#look i love talia

[sydneyofalltrades]

Why do people assume Talia can’t speak/understand English? It makes sense to think that bc of how Mischa sings in Ukrainian when he thinks of her, but like, think about it.

Mischa raps in English. Talia commented on his rap videos, which might I remind you he says in English, so she must know at least some English. Not to a very high degree, but enough! And maybe sure she texts/speaks more in Ukrainian bc it’s her native language, but I just feel like she knows enough!

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID in ALT] I've made posts before about Talia/Dick co-parenting Damian moments (will never happen but let me dream) and this came to me in a vision. Took me ages to finish for some reason 😭 and then even longer to post

[kittykatninja321]

My less popular opinion (and what I believe to be implied by the art in Lost Days) is that rather than waking up in a fully grown body Jason didn’t actually complete his puberty until after his Lazarus pit dip while he was on his murder tour. Imagine you’re tied up in a basement in Berlin getting interrogated by a teenager and his voice is cracking the entire time and if you laugh he’s going to shoot you

[whalehouse1]

So I was told to read Robin: Son of Batman and while I understand that it’s almost a decade old at this point, look at this child.

I’m sorry, I know I��m late to this run, but how do you see this literal child who was manipulated and groomed his entire childhood and not immediately go, “Give him a blanket, mug of hot cocoa and a Grey Ghost a marathon,”. He just wants to be good enough for others and hates himself so much.

[starry-bi-sky]

Stuck in the middle of a forest made of

Flesh and bones and they're all scared of

A lost little boy who has lost his heart

Fear's not enough, they have to

Tear him apart —-------

There are two things Daniel Fenton knows that his family knows as well: 

He’s adopted.

He can’t remember anything else before that.  

‘Adoption’ is a loose term, implying that they went through the official legal processes and troubles of adopting a child into their home willingly, and with the full intention of doing so going into it. That is not what happened. What happened is that Jasmine Fenton found a half-dead child, in strange clothing, in the middle of the woods at her Aunt Alicia’s cabin, and then she went and got her parents. 

What happened is that a twelve year old Danny woke up in the same cabin, wearing clothes much too big on him that didn’t belong to him, and with very little memory of before that moment. He wakes up like a spring being set loose, sitting up so fast he scares the daylights out of Jasmine Fenton sitting next to him. He wakes up, reaching for his sleeve for something that isn’t there, and when it isn’t his mind stutters, like he’s tripped at the top of a steep hill. 

When they ask him for his name, he tells them, clearing muddled thoughts from his mind; Danny. He’s twelve.

(He thinks that’s his name, at least. It sounds right; it feels right. If he thinks really hard about it, he thinks he can remember someone calling him that, utter adoration in their voice. So it must be his name.) 

The Jasmine girl convinces her parents to take him home with them, and they give him the spare guest room upstairs. He has nothing to fill it with.

It’s… a strange experience, to go to a ‘new’ home when he doesn’t even remember his old one. 

The official adoption process… happens. He can’t say it’s easy, or difficult. He’s oblivious for the most of it, Jasmine intends on helping him settle in and Danny can’t say he enjoys the smothering. He learns that he is stubbornly self-independent, that’s one new thing he knows about himself. 

His adoption papers say ‘Daniel J. Fenton’. Danny remembers staring at the name ‘Daniel’ for a long, long moment, something curdling sour in his sternum. His name is Danny, that he knows. But it’s not Daniel. But he doesn’t know any other way of saying it, so he keeps his complaints to himself.

(Jack Fenton boisterously claps his hand on Danny’s shoulder and jerks him around, grinning wide as he welcomes him into the Fenton Family. Danny’s mind blanches at the touch on his shoulder, an instinct snapping like the maw of a snake, telling him to cut off the man’s fingers for daring to touch him.) 

(He keeps the thought to himself, tension rising up his shoulders the longer Jack Fenton’s heavy hand stays on him.) 

They found Danny in the summer. It’s a perfect coincidence, Maddie Fenton says before she goes back into her lab with Jack Fenton. She says it’s enough time to allow Danny to adjust; that they’ll enroll him into the school year in the fall. Then she stuffs a canister of ectoplasm onto the top shelf, and disappears like the ghosts she studies back down the stairs.  

(There’s something eerily familiar about the ectoplasm sitting in the fridge, something unsettlingly so. Danny knows what that stuff is, but he doesn’t know where. When the house is empty, he takes a can from the fridge and inspects it.)

Jazz wants him to leave the house. Danny doesn’t want to step foot outside of the FentonWorks building until he has something that quells the feeling of vulnerability he gets whenever he does. He tried to once, and he felt exposed. Unsafe. 

He turned back around and went inside.

—-------

Where do we go

When the river's running slow

Where do we run

When the cats kill one by one

—------

One day, when the house is empty — or, as empty as it can be; the Fenton parents down in the lab, and jazz out with friends. Danny is making a sandwich, and he caves into the urge to flip the knife in his hands between his fingers. A childish impulse, but one he falls for nonetheless. It comes to him easily, like second nature, in fact. The slip of the blade between his fingers is seamless, flowing with an ease like water running down the wall.  

He’s almost startled by it; his body holds memories that his mind does not. Muscles that know which way to move and twist, limbs that know how to hold and how to throw. He continues twirling it, fascinated, as if he were a scientist discovering a new species of animal. 

It’s not for a handful of minutes when a new thought hits him; an impulsive thought that pops in the back of his mind like a firecracker; Danny moves without thinking. 

He turns, and throws the knife. The pull of his shoulder, the flick of his elbow, is familiar like a hug. He knows when to let go, and the blade flies through the air in impressive speed, embedding itself into the wall with a hearty, loud thunk. Sinking into the drywall like butter. 

Danny stares at it in shock, he feels relieved — about what? — before he feels the guilt. He scrambles across the kitchen to pull it out, heart racing in his chest at being caught, and prays no one notices the hole it left behind. 

(He runs up the stairs before anyone can find him, food forgotten, and hides the knife beneath his mattress like a guilty murder weapon.)

After that, he leaves the house more. It’s more out of fear of being caught than the desire to leave. But Danny is quickly learning that among all things, he is someone who was dangerous, before he lost his memory. Even with his mind in fractures, he is still dangerous. 

He’s not sure how to feel about that — he thinks he should be scared. He feels a little proud, instead.

—------

Hazel beneath our claws

While we wait for cerulean to cry

Unsettled ticks run through time

Enough for the hunt to go awry

—-----

There’s another thing he learns about himself. That he knows about since he woke up. He knows that he left someone behind. He doesn’t know who, but he knows they must have been close; he’s always looking down and finding himself surprised when the only shadow he sees is his own. 

He thinks that he must have sung to them a lot; he finds himself humming familiar melodies when he’s lost in thought. Lullabies lingering at the tip of his tongue, an instinct to turn and sing them to someone beside him. He can’t remember the lyrics, but his mouth does, it tries to get him to say them when he’s not thinking. He can’t. 

Danny’s found himself humming under his breath more times than he can count, trying to recall whatever it is his mind is trying to claw forward. 

(“That’s a pretty song, Danny.” Jazz tells him at breakfast one day, Danny screws his mouth shut. He hadn’t realized he was humming. “What is it?”) 

(Something mean and possessive rears its head on instinct, uncoiling like a snake from its ball. His shoulders hunch defensively, he bites his cheek to prevent himself from baring his teeth. He doesn’t know what song it is, but it’s not for her. “I don’t know.”)  

He misses his person. Dearly. He knows, the longer he is without them, that they must have been close. Otherwise, he wouldn’t feel like he’s missing a chunk from himself. He wouldn’t be turning to someone who's not there; reaching for a hand that’s missing, birdsong on his tongue, a story to tell. 

A dream haunts him one night. Warm and familiar, he’s holding onto someone smaller than him, they’re tucked into his side like a puzzle piece. He’s humming one of his songs that is always playing in the back of his mind, an unfinished tale of a harpy and a hare. Danny can’t remember their face, not all of it. He remembers green eyes, hair dark like his own, skin brown like his. 

He loves them more than anything else in the world, a fact he knows down to his soul. He loves them so much it fills his heart with sunlight. Danny squeezes them tight, nuzzling into their hair; he makes them laugh. Then, he proudly boasts something. That when he takes something of their father’s, that his person — a sibling? That feels right — will be… the word fades from Danny’s mind before he can make sense of it. 

His person hugs him tight, his… brother? And their mother — a woman whose face he can’t remember either, but who he loves like a limb nonetheless — appears, smiling. Her hands reach for them both, voice calling them, ‘her sons’. There’s ticking in the distance, it sounds like the fastening of chains.

Danny wakes up cold, tears streaming down his face. The details of the dream already fading from his mind like the cold pull of a corpse.   

—-------

Harpy hare

Where have you buried all your children?

Tell me so I say

—-------

When school starts that Fall, Danny joins the sixth grade class, and quickly learns more things about himself. One of those things being that he’s smarter than the rest of his grade, whatever education he had before, it was better than the one he’s getting now. 

Everyone knows he’s adopted right off the bat. He tells them when the teacher forces himself to introduce himself, but it’s not like they needed him to tell them for them to know; he never existed in their little world before now, and the Fentons are pale as they come. Danny is not.

He befriends Sam Manson and Tucker Foley; they ask him about the scars fading up and down his arms, they ask him about the scar carved diagonal across his face.

Danny, as politely as he can, tells them he doesn’t remember. He thought kindness would come second nature to him, his dream burned into his mind where he hugged his brother so sweetly. Apparently, his sweetness is only second nature to people he considers his own. 

(It becomes even more apparent when Dash Baxter tries to bully him later that day, and Danny ruffles like an eagle threatened. His mind whispers, hissy and agitated, sinking like a shadow at his shoulder, several different ways Danny could kill him for talking to him like that, and fifteen more ways he could cripple him.)

(Danny ignores those thoughts, up until Dash Baxter tries to grab him. Then he breaks his nose on the wood of his desk. It’s easy how quickly the rest of his grade sinks him down to the status of social pariah.)

(At least Sam and Tucker still talk to him after that. When Danny goes to the principal’s office later, he wisely doesn’t mention the worse things he could’ve done than break Dash Baxter’s nose.)  

—--------------

It clicks and it clatters in corners and borders

And they will never

Hear me here listen to croons and a calling

I'll tell them all the

Story, the sun, and the swallow, her sorrow

Singing me the tale of the Harpy and the Hare

—-------

More dreams come, of course they do. Each one halfway to forgotten whenever he wakes up, ticking faint in his ears. He is many different ages. He is young, shorter than a table. He is older, holding onto his little brother. He is singing in almost every single one. He is singing to his brother. 

Danny can barely remember the lyrics, he’s begun leaving a journal by his bedside so that it’s the first thing he can write down when he wakes up. He’s a storyteller, he learns. He feels like a historian, trying to piece together a culture long dead and forgotten. 

His most vivid dream-like memory is not a happy one, and for once he’s almost relieved he barely recalls it. He is somewhere that isn’t home, but his mother and brother are there. He is dressed in black, blades keen in his hands. 

They are atop a moving train. They are fleeing something. His brother is struggling to keep up, he is small, and young. It’s beautifully sunny, they are somewhere green and lovely. 

It is a fast dream. 

His brother stumbles on something, and Danny, fast as a whip, snatches him by the back of his shirt and hoists him up to his feet before he can fall. “Watch your feet, habibi.” He murmurs low, a hand on his back. It’s hard to hear, there is wind in their ears.

His brother, face obscured in all but his eyes, which are green as emeralds, nods. 

The dream blurs, but Danny falls behind. His foot catches on air — impossible, it should’ve been, at least. He never trips. — and he lands against the roof with a thud and a grunt. His mother and brother stop, and turn for him. 

The train hits a turn before Danny can get up, and he shouldn’t have, something pulls on him, he swears, but he slips. He can’t find the purchase to pull himself up, cold fear hits him as his nails scrape against the metal. 

His mother and brother’s horrified faces are the last thing he sees before he disappears off the side of the train. 

(The ticking is at its loudest when he wakes up, pounding against his inner skull. He only manages to write down ‘train fall’ in his journal, before he’s flipping over to press his head into his pillow to get the pain to stop.) 

—---  

She can't keep them all safe

They will die and be afraid

Mother, tell me so I say

(Mother, tell me so I say)

—-------

When Danny is fourteen he is still humming songs he can’t remember, his mind still in a broken puzzle. But his room is now decorated with stars and plants in every corner. He has a guitar he keeps in the corner of his room, and he plays the lullabies in his head on the strings over and over again. 

The ectoplasm in the fridge still unsettles him, still reminds him of a past he can’t recall. The knife beneath his mattress has returned to the kitchen — he doesn’t need it. He found a box in the attic last year, it had his name on it, and inside he found familiar, strange clothes, and more weapons than he thought was possible to carry on one person. 

(Even without knowing that the Fentons prefer guns to blades, Danny knows, instinctively, that they were his weapons. He was — was? Is — a dangerous person. He takes the box down to his room to sort through. The weapons all fit into his callused hands almost perfectly — the grooves worn to fit his palm. They’re just a little small.) 

(He tentatively takes a small blade with him to school one day, and feels much more comfortable with it sheathed beneath his shirt. He’s kept it on him ever since, like he’s reunited a lost limb to himself.)   

Danny doesn’t have a name for his person, his little brother, nor does he have a name for his beloved mother. He’s haunted by dreams every few weeks, many of them repeating. He’s ingrained the words he can remember to memory, and the ones he doesn’t, he writes down in his journal. His little brother; Danny calls him a bird, he can’t figure out what kind. His little bird of some kind; when Danny takes something from their father — what, he can’t remember what — then his little brother will be a little bird. 

(He doesn’t have a name for his brother, yet, but he’s calling his birdie in his head. It’s better than nothing.)

—------

Seeker, do you ever come to wonder

If what you're looking for is within where you hold

Will you leave a trail for them to follow a path

You'll soon forget

Home

—---------

When he’s fourteen, Danny dies. It does nothing to fix his fractured memories, much to his consternation. It just confirms something he already knows; that he was someone dangerous, and that he still is. 

When the shock of death has worn off, Danny inspects his ghost in the metal reflection of the closest table. It’s blurry, hard to see, but shock green eyes pierce back at him, green like the portal. Lazarus, Danny’s mind whispers, and he blinks rapidly.

‘Lazarus,’ he mouths to himself. It’s familiar. Sam shows him with her phone what he looks like, joking that he looks like an assassin. Danny doesn’t think she’s that too far off. 

He doesn’t tell her that. He tucks the thought away with the rest of his secrets, and fiddles with the hood gathering at his neck, attached to a cape with torn edges swinging down to his ankles. He pulls it over his shock white hair. It shadows over his face impossibly so, until all you can see are his green-green eyes peering out like a wolf hiding in the brush.

He ends up calling himself Phantom. 

(Maybe now he can start putting lyrics to his lullabies; his memories may not have returned, locked away with the sound of a clock, but the dead can talk. One of them may just have answers.) 

----------

Home is where we are

Home is where you are

Home is where I am

-----------------

Dedicated to @gascansposts for being the one who introduced me to the band Yaelokre, and thus being the whole reason I was inspired to write this in the first place >:] Those lyrics at the line breaks are all from their album Hayfields.

[damian-lil-babybat]

"I recognize that face, behind your mask, it is the face of my love, my love, my darling love..."

Still enamored by the fact that BruTalia ship is the only one that uses Bruce's real name and not Batman...and it suits them. @daminette-56

The Batman Adventures #13 (1993)

Their Paris date will always be a canon event for me.

Whenever someone asks me why I ship Bruce and Talia, it always goes down to how they looked happiest and healthy together. Their form of bonding could be anything and everything under the sun, because their hobbies and sensibilities alligns (arts, literature, history, martial arts & weaponry, economics, governance, natural sciences, you name it, they have a background on it). And their way of having fun is family bonding with vigilantes and ninja assassins alike. They are both serious and silly at the same time. And hella intense at times.

In a universe before the allegations, love suits them—family suits them—settling down and growing old suits them.

Talia is maternal, and loving, and she is Bruce's peace.

That's why when Batman needed saving, even from the most dire of situations, even from death...Talia is always an option to bring him back to the surface. Because even writers could never deny that Talia would never allow a world without Bruce Wayne.

Detective Comics (2016) #1084

That's why when he is lost and needed rest...he found Talia, again, and again.

"If only he stays..."

[theredcuyo]

I might be crazy with this one but hear me out

Batfamily PLATONIC soulmarks

Were it's a black blob that starts to take color that gives away it's form when you met said people, the more people you'll get, the bigger it is

At first, Bruce's parents were slightly worried upon seeing their son's mark, one that covered his whole torso, back and front, with only a little blank space in the place of his heart, where a tangle of lines seemed to met

Nor Thomas, with his years of medical experience, Martha with her wisdom or Alfred, who had seen far more than many, had ever look at something similar, although, they we're soon relieved, "Bruce will deeply love many people, and many people will return said love"

When the boy started to gain cognition, some color finally appeared in between all the black, a collar of pearls, like Martha's favorite, an scalpel, the one Thomas works with, and to Alfred's surprise, a cup of tea, mirroring the one he was drinking when they discocevered it, one that also connects all three to the tangle of lines around the heart

After that night, though, Bruce thinks it's impossible he'll ever get more, he doesn't want to get more, if it means he'll feel the same pain as now if he loses more of the people they represent

Then, many years later, after taking Dick in, a blue bird mid fly colors itself, a faint line joins the tangle.

He sighs whenever he sees it, after his son is not at home anymore, it doesn't faint, but will it really get better?

It happens again, when he finds a boy trying to steal his tires, it's another bird, a red one, it looks as if it were giving you his back, but it still connects to the hearth

It hurts to look at it, it's worse than before, he gets why it doesn't look at him now, he failed Jason-

Then, a few weeks into adjusting to Tim, he sees a new mark, and- it's a lighter tone of red

Another bird. This one is on a branch, it is making a nest

Then, when a girl comes in too, another bird, a purple one, sits on the branch with Tim's, this one also seems to be looking away

Just like Steph, he thinks

Along them, the shape of a smiling bat hangs upside down from the same branch, black but visible by golden edges that give away it's form, Cass

There are few more, here and there, hints of green when he met Barbara and Jim, Babs seem to fake the form of a hand next to Steph's and Cass's

Yellow, red and blue combine into two familiar symbols after he mets Clark and Diana, the only time he ever complains to his mark, why these people, why them, they're idiots

They're his best friends, but still idiots, he will never tell them, but they probably know anyway

Then, a new bird appears, and so does a color, a deep shade of green, this one looks like it's about to attack a prey

But, as Bruce gets time to know Damian, he realizes, it's not attacking, it's protecting the rest of the picture

A yellow figure of the sun gives it light, when he mets Duke

Maybe all the lines in the tangle have color then, maybe not

[ghostybat]

Love when Damian is drawn more like Talia, like let that boy be pretty, it is deserved, it is in his birthright.

Also love when people draw older Damian with his mom’s build. I like the idea of Damian being a more slight and leaner batman (if he chooses to be), I think it adds an interesting contrast and helps play into the 'a warrior must never be underestimated simply due to his size or shape' mindset.

That boy is gonna be like his batman (Dick) pretty and bendy until the day he dies.

[trying-out-stuff]

Hello guys !

I’m gonna share some behind the scenes from the deluxe edition of Robin son of Batman that came out this Wednesday !

This amazing cover art by Patrick Gleason (you might be wondering why Jon is here but Superman #10 and 11 are in this deluxe trade)

Continuing on and Gleason shares some words on Damian and writing him for the run, it’s really touching 🥹

« Damian is a glimpse of our deepest selves »

Gleason just gets Damian (as we saw in his writing of him) and I couldn’t be more happy !

Afterwards we get the different issues plus the Superman issue 10 and 11 around the end of the run. I definitely recommend you reading it if you haven’t !

At the end we have different sketches that I’m going to share some here :

Baby Goliath and what I think is the first sketch of Goliath that was mentioned in the intro !

Different sketches on the costumes designs and well the characters like Maya’s retractable sword !

One Talia Al Ghul piece from the bts

I reached the limit but will share my favorite one by far right after !

[spocks-husband]

Pov: You are Damian Al Ghul-Wayne and you definitely didn't break that vase in the gallery room why would anyone think that 😅😅

(you also interrupted their sparring session [foreplay] and they're both mad they got cockblocked AGAIN)

[izuizzy]

HUMAN TALIAAAAA!!! the trio of sonadow kids is complete! \o/

[avoiltaire]

i can do whatever i want

[welcometogrouchland]

ANOTHER SKETCH DUMP! Featuring more of me playing with lineless art. Batman reborn era trio (dick, damian and steph) I miss you...when will you return from war. Also featuring Steph designs bc I've seen ppl dissatisfied w/ her current look, some good mom Talia, and Jason Todd poetry club. Duke is confused not that Jason would start a poetry club but that he'd have such mid poetry opinions. (ID in Alt)

[bruciemilf]

I have a weakness for the “big grumpy man” and “sunshine incarnate” dynamic

[brucestalia]

"memories do not soften with time; some grow edges like knives."

"villain and violent, infant and innocent. both arms cradle you now."

✦•┈๑⋅⋯ ⋯⋅๑┈•✦✦•┈๑⋅⋯ ⋯⋅๑┈•✦✦•┈๑⋅⋯ ⋯⋅๑┈•✦✦•┈๑⋅⋯ ⋯⋅๑┈•✦

[theangelcatalogue]

I love you? Nah, i want Mischa's monologue to Talia