i need to get this out of my head before i continue clone^2 but danny being the first batkid. Like, standard procedure stuff: his parents and sister die, danny ends up with Vlad Masters. He drags him along to stereotypical galas and stuff; Danny is not having a good time.
He ends up going to one of the Wayne Galas being hosted ever since elusive Bruce Wayne has returned to Gotham. Vlad is crowing about having this opportunity as he's been wanting to sink his claws into the company for a long while now. Danny is too busy grieving to care what he wants.
And like most Galas, once Vlad is done showing him off to the other socialites and the like, he disappears. Off to a dark corner, or to one of the many balconies; doesn't matter. There he runs into said star of the show, Bruce who is still young, has been Batman for at least a year at this point, but still getting used to all these damn people and socializing. He's stepped off to hide for a few minutes before stepping back into the shark tank.
And he runs into a kid with circles under his eyes and a dull gleam in them. Familiar, like looking into a mirror.
Danny tries to excuse himself, he hasn't stopped crying since his parents died and it's been months. He rubs his eyes and stands up, and stumbles over a half-hearted apology to Mister Wayne. Some of Vlad's etiquette lessons kicking in.
Bruce is awkward, but he softens. "That's alright, lad," he says, pulling up some of that Brucie Wayne confidence, "I was just coming out here to get some fresh air."
There's a little pressing; Bruce asks who he's here with, Danny says, voice quiet and grief-stricken, that he's with his godfather Vlad Masters. Bruce asks him if he knows where he is, and Danny tells him he does. Bruce offers to leave, Danny tells him to do whatever he wants.
It ends with Bruce staying, standing off to the side with Danny in silence. Neither of them say a word, and Danny eventually leaves first in that same silence.
Bruce looks into Vlad Masters after everything is over, his interest piqued. He finds news about him taking in Danny Fenton: he looks into Danny Fenton. He finds news articles about his parents' deaths, their occupations, everything he can get his hands on.
At the next gala, he sees Danny again. And he looks the same as ever: quiet like a ghost, just as pale, and full of grief. Bruce sits in silence with him again for nearly ten minutes before he strikes a conversation.
"Do you like to do anything?"
Nothing. Just silence.
Bruce isn't quite sure what to do: comfort is not his forte, and Danny doesn't know him. He's smart enough to know that. So he starts talking about other things; anything he can think of that Brucie Wayne might say, that also wasn't inappropriate for a kid to hear.
Danny says nothing the entire time, and is again the first to leave.
Bruce watches from a distance as he intercts with Vlad Masters; how Vlad Masters interacts with him. He doesn't like what he sees: Vlad Masters keeps a hand on Danny's shoulder like one would hold onto the collar of a dog. He parades him around like a trophy he won.
And there are moments, when someone gets too close or when someone tries to shake Danny's hand, of deep possessiveness that flints over Vlad Masters' eyes. Like a dragon guarding a horde.
He plays the act of doting godfather well: but Bruce knows a liar when he sees one. Like recognizes like.
Danny is dull-eyed and blank faced the entire time; he looks miserable.
So Bruce tries to host more parties; if only so that he can talk to Danny alone. Vlad seems all too happy to attend, toting Danny along like a ribbon, and on the dot every hour, Danny slips away to somewhere to hide. Bruce appears twenty minutes later.
"I was looking into your godfather's company," he says one night, trying to think of more things to say. Some nights all they do is sit in silence. "Some of my shareholders were thinking of partnering up--"
"Don't."
He stops. Danny hardly says a word to him, he doesn't even look at him -- he's sitting on the ground, his head in his knees. Like he's trying to hide from the world. But he's looking, blue eyes piercing up at Bruce.
Bruce tilts his head, practiced puppy-like. "Pardon?"
"Don't." Danny says, strongly. "Don't make any deals with Vlad."
It's the most words Danny's spoken to him, and there's a look in his eyes like a candle finding its spark. Something hard. Bruce presses further, "And why is that?"
The spark flutters, and flushes out. Danny blinks like he's coming out of a trance, and slumps back into himself. "Just don't."
Bruce stares at him, thoughtful, before looking away. "Alright. I won't."
And they fall back into silence.
Danny, when he leaves, turns to look at Bruce, "I mean it." He says; soft like he's telling a secret, "Don't make any deals with him. Don't be alone with him. Don't work with him."
He's scampered away before Bruce can question him further.
(He never planned on working with Vlad Masters and his company; he's done his research. He's seen the misfortune. But nothing ever leads back to him. There's no evidence of anything. But Danny knows something.)
At their next meeting, Danny starts the conversation. It's new, and it's welcomed. He says, cutting through their five minute quiet, that he likes stars. And he doesn't like that he can't see them in Gotham.
Bruce hums in interest, and Danny continues talking. It's as if floodgates had been opened, and as Bruce takes a sip of his wine, it tastes like victory.
("Tucker told me once--")
("Tucker?")
("Oh-- uh, one of my best friends. He's a tech geek. We haven't talked in a while.")
(Danny shut down in his grief -- his friends are worried, but can't reach him. When he goes back to the manor with Vlad, he fishes out his phone and sends them a message.)
(They are ecstatic to hear from him.)
It all culminates until one day, when Danny is leaving to go back inside, that Bruce speaks up. "You know," He says, leaning against the railing. "The manor has many rooms; plenty of space for a guest."
The implication there, hidden between the lines. And Danny is smart, he looks at Bruce with a sharp glean in his eyes, and he nods. "Good to know."
The next time they see each other, Danny has something in his hands. "Can you hold onto something for me?" He asks.
When Bruce agrees, Danny places a pearl into his palm. or, at least, it's something that looks like a pearl. Because it's cold to the touch; sinking into Bruce's white silk gloves with ease and shimmering like an opal. It moves a little as it settles into his hand, and the moves like its full of liquid.
Bruce has never seen anything like it before, but he does know this; it's not human. "What is it?" He asks, and Danny looks uncomfortable.
"I can't tell you that." He says, shifting on his foot like he's scared of someone seeing it. "But please be careful with it. Treat it like it's extremely fragile."
When Bruce gets home, he puts it in an empty ring box and hides the box in the cave. He tries researching into what it is. he can't find anything concrete.
Everything comes to a head one day when Danny appears at the manor's doorstep one evening, soaking wet in the rain, and bleeding from the side.
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The Bats Are Fighting (Distaff Edition)
some conflicts I enjoy:
Babs is pretty hostile/judgy toward Helena at first & is bitterly upset and hurt when Helena starts wearing a Bat costume - apparently a Batgirl costume - without asking her. Later on, Bruce chases Helena out of the costume, and Babs gives Cass the Batgirl costume with her explicit blessing. Helena and Cass never have a rivalry over this exactly, but I don't think they ever really get along, either
Babs and Helena eventually make up when Babs lets Helena join the Birds of Prey but it's rocky in the beginning - Babs dislikes Helena's methods and doesn't entirely trust her; Helena resents being kept on the outside
Steph is super-impressed by Cass and tries to get her to like her and they eventually get close, but Cass has a pretty low opinion of Steph-as-a-vigilante and doesn't hesitate to boss her around or knock her out, and she's super-hurt by Steph lying to her about what's going on during War Games (probably not unrelated: Cass is the only Bat to blame Steph instead of Bruce after Steph dies)
Babs and Cass get very close but also have tensions because Babs wants Cass to have the 'normal' life that Babs thinks she should've tried harder to have when she was younger, and Cass isn't entirely comfortable with this pressure, plus - this one I think is a bit more well-known - Babs spends a lot of time tutoring Cass and looking after her (awww), BUT ALSO in a tense moment she gets really nasty and harsh about Cass's reluctance to learn to read and calls her "stupid"
Dinah finds Steph REALLY annoying and wants her to stop tagging around after her... until she finds out about Steph's miserable home life, and then she appears like an avenging angel and kicks Steph's dad and his cronies out of the house
Babs decides to work with a guy who tortured Dinah because she thinks he's capable of redemption and Dinah is NOT HAPPY about it
Just generally, Steph and Helena are very much outsiders who don't get brought into the "core" Batfam and who aren't trusted with info like Bruce's secret identity. By contrast, Babs is an insider almost from Day 1 - she may have conflicts with Bruce, but she's also got his absolute trust - and Dinah is as insider as it gets, with a mom who was also Black Canary and a stint on the JLA
other general characterization notes that cause Conflict (TM):
Babs is pretty much a classic Bat - she's got a ton of control issues and she's an instinctively secretive workaholic
Helena is an adult who will kill people if she damn well feels it's necessary and she doesn't appreciate being lectured about it
Steph is a defensive teenage outsider with a bucketload of family problems - deadbeat evil dad! addict mom! - and when she's upset she's got a reckless self-destructive streak
Cass is very much like Bruce in that
1) she is wildly super mega good at fighting,
2) she's an instinctive loner who's comically bad at people AND YET she can nevertheless effortlessly manage to head off to a foreign country for a weekend and have a passionately-felt mutual love affair with some random criminal or something, and then that person dies & she goes home like nothing happened,
3) she cares about other people but completely sucks at communication & when in doubt will just go silent & take off or refuse to have conversations,
4) because she hates talking sometimes she'll just knock you out or hit you so that she won't have to do it,
5) she will spend an entire year planning to have a fight to the death with someone for Reasons and tell no one about it because why would she tell someone
anyway they're all terrible <3
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My dude, all your fanfics and ideas for baby Tails break my heart. I need more! How do you think Sonic would take care of a sick Tails? Do you think Tails would be so delirious with fever that he would not calm down until Sonic holds him? Who knows....
Glad to know I’m damaging your heart! That’s my whole goal, thank you for reading!
We don’t have nearly enough Tails’ sick fics out there, but BABY TAILS sick fics? We have a shortage, and that can’t be.
Now, as for how would sonic react to a sick baby tails, in case of a babyfied Tails there’s a variety of angst and comfort levels all around, but, if it were the unbreakable bond early days, both little Sonic and baby Tails? He’d be so stressed! These kids are all alone, don’t have a home, and clearly are not medicine professionals, so just try and imagine poor little Sonic panicking because suddenly his tiny fox kit started coughing and wheezing and he doesn’t know what to do, and poor baby Tails longing for Sonic to just hold him and tell him everything would be right?
Just imagine…
Sonic knew Tails was small
Tails was already so small, way too little for a four year old, his arms and legs way too short, his fluffy fur hiding how thin he was, and his tails big enough to blanket him almost completely, he was way too adorable, and so, so small.
But looking at him, right now, with the sweat staining his messy fur, his ears flatted down to his skull, and his little nose sneezing restlessly while he tried to curl into the littlest, tiniest ball of fur ever with little whines and whimpers leaving his throat almost every time he breathed, all while the speedster could just sit beside him cause nothing he did seemed to soothe him, Sonic felt like he was the small one.
Worried? an understatement. Scared? An inexactitude. Sonic was right down panicking.
The blue blur could handle 10 ton killing machines, ruthless natural disasters and evil crazy scientists threatening to end the world every day. But hiding from the rain in a cold, dark cave, sitting on the rocky ground beside a sweaty sick fox cub who pretty much looked like he war right up dying? Seeing and hearing how every cough and sneezed hurt him from the inside? He wasn’t sure he could handle this.
Tails was breathing heavily, almost like crying, but no tears left his eyes, not that he could see them anyway, he hadn’t opened his eyes since a few hours ago, sniffing and getting coughing fits every few minutes while his chest made a rumbling sound, but it wasn’t the kind of rumbly buzzing it made when the kit was all snoozed close to Sonic, when he wasn’t sick, when he wasn’t in pain. He wants that sound back.
The warmth that surrounded the little fox was nothing like the comfortable coziness Sonic felt whenever he snuggled close to him, when his little paws would reach for Sonic’s arm and try to hug him, when the little kid’s head below his chin felt like he was holding the most softest, warmest, freshly baked bread bun in the world. No, this wasn’t like that. This time, the heat that evolved him felt like hell was inside the kit’s skin trying to melt both himself and Sonic’s heart.
Sonic knew that being sick felt like freezing in your own cold sweat, your body fighting against itself trying to stay alive, even if it meant setting itself ablaze while feeling so he didn’t wanted to rip the thin blanket way from him, but the kid was not just warm, he was burning.
There was nothing his speed could do against the baby fox’s inmune system, nothing that his quills could break with a spindash, no way he could just take the kid and try outrun the threat.
He gave him all the water they had, tried to put some wet rags on his body and spent his very last dime on some cough syrup that didn’t seemed to be of much help. Tails was hurting, and Sonic couldn’t do anything about it.
He doesn’t know how didn’t he noticed him getting ill, sure, he was kinda quiet, but it have been raining for some days now and neither of them enjoyed stormy nights, both of them stayed silent when they were sad or upset, so he thought it was probably just that.
It wasn’t.
He did everything he knew was supposed to be done when a kid was sick, even when said kid’s little paws weakly waved him away when he tried to comfort him, even when he pouted and whined as he was forced to drink some water so he wouldn’t dehydrate, and even if he refused to open his mouth every time he needed to take his medicine; poor kid must be so scared and confused, not fully awake curling in himself not to show his face to Sonic, he must think someone was trying to hurt him. He must think he was alone again.
Sonic hadn’t left his side in hours, he wasn’t planning to, and yet, he was starting to feel lonely himself.
Tails thought he wasn’t a bad kid anymore.
He’d been told all his life than only bad kids would get sick like him. All the adults from his hometown yelling at him for even daring to get close to the village when he was coughing. All the other kids running from him when he sneezed. And his own body betraying him whenever he tried to stand while his head felt like exploding.
Apparently being “cursed” with twin tails wasn’t enough. He was bad enough of a kid to be sick almost everyday of his life before he met Sonic.
Tails knew only bad kids got sick. Because bad kids who stole from peoples garbage would get the most horrible tummy aches. Because bad kids who stayed in the rain when there was a storm would always fall to the ground when their chest made those nasty grumbly sounds that hurt every time they breathed. Because only bad kids would vomit nothing but liquid when they took water that wasn’t theirs.
He thought that now that he was with Sonic and didn’t need to do any of that, then maybe he was a good kid, maybe the universe forgave him, maybe the cosmos knew he always tried to help Sonic save the world, maybe reality wasn’t as cruel as to make him sick now that he was a good kid!, so he ignored the lingering pain in his chest whenever he talked for too long, he didn’t mention anything about how stuffed his nose felt and how nauseous the thought of food made him feel, neither about how as the hours passed he felt like his body was trying to cook itself alive, he was a good kid now, so it must’ve been a defense mechanism against the cold weather, nothing else.
But he did got sick, so he was still a bad kid.
It was fine, he had been through this before, he just needed to wait a little while, maybe less than two weeks, he was in better shape now than last time this happened, when he was alone and got sick he knew if was hungry enough he would just fall asleep for a few days and wake up with a horrible headache and a runny nose, but that just meant he would feel better in three or four more days, he could take it. But he wasn’t alone now, and even if his heart wanted nothing more than to fall asleep in his big brother’s arms until he got better…. He didn’t want Sonic to go through that, Sonic wasn’t a bad kid, he was the bestest friend in the world, the bestest greatest brother in the world, he didn’t deserved to get sick.
So even if he couldn’t open his eyes, even if all his body hurt like he was made of broken glass, he waved him away, surely Sonic didn’t know he could get sick from being around him, so he needed to protect Sonic from his sickness, he needed to protect Sonic from him. Even if he tried to pet his forehead or scratch behind his ears, and even if Tails wanted nothing more than to be hugged by him, he needed to protect Sonic, so he curled in himself, rolled on his side when his brother got too close, and even scratched his arms when he tried to pet him. Tears finally started rolling down his tired eyes when he heard his brother’s sudden hiss to the touch of his claws, no, anything but that, he didn’t wanted to hurt him, he didn’t wanted him to be ill, he didn’t wanted his brother to suffer because of some cursed freak, and now he was the one crying, he didn’t deserved to cry, he didn’t got time to cry, he could already feel the rest of his energy going away with the falling of his tears, his body already felt so heavy, sleep taking him down more and more with every heart beat, and as much as it hurt, he needed to get his brother away from him or he would try to comfort him again, he couldn’t risk Sonic getting sick just for petting him.
Bad kids didn’t deserved to be petted.
That was it. Trembling and whining were bad enough besides being sick, but tears? The blood coming out from the little claw scratches on his forearm didn’t sting nearly as much as the tears falling down the kid’s eyes did.
No, he couldn’t take it anymore, it didn’t matter if he scratched his face, growled at him or bit his hands, he couldn’t give him a solid home, five star medical care or even a proper bed, but he could give him this.
He was no doctor, and he knows that no amount of hugs could cure the little fox, but again, no doctor could really know how much better it made Tails feel whenever he was hugged, but Sonic knew, cause no matter when or how, or the limited time’s he’s done it, but he knows that for this tiny baby fox, hugs made him sleep, hugs made him purr, and hugs made him smile. When all the wet rags, medicine and blankets don’t do their job, hugs were the best comfort in the world.
And so the speedster finally placed himself on the ground, not just beside the fox, but completely surrounding him, holding him close to his chest while the kit mumbled silent whines and tried to move his paws against him, hoping the lullaby of his heartbeat could be enough to soothe the little cub, longing for the calm sound of his brother’s almost silent snoring, demanding to anything that’s out there to let him keep his brother alive, to let him end his pain and make him smile soon.
He didn’t really believed in anything up there, if they were real, they weren’t doing their job if the traumatized kid in his arms had anything to say. But Sonic believed in himself, and if the universe wanted to take his kid from him, they’d have to rip him from his dead cold hands, and he wasn’t going anywhere.
He held Tails even closer, whispering soft nothings to him, the kit’s wet nose pressing to his chest while he pet his ears and ran his fingers through his bangs, the fox’s whimpers and loud breathing made his heart ache, but he was still breathing, all cold, sweaty and scared, but breathing.
He wasn’t crying anymore, no longer fighting his big brother’s embrace, no longer trying to get away or to hide from him, and suddenly melting into his touch, relaxed enough that Sonic could feel the heartbeat on his chest against his own.
Then the most beautiful sound ever blessed his ears.
Tails didn’t know why Sonic didn’t leave him alone. He didn’t know why he seemed even more eager to get close to him after he hurt him to the point of bleeding. He didn’t know why he got to the ground and held him closer to his chest when the tears appeared, when he was the one who hurt him. And he didn’t know why he didn’t try to stop him. He needed to protect him, he was barely awake but he could try a last effort. He could push him away. Letting him know he was dangerous to be around one last time. He had to.
His brother’s heartbeat was always fast, almost sounding like a buzzing instead, what would be annoying to most people, but to Tails? Being held right now, his head cradled to the crook of his hero’s neck, listening from up close to the rapid beat, it was the most soothing sound he’s ever heard. As much as he needed to push Sonic away, and as much as his mind told him to protect him, his heart knew that being there, in his big brother’s arms, he didn’t wanted to move away from there, ever. It felt like the safest place in the world. It was the safest place in the world.
Just being there close enough to feel the hedgehog’s breathing over him, getting his forehead rubbed and his ears scratched while the speedster’s voice engraved itself in his heart, It made his headache almost bearable, his tears slowly stopped, his breathing no longer felt like chocking, and the warmth that he felt before was no longer burning, but rocking him to slumber.
Only good kids deserved to be held with love, he knows that, he was never held like this before. Even when every single person on his home island refused to even touch him if it wasn’t to hurt him, and even if he doesn’t remember ever being held like this by his parents, Sonic was here, holding him. His brother was holding him.
The pain and sorrow that embraced him finally being replaced by a comforting rumbling coming from his own chest.
Maybe he was a good kid after all.
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