part 1
"Imma be real for a second," Duke said. "I'm fuckin starving."
"That's understandable," Spoiler responds. "Crime fighting is hungry work."
"True that," Duke sighs. "Batman makes us carry cash you want noodles?"
"If you're paying then of course I do," Spoiler responds easily. "You know any good places?
The thing about Steph, is that a lot of people underestimate her. Even other bats, who should really know better, seem to do it all the time. Duke privately thinks that its because she's funny and upbeat that people will just let her fade into the background as a dumb blonde.
People do this to Duke sometimes, other heroes, other bats, they'll just let him become white noise.
He wears bright yellow for fuck's sake.
Unfortunately for this Steph, future Steph and Duke spend a lot of hours together, and he knows what she's like when she is on the hunt.
Duke knows the protocols for time travel, he knows the protocols for dimension travel. Duke also knows that he's tired and starving and going to have to track down whatever Turbo Emo version of Batman is out there.
"The future."
"Weird name for a noodle place," Spoiler mutters, the lenses in her mask drawing in together.
"Not a noodle place," Duke belatedly realizing that he just completely blurted that out. "The answer to your question."
Spoiler crosses her arms.
"The question was about noodle places."
"The other question," Duke gestures vaguely at Spoilers brain, because that was so helpful wasn't it. "The one you didn't ask."
"Oh," Spoiler says about as lamely as Duke feels right about now. "OH! Damnit I was betting on dimension travel."
Duke raises an eyebrow under his helmet.
"Dimension travel?"
"Yeah like maybe you're a happy universe' Batman," Spoiler says, her body language loosening into typical Steph. "Or wait..."
Spoiler gasps, leaning into whisper: "Are you Evil Batman?"
Duke barely doesn't burst out laughing.
Barely.
"Like do you bring presents and joy?" Spoiler continues, conspiratorially.
Duke breaks into helpless giggles.
"Santa?" Duke practically shouts through his laughter. "Evil Batman to you is Santa??"
"Am I Wrong????"
Duke laughs even harder. Spoiler politely gives him time to collect himself.
"I've met both and so I can tell you, yes."
"Wait, wait hold on," Spoiler waves her hands as if to dispel the previous conversation. "Santa is real?"
"Yes," Duke says gravely.
"Wow," Spoiler blinks blankly at the sky for a couple seconds. "That is going to need a lot of processing."
"I think crises are best had over noodles don't you think?"
Steph's head whips back around.
"Fuck yeah lets go!"
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Sometimes you compare yourself to your parents or grandparents or whatever, and think like "oh my god how did they do it and why can't I do it", like I was making frozen mashed potatoes for dinner because I didn't have the energy to peel and boil and mash the potatoes from scratch, and my thoughts went like "oh this is going to be really handy with kids...how did my parents do this with multiple children, why am I already thinking about ways of doing things the easy way when they didn't? We had dinner made from scratch every day even though they worked almost 10 hours shifts"
and then I remembered that first me and my older brother had our grandparents feeding us, then we had a nanny who would pick us up from school and feed us, and then when we were around 10 and 12 years old, it was us who peeled the potatoes and put the dinner to oven before our parents came home and they only had to finish the cooking
So, yeah. The answer is that they didn't do it, and most likely a lot of people you're comparing yourself to didn't either
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