#just below the joker and just above The Bat Who Laughs because at least that second motherfucker HAD AN EXCUSE

[variablejabberwocky]

...i have learned more about the batman canon/dc universe against my will and i think i get it now

i think i get why everyone is angry

because right now?

right now i'm furious

[soulmate-game]

This is an alternate ending for my Bio!dad Joker / Bio!mom Harley AU. Or really, the timeline itself will be entirely different starting from the moment that Marinette’s plane lands in Gotham. If you haven’t read the original, you can do so here.

—*—*—*—*—*

“He’s going to find out, Mom.”

“No he won’t, don’t be silly! I’ve been very careful about hiding you from him, Nettie-pie.”

“Mom… I just have a bad feeling. I don’t think we can hide who I am from him. If he sees me, I think he’ll know.”

The phone went silent.

“If he hurts you, I’ll kill him. If I was crazy about him, Sugar, then I’m head over heels for you. Not even he can stop me from caving his skull in if he tries his usual tricks with you.”

“... My plane leaves soon, I’ll talk to you when I land. And mom?”

“Yeah, honeycake?”

“I love you.”

—*—*—*—*—*

Marinette often hated how accurate her intuition tended to be. She had barely even stepped out of the airport before she had felt the prick of a needle in her neck and the sensation of being shoved into a small, dark space before her vision cut out.

Looks like her mom wasn’t able to hide her existence away as well as they thought.

And unfortunately for Marinette, her darling asshole of a father had apparently had ample time to plan his first meeting with her. If he had just used the much easier to acquire Chloroform on her, then Marinette likely would have woken up early enough to come up with a plan. Chloroform was unreliable and wore off fairly easily. But no, he had actually had the time to steal hospital grade anesthetic.

Which meant that Marinette woke up with her wrists zip-tied to heavy links of chain above her head, and her ankles connected to the chain below her with what felt like ten layers of duct tape.

Lovely.

“Ah, there she is! Good morning, sleepyhead!” Those were the high-pitched, dramatic words she heard when she came back to consciousness. She didn’t even need to open her eyes to know who the speaker was— she had watched enough videos online and not-so-legally obtained Asylum and Prison footage to immediately recognize the speech patterns and tone that was echoing around her.

Apparently keeping her eyes closed was not allowed, because it was only a few seconds later that Marinette felt a harsh slap sting her cheek and whip her face to the side. Oh, that would become a bruise without a doubt. Her teeth betrayed her, cutting into the inside of her mouth with the force of the hit. So, when Marinette opened her eyes to glare at the sperm donor responsible for half of her DNA, she aimed her bloody spit right at him. It landed on his shoe, which only a few seconds later slammed into her gut.

Marinette gasped for air even as the chain she was on swung violently, making her dizzy and upsetting her stomach. Too bad she didn’t have anything in there to throw up on him, she thought angrily. The chain links rattled loudly, ringing in her head alongside the electric pain of both of her newly forming bruises.

“Honestly, is that any way to treat your dear ol’ Daddy?” Joker cooed with false offense, one hand over his heart. Marinette glared at him as best as she could as she continued to sway in the open air, the chain she was tied to being the only thing keeping her from plunging straight down into a vat of sickly green, bubbling liquid.

Marinette didn’t need to be told what that liquid was. And joker knew that, the moment he saw her look down at that vat and saw the realization almost immediately cross her face. So instead of explaining, he laughed. Loud, high, and deranged.

“Good, good! That idiot Harley kept you educated, at least,” he said between psychotic chuckles. “Ah yes, and she somehow managed to choose the perfect name,” he glided over to her, as if he was some ethereal demon of chaos instead of a human. His paper-white hand reached out, grabbing her chin in a crushing grip and turning her face this way and that. Inspecting her as if she was a piece of china and not a living being. “So easy to adjust. Right now, you’re Marinette. Just like how, all those years ago, your mother stood here as Harleen. But just as she was dunked into acid and became my harlequin,” he stepped back and grabbed Marinette’s shoulders. He spun her like a top, making the metal chain creak and clink as it wound into a few weak coils and then released back out, trying to go straight again. It sent Marinette twirling through the air in a horrid half-spin, one-eighty degrees one way before sharply spinning to the other side. Joker laughed.

“Just like that, you’re gonna go from boring old Marinette,” he stuck out his tongue like a child, as if the mere taste of her name was bitter. “And you’ll be reborn as my new little Marionette. Aren’t you excited?!”

“Fuck you,” Marinette spat, even as she tried to blink and return her vision to normal. She was far too disoriented to even come up with a plan— but she was still coherent enough to register that the sky was dark outside the high windows of the factory she was apparently in. She had been missing for a few hours then, which meant that her mom and Momma Ivy would have called for help a long time ago. Maybe if she just stalled long enough, it would get there in time. “I’m not a puppet. Not for you, not for anybody!” She snarled.

Joker rolled his eyes, but his smile still widened. “Oh, that’s what they all say. In fact, your mother put up a good resistance there for a while, but her inner chaos couldn’t resist me. You’ll bend even easier, I have no doubt,” her ran his hand along her cheek in a motion that was so gentle that it felt foreign, wrong, to her coming from him. She knew what he was doing. He was trying to whiplash her, take all her hope away before dangling the option he wanted her to choose in front of her like a carrot on a stick.

Too bad he didn’t know her at all. She cringed away from his gentle touch, revolted by the mere feel of his skin on her’s.

“And your accent is a nice touch,” he cooed as if her reaction didn’t bother him at all. It probably didn’t. “Exotic. Just the thing I need to freshen up my usual act a bit, the Boston twang my old Harlequins had is just… stale by now, don’t you agree?”

Marinette clenched her jaw at the reminder that he had tried to pass off a cheap look-alike as her mom when she disappeared, back when she was pregnant with Marinette, to hide her baby from Joker. How he had discarded that woman like trash when Harley went back to him, only to replace her again when her mom left him for good.

No matter how badly Joker spoke of her mom, Marinette knew that Harley had been the only Harlequin of his to actually last. The only one he kept around, and there was a reason for that. Now, he was looking for another replacement. One that was more than a cheap knockoff, and he was hoping that a teenager with not only Harley’s genetics, but also his own, would be the exact kind of right-hand prop he wanted. An obedient little puppet of chaos, just for him.

But Marinette was nobody's toy. She had been used and taken advantage of enough back in Paris, she had spent her whole life struggling to escape the side effects of her parentage. To deal with the things she inherited.

The obsessiveness, the way she was so quick to get attached. She knew she inherited that from her mom. But there was also the rage, the anger that Marinette constantly had to stuff down. Hide below the surface before it hurt someone. Keep under a tight reign and hide away in the back of her mind, her own dirty little secret.

The constant reminder of just who her biological father was. Because that anger, that viciousness, could only have come from him.

She had spent her whole life trying to carve herself her own identity, to create beauty with the chaotic elements she got from her blood. And she couldn’t blame her mother, not really. Her mother at least did her best to help, and always leant an empathetic ear when Marinette needed it. But Joker?

Oh, she could, and would, blame him even long after he was dead and gone. Because he was the one who hurt her mother, he was the one who twisted her and drove her to feel unfit to be a parent. And sometimes, Marinette thought it would be better if Joker never existed. Sure, that meant she never would have been born. But wouldn’t that have been easier, too? To not ever have to experience the struggle that came with being his daughter, a title she never consented to?

But she couldn’t change the past. She was alive, and she would use her life to spite everything that the Joker stood for. That would be her revenge. He wanted a toy?

Joker had been monologuing, but Marinette drowned it all out as she kept her periphery vision on the windows above her. Shadows moved out there, with familiar bright yellows and shadowy blacks. The bats were there. She just needed to stall.

She opened her mouth. Joker pulled a lever.

Marinette dropped.

Wire whizzed through the air, knocking the breath out of Marinette as it wound around her torso. She was barely able to piece together what was happening; one of the bats shot a human-safe grapple to try and pull her away from the acid.

But the chain and her restraints were stronger, heavier, and just dragged the grapple down with her body.

The impact sent a large wave of sickly green liquid surging over the side of the vat, and Marinette was dragged from view underneath the surface.

It burned.

She distantly felt the tape around her ankles peel itself away from her skin, the combination of acid and wetness rendering it useless. She felt the chemicals burning at her, sending painful tingles across every last inch of her skin. It got in her mouth, she didn’t have any breath in her to hold and ended up swallowing some. It seared her throat and created a river of lava inside her. It hurt.

It hurt so bad, she just wanted out. Out. Out. Out!

Someone pull her out now!

The zip tie around her wrist loosened enough for her to pull herself free, right as something heavy slammed into the heavy metal bowl. The entire container sloshed, slamming to fall onto its side. Marinette’s body was pulled alongside the rush of liquid as it flowed out, and she was able to breathe air again. Sweet, cooling air.

And then she hacked up acid, spitting and spewing it in an attempt to purge every last drop she had accidentally ingested. Like a cat choking on a hairball, she coughed and hacked and her chest convulsed and contracted to try and help her. Her ribs ached, she figured that the grapple that had tried to save her had ended up fracturing or breaking a rib or two. But all she cared about was breathing and getting rid of the chemicals she had inhaled. She needed it out. All of it. Out. Out. Out of her!

“Try to take a deep breath,” a gruff voice commanded, soft but solid. Something stable for her to cling to. So she did as it asked, forcing herself to stop hacking and instead focus on inhaling. As slowly as she could. It was difficult, the first few breaths cut themselves off with more involuntary coughing, but the owner of the gruff voice stayed nearby. Repeated it’s request. “Deep breath. Steady, now. In. Out. Good.”

Marinette was just starting to calm down, just starting to claw herself out of the haze of panic and adrenaline, when that wretched laugh cut through the air again.

“There you are! Heheheheh! My cute little Marionette!”

Marinette froze. She could barely think, barely understand her own emotions. But she knew she was different now. She knew there was no way back, he had taken it from her. He had taken her normality, he had taken all of her years of hard work and burned them right in front of her.

He had won. The bats hadn’t been fast enough. But, if her foggy mind was correct, Batman was the one trying to bring her back to lucidity. Batman was the one trying to help her get air back in her lungs.

Not her so-called father.

If he wanted a toy, she’d be a haunted doll. She’d harass him, haunt him, until he wanted nothing to do with her. She’d come back, like a possessed porcelain doll refusing to be thrown away. She would make him regret ever awakening the monster that she had spent so long forcing down. Because she was her father’s daughter, yes. But she was also her mother’s daughter.

And most importantly, she was Marinette Quinzel-Isley. Her own damned person. The Chosen wielder of the Creation miraculous. And she would never bow down and be used by anyone, ever again.

Tikki’s words from so long ago echoed in her mind. Resounded even louder than Joker’s laughter;

“That’s all order really is, Marinette. The decision to take all the chaos and madness around us, and make it make sense. Make it do something good.”

And wasn’t that everything Marinette had ever done? It was a part of her now. Like a tattoo she had inked into her very soul.

She took the chaos she was given, and turned it into something beautiful. And right now? Right now, the most beautiful thing she could think of was Joker’s face when she slammed her fist into it.

“Easy,” Batman repeated, but for a different reason now. Marinette’s lungs still stuttered a little, but her breathing was mostly under control. Now, he was saying it because Marinette was forcing herself to her feet. Her legs trembled under her, threatening to lay her out on the floor again. But she was every bit as stubborn as Joker, which made for a terrifying combination with her all-consuming fury. The acid had broken the mental chains Marinette had been using to hold it back, and now it burned fierce and bright in her eyes.

So Marinette kept herself up right, cognizant of Batman’s hand on her shoulder but ignoring it. She grit her teeth against the burning light of the room, everything suddenly too bright and colorful. Too vibrant. But it did little to distract her. She realized that one of her hands still gripped the heavy chain that had sent her drowning in the acid, and sent a snarl at her darling, jackass of a father as she whipped it out right towards him.

“Marinette!” Batman yelled, his grip tightening on her shoulder. But he didn’t pull her back, which spoke louder than any words he could have said to her right then. He wouldn’t save Joker from his daughter, he knew the man deserved at least this much pain. And sure enough, the metal links slammed right into Joker’s side, winding around him like a crushing whip.

But that was all Marinette had the strength to do. As soon as she saw Joker’s body hit the floor, writhing in agony and painfully loud cackles, her hand let go of the chain and her body tumbled down. Batman caught her.

“Red Hood, Nightwing, get Joker back to Arkham,” Batman’s order faded in and out of focus. Now that her most pressing desire was taken care of, the effects of the acid reared their ugly heads with renewed ferocity. Everything was too bright, too loud, and her thoughts echoed in her head like voices wrestling for supremacy. “Robin, Black Bat, stay on alert. Harley said that she’s incredibly trained,” he warned his partners. Marinette didn’t begrudge him, the only other two people who had survived being dunked into those chemicals hadn’t exactly treated him with kindness and pacifism. But she could barely focus on them anyway, too distracted by trying to reign in the chaos in her mind.

But Joker would never stay silent, even as he was dragged away in chains.

“Hehehahahahaha! Paper white, paper white!” He jeered cheerfully. “That’s my girl! Violent just like Papa!” Red hood knocked him out with a harsh punch to the side of his neck before he could say another word. But it was enough— enough for Marinette to gasp in realization.

Her skin. It was paper white, just like his. Not even Harley’s skin had been bleached like the Joker’s after her dip in the acid. That had always been makeup. Her mom had a healthy, peachy complexion like anyone else. A complexion Marinette had shared— until now. Now, she was unhealthily pale. Just like him.

A painful screech tore itself from her already raw throat, and Marinette’s fingernails immediately began to tear at her own skin. Red. Red was better than white— she didn’t want to look like him. She couldn’t. White was bad. Bad. Bad. Bad.

“Marinette! Stop!” Strong hands clamped around her wrists, pulling her hands away from herself even as she wriggled and tried to keep clawing at herself.

“No! No no no!” Marinette howled. “I don’t wanna look like him! I don’t wanna be like him!” She managed to get one hand free and immediately tried to tear away at her face. Batman was able to wrestle her arm away before she could do any damage besides a few angry red lines. “I refuse! I refuse! I refuse!” She shook her head, not feeling as tears flung themselves off her cheeks.

“Okay,” Batman’s voice was solid again, soft and grumbly and stable. She grabbed at it again, drawn to anything that might help bring her stability. She needed his unflappable attitude right then, and he probably didn’t even realize how badly. “That’s good. But you don’t need to rip your skin off to do that, you know that right?”

Marinette hiccuped, finally sinking down to sob as the weight of everything she had lost pressed down over the chaos of deafening light and blinding sound that continued to jumble around inside her head. “He changed me,” she choked out. Batman nodded even though she wasn’t looking at him.

“He did.”

“Th-that f-fucking bastard,” Marinette managed a sad chuckle before devolving right back into sobs. “I wo-worked so h-hard. N-never hurt any-anybody. Never… never yelled. Ne-never hit… Not people who didn’t attack f-first.”

“I know. Your mom told me,” he confirmed calmly. Solid, tethering. Marinette swallowed another gulp of air, trying to calm down. But everything was too much.

“Mom!” She suddenly realized out loud, turning and grabbing at Batman’s chest, clinging to his uniform. She didn’t even care that she almost sliced herself on a batarang, she clung to him desperately with wide, crazed eyes. “G-get Mom and… and Ivy! They… they can help. They know—“ Marinette paused to breathe, then resumed. “Momma Ivy— she gave me—gave me a diluted… th-thingy, years ago, I can’t remember—“ Marinette’s eyebrows furrowed as she tried to get her mind to calm down. To work.

“The serum she gave Harley?” He asked. “The one that made her immune to poisons, and gave her increased physical abilities?”

“That!” Marinette agreed frantically, nodding. “I was too— too little, to give the real thing, so she diluted it,” she swallowed her spit and winced when it burned her throat. “It… I think it’s helping with the—the—the—“

“The chemical’s effects?” Batman suddenly sounded like he was paying much more attention than before, his shoulders a little straighter at her explanation. “You think it’s slowing down or numbing what it did to your mom and Joker?” Marinette couldn’t talk anymore, it hurt too much. Everything hurt too much, so she just nodded. “Good. That’s good, Marinette. Robin! Get Harley and Ivy down here, now!”

That was when the voices started. Sometime during the ten minutes it took to get her Mom and Ivy to her, they had apparently been waiting nearby anxiously incase the Bats had needed backup, the voices had built from ominous whispers to devious shouts, ordering her to do things like slam her elbow into Batman’s throat or see what happened if she splashed Robin with some of the acid that was still on the ground.

Her body didn’t move. She kept herself carefully still, focusing on ignoring her impulse to listen to one of the voices. She was still lucid enough to know that she would regret it if she did any of that. That the Bats were more on her side than any of the voices or the Joker were. But it was growing painful, and Harley and Ivy walked in to Batman trying to keep Marinette from hitting her own head. She had devolved to trying to knock herself out to get the voices to be quiet.

“Shut up,” she hissed, her voice hoarse and gravelly. “Shut up, shut up, shut. Up!” She was clearly talking to herself, her eyes screwed shut as she continued to try and hit her head. Harley gasped, hands flying to her mouth and eyes watering at the sight. This was something she had hoped she would never see.

“Harls,” Ivy spoke softly, putting a gentle arm around her wife’s back in support. It hurt Ivy to see Marinette in so much agony, but she knew it pained Harley even more. And much more personally. “Come on. We can help.”

“Y-you’re right,” Harley agreed shakily, taking a deep breath to try and compose herself before they both approached their daughter. Batman didn’t let go of Marinette, but did lean out of the way to give them access to her.

“Honeycake?” Harley called out softly, a little unsure how the chemicals were affecting her baby’s personality right then. The first few days were going to be the worst, and she knew that. The Dunk never took it easy on it’s victims. Marinette gasped, stopping her muttering and raising her head to look at Harley with wide eyes.

“Momma?”

Harley had to swallow heavily to shove back the sob that wanted to bubble up out of her. She had to be strong for her baby. She couldn’t break yet. But Marinette hadn’t called her Momma since she was little, now she called Pamela ‘Momma Ivy’ and her just ‘Mom’.

“It’s me, sugarplum,” she assured her daughter, kneeling down and cupping one of Marinette’s cheeks in her palm. And that was when she noticed it, and couldn’t help but widen her eyes in shock. But Marinette’s senses were so sensitive that she noticed it right away, and stiffened.

“Wh-what is it?” She grew frantic when Harley didn’t immediately respond, only winced in sympathy. Marinette knew that wasn’t good. “Mom? What is it? What did he do? What else did he do to me?”

“Darling,” Harley started, licking her lips nervously. “My sweet baby girl, your right eye… it’s green now, sugar.”

Marinette’s world froze. She tried to smile, but it came out lopsided and disbelieving. “No,” she somehow managed to breathe. “No, mom, I have your eyes. Your blue eyes. I love your eyes,” Her voice steadily got more and more panicked as she went on, not wanting to accept what her mother was clearly seeing. She watched as Harley’s face broke a little, a few tears escaping before the older woman could stop them. Marinette shook her head again, slipping her tiny wrist out of Batman’s hold and raising it to her eye. “No. It’s one of his tricks. He—he must have slipped a contact in my eye when I was passed out, that’s— that’s— that’s all—“ but her fingertip met her normal eye. No contact to be felt. Marinette’s hand fell into her lap limply. The room was absolutely silent as everyone gave her a few seconds to process just how much she had been changed, entirely against her will. She opened and closed her mouth, not sure whether she wanted to yell or curse or cry. Instead, her voice just came out in a very tiny, broken:

“...fuck.”

—*—*—*—*—*

Marinette had gone mostly mute. She would say a word here or there, but for the most part she was doing a good impression of a vegetable. She stayed silent, as still as possible, and just stared at the ceiling of her hospital room.

She had been like that for the past two weeks they had been monitoring her in the Acid’s aftermath. Her ribs, which had turned out to only be bruised thankfully enough, had healed. Her cheek and torso were healed up too, only the barest hint of sickly yellow to show as a reminder of Joker’s hits on her. Sometimes the cameras would catch her talking to seemingly empty air, only for a nurse to rush in and see that Marinette had gone silent yet again.

Tikki was doing her best to help. She had been separated from Marinette, but Pamela had found Marinette’s purse and returned it— and subsequently Tikki— when they had gotten her to the hospital. She was the only person Marinette regularly spoke to, because Marinette knew Tikki understood. Tikki had been around since the Big Bang, she had seen worse things than a little insanity. Tikki had always been there to help her feel at ease with her mind and body. She shared a piece of Tikki’s soul, even, according to the tiny god.

But talking to anyone else was too hard. Too scary. She still had those damned voices at war in her mind, trying to convince her to do things that made her lock her joints and keep her body absolutely still before she acted on any of the coaxes. Possibilities she had never considered before came startlingly easy to her mind now— like how it would only take two seconds to tear her IV out and stab it into her nurse’s eye. How she could use her blanket to strangle Momma Ivy, or how she could fake jumping out the window and Harley wouldn’t waste a second trying to save her.

They were horrible thoughts. Intrusive, ugly, and far too loud. She didn’t want to act on any of them, but sometimes she found her fingers twitching only a second before she could follow through on one.

She spent a lot of time meditating, because of it. Which is why most people thought she was ignoring them. She didn’t mean to, she just needed to meditate. It was like her brain was a giant room filled with filing cabinets that held her thoughts and emotions. Her whole life, Marinette had carefully kept this room alphabetized, organized, and neat. Every file in its correct drawer. Until Joker had come along, and ripped the entire place apart. Tore certain files in half, broke her cabinets, ruined her filing system. And now she had to put the room back together, one drawer and piece of paper at a time.

That’s what the meditation was doing. She was getting reacquainted with herself. Learning what had changed in her mind and trying to adjust. She couldn’t be the old Marinette anymore, but she’d be damned if she let the Joker turn her into someone ugly like him.

So she needed time.

One day, towards the end of those two weeks, she got a visitor slipping through her window. Considering her room was on the tenth floor, she had it pretty narrowed down as to who it could be. Batman had visited her every night, a silent shadow in the corner, but he had already left for the day so it couldn’t be him. None of the other bats had dropped by after the second day.

She turned her head to see that that was now changed; Red Hood sat on her windowsill with one leg inside the room and the other bent on the sill itself. He looked the very picture of comfort despite being a stiff wind (or quick shove— no, bad brain) away from falling to his death. And then Hood took off his helmet, which was ugly enough to inspire some of the more violent suggestions in her brain and make them seem appealing.

“Ya know. Red Hood used to be what Joker called himself,” were the first words out of the vigilante’s mouth. Marinette’s eyebrows pulled down, and it was clear she was confused (and a little angry) at what he told her. He grinned, his eyes still hidden by the domino mask on his face. “Eh. The bastard killed me, ya know. I was the second Robin, a lifetime ago.”

Marinette’s eyes widened at that, and the violent voices dimmed and seemed to grow muffled. Marinette couldn’t quite understand what they were trying to tell her anymore, which made her figure that she had better pay attention to what Hood had to say. She licked her dry lips, and spoke softly. Her throat was still damaged from the acid, so she couldn’t speak very loudly yet.

“Then how are you… you know, here?”

The man chuckled. “Another group of assholes happens to have a magic pit in their basement. It’s a glowing green lake, ten different types of bad news. But it brings people back to life, and they dunked me in it without even caring for a second if I even wanted to come back.”

Marinette’s shoulders relaxed all on their own. It seemed to sink into her brain all at once, a simple:

Oh. He gets it.

“I guess the water doesn’t take it easy on your brain, either?” She hazarded an educated guess. He laughed, shaking his head.

“Not at all. I went off the deep end for a while, and killed a lotta people. They deserved it at least, but I don’t like how violent I was back then. Before I learned how to cope. Attacked people who were innocent. Red Robin almost died when I attacked him, back then, when he was just Robin.”

“Then why’d you keep calling yourself Red Hood?” She asked, tilting her head. He finally turned his head to look straight at her instead of just staring out the window. His grin widened, but it was lopsided. The grin of someone who was healed from some serious shit, but knew that it would always ache. A bittersweet expression.

“Cuz he doesn’t own that name. I made it into something that stands for at least a little good. Something that scares the assholes who don’t care about killing or abusing innocent people. Hell, some people take comfort in the name Red Hood now. And you know what that means?”

Marinette shook her head, and his grin widened into a shark-like smile.

“It means I stole it from him. The name Red Hood. He’ll never use it again, and now it stands for the opposite of anything he’d agree with. You can do that too, you know. Find something to steal from him, or use something he gave you, and make it your own.”

“Turn the chaos into something good,” Marinette said dreamily, clearly quoting someone. Red Hood nodded.

“Exactly. It’s not gonna be easy, but you got the choice here. You ain’t going back to who you used to be, but you can take the victory away from him.”

“... make him regret ever dunking me in that stupid vat,” she agreed, narrowing her eyes as they filled with determination for the first time since her body hit the acid. “He wants a puppet, an obedient little doll, I’ll give him Annabel.”

“There ya go,” The vigilante slid off the windowsill and approached her bed, holding out his hand for a shake. “I can help you get to that. What do ya say?”

Marinette was silent for a long minute, staring straight into his masked eyes. And then, a slow smile spread over her lips. “I got one question, Red Hood.”

“Shoot.”

“How do you feel about black cats?”

—*—*—*—*—*

This took four hours, holy hell. I’m actually happy with how this turned out. What do you guys think? I even got to max length on Tumblr 😂

[aion-rsa]

The 21 Best Christmas Horror Movies

https://ift.tt/3lZGPFt

Technicolor lights are about to illuminate every other home in the neighborhood; carolers are marching through the streets; even that old tree in Rockefeller is shining brightly.

For some folks, that’s enough to make you want to grab an axe. But don’t do that. Watch demented men dressed as Santa Claus or a demon Krampus indulge your Anti-Christmas sentiments with maximum gore. Indeed, this list isn’t about the most charming, heartwarming, or schmaltzy Christmas viewing traditions. Nah, this is about the 20 grossest, nastiest, and all around most fun Christmas horror movies. The kind where the greatest gift you’re going to get on Christmas morning is escaping with your life and maybe some psychological triggers whenever you see jolly men in red suits.

Yep, these are the very best Christmas horror movies. Ho. Freaking. Ho.

Anna and the Apocalypse (2017)

Almost certainly one of the sweetest, most positive, and upbeat Christmas movies on the list is this wonderful feel good musical romance from director John McPhail, which also happens to be a zombie movie. It follows a group of friends in a small Scottish town who are just about to finish school and are making plans for the future when a zombie outbreak lands. 

Incredibly catchy tunes which take inspiration from Buffy musical episode Once More With Feeling, mix with inventive festive kills – zombie snowman decapitation is a highlight – in a way that manages not to tonally jar. It’s mostly thanks to the super-likeable performances of the young cast, headed up by Ella Hunt, and the teenage troubles, romances, and heartbreak which form the backdrop of the movie. Paul Kaye also pops up as the school’s tyrannical headmaster – his musical numbers aren’t the best but he brings cartoon villain energy to an unusual but rather adorable Christmas horror that’s way better than you might expect.

– Rosie Fletcher

Better Watch Out (2016)

Home Alone is surely one of the most popular and iconic Christmas movies of all time, though it is not, of course, a horror. However, if it was, it would look something like Better Watch Out, a slick reinvention of the home invasion sub-genre. Olivia DeJonge plays babysitter Ashley, who attempts to protect her charge, 12-year-old Luke (Levi Miller), when they are threatened by intruders in his home. But all is not as it seems.

DeJonge and Miller spar beautifully in a movie which plays with gender and coming of age tropes and includes handfuls of gruesome set pieces, while Ed Oxenbould brings comic relief. This is clever, funny and gruesome stuff from director Chris Peckover which might not become a new Christmas tradition but should definitely be watched at least once.

– Rosie Fletcher

Black Christmas (1974)

Getting stabbed by a unicorn head to the tune of carolers singing “Silent Night” is probably not how you want to spend Christmas Eve. This pre-Scream holiday slasher claims its victims in a sorority house haunted by creepy phone calls (sans ghost mask), demonic noises, bodies eerily shrouded in plastic wrap, and one perverse killer whose voice alone is enough to freeze your blood.

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TV

13 Craziest Interpretations of Santa Claus to Ever Slide Down a Chimney

By Daniel Kurland

Movies

17 Movies Secretly About Christmas You Need to Watch

By Mike Cecchini and 4 others

When an unidentified caller keeps harassing your entire sorority house with obscene things you can only half-understand (because he sounds like a deranged Donald Duck that laughs like the Joker), you should run even if it is 10 degrees outside. The blizzard of murders keeps raging with one victim dragged screaming by a hook, and another bludgeoned to death. Never mind the one suffocated by plastic wrap and left next to the window like the vacant face of a doll staring out into the night. You’ll hardly sleep in heavenly peace after this one.

– Elizabeth Rayne 

Christmas Evil (aka You Better Watch Out) (1980)

In his one and only film as writer/director, Lewis Jackson crafted a smart and clever black comedy that’s more character study than straight horror film. John Waters insists it’s a comedy about a closeted transvestite (of a sort), but it’s much more than that—it’s the Taxi Driver of Yuletide shockers. Brandon Maggart plays a man who takes Christmas way too seriously. His home is filled with bright holiday decorations all year-round while Christmas carols are playing on the stereo. Santa is his role model, a symbol of all that is good and just in the world. He even works at a toy factory.

He so identifies with Santa, he takes to spying on the neighbor kids, keeping his own carefully annotated naughty and nice lists. But when he recognizes the level of cynicism and hypocrisy among his co-workers, bosses, and the people around town as the most joyous time of the year approaches, well, he goes a little funny in the head. He reaches for the suit and beard and axe, determined to reward the good and punish the evil.

Maggart has since tried to desperately distance himself from the film, but he gives a remarkable performance here as a completely isolated figure with a head swimming with both joy and rage. In the end, the film remains king of the sub-subgenre. Screw It’s a Wonderful Life and Rudolph. Apart from Blast of Silence and Invasion U.S.A., Christmas Evil is the only holiday film I watch annually.

– Jim Knipfel 

A Christmas Horror Story (2015)

Admittedly, a number of horror-based Christmas movie have gone with the anthology angle for their storytelling. Hell, this isn’t even the only anthology film on this list. A Christmas Horror Story may not be on a lot of people’s radar, but it’s a worthy installment that goes to some unusual places purely because both the Christmas and anthology playgrounds have gotten so bloated at this point. This film also benefits from being executed by a cabal of directors who are responsible for directing some of the best horror movies to come out of Canada in passing years, such as Splice, the Black Christmas remake, and the Ginger Snaps trilogy.

A Christmas Horror Story deliciously uses a radio DJ (William Shatner) as the connective tissue that holds together the four stories that comprise the film. Parables on ghost possession, clone doppelgangers, Krampus, and zombie elves all get their due here. The film also has a pretty inspired ending that actually casts the picture in a whole new light. It’s got Santa Claus fighting Krampus. What’s not to like?

– Daniel Kurland 

Dead of Night (1945)

Never play hide and go seek in a house where someone was murdered. While it might be best known for Michael Redgrave’s night-terror-inducing ventriloquist dummy scene that sparked the phobia of possessed puppets, Dead of Night also invites you to a Christmas party with a spectral guest. Spacecase Sally’s genuine terror at realizing what she thinks she saw is what she really saw will forever have you second-guessing shadows creeping in the cold. 

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By Delia Harrington

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By Don Kaye

What is obvious in this scene—encroaching darkness and shadows looming over what a place you know is haunted without ever having to hear the big reveal—is hardly as chilling as what is not so obvious until the truth silently materializes. The ghost of the little boy plays hide-and-seek with the other children as if warm blood courses through his veins. Unlike many stereotypical see-through phantoms of the era, this one doesn’t have that telltale translucence which would set off a chorus of screams. Being almost disturbingly normal is exactly what makes him so terrifying. 

– Elizabeth Rayne 

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Eyes Wide Shut was the non-denominational star at the top of Stanley Kubrick’s Christmas tree. Originally conceived as a Woody Allen vehicle, it almost starred Steve Martin after Allen insisted on reading the script from right to left. It is as much a cautionary tale as Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, bringing the whole family together with a different Christmas tree in almost every frame.  

Kubrick pours on the cheer from the opening sequence at the Christmas party where the first gifts are unwrapped, and oh boy are they unwrapped. Bill Harford, played by Tom Cruise, dives right into the muffled spirit of giving after he performs a more than charitable deed for the party’s host, played by Sydney Pollack.

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By David Crow and 3 others

Harford spends most of the film looking for the perfect gift like a slow motion version of Jingle All the Way, rushing around from New York City’s famous toy repository FAO Schwartz to downtown specialty shops, to the suburbs, where he can find collectors’ editions. Cruise pays Harford like a wooden windup toy, and not a particularly cute one, either. In spite of all the colorful lights and trips above and below the rainbow, Harford just can’t get into the Christmas spirit. He’s not even moved by the uplifting seasonal tunings of “I Want a Boy for Christmas” by the Del-Vettes. He recovers his seasonal facilities while humming along to the chant during the climactic illuminati sex party, though! The song is actually “Here Comes Santa Claus” sung backwards in Latin, adding more menace to the proceedings than Silas Barnaby brought to Toyland in The March of the Wooden Soldiers.

– Tony Sokol 

Gremlins (1984)

Santa doesn’t exist… unless it’s your father in a red suit who met his untimely end trying to slide down the chimney with a sack of presents before getting stuck. Don’t tell that to the innocent bat-like ears of a harmless (for now) Mogwai. It’s exactly the kind of story you expect to hear while hunkering down in the shadows with a flashlight while a bunch of leathery green things with too many teeth ransack the neighborhood.

And as for Santa? That smell coming from the fireplace weeks later was no dead cat. Worst. Christmas story. Ever. 

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By David Crow

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By Michael Reed

This movie should be on every hardcore horror fan’s holiday playlist just for the musical monstrosity of those reptilian things decked out in Santa hats and earmuffs singing “Deck the Halls” at the neighbors’ door, sheet music and all. This is continuing proof that animals have a sixth sense, because her yowling cat senses something off about the voices warbling “Joy to the World” outside. She’s right to have an aversion to Christmas carolers.

– Elizabeth Rayne 

Holidays (2015)

There have been so many holiday-themed horror films at this point—reaching Christmas and going far, far beyond that—so why not make an anthology film that takes that idea to the extreme? Holidays hits the expected staples such as Christmas, Halloween, and Valentine’s Day, but part of the fun here is how holidays with lesser expectations like Easter or St. Patrick’s Day deliver some truly horrifying content (seriously, the St. Patrick’s Day segment is disturbing, bonkers chaos).

The Christmas segment comes courtesy of Scott Stewart (Legion) and has Seth Green trying to survive the holiday as he attempts to get his son the perfect gift. Stewart’s installment feels very reminiscent of a Black Mirror episode with virtual reality, consumerism, and the dangers of mob mentality all playing their part here.

A lot of these anthology films also try to bank off of the name recognition and notoriety of the assembled directors, but Holidays proudly features a collection of mostly fresh faces (although Kevin Smith and Starry Eye’s Kevin Kolsch contribute segments). It’s fun to discover a bunch of new blossoming talents here.

– Daniel Kurland 

Jack Frost (1997)

This ain’t the cringeworthy father/son bonding vehicle starring Michael Keaton. No, this is the Jack Frost where the killer snowman’s nose functions as both a killing tool and a device to sexually assault his victims. All square? But hey, at the least the film isn’t afraid to ride its ridiculous premise as hard as possible.

First of all, an actual killer named Jack Frost crashes into a truck of “genetics material” that causes him to transform into this cold abomination in the first place. That sets the tone pretty nicely for the abundant murders, sex, and plot holes that plague the town of Snowmonton (yup). It’s hard to believe that this film got made, with all of the visuals being some real spectacles that you don’t typically see in the horror genre.

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Hasbro Gift Guide: Best Hasbro Toys, Action Figures, and Games for the Holidays

By Chris Cummins

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By Daniel Kurland and 3 others

Jack Frost is the perfect Christmas horror film to shut your brain off and watch, or the title that you should be selecting right in the middle of your deep eggnog haze. It’s utter nonsense, but it knows that it is and has tons of fun with itself. We need more talented individuals trying to tap into the killer snowman subgenre. There’s still a true classic waiting to come to life here.

– Daniel Kurland 

Krampus (2015)

Morbidly funny in its anti-holiday sarcasm and ridiculous demons, Krampus is like a mashup of the Griswolds, the Grinch, and every mythical beast that has ever been rumored to devour children on the naughty list. You’d rather get coal in your stocking than a killer jack-in-the-box jump scare… or find chilling hoof prints in the snow that are definitely not from Rudolph.

Krampus is one Yuletide monster actually worse than the Grinch. The grisly inspiration for this tale is a Germanic one about a hairy, horned, and cloven-hooved demon who stuffs naughty children in his sack and either beats them with a wooden switch or eats them (depending on who you ask). Also, his heart won’t grow three sizes from gorging on human flesh, either.

This version of Krampus is also hungry for anyone who’s lost their holiday spirit—whether or not you otherwise qualify for the nice list. Watch this with the lights off for the full effect of the power outage that works to the creature’s advantage as he goes hunting for holiday nonbelievers. Kids, don’t scorn Santa or Krampus will come to collect you.

– Elizabeth Rayne 

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

There are some of us who know this movie verbatim and to the point where we will shamelessly break out singing “This is Halloween” and raise Jack’s quasi-Shakespearean monologue from the dead even in the middle of July. Or keep warning people that tragedy’s at hand. Or correct anyone who says there are 365 days until next Halloween by growling “364!” The stop-motion animation saga of the talking skeleton turned “Sandy Claws” bewitched an entire generation of ‘90s kids. 

Even people who hate Halloween will stare with delight and awe when Jack’s skull bursts out of a snowdrift, and he first puts colored lights in his eye sockets and explores every “what’s this?” in Christmas Town like a spook in a coffin shop. You just can’t help but love the adventurous skeleton, even if he does end up making haunted houses out of people’s living rooms on Christmas Eve. Whether you’d rather be making Christmas with strangely somber carols, reanimated reindeer or toys that bite back, it’s now an officially unofficial holiday classic.

– Elizabeth Rayne 

P2 (2007)

On the sillier end of the Christmas horror spectrum comes P2, a film named after a section in a parking lot, starring Wes Bentley and Rachel Nichols. She’s a business woman trapped in a multi-story parking garage on Christmas Eve, he’s the insane Security Guard who’s obsessed with her and really wants her to try his festive eggnog, so to speak. 

Camp and gory, this is the directorial debut of Franck Khalfoun who would follow it up with a remake of Maniac. The movie was co-written by Alexandre Aja who made one of the greatest cat-and-mousers ever in Switchblade Romance. The set up is formulaic, perhaps, but the game performances and relentlessness of the action makes this worthwhile. And if that’s not enough check out a deranged Bentley dressed as Santa, for the angel on the top of the Christmas tree.

– Rosie Fletcher

Rare Exports (2010)

There couldn’t possibly be a more sinister place to search for Santa’s ancient burial mound than in the frigid depths of Lapland. It’s the same supposedly enchanted place Dick van Dyke hiked to in the search for Santa in an ‘80s musical Christmas special, except this time you won’t find him in a cozy cottage with stockings hung by the chimney with care. You won’t find the guy in red from the mall, but anything that takes a disembodied pig’s head as bait couldn’t possibly be jingle-belling on a sleigh with eight tiny reindeer, especially when he seems to have a ravenous appetite for said reindeer. 

This time, “the spirit of the season” is literally the most malicious Christmas spirit that has ever terrorized the Yuletide. Even if you watch the whole thing in Finnish and don’t understand a word except the screaming, the ghost of the child in you that really did believe there was a guy in the North Pole will be forever traumatized. This glaze-eyed zombie incarnation of Mr. Claus doesn’t laugh like a bowl full of jelly. You better watch out, indeed.

– Elizabeth Rayne

Santa Claws (1996)

You do have to wonder what happened to John Russo along the line. 30 years after co-writing Night of the Living Dead, he came up with this decidedly sleazy but sadly unoriginal wonderment, which was much more focused on boobs than Yuletide butchery. In what by that point had become a battered cliché of the Slasher Santa subgenre, a young boy named Wayne (Grant Kramer) sees his mom having sex with a man wearing a Santa hat (!), and so murders them both. I’m not exactly sure how this transference would work in Freudian terms, but when he gets older, he a) becomes obsessed with a low-budget scream queen named Raven (played by low-budget scream queen Debbie Rochon) and b) decides he’s Santa.

As you might imagine, stalking someone when you’re wearing a Santa suit is no mean feat, but Wayne gives it his best shot. Most of the film, however, focuses on Raven and her extended family as she gets undressed a lot and wonders not only why that creep in the Santa suit keeps showing up everywhere, but why everyone around her keeps dying in a particularly bloody fashion. It can feel like there are two films going on here, a by-the-numbers stalker/slasher movie and a holiday horror film, which leaves me thinking Russo had one of them in mind, but after some eight-year-old smarty-pants came up with that clever “Santa Claws” pun, well, he just had to run with it.

– Jim Knipfel

Santa’s Slay (2005)

Christmas can sure scare the Dickens out of people. Hence why you can’t not watch a holiday horror flick in which Santa is the Antichrist, sentenced to 1,000 years of delivering gifts after losing a curling match with an angel, and played by former pro wrestler Bill “Who’s Next?” Goldberg.

As the only son of Satan (you know what they say about rearranging the letters in that name) whose grim legend is immortalized in the Book of Claus, he can now at last spread Christmas fear with weapons, karate kicks, hand grenades, exploding presents, and his own perverse idea of what “Ho ho ho” should really mean. Them’s the breaks once the bet’s terms are done.

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MST3K: A Christmas Episodes Guide for Mystery Science Theater 3000

By Gavin Jasper

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Christmas in The Twilight Zone: Revisiting Night of the Meek

By Arlen Schumer

Santa’s methods of murder are fiendishly festive—to say the least. There is no naughty or nice list when it comes to an insatiable appetite for violence. He even knocks out poseurs in red suits and drives a sleigh with a rocket engine like it’s the Batmobile. Mall Santas everywhere are shaking in their pleather boots.

– Elizabeth Rayne 

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Naughty children get punished with more than just a stocking full of coal in this Christmas chiller. Just the opening scene with all those empty-eyed animatronic toys haunting a window display after-hours should tell you that this is not a movie that’s going to end in visions of sugarplums. Forget that it’s supposed to be the season of all things magical. Those things can be more terrifying than every single plastic skeleton and gaping zombie mask you’ll ever see in a haunted house around Halloween.

You’d better watch out for that psycho in the red suit who grabs a hatchet off the wall as if it was his bag full of toys and packs an automatic pistol in his fur-lined pocket, murdering misbehaving kids he’s been watching undercover of shadow. This sadistic Santa clearly doesn’t believe in sliding down chimneys—and the only red he’s interested in wearing is the blood of innocents. If that won’t convince you to stay awake because he sees you when you’re sleeping, you must be Freddie Krueger.

– Elizabeth Rayne

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

Three years after the shit-storm sparked by the original’s ad campaign, some smart cookie decided a sequel was necessary. A tough call there, given most all the principals were killed off pretty thoroughly the first time around, but still, right?

But there was money to be made, so they brought in an untested director (Lee Harry), a mostly untested crew, and a cast of mostly non-professional actors. After a half-dozen writers took a swipe at the script, they came up with a confounding but tepid rehash of the first film. This time around, and mostly in flashback, we learn that after the first killer Santa was sloppily dispatched at the end of Part 1, his brother Ricky becomes determined to uncover what went wrong.

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By Jim Knipfel

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By Wesley Mead

He pays a visit to the sadistic Mother Superior at the Catholic asylum where his brother had been kept, and before you can say “ho ho ho,” Ricky ends up donning the red and white suit himself to do a little rampaging, though without nearly half of his brother’s imagination. They even used the same fucking poster design, just slapped a “2” on it. I guess hoping they might raise the same sort of ruckus the first one had. Sadly, it was too late for that.

– Jim Knipfel 

Sint (2010)

Dutch director Dick Maas took some early steps toward Krampus territory with his re-imagining of the legend of the warm-hearted Saint Nick. Borrowing heavily from earlier Italian, Spanish, and American horror films, as well as Danish folklore, “Sinterklaas” here was actually a bloodthirsty medieval murderer and all around brute who oversaw a savage reign of terror. Finally fed up with all his nonsense, the ornery local villagers banded together on the night of Dec. 5 and lynched him. As per tradition, however, in the moments before he died Sinterklaas vowed vengeance from beyond the grave, promising to return every 32 years on that very night to do bad and icky things to the villagers’ descendants.

Over the centuries, the story was mainstreamed and soft-pedaled, becoming part of the local folklore. The character of Saint Nick became much more benevolent and child-friendly so as not to scare the wee folk. Then, well, wouldn’t you know it? That anniversary creeps around again, Sinterklaas is true to his word, and Amsterdam turns all bloody, leaving it up to an intrepid teenager named Frank to put a stop to the mayhem.

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By Ivan Radford

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By Arlen Schumer

A stylish, wicked, and hugely entertaining take on the darker history of a beloved legend. It was also the top grossing film in Denmark in 2010, which either says something about the Danish film industry or the Dutch themselves.

– Jim Knipfel

Tales From the Crypt: And All Through the House (1972)

The Crypt Keeper first emerged as a ghoulish EC Comics horror host in the pages of Tales From the Crypt who crawled onto the big screen in this horror anthology, welcoming unknowing tourists to his catacombs with bony arms open. What the tourists don’t know is that they’re all recently deceased. The invite is to a subterranean story-time in which he unearths the gruesome details of their deaths with a gap-toothed grin. Creatures are obviously stirring when killer wife Joanne is stalked by a homicidal Santa in this warped homage to ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas titled (appropriately enough) “… And All Through the House.”

So it is that “O Come All Ye Faithful” is interrupted while playing on the radio by a scratchy warning of a homicidal maniac run amok. And wouldn’t you just know it, this occurs right as Joan Collins is offing her husband with a shot to the head—and then realizes she has to dismember the body before cashing in on his life insurance. Her blissfully naïve daughter lets the killer jolly old elf in, shrieking that Santa finally came before he erupts into psychopathic rage. Clement C. Moore must be turning in his grave.

– Elizabeth Rayne 

The Wolf of Snow Hollow

Certainly less purely Christmas-y than other entries on this list, The Wolf of Snow Hollow is nonetheless a wintry delight set during the holiday season. Carols play ominously in the background during key moments, and the immaculately snowy white setting of Snow Hollow, Utah is broken only by splashes of color from lights on homes and Christmas trees. Oh yes, and the blood of the titular werewolf’s victims.

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By Don Kaye

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By Mike Cecchini

Jim Cummings’ film is heavy on cozy, ski town holiday atmosphere without leaning on its actual Christmastime setting at all. But good werewolf movies are a rare breed indeed these days, and a werewolf movie set at Christmas? Well…now you know what to watch when the moon is full each December

Mike Cecchini

Got any other suggestions for Christmas horror movies that we missed? Let us know in the comments!

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[scaryscarecrows]

Close Call

AN: There’s been many a time where I was gliding along and accidentally grappled onto/into a watchtower, resulting in a, ‘hey! It’s Batman!’ and a ‘OH FUCK’ *mashes triangle to drop smoke pellet*.

Bruce doesn’t know who’s more surprised at his sudden arrival: the Arkham Knight, the handful of men clustered around him, or Bruce himself.

They all stare at each other for a beat before the one closest to him shouts, “GET HIM!”

At this point, Bruce does not feel safe in engaging. He can’t quite catch his breath and Joker’s giggling is threatening to drown out everything else. So he drops a smoke pellet, grapples to a nearby crane, and settles in to assess.

As it turns out, the Knight probably isn’t surprised. He’s unconscious on that rooftop, and judging by the chatter, he was like that when they found him. Bruce is mostly just relieved to find out that he didn’t accidentally leave the man to a horrible fate in Scarecrow’s sea of toxin. He still has to apprehend him, but at least he isn’t dead due to Bruce’s momentary loss of reality.

The Knight’s flat on his back, pulled as far away from the edges of the building as possible. The soldiers surrounding him are backed up by sentry guns, mines, an aerial drone, and, judging by the hint of static in his ear, a scrambler. Bruce is willing to bet one of them has a way to pick up the cowl’s signal, because at this point, why wouldn’t they. They have everything but a tank.

“Where’d he go?”

“Not far. Keep your eyes on the rooftops. You so much as think you see a fluttering cape, shoot it.”

Well. They’re very determined. Not that they weren’t before, but now they’re…upset. He can still handle them, he’ll just have to be a little more cautious.

“What do we do now?”

“We sit right here,” one of them-he must be in charge for the moment-says firmly, “and we wait for the boss to wake up. And if we’re very lucky, we take out the Bat.”

“We’re fucked.”

“Yeah, probably.”

Well. That’s certainly a different tune than the one he’s been hearing all night.

“What if he doesn’t wake up?” one of them asks. “What if he dies?”

“He hasn’t killed Batman yet, he won’t die,” Secondary Leader says firmly. Then, a little quieter, “I hope.”

Joker scoffs.

“If determination to kill you was all it took, I’d still be here today,” he grumbles. “Although…I’m here now, in a manner of speaking! Maybe it works after all.”

He’s just about to get closer, to try downloading the codes from the drone controller, when the Arkham Knight stirs and they descend on him.

“Sir?” Medic. “Sir, can you hear me?”

“Mm-hm.”

“I fuckin’ told you so,” Secondary Leader says. “You okay, sir?”

The Knight doesn’t answer, just tries to shove himself off the ground. The minigunner sets said minigun aside and half-picks him up to prop him against a ceramic flower pot.

“Th’ ‘ell ‘appened?”

“Batman happened, sir. Cloudburst is gone, Scarecrow is. He’s not happy.”

Right on cue, Crane comes back online to inform the GCPD that they will suffer horribly when he gets to them, as punishment for Batman’s interference. On the street below, one of the rioters grumbles that he wants an apology for being gassed without warning. Bruce wonders, a little, if the Knight will take his helmet off.

He doesn’t. He just leans against the flower pot, breathing heavily. Bruce doubts he’ll be a problem. He’s armed, yes, but he’s weak, and even if he does draw his sidearm, his aim is likely to be compromised. The minigunner, on the other hand…

“He’s never happy,” the Knight finally breathes. “Where are we.”

“Office building, boss,” Secondary Leader says. He’s prowling the edge of said building and Bruce instinctively moves back a little more, just in case. “Across the street from Wayne Enterprises.”

Something about that strikes the Knight as amusing-he laughs, cutting himself off when it starts veering into semi-hysterical territory. It’s…unsettling. A little too close to the Joker’s frantic giggles for Bruce’s liking.

“You okay, sir?” Medic asks. He’s still crouched down, kit in his hands. “We’re pretty sure you got a lungful of that crap.”

“Mm.” To Bruce’s dismay, he eases himself up, legs shaking, and makes his way to the edge of the building. “I’ve had worse.”

“Yeah, and a broken ankle is worse than a cut that needs stitches, but you still have to treat the cut,” Medic snaps. “You seeing any floating pumpkins or anything?”

“I’m fine,” the Knight insists again, leaning on the railing. “Just a little shaky, it’ll pass off in a few…minutes…”

“Boss?”

“What is that?” That doesn’t sound good. “Well, well. We’ve got company, gentlemen.” It’s not good. “Why don’t you come down here and face us, Batman?”

Joker approves of this plan. That alone means that Bruce is going to stay right here.

“He gave Barbara to Scarecrow, Bats!” Joker cackles from behind him. “Don’t you think he should pay for that?”

It would be easy, even now that they know where he is. If he glides down and hits the minigunner’s head at just the right angle, he’ll break his neck. Then, in the confusion, he can take out the medic and the drone controller before moving on to the others.

He doesn’t even have to do that. If he’s quick, he can yank the Knight over the edge of the building and take him somewhere they won’t find him—

No. He won’t. Joker isn’t allowed to win.

“I think he’s too scared to come down here, sir,” Secondary Leader says smugly. Joker takes offense, asks if Bruce is going to sit here and take that. The Knight shakes his head.

“Don’t get cocky.”

“Ohhhhh, big words from a guy who’s been calling you an old man all night,” Joker says. “C’mon, Bats, let’s give these boys a taste of the new Dynamic Duo!”

It would be easy. But it wouldn’t be right.

The Knight suddenly staggers and Secondary Leader snaps a hand out to steady him.

“Maybe you should siddown, boss.”

“I’m fine.” But he does step back towards the flower pot again. “Give me a minute.”

“Seeeee?” Joker says, jabbing his finger at them. “Act fast, Bats! Now’s your chance!”

It would be easy. So. Very. Easy. He got Barbara killed. Gotham is in flames because of him. The airships. ACE Chemicals. Dozens dead tonight, and who knows how many more during his preparation period.

“That’s it, Bats, teach him what happens when he messes with your city!”

He doesn’t realize that he’s moving until a bullet streaks through his cape. He dives downwards, bile steadily rising in his throat. Above him, one of them shouts, “You want the boss, you go through us!”

“Bold of them to assume you won’t, eh, Brucie?”

Bold of Joker to assume he will. He’ll find them again, when he’s alone in his head and back in control. When the giggling stops.

When he won’t accidentally kill them.

THE END

[fordarkisthesuede]

At the Brink of Midnight - Chapter 11

IT’S FINALLY HERE! REJOICE!!!

<previous> <next> <all>

Important Spoiler Tags:  past suicide attempt (mention), death (mention)

(Read on Ao3 or Continue Below:)

Chapter 11:  A Laughing Matter

The ride to Jackie Lant’s apartment was fast and quiet. Bruce wasn’t sure why, as John had a tendency to talk a lot when they were riding around before, and would talk about almost anything.

John was mulling over something, and when asked, John had shrugged and said “just some things”.

Like Bruce couldn’t worry over a response like that. He figured it had to have been what happened at the Main Street Diner. John’s street make-up was back on, and done just as impeccably this time, but with the addition of heavy black eyeliner, so it wasn’t as if he’d left in a rush.

Jackie’s apartment was high up in a building that had definitely seen better days. The neighborhood wasn’t one of the best, either – Bruce had visited it many times, always late at night, and he was sure he’d been on the other side of the apartment building on a case long, long ago.

They entered through the rooftop door, which it seemed no one had bothered to lock. (Not that Bruce was surprised – he was the only one in the city who made a habit of flying roof-to-roof, and anyone who walked up to any building’s roof at night was up to nothing good ninety-five percent of the time. Raids by blimp or helicopter were few and far between, thankfully.)

“Kind of reminds me of Arkham,” John (no, Joker, they were outside together) commented in a hushed voice as he shook the rainwater off his borrowed fedora. The stairwell was vaguely reminiscent of the asylum’s, but rather than white-washed brick, it was bare and aged, and it didn’t have the large glowing florescent lights hanging on the walls. There was just a small light in the middle of the staircase leading down.

“Her place is just on the fourth floor,” Bruce said, leading the way with light steps. He was always careful about stairs; he never knew if someone was sitting below a set.

The metal door leading into the hallway was lighter than it looked. Peeling red wallpaper greeted them, and the dark wooden floor had seen better days, but it wasn’t the worst apartment building Bruce had ever set foot in. It’d be a four out of ten, if he was feeling generous… The water stains on the ceiling certainly detracted from that generosity.

“If I hadn’t been spoiled by your place, I’d say this was pretty nice,” John muttered, grinning over at Bruce.

Bruce bit back the comment that it was only because John had no decent standard of living, and gave a very small smile in return. He remembered the little place John had made for himself back at the Old Five Points – the Ha-Hacienda, as he had called it. He’d taken what was a run-down little shack and thrown his heart into it, putting up pictures and lights like it was a real home.

He’d tried going back there the day after John had fallen off the bridge, but John had somehow managed to smuggle most of his things out of there to one of his friend’s places, and now they were impossible to find. It hurt to think about.

Jackie Lant had the corner apartment, overlooking the back. Working the lock-picks in the door took so little time Bruce found himself thinking he should find a way to pressure someone into making a policy that apartment managers had to upgrade their client’s locks every few years.

The beam of light stretching in from the hallway cast his shadow over the place, but he could already see it was much homier than Dr. Crane’s, despite it being smaller than Bruce’s master bedroom.

He stepped inside, John (Joker) following him and immediately making a line for the dresser. Bruce decided to look elsewhere.

Posters were plastered and pinned all over the walls, most of which were for movies or famous plays. There were also over a dozen flyers mixed in, like those handed out for amateur gigs, and they all seemed to be for copyright-infringing shows at Gotham University or South End High School; the dates were in line with Jackie’s educational attendance.

There was a cheap wire shelving unit holding all matter of things – books, DVDs, and bits of décor that almost all looked like they came right out of the Halloween section of a D.I.Y. store. Casting a look over at the bed (it didn’t have a frame, it was just two mattresses piled on top of one another, but was a bed) told him it wasn’t just a seasonal thing, either; there were two different pumpkin-shaped cushions and the blanket on top was patterned with smiling jack-o-lantern faces.

At least she had a variety of different tastes:  romance, fantasy, popular YA literature, used psychology textbooks… There were some horror novels in the mix, but it looked more…pulpy than anything. Her little movie collection had a few of the same titles as Crane’s, too, but they looked to be either from the more popular franchises or cheesy b-movies.

Bruce cast a look at the kitchen unit – nothing spectacular, but he should go through the cupboards, just in case she’d hidden anything in there…

“Bats,” Joker called, frowning at the strung-up photos in front of the desk on the back wall, “can your gadgets scan faces?”

“Something like that,” Bruce answered, stepping towards him. Some photographs were placed directly above the desk, adjacent to the window surrounded by string lights with jack-o-lantern faces. They were hung up by laundry clips on wire wrapped around a combination of nails and tiny peel-and-stick hooks. Looking at them made Bruce think of John’s photos, all arranged in a smiley-face wherever he went.

The pictures were all group photos, varying in age, and it didn’t take a genius to notice that the last several pictures all held the same people, but dwindling in number. Bruce clicked a button on his visor, and waited as the Batcomputer scanned the faces he honed in on and ran through its database of connections to news and GCPD files. Jackie Lant was easily recognizable, due to her curly red hair, but in a few pictures she was very young. The oldest photo was just of her and another little girl, looking up into the camera with the sort of wide-eyed innocence that only children could really have.

He checked his gauntlet, and decided to go from the bottom to the top.

Richard Seed, deceased.

Zoe Smith, deceased.

Angela Maynard, deceased.

Deceased, deceased, deceased. It was just one after another, two of which happened one month apart, and half of the death records were pulled from the GCPD – car accidents, crossfire shootings, muggings gone wrong... The earliest death was almost fifteen years ago, when a missing girl was found wrapped in a rug by a dumpster.

Bruce cast a look back at the photo of the seven-or-eight-year-old Jackie Lant, and remembered her mention of how the formative years played a lot into one’s psyche.

The only people left alive came from the middle bunch of photos:  Dean Norton, who still lived in Gotham, and Veronica O’Reilly, who hadn’t lived there for a little over a decade. Dean showed up in only one photo near the end of the bunch, too, where he was with three other people who had passed away within the last four years.

Bruce thought back to the list of contacts she had on her FriendBook. He didn’t remember seeing any R.I.P. posts or anything like it in her timeline, but he’d checked out the people she contacted most on there, and none of them were dead… “Have you seen any other photos?”

“Just two on her dresser – pretty sure it’s her parents and… I dunno, an older guy, so maybe an uncle?”

“I’m beginning to think you were right,” Bruce grumbled, clicking off the scanning feature in his cowl, “Jackie Lant’s current friends might not really be friends. Almost all the people shown here are dead.”

“Yikes,” Joker winced, “and I thought I had it bad, with most of mine in jail…”

“Did you find anything in the dresser?”

“A few spare bullets and a box of condoms. You know, the essentials,” he joked.

Bruce cast a look down at the desk. A laptop and a tray of loose papers. “Check the closet. If she hid Crane’s stuff here, the only spot left is there or the kitchen.”

“On it,” Joker said confidently, swinging open the flimsy panel doors behind them. “Though I would think I’d scatter them all over the place… You know, put the drive in a bag and tape it inside the toilet tank. That kind of thing.”

Bruce flicked through the pile of paper – mostly the bills for rent, insurance, and student loans, at least two of the latter bearing ‘OVERDUE’ stamps. “Then check there, too. Follow your instinct.”

“Ha ha, okaaayyyy,” John drew out quietly, shifting through a pile of clothes. Jackie seemed to prefer yellows and reds; Bruce remembered her work clothes looking rather nice, and wondered if she hadn’t spent more money on them than anything else.

Bruce opened the laptop on her desk, mindful of the speakers she had plugged into it knocking over the well-loved stuffed cat sitting there. The lock-screen was password-protected and the hint was “check the handbook”.

Handbook…? Hadn’t he seen something with that?

Bruce returned to the shelf – The Handbook for the Recently Deceased sat next to an empty candlestick holder molded in the shape of a raven.

Sure enough, it was a blank journal with a list of contact information (birthdays and death dates were listed, too, much to Bruce’s surprise) and passwords to different sites – banks, her social media, and even a bloggr account – with the laptop’s password written on a sticky note in the front:  Pumpk1nPr1nc355.

“Hey, Batman, I found somethiiing,” Joker called, tugging out a heavy-looking lock-box. “Hidden right under the loose floorboard, how cliché… Ooh, you looking into her laptop?”

��I figured it might give an insight into her, if she didn’t have Crane’s work copied onto it.”

“Right. You look at that, I’m going to poke around her bathroom for a key to this thing.”

Bruce wanted to question that, but Joker left without another word, a confident smile on his lips.

Jackie Lant’s laptop hummed to life. It seemed it had been in hibernation mode – her browser was still open to her email.

Bruce read through the headers:

New post from Batman Watch

New post from Gotham-Sucks

[!] Application for job #P283451

[!] Application for job #E7990S2

We’re sorry to inform you that your…

New post from Gotham-Sucks

RE:  St. Mary’s Mental Ward Position...

RE:  Hopkins Mental Clinic application

BatmanChick96 replied to your post

[!] Application for job #8714E03

Bruce could deduce without even opening any of them that the application notifications were rejections. Judging by the bloggr notifications, she was likely trying to leave the city. Scrolling down further and seeing the list of rejected applications amidst the odd bank statement and old blog notifications told him she’d been trying to do leave Gotham for months.

That explained why she wanted to steal Crane’s work – she must have figured that she could take it and run out of the city, publish it with her name attached, and make something out of it. In her mind, he supposed, she had bills to pay and not much to lose.

He opened her file browser; thankfully it looked like she was the type to keep all her files fairly organized. There was what looked like a folder for her old school documents, a folder for her Arkham internship-employment, tax folders… A quick search said the only thing with Crane’s name in it was a term paper on Working Through Grief and some copies of his work, though they weren’t opened in over a year.

Looking under her recent files, she had a video labeled with a date from several days ago, and she did have a webcam… Maybe she was the type to vlog.

“Whelp, nothing in there… What’d you find?” Joker asked, coming to stand behind Bruce and lean on the back of the rolling office chair.

“Hopefully, a video log.”

“Well press play, then! Maybe she’ll just tell us where she stashed Crane’s stuff. I’m going to be mad if it’s not in that safe…”

Bruce double-clicked the video dated several days ago.

Jackie Lant sat in front of the desk, pushing back the laptop screen until she was entirely in view. She threaded her fingers together under her chin, on level with her hair, and and gazed right at the camera with an intense focus as she breathed deep.

“Normally, I try not to talk too openly in these sessions, in case I have one of those Agents monitoring me like everyone seems to think we do, but just in case I fail miserably, or Professor Crane decides to bury me in his backyard, I want to say something. I’m probably going to regret this video later… Then again, if everything works out, I’m going to delete this and pretend it never happened anyway.”

Jackie shrugged, folding her arms on top of her desk.

“There’s…no going back for me, now. I had to keep telling myself that if I did… If I did, then I might as well just throw myself off of the bridge tomorrow. I’m in too deep. I know too much. I’ve…seen too much.”

The young woman scowled slightly down at her hands.

“I can’t pretend that I’m not going to regret anything. I already regret a lot. I don’t think I’d be at this point if I’d chosen a theater major,” she said with a slight hint at a smile. “But in case something happens, I just really want to say – I’m the one who tried to kill Dr. Jonathan Crane, and stole all of the research that would’ve given evidence pertaining to his unethical experiments at Arkham Asylum. I’m hoping someone will find his bloated corpse floating around the docks or face-down in a pool of his own blood in the street,” she continued with a nasty curl of her lip that lasted all but a couple of seconds. “If not, then I failed, and I’m probably dead already, either by Dr. Crane himself, or Bruce Wayne, for taking advantage of him like I am tonight. I wouldn’t blame him for it, honestly…” She looked down, regret flashing in her eyes. “He and I both have mobster blood in us, I’d be surprised if he didn’t want to kill me for letting his friend get hurt and not doing anything to stop it… It’s what Great-Uncle Finger would do.”

Jackie looked back up at the camera, sincerity peeking through a steely gaze.

“But I am sorry to whoever might get caught in the middle. I hope there’s none, but… If I could see the future, then I would’ve swallowed that bottle of ibuprophen years ago.”

The video cut out after a moment, and Joker immediately leaned over Bruce to click through the video folder, his eyes shining in the light of the bright screen. “She’s got to have more. Something,” he muttered, and promptly played a video dated nearly six weeks ago in a folder marked “personal vlogs”.

The first thing Bruce noticed was that Jackie still had her long ponytail, giving credit to the date on the filename. The second detail was that she looked rather conflicted, even as she just sat there hugging herself in her jack-o-lantern blanket.

“I had…an epiphany, last night. I normally would’ve done this when I got home, but… I couldn’t. I was too… I’m not sure. Not scared… Bewildered, I guess is the right word. Dr. Crane invited me over to his house again, yesterday. I thought, ‘yeah, last time was nice, despite the talk about death in the middle, why not’? It was okay, at first. You know, home-made pumpkin spice lattes, catch-up about how I’m doing, gossiping about patients’ sessions I have to sit in on… And then we got onto the topic of Gotham, somehow. I think I asked him why he stayed here, since he had the means to leave, and he just…”

She was half looking into the camera with general disbelief.

“He said he liked it. He thinks all the general misery is fun to study. I didn’t know what else to say to that, so I tried to change the subject, and asked what he thought of Batman, because…I mean, what normal person doesn’t like him, right? And he thinks he’s fascinating. Or…really, he thinks the effect Batman has on the city is fascinating. He thinks the way criminals fear him is interesting. So… I just said, ‘yeah, that makes sense, you like studying human behavior around fear, don’t you?’”

She got quiet, but stared dead at the camera.

“He lit up at that. Like, the happiest I think I’ve ever seen him. He actually smiled a little,” she pressed, leaning forward to emphasize her point before sitting there with her arms on the table. “So, I figured that had to be good. We talked about his work for a really long time - I still remember going through bits of it at school, and I did genuinely like his stuff, so he walked me through his last one, and I guess I said something right, because… He said he was testing something special for his current research, and he asked what my worst fear was.”

She paused and sat up straight, crossing her arms again.

“I mean, I’m not stupid enough to ask why. I can guess why. So I told him my old one so it’d be believable. And he just looks at me and says ‘So imagine I can manifest those roaches before your eyes. What would you do?’” She phrased in a fairly good imitation of Crane’s pitch, “I said I didn’t know; probably squish as many as possible while screaming my head off, and he…he just said, ‘Yes, that’d be interesting, wouldn’t it?’”

She stared down at the surface of the desk, almost in awe.

“And I just… I just realized, right there, that he was making something to do that to patients. I never asked him about what he did in sessions, but… I’m allowed to peek at almost everyone’s notes to look at the progress of certain patients, and it just…hit me. He’s why some of them are regressing.”

She was quiet for a minute, only shifting to get comfortable again, and staring out the window by the desk.

“And I couldn’t help but think, ‘that IS interesting’. I thought that, and I meant it, and I hate that I thought it at all. And… I know that secret, now. I have to carry it around with everything else.”

Jackie stared a little longer, first out the window, then at her desk, and then she swiveled the chair and moved to click the mouse with an irritated scowl.

“Fuck it.”

That was certainly enlightening… Bruce had wondered how Jackie had developed the idea to steal his research – she’d apparently known for weeks already, before she’d reached out to him days ago and asked for his help. He wouldn’t have been surprised if it was her who had prevented him from seeing John, solely to drum up his suspicion and get him invested in her idea of helping her steal Crane’s files.

(Though he couldn’t see her knowing everything else in-between. There was no way she knew he stole Crane’s fake drugs from the lab, or that they would walk right by John that day, or that John would break out of his cell at all.)

John was already clicking to another video, a determined frown on his long face.

“Joker, that’s enough,” Bruce said, moving to stop him, but Joker was just fast enough to start a new one, dated almost four weeks ago, and it caught his attention enough that he let John’s hand go.

Jackie Lant faced the webcam with her head in her hand, taking deep breaths, and on the third, she turned her gaze to the window to her side.

“I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I really, really, don’t.”

The look in her eyes was furious, despite her relatively flat expression.

“I hate it when people say it’s ‘the little things in life’ – they always mean ‘oh, life’s not so bad, just look at this fucking rainbow’, like that will make everything better for you,” she grumbled, turning to look at the camera. “It’s like, ‘hey, you ever see a guy get stabbed in the middle of the road? Just fucking stabbed? And you’re in your car, you have to keep driving, because you’ll be penalized for being late to work, and if you go out there and try to do something about it, you’ll be stabbed, too. And you have to just…pretend like you didn’t see anything. That everything is perfectly fine. It’s just…a little thing,’” Jackie finishes, a lopsided smile tugging on the corner of her mouth for a moment, and then it faded into a flat line. “I tried texting Dean about it, since he was there when Michelle got killed, and he just… He said ‘that’s how life is around here, you gotta be tough’.”

Jackie stared at the table, her eyes glistening slightly, the anger never leaving them.

“Four years… Four years, and that’s what seeing her die in the fucking street has reduced that to. Just another part of life in Gotham.”

She blinked away the tears threatening to fall, taking the sleeve of her hoodie to wipe at her face properly for a moment.

“I tried telling Ver’ about it, too – not directly, just, ‘hey I’m feeling super awful and I hate my life.’ And all she said was, ‘Look on the bright side! It’s the little things that make life worth living!’” she paraphrased in a falsetto sort of voice, her brows furrowing. “Fuck her. Just…fuck her. She can come live in Gotham for a day, see if she can look on the fucking bright side…”

Jackie grunted to herself, rubbing her face into her hands for a moment, and when she reappeared, she had a steady gaze.

“I just have to shove all this down, I guess. Like I don’t already do that all the time.” She stared right at the screen, as if watching herself, and her face grew soft and contemplative. “I’ll just put it next to the thoughts of how I threw my dreams down the gutter, or how much I’d rather risk taking the train to East End than having to work at Arkham one more day,” she added spitefully, despite the glint of humor that crossed over her expression. “I guess I just have to…” She smiled a little wistfully at the camera, even as her eyes dulled. “Smile, though your heart is breaking,” she half-sang.

Bruce heard John snort heavily, as if trying to stifle a laugh, and turned to look just as a loud cackle burst out of him.

John doubled over, clearly trying to stifle his own raucous laugh as he held his stomach like it was the funniest joke he’d ever heard.

Bruce almost wanted to punch him, but held himself steady, clenching his fists as John turned away from him, giggling uncontrollably.

Half a year in Arkham wasn’t going to change him. He was always going to find this sort of thing entertaining. Bruce never quite forgot the conversation they had during Harvey Dent’s speech about hunting down the Children of Arkham; John had grinned wide and joked about it all like it wasn’t actually happening, even though they both knew it was. That same man was right there, throwing open the window and laughing like a damn hyena.

John stuck his head out into the pouring rain, letting the water drown out some of the noise as brown hair dye and make-up started to wash away.

“What are you doing?!” Batman’s voice growled out as Bruce shot up and yanked him back out by the collar, angry at him for laughing at all, for doing something so stupid as showing his face, for further washing away the only thing really keeping him safe-

“I-I’m sorry,” John managed, still chuckling to himself as he tried to steady himself upright using Bruce’s shoulder. “It-it’s funny, but I just… I just can’t – hee hee – be-believe… I’m…” He tried to breathe, a grin still plastered on his face, make-up running terribly in what almost looked like tear-tracks on his cheeks as his laughter slowed. The sound of the video continuing on low volume as rain hit the brick and pavement outside was almost loud enough to prevent Bruce from properly hearing him. “I’m sympathizing with her!” He finished, letting out another little burst of laughter.

That was sympathy…?

“I just – oh, geez, that hurts,” John breathed, a slight giggle coming out as he clutched part of the cape draped over Bruce’s shoulder. “When she was threatening you, back at Arkham, I just thought she was like Crane; a weird, more emotional version of him, but… I hated her for it! And it turns out we - we not only having something in common, but she’s like you,” he emphasized, looking up at the white lenses with a bright-eyed look. It made Bruce feel like he was stuck to the floor. “You both just shove your real feelings down so far even I can’t see them! You both just put on your public faces and pretend!”

Bruce was tempted to wipe some of the run make-up away, and he wasn’t sure if it was because of the knowing glint in the green eyes that stared up at him, or if was because he just wanted to distract the man from continuing to hit Bruce right in a sore spot.

“I still don’t like her,” he said, “but I don’t hate her anymore. And that’s so ridiculous, because I loathe anyone who even thinks about hurting you, Bruce,” he finished with a laugh, caressing Bruce’s arm through the batsuit.

He didn’t know what to say. What could he even do, in a place like this? In a situation like this? He felt guilt and warmth pile up on one another, and he wanted to tell him he was sorry, and he wanted to reach out and cup his face and get rid of all the color until there was nothing but John left, and he knew what John said wasn’t exactly healthy but it still sent a rush through him and he just wanted to…

It wasn’t the time or place for anything like that. He was Batman. John was Joker. They were supposed to be investigating Jackie Lant so they could get a lead on Crane.

Batman was sturdy. Bruce was sturdy.

“Joker,” he started, forcing himself to maintain eye contact even as John’s pupils dilated slightly in response, “Go wash the rest of that stuff off. I’ll copy over the rest of Jackie’s vlog files.”

“My face looks that bad, huh?”

“A little.”

Joker tore himself away, letting his fingers slide over the armored bicep as he passed by. He couldn’t feel the touch at all, but the gesture was more than enough to give him a pleasant little jolt.

Bruce copied a compressed version of her vlog files to the USB stick he carried in his belt. They might be useful, or they might not. A quick scroll through of the rest of her documents showed nothing nefarious, no hidden files, no detailed plans - not so much as a crude map of the asylum. Her browsing history was pretty normal, though he did see some bookmarks to particular blogs she followed, such as Batman Watch, Gotham’s-Dark-Knight, and Gotham Gazette Official.

Bruce was sure he could reason with her. Jackie Lant was stubborn, but she seemed desperate for someone to talk to, and relied only on herself for everything; she either had a backup plan memorized for if things went south, or she was making it up as she went along. She clearly internalized a lot of pain, and not having an outlet for it besides talking to herself seemed to be the final straw in what drove her to desperate measures of escape.

She would probably be thrown in a jail cell for assault and conspiracy to murder, but Bruce was fairly positive she needed some mental help. If he managed to talk her down, he could likely fix it so she wasn’t thrown with the rest of the wolves in Black Gate. Perhaps he could even transfer her out of Gotham entirely.

The files had almost finished downloading when Bruce heard a metallic clink ringing against tile followed by a muttered curse.

He rushed to the small, dimly-lit bathroom, and was greeted with John standing on the rim of the built-in tub, rubbing his head with one hand and holding what looked like part of the shower-head in the other.

“No need to worry, Bats,” Joker said without even turning around. “Just hit myself a bit on this,” he explained, holding up the outer piece to the shower attachment. “Good news though, I found the key to the safe!”

Joker hopped down, stooped, and picked up a key from the base of the tub, turning to face Bruce with a proud grin. “I knew it must have been in here!”

His face was mostly clear, now. His eyelids were still fairly dark, but it was a lot of make-up to wash away, and it couldn’t have been easy for such a fast job. His eyebrows were back to being green, and there were even chunks of color showing under the temporary hair dye.

Bruce forced himself to focus on the task at hand. “How did you think to look in the showerhead?”

“Jackie’s a super-secretive girl, and I would put a key to a safe holding what I was working my life towards in a place no one would think to loo… And the toilet tank was empty.” He dangled the key in front of their faces. “You want to do the honors, Batman?”

Bruce took the invitation. He dropped the lock-box onto the desk, minding the laptop, and turned the key, pushing away the tiny concerned thought about a potential bomb.

He pushed aside the academic papers Crane had written on top of the pile, and found a stack of Arkham patient notes that Bruce knew he’d comb through later, despite it likely not holding much more information than he already knew. And then, under all that, was Crane’s hard drive.

“See if you can find some plastic bags,” Bruce suggested, leafing through the papers to make sure everything was accounted for.

“No need to look, Batsy,” Joker grinned, and yanked an orange bag from the trench coat’s ticket pocket as if he were pulling out a line of scarves. “Ta-dah!”

“That’ll do,” Bruce answered, unable to stop the minute smile from spreading on his face.

He’d all but tied the handles together and passed it to Joker for safe-keeping when the head-set in his cowl rang obnoxiously in his ear.

“Hello?” He asked in his normal voice.

“It’s just me, Batman,” Tiffany answered, sounding somewhat drained; John mouthed ‘who is it’ as he stepped a little closer. “I wanted to apologize for what I said earlier. I’m just having trouble wrapping my head around…everything.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that.”

“Yeah, well… I also wanted to tell you I got a signal from one of Maroni’s thug’s phones. I’ll send you the coordinates. Is he with you?”

“…yes.”

“Figures… I’ll…discuss that with you another time. Just…be careful out there.”

“Always am.”

“No you’re not,” Tiffany countered with a light-hearted scoff before hanging up.

Notes:  Blargggh, my brain failed me at a critical time, and then today my stomach acted up for about 2 hours, which impeded me further!! Something must have really wanted me to just wrap up this chapter here… That, or they wanted you guys to wait this long. I certainly didn’t!! (T^T)

As always, thank you SO SO much to everyone that comments, reblogs, likes, kudos, bookmarks, or subscribes!!! I said it before and I'll say it again - I love you guys!!! You guys are awesome!!!! (ෆˊ͈ ु꒳ ूˋ͈ෆ) I'm gearing up for some good times comin' soon... REAL good times. Stay tuned next weekend...

[fanfic-inator795]

I just finished season one of Batman 1966 and here are some random thoughts/comments

It took me about twenty episodes to realize it, but the way they use the Narrator (opening each episode, occasionally making comments or explaining something) in the show is similar to how The Powerpuff Girls uses its narrator. Considering that Craig McCracken was apparently inspired by the 66′ show’s villains (hence why the PPG villains are so silly and over-the-top), it wouldn’t surprise me if was inspired by the 66′ show’s use of a narrator too

I’m not really sure what the point of having Aunt Harriet around is (and yes I know she was in the comics at this time but still), though she does occasionally make me laugh with some of her reactions, plus her interactions with the rest of her family are cute. I’d be curious to see how a modern interpretation could fit her in, or if there could ever be a story where after Dick gets closure from the whole Tony Zucco murdering his parents thing, he learns he still has living family and has to decide whether to live life as a normal kid or continue being Robin. Just something to think about.

I like that the show focuses a bit more on the solving mysteries aspect of Batman. Even when you’re given an answer-reveal right away about the villain or their plan, you’re still interested in seeing how Batman and Robin figure it out. 

I’ve noticed that more often than not, Robin won’t even use the doors when getting out of the Batmobile. He’ll just jump over the door or - on a couple occasions - step onto the seat, over the windshield and across the hood before hopping down. Once an acrobat always an acrobat it would seem ^v^

THE BATMOBILE KEEPS GETTING STOLEN. They only ever activated an anti-theft device once and that was in the first episode. The rest of the time, if a villain wants to, they can just steal it and it’s just hilarious to me how easy that apparently is.

Instead of your standard white gloves, the Penguin wears white gloves with fluff on the tops of them... Idk if that was the style back then or something but it’s adorable...

Whenever Robin gets kidnapped, Batman saves him. But whenever Batman/Bruce gets kidnapped, he has to save himself. I kinda wish Robin would save Batman sometimes, just to switch things up and to make Robin seem like less of a dude-in-distress, showing that he can save the day just as often as Batman. Though, interesting enough, it seems like Robin is slightly better than Batman at solving riddles in this iteration, so... he’s got that going for him at least.

Every villain seems to have their own ‘Harley Quinn’ as it were along with two or three random grunts. The ladies they have with them range from “Don’t care, I’m totally up for evil” to “airhead who’s just sorta going along because the villain is cute”, and their fate is usually getting captured and arrested with the rest of the grunts or suddenly becoming guilty and therefore getting a lighter sentence. ...Also one of them died, but it was sorta her own fault so... yeah. Also, pretty much all of them find Batman super handsome and attractive which gets kiiiinda tiring and problematic after a while... 

It’s honestly a wonder no one in this show hasn’t just built up a tolerance for knock-out gas at this point. Seriously, in this universe, don’t open anything that a stranger gives you or accept flowers/an umbrella. Nine out of ten times it’s just filled with gas. 

Some of the villains’ plans and death traps get surprisingly dark and sorta brutal (along with being kinda clever in a comic book-y sort of way). Like... Way more than I was expecting. And honestly, as silly as the show can be, it can still occasionally be suspenseful. ...Also Adam West fought a tiger in one episode. Like... a LEGIT TIGER. Yeah, I’m sure the tiger was well trained but that don’t mean it still couldn’t have snapped and done some damage if it was agitated enough, so the fact that it was getting so close to the actor and they were making it look like a fairly realistic fight is pretty darn impressive! (also the clip’s on youtube if anyone wants to check it out)

False Face was a stupid villain. Just sayin’. I can see why he never came back. 

Pills can apparently solve everything in this universe. ...Except for surviving in below zero temps. For that you need bat-thermal underwear.

Most of the time Batman is able to get out of a trap using skills and some bat gadgets, but occasionally there are times where he’s only able to escape because of total luck. The biggest example of this is when the Joker has him and Robin in electric chairs, and literally just moments before they’re electrocuted, Gotham has a city-wide power outage and they’re saved. And like, Batman doesn’t even cause the power outage, it just happens! Though when you think about it, as silly as it is that Batman occasionally gets spared because of good luck, it’s sorta more realistic. You can’t have a contingency plan for EVERYTHING, Bruce! Also the moment that I mentioned above doesn’t even match the glory of the “Noble Porpoise” moment from the 1966 movie

I really love the dynamic (heh) between Adam West and Burt Ward. They really do play off each other well ^v^ They could’ve just phoned it in, but instead Adam reads everything like it’s freaking Shakespeare and Burt is just so full of energy. Their scenes are always the best ^v^ Though The Penguin and The Riddler’s scenes are a close second (I still may not like The Riddler as a character, but MAN is Frank Gorshin fun to watch)

Speaking of Riddler, I can’t tell if his riddles are good or bad because I suck at solving ALL riddles, lol

There’s this moment in “The Perfect Crime/Better Luck Next Time” where Catwoman’s got Robin dangling above a tiger’s pit. Robin’s response: “Catwoman... You are NOT a VERY NICE PERSON!” Just... the delivery of that line plus the fact that THAT it was apparently the best insult Robin could come up with... That one moment had me laughing the rest of the day after I saw it. 

So yeah, that’s all I have. Overall while there were a couple of sorta meh episodes, most of this season was very entertaining and fun to watch, and I can’t wait to start watching season two! ^v^

[fanfic-inator795]

Lego Batman Oneshot: No Fear

Plot: Every hero has something to fear... Both old fears and new ones... Thankfully, hugs make it better.

((Yaaay, new fic! ^v^ Thought of this while I was watching my brother fight Scarecrow in the new Injustice game. Enjoy!

Also, quick warning. Soooorta graphic imagery ahead. But I mean, graphic for Legos. So, no actual blood or anything. Still, I wanted to give you guys a head’s up!))

The full moon had already risen above Gotham, with the dark violet sky acting as its stage as it shone down on the city. Below, there were plenty of people out and about - not too surprising, since Gotham was a big city after all. Of course it would have a healthy nightlife, even after all the crime that usually happened during this time.

And speaking of which...

*BOOM!*

Several citizens quickly turned towards the explosion, each letting out a small scream or gasp in surprise. Others just instantly ran for cover out of instinct. However, as the green gas from the explosion began quickly washing over the late-night shopping and/or clubbing crowd, very few managed to escape it. 

And, as more screams of fright were heard, a raspy laugh echoed over them. “Yessss,” the masked man smirked as he sauntered through the chemical fog, a metal pack full of fear gas on his back and a hose in his hand, “Another successful experiment~”

All around him he could see people afraid - and not just of him, but of their own imaginations. From spiders and killer mosquitoes, to snakes and giant hungry rats, to- ...giant man-eating tax forms apparently (the doctor actually felt kinda sorry for that guy), everyone on this block was seeing their worst fears!

And Scarecrow was loving it.

“Now, let’s see how many more people I can frighten~ Perhaps I should take my little experiment to the bank next.” After all, fear gas wasn’t cheap. And hey, what was crime without a little robbery?

Chuckling again, the Scarecrow started heading towards the next street, but stopped when he saw something fly by out of the corner of his eye. “Huh?” Unfortunately, he was just a bit too slow, and as Scarecrow turned to try and block the attack, a bat-a-rang ended up hitting and getting stuck in his fear-gas hose, blocking it completely.

“No!” The Scarecrow’s scowl deepened as he looked up - and sure enough, he could see a pair of white, glowing eyes staring him down. “Batman... Hmph, I would be a fool if I had thought that you wouldn’t come after me tonight. However, you’re still a fool for being here!”

“Maybe,” Batman gruffly replied as he stayed in the shadows, “But come on, did you really think I’d just stay in the cave and let you terrorize everyone in Gotham?”

“Oh come now, it’s only a little experiment!” Scarecrow insisted, “A bit of late-night chemistry. Scarecrows never sleep, Batman. Always vigilant, always spreading fear - or, in my case, fear and gas. Speaking of which-” Lifting up his hose, he started to pull on the stuck bat-a-rang, “How about I give you a taste of my latest concoction?!”

“Sorry, Scarecrow!” A new voice shouted, making the villain flinch, “But-!” From behind him, a rope was thrown and instantly wrapped around him, trapping him as well as keeping him from releasing more gas.

Robin smiled proudly before hopping down from his position. “It looks like science class is canceled for tonight!”

Batman smirked, giving his sidekick/son a small nod of approval - he really was improving on his awesome one-liners, and Batman couldn’t be prouder! - before hopping down himself. “Heh, if it’s any consolation though, you should still be able to make it to Arkham’s villain arts and crafts class tomorrow.”

However, instead of looking disappointed or angry, Scarecrow simply smirked, even as the Dark Knight started walking towards him with bat-cuffs in his hand. “You know, I really am more of a chemist than an artist so, I think I’m going to skip out. Besides, every experiment has a back-up plan!”

With that, Scarecrow threw his head forward. He nearly gave himself whiplash, but (more importantly) he also managed to knock his straw hat off his head. A hat that, as soon as it hit the ground, automatically released a whole cloud of fear gas!

“Hey!” Batman shouted, glaring and squinting through the gas as he heard both evil laughter and footsteps. Maybe Scarecrow couldn’t use his arms, but he could still run and escape! But Batman wasn’t about to let that happen! So, ignoring the gas the best he could, the vigilante ran through it and after the masked doctor.

Robin however, just backed up and covered his mouth. “Uh oh...” He may have still been a new hero, but he still knew how powerful Scarecrow’s fear gas could be. The Boy Wonder could still remember nearly a year ago when Scarecrow released a bunch of it near the orphanage. Most of the kids had been affected by it, and Dick himself had had nightmares about his parents for almost a whole week...

But, as unpleasant as those memories were, he wasn’t about to let them stop him from helping his padre! So, holding his breath and going as quickly as he could, Robin took off his sparkly cape and wrapped it over his mouth and nose like a bandana. 

Maybe it wouldn’t keep out all the fear gas, but it would at least slow its effect on him. And with that taken care of, the boy ran after his father and their villain of the night. 

The two of them had actually gotten pretty far, and with all his movement (combined with his own skinniness), the Scarecrow actually managed to shake off the ropes. Now all he had to do was unclog his weapon. “Come on... Come on-!” 

He gave a small yelp as another bat-a-rang whizzed by his head. Close, but still a miss! “A miscalculation, eh Batman?” Scarecrow shouted back at him as he turned a corner into an alley. 

Batman however just narrowed his eyes. His vision was starting to blur, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. He simply got out his grappling hook and shot it up towards a nearby fire escape, using it as a sort of jumping point/shortcut into the alleyway. “Are you sure you aren’t the one who’s miscalculated, Scarecrow?”

“Huh?” the still-running doctor raised an eyebrow as he looked over his shoulder, trying to find his pursuer, “And just how can you say that?!” 

...Unfortunately for Scarecrow, no sooner had he said that did he look forward and see exactly what Batman had meant. And as the doctor’s feet screeched to a halt, Batman simply glided down and stood behind him. “Because, you’re the one who just ran right into a dead end.” 

No nearby windows into buildings to jump through, no holes or pipes to crawl through, and a wall that was way too big for anyone without a grappling hook to climb. The Scarecrow sighed, muttering under his breath about how he knew there was a dead end here, he simply forgot. 

“Now,” Batman started to say as he crossed his arms, “Are we going to do this the easy ‘take-you-to-Arkham’ way, or the punching way? What’s it going to be, Scarecrow?”

“A simple enough choice, I suppose,” Scarecrow shrugged, still facing towards the high brick wall, “In fact, it reminds me of another. The old ‘Fight or Flight’ decision that the brain has to make each time it’s faced with danger - faced with something threatening and intimidating enough to cause the mind to enter into a state of primeval panic. So, tell me Batman-”

The doctor finally turned around, with a bat-a-rang in one hand, and an open hose in the other. 

“Which will you choose~?” 

With that, Batman was practically smothered with gas. The Dark Knight coughed, covering his face with his cape the best he could. “Ggh-! S-Scarecrow!” Even through the thick green clouds, he still could see the villain trying to escape. “No! Not gonna happen, Scarecrow!” 

After all, it wasn’t like this was his first time being poisoned with fear gas. He could deal with it. He just had to stay focused! Stay focused... Stay focused... Stay-!

Batman stepped forward, using his arms to push away the gas. He quickly spotted an arm and- ...Wait. The arm... It wasn’t Scarecrow’s. It was on the ground, and it had a blue sleeve on it. “What...?” 

The hero took a couple more steps forward and- He completely froze at the sight.

All around him were... were his friends. His family. Alfred, Barbara, even people like Jim Gordon and the Joker! But they weren’t just lying there. No... They were lying in pieces. Completely and utterly broken with X’s over their eyes. 

However, as horrible as seeing all of this was, Batman’s clouded mind quickly focused on just one set of body parts - arms and legs that had been adorned in bright red and green clothing. “No... No!” 

Batman couldn’t even move - the most he did was falling to his knees - yet the image of his son’s broken body somehow came closer. And, unlike the others, his eyes weren’t just X’s. No, instead Dick’s eyes were wide and filled with fear and sadness and pain... He was supposed to protect his son. So why? Why didn’t he protect him?!

All around him, Scarecrow’s chuckles echoed. In the back of his mind, Batman knew the villain was escaping, but his body didn’t budge. His eyes still couldn’t look away from his broken family - his broken son.

“It really is nice to see that I can still get a reaction out of you, Batman,” Scarecrow taunted, his pace now slow since he no longer needed to run. Besides, he always loved watching the effects of his gas. “Even if it does take an extra dose or two, I can easily say it’s worth it. Oh, but don’t worry! I’ve got plenty more for the rest of this city!”

“Oh really?” a familiar, slightly muffled voice asked. Eyes widening, Scarecrow turned around - and nearly got hit with a metal bo-staff. Yelping slightly, the Scarecrow jumped back while Robin glared at him. “Then I guess I just have that much more I have to take from you!”

“Hmph...” The doctor began to narrow his own eyes. “As if a child could ever intimidate me!”

“Yeah well, no one said that I had to intimidate you to beat you!” Robin retorted. With that, Robin leapt up and swung his staff at the Scarecrow. Again, Scarecrow dodged, but this required moving back into the alley. If he wanted to escape, he’d now have to get past the Boy Wonder. 

“Grr, little brat!” Admittedly, Scarecrow wasn’t the greatest hand-to-hand fighter, but he still had a couple tricks up his straw sleeves! After managing to dodge another would-be blow, he quickly got out a gun and started firing. “Pew pew!” 

Retracting his bo-staff, Robin ducked and rolled out of the way out of the bullets. Once he was safe though, he quickly extended his staff and used it to help him pull jump up and over the Scarecrow! 

Before the villain could even try to turn around and shoot the boy, he felt a sharp kick in his back strong enough to knock him to the ground. Not wanting to give him a second chance, Robin also made sure to push the gun away from him before pointing his staff at the Scarecrow. “Gotcha!”

“Erg, t-that’s what you think, boy!” Still desperate to escape, the Scarecrow held up a fear-gas grenade - and dropped it just before he could press the activate button, thanks to a flying bat-a-rang. A bat-a-rang that, once he had unstuck it from his hose, he had simply discarded. “NO!”

Robin grinned as he glanced over his shoulder. “Nice shot, Batda-!” He stopped, his smile falling as he noticed that his father was still on his knees. “...Padre? A-Are you-?”

“Robin. Cuffs.” “Oh! Ah, right...” 

It didn’t take long for GCPD to arrive at the alley, and with Scarecrow already in handcuffs, it was easy to take him in. Still, as successful as their mission had been, Batman still only gave half-hearted “Thank yous” as he and Robin headed towards the Bat-mobile.

Worry still clearly on his face, Dick spoke up once more. “So, uh... Batman? Is everything-?”

“Seat belt,” Batman reminded him, his voice quiet yet still just a bit stern. 

“Oh, right. Got it.” The boy quickly put his seat belt on, and the Dark Knight started the car. 

“...You’re alright, right?” his father asked suddenly as ‘Puter drove them back towards the Cave.

Smiling a bit, Dick nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. I don’t think I got much of the gas, thanks to my cape.”

“Good... Good to hear. Nice work.”

“Thanks! ...And, what about you, Padre? Are you-?”

“I’ll be fine.” And with that, the conversation had ended, leading to only silence and light radio noises the rest of the ride home.

()()()()()()()()()

Bats squeaked and fluttered above as he poked his lobster thermidor. He’d only managed to eat a couple bites of it so far, and it was starting to get cold again, as had the earl grey tea that he had told Alfred to bring him.

Batman sighed. Getting exposed to any kind of gas always seemed to cause him to lose his appetite, whether it was sleeping gas, laughing gas, poison plant gas or-... 

“Ugh. Stupid fear gas...” He had already taken some antidote for it, but he knew very well that it wouldn’t really start to kick in for at least another half hour or so. Until then, he’d just have to at least try and relax. Forcing his fork into the seafood, he took a bite of the luke-warm lobster and slowly closed his tired eyes. 

...Unfortunately, once his eyes were closed, all he could see were broken friends and family members he had let down.

Choking slightly on his bite, Batman quickly opened his eyes and made himself swallow. “No...” He muttered, squeezing his fist. 

He thought he was used to whatever Scarecrow’s fear gas had to throw at him. Snakes, clowns, his parents’ disappointed faces - even visions of that one bad night in Crime Alley... He had faced them all, and he had still managed to break through these horrible, fearful visions all on his own and save the day from Scarecrow each time.

But this...? How could he just forget seeing something like this?

“...Batdad?”

Gasping slightly, Batman turned his chair around and threw a punch. Thankfully, the person behind him had not only been expecting it, but also knew how to block. “Whoops,” Dick said, looking more sheepish than frightened by the attack, “Sorry, didn’t mean to-”

“I wasn’t!” Batman shouted, a bit too loudly, “I-I mean, you didn’t scare me. It was just, uh, heroic reflexes, you know?”

“Heh, right,” Dick said, smiling for just a moment.

“Yeah. So, uh... What did you need, buddy?” Batman asked.

“Well...” Dick glanced away slightly, “I, I guess I just wanted to check up on you. I, I know you probably inhaled some of that fear gas and, well-”

“I-” Batman started to argue, but as soon as he saw his son’s concern he stopped, giving another small sigh. “Yeah, I... I guess I did breathe a bit of it in, yeah,” he admitted (finally), “But, I’m not lying when I say I’ll be fine, okay? I mean, it’s not like this is my first time getting gassed by the Scarecrow. I’m used to this sort of thing. And, and I’ve already taken antidote for it anyway so-”

“But are you still being affected by the gas right now?” Dick interrupted.

Again, Batman felt the need to tell the truth, albeit a bit reluctantly. “Ugh, yeah, I’m... I’m still being affected by it. But the antidote should kick in soon. Shouldn’t be too long now. ‘Bout half an hour wait, tops. So it’s fine, really.” 

Forcing it only a little, he gave Dick a small smile before turning back around. Maybe he ate a bit more and made it look like everything was normal, the kid would stop worrying. So, he stuck his fork back into the lobster, lifted it up towards his mouth and Batman stopped, blinking as he felt a pair of small (yet still very strong) arms wrap themselves around him. “Huh?” 

As surprised as he was, he fought the urge to try and break out of the hold. Instead, the Dark Knight put the lobster back on his plate before looking down at Dick. The kid was leaning over the armrest of the Batcave’s computer chair just so he could hug his dad, not caring how uncomfortable the position might have been for him. “Uhh... What are you doing, Dick?”

“Hugging you,” Dick replied simply.

“Well, yeah, I can see that,” Batman told him, rolling his eyes slightly, “I mean, why are you hugging me?” Even if he had gotten somewhat used to it, he still couldn’t help but feel a bit awkward about it.

Dick however, unsurprisingly, didn’t mind the hugging at all. “Now just seemed like a good time for hugging,” he explained, still refusing to let go.

“Okayyy... And just how long is this ‘hug time’ thing going to last, cause it’s been almost a minute already-”

“Eh, I’d say maybe... half an hour tops?” Even if wasn’t really able to look up at his father, Dick knew he was probably giving him a flat look. 

“Dick, this really isn’t necessary.” 

“Well, I kinda think it is, Batdad. So, I’m gonna keep doing it.” 

“Yeahhh no. Come on, Dick, let go.” “Nope, sorry Padre!” “Dick-” “Nope!” “Kid-!” “Nuh-uh!” “Richard-!”

“I’m not going to let you be all alone while you’re feeling scared, Dads.” 

“...” Once again, Batman couldn’t help but fall silent at that. And as he sat there without a word, he felt Dick hug him tighter - tight enough to feel his adoptive father’s shaking, despite his attempts to hide it. 

“You wouldn’t let me just sit somewhere all alone, feeling sad and afraid,” Dick quietly told him, “Not while fighting crime, not in Arkham Asylum, not after Joker’s big top scheme - not ever! So... So I’m not gonna let you sit here all alone either!”

“...Heh.” Batman smiled, just a little. “Yeah... Yeah okay, fair enough. I guess it’s hug time then.” He paused for a moment. “Though, maybe we should move this hug thing upstairs, just so your arms don’t get too tired. Besides, I could use some more tea anyway.”

Dick smiled. “Sounds like a good idea to me!”

With that, Batman stood up - and Dick continued to hug his shoulders as tight as he could, hanging off them now. “Huh... You know, maybe I was right to assume that your hugs are actually attacks,” Batman smirked, making Dick giggle a bit, “Come on, kid. Let’s go.” “I’m right beside you, Batdad!”

Maybe it was a bit unorthodox - and certainly different from what Batman was used to - but he supposed it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Just like how letting people in wasn’t necessarily the worst thing either. Far from it, in fact. 

“...Hey, Dick?” Batman spoke up as he pressed the button to the bat-elevator.

“Hm? Yeah?” Dick replied. 

Maneuvering his arm slightly, making sure not to accidentally shake his son off him, Batman managed to wrap an arm around Dick’s waist and return the hug. “...Thanks, kiddo.”

Dick smiled, laying his head on his dad’s shoulder. “No problem, Padre. Any time.” 

Yes, the fear was hard to deal with at times. Very hard and very tiring. And yet, the more Batman thought about it, the more he knew it was true: Even if this fear was tough, having a family was still more than worth it. 

It had taken him a while to learn that, but with Dick and the others being willing to stay by his side, he knew he would never truly forget it.

THE END