#other important things happened this session but i'm tired and focused on the funny

[msommers]

riya already having two people crushing on her by session two

[fantastic-nonsense]

Can of Worms Time;

Say you were editor of The Nightwing and BOP books and there’s fan demand for Dick and Babs to finally tie the knot.

How would you pull it off?

Well I wouldn't do it by having Dick feel pressured to propose to a woman he's not actually actively in a relationship with anymore because he thinks he's going to die and wants to get it off his chest before he runs off, gets hit by a massive energy beam during a multiversal invasion event, and ends up in a coma, that's for sure.

No I'm not bitter about Infinite Crisis and Devin Grayson's continual misunderstanding of Dick and the Dick/Babs relationship, why do you ask?

More seriously, let's play this out with post-Crisis!Dick/Babs but sprinkle in the occasional piece of post-Flashpoint stuff (aka, we're talking Nightwing and Oracle, competent and independent adult heroes who both actively lead their own teams, have their own friend groups, have had serious previous love interests, and have their own responsibilities outside of a relationship with each other).

Realistically, the actual proposal would likely be pretty quiet. Dick and Babs are both pretty private people when it comes to their relationship and they both know what a Production™ their family and friends would cause if they knew there were plans (I'm thinking about Dinah and Tim specifically here, but everyone involved would be guilty). I think they'd wait a few days before letting everyone know.

My running gag during the wedding prep era would be that every time they're trying to plan an aspect of the wedding, they keep getting called out to go deal with superhero stuff. This would obviously usually be within the context of whatever a-plot they're dealing with in their individual books, but also just...littering references here and there about other stuff happening in the background.

Trying to book a caterer? Whoops, all-hands-on-deck alien invasion. Talking about flowers? Gotham's had another Arkham breakout. Trying to get to a dress fitting? Oh no, the Birds need help breaking into a high-security prison in Bialya. Scheduling their mandatory pre-marital counseling sessions? Oops, the Titans need help dealing with some major universe-ending threat. Nothing that actually puts a strain on Dick and Babs' relationship, but something that's just exasperating enough to be plausible for two characters who are traditionally DCU linchpin characters with a lot of responsibilities and funny enough for readers to not get tired of it.

I think it would also be fun to have a Nightwing issue focused on Dick running around Bludhaven dealing with petty crime while trying to figure out who his best man is going to be. Should it be Wally, who's been the best man at all of his previous weddings/wedding attempts? Should it be Roy, who's stuck by him again and again and (Dick thinks) should get a chance to actually be in a wedding party that's not his dad's for once? Should it be Tim, the sibling he's closest to? Should it be Donna, who he walked down the aisle at her own wedding? He has so many choices, all of which would be good choices for different reasons and none of whom would be particularly offended by him picking someone else. He picks Wally in the end, because why mess with what works, and asks the others+Garth and Damian to be groomsmen (yes, Donna's at the altar with him too).

At some point, Babs just appoints Dinah as her Maid/Matron of Honor and lets her run her entire wedding prep process for her. Babs might be a control freak, but this is one area where she's largely happy to let someone else take care of the minutia. She grabs the rest of the BOP Core Four+Cass, Steph, and Alysia as her bridesmaids, picks out her dress, and calls it a day.

As for the wedding itself, I want two things out of it: one, someone important (not Dick or Babs, so maybe Wally or one of the Bats?) nearly doesn't make it to the venue because of a massive superhero conflict, and two, the actual wedding goes off without a hitch. I'm very determined that the actual wedding will not be interrupted or otherwise ruined in any way after the disaster that was Dick/Kory's attempted wedding and the pre-wedding trials I just talked about. So they get their wedding, they go on a honeymoon somewhere, and they TURN OFF THEIR COMMS for a week. The honeymoon period is for enjoyment, not distractions; they've both had enough of those.

Publishing/IRL time-wise, the proposal would happen in a Nightwing issue, I'd let the engagement era happen over a year or so (so 12 issues for both the Nightwing and BOP books, exploring the process from both their POVs) and then have their wedding in a crossover issue. So...yeah, that's how I'd pull off a Dick/Babs engagement and wedding in the context of Dick and Babs both having their own books.

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Hello I'm not sure if you're taking prompts as of late, but I really love the way you write angst and tackle the supercorp rift. Arc!Lena is so satisfying to read and Lena being understanding is so tiring. So if you have the time or like the idea, will you please write about a Supercorp Soulmate AU where people only realize they're soulmates after a certain moment? Would love to see your take on them finding out they're soulmates after Season 3, maybe even during an accidental identity reveal.

A/N: Maybe not what you were looking for, but technically you specify why KIND of soulmate au you wanted, so this is the soulmate fic that happened. Hope you like it anyway!

Lena gets her first note on her tenth birthday. She’s been writing on her skin for years, hoping to get a response, but this is the first time she’s gotten one.

The one she writes is simple:

I’m ten years old today.

Lena scrawls the note on her forearm. Her father has gifted her with an ornate ballpoint pen, its ink smooth and the casing metallic. It sits heavy in her hand as she waits, staring at her arm for a response to materialize on her skin.

Nothing has yet, in the countless times she’s tried before. But today is her birthday.

Maybe, today will be different.

But her arm remains bare, and Lena endures dinner alone with no response. Lex doesn’t care about soulmates. He already wrote to his that they can keep their words to themselves. Lena craves it– a soulmate was a bond she was born with. They would have to like her, and all the things that made her odd.

She’s in bed and half-asleep when her palm fills with a strange prickle that focuses into the dull pressure of pen on skin.

Happy birthday

For the first time since her mother died, Lena cries.

That first message isn’t punctuated, nor are any of the stilted, lopsided notes that follow. They look like they belong to a first grader. Lena wonders if that’s why it took so long for her to get a message. Maybe her soulmate is younger, or has a learning disability. Lena doesn’t care. She’s just glad she has one.

Her very own soulmate.

The messages quickly grow neater, and the spelling improves… a little. Rather than youth or disability, Lena deduces that english isn’t her soulmate’s first language. They learn quickly, but much of their early exchanges read like a tutoring session.

What does moron mean?

It’s a derogatory term for someone who isn’t smart.

The words all fade and her arm remains bare for long minutes before her soulmate responds.

What’s derogatory.

Lena doesn’t mind the endless questions. She likes sharing knowledge, even if that knowledge is simple vocabulary. By Christmas, their handwriting smooths and the exchanges grow to more than just grammar and word use.

Where are you? Lena asks one day.

On the beach. Where the sand meets the water.

Alone in her room in an empty dormitory, Lena imagines the beach would be quite lovely. Even the cold dreary ones like they have on the northern coast. She wonders if her soulmate is on one of those, or a beach in the tropics, skin dark and glowing.

Why are you the only one I can write to this way? her soulmate asks. It doesn’t work with my sister.

We’re soulmates. And in case her soulmate doesn’t know what that means– Fate chose us to share a bond. It can only exist between two people. No one knows exactly why.

So we’ll marry one day?

Maybe. If we want to. Many do.

There’s a long pause, and Lena assumes her pen pal has gotten distracted. She returns to her book, but only stares at the words instead of reading them.

When the words resume, it’s with new knowledge.

My sister says it’s because we share a soul. Two halves of a whole.

Lena grimaces, but hesitates before writing back. I disagree. Two whole souls, that match.

People lose their soulmates. Sometimes they never meet. They can choose someone else. Those people still find love, and live happy, complete lives. Soulmates are a joining, stronger together.

I like that better, comes the response. Punctuated by a doodle of a small smiling face.

Lena thinks she might love her soulmate already.

At sixteen, they’re best friends. They write constantly, to the point Lena is reprimanded for distraction in class, but by then it doesn’t matter. She’s set to graduate, and graduation day is when they’ve chosen to reveal themselves.

In between doodles and pronouns, they’ve dubbed each other Stranger. It was funny at age twelve, and it’s held in the years since. There isn’t any rush, and names mean little to the conversations they share. And, if Lena is being honest with herself, she likes having someone who cares for her without knowing who she is.

The day she walks the stage, Lena itches to pull pull out her pen and confirm the deed is done. That the time has finally come. But it’s too public: people are suddenly going to miss her now that they’re all spreading to the winds, and voices pull her every which way.

She wants calm, and quiet, to learn the most important facts of her life.

It never comes. Her mother doesn’t attend the ceremony, but does come to collect her. What worries Lena more is that her brother is absent from both.

“There’s been an accident,” her mother informs her as soon as she climbs into the car, still in her cap and gown. Lena sits, stunned, sure that whatever it was, Lex has been caught in it.

The truth is worse.

The FBI believe Lex is responsible for the bombing in Metropolis, and have him picked up for questioning before Lena reaches the manor. She waits days for him to come home, but they arrest him from the interview room. He doesn’t return to the manor.

It’s just her, her mother, and the lawyers that suddenly seem to live in their drawing room.

Lena is so distracted that she doesn’t notice the lack of communication from her pen pal, until almost a week later a scrawled, jerky note presses into her skin.

My father’s dead.

Her soulmate is adopted, but she loves the family that took her in, and the evidence of her grief is etched in the jagged lines of the letters, and the stuttering shake of their manifestation.

He was in Metropolis.

Bile rises in Lena’s throat.

Caught in the explosion.

After a week of stunned apathy, tears finally rise to Lena’s eyes. The words blur and fade, and Lena feels empty for the first time since her tenth birthday.

I don’t know what to do.

Lena does the only thing she can think to do. She reaches for a pen, and scratches out the two words that fill her ears like thunder.

I’m sorry.

Contact lessens after that. Lena can’t find any words to send, and the ones that come to her skin don’t invite response.

The service was beautiful. I wish you’d been there.

My sister hasn’t spoken in days.

Eliza cries every night.

Lena reads it all, searing it into her memory as her brother is ripped apart by the press, and her world narrows to manor to which she’s confined. For her own safety.

Eventually, the words turn to them.

I want to see you. My name is–

Lena strikes a line through before the letters fully emerge. Terror makes her hands shake.

No. Don’t tell me.

She can’t know. She can’t tell her soulmate who she is. Who they claim her brother is. Not when…

We can’t meet. Not yet.

Lena feels the hurt and bewilderment in the silence that follows, more powerful than any words, when her arm stays bare.

When the response comes, hours later, it’s only two letter– the shortest message from her soulmate that Lena’s ever seen.

ok

They get no closer to meeting as Lex’s arrest gains momentum. Her mother’s attempts to have him released on bail come to nothing. Instead, the charges against him mount and mount, from embezzlement to extortion to murder. Mass murder.

Lena tries to believe his protestations when he calls home, but it gets more and more difficult as the news finds more secrets every day and puts them on full display. Her father’s memory crumbles to pieces, tarnished by evidence that ties Lex’s crimes to his.

And the one person Lena has to talk to, remains firmly off limits.

They try.

They offer again and again to help with whatever is bothering her. The last time, Lena’s at college and her brother has been in prison for over a year, despite his lack of trial.

Instead of asking if, they can meet, her soulmate asks when.

Her heart lodges in her throat as she reaches for a pen, and scribes the answer she’s hidden in her heart of hearts for almost a year.

Never.

After that, Lena’s skin remains unblemished. For years. She has only herself to blame, and the emptiness in her chest hardens to steel. She throws herself into her studies. She earns two degrees, and graduates with a masters.

Armed with knowledge and steel, she accepts the board’s offer of CEO. Oh, they expect her to fail, but Lena has other plans. She devotes herself entirely to resurrecting the good she once believed her family stood for.

It’s in that first year of her tenure as CEO that she feels the phantom pressure on the inside of her wrist. She almost thinks she’s imagining it, but when she looks, she finds the familiar script of her soulmates hand gracing her skin.

I miss you.

Lena almost sobs right there at her desk. It’s all that comes.

Lena doesn’t write back.

After that, other messages start to trickle in. Infrequent, but cherished all the same. Some express confusion, others simple, or poetic. All of them convey the same sadness Lena’s felt since the day of her high school graduation.

I don’t understand what happened. I hope you’re okay.

The sun felt really nice today.

Sometimes I wonder if you died too.

All of them go unanswered, but they continue to appear, random and without cause. It’s the only thing that keeps Lena going when her progress with Luthor Corp stalls before it can start.

Anything bearing her family’s name is dead in the water. She needs a fresh start. A fresh city, as far from the scene of Lex’s crimes as she can get.

If she can get far enough away, if she can make something good… it would be worth something.

The ache in her soul would mean something.

She chooses National City. There’s a vacuum to replace Lord Industries, and…

She’s ready to feel the sun on her skin.

“I hope this isn’t the last time we talk.”

Lena means it sincerely. There’s something so honest in the way Kara Danvers smiles at her. Without judgement, without guile… her gaze is open, and genuine.

When Kara not reporter Danvers nods, a little thrill blooms in Lena’s chest.

“I hope not either.”

They come together slowly, Lena and Kara. It starts with friendship, and stays there quite a while. It’s all Lena needs– it’s all Lena accepts.

But then it deepens into something more, and deepens further until it resolves itself into a true romantic relationship.

It’s not a betrayal, Lena tells herself. Kara already knows the worst parts of her, and it has nothing to do with her family. And Kara isn’t without her secret heartbreaks either.

There are times when Kara looks at her that her thoughts seem miles away, and Lena wonders if she too asks what she did to deserve this.

The infrequent notes that had started up again fall away again the closer she and Kara grow. Lena barely notices, for the warmth in her chest when Kara brings her lunch unannounced, or pouts until Lena agrees to game night.

She wishes that her soulmate finds a love as warm.

I’ve met someone.

The words come early one morning. She’s left a pot of coffee on for Kara, and is already at the office when the press of a pen tickles the inside of her arm.

Lately I’ve been thinking about what you said once, about soul mates. Two wholes that match.

Lena watches the words appear and fade, and waits for them to continue.

It makes more sense than two halves split apart. Because if I were a half I don’t think I could be as happy as I am now.

I don’t know if you’re still alive, but if you are

I’ll always be sorry we never got to meet, but she makes me so happy. I hope you find someone who makes you as happy as she makes me.

I think

I could spend the rest of my life with her.

With tears in her eyes, Lena watches the words fade. She’s happy for her soulmate– it’s what she’s wished for. But the finality hits home with a stab of pain.

Lena reaches for her pen, to prove to herself and her soulmate that she’s still alive, that she stills cares, that she still wants happiness for them.

Her phone interrupts her, buzzing with a text message from Kara.

“Dinner tonight?”

Lena responds with shaking fingers. “Of course. Meet up at yours.”

A heart emoji blinks onto her phone screen. “Love you.”

With a smile, Lena responds easily. “To the moon and back.”

She watches the indicator flip from sent to read, and something in her calms. When her skin prickles again, she’s more confident that she won’t break down in tears.

I think you’d like her. She’s a lot like how I imagined you might be.  

The words blur, a bittersweet smile all that holds her welling tears at bay.

Her name is Lena.

The world stills.

Lena stares at her skin. Little by little, the pieces click together. She waits for more, to be disproved, for it to be a coincidence. But the words fade, and no more appears to replace them.

She completes her day of meetings, but she could have promised them all the Eiffel Tower for all she remembers of them. Her thoughts remain glued to her soul mate’s final message.

Lena leaves without shutting off her computer. She only remembers her phone because it’s still in her hand. She opens Kara’s unlocked door with it still clutched in her fist, and the hard case digging into her fingers is the only thing that keeps her grounded.  

Kara smiles at the sight of her, before concern fills her gaze when she takes in Lena’s wide, stricken eyes.

“What happened? Is everything–”

“Can I borrow a pen?” Lena croaks.

Kara doesn’t expect that, and stutters in her quick response. “Okay, sure.” She hands one over, and Lena accepts it with shaking fingers. “Lena, what’s–”

She trails off, staring at her palm as Lena writes four simple words on her hand.

My name is Lena.

Shock freezes the air around them. Kara stares at the words already starting to fade, her eyes flickering to the pen in Lena’s hand.

“I don’t understand…”

“When you told me how your dad died in Metropolis, I– I knew you would never… everyone believed I had something to do with it, and I couldn’t bear for you to hate me too.”

Kara shakes her head. “But I’ve always believed in you…”

“I didn’t know it was you. Not until tonight. Kara, I– I’m so sorry. I tried to cut you out, so you could move on, find happiness with someone else, but… you found me anyway.”

Kara stares at the floor. She doesn’t say anything, and Lena endures it as long as she can before running out of hope.

“Please, Kara. Please say something.”

She doesn’t. Without lifting her head, Kara steps forward, wrapping her arms around around Lena’s waist while burying her face in the shoulder of her coat. Lena returns the hug with a sob, tears finally spilling over.

“I thought you were dead too.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Kara sniffles. “I forgive you,” she murmurs. “But you’re not allowed to leave like that again. Okay?”

“Never.”

And that, Lena knows, is the honest truth.

Prompts are now CLOSED