#esp dealing with how murder would send tim on a spiral

[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.