs to Bruce that his first encounter with a doll was at the well entrance, many levels above.
There was nothing there when he went back.
-
The justice league stared at the subaru. The subaru, having no eyes, did not stare back.
The seven of them had just finished a very long, arduous mission, and narrowly escaped government censure after the base they'd been raiding had turned out to belong to some corrupt official. With the alert up, they couldn't escape through city airspace, or even in their hero suits.
So civilian it was.
Batman had hotwired some bloke's car while the rest of them ducked into alleys and shop bathrooms, but the problem remained. There was seven of them. And five seats.
"I can shift into something more suitable for being carried," suggested j'onn, "but I believe one of us might have to hide."
"Foot well?" Hal tried, and everyone looked around at the tall, bulky, broad heroes.
"Think they'd have to go in the boot," Barry finally said. Everyone immediately turned to him. "No."
Batman spoke up before the discussion could devolve.
"I think.... I would be best for that."
The team stared.
"Batsy?"
Having no lungs meant he could not drag in the tired sigh he wished, but whatever force allowed this body to talk was capable of approximating something suitably resigned.
"As I am, I am... incapable of fully passing as human. It would be best if I remained out of sight."
"So just? Go change? I swear we won't be weird about whoever you are under the mask. Even if you're like, bald."
"Thank you, Wally, but I'm afraid I'm being serious." Reaching for the mask in broad daylight was unpleasant, but the glue and wires held as he gave it a few thorough tugs. "It doesn't detach."
Everyone stared. Clark reached out as if he wanted to check, but withdrew.
"Do you even have a civilian identity??" Oliver eventually asked. "Because at this point I'm genuinely not sure."
Wayne Enterprises and Queen Industries had a meeting that same evening. "Hn."
"Can we go back to the 'incapable of passing as human' part?!"
"We can discuss it in the car," he snapped, stalking past Barry and popping the boot. "In case you haven't forgotten, we're on a time limit."
For once, that seemed to encourage them, and batman, with great dignity, folded his joints and cape into the small space, ignoring Hal's mutter of 'what kind of contortionist -' as he slammed the lid. With a little shuffling he managed to activate his comms.
"I will inform the watchtower of our delay."
"Batman, they're tapping all outgoing signals, you can't -"
"It won't trigger," he interrupted, before he twisted his consciousness and sent it spiralling across the country.
Bruce awoke with a groan, stretching his limbs and taking a moment to marinate in his annoyance before he reached for the comm and voice modulator on the beside table.
"Batman to watchtower, we've encountered delays. If the Texan state government calls we haven't entered the state in six weeks. Batman out."
-
"Alien?"
"No."
"Reanimated corpse?"
"No."
"Uh... Demon?"
"Hm. No."
"You're not just a meta human, are you?"
"No."
"Vampire?"
"No."
"Robot??"
"No."
"Batsy, please, someone's got to win the bet eventually. How do we even know you're not lying?!"
"You don't," Batman said, not looking up from his paperwork and Flash groaned, letting his sticky notes fall to the floor as he buried his head in his arms.
"One day," he bemoaned to the keyboard, "one day we'll figure it out."
"Until then please keep your eyes on the monitors."
Flash groaned again.
-
Robin ducked under superman's arm as he scuttled down the corridor, laden with the night's haul of snacks. The real problem wasn't getting them - stopping league members from raiding the kitchen would be extremely counterproductive - but keeping them until he could return home to his human body to eat them. Batman had started searching him each time they left and it was really cutting into his daily sugar intake. Unfair! Just because he didn't actually use energy to stay up my night to fight crime, it felt like he did!!
'Oh, you're broken, Robin, oh, don't go out until the glue has fully set, Robin' his arm was fine! It wasn't like there was much crime to be fought on the watchtower anyway! At least not physically.
So he was pretty pleased with himself until he went to set the snacks down and found that the tar like glue they used had soaked through the sleeve and gotten all over his chocolates.
With his other hand, he tried to pry them off, wincing as the wrappers tore and stuck. He tried to shake it, ignoring the way his elbow rattled in the joint.
"Come on, come on - aw, cheezits."
The arm fell off. Robin stared despondently at the limb, surrounded by torn wrappers and dripping black glue where it connected to the elbow. The sour stink of formaldehyde filled the air.
He was going to be in such trouble with Bruce.
The click of the door jerked his head up.
Flash stood in the doorway, wide eyed. Robin stared back.
Flash screamed.
Oh yeah @dehydratedmockingbird have a thing
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There’s so many layers to Sejanus being devastated by Marcus’s fate. He hates how the districts are treated by the Capitol, hates the cruelty of the Hunger Games, he feels the same emotional pain he would have felt being a tribute himself, if not even more, having to watch completely safe from afar, unable to do anything to put an end to the senseless slaughter, while guilt gnaws at him for not risking getting picked to participate himself, for having escaped. No innocent child deserves that, and it gets even worse when one of the children picked is someone he personally knows, someone he used to share a routine with, someone he used to spend hours alongside in a classroom.
And that child isn’t just someone, that child is Marcus, the kind boy who, while not even being his friend, went out of his way to help him when he got hurt, completely unprompted, just out of the goodness of his heart. That boy is a testament to what Sejanus already knows, that everyone seems to keep forgetting, which is that humanity at its core is and can be better than how it’s currently behaving. Not to mention how that was probably the last time Sejanus ever experienced an act of such pure, unconditional kindness. And that simple gesture was so impactful on him, it was enough to cement Marcus’s presence in his heart for all those years and then the rest of his life, and it no doubt helped shape Sejanus into the person he became. Someone as good as Marcus shouldn’t be going through all of that, and it drives Sejanus crazy. If the Hunger Games were too much for him to handle before, now that Marcus is involved, they're unbearable.
But there’s more to Marcus. He is also a safe memory to Sejanus, one who undoubtedly often comforted him when he was feeling at his worst. And he’s one of the main things Sejanus thinks about when he thinks of District 2, his home. Home, which despite the fact that he lived there during the war, despite all the suffering he witnessed, despite the reality of the current living conditions there, is still Sejanus’s happy, safe place; it’s the place he belongs to, the place that could fix almost everything for him. But he can never return there. It has to exist only as a memory, kept safely locked away and untouched in his mind and heart.
But when Marcus arrives in the Capitol, he brings his home with him too, he is the physical manifestation of it. Sejanus’s desperation doesn’t just stem from the fact that it’s Marcus, the innocent, kind-hearted boy, undeserving of such cruelty; but also from the fact that that’s his Marcus as well, the one whose existence is synonymous to his home, his sweet boy from his memories, his comfort. Marcus being there doesn’t only mean the pointless, unjust death of a good person, Marcus being there also means the death of Sejanus’s home, its image no longer far away, safe and untouched, kept only in his mind. Now it’s here and crumbling in front of his eyes. He already knew the reality of things, but it was just that: knowledge. Now he’s face to face with it, face to face with the fact that neither Marcus or his home are or will ever be safe. And, worst of all, he has no way to save them, or anyone else, he’s powerless and completely hopeless against the cruelty of the Capitol, against their fate; and now more than ever, since he’ll have to witness the death of the boy whose memory so often brought him hope before.
In the end all that’s left of both of them, for Sejanus, is a small chunk of marble, made from the same material as his District and carved into the shape of a heart, because that’s exactly where Sejanus’s own is: home with Marcus. We learn he has carried it to his new life in Twelve, immediately before we learn the only pictures he’s taken with him are of his family and his classmates in Two, of him, home for one the last times, standing with Marcus right behind him. That heart is the last physical object connected to Two and Marcus that he’ll have with him for the rest of his life, the last symbol of what he lost and will never get back, of what he couldn’t save or help. But it’s also the one object connected to them that he brought with him when he regained faith, when he felt like he could finally make a difference and actually help people in the districts; the last symbol that things could still get better and not all hope is lost.
For Sejanus Marcus is a kind and innocent kid; he’s the good in humanity; he’s a safe memory; he’s the marble heart because he is hope and comfort, and despair and helplessness, and home, and because he is deeply rooted in his own heart
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oh but please do?? please please yap a little more... it's so nice to see some people who actually _watch_ and _read_ the Thing attentively and then interpret it the way it Actually Is without making stuff up on the go??
also: I especially trust your judgements because, as I told my partner when I sent them your fiddleauthor essay - if the person admits they Love the Thing and then begins tossing dirty laundry here and there about it, they _really_ know what they're talking about
so please go on. don't stop, for the love of god
EHEHEHE I REALLY APPRECIATE IT, THANK YOU FOR LISTENING TO MY RAMBLES!! for real, the way I talk about shows and characters I like sometimes, you'd think I despise them more than anything, but I swear that all the hate mail is made special with love <3 and I'm very glad it comes across as me being knowledgeable and not making stuff up for convenience, because at the end of the day, its most important to me that everything I do is as in character as I can get it. I love doing thought projects for fandoms, but this is the first time I'm really putting everything down on paper because I'm in a fandom with more than 5 people and know there's actually someone listening HAHA which is very nice for a change.
My Billford essay will probably be a good while out because I'm going to write an official script and record it and everything for a youtube video, but I promise I have so many more pages of info to write about many things..... so I will not be shutting up any time soon
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