#spoilers: there’s this implication that Jason doesn’t like feeling seen by Dick and or even seeing himself bc he knows deep down his stance

[cologona]

DROP THE FIC AND MY LIFE IS YOURS

You might have already heard of it (and in which case you may be suprised), it’s Wolf-King of Rome by Whiskey

The reason I didn’t include the fic name in those tags is because the fic (and the series it’s a part of) actually isn’t Jason-centered. It’s Dick centered, and while Jason is written with care and depth… the author isn’t a Jason stan ykwim?

[astrologista]

jason stop dying

ooooook i just watched ditf. it was PRETTY GOOD.... i only wish there was MOOORE! watching this REALLY brought me back to 2011 times to see it and i think they did a good job with most of the character design and animations insofar as matching it to the original. (maybe i’m totally wrong but i thought it looked good for the most part... also i just really love these character designs in particular). obviously the budget is not what it would be on a feature, so there are a LOT of places where animation gets recycled and many still frames. some parts are basically a slideshow lol. but i only sort of came to that realization awhile after watching, so i think they did a fairly good job of masking this... ymmv

so let’s get into it!!! 

SPOILERS a-head! do not read until you’ve watched it because i’ll spoil everything

now obviously the thing to be aware of if you are not is the fact that this adaptation is not a panel-by-panel adaptation of the original death in the family comic. all references to jason’s mother (save one mention of her dying of illness) are completely removed, they go to bosnia instead of africa, and the circumstances around jason leaving are also heavily altered to fit the new narrative. this adaptation does slot perfectly into the universe established by the under the red hood animated movie from 2011 though, without which one would be pretty confused when watching this. it’s kind of a mystery as to why they didn’t just package this with utrh and release the entire thing as a collectors edition. instead they package it with like 4 or 5 unrelated dc showcase shorts which makes absolutely 0 sense but go off i guess. anyway

i liked that they took the time to adapt the scene from the original ditf where bruce is talking to alfred about jason! (i do not like that alfred didn’t get any lines. bad choice). tbh i can’t understand why they bothered showing us alfred, barbara and dick if they weren’t gonna give them any lines..... like come on........??

HOW INTENSE BRUCE LOOKS WHEN HE FINDS JASON IN SARAJEVO and just. grabs him lol. hes smad :)

ok so one two skip a few and we get to the first branch. instead of calling 1-900 we now get to choose whether jason lives or dies. there are 7 possible endings i think i got em all so let’s see what we got here.

“Hush” Route - Robin cheats death

hgrgdggr. i definitely think this is one of the more interesting endings, if not the most interesting one. this is also the only ending in which both bruce and jason survive the bombing. bruce is still too late, but this time jason barely clings to life and survives. as a hurt/comfort fan i was 100% on this shit from the word go but then jason? runs away from home lmao lmao i thought that was SO funny because 1) hes super messed up, how is he able to just literally run out the house that is SO funny to me and 2) implying that bruce would ever not be keeping an eye on him after that is just, lmao. it’s so zany. i call this the “hush” route because of the bandages but there are no other references to hush so ok. that’s fair. so anyway jason is now angsty for loosely explained reasons but the most fun part is yet to come.

when talia showed up, i really thought / was terrified for a second that they were gonna bring up certain “events” regarding damian’s parentage / who damian’s father is but then she mentioned bruce and i was like OH THANK GOD WE CAN STILL GO TO HEAVEN. i am so so grateful to the writers for NOT going there. cuz it was damn close ok. im not sure what the implication of this route is in terms of talia, jason and damian being a family unit but i want to believe talia sees jason as a son and damian’s brother (which is how she refers to him, damian’s brother) and not... yknow. i mean. jason raising a baby is kind of like a baby raising a baby...

no actually the reality of this scene is really dfuckin interesting like. they actually go with the “birth of the demon” (forget if it was birth of the demon or bride of the demon. one of those.) explanation for damian and that is something i’ve NEVER seen adapted so whoever wrote this can have a cookie and i kNOW this is something a certain someone will appreciate :)

not only that but the implications? are interesting? so talia’s claim is she miscarried so bruce won’t have to “choose” between damian and jason and idk if she’s supposed to be all on the-up-and-up in this universe but. i’m sitting here like GIRL YOU DON’T GOTTA DO THIS HE HAS A PRIVATE JET HAVEN’T YOU HEARD OF SHARED CUSTODY and BETTER YET HE HAS A MANSION JUST GO ON MAURY AND GET THIS SORTED OUT RIGHT NOWwwww

i’m also LAUGHING at the implications of jason thinking theres anywhere on earth that he’s going to go and hide damian’s existence from bruce. because you already know he’s just going to be tearing the planet apart looking for jason so this is actually hilarious. imagine he finds jason in one piece and also a baby. his baby. he’d be like (@ talia) “OMG WHY WOULD YOU THINK I WOULDN’T WANT THEM BOTH u are tearing me apart talia......” BUT THEN HE WOULD BE SO FREAKING HAPPY BECAUSE HE HAS TWO ALIVE SONS AND HE THOUGHT THEY WERE BOTH DEAD / (lost to crime)!!!

please lord imagine all of jason’s angst probably just originating from the fact that he has a brain injury that hasn’t fully healed and the trauma of going through all those surgeries probably gave him a lot of fear / paranoia about bruce and associating him with the joker because his neural pathways are all messed up but after he leaves he starts slowly healing back and regaining some of his lost sanity and thats when he realizes he misses bruce so much... but hes also raising his child... and every day it gets more difficult for him not to just take damian and bring him home and i ;v;

anyway i thought this route, while it had a few inconsistencies in it, was really freaking interesting and it gave me feels and plot bunnies and is probably the one i want to write about the MOST despite the fact that baby damian looks like a character from one of those web flash games in this lol

“True” End - Jason Dies

now if you select that jason dies the route basically defaults to the canon of under the red hood and the fact that utrh does not come packaged with this movie is a rather mystifying choice to me as i don’t think this adaptation would stand on its own very well. like you need quite a bit of background to really get anything out of watching this on its own, which is probably why it’s classified as a “short” and not as its own movie.

instead of showing all of utrh, it seems they took the opportunity to give a ~30 minute recap of utrh with basically entirely reused animation but they allow bruce to sort of. give his dvd commentary over it.

the biggest feeling i have on this is that it’s sad that they had to waste 30 minutes like this that could’ve been used to do something new and much more interesting, but honestly i’m not mad. it seems kind of obvious that this choice was probably made for budget and/or runtime reasons because a short does not get the same budget set aside as a full length feature film does. so they basically took the option of recycling 30 minutes of animation from the movie and dubbing new audio over it.

in evangelion they ran out of budget and that’s why the last two episodes consist of nothing more than still pencil drawings and frames while the characters engage in philosophical debates concerning the nature of reality and human connection. and i really enjoyed that. and for the same reasons, i also really enjoyed this.

i enjoyed seeing the clark kent of this universe. i enjoyed that he was basically out on a date with bruce. i enjoyed that bruce was willing to open up for once and tell clark all of what happened with jason. but what really makes this segment shine bright are bruce greenwood’s line reads. there are SO MANY good line reads in here. and i LOVED how many times he said the word “son”. very wholesome. the way he describes how he felt during the final fight with jason? probs my favorite FUCKING part.

and then him and clark joking together about contingency plans and then they’re going to work together to find jason and i ;_; this is probably the closest thing to a “good” ending but as a continuation of utrh i thought it worked really well. i really want to believe that bruce and clark did find jason in this route and that there was some closure in the end even though we didn’t get to see it.

including clark in this was DEFINITELY the right move as well, considering that he played a rather large role in the original ditf so it’s a welcome nod.

The rest of the branches exist under a separate option where Bruce makes it in time to save Jason from the warehouse... but Bruce dies......... :O

let me tell you bout it... bruce’s fucking DEATH SCENE i don’t know WHAT my man bruce greenwood is on, but the freaking LINE READS in this dialogue had me making INHUMAN NOISES. LIKE NOT ONLY WAS THE DIALOGUE GOOD, NOT ONLY DID HE SAY “I LOVE YOU, SON”, but this man is just an amazing actor. not just voice actor, but actor. he really really really really gave it the most i don’t know how else to say it....... it was very very well done and punched me sideways in the heart and i haven’t recovered and i’m not going to recover. and

ok so once we get past that.... scene.... u have to choose whether you’re going to catch the joker or kill the joker. bruce asks jason to promise not to kill the joker but technically jason doesn’t promise so........

Let’s start by choosing to kill the Joker. Jason attends Bruce’s funeral and various members of the Justice League show up to talk with him and just generally hang out. He has Alfred, Dick and Barbara as his support system, but Jason has some other plans.

This leads to a scene in a cafe where Jason meets with a man who... something something Killing Joke, flashlight, more Barbara being used as a plot device when she deserves better, Jason kills the Joker with a butter knife.

Once you do this you can choose to surrender to the police, or retaliate and escape.

Jailbird Ending

basically if you surrender to the police jason ends up in prison where he can actually attack even more criminals so.... ya

If you retaliate and escape instead you go to the Red Robin route where Jason becomes a vigilante who kills people much like the Red Hood and you get a further choice in a fight with Two Face where you can control how Harvey’s coin lands. 

Tim Ending!

If you choose the coin to land clean face up, the thing rewards you by having Tim show up and I forgot what happened (wasn’t really paying attention lol) because i was so focused on TIM!

Prolly they felt sorry for him what with Jason stealing what is essentially his outfit (ok I know it was Jason’s first, but Tim made it cool) so they let a little baby tim have an appearance :) he’s very smol

I guess in this ending Jason gets reintegrated with the family somehow and Tim becomes “Bat-kid” which is hilarious to me but you know what it’s cute. CUTE.

The one ending where the coin lands scarred side up

i honestly forget what happens if you choose to have the coin land scarred side up but let me just say this is a FUCKED route to take, not only have you had jason survive and bruce die, you’ve now chosen to kill the joker against bruce’s dying wish, you’ve chosen to attack the police, and at the end of that you really are gonna choose harvey’s coin to be scarred face up???? choosing this made me feel like a DICK because here i am supporting jason’s whole fall to madness and villainy thing the way it wants me to and now he’s gonna die HERE? i hate it here.

interestingly enough he doesn’t actually die in this route. he ends up at home with barbara and dick while dealing with the fact that he killed the joker but the route ends with jason saying “i promise” so i guess this is supposed to be kinda sad. im so confused lol ok

So that is all the options if you choose to kill the joker, I believe. You can also make the choice to just catch him instead of killing him but amazingly enough, those routes are even more FUCKED up. 

If you do this option Jason goes home, mourns Bruce with Dick, Barbara and Alfred, and becomes Red Hood BUT with a twist, he’s entirely on a bloodless operation in line with Bruce’s wishes. OR.... IS HE?

Things then follow the events of UTRH until the scene on the bridge with the van and the guys. Jason finally confronts Joker, who reveals the truth. 

Apparently in this route Jason has actually been killing and decapitating his victims just like in the original movie, but he’s repressed it so as to not even realize to himself that he’s doing it.

that is FUCKED. also. i wanna cry because jason doing all of that stuff but not even realizing it ;------; jason blocking it out, because he wanted to honor bruce’s wishes for him not to kill anyone ;______; but he’s doing it anyway ;_____; he’s actually hearing voices telling him to kill ;____; like it’s a very cheap twist in a sense and also really quite cruel but.... damn, son.

There is a branch here where you can choose to spare or kill the Joker at this point (UNDERTALE???) but from what I can tell it seems to be totally meaningless what choice you pick because you end up at the exact same point either way, I think there’s a small variation in what happens after you make the choice but after that they just coalesce back together into the following two endings. Which seems incredibly cheap to me, I mean making a choice like that should alter Jason’s path completely but, it doesn’t! So... ooook....

Either way Jason ends up on the Wayne building and Talia shows up with a re-animated Bruce from the pit. Here’s another fun blast from the 2011 past with more gratuitous Grant Morrison dreck, remember that shit? Well, they’re gonna jam it down your throat here, too.

The reanimated Bruce is the Zur En Arrh Bruce and he’s already dead so this is all meaningless but basically Jason fights him and you get to choose whether everybody lives or dies.

Zur En Arrh - Everyone Lives!

if you pick this, jason actually gets the re-animated bruce back to the batcave and they lock him up down there because he’s still pit-mad and the prognosis is not great. but i’m not sure what they expected, he is the zur-en-arrh guy so I don’t think he’s getting better. 

Zur En Arrh - Everyone Dies!

pretty much there’s an explosion and all three of them die and that’s it

I think that should be all the possible endings there are.

By the way the different ways in which black mask dies in this was actually a fairly clever running gag lollll. let that mf burn we don’t need no water.

overall there are a couple of things i would have done to SIGNIFICANTLY improve this adaptation beyond some of the obvious ones.

- the fact that all of the branching options are branched exclusively under the “jason lives and bruce dies” branch is a huge wasted opportunity. imo this is the most egregious problem with this, i was really looking for a more balanced tree / explanation of different things. i am probably super biased though being a fic writer and used to fic, we’re the ones making huge ass trees every day lol.

- the fact that there is no “good” ending here is something i kind of expected but given the context of this is lackluster. i sort of get it though because granted, the original ditf ends in an unresolved manner but it’s distinctly unsatisfying here. i secretly wanted an ending where bruce, like, figures out about the different endings and hacks reality to try to find a good ending where jason lives and everything is fine lmao. like a bat mite ending.

- i was disappointed in a sense that the narrative given in here is so basically simplistic? maybe i’ve been spoiled by games like 999 and undertale where shit gets messy and that’s not what this is supposed to be but when i play something with multiple endings in this day and age, at least play with the concept a little bit and connect some of the branches together narratively. use different devices. i was also hoping some of the choices would be a little bit meatier like you could choose to “forgive bruce” or something cool like that lol. but it looks like the majority of choices have to do with who lives or dies. and i felt like they couldve been a bit more creative with that ya know? being able to control harvey’s coin was a GREAT example of having some more fun with this.

- it is a huge missed opportunity not to have a “secret ending” on something like this. like where. the fuck. is my secret ending for completing everything. come on. and in a similar vein there should’ve been at least something in terms of bruce and jason interacting in a “true ending”. even if very brief. the closest thing to an ending this has is the “jason died” route and then the ending where he’s talking to clark which i feel like was a REALLY nice good optimistic ending as far as this goes, but it comes off as kind of disappointing i guess

there were SO many interesting nuggets locked into this thing though. i can’t deny it bugs me how many wasted opportunities there were with how they chose to structure things but i guess it’s the best you can do with limited runtime. i thought it was really well done though, makes an interesting companion piece to the original utrh, and is definitely something that i will be re-watching again soon!! overall i give it a 7/10 and some parts an 8/10+!

[damian-dreamz8442]

Missing in Action Part II

Hola, back with the second half of the fic. Should I link Part I here?

Psych, I already did. 

BTW this is NOT canon compliant and I do not even try to be accurate at all, just in character. 

Basic re-cap (spoilers) Damian is missing, kidnapped by a pack of goons in clown makeup, right out from under Dick’s nose. Afterwards he got a call from the Joker saying he has Damian, and gave Dick a bit of a clue as to where. 

Meanwhile, the Joker is very angry over the fact that he doesn’t actually have Damian, and the little punk is, in fact, nowhere to be found. 

Dick called the batmobile to his location, putting it on autopilot as he was in no condition to drive. His pounding head was only a minor distraction compared to the all-encompassing worry over Damian. He needed back-up if he was going to find Damian. 

Stephanie was, unsurprisingly, the first to answer. “Batman?” She questioned, no doubt noticing Dick initiated a group call with her, Cass, Tim and Jason. 

“I hope this is quick, Batman,” Tim added, keys clacking audibly in the background, “I’m in the middle of a case with the titans and-”

“Damian is missing.” Dick blurted, abandoning code names. 

“What?” Jason barked. Dick could hear Cass narrow her eyes. 

“He was kidnapped on patrol,” Dick explained, “a pack of goons took him, wearing clown makeup.” 

“Oh my god.” Stephanie breathed, at the same time as Tim’s “the Joker? He’s back?” 

“We don’t know that.” Jason reasoned, voice tight. “There are copy cats of the Joker all over Gotham.” 

“I got a call.” Dick cut his brother off, trying to focus his eyes on the road despite not being in control of the car. “A payphone, somehow he knew I would still be in the area. He gave me a clue.” A really messed up, useless clue. Dick hated even remembering the words as they came along with that familiar nasal voice. He’d written down the message, scrawled hastily on a sticky note in his belt, but somehow he’d dropped it in his panic. 

“He said he took Robin to ‘the place little robins go to... die’.” Dick ignored his voice crack, hoping the others would as well. 

Tim’s typing stopped, “like actual birds or-”

“The warehouse.” Jason growled, eliciting a curse from Dick. “You don’t think...” Jason’s only response was a grunt. 

Jason’s constant death jokes insured that at least they all knew which warehouse he was referring to. It did nothing to instill confidence in Dick. 

“How long do we have?” Tim asked as Dick went about changing the coordinates in his GPS. 

“It’s the Joker,” Jason grumbled, emotion lost from his voice in a transparent way of blocking out old memories, “we’ll be lucky if Damian’s even recognizable when we get there.” 

The line went silent, the implications heavy on the group of siblings. Dick wished for the thousandth time that Bruce was there. He could’ve stopped all this, surely. Dick didn’t have time to think about the irony; losing his first robin the same way the first Batman lost his robin. Dick wouldn’t let his brain go there. He couldn’t. 

Damian finally made it back to the street Dick was supposed to be on. Between limping and sticking to the shadows as much as possible in red and green, it had taken him nearly another hour. Quite the pathetic display, Damian told himself. No doubt if his father had been alive, he would’ve been disappointed. 

Despite it being two hours, Damian was at a loss when he found the alleyway deserted. There was a creepy box, mostly broken, and a stuffed clown face that laid decimated not far away, but no Batman. Damian did not like the idea of limping all the way back to the manor. His ankle pulsed with constant pain, it was getting harder to breathe around his ribs, and the cuts littered all of his limbs had yet to stop bleeding. It was tempting to just sit against the wall and wait for someone to come along and put him out of his misery. 

Instead, Damian limped over to a phone booth across the street. The receiver was unhooked, emitting the most sound, second only to Drake speaking. Damian hung it up with a grimace. He was surprised it worked at all, considering no one used phone booths anymore. Unless they were desperate. Which Damian was. 

He was about to try to remember the number for Wayne manor, when Damian noticed something yellow discarded haphazardly outside the phone booth. It wouldn’t have been of much interest to him, except the handwriting was unmistakable. 

Dick had used the phone booth and carelessly left behind a note. No doubt he was over reacting to Damian being missing, but at least it ensured he was alive. The note made little sense. 

‘Where little robins go to die’, who would even come up with that? Damian made a face at the sickening notion. 

Sluggishly, Damian’s brain aligned the clues. Dick thought he was missing, already on a scale of six of worry. He and Tim categorized a scale of worry for their family. Dick was almost always a five, Damian had never seen Jason rise above a two. 

Someone had called him on the phone booth, obviously. It was unlikely Dick’s communicator was broken in the skirmish and even if it was he wouldn’t think to use a phone booth. For what purpose? He could just call the batmobile. 

So some sicko had called the phone booth and given Dick the message. A clue perhaps? Damian read it again, allowed his mushy, bruised brain to comprehend the words. Wished he was as good a detective as Drake. Bashed the intrusive thought with a mental crowbar. 

Crowbar! Damian would’ve smacked his head if it didn’t already hurt so much. Finally Jason’s fatalistic sense of humor came in handy; his cause of death ingrained in the back of Damian’s mind. A rather dark turn of thought, but Damian was more results oriented. 

The Joker had beaten Jason with a crowbar, then killed him, in a warehouse on the other side of Gotham. It never did get rebuilt, but the Joker had erroneously threatened to do the same thing to Damian. Despite it being a lie, Dick would believe it. He didn’t know Damian escaped. 

Great, just great. How unbelievably fantastic. What an amazing turn of events, now Damian would get the absolute privilege of walking all the way across Gotham, trying to catch up with Dick who was probably a hair shy of a ten. If Damian was wrong well... that would really suck. 

Damian was really starting to understand why Joker was the most disliked criminal in the batfamily. (There was a vote. Ironically, they all like Harley Quinn the most.) 

With no other options, Damian began limping in the vague direction of the infamous warehouse. A street later, he passed a marooned motorcycle. After that, his night got much better. 

Dick ran across the grounds of the warehouse district to find the rest of his siblings not far from the remains of the blown up warehouse. Cass had a hand on Jason’s shoulder, while he quietly muttered about not letting Damian die the same way he had. It was cruelty on another level, this scheme of the Joker’s. Dick just wanted his robin back. 

Tim and Steph were formulating a strategy. Well, Tim was, having pulled up an overhead view of the warehouse rubble. Steph kept suggesting they go in fighting, get Damian, and set Joker on fire. Tim pointed out eight reasons that would not work. 

Dick stood next to Jason, taking a deep breath. “I don’t think we have time to wait, or make a plan.” He shot an apologetic look at Tim, “we just need to go in, canvas it, find Damian-”

“That’s what Joker wants!” Tim insisted, gesturing lamely to the building. “He probably has some game set up, or the entrance rigged, and we’ll all get blown up!” Jason bristled at the prospect of being blown up again, noticeable only to Cass. She squeezed his shoulder. 

Suddenly, a sharp disc cut through the group, lodging in the tree behind them. They all looked at it in shock, Joker’s logo laughing at them. It blinked to life, emitting a hollow cackle. 

“You’re too late!” Came a raspy voice. It hissed, a pathetic amount of laughing gas bubbling out of its edges. The frisbee was not meant to do damage, the real threat...

Dick spun around just as ruins of the warehouse let out a sickening crackle and exploded. Again. 

“No!” Dick screamed, lurching forward. Cass jumped in front of him to hold him back, eyes trained on the building. Jason couldn’t tear his eyes from the flames, memories and horror clutching him. 

“No, no, no, that can’t be it!” Tim insisted, burying his hands in his hair. “It’s... it’s the Joker! Where are the mind games? The... the...” 

Stephanie crashed to her knees, gaping at the scene. “What just-what just happened?” 

“Damian...” Dick’s voice cracked painfully, throat raw. He could feel the heat, there were debris floating down. Cass hugged him tightly. 

Jason spun around and punched a tree, it was unclear if the following crack came from the wood or his knuckles. He let out a furious growl, which morphed into an anguished roar. “I’m. Going. To. Kill. That son of a b-- !” 

Damian nearly stopped his stolen motorcycle as he saw the warehouse rubble go up in flames. What the... who would go through the trouble of blowing up that heap of cement? He could only hope Dick wasn’t in there, it would be just like him to do something stupid without Damian. 

Finally making it over the grassy hill - one of the few greenspaces in this area of Gotham - Damian ditched the bike. He was about to hobble forward when he heard a haunted wail from none other than Jason Todd. Damian broke into a run, despite his bodies protests. 

Had Dick gone into that building? Was one of them hurt? Damian could see his whole family gathered not far from the explosion. He could barely breathe, thanks to his ribs, and tripped on his ankle. He was panting by the time he got close enough to call out to them. 

Are you ok?” He straightened to talk to Jason, the only one looking at him, “what happened? Sorry I’m late, but someone ditched me in central Gotham and-” 

His whole family spun to look at him. Jason looked close to tears. Dick was crying. Stephanie was on the ground. Maybe she was hurt? Before Damian could ask, Dick was running full speed at him. 

“Robin!” His voice was thick with relief as he swept Damian into a hug. Normally such contact was unwarranted but not uncomfortable. This time, could Damian just say, ow. 

“Batman, release me!” Damian managed through gritted teeth, his ribs screaming at the pressure. There were definitely a few broken. 

“Robin, I can’t believe... you were... and then we!” 

“Batman! My ribs!” Dick let go immediately at the pained sound of Damian’s voice, supporting the boy as he doubled over painfully. He looked up to find his whole family gathered around him in concern. 

There were hands all over him, noting his injuries, bracing his ankle, rubbing his back. Someone - Todd, probably - even took advantage of the situation to mess up his hair. It was too much to keep track of, making him dizzy. 

“What happened?” He asked, batting the hand away from his hair. 

“We thought you... you were in there.” Stephanie finally explained, pointing at the burning cement foundation. 

“Joker, he... I saw you?” Dick was still unable to formulate a proper sentence. 

Damian scoffed, which cost him dearly as pain seared through him. It took him another second to get enough breath back in his lungs to explain. “I got away from those buffoons in like... five minutes.” Two hours, but who was counting. 

“Your ankle. Ribs. Head.” Cass countered. Ah, her hands were bracing his ankle. 

“Well, I didn’t get away entirely unscathed.” 

“We were really worried about you.” Tim’s voice was choked with emotion. He was rubbing Damian’s back. Damian couldn’t help but look at him in shock.” 

“So you all rushed here... to try and save me?” 

“Obviously!” Jason scoffed loudly. “Always.” He finished, locking eyes with Damian. 

Damian cleared his throat - another act that rendered him speechless in pain for a few seconds. “Thank you for coming. As you can see, I’m fine.” The siblings shared an incredulous look. 

“Is that Damian for ‘my body frigging hurts and I want to go home’?” Steph asked, leaning down to Damian’s level. He glared at her. “No, I’m-” he was about to say ‘not even that hurt’ but then Cass let go of his ankle to stand and Damian nearly fainted. To his utter mortification, a pained whimper left him. 

“Oh, lil’D, c’mere.” Dick cooed sympathetically, slowly gathering him up. This time he was mindful of Damian’s ribs. Damian would not admit that a huge wave of relief washed over him as soon as he was being carried, weight off his ankle and head cradled on Dick’s shoulder. 

“Put me down. I can... I can walk.” Damian’s protest held no heat, it was basically a whine. Dick leaned his cheek on Damian’s head softly. That was all it took for Damian’s body to finally give into the darkness. 

When Damian came to, he was in the batcave on a bed next to Dick. Dick was holding his hand, half asleep, pristine bandages wrapped around his head. Despite the calm scene next to him, the batcave was anything but. 

Tim and Cass were playing a video game on the huge monitor - correction, Tim was losing against Cass in a video game on the huge monitor - while Jason and Steph cheered them on. Alfred was cleaning up medical supplies when he noticed Damian’s attempt at awareness. 

“Master Damian,” Alfred greeted with a soft smile. Dick jerked awake, already grinning. “Dami! You’re awake!” The game was paused as four more people came rushing to his bedside. 

Damian hated being on pain meds. The sight of his family being so worries about him was enough to make him want to hug them. Humiliating. 

“How are you feeling?” Tim asked. Before Damian could bite back with a harsh ‘fine’, his emotions betrayed him. 

“Thank you,” he muttered, surprising no one more than himself. “Thank you for always coming for me.” Damian bit back the rest of his words, and the tears. He refused to be as pathetic and young as they expected of him. 

Dick saw right through him, he always did. He reached over and hugged Damian - something that was quickly becoming a normal action, not that Damian could bring himself to mind. “We love you.” 

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

Fic: skin

this is... a dark one, folks.

Summary: Set after 1.06: Jason Todd. The implications of the last twenty four hours finally come crashing down on Dick. He deals with it poorly.

Warnings: SPOILERS till 1.06. Self-harm, trauma, some body horror. Brief descriptions of consensual sexual encounters; nothing explicit. Dick’s not in a great headspace.

skin

Dick’s pretty sure he’s dying. His body hurts in too many ways to name, he shudders and strains at the apex of every breath, and—

he can’t—

he can’t move his legs—

“Ssh, Master Richard. Just a pinch, and then you won’t feel a thing.”

He blinks rapidly and tries to focus on the blurry figure that’s materialised next to him. But that only releases more tears, and he is ashamed and angry at the same time, because while Dick might only be a child, Robin can never be seen crying. “A-Alfred,” he chokes. “What’s wrong with me?” He coughs painfully; something tears at the back of his throat and he tastes metal.

Alfred says something that’s lost in the roaring in his ears, but he sounds profoundly, indefinably sad. Dick’s breath stops stuttering and seizes altogether, freezing in his chest like a block of ice. Nothing seems to exist outside of this moment—there is no future beyond this pain. There is no future at all, because what is he if he can’t run, and jump, and leap, and fight? If he can’t be Robin? Every minute worth remembering in his life since he was six years old has begun with him coiled like a spring, ready to burst into flight into the night air, but this moment? He’s splayed like roadkill, limp and broken, and it. won’t. stop—

There’s a sharp needle-point of pain at his bicep, startling him out of his own panicking mind, and seconds later, he tumbles into darkness.

-

It takes a little over two hours for Dick to drive from Clay’s house to the Chicago safehouse. Once he’s there, Gar figures out how to get him inside and upstairs. Dick can tell he’s itching to ask about Jason, but something in his eyes must’ve warned him otherwise, because he can barely meet Dick’s gaze in the elevator.

Kory’s lounging near the television; when she sees him, her eyes narrow, and she straightens. However, it’s Rachel that speaks first. “Dick,” she says, “you’re hurt!”

For a long moment, Dick can’t figure out what she’s talking about. It’s been a monumentally shitty day, but he’s pretty sure he came out of it unscathed. Physically, at least. He follows her gaze to where it’s transfixed on his arm, and spots the blood-spotted bandage wrapped around his forearm. Oh.

Oh. The tracker.

He hadn’t bothered stitching it up that morning; he hadn’t the time. He can imagine it now, gaping and leaking blood, fat and hard muscle peeking through. If he doesn’t close it now, it’s going to leave an ugly fucking scar; nothing like the perfect, unblemished skin the tracker left behind while going in. Wayne Tech had been working on subdermal implants to deliver medicine for chronic illnesses a while back; it would’ve been so easy for Bruce to appropriate their designs for port of entry to get the tracker in without Dick noticing a thing—

“Dick? Dick!”

He blinks. Kory’s shaking his shoulder, trying to get his attention. When did she get here?

“You’re cold,” she tells him, shifting her grip to his hands. They’re shaking, he notices. That’s weird. “Go take a shower and change. I’ll heat up some more of the frozen pasta from the pantry.” She tilts her head, and for a second she looks almost other-worldly, like a creature sizing up its prey. “Pasta’s okay, right?”

He stares at her, and Kory sighs.

“Is he okay?” Rachel asks, her voice trembling on the last word. Just a little.

“I’m fine,” Dick says, the words scraping through his throat like he’s not talked in a long while (like he’s been screaming). “I’m just, uh, going to take care of this and clean up.” He waves his left arm at them. It’s throbbing, but distantly, like it doesn’t really belong to him anymore (it doesn’t belong to him at all). “And pasta’s fine.”

He can feel Kory’s gaze on the back of his neck all the way to the bathroom.

-

“You’re beautiful,” Dawn tells him. Her hands and lips are everywhere, fingernails catching on his scars, her tongue soothing them in their wake. She climbs back up and kisses him fiercely, hair tumbling over his face. She smells of strawberry-scented shampoo and beneath that, the faint whiff of antiseptic. He grins, cards his hands through her hair, and flips them both—

--and Kory bites down on his nipple while reaching for his groin, and he arches above her with a choked-off groan. “Beautiful,” she whispers into his chest, guiding him inside her, and he’s so close, so embarrassingly close—

--when it’s over, he collapses, relishing the slide of sweat-slicked skin against his, close, intimate, content to just be. “So beautiful,” Wally tells him lazily, squeezing his thigh.

Dick needs to say something, but he never does.

-

In a distant sort of way, Dick’s glad that Adamson’s still tied up in the main bathroom; it’s too big, too exposed. Normally, he wouldn’t mind so much, but tonight he’s content with the smaller, more discreet version attached to the third bedroom. He strips and steps into the shower, leaning against the wall while the shower beats a steady pressure against his tense muscles. The soggy bandage around his arm peels half-off, hanging, and Dick removes it completely.

The incision is puffy at the edges and bleeding sluggishly. He thinks it’s still salvageable; if Bruce’s usual safehouses are anything to go by, every bathroom should have an overstuffed first aid kit. Dick probably doesn’t even need the lidocaine; he’s so used to a needle pulling thread through his skin that it barely registers anymore. He just hopes they have good quality suturing thread; his skin is weirdly sensitive to anything other than Ethilon—

He wonders if Jason has gone through this particular ritual yet. If he cried like Dick did the first time. Maybe not. The kid cares too much about appearing tough, and besides, he’s distilled a truth about Robin that Dick never figured out in over a decade: Robin’s a distraction to draw fire. A dummy. A body. It’s not the whole truth, but it is a truth—so of course Batman would need to track him at all times. Jason understood this from the get-go, so he got to know; Dick didn’t. It would’ve been so easy, so convenient, to insert that tracker in him when he was sleeping, or laid up with injury or illness, or even during sparring—

Dick’s shaking again, but it’s no longer distant. His stomach rolls with nausea.

Oh, god.

He had something inside his body for months, maybe years, and he didn’t even know—

He falls to his knees and vomits the half-digested remains of the grilled cheese he’d eaten at Clay’s before leaving. His shaking’s only gotten worse, and he retches and retches again until nothing’s coming up but stringy bile. He’s kneeling in a disgusting sludge of vomit and shower water and the shower that’s still beating down on him is hot enough to hurt, but all he can think of right now is: there’s more there’s more there’s more!

Because that can’t have been the only tracker, right? No, no, Batman is much too paranoid, and Robin is too valuable an asset (too much of a liability) to lose track of that easily. And Dick’s made it so easy, so trusting and open with his body—

He stumbles out of the shower, and rummages through his overnight bag for his electronic scanner. He passes it over every inch of his body, but it doesn’t detect anything. Dick can’t relax, though, because that doesn’t mean anything; Bruce could’ve easily built an upgraded tracker that his old scanner can’t detect. After all, he has all of Wayne Tech at his disposal and Dick’s got—Dick’s got—

(skin)

He settles on cold, slick bathroom tile and drags the first aid box towards him. He pulls out a lancet, rips open the sterile packaging. He positions the blade over an old, long scar on his right thigh—remembers how it was torn open with a rusty crowbar by some random thug-of-the-week who got in a lucky hit. Remembers Bruce holding his hand while he writhed and whimpered and Alfred slowly, painstakingly stitched him back together.

It’s as good a place as any to start.

Dick lowers the blade and makes the incision.

-

The night Robin lets Zucco die, he returns to the Batcave teetering on the verge of shock. He knows Alfred tried to get him to change out of his damp costume and come into the manor, but all he’s managed to get Dick to do is get his mask and gloves off and sit, shivering, on a stool, hands closed around a steaming mug of hot cocoa.

Robin waits while Dick quails.

Batman finally arrives and stands before him, a looming shadow. Dick opens his mouth, but no words come out. What can he possibly say after failing so spectacularly at everything he’s supposed to stand for? After feeling that sharp frisson of near-joyous vengeance when Zucco died in a hail of gunfire, still reaching to Robin for help?

“Dickie,” Bruce says finally, voice raw and disappointed and so, so sad. He reaches out to hold Dick’s shoulder, and something snaps inside of him at last, at long fucking last.

The mug falls to the floor with a resounding crash as Dick flees.

-

Blood’s seeping slowly from the gaping cut on his thigh. There’s no tracker there; Dick was quite thorough. Dick picks up the blade and moves to his other forearm. He’ll need to cover all the places he’s been touched; all the places where he stupidly provided easy access.

Before he can make the incision, however, a hand catches his, quickly, firmly. “Dick.”

Kory.

“I have to keep looking,” he tells her. It’s really important, but he’s feeling dizzy now, and she takes the lancet from him without much effort. The world wavers at the edges as she presses a towel firmly against the wound on his thigh and wraps another around his naked form.

He waits for her to say something (so beautiful), but all she does is settle next to him and pull him towards her. He leans in, closes his eyes, and shivers, and shivers.