#i always feel like i'm missing a duckling when i list them all at once

[marc--chilton]

how would each of the house characters react to a spider

i think wilson would either FREAK OUT (like with the possum) or be very kind to it. and i think House has a decent chance of adopting it like steve mcqueen. and i think chase is the only australian to be afraid of spiders.

but i'm interested in hearing your thoughts

this anonask brought to you by Me Being Sad About Not Enough Spiders Living In My House And Also Not Enough Bees

house: would gripe at it for not doing its job and not catching Every Single Fly to have bothered him ever

wilson: EEK!!

chase: tbh he'd probably be relieved that most spiders round these parts are small. like spiders aren't his fave but at least these ones aren't huge

cameron: eek! time to do the old cup and paper trick

foreman: kills it. whatever

taub: kills it. whatever

kutner: heebies are jeebied.

thirteen: prefers to put them outside but won't be heartbroken to kill a spider either

[whetstonefires]

While i was rifling thru your fic tag like a half-starved raccoon in a cake tin I found your clone Damian's fic & i'm in LOVE! And like, do u hav anymore meta on that verse? like how do the rest of the fam find out? how do they REACT?! how does Damian? does the heretic clone still exist? Just reading abt tim with a bunch of tiny dami's gave me heart palpitations. Thank you for this gift.

(In reference to this post.)

Why thank you!

It’s vaguely inspired by some meta @cerusee and @audreycritter did about what if Damian was one of several identical clones, but I’ve been fascinated by the character potential suggested by Damian having been cloned since Talia first revealed it, so.

Let’s see.

I don’t think the Heretic still exists, not in the form we saw. This story fragment sort of assumes Talia went less crazy than they made her for the whole Leviathan storyline; she doesn’t regard the clones as sons the way she does Damian (she totally relied on cloning to get him perfectly matched organ replacements, like that spine) but she’s not “sons are born to die in battle” “let’s grow him big inside a WHALE” levels of whacked out.

She hasn’t fully committed to having them compete to be selected as the official Damian #2, either, because she’s still attached to the original, though the growing prospect of that was a lot of the reason they ran for it. One of them might have wound up as the Heretic, in another timeline? But it was a timeline that diverged long before they fled the League.

So they make it to Tim’s emergency van without being intercepted, and get as far as his secure site on city limits, but they have to fight their way through the last leg of that trip and to make it inside the bunker, and it’s supplied for a siege but not really big enough for eight people, even if seven of them are small, and also staying there and being besieged would draw the attention of the Bats, which defeats the whole purpose of not making for the Cave/calling reinforcements.

So he calls his friends for extraction, and they all wind up in Kansas.

Tim puts off contacting the family until the clones have with his guidance sorted out exactly how they want to present themselves.

Unfortunately, the last stage of the ninja battle was showy enough not to be overlooked, so his absence was noticed much sooner than he expected, and regarded as more worrying. On the second day Dick calls Kon to see if he knows where Tim’s gotten to, and Kon fails to lie adequately.

Dick can’t pressure Kon as easily as he can most people because last time he asked Kon for a favor Kon came to the North Pole and died for him.

Which is the kind of thing even Nightwing isn’t veteran enough not to take seriously.

But he still calls his bluff and asks a bunch of questions, and winds up very suspicious and worried, so at this point Tim and the Damians have to hurry up and figure out how to announce the situation or go on the run from the Bats as well as the League, which would be. Not smart.

Tim explains the situation over videochat with the Cave before having the cloneboys join him on the feed; this spares them the worst of the yelling.

Bruce, Dick, and Damian all respond pretty badly. Bruce because he doesn’t like change and he’s reflexively suspicious, and having eight Damians to raise is a justly horrifying notion. Also anti-clone prejudice. It’s unfortunately an established trait of his, though not like. A strong one.

Dick because he’s really defensive of Damian, and perceives this first and foremost as an emotional threat to his bab’s fragile identity.

Damian because he knows exactly how he was raised to react to someone being in a place he wants, and he knows how many opportunities his father’s household policies gave him to take shots at Tim, and they may be six years old but there are seven of them. He is going to die.

All things considered, Damian’s being the most rational here.

He’s wrong though. The clones were raised as disposable ninjas, not princes; they’re perfectly well aware killing him would gain them nothing, and they have very little sense of entitlement.

Bruce and Dick do try to be nice to the kids once it’s finally settled they will be staying at the Manor at least for a bit, because they need to be somewhere safe and Bruce can’t leave them at Clark’s house forever. Even Ma Kent has her limits.

But Bruce blows bewilderingly hot and cold and Dick kind of makes a point of of not being too warm to them, because he’s loyal to his demon brat. Damian starts staying at his place a lot and consequently working with Nightwing instead of Batman.

Bruce has no idea what to do about this or if he even should do something. Damian’s thirteen, right? Teenagers are supposed to rebel??? This is a pretty harmless way to do that?

But he misses him.

This does lead to making more time for the Seven Identical Six-Year-Olds.

Their sense of morality revolves around having made the breakthrough to valuing on another’s lives; they aren’t as opposed to not-murder as Damian was but they’re also a lot harder to coax into seeing things his way because they don’t need as much from him, emotionally.

This makes them ironically less terrifying for Bruce, even if he’s still having trouble actually bonding with them the way he normally does with his kids.

Barbara meanwhile is cautious. She always takes a while to warm up to new people, and she doesn’t have Tim’s history with clones to get her over that speedbump. She tries very hard to be fair, but she’s not really welcoming. She’s Reserving Judgment.

Jason thinks this is the funniest thing ever and goes out of his way to tease Damian about it. Privately he’s super creeped out, but as that wears off he starts getting mad about Bruce and Dick making the kiddos feel unwelcome and at some point does a rant, and after that is vaguely protective in a useless sort of way.

He enjoys being a bad influence. The septuplets also enjoy this. They think he’s funny, too, and he’s easier to communicate with than most people around here. Achieves a fairly high tier on the Favorite Non-Clone Brother list they aren’t exactly keeping.

Cass is super about these kids. She can relate to them even more than to Damian, because they weren’t raised as heirs to anything and don’t have the sneering put-down form of pride going, and also she’s actually around to meet them at the crucial getting-to-know-you stage.

She thinks sparring one-on-seven is an excellent sibling bonding activity. There are assassin-child puppy piles once they’re all worn out. Many photos are taken.

She’s doing much better than Bruce at getting them to extend their nascent sense of empathy beyond one another, without actually making an effort. It’s not like they’re actually much behind their cohort when it comes to social development, they’ve just got murder conditioning flattening their affective empathy. (And are ahead of cohort intellectually, which contributes a lot to the dissonance.) Cass’ accidental therapy involves butterflies.

Tim continues to be around, a lot more than he has been for a while because he’s kind of obligated to see this through. The septuplets trust him, which is more than they do anybody else for a while, so he winds up with a lot of childcare duties.

Since this amounts to ‘showing them where to find soap’ and ‘being in their vicinity’ rather than i.e. brushing their teeth for them and making sure they don’t steal each others’ snacks, he’s fairly okay with this.

Sizdahum sticks especially close, which is fine because he’s not a big talker; he winds up getting a lot of absent lessons on detective work.

Tim gets yelled at for having murder scene photos open in front of him; both of them and Haftum, who happens to be there at the time, roll their eyes a lot throughout.

Tim’s friends also visit the Manor a few times specifically to visit the kids, since they already met them. At one point the Damian clones, Tim, Kon, Wonder Girl Cassie, and due to rumor mill Anita, Cissie, and Greta all have a picnic in a rare afternoon of sunshine on the Manor grounds.

Alfred packed the picnic so it has ludicrously expensive cheese, a fruit salad featuring freshly pitted cherries, and thermoses of milkshakes in the favorite flavors of everyone who got one, even the ones he’s never met before. In response to this bounty Anita threatens to come to visit every time she can get babysitters for her parents.

Then she considers introducing her parents to the clone kids. They’re turning out almost as weird, even if in theory they don’t remember their previous lives. We’ll see how that turns out.

Bruce got used to how all his sons’ friends know his secret identity over a decade ago, it’s…fine.

Steph thinks they’re creepy but she’s far enough from ground zero to laugh about it, especially about their occasional appearances as Tim’s row of ducklings, and also she trusts Cass’ judgment.

Everyone does, to a certain extent; it helps the septuplets’ cause incredibly over the course of the first few weeks. It wins Alfred off the fence about them after about three days, which is quite a coup; even before that he was fast catching up with Tim in the ‘learning the differences between the septuplets’ sweepstakes.

(Cass is the only one who can even semi-reliably tell them all apart if they’re not wearing their nametags, or catch them switching, but learning things like their individual preferences in weaponry or cake is arguably much more important.)

Speaking of names, it’s a difficult issue. Bruce would (with considerable angst and self-doubt) be willing to name them all if asked, and they’d probably be open to it if he offered, but they’re not quite comfortable naming themselves and he’s too insecure and weirded-out to suggest anything else.

The other members of the family are varying degrees of not okay with the numbering system. Steph’s main issue with it is she has trouble remembering them precisely, because she doesn’t speak Farsi and learning seven unfamiliar similar-sounding words at the same time doesn’t play to her strengths.

Damian has a tendency to call them by their numbers in English, which only some of the clones actually mind but it offends the hell out of Bruce.

The necessity of keeping them secret until they have actual public-ready names and a story has been settled on wears on everyone’s nerves a bit. The issue that there exists no story more believable than the actual extremely weird truth stands in the way.

Barbara actually crafts an entire cover about rescuing the products of an illegal cloning operation by people planning an overly complicated ransom scheme for Damian, and Bruce going ‘well dammit they’re my kids too,’ which doesn’t get deployed for a while because:

1) everyone’s still hunting for something a little less weird and

2) they have to review the entire body of legal precedent relating to clones to make sure this won’t put the kids in jeopardy down the line or undermine Bruce’s chances of getting custody somehow.

Meanwhile, Bruce absolutely forbids the clone squad from getting involved in vigilante fighting. Because they are six. They’re not quite on house arrest but they have strict supervision and a curfew. They mostly accept this; they’re used to discipline and they did come here for refuge.

He tries to take away all their live weapons. Because they are six. This fails to stick. It threatens to become a serious bone of contention.

Cass, Tim, and Damian (somewhat unwillingly) wind up having to broker the issue; explaining to Bruce that the kids think he suspects them of plotting murder, and to the kids that Bruce doesn’t think they can be trusted not to hurt themselves with sharp objects is. Fraught. On all sides.

Why does Bruce never get any kids for whom normal responsible parenting guidelines are fully applicable?

[snowbellewells]

Thank you for sending me a link to your post. I went through your blog to make sure I asked something you hadn't already answers. Hopefully I didn't miss your responses. haha I'm curious about “A Cottage by the Sea”. I enjoy EF AUs, especially Lieutenant Duckling or Captain Duckling. And please for the love of everything, write the fic that reimagines the crappy end of David’s dad’s murder plot line!!

Thanks so much for sending me an ask about my WIPs @aloha-4-ever! I’m flattered you took the time to look through and see what hadn’t been answered yet.  You have chosen one that actually has a basic plot line and has even been started. It just got pushed aside by more pressing deadlines (but see, some of the stories on my list are actually IN PROGRESS!)

Anyway, the basic story idea of “Cottage by the Sea” was for Emma to be growing up raised by Snow and Charming in a peaceful Enchanted Forest that was never cursed, etc. She and Snow are walking on the shore on evening when they find an unconscious young boy (Killian) about the same age washed up on the beach. They take him in and he is raised with Emma (stable boy? page???) until old enough to become a cabin boy and eventually join the royal navy.  However, there’s a storm at sea, shipwreck, most of the crew are eventually found and rescued, but Killian appears to be gone and is assumed drowned.  I was toying with Calypso being his mother (and I always thought Davy Jones should have been his father). So Davy wanted his son for his cursed crew, but Calypso has him on her island instead so Davy can’t find him. Unfortunately, she has also enchanted him to forget his home/his people/Emma so he will stay with her there. Killian does have snatches of remembering; I couldn’t decide if I was going to have him set out for home, or if Emma was going to come seeking him, having never fully believed he was dead…  I know how I intend it to end even, but don’t know if I should say that here and spoil things…

I will give you a snippet of the beginning though, below the cut:   

Prologue

The land around her parents’ castle had always called to Princess Emma. The open spaces and craggy cliffs she could see in the distance as they fell down into the churning water of the sea were windswept and wild- much like she was herself. Though she had always been cared for and beloved, the sole heir to the kingdom of Queen Snow White, Emma had also always felt the desire to run free, as if she were destined for more than curtsies, crown fittings, and learning to waltz. She loved her happy, devoted, perfect parents, her people, and her role in the kingdom, but she also wished at times to rip the fancy curled updos and bejeweled tiaras from her head and run streaking like a loose cannon along the wet sand at the ocean’s edge, hair streaming loose behind her and cool, salty air on her face. All the proper princess etiquette and worries left behind.

      Her simplest and favored cure for this sort of wanderlust and burning energy within is to get either her mother or her father to take her walking along the water each evening, both as a way to be free of so many fussing, crowding attendants and hangers-on, and also to feel the open, cleansing air of the world outside the palace. Both her mother, once a legendary bandit on the run over forest and hill, and her father, once a humble shepherd with a small, pleasant field, appreciated the chance to escape the walls and venture a bit on their own as well, and neither hesitated to spend time with their beloved, wild-hearted little girl. It concerned neither of them that she was so bold and adventurous, bucking her ‘pretty little princess’ traditional role; in fact, they adored that in their Emma, reminding them each of what they most loved in the other.

      One such night however, Queen Snow had been kept past full dark in a council meeting over trade routes and revenue, along with Emma’s father and even Red, her godmother. Waiting impatiently, Emma sat in the wide, cozy window seat of her tower room, looking out over the shore she always longed to roam and felt a part of.  She took in the lights off of the ships out in the harbor, the mist and waves, and she longer to be closer - to be in the center of it all. She was mischievously contemplating whether or not she could scale down the outer walls in her nightdress and robe and get to her usual walking course alone without being detected, when the door to her rooms opened behind her…