#that bruce struggles to maintain his sense of self without him

[angstandhappiness]

INTERESTING

While Jason didn't try to get Bruce to kill, he did deliberately drag him into a situation where he had to watch someone be killed (or kill himself) to prove a point about the problems with moral code. He could have very easily killed the joker without all of the convoluted scheming to get Bruce there as witness.

Also considering how Bruce and Cass both see saving all life at all costs as their responsibility, and any death on their watch as their personal failure, its reasonable to assume they see that set up as being made implicated in the killing. And to them that is just as bad as pulling the trigger themselves. They don't take there was no other way for an answer to truly unhinged levels.

And due to all that I feel like Cass would see the UTRH set up as him trying to make Bruce part of a death for no reason other then to prove a point about how good family members kill for their loved ones (I know the whole revenge for murder is very complex but not for cass tbh). And in my mind she would see that as his most unforgivable act.

[stararch4ngelqueen]

Revive Your Piece of Mind

—

Time written-4:44 a.m

Jason Todd/fem!reader angst

—

The impact of both men tumbling onto hard, steel grates down below nearly caused the entire platform to tremble.

The rattle of his pistol landing beside him quickly found the palm of his outstretched hand before he stands abrupt, quickly standing over the masked bastard he’s fought the second he arrived.

“Jason!” You cry out for him the second he aims the gun down on Batman’s head, your bounds hands preventing you from reaching towards him and potentially disarming him. At least, that’s what Red Hood assumed you’d do.

“Stay out of this!” The masked criminal loudly demands, keeping his focus on the bat that laid below him, quickly registering what was doing on once he gained his bearings.

Bait.

The bastard used you as his pretty faced bait to lure him here. You; his girl, his sweetheart, the woman who took months of self defense and trained alongside the rest on occasion for amusement, but not him.

Not the Batman, never the Batman.

That was where Bruce took opportunity on your mistake.

What had he done to you, during the year he was dead? Did he brainwash you? Manipulate you? The textbook signs Jason pictured in his mind of what Bruce could’ve said and done to make you move on and forget him?

What did you think of him now? A much better version of the man he used to be, holding Batman at gunpoint?

"Do it, Jason." The words left your lips faster than you realized it.

It sounds so easy to scream out, as painful as it was. A wave of understanding shadowing over your mind. Bruce was the man who raised you both, and chuckled off to the side every chance he got from witnessing how close you and Jason became over the years.

The Red Hood was silent, eyes wide in surprise behind his mask, for all you knew. He believed you were another victim to Bruce’s manipulations, his mind games, his tricks.

"Do it, shoot him!" Came your eagerly desperate plea, as you were the one wanting to get away from the man who bound you here, keeping you restrained in the dark until both men came bursting through glass. Your eyesight limited via pale moonlight from the roof of this strange warehouse.

No. You thought Jason had changed, but it quickly showed that it was also the other way around.

You wanted him dead too.

This gravely surprised him. In a sick, twisted sense, he also found delight in the idea that Batman never got through to you.

He knew his girl was stronger than that. This so called master detective failed in that category too.

It made all of this so much easier.

…

Click.

…

Click. Click.

The lack of bullets resulted in an empty chamber. A horrific silence shortly following until a strange, deflated wheeze leaves the lungs of the darkly dressed victim at Red Hood’s feet.

A deep rumble of laughter erupted from Batman’s chest, a twisted smile growing on the man’s stoic face, sending you both deadly silent in a confused mix of horror and shock.

In seconds, Bruce swiped Jason off his feet, shoving his arm wielding gun off to the side. While Jason managed to clutch hold of the nearest railing to maintain his balance, he failed to block a harsh blow against his shielded temple, forcing his back further against the platform guards. The rusted iron bars gave way with a few creaks and loud clicks, sending a flailing armed vigilante down into the abyss down below, without a scream to his name other than yours.

Your irritated wrists now bled from your relentless tugs on your cuff restraints keeping you locked against the railings, cutting deeply into your skin the longer you struggled. Your lunged burned from your screaming, hoping you’d see a large grappling hook catch onto the grate platform under your knees.

You never did.

What was worse was the consistent cackling that nearly overshadowed your crying voice, not once taking a single breath of air since the second he started.

You couldn’t stop sobbing, quickly acknowledging the horrific realization that you had admitted you wanted Batman dead, in his very presence. Batman’s laughter never ceased, even when he turns his attention towards you, pitifully sobbing on the ground with no one to free you. No one to save you.

In a desperate attempt, you bash your shoulder against the railings keeping you stuck in place, hoping you’d get lucky to escape the storming footsteps of the cackling, false vigilante behind you.

You gasp awake shortly you feel a firm hand grasping hold on the back of your head, forcing your hands to rip from their tight grip on your blankets, violently swiping at the phantom of your dying nightmare.

The darkness was unfamiliar to you at first, but what brought forth a recognizing comfort was a faint smell of cologne on your sheets. Your bedsheets, on your own bed, in your own bedroom. In your own home.

As the darkness slowly grew accustomed to your teary vision, you could make out broad oval, leafy stalks of various potted plants, a small plethora of endless photos plastered along the walls with tacky tape, and your vanity with yesterday’s makeup palates sprawled across the surface.

Come to think of it, a strange heaviness lingered along your lap, contrasting the soft security of your blankets. Your hands met smooth, worn leather that once was draped over your very self when you slept. A quiet, gentle gesture he had always done when coming from patrols early.

What went from a slowly settling ease spiked up to a bright distress came from the absence of the warm body of your partner by your side.

Relax. Easy.

It’s what, the middle of the night?

Your hand searches through your blankets for your abandoned phone regardless.

A warm, amber glow caught the corner of your eye before your phone screen blurred your vision, forcing you to acknowledge this little light peeking from underneath your closed door.

Checking the time, you slip out of bed, spotting his boots parked by the bedroom door.

There he sat in the living room after a short tread down the hallway, a warm mug of tea perched on the coffee table beside his phone. His inky locks slightly framed his downturned face, peering at the words of a hardcover book in his lap.

While he could remain as quiet as possible due to years of stealth experience, the slightest suspicion of your presence in his nerves made his head turn. Teal eyes meet your gaze before your bare feet make the squeaky floorboards creak.

“Morning, mama,” Jason quietly greets while gifting you a short, simple smile. “Why’re you up? It’s early.”

A strange wave of relief douses your shoulders at the sight of him lounging in a weathered white shirt and gray sweats, hair tussled after hours of being flattened in a sweaty helmet.

This was his little routine when he came back from boring patrols early on calm, quiet days. Sometimes, sleep didn’t find him so easily as it should’ve, so he’d spend time catching up on his latest novel until his adrenaline died down.

Jason picked up on your hesitation to respond, your nervous tick consisting of rubbing along your forearm after you hug yourself. The exhaustion in your eyes, the hesitation to answer such a simple question.

He didn’t like what he saw, closing his book on an unmarked page for a later time.

“C’mere.”

He beckons over your exhausted body with a simple wave of his hand, which you gladly do.

He settles you in his lap, letting you tuck your legs by your side as he snatches the cream colored comforter folded on the armrest, pulling it over your shoulders. His warm arms consumed your shielded body, clutching you like a little child with a stuffed animal.

“Come on, look at me,” he encourages you to meet his gaze. “What’s wrong, babygirl? What’s the matter?”

His abandoned book laid face down on its cover title, but you managed to catch the abbreviation of the author along the spine. F. Dostoevsky.

You took a good while to come up with an answer, acknowledging the warmth and stability of Jason’s voice soothing your ears, his body heat a result from his beating heart encapsulated inside his chest.

Those patient, gorgeous eyes used to glare a crude, untrustworthiness when he came back to life. Now, all they ever gave you was wholesome contentment, especially with your love remaining ever so genuine after all these years.

“Didn’t sleep good,” you whisper, your throat itching for moisture. He clicks his tongue while he rubs your back, temporarily removing his hand to offer you his lukewarm tea.

“Wanna talk about it, Princess?” He offers, your concerns being his alone to claim. “M’all ears.”

Was this another dream? Part of you didn’t expect this was real. You weren’t fully sure what to expect, but this… was going a little too perfectly.

What were you expecting? The lightbulb to explode? For Batman to peer out from an unsuspecting corner, or break through a window? For this tea to burn down your throat like acid?

But that didn’t happen. It was just simple, chamomile tea. With no sugar.

“This needs honey,” you say after two sips, making Jason scoff.

“Not this early.” He gently pokes your cheek, tilting his head with a handsome smirk. “What happened? You miss me in your dreams, mama?”

It brings a smile to your face and a pleasant warmth in your heart. The last thing you wanted was to bother him with such a disturbing dream, enjoying the comfort that radiated off him in such a cozy, early morning ambience.

He was here, free, safe. That was all you really needed.

“I prefer you right here much better.”

“Who wouldn’t?” Jason retorts, his thumbs drawing soothing circles along your outer thighs.

“You sure you’re okay, babygirl?” Jason gently pries, his forehead settling against your hairline, his softened eyes full of concern scanning along your face for the fiftieth time.

You reply with a subtle ‘mhm’, softly exhaling through your nose while you tug the comforter closer. “I’m okay.”

Jason, while he didn’t voice it, wasn’t satisfied with your response. But, he wouldn’t pry. Not now, at least.

“Well, listen,” He slowly prepares his next words, hoping to put a smile on your pretty face. “I’m thinking of taking tonight off.”

Your raised brows, accompanied by the glimmer of happiness in your eyes nearly gives his heart a few palpitations.

“Really?” You smile, clutching the mug closer to your chest, your rising hopes becoming a soothing balm to your anxious nerves.

“Uhuh,” he continues, his other hand never ceasing their mindless movements along your skin. “I’m thinkin’ we can get some dinner, maybe go out somewhere. Whatever you wanna do.”

“I’d like that,” you reply in seconds, making Jason smile as he adjusts a few strands of your hair.

“So, what hits your fancy? Batburger, or pizza, maybe Superbabes—“

“Oh my God, Jason—“

“Kidding, kidding!” He laughs, holding your hands before you could hit him again. “Relax. Dick says the wings there are shit, anyway.”

“How about Lorenzo’s?”

His brows slightly widened in surprise at the familiar name. Lorenzo’s? The little Italian restaurant on the other side of town?

“We haven’t been there since we were, like what, still in highschool?” He questions with furrowed brows at the memory of it. A cute little restaurant, with seventeen tables at most, four of them being outside. They sold fresh gelato on Wednesdays, and always sold their desserts at half price on closing hours at the end of each day.

You smile and nod. “I know. They’re still owned by Emilia and her husband. Saw her the other day at the store, she wants to see how grown you’ve gotten.”

Jason could only smirk and tilt his head back in amusement, pinching the bridge of his nose while chuckling under his breath.

He could recall it now, the painfully awkward moments where the sweet owner’s wife, a short woman with fading blonde hair, would pinch his cheek before chastising him to eat more every time he brought you there on dates.

Back when he was a bit less muscles, and more goody two shoes.

“Fine, we’ll go pay them a visit,” he agrees, thinking it would be nice to see the old couple again.

He could practically hear Emilia praising the heavens that he took her advice.

“You don’t wanna order in? We can just go say hi.” You suggest, getting a bit of a feeling Jason may have wanted to skip the attention and just eat in the comfort of your shared apartment.

“Nah, I don’t mind,” Jason replies, resting his head on his propped up hand along the armrest. “We’ll leave a little before five.“

“That’s a bit early for dinner.”

“Takes time to look this good after all, babygirl.” He gives a weak shrug, expertly hiding a smile. “Gotta admit, it gets exhausting, but I’ll do it for Emilia.”

He laughs again when you playfully smack his chest, catching your hand in his shortly after to plant some light kisses along each of your fingertips.

You close your eyes, giggling to yourself as you take in the faded cologne clinging onto his shirt, the fabric rustling along your cheek as Jason murmurs just how much he loves you against the top of your head.

You loved him so much more than you could’ve ever imagined, stronger than your fears of losing him, stronger than your conflicted indifference with Batman. He wouldn’t imagine the lengths you’d go to prove it, to fall down the dark cavern with him if you had the chance.

Anytime to embrace this feeling just a second longer, not wanting to lose this. All you wanted to look forward to now was your date tonight at an old establishment running since before either of you were born.

Lorenzo would cry out your names, expressing such excitement at your grown faces, whilst Emilia gave warm, motherly hugs, gifting you two of her famous pistachio cannolis to take home.

The heartwarming sentimentality was nearly enough to diminish the cryptic cackle of the dark knight’s laughter into a ghostly whisper in the back of your mind.

For now, sleep came much easier, the ease of your worried mind settled by the calming tempo of your beloved’s heartbeat.

[bigskydreaming]

Brain topic du jour is reflecting on the frankly weird as fuck pattern in Dick’s life where....he barely ever experiences losses one at a time. Most of the loss he’s experienced in his life is compounded by him losing multiple people and other elements of stability all at the exact same time.

1) When his parents died, in some continuities this is coupled with him losing his extended family of his aunt and cousin as well, with his uncle left comatose and on life support for years before he eventually died as well. Even in continuities without Richard, Karla and John, the loss of Dick’s parents is compounded by the additional loss of his circus family in the sense that he was taken away from them by the state and their constant reassuring presences in his life were no longer comforts he was able to rely on.

2) When Jason died, Dick didn’t just lose his brother, as the tragedy was compounded by Bruce’s reaction. I’ll never be able to gloss over the effects of NTT #55, personally, because I think its too key to Dick’s entire characterization and the specific direction his character took in the years that followed this, to like....disregard that Bruce however unintentionally, while lost in his own grief, added to Dick’s own sense of loss for Jason in probably the worst way possible. As by kicking Dick out and telling him to leave his keys, Dick - having no way to know or guess that they’d ever reconcile, just like he never actually went back to the circus being a regular presence for him - to Dick, this was in essence the equivalent of his childhood tragedy all over again. Losing not just one family member, but his whole family in one sweep, and all the comforts and stability offered by a home he was forced to leave. Even Dick’s contact with Alfred was minimal for awhile, because why would the guy who basically JUST saw history repeat itself and was like, well I know how THIS tends to play out.....why would he think that if Alfred felt forced to actually choose between his loyalties to Bruce and Dick respectively, that Alfred would pick Dick over the man he’d known and raised from childhood himself?

3) Titans Hunt. I know I harp on this one a lot, but you can’t deny that it fits the pattern. Dick didn’t just lose one friend and teammate.....he lost Joey, he lost a good four or five lesser known Titans who nevertheless were people he viewed as directly HIS responsibility to keep safe. With these tragedies compounded by the fact that though comics played out a lot more slowburn and extended stories over years back then, like.....the aftermath of Titans Hunt was still everpresent and directly died into Dick’s reactions and emotions during the Mirage storyline and everything that happened with the failed wedding and his breakup with Kory AND the fact that he was literally forced off the team he’d basically founded, by the government agency that took over the team and appointed Roy as its leader in his stead.

3) Graduation Day. The second time the Titans disbanded it was again not due to a singular loss, because Dick didn’t just lose Donna at this point, but also Lilith died in the exact same story and though Lilith is criminally underused, like, she’s also one of Dick’s oldest friends. She was literally the first Titan to join after the original five. This then led into the Outsiders era, where Dick was shown to still be reeling from the losses of this story for an extended period of time, and in a fun parallel to the Titans Hunt aftermath, Dick was also ousted from his leadership of THIS team by essentially a vote of no confidence by his teammates (and uh, Bruce too, literally).

4) The Blockbuster arc. Where Dick’s emotional state was due to a continued string of multiple losses. He lost his apartment building and almost every one of the neighbors he’d built a community out of, as we’d been shown him actively involving himself in their lives and vice versa for YEARS before this point. Then he lost his circus, his childhood home, burned to the ground and with dozens of deaths - both spectators and actual performers Dick had known and loved as a child. Then he lost his relationship with Barbara, his sense of self-security and autonomy to Tarantula, he lost another teen vigilante who died in his colors, the mantle HE’D created, when Stephanie was believed dead in War Games, and it all culminated in losing the city he’d invested himself in as his CHOSEN home, the place he dedicated himself to protecting, when Chemo blew it up.

Oh just for the record - my nonexistent passport to the magical kingdom of Narnia for a fic that raises the point when bringing up Tim’s losses in the Red Robin era, that like.....ALL of the above happened at literally the EXACT SAME TIME as all Tim’s referenced losses occurred. Obviously Steph meant more to Tim than Dick on a personal level, but I also included her largely as an anchor point to the timeline, to show how that death, and not long after that Jack Drake’s and then Superboy’s.... occurred right smack in the middle of one of the absolute WORST periods of Dick’s life. To be clear, I don’t intend this to suggest that no actually, Dick had it harder than Tim - nah. 

No thank you. Hard pass. I hate that sort of thing even in support of my own faves over other characters. No, instead the thing I’d love to see explored more is just in light of the SPECIFIC angle fics take here - that Dick’s actions while Bruce was lost in time showed an obliviousness to everything Tim had lost lately - for literally ANYONE to bring up or introduce into the timeline here an awareness of everything Dick had lost AT THE EXACT SAME TIME PERIOD. To establish that actually, Dick didn’t just ‘not understand what it was like’ - rather, its more accurate to say that nobody in universe around this time ever shows an awareness of Dick’s own losses and says oh wait, that doesn’t track then. 

Because obviously, with this stuff put in proper perspective, Dick understands VERY VERY WELL the exact thing we’re accusing him of not understanding by being oblivious to Tim’s losses that he’s not actually oblivious to because he tries to talk to Tim about them all the time, while meanwhile its everyone else who has absolutely mum to say about the fact that Dick’s emotional state is compromised to hell and back at this point, not JUST because of losing Bruce, but also because *gestures wildly* literally ALL OF THE ABOVE in the exact same time frame Tim’s extended losses happened in.

And okay I am going to indulge in slight tiny itty bitty pettiness and point out my ire that so many fics set during this time tend to recite listicles of Tim’s losses, with Steph, Kon and Jack Drake at the very top of said list....while paying no attention whatsoever to the fact that STEPH WAS LITERALLY BACK BY THE TIME THE RED ROBIN SERIES HAPPENED. She’s LITERALLY a person Dick sends to check up on Tim after Tim turns Dick away when he tries himself. How are you gonna stress the impact Steph’s loss has on Tim when you’re not even acknowledging STEPH’S RIGHT HERE IN THE EXACT SPECIFIC CANON STORY YOU’RE CITING??? I just. afhioskhflafhlafhklfahlfa. 

And not to put too fine a point on it, but you know who ELSE was also back at the same time? CONNOR. Superboy LITERALLY was already back to life by the time the Red Robin series even began. Like, the issue where a resurrected Kon and Cassie (Wonder Girl) have a heart to heart about the fact that Tim and Cassie ‘connected’ during his absence and Connor stresses that this doesn’t bother him or make him feel negatively towards either of them at all, because hello, he was literally dead at the time, why would he mind that two of the people he loves most in the world sought comfort in each other? Yeah, that issue? Literally came out BEFORE Tim even became Red Robin.

I MEAN. I’m just saying, when people constantly take shots at Dick’s choices during this period because of how much Tim had lost before Bruce already, in order to shift focus away from the fact that Dick lost Bruce every bit as much as Tim did......and you repeatedly emphasize the SAME three names as the focal point of Tim’s losses while paying no acknowledgment whatsoever to everything Dick lost at the exact same time Tim lost these three.....it quickly becomes kiiiiiiinda relevant in my opinion THAT TWO OF THE THREE NAMES CONSTANTLY MENTIONED AS BEING TIM’S LOSSES ARE NO LONGER EVEN LOST BY THE TIME THE SUBJECT COMES UP. Again, I’m just saying! Pettily, mind you! I am aware of the pettiness, I just beg awareness of like *again gesticulates wildly at all of the above* ALL THAT!

LOL.

But I digress.

5) When Bruce was believed dead while he was lost in the timestream. Again, Dick didn’t just lose the father who had been the only parent in his life for almost TWICE as long as his first parents......this was coupled with the loss of numerous other sources of stability in Dick’s life. There’s the matter of his personal sense of identity and self-expression....Dick FOUGHT against becoming Batman, trying to handle Gotham in Bruce’s absence as Nightwing for as long as he could, because he knew being Batman was very much NOT going to be good for him. He put so much of himself into building his identity as Nightwing, establishing himself in that role, that self-image, that yes, I maintain it was an actual LOSS for Dick, to feel like he had no choice but to give that up and everything it meant to him and his own life, in order to essentially live Bruce’s life for him in his absence. 

Because it wasn’t just being Batman that Dick was struggling with at this time....he also had to act as the patriarch to the Wayne family, essentially raise Bruce’s ten year old son, step into Bruce’s old role in Wayne Enterprises, all while getting no acknowledgment for any of this, for literally LIVING his father’s life instead of the life Dick had worked so hard to build for HIMSELF....because of course Dick’s actions and struggles couldn’t even be advertised beyond the family and close friends, because the whole point of him doing all this was so that nobody else even realized that Bruce wasn’t really there anymore. Dick didn’t just assume Bruce’s responsibilities. Dick assumed Bruce’s life, so thoroughly that most people didn’t even put together that Bruce was ‘dead,’ between Dick handling Bruce’s actual roles and responsibilities while Hush made public appearances as him. 

Like, when you’re living someone else’s life so completely that nobody can tell they’re even gone....how on earth does that leave any time or space for you to have ANY kind of life of your OWN, y’know? Not to mention the fact that like in so many times previously....all this meant that Dick couldn’t even afford to let his grief for his own losses show, because he wasn’t supposed to be grieving any losses in the first place, that was the whole point of the con!

Additionally, couple this with the fact that throughout this time period, Dick didn’t have Tim to lean on at all, because it was never that Dick kicked Tim out or neglected him or didn’t care....he’d actively stressed how much he needed Tim, because the partner Tim was convinced Dick chose ‘over’ him - Dick was the first one to admit back then that he DIDN’T trust Damian yet, couldn’t afford to, because he was all too aware that Damian didn’t give a fuck about him yet and couldn’t be guaranteed to step in to have Dick’s back - because that required mutual trust that Dick literally just hadn’t had time to build yet. And add to THAT the fact that during this time, Jason was actively antagonizing the family and Dick in particular at every turn, trying to bring them all down and basically write over what all of them saw as Bruce’s legacy with Jason’s own version of what he thought that should look like.

Also also, take into account that unlike how often we see fanon depict Dick as just too stubborn or proud to ask for help, there’s the fact that he actually had very few avenues TO ask for help! As already established, he DID ask Tim for help. Not like Jason was an option at this time, and Dick’s friends weren’t actually just sitting waiting in the wings and groaning about the fact that Dick was trying to do all of this solo....nah, they kinda had their own problems, which Dick was all too aware of?

Like the fact that in the wake of Final Crisis, it wasn’t just Bruce that was believed lost. Many other key Leaguers like Martian Manhunter were dead or lost, with others struggling to fill the gaps left in their absence. Cry For Justice happened right after Final Crisis too....that story where Lian was murdered? So it wasn’t like Dick was remotely going to try leaning on Roy when Roy had just lost his freaking DAUGHTER and very much wasn’t handling it well (and not to overshadow Roy’s loss at ALL, but please let’s not act like Dick - who had literally been the person to put a baby Lian in Roy’s arms for the first time and had known that girl for pretty much her entire life - like, it shouldn’t be used to detract from Roy’s loss at all, but it shouldn’t have to, to just acknowledge that Lian’s loss right at this exact time was painful as fuck to Dick, who’d loved his niece like crazy.)

The pattern of compounding, concurrent losses in Dick’s life. I’m just saying. Its there.

And it extends into the New 52 as well, where Forever Evil came right on the heels of Dick losing his circus in THIS continuity to the Joker, just as a way to hurt him in Death of A Family. And with the aftermath of Forever Evil and Dick’s own literal death, being like....the complete loss of Dick’s entire life, even though he was revived quickly. That didn’t mean he got to live HIS life though, since Dick Grayson was believed dead and he was told had to remain so, so its like fuck whatever he actually wanted to do as he went about on the Spyral mission aka something that pinched his own sense of morality and personal agenda at every turn and was kinda the last thing a therapist would recommend for a trauma recovery period, lol. And like, for all the focus that was paid to how Dick’s family were hurt because they believed they’d lost him when he was actually alive, let’s not forget that for all intents and purposes, Dick DID lose his family in the wake of his resurrection because he was flat out told over and over that due to what ‘he’d LET happen to him’ he was an ACTIVE danger to them, and thus wasn’t allowed by Bruce to contact any of them or lean on them to any degree, until Bruce got amnesia and stopped blocking Dick’s pleas to return home by just not being there to pick up the secret phone line at all. 

(And omg, the obliviousness that just EMANATES off the hot takes that Dick had a ‘choice’ in all this and he still CHOSE to do what Bruce told him....like. LOLOL, stop being pissy about me bringing up the term abuse apologism when its literal victim blaming to paint the guy who had to be beaten into ‘agreeing’ to the Spyral mission in the immediate wake of the trauma of DYING, all while his father vocally blamed him for his own suffering and the ‘threat’ he now posed to his family, keying directly into the guilt complex Bruce knows damn well is at the core of most of Dick’s motivations.....fucking please. There’s no choice in all that. That’s active emotional, mental and physical abuse aimed at directly manipulating Dick’s actions, delivered by the guy who knows Dick best in the world and whose approval - particularly when Dick is at absolute rock bottom aka Current Location - matters more to Dick than just about anything because his sense of self-worth has more in common with dog shit than actual dog shit does. Or something. Idk. That analogy got away from me. But like. You get it.)

BUT. I. DIE. GRESS. (I guess).

Aaaaaaanyway, so yeah! That repeating pattern throughout Dick’s life of ‘loss? What loss (singular)? My losses only come in groups, lolol, fuuuuuun’ - mmmm. Yeah. So that’s what’s on MY brain right now. Thoughts?

[theblackbirdsgemimagines]

May I request for the Leona, Vil, Azul and our boy Jack getting stuck in their MC's world and their experience? (MC is with them)

Oh sweet Jesus akdhakdhsk FORGIVE ME OF MY RATHER CYNICAL OUTLOOK ON OUR LIL BLUE PLANET 😬 I think it’s understandable to be more cynical than ever in this Hell Year, lolll

Send these poor, sweet babies back home, they deserve better than to be stuck here of all places 😅 ESPECIALLY JACK AAAAAA SAVE THE BABY 💔

Ok, not even going to play with you... Vil would thrive, lol.

Just give him time enough to stop panicking over all his lost clothes, magic, etc., and find new things that works for him and his detailed self-care routine, and whatever he chooses to do, he will make Fat Stacks in.

He’s the male version of Belle Delphine, here ajdhakdhsj

He appears anywhere, on tv with some company to continue his performer career he had back home, or on youtube/instagram, and he is almost immediately just as famous here as he was in Wonderland.

Can we really blame anyone, tho? Look at him.

And there’s no Neige here!

Also, ‘my’ Vil is definitely the one that knows there are many different ways to be beautiful~. He may be a bit more blunt to his friends if he thinks they’re not quite hitting the usual mark their talents place them in. But that’s only because he cares about them, and wants everyone to see their best, as he does~. He’s an absolutely encouraging sweetheart to anyone else/a beginner at whatever their passion is, though~. And either way, he’s your best cheerleader~.

Of course he still just doesn’t feel himself without his magic, or ability to do potions. I don’t think he’d find the witchcraft in our world would suit him very well.

If he was really stuck for good, of course he’d make the best of it. But if he could go home, especially if you wanted to go back with him, he’d jump at the chance. And always be on the lookout for the chance.

But that being said, I think, aside from all the world’s problems, of course, he’d find it interesting just how similar, and vastly different, things are here.

He donates Ass Loads to so many charities, like honestly.

Rich boy knows his privilege, and lets others ride off his advantages as much as he can. 💜

He becomes friends with James Charles. You know he does.

You can’t be truly fully beautiful if you’re not also lovely on the inside, too, after all~!

Rip Rook wherver he is, he is lost without his Queen 😔

Gosh, in direct contrast to Vil, Leona probably suffers the most over here?? Jahdkshdj

I know they based his sleep habits off a irl lion, but that also sounds just a Tad Bit like possible depression to me (along with a lot of the other ways he’s behaved so far, lol).

Get this sweetheart to some therapy, maybe?? Help him get a lil energy boost at least to help him feel better 💛

He’s going to HATE the work pace people have to maintain just to eat here, 100%.

He enjoys the entertainment the most, though~. Video games, things you can watch online, all those sorts of things~. Might like a few of our sports, too~.

Poor bby struggles with having to work, though, please help him 💔

At least he doesn’t have to live under being Forever Prince, here, and doesn’t have to worry about turning anything he touches to sand. And the lions in the zoos are pretty cool to go see~!

He’d probably love it if he could go to Africa and see what our “Afterglow Savannah” looks like here~. Meet the lions that are in the wild~.

I imagine he and Jack would both lose the ears for human ones, and the tails, too. (😢💔) So he probably feels weird seeing himself like that, and might miss his tail. Especially if it helped him with balance. Give him some time to adjust to it~. There’s these neat new tails people made for cosplay, that can move around on their own, if he’d like one to help him not miss his old one so much~!

I had to really think about what the heck he’d even do for a job, cause he’s so grumpy to everyone, retail’s just OUT, lol. And I don’t think he’d be that great at something like youtube, either ajdhsjjd

It’s hard for him to not just lay around all lazy, rather than think of stuff to do for it/actually get up and go do it. Let alone all the meetings, and interacting with fans, and the like.

So maybe actually being one of the zookeepers would be a good fit for him~. He’d be obligated to actually go, and he’d get to be around lots of different animals~. Might help him feel more at home, too~. I think he’d be pretty good at it, and the animals would probably be drawn to him~ 💛

He’d also absolutely challenge the authority here (or anywhere else that has appalling governments, especially if they’re not run by women). The state of things, and the way women and minorities are treated by white men around the world, and men in general, would absolutely appall him. He so drunk on that respecc women juice, he just can’t wrap his head around what the hell the problem is with those rich assholes in power. Put him in power, and he’ll ruthlessly show them what-for! ALL the others behind him would be women! Good grief, humans!

All in all, he doesn’t mind it here, but would also prefer to be home, where he can sleep more, and Ruggie can run around for him most of the time, lol

Besides, that allowed him to spend more time with you~! 💛

(LOOKIT THAT HAPPY BOY SMILE!!! I’M DEAD 💞💞💞)

Oh, Jack. Sweet, sweet Jack.

He absolutely becomes a personal trainer as a job, here. 1000%. He lives that Exercise Junkie Lifestyle, there’s just no doubt about it.

He’s VERY encouraging to his students, though~! Build up that beef, guys, he has total faith in you~! 🤍🤍

He absolutely loooooooves going anywhere to see wolves. He’d probably really love the wooded mountains in Europe, if you ended up there, or in Oregon/Washington if you ended up here in America~. Definitely Canada, or Alaska, too~! Just give him huge trees, snowy winters, and nearby mountains, and he feels right at home~.

Idk if he’d miss his magic a whole heck of a lot, tbh?? But he WOULD miss his friends and family! It’s just not quite the same here, though he thinks it’s beautiful and interesting to see where you came from~. 🤍

He’s a good boy 😭

Also appalled with the state of so many rulers and governings both in your home, and around most of the world, lol.

He can’t stand seeing so many people suffer like that! How can they possibly live the life that’s the most healthy and happy for them to live, disabled, chronically ill, or not, if they’re suffering under an iron fist all the time?!

He CAN’T stand for it. You won’t stop him till he sees good change starting to finally happen. Especially if you live here! There’s no way he can just sit around and have you be subjected to that!

HE’S A GOOD BOY 😭

You gotta calm him down a lot and remind him there are others just as good and kind as he is, fighting to change things too 🤍

God help people if he gets here anytime within 2020-2021. He’s sucker punching nearly everyone he sees without a mask.

He’s also sucker punching every nazi he sees, too.

My goodness, please show him the movie Wolf Children! He’ll hide the fact he’s crying multiple times through it, but it’s one of his favorite movies here~.

If you do manage to go back to Wonderland, please try to bring a copy of it with you. It’s the one thing he’ll miss most, and keep asking to watch with you again, before remembering it doesn’t exist there. 😭

He also misses his tail and ears a lot. Losing all of that + his senses would be very a very awkward adjustment for him, and he wouldn’t really like it poor bby 💔 Give him lots of hugs to compensate U-U 🤍

His favorite thing to do with you would probably be to go hiking, and stay in a little cabin in the woods, for a week or two~. Somewhere in one of the previously mentioned places~.

(I couldn’t find a chibi gif of Azul to use, rip 😭)

Azul is just straight up becoming a mafia boss, probably wkdhakdjjs.

He’s the ‘good’ kind, though. He’s learned his lesson since his overblot, and he won’t outright kill people for not paying him back, or introduce drugs, or anything like that.

He’ll help people obtain what they want as legally as possible... But that doesn’t mean he still won’t be sly as hell about it, haha~.

He’ll protect loyal/good customers and the areas they live in, too~. In fact, he’d probably reDUCE crime from doing so.

He just learns all the dirty ins and outs of everything about how things run here. And as much as he’ll fight for change as the others would, because there’s no way any of that is an acceptable way for you to live, he’ll work dirty in order to take advantage of the system, to do so. What better way, right? Make the dominos fall from the inside out.

He’s a good business man, he knows doing so would also benefit him, too.

He’s like Bruce Wayne if Bruce Wayne was a rich mafia leader jeehskdje

Need health benefits to work for him? Covered. Need above-average pay to actually afford your bills and other stuff? Covered. Need education to do a job for him? They’ll train you.

He’s also practically a Gordon Ramsey, tbh. Lots of his bars will pop up across the world, if he stays here long enough, lol. But they’ll all help a good number of people, in doing so~.

He also donates as much as he can, too. If he’s gonna become even a fraction as rich as Jeff Bozos, he’s ending world hunger and homelessness every year.

And boy oh BOY will he swindle the rich akdhakdhwj

He will whip them so hard, they won’t know what the hell hit them.

He may have been under restrictions at the college, but he sure as hell isn’t here. Watch out as he spreads his tentacles wings.

And, of course, he adores being anywhere near the coast. Doesn’t matter what part of the world you’re in, he just needs to be by the sea.

All the polution absolutely breaks his sweet little heart, and that’s one of the first things on his list to fix. Dealing with trash back home was much easier... you could just zap it all away at big trash fields. But you don’t have that luxury here.

Being that he doesn’t really like his ocotpus form (bbyyyyyy 😢💔), he probably doesn’t mind the permanent legs. At least he doesn’t have to constantly take a potion to keep them, anymore.

But it’s still awkward to get used to. And he can’t stand that he can’t breathe underwater anymore, or go too far down without dying from the pressure.

He’ll dive as often as he can~. And loves to dive, or snorkle, or just swim~, with you, if you want to join him~.

He does miss his home, if only for the beauty and familiarity it had, despite a lot of bad memories around it. But there’s no doubt he’d thrive here, in a way only he could~.

He totally believes your own version of mermaids exists, and gets excited over anything that could prove it to be true 😅

Plus, he’s just obsessed with how marine life works here in general~. If he can juggle being a freakin maffia boss, and a marine biologist just out of the pure love for it, I have no doubt he’d do it~.

Humans most likely evolved from creatures in the water?? That’s amazing~! So the ocean feels like a distant memory of a second home~! He’d love to bond over that, the romantic~ 💜

[superbat-lmao]

So then Damian shows up and it’s difficult because he doesn’t get along with Tim and Dick understands not wanting to get along with a sibling you feel like has been forced on you. And Tim still isn’t out of Jason’s shadow but Damian is difficult in some of the ways Jason was, and Dick has already resolved himself to trying harder. And now he’s trying harder at the expense of Tim, like any good parent.

Because Tim tried to be the easy sibling and Damian is the youngest and even if none of them have had siblings before, it’s expected of Tim to be the bigger person even when it isn’t fair.

Because now all Dick can see is someone who was trained since birth to be a killer and fill in their father’s shoes. Designed by someone who wanted to manipulate Bruce and found the one route that Bruce uses to self flagellate - taking in kids who he’s convinced need him, that only he can help, only to reject them when he can’t fulfill their actual emotional needs. It’s Bruce’s double edged sword, how he desperately wants a family and can’t seem to hold onto them correctly. It’s too tight or not enough.

It slow going.

And then Bruce is gone and Dick has to step into two mantles he never really expected to fill (we all believe our parents are immortal, especially if yours has literally changed the world) as Batman and now, Damian’s dad.

It’s being a circus performer 24/7 trying to maintain a shifting mess of facades just to get through the day. Forced levity, forced seriousness, holding back rage and resentment and grief at losing your own father and then basically becoming one.

Because Damian needs someone who will treat him compassionately, someone who will convince him of his right to be a child and make mistakes and have fun. And to place that sole responsibility on Dick, who is grieving his father, means that his sense of what to do, who to prioritize, how to handle this is shot to hell.

He takes Robin away from Tim to give to Damian. Just as it was taken from him. And he doesn’t seem to understand that he’s Tim in the situation because for a moment, he has so throughly embodied Bruce he’s unable to see what he’s doing as hurting Tim.

And when Tim leaves to go find Bruce, well, out of sight, out of mind. He believes Tim can handle himself, or he needs Tim to handle himself because Dick is already struggling to handle everything else.

And Damian?

To be thrown into a group of people who lack clearly defined social status, in another language, that do not properly explain rules or punishments beforehand and seem to dole out expectations at random, it’s like the universe giving you anxiety. It you didn’t doubt yourself before, everyone around you is trying to make you do so and it’s like never leaving fight or flight mode.

US soldiers and prisoners who are from this country have significant difficulty readjusting to “normal” life when they come back from deployment/lockup. To have a child go through that without adult support/comfort must be like swimming in the deep end of the pool. There is a forced casualness to America, an idea that people as individuals are free to do what they want, but it’s a lie. There is a social hierarchy, it just isn’t talked about to the point that people forget it’s there. To have to learn that hierarchy from people who can’t properly explain it to you unless you’ve broken some social boundary/moral code that also wasn’t given to you as a child is exhausting.

On the one hand, all of the adults in Damian’s life want him to “be himself” but on the other, each of them has some sort of mental image of what it was to grow up in the League and how terrible they think that would be, and picture Damian as a child that has had to repress “who they really are” beneath League training. Bruce and Dick and Alfred and Tim have clear ideas of what they think a child should be/act like. And it isn’t Damian. And instead of treating him like his own unique person, they are asking him to fit into their idea of who he should be as a child without explaining anything until after it would have mattered.

So yes, Damian falls back into League training or his Mother’s ideals sometimes, because it’s part of who he is, not something that was forced on him. If the others consider it trauma, that’s their business. And as he learns more of their world, he can eventually begin to see the positives of aspects of extreme individualism, like helping people or having personal interests and valuing others. But those weren’t exactly lacking where he came from, just expressed differently.

So he’s in a new country living with a man who didn’t know he existed and the weird amalgamation of a family he’s been collecting and has no clue how he fits into it. He feels lied to, like he had been promised someone who would understand him and teach him as all his masters before to prepare him for the responsibility of what is expected of him. (And Bruce could damn well understand him if he chose to make the effort, if he loved Talia and trained in the League then he’s the only one who could understand him. But he’s so wrapped up in his own angst he can’t see his son.)

And then Bruce dies.

And the tenuous nature of his position in the family, something he was told is beyond reproach, is suddenly in question.

He never asked for siblings, and if he had them, was under the impression they would be younger than him. So to have to now come to terms with the loss of his father and new reliance on his “brothers”? He’s not coping well.

And to Tim? Damian is perhaps the biggest betrayal Dick could make.

Because Tim idolizes Dick, loves him beyond measure. He understood his fight with Bruce over taking Robin. How it hurt him so badly that he wasn’t able to cope with the addition of Jason. And for Dick to turn around and hand it to a kid that hates him and repeatedly tries to hurt him?

Yeah, that’s betrayal.

So when Damian finally does learn to acclimate, does begin to trust Dick as Batman, to then have Tim show up with his Father?

That’s betrayal too.

It really strikes me how in so many fics where Dick Grayson meeting Jason Todd goes badly, where Jason is written to have a past history of sexual abuse usually, how callous/direct/abrasive Dick comes across through Jason’s perspective.

Like returning home and being suspicious of a stranger in your house, being so in the middle of your own feud with your adoptive father and family problems that it doesn’t even occur to you to snap into Robin/Nightwing training.

There are some I’ve seen where Dick actively makes it worse for Jason, like asking who the hell he is or saying to Bruce “you didn’t tell me you were getting another one” or especially anything A/B/O related because people love to write highly emotional reactions with those sorts of subtexts being explicitly laid out with the “scent” meanings.

But just, it strikes me how many people write him as an aggressive teenager who thinks he’s been replaced and that his father, who revoked his access to being a hero/his mother’s name for him out of a fucked up/misdirected sense of protection, doesn’t want him anymore. That it wouldn’t occur to him, in his own home, to have to respond to a situation with the same level of caution and understanding he grants survivors as Nightwing. That he’s really just 18 and in a space where he’s been conditioned to keep “cape business” downstairs and is reacting with all of the emotional volatility of a teenager because it’s the level of compartmentalization that Bruce instilled in him and he’s so woefully unprepared to have to code switch back into being Nightwing when met with familial turmoil.

And that Jason couldn’t possibly know any of this from The King of Emotional Repression™️ and that the man didn’t think to inform Dick of Jason’s situation. That Bruce can’t understand why it would hurt Dick to come home to something like this, or how it would harm Jason to be met with teenage hostility that is adult hostility.

There are a lot of fics where people write that Jason thinks B will “get rid of him” and other sorts of self deprecative phrases about him being homeless, a street rat, “turning tricks” in some cases. And that Dick is so blindsided by his own personal problems with Bruce that he just, none of this occurs to him.

That he really is only 18 and suddenly expected to be able to handle things he’s never even considered. He’s been trained to handle difficult cases, to see the worst of the worst, but Dick’s only 18 and has far less experience with families than he does with drug smuggling.

He’s an acrobat and a hero because of his training. He’s still learning to be a son, and now a brother.

[kinsbin]

Cooking Lessons [SI/Canon - Platonic/Familial]

Title: Cooking Lessons Pairing: Xena[Batmom]/Damien Wayne [Platonic/Familial Self Insert/Canon] Rating: G Word Count: 1865

Summary: Damien and Xena have a relationship of mutual respect, and that’s usually about as good as it gets. A bonding moment between the two of them, however, leads to some surprising confessions from the youngest of the Bat Family. 

A/N: So anyways Damien Wayne is my son and this is literally just a pice where he calls me mom for the first tIME

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

The night at the Wayne Manor was quiet, the only sound a soft echo of a television set having been left on in a room somewhere further in the darkened halls of the ever-expanding home. Xena leaned on the granite counter of the kitchen island and took a long sip of her whiskey, exhaling through her nose as she tapped the edge of the fine crystal tumbler she had placed the beverage in. Bruce Wayne’s grandiose manor never failed to amaze her, no matter how long she had found herself a resident among its halls. 

Bruce was out on business. By business, of course, it was Batman stuff, as it always seemed to be this late into the night. The mission was a small one apparently, nothing he and Jason (with Dick as backup) could’t handle on their own. That left herself, Tim, and Damien to spend time in the manor together. The thought of being left alone with the two boys left Xena uneasy for most the night, causing her to seek solace in a small drink alone as the boys spared down in the batcave, as their normal routine seemed to place them into doing.

The boys had been suspicious of her, as they had a right to be. With their father’s history in women, to be regarded with such sharpness was nothing unexpected that was for certain. It was Dick who accepted her first, followed swiftly by Jason and then, lastly, by Tim. The three elder members of the bat family seemed to find her well suited to Bruce and sweet enough that they let their guard down around her long enough to confess that they appreciated the change she had made in the older man’s life. Xena could only smile with appreciation at the generosity they gave her when it came to the so called ‘power’ she had over Bruce Wayne.

But then, oh, but then... there was Damien. 

Considering what history she could gather from Bruce and the others, it was no surprise he was taking the longest. She didn’t feel like it was right to rush him in his ‘acceptance’ of her either, if she could call it that. It had gone from him detesting her to, at best now, tolerating her existence and behaving neatly around her when Bruce was in the same room. Alone was even more awkward, sure, but he maintained cordiality. 

Though he was young he was smart. Xena never felt the urge to look down at him when they talked, her words flowing natural as they would with any adult conversation. It was in one of those conversations, something about the development of multi-media industries and their basis on socioeconomic culture amongst Gotham elitists, that he had actually referred to her by her name and not simply ‘Miss Imperial’ or ‘woman’. The words were shocking enough to nearly send her fumbling with her statements as she tried ot hide a smile, which in turn brought a blush of annoyance to Damien’s cheeks.

It was small, she supposed, but it was progress. It was what she was grateful for.

Xena wondered now, though, if the situation in the night was going to be too much for them both. There was a mutual understanding now of treading carefully among one another, taking time to plan out situations and discussions as they met. Bruce insisted she didn’t have to be so careful with Damien, but Xena argued that it wasn’t ‘careful’ so much as it was ‘respectful’. She had known the annoyance of being a child and not being taken seriously by adults. She had seen the resulting trauma that could grow from such behaviors and vowed never to treat a child like something so delicate and breakable, or like a pet to be trained. They were human. Damien was human.

A very tiny, sometimes intimidating human.

Footsteps brought her from her thoughts and she could feel her back tense at the sight of the very boy she had been thinking of. 

Damien froze in the kitchen doorway as well, his eyes wide as he watched her back. Neither had been prepared to run into one another in the kitchen, clearly, and the suddenness of their proximity created an air about the both of them that wasn’t necessarily awkward as it was unsure. New and distinct in its presence as they were given time with one another and no on else.

It was... different.

“Hey,” Xena finally piped after another slow sip of her drink, “Did you and Tim wrap up training?”

“Yes,” Came Damien’s curt reply as he walked further into the kitchen, “I was just going to get something to eat before retiring for the evening.”

She smiled despite herself, his proper demeanor never ceasing to fascinate her as she put her beverage down and sighed, stretching a little.

“I can make you something.” She offered.

“I couldn’t ask you to do that, Miss Xena.”

“It’s no trouble,” She smiled, “I was about to make some food for myself anyways. No reason I can’t make a little extra. Chicken and rice sound okay to you?”

There was a hesitance in his form before slowly, surely, he gave a nod of approval. With a smile back at him, Xena turned to the kitchen to begin preparing the food she had planned on making anyways, taking out fresh jasmine rice alongside some herbs and digging through the kitchen for broccoli and chicken with a hum to her lips. As she gathered and prepared the food that was soon laid before her, Damien found himself sitting comfortably upon the bar stool of the island, leaning his chin in the palm of a hand as he watched the woman work in silence.

“Why are you so happy?” His question was sharp, even though it didn’t mean to be, but Xena was unphased.

“I like cooking. I’ve always have a bit more fun doing it for others.”

“It’s tedious.Having servants to do it for me was far more useful.”

“Which is why you don’t know how to cook anything.”

“I can cook!”

“Cereal and toasting things don’t count.”

Damien blushed and looked away with a frustrated huff and Xena laughed as she chopped up the chicken and set out pots to start boiling water for both the rice and broccoli, dipping the chicken in seasonings as the bite sized chunks formed on the plate before her. 

Xena finished chopping and set a few different food items aside as she looked over at Damien with a tilt of her head and a thoughtful pause. It ended as she finally spoke with a curious hesitance in her tone that made Damien perk upwards to listen to her more:

“Would you like to learn how to cook this? I can show you now.”

There was a long, thoughtful pause and, for a moment, Xena was afraid she had overstepped their boundaries. Her pushing may have been the sharp wedge that removed them both from their once comfortable spot in respecting one another. Perhaps she had put the relationship of her and the youngest wayne family member in jeopardy?  Her heart beat loud in her ears as she tried to swallow casually.

“... Very well, show me.”

When Damien spoke those words she couldn’t help the sight of relief alongside the twitch of a smile against her mouth as she gave a nod.

“Go wash your hands first before you touch any food.”

“My hands are perfectly-”

“Damien.”

“Okay, okay I’m going!”

---

Damien wasn’t as patient with cooking as he was with other things. He grew frustrated when he couldn’t cut the broccoli pieces evenly enough and nearly threw the knife across the room when a splash of boiling water hit his hand as he dumped half of the rice down in one swift movement. Xena could only stifle her laughs at his struggles and talk him through each movement with patience as she showed him the proper way to hold a knife and helped run his hand under cold water until the burning of the previous boil had ceased.

By the end of it, though, they had a meal. A real meal that looked edible and carefully crafted: piles of rice topped with broccoli and chunks of chicken, sprinkled with soy sauce and sesame seeds for added flavor. The dishes steamed with an enticing array of smells to them that had both members of the chef team drooling with anticipation.

“Now for the best part,” Xena grinned at Damien as she handed him a fork, “Eating what you make.”

Damien stared down at his food, wincing curiously at it before slowly bringing a portion to his mouth. He chewed with a careful cadence, judging both the meal and himself in the singular bite he had taken from it. Xena watched as she scooped a bite into her spoon and chewed carefully, her eyes widening and her smile spreading across her lips in delight as she chewed with renewed vigor. 

“It’s edible.” Damien observed in near disbelief in himself.

“Edible? It’s delicious!” Xena beamed with excitement, “You did really well Damien! I’m so proud of you!”

The words fell from her lips with delight and genuine pride. So much so that Damien felt a sense of his own pride welling deep in his chest. It bubbled fitfully under the surface as he bit back a smile through another bite of the food he made with her help. 

His words, though, fell without a filter. They fell without his permission:

“Thank-you, Mother.”

The silence now was thick as Xena stopped mid-bite of her food and stared down at the boy to her side with shock in her eyes. Damien, in return, felt his own eyes widen and a bright red streak of embarrassment coat his face in a vehement shade. He choked on what rice he did manage to keep in his mouth as he leaned forward and coughed.

Xena’s hand touched him hesitantly, rubbing his back to ease the rice out of his mouth. Damien’s shoulders tensed at the feeling and he sat up shortly after he stopped coughing. Grabbing his food, he made any and all effort to run from the kitchen. Xena watched him speed off with surprise.

“Damien, w-wait!” She called, reaching out for him, but by the time she stuttered out his name he was gone. Swiftly returning to his room and hiding away as the words of his mistakes echoed in the halls he ran through. 

He had... called her mother.

It was unintentional but so, so genuine that Xena felt her heart rise with an ecstatic delight that likes of which she had never felt before. Her lips curled into an excited smile as she rolled on the balls of her feet and tried not to giggle in delight as she sat on the bar stool Damien was previously occupying and ate the rest of her meal.

She would talk with him about it later. The poor boy, without a doubt, had a lot to think about in that moment.

All she could think about was how she couldn’t wait to tell Bruce when he got home. 

[threewaysdivided]

Yo hey!!! I just read through your YJ:DW series and I absolutely love it??? So much??? You write absolutely marvelously and have such a wonderful devotion to characterization and everything feels very Real and Natural. Your pacing is most excellent, you really know when things need to be lingered on and when they don’t need much more than a passing mention. And g o d I absolutely adore how you characterize so many characters, but particularly Danny. Like, he’s still the same Danny from the-(1/?)

show, but he’s changed in very particular ways that really match with what he’s been through. He’s very cautious and nervous and frightened after everything that’s happened, afraid to trust, to let people know too much. And that makes sense with everything he’s been through! He’s been on the run for so long, settling in one place definitely chafes at him. More than he feels it should, but it does. And like! He’s so wary and on edge with meeting the Team and the League members. I am def- (2/?)

-initely looking forward to seeing even more of their interactions. And like!!! The team’s reactions!!! Are so well thought out and just fantastic. Like, how Robin is aiming for a mix of normalcy and just a touch of protectiveness. And M’gann is curious and welcoming and doing her best to be Team Mom without being overwhelming. And how Wally is so intensely disbelieving and flippant QND almost abrasive to Phantom. I really wonder how he’s going to change in his approach to Phantom,- (3/?)

-like if he’ll dig his feet in even further to the point of rejecting reality in an attempt to maintain the reality in his own mind, or if he actually will start considering the science behind ghosts possible. I’m so excited to see how that develops. Also, aside, can I just say I loved getting Black Canary’s perspective on things with the last chapter? It revealed a lot more of Danny’s proper abilities and strengths than ya’d necessarily be able to piece together with a younger perspective-(4/?)

-and it just really helps develop the dynamics of everything even more. I’m wondering if you’re going to end up giving Danny enhanced strength or not, and if so to what degree, as an aside, explaining a bit more why he might be pulling his punches. I also wonder if he has any hesitation with fighting living folks who aren’t actively trying to hurt him, seeing as he mostly has experience fighting Ghosts and Hunters. Also also, I’m just so excited to see them all go on a mission!!! (5 or 6/?)

-Aaaah I could keep gushing for a Good While but I’m forgetting how many asks I’ve sent and I don’t want to bother you toooo much, so Imma just finish with you write beautifully and I’m So EXCITED to see where you go with things and like aaaaaaaaah, ya kno!!! (6 or 7/ 6 or 7)

Okay, first things first, you are absolutely not bothering me.  You found a piece of free content that I put up and - with no obligation or expectation -  sent me six messages detailing how much you liked it, and that’s Delightful.  It made my morning.  ‘Bothering’ is more than welcome on this blog.  Encouraged, even!

We’ve got a lot to cover so let’s get to it:

Danny’s Characterisation

Danny’s character has been a bit of a challenge to balance at times but I’m pretty pleased with how he’s shaping up.  There was this trend I noticed back when I started where - even in fics I really like - people had a frustrating tendency to swing him too much in one or the other direction; either turning him into a confident wise-cracking hyper-powerful hyper-skilled Troubled Badass™ who everyone respected even if he was humble about it, or into a Sad™ Broken™ Tormented™ cinnamon roll who just wanted love and who trusted and is trusted by every hero with minimal persuasion, when really he’s somewhere in the middle.

He’s a hero, yes, but he’s also a teenager.  He’s experienced and competent, but it’s in the self-taught way that leaves him with rough edges, blindspots and a lack of technical skill.  He can be a good, confident leader when the situation calls for it but he’s also someone who reads as fairly socially introverted and canonically has personal self-confidence issues, anxious and depressive traits and really wants to be accepted by his peers.  He’s friendly and funny and likeable but lacks social experience in a casual setting and can struggle with expressing his feelings, knowing the right thing to say/ do and being open with people.  He’s not just one or the other.  He’s both.

I also really wanted to explore the Death and Secrets plot points with more emotional detail.  It felt like a lot of the time in stories where he lost his family, Danny would either stall out in a tormented Grief State right until a Power of Love/ Friendship-prompted revival toward the final act, or he’d be sad for 5-10 short chapters then bounce back to his old self and go off with his New Family like it ain’t no thing.  With Deathly Weapons I want the characters to have to grow and come together naturally; to earn their healing and show why/how they’d come to like and trust each other, or decide that the other person is worth making the investment.

The Team

It’s kind of funny in hindsight but the Team’s development was a oddly late addition to the planning.  Which was fine for Arc I - being very Danny-centric - but then, as I was brainstorming Arc II it kind of hit me that if I was going to call this fic Young Justice: Deathly Weapons I should really try to showcase what I liked so much about the series.  And then I realised how much Danny’s experiences (canonical and DW-verse) and Team Phantom paralleled different members of the S1 cast, and how much character exploration potential there was to be had.  Arc II is basically just 8 teens looking at each other and going “We’re not so different you and I” in various settings for 20+ chapters.

There’s this nice quote from Stieg Larsson that I think sums up how I see both Danny and the different members of the Team fitting together: 

“I’m not going to compete with you. I’m better than you are at what I do. And you’re better than I am at what you do.”

All of them have at least one thing they’re good at, and at least a few weaknesses that other members can cover.  Their skills are complementary, their personalities and experiences are complimentary and none of them feel redundant in being there.  And with the extra challenges a DW-verse AU opens up, it creates a space where Phantom can slot in without having to displace an existing well-established member.

It also makes revolving perspective a lot of fun as I can tag in whoever’s mindset and perspective best fits the tone and information that needs to be delivered, rather than risking any one character losing their characterisation to their role as de facto narrator.

Despite how he’s acting right now, Wally is actually one of my favourites.  Needless to say there’s a lot more going on with our resident speedster than simple garden-variety ecto/paranorma-phobia, but that’ll be explored more in the chapters Flashpoints, Combustion and Equilibrium.

Training and Powers

Bruce and Dinah both make fun writes because they’re adults with more maturity and experience, which makes them great sources of diegetic exposition and perception that the main Team wouldn’t carry as well.

I’ve gotten a few questions about Danny’s powers in that chapter and how close they play to canon, so I should probably clear that up.  First thing is that DP’s canon is very wibbly wobbly about Danny’s power set (Is it super-strength letting him lift that or is he touch-transferring flight to make it weigh less?  Are those ectoblasts actually fire or was that just an animation flourish?  Can he teleport or is he just really fast and invisible? Does him lifting a rake that one time mean he has telekinesis or was it just a quick sight-gag?) so I’ve had to make some calls with grouping and sometimes dropping or altering edge-case powers to create a system that makes sense.  The other thing is that Chapter 17 is Danny explaining the things he consciously uses on the job and exploring how they compare to similar DC powers, rather than detailing out every single aspect that makes him different from regular humans.  (Kind of like how you wouldn’t bring up your own lung capacity, 20/20 distance vision or excellent patellar reflex unless someone drew your attention to it).  The chapter mostly serves to do some character set-up for later and drop some needed exposition so that Danny won’t have to be breaking the flow of future missions to explain very basic facts about his abilities the first time he uses them.

As for pulling his punches, some of it is certainly to do with him being uneasy about fighting breakable living beings when he’s used to ridiculously tough Ghost Beasts, and some of it was specifically due to who he was paired against.  But again, that’s something we’ll explore in future chapters.

Pacing and Writing

At this point I can only put this down to lots of planning, drafting and taking inspiration from the styles and structures of some very, very good published authors.  Quite a few chapters started out as simple exposition dumps or time skips before I realised that they’d have more value expanded out into full entries of their own.  (My drafting process = step 1: write too briefly, step 2: balloon to massively bogged down self-indulgent explorations, step 3: reign it in to something readable).

Books I definitely took stylistic influence from:

1. Steig Larsson’s, Swedish crime-mystery series The Millenium Trilogy.  Lisbeth is one of my character references for writing both Batman and Robin.(NOTE:  Hard MA+ rating, cw for explicit discussions and depictions of misogyny, homophobia, violence, gendered violence, sexual assault, stalking, drug use and Nazis.  Good books but Discretion Advised.)

2. Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief.General influence/ reference for prose and imagery, especially for the tone of Roads to Safe Places (ch.15).(Beautifully written story about humanity, but set in WWII-era Germany so be advised that Nazism, Nazis, War and Death feature heavily.)

3. Patrick Rothfuss’ The Kingkiller ChroniclesGeneral influence/reference for style and prose, YJ:DW Ch. 15′s title is a deliberate call out to the same title in Chapter 18 of KKC Book 1.(Fantasy books with some fantasy violence and a little bit of sex but nothing especially shocking.)

I’m just so excited to see them all go on a mission!!!

Me too!  Quick question though:

Just one?  Or are all of these okay? 😏

Now that I think about it there’s a weird dearth of story missions outside of the one needed for set-up in most YJxDP stories.  Not sure why.  Anyway, Deathly Weapons is a beast, we’re going to do at least 10.  I gotchu fam.

Aaand I think that’s everything.  Thanks for dropping in, feel free to stop by anytime.  Hope to see you around! ❤

[artemisegeria]

The Picture of The Mind Revives Again (Chapter 5/?)

Title: The Picture of the Mind Revives Again (5/?)

Rating: T

Word count: 2112

Warnings: None

Summary: Sequel to “A Formula, A Phrase Remains.” Title is from “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth.

Vision has gone missing after Shuri, Bruce, and Helen revived him. Now they must tell Wanda what they did without her knowledge.

Chapter Summary: Vision spends some time with Helen Cho and talks with Wanda for the first time since being revived.

A/N: As I’ve been spending more time writing this story again, I’ve decided to make some slight changes to my original plan. Therefore, I added a final section to the end of the previous chapter (starting “The next three months…”) that ties in with what happens here.

I wasn’t expecting to update this today, but I got a sudden burst of inspiration. So, this chapter is in honor of the first anniversary of Endgame’s release. I remain bitter and determined to correct the fate it handed Wanda and Vision.

  Vision maintained his usual density as walked through the sand of the vast Sahara Desert. After his last trip to Russia, he had wanted a change of scenery and of climate. If he was truly to see what Earth and humanity had to offer, he needed to continue moving over the whole world. He needed to distract himself from the loneliness that gnawed at him and threatened his mission.

A wave of homesickness that had washed over him several weeks ago had caused him to contact Wanda. He had almost flown to New York right away, a desperate plan to meet the team when they returned from Washington forming in his mind. But something was holding him back. He was more than ready to see Wanda and Sam again and meet the new team. He positively ached to be with them at this moment. Though the old compound was destroyed, he had come to learn that home was about the people that one treasured, as opposed to a place of residence. He wanted to go home.

But he knew with every synthetic fiber of his being that he had to remain apart for a while longer. He had to learn himself not only as a superpowered, one-of-a-kind synthezoid or an Avenger or Wanda Maximoff’s lover, but as himself. Those were all parts of himself that he treasured, but it was not enough any longer.

Vision was not ready for all that going home entailed. He was not ready to take up the mantle of an Avenger again. He would always favor fighting for humanity and saving those who needed him, but doing so at need was different from it being his full-time duty. He would be unable to travel except where he had to go for a mission.

Vision had no doubt that the team would allow him to stay with them without the expectation of fully rejoining, but something about that felt wrong to him. It was an all or nothing life, being an Avenger. If he could not devote himself totally to it yet, he should not seek to join them.

He could not go home, but a compromise did occur to him. He prepared a message for Helen Cho. Surprised when she responded almost instantly, he responded with equal alacrity. Within a few exchanges, they planned for him to stay at her lab for a time.

After the business was concluded, Vision felt a sense of purpose and rightness emanate from his neurons and fill his entire self. There was only one thing missing. While he was not ready to go home yet or rejoin Wanda in their new home, he could at least communicate with her. The picture he had sent her a few weeks previously and their subsequent conversation had reminded him of feelings that he had long suppressed. So, he emailed her a story of his recent exploration of Tokyo.

He then embarked on a new journey as he waited for Wanda’s reply.

***

His first few days in Helen’s lab were spent getting acclimated to her new research. After her work on reviving him was finished, she had requested a leave to return to South Korea for a time to help U-GIN and the University of Seoul rebuild. Many of the scientists working with her were the same ones who had been kidnapped by Ultron. Vision was grateful that, after an initial period of nervous silence, they did not appear to hold his connection to Ultron against him, far more interested in the assistance he could offer to their research.

Within two weeks, he was sharing meals and evening activities with his colleagues. They were a tight-knit group, but they were letting him in. They recognized their own keen interest in science and other specialized pursuits in him. It was almost like being back with the Avengers in the early days after his birth.

But one thing still gnawed at him during those long sleepless hours in the middle of the night. He could always enter his resting state, but that time was the only opportunity for him to process his feelings amid the endless research. It was a concern that he had been able to push to the side since his revival, but he knew it would not go away if he ignored it.

He thought back to the first afternoon, when he hovered above Wanda in the forest and could hear nothing of her thoughts. That link had always been their special connection. Part of him wondered if they could even maintain a relationship without it. The rest of Vision’s consciousness rebelled against such a judgment. There was far more to his love for Wanda than their connection through the Stone, but it was important.

She deserved to know. They needed to talk about this shift in their lives. But he did not want to acknowledge the pain and the loss through cold electronic communication. He did not know what to do, so he asked the person he trusted the most in this building.

He approached Dr. Cho one day while she was preparing to go home for the night. “Helen, I have a query for you, if I may.”

“Of course, Vision.” She smiled at him and gestured to the seat across from her. He sat stiffly, folding his hands carefully in his lap.

“If you had something important that you needed to tell a loved one, but it was not immediately pertinent to your relationship, would you tell them right away or would you save the information until the subject arose naturally?”

Helen fell into an expression of deep contemplation. “Well, ideally, I would want more context. A hypothesis is only as good as the information behind it. But whenever I’m struggling with an interpersonal dilemma, I always like to ask myself what I would want the other person to do to me in the same situation. Would you want to know this information as soon as possible, or would you prefer your loved one to wait?”

Vision did not know how to answer that question. With the exception of his regrettable mistake of trying to keep her inside the compound before the break up of the Avengers, he had never kept any secrets from Wanda. She was the only one with whom he felt he could be completely honest. But know that they were apart, he was doubting that telling her about the loss of their connection through the Mind Stone was the best idea.

Vision did not realize how long he had been lost in thought until he noticed Helen was still looking at him in gentle inquiry. “Thank you for your perspective, Helen. I will think on your advice.” He said farewell. On his way back to his room, he passed many of his fellow researchers, but he begged off their requests to join them for dinner.

He truly considered all the changes that had befallen him since he was first attacked Thanos’s followers. Opening himself up to the full range of sadness, anger, and loss, he thought of all that must be done before he would be whole again.

It was around two in the morning when he reached the decision to invite Wanda to South Korea. Helen whole-heartedly approved the plan when he admitted the source of his earlier question, omitting the more private details of their connection.

That afternoon Vision began composing his letter.

Good day, Wanda,

I hope this missive finds you well. I appreciated your response to my last messages, and I am always happy to hear from you.

Today, I would like to ask a favor. I am currently staying in South Korea with Doctor Cho. I have been assisting with her rebuilding efforts. I was wondering if you would come here for a visit. There is an effect of the loss of the Mind Stone that I would like to discuss with you. It should take no more than a day or two to test my hypotheses.

Vision considered how to end the note. He wanted to conclude with “All my love,” but those words seemed strangely out of touch with the rest. There was also the problem of the silence between them. He thought that perhaps he had waited too long to have this conversation with her. He did not know where they stood with each other.

So he simply wrote:

Sincerely,

Vision

Waiting for Wanda’s reply was agonizing. He could not help but reread his message and consider how cold and inadequate the words seemed. Fortunately for his thinning nerves, it did not take more than an hour for Wanda to reply affirmatively.

***

Vision stood in the airport waiting for Wanda. It was quite a reversal from all the times he had visited her. When he saw her moving through the crowd, dodging curious looks and picture-takers, he smiled. “Hey, Vizh!”

“Hello, Wanda.” Lingering doubt kept both of them from embracing, but Vision did dare to take her hand. She smiled up at him. “Is this everything you came with?” He gestured to the small backpack she was wearing.

“Yeah, you know me, good at traveling light.” They started walking toward the parking lot. “Um, are we flying to the lab or do we have a car?”

“Actually, I have a motorcycle. They are rather popular here.” He led her to the motorcycle he had ridden to pick her up. When they reached the vehicle, Vision handed Wanda a helmet and secured his own, despite the fact that no ordinary crash could harm him.

“Is this yours?” She seemed impressed, and he was tempted to prevaricate. But that would be a poor way to start this new stage of their acquaintance.

“No, I am borrowing it from Helen.” She smiled at him as she put on her helmet. Vision mounted the bike. Wanda slid in behind him, wrapping her arms around his torso. He reveled in the touch that he had not felt since his restoration. Though he had become friends with the others, it was not the same as his love for Wanda.

That was a contemplation for another time. It was only a brief ride to Dr. Cho’s lab. He had made the trip to the previous day to ascertain exactly how long it would take. His trial had lasted only 5.4 minutes. But as Wanda hugged him closer to her, he found himself taking the long way. It was a full 12.3 minutes before they arrived at the lab.

Vision gave her a tour of the lab. All the areas he frequented were curiously empty. He had expected Helen to be available to meet with Wanda, but she was not in her office or her chief study areas. Vision eventually resorted to showing Wanda her guest room. Prior to her arrival, he had agonized over how to set up her room and whether he should invite her to share his.

But things were not as they were when they had last been together. They did not have a firm foundation on which to share a bed. So, Vision ushered Wanda into her room. She smiled at the vase of wildflowers on the table and the perfectly made bed. He remained standing in the doorway, not knowing what to do with his hands. He simply watched as she laid down her backpack in the corner and bounced onto the bed. “You can come in, Vizh.”

“Oh, thank you.” She shook her head at him, still smiling gently. Vision stepped inside. This did seem the ideal time to begin their necessary conversation. “May I shut the door?”

“Sure.”

Wanda patted the bed beside her. Vision joined her. When she reached out her hands, he took them gladly. “There is much we need to discuss. Since everyone else here appears to be occupied, I would like to begin if you are ready.”

“I’m ready. I’ve been waiting so long to have a real conversation with you.”

Vision hung his head. “I apologize.” She squeezed one of his hands, and he looked up again to see her gazing at him sympathetically.

“You don’t have to apologize. I spent the first year and more after being brought back feeling lost most of the time. It’s a lot to take in. It made all of us act a little strange.”

“Thank you,” he whispered. “I do believe talking will help.”

“I think so, too,” she said with equal softness. They stared at each other for a moment, both lost for words. Then, she squeezed his hands and pulled away. “All right! Let’s talk it out, so we can both feel better.”

[kiwisfics]

Marvel Preference - How You Meet

F/N - First name

L/N - Last name

F/A - Favorite animal (or any animal)

E/C - Eye color

X

Bucky Barnes (MCU)

 (Time frame: Post Winter Soldier, Pre Civil War/reuniting with Steve)

 “Wait a minute!”

 The pounding on your door had shook you from your sleep, worry welling up the moment you glanced at the clock on your bedside table. It was far too late for a visitor to mean anything good. In your hurry to get to the door, you’d tripped, catching your arm on the corner of a table as you had. 

 Finally, after battling your way through the dark of your home, you threw open the front door, one hand clutching an open cut and looking the very definition of a mess.

 Still, even in your state, you couldn’t resist being surprised at the appearance on the man on your doorstep. 

 “I thought I was having a hard night.”

 A rough laugh came from the stranger, “Sorry to prove you wrong.”

 You stepped to the side and motioned him in, though you noticed the way he hid his right arm. He wasn’t as smooth as he seemed to think he was. 

 “So, what exactly is the Winter Soldier doing standing outside my door?” Immediately, he tensed, panic clear on his face, “You can relax, I don’t have any desire to have government agents crawling around. I only just got myself out of SHIELD.”

 “Am I that obvious?”

 “I blame the hair. Try a man bun, no one would expect you to be running around with one of those.”

 “Noted.”

 You laughed as you pointed in the direction of your sofa, “I’m going to get this cut cleaned up. Do you drink tea? If not, I can start a pot a coffee.” 

 “Either’s fine.”

 “Got it. My name’s [F/N] by the way.”

 “You can call me Bucky.”

 “You’ve got it, Buck.” 

 He couldn’t help but smile as you gave him a playful wink.

Clint Barton (MCU) 

 (Time frame: Pre-SHIELD collapse, post Avengers)

 Being a SHIELD agent wasn’t always trouble after trouble, just as—you assumed—being an Avenger allotted some time away from the front line in favor of some much deserved rest. Your job, like any, though it allowed for much more action than most, still had times where paperwork and meetings made for a day that dragged on and on. 

 And this was one of those days. 

 You shared a short lunch break with a few fellow agents, none of which ever spoke to you, spending even their breaks with faces shoved into documents. You often wandered if the paperwork became more interesting the higher your clearance level was, they certainly couldn’t be so focused on paying for yet another building leveled by yet another Avenger incident. 

 After another uneventful lunch, you began the trek back to your office. There was much to be grateful of in your job—your own office included—but every job seemed to suck the life out of you after awhile. 

 As you meandered your way back to your office and the paperwork residing there, you happened to run into someone. 

 Both parties stumbled back a few steps, apologies spilling as you each took in the other. 

 It took only a second for you to realize who you’d bumped into. 

 “Hawkeye! I’m so sorry! I wasn’t paying attention to where I was- I-I’m a big fan! Of you! Not just the Avengers, even though I am a fan of the-” You breathed out a sigh, covering your face as you attempted to regain any of the professionalism that you had once thought you had, “I’m sorry, let me start over. I’m [F/N] [L/N]. And I am an agent, despite acting like a rabid fan.”

 Hawkeye, who had maintained an amused grin throughout your tangent, offered a hand, still smiling as you shook it, “Don’t worry about it. And you can call me Clint.”

 “Clint, right. Pleasure to meet you.”

Johnny Storm (Fantastic 4)

 (Based on the original F4 movies)

 When a flaming anything comes crashing through your bedroom wall, you scream. It’s the natural response. When you realize it’s a man you momentarily question your sanity. And, finally, when said man ends up passed out on your bedroom floor surrounded by destruction, you’d normally call an ambulance—or would you? How often does a flaming man crash through someone’s wall? Unfortunately, whether you wanted to call an ambulance or not, your only phone had been pulverized when he flew through the wall.

 Who had a landline anymore? It wasn’t your fault.

 You dragged the man—who was easy to identify as the Human Torch—onto your bed and began to search his body for injuries. The injury that had knocked him out was quite easy to find, a large laceration on the back of his head, clearly from when he’d flown through the wall. You had expected more, considering the man had flown through a wall, after all.

 You cleaned up his wound with all the skill of a random citizen having a superhero falling into her care. 

 It wasn’t more than an hour or so after that he shot straight up in the bed. His eyes immediately landed on your form, your feet perched on the back of a chair and your head on the footrest. An open book was in your hands, but it was forgotten the moment he awoke. 

 “About time you woke up, I was beginning to get worried.” You gave him a smile. “I’m [F/N] [L/N], the woman you owe a wall.”

 “I’m Johnny Storm.”

 “I’m well aware, Mr. Human Torch.” You motioned to the part of your floor he’d landed on, burn marks standing out against the hardwood. “You owe me floorboards too.”

Logan Howlett (X-Men)  (Time frame: Pretty much any. Post Origins and the first X-Men)

 Your story wasn’t unique in the world of Mutant and human conflict. 

 Your parents had kicked you out the moment they discovered you were a mutant—class A parenting, if they asked you—and that led you to pick-pocketing and stealing to stay alive from day to day. 

 You didn’t like it and realized that you had no more of an excuse than anyone else on the street, but you had to get money somehow and people weren’t exactly fond of your kind. Mutants were given the short end of the stick at every turn and you doubted that would ever change. 

 More often than not people were more than willing to offer you money, at least, after you showed them your fangs.

 You didn’t think twice about who you were stealing from a majority of the time, you got them alone, bared your fangs, and then were on your way. That was that. You also didn’t think twice about your reputation spreading around, but it was, more than you could imagine.

 You were at a bar one night, as usual, waiting for one of the drunkards to go wandering out on his own, the prime opportunity to snatch a wallet with nearly no repercussions. When you were confronted by a man, you hardly flinched. “Are you [F/N]?”

 You looked up at the man without the slightest concern on your face. He was larger than you, but you’d robbed far bigger men than him. “That depends. You a cop?”

 “If I was, don’t you think you’d be in handcuffs by now?”

 “I suppose.” You hummed, before offering a Ganges grin, “Alright, alright, yeah I’m [F/N]. [F/N] [L/N]. And you would be?”

 “Logan Howlett.”

 “Logan? I think I just might remember that.”

Loki Friggason (MCU)

 (Time frame: Fight with Hela in Ragnarok)

 It wasn’t the first time you’d fought alongside Thor. You were an Avenger after all—well, honorary Avenger according to Tony, not that you ever paid much mind to his taunting. 

 You’d been with Bruce when he’d vanished, that much you knew, but you weren’t sure how much time you had lost in between that and regaining your sense of self. 

 You understood Bruce’s struggle better than the others ever could. 

 While you weren’t a “rage monster”, the moment your subconscious perceived a threat, your form was overtaken by that of a giant [F/A]. You and Bruce had bonded over this fact, leading to a duo of giants always ready to have the other’s back. 

 You’d never had the opportunity to meet Thor’s brother, something that your team often forgot, considering your own sibling-esque relationship with the Asguardian. 

 You hadn’t expected your first introduction to the supposed villain brother to be him announcing himself as the Asguardian people’s savior. 

 “You’re Loki?”

 “Yes. And you are?”

 “[F/N]. I’ve got to say, you’re not what I was expecting from the man who tried to enslave Earth.” He didn’t have time for a response, not that you cared to wait for one yourself. 

 Amidst your own fighting, you found yourself aside Thor again, “That brother of yours is a real charmer. Your savior is here! Is he serious?”

 With a loud laugh, he tossed a comeback, “He can be very theatrical.”

 “I think that’s a bit of an understatement.”

Peter Parker (MCU)

 (Time frame: After Ned finds out about Peter being Spiderman)

 Changing schools in the middle of the year always brought with it more turmoil than was necessary. You knew that better than most, after all, this was far from the first time you’d faced a mid-year transfer. 

 Still, it grew easier with each transfer and, you’d begun to realize, the older you got the more other students just began to ignore your presence. It was a lonely existence, but one you had resigned yourself to. 

 Besides, this would be your last move.

 Finally, after years of being tossed from one school to another, you were sent to stay with your [relative]. 

 Still, the first day was like many before it, lonely and awkward as students would offer you fleeting glances before returning to their own groups. With any luck, you wouldn’t paint a target on your head to attract those of the students that would just as well bully you as let you alone. 

 “Um, hey,” you toyed with the straps on your bag as you approached the least occupied table in the lunch room, uncertainty in your voice, “would you mind if I sat here?”

 “Oh, yeah, sure!” You smiled as the two boys scrambled to clear off the spot in front of them. 

 “Thanks, I’m [F/N].”

 “I’m Peter, this is Ned.”

 Hardly a moment after, Ned interjected, “Have you heard about Spiderman?”

 Peter elbowed him, earning a laugh from you. 

 “Yeah, the guy from those youtube videos, right? I figure it’s all in the suit. Unless he’s some alien or something. Why do you ask?” You cocked your head.

 “No reason!”

 “Uh, yeah, just curious.”

 “Whatever you say.”

Pietro Maximoff (MCU)

 (Time frame: Post-AOU au, Civil War; Pietro sides with Cap.)

 (E/C) eyes observed the male intruder traipsing about the warehouse you had adopted as your own. 

 It hadn’t taken much to stake a claim on the property. It had been abandoned for years, nestled in the midst of a tangle of trees, too tightly woven to bring in the vehicles needed for destruction without taking out the trees too. Your particular abilities made it all too easy to convince those who did wander along, that the warehouse was home to a nasty number of woodland creatures. 

 It wasn’t as if there was any concerning individuals out searching for you either. The only people aware of your existence were the Avengers and you were sure that they wouldn’t divulge your location to anyone. 

 Though the recent divergence from friend to foe did make you wander. With all that had happened, any of the team might divulge your secret. 

 Said secret being your existence. 

 Curiosity filled your eyes as the stranger walked further into the darkness of your abode.

 The warehouse wasn’t exactly welcoming. Maybe his friends had dared him? He did look young. Maybe your age.

 You followed him via the old pipes running across the ceiling of the building. 

 “[F/N]!” Your name coming from the mouth of another being surprised you, “Captain America sent me!” You perked up at the title as he yelled into the darkness. Steve had always been more welcoming of your presence than Tony. 

 Knowing Steve sent this stranger also gave you hope that you hadn’t been ratted out by Tony and his Accord. 

 You silently dropped down behind him, “And why is Mister America hunting me down?”

 You couldn’t help but be somewhat disappointed by his lack of surprise. 

 “He’s gathering a team”

 “Well, I have always wanted to experience the superhero shtick. Name’s [F/N].”

 “Pietro.”

Sam Wilson (MCU)

 (Time frame: Beginning of Winter Soldier)

 “C'mon, Cap, you’ve got nothing on me. I’m known for being fast.”

 “Whatever you need to tell yourself to get sleep at night.”

 “Oh, I’m going to get you!” With a playful growl, you launched yourself onto Steve’s back. He didn’t miss a step, continuing his run while you placed yourself atop his shoulders. 

 Your partnership with Steve arose from your interest in him and those he had fought alongside. What was a one time interview for your blog became a strong friendship, one that resulted in even the reveal of your abilities.

 “On your left.”

 You perked up as Steve spoke to a fellow runner, giving the stranger a grin as he fell away. You must have been a strange sight, perched atop Steve’s shoulders.  

 When you next heard Steve’s comment, you were typing away a text, but quickly turned to the stranger again. This time, you offered a wave and gave Steve a tap so he would stop. 

 After hopping down, you fell in step beside the man, “Sorry about Steve. The whole superhero thing makes him hard to beat.” 

 “I figured that out,” he stopped, offer in you a hand, “Sam Wilson.”

 You took his hand, “[F\N] [L/N].”

 An easy conversation arose, him mostly questioning your relationship with Steve and, by extension, the other Avengers. 

 It wasn’t until Steve once again lapped him that he seemed to remember that he had been running. 

 “Don’t say it!”

 “On your left.”

 “Come on!”

 You rolled your eyes as you joined Sam in chasing after Steve, “Boys.”

Steve Rogers (MCU)

 (Time frame: Post SHIELD collapse, pre AOU, references the AOU scene with Thor’s hammer)

 Working for SHIELD hadn’t been among your aspirations upon leaving home. 

 Yet, here you were. 

 Or, more accurately, there you had been. 

 Your work as an assassin had long kept you separate from the golden heroes of the world, but the collapse brought that to an end. With what information had been kept on you being stored the old fashioned way, you’d made an escape, free to abandon all the drama that SHIELD had supplied. 

 So, you found yourself questioning why you now sat aside the heroes that you’d always thought yourself too tainted to friend. But here you were, the part of a bona-fide Tony Stark party, with all of the Avengers in attendance. 

 As the newest member—not that you were an Avenger, far from it—you received the spotlight as the group tossed questions at you from every side. 

 The conversation trailed away from you, for which you were grateful, and turned to Thor’s hammer. The men immediately jumped at the opportunity to prove themselves ‘worthy’ and you couldn’t help but make a snide remark toward their testosterone-fueled pride. 

 You also couldn’t help being impressed when the hummer moved for Steve—and beyond amused at the surprise on Thor’s face, but you’d leave that for later. 

 “I don’t think I properly introduced myself, Captain.” You gave him a grin, one everyone in the room could tell was flirtatious, “I’m [F/N] [L/N].” You held out your hand and he took it a grin matching your own on his face.

 “Steve Rogers.”

 You opened your mouth to speak but Tony quickly cut in, “Do you have to flirt in front of us?”

 “Tony!”

Thor Odinson (MCU)

 (Time Frame: Ragnarok)

 Meeting the heir to the Asguardian throne was the last thing you had expected from your imprisonment on Sakaar, but he was there, imprisoned the same as you. 

 Your time as a contender had brought you more than your fair share of pain, but the look on Thor’s face served to convince you he’d suffered plenty before even being introduced the the Grandmaster’s game. 

 Still, you knew Thor was the greatest chance you had to escape and you wanted your chance, even if it meant weaseling your way into his favor with all the womanly charm you had left after the months of fighting you’d done for the Grandmaster’s enjoyment. 

 “Hello there,” you gave Thor your best attempts at a sexy smile. 

 “Oh, yeah, this is [F/N].” Korg introduced you and you gave him a nod.

 “I’ll answer any questions he has, pal, you can go hang out with Miek, yeah?”

 He hesitated and you couldn’t help but wonder if he had the same plan or if he simply wanted to chat with the newcomer. Either way, he relented without protest.

 “He’s a good guy, great for some laughs too,” you shrugged, “I would have let you be, but I had to chat with you. Never expected to find an Avenger trapped in here with me.”

 “You’re from Midgard?” you gave him an affirmative nod, “How did you end up here?”

 “You’re asking the wrong person. All I remember is Earth and then,” you motioned a poof with your hands, “here I am.”

 “I’ll get us both out of here, you have my word.” 

 Any response you had died in your throat. He hadn’t even gave you a chance to flirt your way into his good graces before offering his help. 

 You decided then, Thor was your favorite Avenger.

[armageddon-generation]

Starting the DCEU right: fixing BvS and its lead-up

BvS is really frustrating, so I rewrote it, re-ordered the existing movies and inserted in a Batman movie

1. Wonder Woman

Start the DCEU off with  a ‘bold’ statement with the first female led superhero movie, and the first chronologically.

2. Man of Steel

Bright colours, bloody hell

Cut the heavy-handed Jesus/Messiah symbolism. Superman was created by Jews anyway, Christiansing him feels disrespectful

Put it in chronological order starting in Smallville, so we’re invested in Clark’s struggle

Pa Kent doesn’t die in a tornado, that scene is ridiculous

Move the Krypton sequence in the beginning to when Jor El is explaining Clark’s origin to him in the Arctic ship, so we maintain the mystery and don’t repeat ourselves

Focus on Clark trying to live a normal life – his relationship with Lois, becoming a reporter, while he fights regular crime in secret (the Smallville blur trope)

Zodd attacking disrupts that peace and forces Superman to go public for the first time

Thematically, classic ‘regular guy doing the right thing’ Richard Donner Superman is fighting off the ‘detached alien Messiah figure’ Zack Snyder Superman Zodd wants him to become

Metropolis’ destruction and Clark being forced to kill Zodd still happens, but show Clark trying to avoid populated areas and save bystanders instead of fight, Zodd just won’t let him.

3. Batman: Under the Red Hood

Under the Red Hood (UtRH) with a depressed robin-less Batman

Follow basic outline of UtRH animated movie (75 mins) in a 2-hour movie, incorporating elements of The Killing Joke

UtRH is a mystery that lets us focus on Batman’s detective side

Talia resurrected Jason as an apology to Bruce – allude to Damian’s existence when we visit the League of Assassins and establish their past romance

UtRH is the perfect story to introduce the batfamily - Bruce still isn’t talking to Dick after kicking him out to become Nightwing, the Red Hood pushes them to work together, but uncovering Jason’s identity fractures their relationship further (fight?)

Killing Joke happened recently and Barbra is still recovering. Show the events leading up to and after it in PTSD flashbacks, but framed through Barbra’s empowering story of recovery, not the traumatic incident itself. Maybe introduce Leslie Thompkins as her therapist.

Bruce is also estranged from Commissioner Gordon as a result of Killing Joke. When Jason finds out the Joker paralysed Barbra after he died and Bruce still let him live, he’s even angrier

This story is the perfect set-up for the DCEU’s (recast) Joker; he’s a secondary villain to Jason, but by mixing both UtRH and Killing Joke, his two most famous/heinous crimes, he immediately becomes a terrifying bogeyman with an established relationship with Batman

Stealth set-up for Birds of Prey (Oracle), Nightwing, and Red Hood and the Outlaws movies

By the end of the movie both Jason  and Joker escape and Bruce is left isolated and questioning his no-kill code after Jason’s arguments, Joker escaping yet again, and all his recent trauma, setting up his emotional state for BvS

The only ones to stay by his side are Alfred and Lucius Fox

4. Batman vs Superman

Clark is our protagonist, Bruce the sympathetic villain who’s redeemed by the end

After killing Zodd in MoS, Clark is determined not to kill – CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT through an opening action sequence

He and Lois are newlyweds 

Clark wants to be trusted, and that means conforming to government control (like in The Dark Knight Returns, except this time it’s sympathetic) – his moral dilemma is whether them controlling Superman is a good thing

Clark hates Batman because Bruce is becoming more and more recklessly violent (The Dark Knight Returns) since UtRH and The Killing Joke and his support structure collapsing. Clark reports on how the Bat-Brand is causing criminal deaths (which is now a big No-No for Supes, without him being  a hypocrite) - cut the unimportant conflict with Perry White

During the Metropolis attack Bruce loses someone. I don’t like killing a black character, but it makes the most sense that Lucius Fox would be in the Wayne Tech building and die. The audience has a history with the character – not only was he in UtRH, but also the Dark Knight Trilogy.

Alfred loses a leg, as in the Earth One graphic novels – that gruffer version of the character is similar to Jeremy Irons’ portrayal anyway

Bruce now has legitimate reasons to fear Clark, and he has no support network left.

Wayne Industries is funding the rebuilding of Metropolis, in collaboration with Lexcorp (like in the No Man’s Land comic event). Lex (recast) is presented as an ally to Bruce, sympathising with and stoking the flames of his Superman hatred

Insert the Diana subplot in here – BUT DON’T SPOIL HER BEING IN THE MOVIE IN THE TRAILERS. Bruce catches her snooping around at one of Lex’s fundraisers for rebuilding Metropolis. 

Lex doesn’t just have her photo – in the hundred years since Wonder Woman, Diana has become a protector of mythological beings (Nick Fury for the Gods). Instead of the email attachment of Justice League teaser trailers, Lex has stolen information from Diana that reveals the locations of Themascyra and Atlantis, the sister cities.

Bruce and Diana can have a philosophical discussion about new gods outmoding old gods without it being out of place – Diana is unsure of her place in this changing world

Lex is also planning to run for President – he encourages Bruce’s anti-authoritarian sentiment. The GCPD have started a manhunt for the more brutal Batman. Legitimise this sentiment further by having Clark’s main contact to the Government be morally corrupt Amanda Waller (replacing Holly Hunter’s Senator) who wants to use Clark in black-ops missions.

We see one of these missions. Amanda wants Clark to kill, which he refuses to do, only for her to kill the targets anyway. (a version of the drone strike scene that opened the original BvS)

This causes huge moral conflict for Clark – show he and Lois debating and supporting each other at home – Lois doesn’t trust Waller and starts investigating her.

Bring in the Sons of Batman subplot from The Dark Knight Returns – Batman’s brutal new tactics inspire a gang of, deadly copycat vigilantes. Possibly you could turn them into the We Are Robin gang from Scott Snyder’s comic run

We learn about the gang from the POV of one kid – Tim Drake (or Duke Thomas, but we’d have to give him Tim’s origin – figuring out Batman’s identity as a child detective)

Tim experiences the terror and violence Batman’s new brutality is inspiring on the streets of Gotham – he goes to Wayne Manor, only to find it abandoned. Alfred lets him into the Batcave to shake some sense into Bruce, and Tim gives his pitch about Batman always needing a Robin to balance him. Bruce kicks him out.

A scene where Lex inducts the wheelchair-bound Metropolis victim into his scheme.

The conflict and tension is driven up by Superman breaking up a Sons of Batman rally, then confronting Batman while he’s torturing some criminals.

Bruce is working on his power armour, exhausted. Here we see a version of the Knightmare sequence:

Future!Barry runs in, grabs Bruce and zips into the post-apocalypse to show him the future. This is the only time we see Batman kill in the movie – driven over the edge. He is fighting Evil Superman, bearded in the black suit, looking a lot like Zodd. Darkseid looms as a dark, unidentified figure in the distance. Barry runs Bruce back, yelling to find him in the present and watch out for Luthor, but Darkseid’s Omega beams hit and kill him just as Bruce is thrown back into the Cave.

He passes out, then wakes up later, convinced he’d had a dream about Superman destroying the world.

Lex lets Batman steal the kryptonite – he’s getting desperate

Finally, with the Batman crisis worsening, Waller orders Clark to take Bruce down.  Bruce is waiting with his power armour.

The fight should be a pastiche of fights from the comics – sonic weapons and kryptonite gas, but also Red Sun lasers and that moment in Hush where Bruce electrocutes Clark with the mains supply of a whole city.

Meanwhile, Lois’ investigation into Waller has uncovered that the government agents ordering Clark around answer to Lex Luthor. She realises Lex has been manipulating Superman and Batman into fighting in the hopes of killing both (supplying the kryptonite etc). Mercy Graves shows up to kill her but Lois escapes.

Meanwhile, Tim breaks back into the Batcave and steals a Robin suit.

Both Tim and Lois arrive at the scene of the fight and stop Bruce delivering the final blow. Instead of MARTHA!, Tim and Lois talk their respective heroes down, Lois explains Lex’s role. Bruce remembers Barry’s warning – was that dream real?

Lex realises what’s going on and releases his Big Bad, Metallo (replacing shit Doomsday), a kryptonite-powered cyborg mech created from the wheelchair-bound Metropolis victim and  Kryptonian-killing weapons technology from Zodd’s ship. This way the fight ties in with the consequences of Clark destroying Metroplolis.

Diana, having been in the Lexcorp facility to steal her information back, arrives to fight with Clark and Bruce. She’s decided she’s still a hero.

The power is out in Gotham after Bruce used the mains to fight Clark, and the city is in chaos.

Bruce enlists Tim to evacuate the city and stop rioting while Clark and Diana fight Metallo – adapting the Dark Knight Returns sequence where Bruce rides through Gotham on horseback, enlisting the Sons of Batman to do some good.

This is the culmination of Bruce’s arc; accepting Superman is needed while stopping a repeat of Metropolis’ destruction by damage-controlling his fight. He’s also taking responsibility for his impact on Gotham through the gang.

Lex remotely sets Metallo to self-destruct when he starts losing the fight. Clark tries to save his enemy (DEVELOPMENT from MoS) but dies in the explosion due to the fatal dose of radiation poisoning. This death sets up the next 'phase’ of movies

We’ve set up several threads for future movies – we are aware of Atlantis thanks to Diana’s information, without having Aquaman thrown in our faces.

Lex gets away – Bruce breaks into his office and confronts him, but Lex is untouchable and still running for President

Bruce is now privately investigating what he saw in the Knightmare, including finding Barry Allen

Tim starts training to be the next Robin – Bruce is learning from his mistakes with Jason.

Amanda Waller sets up Suicide Squad

Lois is revealed to be pregnant with Clark’s child at the end, paralleling Clark’s natural birth in Man of Steel

[terresdebrumestories]

Clakr Kent, of Krypton - 3/4: Superman

FANDOM: DC’s cinematic universe. RATING: Mature. WORDCOUNT: 29 999 (Fic total: ~98k words) PAIRING(S): Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne (main focus is on Clark, though). CHARACTER(S): Kal-El | Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Jor-El, Lara Lor-Van, Kara Zor-El, Zor-El, Martha Kent, Alfred Pennyworth, Diana Prince, Barry Allen, Arthur Curry, Victor Stone, John Stewart, J’onn J’onn, plus a quick cameo by Lois Lane. GENRE: Alternate Universe (canon divergence), transition fic with romance. TRIGGER WARNING(S): A great deal of anxiety and self loathing, especially in parts one and two. Some descriptions are heavily inspired by my experience of dysphoria-induced dissociation. SUMMARY: Batman crashes on Krypton a few days before the Turn of the Year celebrations and Kal-El's life takes a sharp turn to the left, on a path that will ultimately lead him to becoming Clark Kent.

OTHER CHAPTERS: [I. Kal-El] [II. Shadow] [IV. Clark Kent] ALSO AVAILABLE: [On AO3] [On Dreamwidth]

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Thank you, still, to @stuvyx​ for the wonderful illustrations and to @susiecarter​ for the beta :D

Healing pods are designed to be a blank space. A place where the body can heal and the mind be left idle, bathed in warm fluids and soft bubbling noises. There is nothing else, in a pod, save maybe the dizzying feeling left behind by the abrupt disappearance of pain. Kal floats in that warmth forever—or maybe just a minute—and the silence around him is occasionally broken by a deep sound, muffled, as if it comes from far away.

Then there is a vibration, a great noise of suction like the emptying of a sink, and Kal finds himself thrown headfirst into the bone-deep cold of reality, shivering and with half a mind to scream. He struggles, blind and disoriented, against the burning things trying to pull him—up? Down? There is no telling. Kal gasps, blinks against the veil that will not let him bring the world into focus. Twists away from the burn and ache of something else on his skin—and sinks into darkness.

The world comes back in snatches. Shivers—cold, then hot, then cold again. Gray-green so dark, it is nearly black. Voices overhead, talking...to him, perhaps. Or rather about him. Then there is dark, a vast emptiness that lasts for a long time, until Kal’s mind reaches the surface once more. Smells. Something dry, warm on his clammy forehead. A voice, deep and gravelly. The abyss.

The cycle continues for a while, though Kal could not say how long if his life depended on it. Several times, he almost wakes—brings images of what happens then into the next attempt—until he can finally open his eyes, blink, and know that he is in a spacecraft. More blinking, a painful twist of his neck, and he learns that he is in a Kryptonian spacecraft, most likely the one some El ancestor had the forethought to smuggle under the Citadel when space travel was banned, after the Lanterns’ war.

Pain and remembrance come to him all at once, then, as if one had called the other, and he gasps around them—breathes in, deep and hard, until his lungs hurt, his throat aches, and there are burning lines running from the corners of his eyes. His body aches, too, muscles still sore around the scar where he was shot, and his neck feels rigid under him, painful enough that his one attempt at raising his head tears another pained gasp from him. He tries to focus on this, and not the rest, but the memory of it—Kara’s face as he was lowered into the pod—rushes back, and back, and back every time he tries to push it away, until he has no choice but to surrender to the sobs or choke on them. There is a hand on his forehead, then, cool and dry and a shade too strong to be entirely comforting, and Kal wishes he could stop himself from leaning into it, but does not have the strength for it yet.

“Stop moving,” Batman says, something stern in his tone even after he tries to soften his voice. “You’ll make things worse.”

The snort escapes Kal’s throat before he can even think of stopping it, neck twisting again in the vain hope of catching a glimpse of Kryo’s silvery form. Hunits like it were never meant to pilot a ship like this one, let alone on an intergalactic journey. It makes sense that it would be keeping its entire attention on the task, added programming or no...yet Kal’s throat tightens again when he cannot find it, homesickness so strong for just a moment that it threatens to engulf him again.

He forces himself to swallow instead—accepts the water Batman presses to his lips, and asks, “How long was I—?”

“You were in the pod for about four days,” Batman says, “and unconscious for the next thirty-six hours.”

Kal manages a nod, throat tightening despite his best efforts. Six days away from Krypton—six days since he saw a glimpse of it for the last time in his life. The thought feels strange, in his mind—overpowering yet not quite there, like an obnoxious mirage waiting to be dismissed or reveal itself as reality, and Kal breathes in deep, tries to ignore the call of it. It is not an easy task.

“Well,” he forces out in the end, hoping against hope that a new thread of conversation might be of some help redirecting his thoughts, “I suppose it could be worse.”

“Hardly,” Batman replies, and Kal’s mouth clicks shut, what little resolve he’d managed to muster vanishing in an instant.

“Batman,” he starts, but, not for the first time, Batman snaps:

“Do not ‘Batman’ me. You have been walking around sick and sleep-deprived—you endangered countless lives with your recklessness, including your own. That shot could have killed you! You are lucky the healing pod was well-maintained, or you might be paralyzed by now.”

“I am sorry,” Kal mumbles, stomach slowly sinking to somewhere beneath his recovery bed.

Guilt presses at his chest, at his temples, at the corners of his eyes. Batman is, after all, perfectly right. In point of fact, he is being remarkably restrained about this—he could be much, much harsher on the topic and still say nothing more than Kal deserves, nothing more than the truth. Kal knew, the second the cycle began, that there would be no excuse for it.

“I knew you were green,” Batman continues, hissing more than speaking now, “but had I known you were such a reckless idiot—did you think yourself immortal? Did you think death would not take you?”

Kal looks away, biting the inside of his cheek until his focus narrows down to the pain and not the burn of words he would never be able to take back—until his eyes close of their own accord, lids burning as if someone were trying to seal them with melted wax. Overhead, Batman takes a sharp breath in, and Kal wishes he could fall out of existence as easily as dust from a shelf.

“Did you even care that it could?”

Kal does not answer. Eventually, Batman’s hand comes to rest on his shoulder, squeezing tight—too tight: the skin might bruise, but the gesture is a comfort nonetheless.

“Kryo says we should reach Earth in a few hours,” Batman says in a voice gone from furious to entirely blank. “You should take the opportunity to rest.”

There is the barest of pauses, as if Batman had inexplicably faltered, before he turns on his heel and leaves. Kal remains alone in the healing chambers of the ship, unable to bring himself to open his eyes. Batman might be right: perhaps Kal will like Earth. Perhaps he won’t. There is no way to be sure, but the one thing that is certain is that he will not see Krypton again for a long time, if he ever does. Tears gather in his eyes as fast as memories in his mind, and he makes no effort to repel either. His arrival on Earth—his installation, as far he can tell—will require his full attention, after all. If he is to lose himself in grief, he might as well do it while there is nothing else to do.

Krypton...the Citadel may not have been the best home, for Kal, but it was his home. He knew every wall, every room, every tapestry of it. The Citadel was a vast cocoon of familiarity and a—tenuous, but real—connection to a family he could never help but feel removed from. It was not an ideal home, but it was home, and now that Kal has left, the list of things he must mourn seems to go on forever. No more sunsets setting the mountains aflame with red light. No more standing on the balconies of the Stateroom of Peace and admiring the Lords and Ladies’ Citadel residences below. No more comforting himself with the knowledge that, whatever else might happen, there would always be his labs and his plants—and Kara—to return to.

Who can tell whether there will ever be that sort of space for him on Earth? The ship, he supposes, might be kept...but it will not be on Earth. What if Kal never truly adapts? Batman survived Krypton without much trouble on the physical side of things, so Kal is not too worried about that. But what if he never finds a way to fit in? And what will it cost him to even attempt it? He is willing to make the effort; that is not the question. But he does know all too well that sometimes, even doing one’s best is not enough...and what then?

There is no way to know. Kal lies there, on a small medical cot in an ancient spaceship, with nothing for company but the icy emptiness of space and an alien who must be overjoyed to come home, until exhaustion claims him and he finally falls into an uneasy sleep.

Kal wakes up with a shout of pain on his lips, the entire left side of his abdomen tingling as if with static. Most of his muscles ache, complaining over their disuse, the skin around them too tight and too dry for comfort. Kal breathes in deep, taking stock. The cot under him is moving—not in the smooth hovering glide of Kryptonian equipment, but rather with a regular rattle of small wheels on a smooth, hard surface. It sounds like the sort of cabinets Kal has encountered in the older corners of the Palace, antiques meant to store documents too precious to be traded for digital copies. A brief flash of himself as an antique—left in a glass case and surrounded by two or three conservation-specialized hunits—makes its way into Kal’s head, and he snorts against the hard material of something like a mask pressing on the lower half of his face. There is a blindfold on his eyes, too, but the feeling of the air on his face speaks of cool darkness rather than sunlight. The smell of water is in the air.

Kal raises a hand to pull his blindfold off.

“Do not,” Batman says overhead. “You are not to exert yourself until you are both healed and used to Earth’s atmosphere.”

Kal does not have it in himself to chuckle, even grimly so. Healing, he knows, will take time, but adapting to Earth’s characteristics...who knows how long that will take? Just because Batman stopped panting like an ox every time he moved after three weeks does not guarantee Kal will achieve the same. Even if he does, there is no saying what other problems Earth may pose to him. The planet shares a number of characteristics with Krypton, it is true. Batman would have died, otherwise. But it is also much smaller and much younger—as are its sun and its lone, undamaged moon. Who knows what that will do to his body?

“Would you at least remove the blindfold?” Kal manages. Then, when that provokes no response: “The fabric on my eyes?”

Batman speaks again, but over Kal rather than to him. Someone else—deep voice, steady tone,a different cadence to their words—answers him, and Kal’s tired brain somehow manages to recognize English, although he cannot make out any of the words he has learned. He sighs, trying to let the two voices lull him to sleep—he trusts Batman, after all, not to lead him into a trap—but in vain. He is grateful when, after a while, Batman’s hand—Batman’s naked hand!—brushes against his temple as it finally pulls Kal’s blindfold off.

“Thank you,” Kal manages, even as he blinks.

They are, as he suspected, not outdoors: a smooth, geometrical ceiling about twenty feet high blocks his view, light rippling over it with gentle irregularity. The lights are dim but clearly artificial, and while the space is too full to really echo, there is still a hollow quality to it as Batman and his companion discuss something or another over Kal’s bed.

A twist of his head reveals nothing but a rough wall of untouched stone to the right, the edges of Batman’s cape floating into view as he guides Kal’s bed along what must be some sort of walkway. To the left, a vast empty space, part of a large cavern that hasn’t been colonized by Batman’s vigilantism just yet. Kal stares at a large rock, jutting out of the water like Vohc rising from the depths of his very first creation, and follows the line of it into the darkness on the other side where a wall must be hiding. The walkway’s ceiling blocks his view when he tries to look further up, and he does not have the strength to twist enough to get a good look at the back of Batman’s cave; but he does catch a glimpse of a brighter area further in, the space built around—a statue, maybe. A column of some kind, in any case, and something Kal is reasonably sure is person-shaped, though whether it is meant to be an altar or a more profane sort of display, he does not know.

“Are these your headquarters?”

Batman remains quiet for a moment, while he and his—companion feels too impersonal. ‘Friend’ does not quite encompass the feeling in the air between them, much more reminiscent of Kal’s conversations with Kryo than the ones he used to have with Batman...and of course ‘hunit’ would be a wildly appropriate term to apply to any living being, especially one Batman addresses with that level of familiarity and respect. Whoever he is, he and Batman wheel Kal to a stop, the silence between them almost stony.

“Batman,” Kal manages, and is met with an explosive sigh.

“Yes. More precisely, you are now in the infirmary. Which I have, because I am not entirely foolish.”

Batman’s company speaks from somewhere on Kal’s right, and he sees Batman’s cowled head turn to look at them, the edge of his jaw squeezed tight. He does not answer, however, and turns back to Kal with a glare that makes Kal wish he could sink into the bed.

“Batman—”

“You deceived me.”

“What?” Kal protests. “No, I—”

“You told me you wished to help the citizens of El. You presented yourself as a man with a mission—not a death wish!”

Kal swallows, hands finding the edge of the medical cot and squeezing them as he blinks a sudden blur out of his eyes.

“I was not trying—”

“Were you not? You ignored every warning your body had to give, put everything you and your cousin had built in jeopardy—and all for what? To preserve your ego?”

Kal opens his mouth to protest—closes it. ‘That is not why I did it,’ he had been about to say, but would it have been true? He spent so much time focused only on putting one foot in front of the other—he never truly stopped to ponder his motivations for it. He wants to say ego was not the answer, but can he swear to the truth of it? Or does he only want to be seen in a better light than he deserves? He does not know—does not know that he wishes to know. Besides, does the answer truly matter to anyone but himself? His attitude the past few weeks constitutes either a dangerous inability to do what must be done, or a dangerous attempt to preserve undeserved pride, neither of which Batman should accept.

How could he? Kal may only have had a limited look at the man’s headquarters, but they are vast. They are full, too: full enough that even in such a cave the echo remains quite low, almost inaudible. Whether this cave is Batman's main lair or a secondary base, it must have taken years to assemble. Years of successful secrecy, years of building things Kal would never even have dreamed of accomplishing on Krypton.

Whatever Batman may be to his planet—however right Kal’s assumption that he and Shadow strove toward the same sort of goal, despite dramatic differences in their levels of success, turns out to be—it is quite clear that he has been working at it longer, harder, and far more competently than Kal ever managed.

“I apologize,” Kal says in the end, turning his face away from Batman, from the infirmary—from all of it, if he could.

To his right, Batman draws a breath in, ready to pursue the conversation—stops when his companion speaks. Four words, maybe five, and with no more steel in them than there had been before, but it is enough to shift the air in the room. At first the tension grows, as if on the verge of explosion—and then there is the scuff of a foot, the soft sound of fabric on concrete. Batman departs with the click of a door. For a few blessed seconds, all is quiet, and Kal swallows and blinks. Brings himself back under as much control as he can manage before the sound of Batman’s companion tinkering peters out. Kal keeps his gaze averted when the person steps nearer, focusing on the large rock in front of him, until the feeling of a hand on his shoulder—brief, soft, impersonally kind—makes him close his eyes again.

He is alone by the time he reopens them.

Kal must have fallen asleep without quite meaning to: he opens his eyes to the ceiling of Batman’s infirmary again, just in time for the door to click shut somewhere to the right of his head. His side is still quite sore, the skin itching with returning health, but his muscles feel mostly functional. With a huff of breath, Kal rolls over until he can prop himself up on his right elbow and take a more encompassing look at the cave.

He looks past his feet first, blinking at the sight of large metal doors set deep into the wall of the cave, the mechanisms necessary to have them move all but invisible. Whatever their purpose is, they look like the sort of things meant to withstand a siege. To the left, the walkway Kal was wheeled in on, flanked with two wheeled vehicles—ancient things, by Krypton’s standards, but Kal is starting to suspect they might not seem so to the average Earth citizen—and some sort of bulky aircraft. Kal studies it for a moment; notes the build of it, the disposition of its rotors, the way it is clearly meant for a lone pilot, before he moves on to the rest of the cave. There is the boulder he noticed on his way in—somehow larger and more menacing now that he is awake to see it. Behind it, glittering in the dark, an underground lake explains the damp coolness of the air.

It takes some effort to keep looking—Kal has to pull on still-tender skin in order to twist and follow the rough lines of the cave’s natural ceiling and find the bright white light of yet another glass case...a weapon room, perhaps, though it is difficult to say for sure. Kal has spent quite a lot of time poring over old books and microscopes, after all, and while his vision is not poor, it does show signs of use most Kryptonians' eyesight would not. It is difficult, in these conditions, to ascertain whether the shapes on the walls are truly objects or simple swaths of paint.

The display case, however, is easy to identify, and the armor inside unmistakable from that angle. Kal is still frowning at it when someone clears their throat behind him.

He turns around—too fast: it makes him hiss, flesh still tender. Healing pods have extraordinary properties, but it is a well-known fact that it does no one good to leave all the burdens of recovery to them. Kal takes a second to wish that were possible before he looks at the newcomer.

They are of average height, lean but not scrawny. Gray hair, cut short, parts on the side of their skull, and despite the scruff on their chin both the—visual aids, perhaps—and their clothes are immaculate, though the cuts and fabrics are foreign. But the care—the posture, the careful refusal to intrude—is familiar enough. Hunits, after all, are not the only sort of servants to be found on Krypton.

Kal watches as the domestic deposits a tray bearing water and a bowl of what seems to be broth—lukewarm, Kal assumes. It wouldn’t do to put his body through more effort than strictly necessary at this stage...especially not when they have no idea whether he will even be able to digest much of Earth’s food, if any. Batman’s ability to handle Ellon dishes with barely any discomfort is encouraging, but it does not, in the end, guarantee a similar outcome for Kal in any way.

“Thank you,” he tells the servant in English, flushing when he has to repeat himself.

Fortunately, terrible pronunciation is not enough to deter the alien—the human. Kal is on their planet, now: he is the alien. In any case, mangled phonetics or not, Batman’s servant does not seem to think less of Kal, smiling as they watch him dig into his predictably lukewarm yet delicious meal. At least he is lucky enough to start his days on Earth with a good meal. So good, in fact, that he waits until he has scraped every last drop out of the bowl before he thanks the servant again and, touching his forehead, says:

“My name is Kal.”

He repeats his name for good measure, and smiles when the human touches their chest rather than their head—"Alfred," they say. The oddity of the gesture is as charmingly incongruous in them as it was in Batman. The smile dims when Kal realizes he will need to adopt that same gesture in the future, and a number of other things he has yet to imagine but might very well find much more unpleasant than this.

He does not understand what Alfred says next, but the tone is easy to decipher, and Kal dismisses the concern with a practiced smile and a shake of his head. Then he asks:

“Where is Kryo?”

“Kryo?”

The corner of Alfred’s mouth twitches when Kal mimes Kryo’s shape in the air, but Kal ignores the urge to shrivel—squeezes his knee tightly enough for it to hurt—and watches the human point at the ceiling with one finger rather than their whole hand. Kal thanks the human in shaky English again, and is in the middle of wondering how to initiate something of a conversation when Batman appears at the door, Kryo hovering a step behind him.

He swallows, tensing without meaning to, and forbids himself from looking at Alfred for reassurance as Batman steps into the infirmary proper. There is something stiff in the way he moves, and when he speaks, it is with the grammatical forms of a noble and the familiarity of an equal.

“I was—harsh. This morning. That was...unnecessary.”

“Think nothing of it,” Kal says, heart hammering against his ribs without any good reason.

“I would,” Batman says, “but Alfred would disapprove.”

Alfred’s clothes rustle, when they recognize their name, but they do not comment, and Batman continues:

“He is pushier than he seems, but he is—not entirely wrong.”

“Please,” Kal says, voice somehow thinner and firmer at the same time, “there is no need to—”

“Look, you didn’t deserve—”

“Stop!” Kal all but shouts, blinking in surprise at his own outburst.

It takes him several seconds to bring his breathing back down to something bearable, to beat the urge to block his ears into submission. When he manages it, eyes stinging with vanishing pressure when he opens them, he finds his knuckles white on the coverlet. He has to work some more to swallow the sudden knot of tears in his throat, but once he does—once he feels his voice will remain steady enough—he ignores Batman’s renewed stiffness, pretends to forget about Alfred entirely, and asks Kryo:

“How long have I been in this cave?”

“Twelve hours and fifty-six minutes,” Kryo replies in its usual monotone. “The pod’s sedatives are all but out of your system by now.”

“Good. How long, do you think, until I recover?”

“You should be able to leave the bed in the next few days,” Kryo says. “Complete recovery is expected in one to three months, depending on the way you tend to your injury, and barring unforeseen complications.”

It is a good thing, Kal thinks—though he does not say it—that he will have little to do but recover in the upcoming days. Weeks...who knows how long, really. He knows little of Batman’s life for the present, the man incredibly discreet about it even when he still considered Kal a friend, but he knows enough to realize it will not afford Batman much time to take care of Kal. Should he even wish to. Whatever the road ahead may have in store for him, Kal had probably better prepare himself to face it alone.

“Thank you,” he tells Kryo, relieved when he manages to keep his sudden dread out of his voice.

And that is not his only source of reassurance: he has been done with his broth for ten minutes or so, now, and has yet to feel any adverse effect from it.

“Please set yourself up in language acquisition mode, and begin preparations for a learning course as soon as you gather enough data.”

“I did not know it could do that,” Batman says from his spot near the door.

Kal musters a tired smile.

“I suppose it is never too late to learn. It is a pity circumstances made this function useless to you, but I hope it might at least save you the trouble of finding me a tutor and explaining my presence on Earth, at least for a while.”

Besides, this way, Kal should be able to communicate with all relevant parties until he finds a place to settle in, whether on Earth or...elsewhere. Coming here was, after all, never part of the initial plan—that would have been the version of events in which an injured Kal left with a fully qualified physician as a companion, in addition to Kryo. But the moment came, and Batman was there, and why would Kara have deprived the Dark Sun of a most valued asset—and set herself up for the trouble of having to smuggle them back—when anyone could listen to a ship’s instructions and manage a well-functioning pod? It might have meant further gambling with Kal’s life, but he would have insisted on it, had he been conscious. He might have been reckless, and idiotic and—and a number of other things Batman has been too polite to call him, but Kal does have a certain sense of priorities, if nothing else.

“It should,” Batman says with a nod.

Kal watches him turn around and busy himself with the medical readings—some in the English alphabet, some in Ellon. The pointed ears of his cowl glint like teeth even in the darkness. Things remain quiet while Kal musters the will to speak, the broad expanse of Batman’s back more frightening now than it used to be back on Krypton, back before he tried to apologize, like he’d done something wrong, and Kal—swallows, ignores the tightness of his throat, and asks:

“Is there any way I might sit up?”

Most beds on Krypton are at least equipped with a positioning mechanism, designed to ease the daily life of the elderly. A bead mattress such as Kal is used to would most likely be too much to ask, but perhaps a bend in the bed’s frame...Kal bites on a hiss when Batman turns back around and fiddles with a small white remote, the bed lifting Kal’s upper body in a way that makes his left side twinge. Batman’s lips thin.

“I apologize,” Kal says, and feels his teeth click together when Batman cuts in:

“You nearly died. Pain is to be expected.”

Kal blinks, struggling to breathe for a few seconds. Then, in an effort to take the focus away from himself, he asks:

“Does Alfred know your face?”

“Yes,” Batman says.

His face—what portion of his face Kal can see, at least—does something rather complicated, his jaw tensing for the briefest moment before he says:

“I’m afraid I’m quite unused to sharing that secret with people.”

It takes Kal a few seconds longer than it should before he realizes what Batman is saying, what the raising of his hand means. This time, it is easy to ignore the pain in his side when he pushes himself off the mattress, hand outstretched, and says:

“Oh, no, there is no need—”

But Batman breathes in once, sharp and determined, and unclasps something in the neck of his suit, and suddenly there he is, staring at Kal with an expression—Gods. Kal is—he knows himself well enough to realize he would be transfixed by Batman’s face no matter what expression it bore. The strong jaw, the slight dip in the chin. The way his hair falls into his eyes, mussed from the cowl. It would, Kal is sure, take very little for a face like this to enrapture him completely.

But the way Batman looks at him is—there is something in it that pulls at Kal’s insides, something wild and raw—frightened, almost, but then...no. This is—why would Batman be afraid of him? He has seen every inch of Kal so far, a side of him so pathetic he never even dared to allow it into the light of day in front of Kara. How could a man like Batman be scared of—of that? Ridiculous. Kal blinks, heart hammering against his chest, and when he is done he finds Batman composed once more, face as neutral as it ever was under the cowl.

Somewhere at the bottom of Kal’s stomach, a shamefully perverse part of him misses—whatever made Batman’s face look like that, and he is still trying to figure out what to say when Batman clears his throat and turns away to inspect one of his displays with a look of intense focus.

“Kryo says you have undergone a fifteen percent amelioration,” he tells the display in a painfully neutral tone, and Kal—

“Thank you,” he blurts out, using the most respectful forms he can think of.

Batman pauses—so brief, so swiftly smoothed—and fiddles with the display screen in his hands.

“You helped me before,” he says without looking at Kal. “It seemed fair to return the favor now that you were injured.”

“Yes,” Kal makes himself say, the heat of a flush all but setting his neck and ears on fire. “Thank you for that, too.”

He is almost entirely certain he does not imagine the click of Batman’s teeth when he closes his mouth again.

Three days come and go, although Kal would not know that for sure if it weren’t for Kryo’s help. He spends most of that time sleeping and, once the suit is returned to him, using part of the material as a reading screen to lose himself in one of his favorite Flamebird myths. Not that there is nothing else for him to do; far from it. He must learn English, for one, and it wouldn’t go amiss for him to try and discover more about Earth’s cultures—or at the very least, the one Earth culture he is most likely to encounter in the near future.

He does not, however, have the slightest idea of where to begin, no true study plan—as this particular function of Kryo’s relies on the quantity of audio samples it can gather, and both Batman and Alfred are rather sparse with their words. There is also, of course, the matter of Batman’s six-month-long unplanned absence to deal with, and while Kal cannot possibly be of any help to them in that regard, he does at least know how to make himself unobtrusive during times such as these.

It is this skill of his that threatens to send him and Batman into their next argument. Kal, after all, does not only possess a functioning sense of when he is not wanted, but also a state-of-the-art multi-function military suit. In the end, it takes him comparatively little effort—although it does require a healthy dose of irritation at being forced to use a bedpan—to ignore Kryo’s injunctions not to leave the bed, slip into the suit and, having adjusted it to his needs, make his own way to the nearest bathroom.

The distance between said bathroom and Kal’s infirmary bed is irrelevant: by the time he is done with his business, all it takes is a couple of steps—three, if he is feeling particularly generous towards himself—before he has to sit down, winded beyond even making use of the suit. He is still sitting there, breathing deep and trying to keep the pain at bay with an archaic prayer to Rao, the cold of the stone seeping into his back, when Batman happens to pass by.

He has discarded the uniform this time, clad in a simple white shirt similar to Alfred’s usual uniform—and a style of pants that reveals much more of his backside than Ellon clothing did while somehow making the definition in his thighs much harder to discern. Not that Kal spends all that much time looking, but Batman is a beautiful man, and it would quite possibly be harder not to notice these things. Besides, with Batman refusing to do anything but stand by Kal’s side and look down at him with an expression Kal finds himself incapable of deciphering, there actually is little for him to do besides admire his host’s physique. Until, that is, the silence becomes unbearable.

“May I help you?” Kal blurts out.

He has enough time to stammer through half an apology at the ridiculous nature of the question before Batman nods at his legs.

“You kept the color.”

Kal looks down at himself, where the white cotton of his night shirt—Batman’s eyebrows rose when he heard the request—gives way to the skin-tight crimson of Shadow’s uniform, the material thicker than usual but still utterly recognizable in design. He feels himself blush.

“Restructuring it takes some focus,” he admits, one hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck. “Altering the color for this seemed like a waste of energy.”

“By ‘this’, I presume you meant getting out of bed before you were supposed to?”

Kal blushes harder, but does not deny it. What would be the point? The evidence is more than damning. What he does instead is brace himself for the return trip, making the suit prop his legs through the motions of standing up, and then blink in surprise when he wobbles and Batman catches his elbow with a bare hand. Kal might well be slightly more aware of the contact than is entirely appropriate.

“Thank you,” he mutters, and focuses on his feet rather than look up at Batman’s face when he hums.

“I have been meaning to ask how you built it for some time, actually,” Batman says after a few steps, glancing down at the suit just long enough for Kal to catch the movement from the corner of his eye.

“Oh, uh...I—I didn’t, actually,” Kal admits. “It’s Zodri technology. I became quite lost during a visit to their Citadel and stumbled onto a prototype of it—it was a genuine accident,” he adds, when Batman’s lips quirk upward.

Before then—six months before then, to be precise—he had been doing what he could with more traditional equipment. The abandoned elevator shaft in his lab had been a pain to go through, and swinging between roofs far scarier than anything Kal would ever care to experience again. That is not a time he will ever truly miss, but it would feel wrong to take credit for a miracle he had no part in, save perhaps being his pathetic self and growing distracted by reflected light in the luckiest of places.

“I think they’d accounted for just about every method of stealing their new technology save for someone strolling through the door and cutting some of the nanites off the prototype. Kryo did more to turn that suit over to my service than I ever did.”

“Criminal oversight on their part,” Batman says, and this time Kal allows himself to smile down at his feet.

“Pride makes a fool of many a man—and you might have noticed the great Houses of Krypton have no shortage of it.”

“Except you.”

Kal remains quiet until they reach his bed again and he can fall on the mattress with very little dignity. He knows the pinch of his lips is too pronounced for Batman to miss it, how unsubtle he is being—how unsubtle he is, as a rule—but there is little else he can do against the wave of shame and tears threatening to submerge him. He looks around the cave instead; the back of it is quite familiar at this point, although Kal has yet to be allowed near the front, let alone the upper level.

None of what he sees seems remotely achievable by one man, let alone quickly, and he forgets to look for a minefield before he asks Batman:

“How long have you been using these facilities?”

“Twenty years,” Batman replies—smooth, controlled. Convinced, possibly, that Kal missed the breath he took before he spoke. “Give or take.”

Kal turns back toward Batman, unable to hide the awe that seizes him—nor anything else, for that matter, though at least Batman is kind enough not to remark on it. There is a pause between them while Kal debates on the merits of asking his next question, but then it becomes apparent there is precious little of his dignity left intact, and Batman was already dismissive of him long before meeting Shadow. Kal might as well ask.

“How did you survive all of this for so long?”

“I am a better fighter than you are,” Batman replies.

Kal’s mouth opens and closes, treacherous heat crawling up his throat and into his eyes like lava bursting out of a reluctant volcano. He turns around, then. Refuses to yield to Batman’s hand on his shoulder.

“Get out,” he manages through the tight fit of his throat.

The mix of relief and disappointment at how easily Batman complies is a bitterly familiar sensation.

Ten days after his hasty departure from Krypton, Kal is allowed to walk under his own power again. He wears the suit, still—although in the form of dark gray slacks rather than Shadow’s form-fitting leggings—and he has to brace himself on Alfred’s arm for it, but his legs are actually up to the task, and that is all that matters.

Kal has not had any significant conversation since his latest attempt to leave the infirmary, for Alfred suggested the day before yesterday that Kryo attempt connecting itself to something the old man called ‘the internet’. The hunit has since been quite busy attempting to download it all and, judging from the fact that it has yet to emerge from the task or send any kind of distress signal, is still at it. As for Batman...he has, so far, kept his distance, a fact Kal found himself altogether more and less bothered by than he would have thought, both at the same time.

“He’s just so—opaque,” Kal tells the old servant when they reach the front of the cave, and Alfred has to make it clear Kal is not to go up the stairs. “I—I understand why he wouldn't want to associate with me, and I don’t intend to force it once he sees fit to have me out of here. I just—well, he is the only person I can talk to around here. Could talk to.”

Of course, ‘have a conversation with’ would be a more appropriate way to phrase it, but still. Being used to a certain state of isolation does not necessarily make it more agreeable to bear. Still, with Batman apparently out of reach for the time being, Alfred remains Kal’s only company, and it would not do to antagonize him. Kal lets himself be steered back toward the rear of the cave, where Batman’s vehicles and medical equipment reside, but does not resist a glance back as soon as the artificial ceiling gives way to the natural width of the cave. (Nor, he notes, does Alfred seem too keen on preventing it.)

It is a weapons room up there—the weapons lined around the walls make that clear—but it is one in name only. In the glass cases in the wall, old armors glare at the void, previous versions of Batman’s uniform preserved like trophies, mementos of what could easily be confused for past glory, if it weren’t for the centerpiece. Kal does not recognize the design. Has no context for the different colors, not enough knowledge of English to recognize the words scrawled in bright yellow all over the torso. He does know a memorial armor when he sees one, though—has walked by his grandmother’s often enough to know the signs. The way the room is oriented around the case; the slight falter in Alfred’s touch when Kal pauses. The way Batman purposefully avoids looking at it as he comes down the stairs wound around it and locks eyes with Kal instead.

He is much less surprised than the would have anticipated when Batman comes down to his level of the cave and relieves Alfred of his duty. For a while, they walk. Their footsteps do not echo, the cave too well-engineered for that, but the silence between them is so absolute that Kal almost imagines that they do. The more frightened side of him longs for small talk—an update on Kryo; a remark on his outfit, oh-so-similar to what Batman himself wears.

What he gets instead is silence. A short breath—the last one before drowning—and then Batman’s voice, almost offensively casual:

“It seems to me like I came across as quite—cavalier during our last conversation,” he says.

Kal has not bothered with the royal forms of Ellon since he was on Earth, Shadow’s words simpler to maintain and devoid of the ghosts attached to Kal’s more formal speech. Batman however, has either failed to notice—unlikely—or refused to acknowledge the change, sticking to the ones Kal first taught him. They do not make the gap between them quite as wide as it was when the man insisted on addressing Kal as a prince—merely enough to tell a Citadel Lord apart from a Mountain Lord of equal riches—but they do imply some form of superiority on Kal’s part; and tonight, more than any other night, Kal wonders whether they are a misguided attempt to preserve his pride or a form of deliberate mockery.

He does not dare to ask, however, and only hums in response, eyes still firmly on his feet as he follows Batman’s lead down the walkway.

“I did not mean to offend you when I compared—”

“That was not the problem,” Kal retorts, anger flaring with the abrupt certainty that Batman is fully aware of that, even though those words die in his throat before he can truly consider saying them. “Your superior skills were never in contest. But I have—I was only Shadow for eight years. Eight! And it nearly—”

Kal breaks off. Pauses to breathe through the enormity of what he has just said. What he does not want to think about. He did not mean for things to work out in such a way, but then Batman—Kal did not exactly care enough to put much effort into preventing that outcome, either.

“I am not—I was not trying to—” Kal pauses again. Breathes in the scent of chilly water and underground moisture. Then, keeping a tight leash on his tone: “I was not working toward a particular goal, but I know what I risked, and I know what I did or did not do. I—I tried to be more like you. I wish I could be more like you—that I could...help you, somehow. But I cannot be Shadow anymore. I wish I could but I—”

Kal hisses, swallowing against the hard stone in his throat, but does not find it in himself to say the rest. To acknowledge what Batman figured out days ago. He takes the last few steps to the infirmary doors instead, leaning on the threshold to get away from the unbearable heat of Batman’s hand on his elbow.

(Away from the bone-deep wish that he could afford to lean into it as much as he wants to.)

“I already have help,” Batman says after a heavy pause. Then, when Kal can’t help but glance toward the cave’s upper level: “Had help.”

Batman does not turn around, and so Kal does not look at the empty armor again. He looks at Batman instead—the wrinkles in his brow, around his eyes. The lines around his mouth that might follow suit soon. He sees the tension around Batman’s mouth, and the very tip of a scar peeking out of his shirt collar—the rough lines of his hands so at odds with the fine fabrics he favors when not in his nightly uniform. How many years of climbing rooftops in the night does it take to create a man like him? What sort of will? Nothing that Kal possesses, that much has been made clear, but that does not make him any less desirous to figure the answers out.

“I trained him,” Batman says after a long pause, angling his body away from the armor at the front of the cave, his gaze away from Kal. “Worked with him. Then he died.”

Kal makes himself hold Batman’s gaze, though the gesture costs him more than he would have thought. It is the first time time Kal sees that sort of harsh resolve on Batman’s uncovered face; but not, he suspects, the first time it has graced the man’s features.

“We will bring you back to full health,” Batman says at last, the tone of his voice leaving no room for discussion, “and then I will help you reach a destination of your choosing. Our contacts within the Green Lanterns have to be good for something.”

Kal nods, and wonders why admitting that he would very much like to remain on Earth feels too momentous to voice.

It comes as a rather significant surprise, to Kal, that that particular conversation with Batman should make things easier for him, but that is still the end result. After all, if even the partner Batman trained himself was not skilled enough to survive, how was Shadow—with his minimal training, his isolation, his poor grasp on the prerequisites of a vigilante’s life—ever going to do this for much longer? It is luck, pure and simple, that allowed him to survive that long, and realizing he never truly had control over it is—it makes it easier to focus on the present, if nothing else. When Kryo finally finishes downloading the internet after three days spent on the task, Kal throws himself into learning English with the energy of a man with absolutely nothing else to do.

It goes both faster and slower than Kal would have expected—the grammar is much simpler than Council’s, to say nothing of Ellon, but English phonetics are...well, they exist. Kal keeps stumbling on some of them, and no amount of self-quizzing or perusing the resources Kryo managed to compile can erase the fact that he does not actually have that many occasions to practice spoken English, except during Alfred’s visits around mealtimes. On the upside, Kal is getting fairly good at distinguishing the nuanced tastes of broths and soups.

“What do have?” he asks Alfred that evening while they set the table.

There is little doubt, in his mind, that Alfred would rather be performing domestic tasks alone—the Gods know no servant on Krypton would ever allow a noble to help them in their daily work—but Kal is not a prince anymore, and he does have some practice with pretending not to understand a rule so he can get what he needs. All he has to do is to think of this as a mission—call up some of Shadow’s strength of will—and here he is, twenty days into his indefinite stay on Earth and almost able to set a table. He tries not to think too much about what his family would think if they realized how much he is enjoying this.

“‘What are we having’,” Alfred corrects as he brings his tray carrier over to the tiny table.

Kal recognizes the word ‘soup’ and some form of negation, which, combined with the new eating implements, give him some grounds to hope for solid food...a wish fulfilled when Alfred lifts the cover for the main dish, and Kal discovers an array of colorful vegetables with a simple sauce, most of which—he assumes—he has had as a soup before. He takes his seat at the table just as Batman enters the cave, and doesn’t let his smile drop until after they have both started on their salad.

“Is there a problem?” Batman asks after a couple more bites.

“I think that will depend on you,” Kal admits, voice growing too thin for his taste. He clears his throat, and makes himself continue: “I was...well, in all honesty, I’ve been growing rather bored here, so in an effort to distract myself and learn more about this planet, I asked Kryo—”

“You had it search for information on the Batman,” Batman says, voice gone entirely flat.

Kal has to steel himself for it, but he nods and keep his eyes level with Batman's anyway. He may not have had the intention to do any thorough reading—all he wanted was the name of Batman’s city, since the subject has only rarely come up between them and, when it has, has brought more grunts than answers. Still, snooping is snooping, and there is no point in denying it now.

“What I failed to anticipate,” Kal tells Batman, knuckles tightening on his cutlery, “was that Kryo would take Batman to mean you as a person rather than just your vigilante persona, so—”

“You know who I am.”

“I know what your civilian name is,” Kal corrects. “I didn’t read further than that. I also had Kryo destroy the file, and gave it firm instructions never to share that information with anyone unless you explicitly permitted it. I have no intention of exposing you, you have my word. But I thought you should know.”

There is a long, long silence while Batman chews on his salad with the sort of care that used to have politicians on their toes when Kal's aunt and uncle displayed it. Kal watches the man’s precise movements, the deliberate absence of tension in the line of his shoulders—his neck, his mouth—and fights the urge to curl in on himself as if he truly thought Batman would hit him.

“So,” Batman says eventually, tone so even Kal has to wonder if it is truly natural, “you know—”

“I know your name is Bruce Wayne,” Kal says, glad for some reason that Alfred isn’t here to overhear, “but nothing else.”

“Good,” Bru—Batman says.

Then he sets his fork and knife down with infinite care, dabs his lips clean with a delicate napkin, and excuses himself from the table with his plate only half finished.

“I talked to a friend,” Batman says as he enters the infirmary the next day. “She is willing to take you in.”

Kal blinks, entirely unprepared for this conversation, although he does have a sneaking suspicion that he knows exactly what prompted it.

“You are well on your way to recovery,” Batman continues without even a hint of hesitation, “and we have vetted enough Earth foods you can eat for you to survive outside this cave. There will be things to watch out for as you decide where you wish to go next, but short of keeping you here for another six months, this is about as safe as we can make you for the next step of that journey.”

“Of course,” Kal murmurs with a nod, not trusting his voice to come out right.

He has been getting a little stir-crazy, lately, and it will do him good to see other parts of Earth, especially if he wants to stay here. It will be nice to meet this friend of Batman’s, not to mention make new experiences for himself. Nevertheless, the timing of it is—it stings, just a little. But then Kal does not have any ground to stand on here, and so he listens as Batman tells him about a place called Kansas and a woman named Martha Kent.

“She helped me when I had nowhere to go,” Batman says in lieu of explaining how they met, or what he was doing several hundred miles away from his city in the first place. “We stayed in touch afterwards.”

Kal nods, wondering whether—and if yes, how—Martha Kent knows the name of the man she saved. It is possible; Kal can’t imagine Batman accepting anything less than absolute privacy, unless he were unconscious and cut off from Alfred entirely. But it sounds just as likely that the vigilante would have kept his face a secret even after Mrs. Kent helped patch him up. Kal will have to wait and see.

“Obviously, you do not have to agree,” Batman says, when Kal, lost in thought, misses his cue, “if you would rather not risk the security breach—”

“I’m sure everything will be fine,” Kal cuts in, blinking once at the statement. “I trust your judgment. If you trust her, I am satisfied.”

Batman pauses to stare at Kal, lips pursed and eyebrows drawn down, and this time Kal widens his eyes in question. He does not truly expect a response—is not really surprised when Batman shakes his head rather than answer—but he would be lying if he said he was not curious about the reaction. Though with the way things have been going the past few days, Kal is starting to suspect this will merely join the long list of things he will never understand about Batman.

“The only problem,” Batman says after a moment, tone almost circumspect, as if he expects Kal to do something entirely outlandish any minute now, “is discretion. There is a shapeshifter in the Justice League who made sure Batman’s absence remained unnoticed, but Bruce Wayne has only been back on Earth for a few weeks. Transportation is not a problem, but—”

“Oh,” Kal cuts in when he catches Batman’s meaning, “my suit has a stealth function.”

He chuckles when Batman raises an eyebrow, but orders the suit to switch mode anyway. The camouflage is far from Kal’s favorite feature—he has yet to go through something as unnerving as being unable to distinguish the shape of his own body, even with floating hands—but it is efficient, and, once Batman tests it, proves decently resistant to basic scanning methods.

“Well,” the man says once he has gathered all the information he needed about this particular feature, “that solves a few problems.”

It takes a bit of time for Batman to organize everything—some of it spent verifying Kal’s affirmations regarding Kryo’s anti-gravitational properties—but on the twenty-fifth day of Kal’s stay on Earth he, Batman and Alfred finally depart for Kansas.

The first leg of the trip is entirely silent, owing as much to Kal’s current invisibility—and the subsequent need to pretend he doesn’t exist, lest someone think Bruce Wayne is losing his mind—as to Batman’s foul mood. Why that should be, Kal has no idea. Didn’t the man want him gone, after all? He should be happy. There is, of course, a chance that he is simply unhappy Kal gets to see the inside of his house—glass and metal everywhere. Not a spot of dust, not a single personal object left in view. Kal’s knowledge of Terran homes is practically nonexistent, but even then he fails to see what Bruce could find so embarrassing about it. It is almost as if no one lived there; what harm could possibly come of Kal seeing this? Still, it is clear Batman is uncomfortable the whole time it takes them to cross the house, and so Kal does not linger, nor attempt to strike up a conversation.

The sky outside is overcast, pewter gray rather than the deep ocher Kal is used to; but the smell of water in the air is the same, and the wind feels almost as cool on his skin as it did back in the Ellon mountains. The first fat drops of rain spattering on Batman’s car—a sleek black vehicle, which, if it weren’t for the wheels, would not have stood out too terribly on Krypton—are like a balm to Kal’s soul, the sky at least trying to match itself to the heavy feeling in his chest. He is, after all, leaving the first home he has ever known on Earth...which may not have been much of a home at all, not in the traditional sense, but it was a familiar place, and comfortable, by now. It is only to be expected that Kal would feel something like a pinch of nostalgia when forced to leave it.

Despite all that, things progress smoothly until they reach the airport itself. It is not so much the look of it that poses a problem. The pale gray shade and blocky shape of it are a far cry from Kryptonian architecture’s organic lines and darker colors, but that was only to be expected. The aircraft, however...Kal shudders.

“When you said ‘ jet ’,” he tells Batman under his breath, “I imagined something a little more advanced.”

“Are you scared?” Batman asks at a similar volume, angling himself so it looks like he’s talking to Alfred.

“At the risk of offending you,” Kal replies, unable to stop himself from sounding cross, “these look positively primitive to me.”

Batman’s snort is quiet, but the earpiece he wears makes it more than easy to pick up on. Kal, if he is honest with himself—which he tries to be, as a rule—is perfectly capable of admitting the fear seems ridiculous. He has made jumps far more dangerous than this, after all. Gods, if nothing else, Kal himself finds his own fear ridiculous...but the fact remains that he would much rather be swinging between the roofs of El than about to board one of these things. Even riding a h’mori as ill-tempered as H’raka seems abruptly preferable to flinging himself into the air on the back of what is, essentially, a spacious missile.

There is nothing to be done about it, though. Even were Batman willing to consider a last-minute change in plans, which seems unlikely given what Kal knows of the man, he did describe his jet as being at the forefront of technology. There is no smoother ride to be found on the planet, at least not on such short notice, and so Kal swallows the discomfort and follows Batman across the tarmac and up the steps with a weight in his stomach.

“Do you truly feel that uncomfortable with it?” Batman asks once he is seated, several rows away from Kal. “I’ve seen the beasts you ride on Krypton. Those can hardly be any less uncertain a ride than this."

“You’re right, for the most part,” Kal has to admit.

He still has vivid—and terrifying—memories of his first ride, seven years old and clutching the pommel of his mother’s saddle with white-knuckled fingers as the wind blew through his hair and swallowed his screams. But he had strong arms to hold him in place then, and a harness...and on the one occasion when he did fall, a trained animal with significant fondness for him that wasted no time in snatching him out of the sky.

“I would still prefer to fly on a living animal.”

“I am afraid we do not have any of those available,” Batman says, and Kal smiles under the helmet, thinner than he would like.

There is a pause, and then Batman says:

“You should take the opportunity to read up on Kansas while we fly. It would do you good to know some things about your new place of residence.”

“What is it like?” Kal asks, eyes drifting to where Batman is doing an excellent impression of a man hard at work—although for what reason, Kal can’t quite figure.

“Not this rainy,” Batman retorts with a jerk of his head toward the window, where the storm has picked up in intensity, streams of water gliding over the tiny windows. “And very flat.”

Nothing like El, then. Kal, abruptly glad for his invisibility, hums and braces himself for the pressure of takeoff.

The sky when they land is, if at all possible, even more uniformly gray than it was back in Gotham. Batman and Alfred both assure Kal the weather—although not the humidity—is usually better in the summer, but it does nothing to prevent Kal from longing for El’s dry mountain air. Earth, so far, has felt strangely like a soup, and Kal makes a mental note to include that in his next letter to Kara. It is a comfort to think this, in that it alleviates the loneliness of the place and allows Kal to remain quiet and composed as he climbs into Batman’s rented car. It still doesn’t quite make up for the foreignness of the landscape—the endless swathes of yellowed crops waiting for harvest, the ruler-straight lines of roads that have never had to find their way through knife-sharp rocks.

There is a turn, eventually—well, there are several turns, on several roads sitting at ninety-degrees angles from each other, but this one is an actual curve. It weaves through two fields: one mostly empty save for the yellowing grass on the ground and a four-legged mammal with a rather long neck; the next much wider and more trampled, filled with at least fifty adult mammals of a different sort. They are much rounder, for a start, brown where the other animal is black, and obviously heavier, even from a distance. The horns, though proportionally much shorter than a hurak’s, add to the impressive ensemble, and Kal can’t resist asking—in Ellon, for the sake of his own comfort—“What are these things, on the left?”

“Cows,” Batman replies. “Do you like them?”

“I think so,” Kal says with a shrug he knows Batman can’t see. “They look majestic.”

Batman chuckles at the word, and Kal is about to ask why when Alfred announces, “Here we are.”

Kal turns around and, taking advantage of his invisibility and the impossibility of his wearing a seatbelt while camouflaged, leans forward until he can fit most of his torso between the front seats and take a look at his home for the next undefined period of time.

He notices the red building—a barn, Alfred calls it—first. It sits to the left of the land, next to a larger blue building. Both are made of wood, both could probably use a new coat of paint, but only the blue one seems to have direct access to the left-hand field with its many cows—a shed of some sort, then? Behind them, a field of gray-golden plants lines the horizon, a few green trees sprinkled in the distance in a stark contrast to the pewter-gray sky. Kal follows the lines of it to the right, where the other animal—a horse, Batman says—grazes with a certain nonchalance, and from there to what must be the house.

It must have been white, originally, though age and the ambient light have turned it gray. A cubic building, two stories tall, with symmetrical windows on the facade and a comfortable front porch with a cushioned bench on the left. Golden light spills from inside, the sky overcast enough to make mid-afternoon feel like evening, and while Kal’s stomach hasn’t quite stopped lurching since he got off Batman’s plane, the sight of the open door makes something warm curl in his chest, and he smiles as he wills his suit into the shape of more ordinary clothes...and then, as he walks, there is a click of wood, the front door opens, and Martha Kent emerges from the depths of her home.

She is a fairly tall woman in a flower-patterned shirt and faded jeans whose loose black-and-gray hair floats in the wind even as she opens an umbrella against the first fat drops of rain. Kal, a step behind Alfred and two behind Batman, watches her push her hair out of the way and hurry towards them in plastic clogs, raising her umbrella high over her head and bypassing Batman entirely in order to shield...Kal. He blinks, surprised, and blushes when he fails to understand what she’s saying.

She laughs it off though, fussing gently at Kal’s shoulder and exchanging what he can only assume are remarks about the weather—he thinks he hears the word "rain" in there—with Bruce and Alfred. Together they hurry inside and shed their muddy shoes under the porch, Mrs. Kent’s eyebrows rising when she notices the nanobots starting in on the cleaning process. Then Kal is ushered inside the house and steered to the right toward a low couch upholstered in blue, a coffee table made of pale wood sitting in front of it. He stands just past the threshold, not daring to go further yet, and watches Mrs. Kent all but force a towel on Bru—Batman and Alfred each, the three of them amiably chatting all the while.

Well, perhaps it would be more accurate to say Alfred and Mrs. Kent are amiably chatting. Bruce—Kal was really trying to keep calling him Batman, fairly sure a switch wouldn’t be appreciated, but the man trying to finesse his way out from under Mrs. Kent’s attention is clearly far too flustered to be Batman. He loses the fight, Alfred and Mrs. Kent clearly having decided to team up and lovingly bully him into self-care, and is about done toweling himself dry when there is a loud bang and the sound of metal crashing to the ground, and then Kryo appears on the other side of the screen door. Kal hides his face in his hand.

“I’m so sorry,” he tells the assembly in English, “I forgot...stop?”

All three Terrans are looking at him, now, and he switches to Ellon in an attempt to at least spare himself the embarrassment of not knowing how to convey a simple thought.

“I forgot to turn off the proximity protocols—they kept it stable in the trunk, but—”

“But now my car is ruined,” Bruce sighs—and yes, it is still Bruce.

It is...uncertain, whether this change happened before and Kal did not notice it, or whether Bruce was unable—or unwilling?—to be anything other than Batman while Kal was in the cave. Regardless, there is something different in the slant of his shoulders now, a—not a relaxation, exactly. Kal doubts, sometimes, that Bruce even knows how to truly relax—not that he is one to pull the first feather. Still, from the outside it seems like a certain lessening of tension has taken place, and it isn’t something Kal remembers seeing before. The contrast is subtle, but real, and it’s enough for Kal to only mildly panic during Bruce’s five-second pause.

“Well,” Bruce says afterwards, already gesturing toward the door, “I suppose we might as well let it in.”

He does, and Kal is grateful for it, as it means the rest of the conversation, though in rapid English, is perfectly understandable for him.

“This is Kryo,” Bruce tells Mrs. Kent, “Kal’s personal supercomptuer-slash-butler. It’ll handle translations as long as they’re needed.”

Kal gives Mrs. Kent a polite nod, and can’t stop himself from blinking when she turns to him with a wide grin—the kind that makes people’s eyes crinkle, even. The force of it is enough of a surprise that Kal misses Mrs. Kent’s words entirely, never mind Kryo’s superimposed translation. He’s still trying to collect himself enough to ask his new hostess to repeat herself when he finds himself gently but inescapably directed to an open kitchen and its well-worn table, its wooden cupboards and the smell of freshly-brewed coffee. On Mrs. Kent’s instruction, Kal sits down on one of the pale wooden chairs, and tries not to scowl when a look at Bruce reveals the man all but smirking at him. Kal blinks, blushes, and then does his best to convey ‘I know you’re just glad not to be the main focus anymore’ without opening his mouth.

“I was thoroughly briefed on your food restrictions,” Mrs. Kent says as she deposits a thick slice of apple pie and a mug of coffee in front of Kal, forcing him to turn away from Bruce—who he could swear is starting to look a little nervous at the edges.

“I may have sent along a few allergy warnings,” Bruce says, and Kal doesn’t need to turn around in order to picture Alfred’s face as he deadpans:

“Six pages of them.”

Kal...has some practice, controlling what sort of emotions he lets other people see. Bruce-as-Batman may have been witness to more slips than anyone else in the world, but for the most part Kal has managed to keep the worst of his inadequacies to himself—often by design, but sometimes also thanks to happy accidents. It’s the same thing that happens now: Kal’s nerves burst out of him in a short, sharp bout of laughter before the blush blooms in his cheeks—his forehead, his ears—and spreads warmth all through his chest. Out of every new thing he has tried since he came to Earth, after all, only two ingredients have caused him any trouble, and even then nothing worse than a long sneezing fit and a slight bout of nausea...nothing to fill six pages with, really.

(But then, he notes, he is sipping on a coffee with just the right dose of sugar, and Mrs. Kent didn’t have to ask him how he took it.)

“Your coffee is excellent,” Kal tells Mrs. Kent once he’s mostly recovered from his surprise. “Thank you very much for having me here."

He doesn’t think he imagines the way Bruce seems to relax on the other side of the table, but before he can make sure of what he’s seen, Mrs. Kent all but beams at him, and Kal doesn’t hesitate before answering in kind. In all honesty, he wouldn’t have thought twice about it, even if his body hadn’t barreled into the response without consulting him: how could he not smile at someone who feels like a small sun took a kryton form and decided to warm him specifically? It feels too good here, too warm not to smile—and then blush as red as the sun when Mrs. Kent all but coos at him.

“Well,” she says, “aren’t you a sweetheart.”

“Why, Mr. El,” Alfred murmurs, “it seems you have been adopted.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Kal retorts, and then he takes a deep breath in.

Alfred—he doesn’t know. Of course he can’t know, or something of it would have shown, but the reminder—the reopening of that particular wound here, of all places—Kal blinks, throat tighter than he thought it would be.

“I...apologize,” Alfred says, clearly perplexed by Kal’s reaction, which is evidently not as subtle as he wishes it were. “I didn’t mean any offense—”

“There’s nothing wrong with being adopted,” Mrs. Kent says, gentle but unyielding, and Kal blushes harder, stares at the green material of his coffee mug.

“I know,” he admits, relieved when his voice doesn’t quite break on the word. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. It’s just—I wasn’t, and—I thought you knew,” he finishes lamely, barely daring a glance at Bruce.

“Knew what?”

Kal blushes harder than he remembers blushing in his entire life before now, the heat of it prickling at his armpits and the palms of his hands. It is bad enough to know this about himself—bad enough to know what the rest of Krypton thinks of it—but to have to explain it here—

“That I’m—that I was...not adopted,” he says, cowering in the face of the revelation.

There is a long pause, during which Kal is quite sure significant glances are exchanges over his head, before Bruce asks, “Kal, what exactly does it mean to you when you hear ‘adopted’?”

“Well,” Kal manages through a tight throat, “properly grown, of course.”

He dares to look up, then, and can’t help a frown when he realizes all three of his companions look utterly puzzled.

“In the growing genesis chambers, in Kandor?”

Another pause, and then Bruce’s features shiver through half a second of shock.

“Wait,” he says, “grown, as in...growing a plant?”

“Well, yes,” Kal replies, nerves turning his shame to impatience—if he is to go through this humiliating an ordeal, he might as well get it over with as quickly as possible. “Normal families put in a request to the Wise Council specifying their social status, their respective Guilds, and the child’s chosen Guild; wait for the the engineering to be done; and pick their child up three weeks after harvest. But my parents were—they decided to—to—grow me at home,” Kal finishes with a dejected sigh, unable to remember the words to describe what he is.

“You mean your mother got pregnant with you,” Bruce says after a short, stunned silence.

The archaisms sound even worse than they usually do in Kryo’s electronic voice, and Kal wonders if having this conversation entirely in Ellon would have been better or worse. He nods.

“And then she gave birth to you.”

Kal nods again.

“Kal,” Bruce says, more careful of his words than Kal has ever heard him, “that’s how everyone is born on Earth.”

Kal raises his head so fast he actually does pull a muscle, and winces at the pain. From the other side of the table, Bruce gives him something that’s almost a smile, though his eyebrows are still caught in a frown, and Kal swallows, unable to figure out what, exactly, is pressing so hard at his throat. He thinks, briefly, of the whispers that used to follow him back in El—and then breathes a long sigh of relief when he realizes he’ll never have to deal with that here. No matter how he may feel about this whole thing—and that is definitely something he will need to pay some attention to in the future—this is an undeniably wonderful thing to learn about Earth, and he has to wipe at his eyes before he can say:

“Well, that’s—that’s good news.”

He doesn’t dare try to say more right away, not when he has no idea what he even wants to say; but fortunately the other three, if they have questions, keep them to themselves. Silence settles between them. It is not uncomfortable, exactly, but it is heavy with the strange tension of high differences in emotional states in a group—until the oven beeps.

“Right!” Mrs. Kent exclaims, rising from her seat and reaching for a towel on one of the cupboard handles, “I’d forgotten about dinner.”

Kal goes to offer his help when she turns to take a dish of what she calls lasagna—‘approved ingredients only!’—out of her oven, but finds himself promptly shooed back, while Alfred uses the confusion to retrieve plates and cutlery from a different cupboard. Kal smiles almost despite himself when Mrs. Kent gives the butler a playful glare, but otherwise allows himself to be served.

He shouldn’t—really, he shouldn’t. He isn’t a prince here, and if he is going to live as a regular person, he has to learn how to perform regular tasks, too. He is, however, aware that he has no idea how to actually help in this situation, and still reeling from the things he learned tonight besides. Perhaps it is best if he sits down and processes things for a while. He can always learn to wash dishes later on, after all. He’s no Batman, but he did survive as Shadow for a while: he can probably out-stubborn Mrs. Kent if he needs to.

In the meantime, Kal watches his companions set the table. Bruce, clearly used to Alfred and Mrs. Kent’s bickering about menial tasks—playful, but with an edge—has sat back too. Kal is abruptly struck by the realization that this, all of it, has been tailored specifically for him. Not for a prince, not for the House of El, but him, Kal. And what’s more, out of the people who were instrumental in creating this entire situation, the only one who even knows for sure that Kal is of royal blood—Alfred, he’s quite sure, has made an accurate guess based on Kryo, but hasn't said anything—has never paid any more attention to that than external circumstances required.

That is a first, in Kal’s life. Oh, he can’t claim to have lacked any material thing he might have wanted, of course! But if there was ever a time when all the people in his life worked together to make a situation more agreeable to him, without any other considerations in mind, Kal has forgotten it. This time, he has to sniffle when he wipes his eyes again.

“Oh, honey,” Mrs. Kent says as she sits down, “is everything okay?”

Kal, eyes still firmly glued to his plate—and frankly unwilling to raise his gaze for the time being—nods.

“Yes, thank you,” he says after a shaky breath. Then, because English has yet to prove capable of conveying the full meaning of what Kal wants to say, he adds in Ellon: “You are very kind to me. Thank you.”

Kryo can’t, of course, translate the grammatical forms Kal used—there is nothing in English grammar to indicate the respect due to a benefactor—but Mrs. Kent pats his hand anyway.

Once dinner is finished and the dishes done—again, without Kal’s help, owing to Alfred’s absolutely devious use of the phrase ‘are you questioning my abilities?’—Kal tries to have a hand in making up his room, at least, but finds himself turned down again. Mrs. Kent’s mouth quirks into an amused smile as she tells him, “Stop acting like this is going to be a permanent situation. Tonight you’re a guest and I’ll be treating you like one—tomorrow you become part of the household and then I’ll put you to work.”

Kal, if his host’s smile is any indication, doesn’t quite succeed in hiding his relief at the words, but that doesn’t bother him in the least. In fact, the satisfaction of knowing he won’t remain an imposition on Mrs. Kent for much longer is enough to settle his nerves for the most part, and he goes back down the stairs to the living room and then the front porch, where Bruce is watching rain fall down on the land.

“I told you so,” he says in Ellon when Kal joins him, “you cannot win against her.”

“We shall see,” Kal replies.

In front of them, the steady drizzle has turned storm-dulled greens and grayed gold even darker, puddles slowly growing in the front garden. It’s quite unusual to have that much rain at once, Mrs. Kent said during dinner, sparking a conversation regarding Earth’s climate change. That is a topic Kal wants to look into, eventually, the dangers of changing an entire planet’s composition as far beyond measure on Earth as they are on Krypton...right now, however, the rain does a good job of masking the landscape’s best features and promises, thus admirably mirroring his mood. That, however, is another thing he chooses not to look at too closely for tonight, acutely aware that he may not have that much else to worry about in the upcoming days.

“You should know,” Bruce says after a bit, “that there is a significant chance she will not allow you out of her office until she has built a space dedicated to you.”

Kal protested, at first, when Mrs. Kent mentioned rearranging her study. He is more than capable of—and entirely willing to—sleep on the couch. Mrs. Kent, however, looked offended when he suggested it, ordering him to stop his nonsense and insisting that she was not yet old enough to have forgotten the proper way to treat people, especially when they’re going to live with her. Kal suspects the surprise he felt at Mrs. Kent's vehemence didn’t play as big a part in his inability to tell her no as he would like to think.

“Was she like this with you?” Kal asks after a while, sticking with the comfort of Ellon for now. “When you first came to her, I mean.”

“Yes and no,” Bruce replies, leaning sideways into one of the porch’s support beams. “My injuries were worse than yours when she first brought me here, and she put a great deal of effort into caring for me until I could be moved back to Gotham.”

“But?” Kal prompts when Bruce’s pause lasts longer than anticipated.

“I am not as...disciplined a patient as you are. Or an exile.”

Kal breathes in, more sharply than he meant to, at the reminder, but Batman is not wrong. He is an exiled man. It would take a tremendous change in Krypton’s governments—both local and planetary—before anyone would consider even pushing back against what is sure to be a call for his death. And even were that to happen, Kal highly doubts they would allow him back anyway—not without debating it for several years, at any rate. The chances of him seeing Krypton again are…slim.

“Did you receive any news from your cousin?”

Kal nods. Even with Krypton's considerably advanced technology, it takes time for messages to travel from there to Earth, and then back. Writing to Kara—letting her know he was alive and on the way to a full recovery—was one of the first things he did when he woke up, not ten days after leaving Krypton. From there it took almost five Green Lantern Coalition Days—roughly the same length as Kryptonian days, and no more than three hours shorter than Earth days—for his message to travel through a multitude of relatively short-distance channels and reach Kara. Based on this, and knowledge of Kara’s constraints and habits, Kal isn’t expecting her second letter for another four or five Earth days, at best. Still, it makes for a piece of home to look forward to, and the thought is enough to bring a small smile to his lips.

“She’s doing fine,” he tells Batman. “The official version of evens is that Kal-El’s decision to elope—”

“Elope?”

“To run away,” Kal says, and doesn’t allow himself to falter before he adds: “Generally with the intent to marry—or at least live with—whoever you are eloping with.”

Bruce nods once, sharp, stiffer than he was a minute ago. It’s a bit of a surprise, considering how unruffled he usually is, and even Kal realizes the cover story is nothing more than a convenient way to leave Kara free to continue her work with the Dark Sun directly. Yes, it makes Kal want to blush, but it isn’t like his threshold for blushing is as high as it should be in the first place.

“I assume by ‘official version of events’, you mean the government is covering up your identity,” Batman says, several seconds late but in a steady voice.

“A fair assumption,” Kal says, stomach twisting, gaze falling on his hands.

Kara didn’t share any details about that—she didn’t share much of any detail at all, in fact, most of her letter dutifully comprised of reproach and lamenting his terrible life decisions, the feeling of betrayal that filled her when she learned of his secret identity. The shame it would bring their family, if any of this were to be made public. It was hardly the most pleasant thing Kal had read in his life, but at least it had allowed Kara to signal that she was safe, and that’s really all Kal could have hoped for. Given the circumstances, his present situation is, quite frankly, clearly superior to what he used to assume discovery would bring.

“And Shadow?”

“Soon to be tried,” Kal says, fingers squeezing harder at the railing. “Then...the death penalty, I imagine.”

There is no guessing who the man who will play his part in the trial might be, and no room for Kara to tell him, either. That, and any other question Kal has—how Kara managed to keep her involvement a secret even after the bug’s pilot saw her face, what the Wise Council will do to El after all of this—will most likely remain unanswered forever, or until they can meet one another again.

He is bracing himself for the moment when he needs to explain all of that to Bruce, but, whether because Bruce has reached that conclusion himself or because he is trying to be considerate—most likely the former, Kal thinks with unexpected amusement—Bruce doesn’t ask.

“It...might sound callous,” Kal confesses after several seconds have passed with only the sound and smell of rain between them, “but part of me is glad to be here.”

“It is perfectly normal to rejoice at being alive,” Bruce points out in a soft voice, and Kal smiles.

“You’re right. But I’m particularly glad to be alive here .”

He doesn’t have the time to check whether he imagined Bruce’s blush or not before the front door opens and bathes them both in golden light.

“The room is ready,” Alfred tells them, nothing but a dark silhouette in the light from the house, and the sight makes Kal smile.

“Thank you, Alfred,” Kal tells him. He turns back to Bruce then, nerves tingling without knowing why, and says in Ellon: “I believe that’s my cue to retire for the night...I assume the two of you won’t be long here after that?”

“No,” Bruce confirms. “I have things to deal with in Gotham.”

“Of course,” Kal agrees, the smile easier to summon than the end of his career as Shadow ought to permit. “We’ll stay in touch, then?”

Bruce nods. Kal waits a beat, but no further words come, and so he shuffles his feet a little before saying:

“Goodnight, Bruce.”

“Goodnight.”

A smile for Alfred.

“Goodnight, Alfred. Thank you for everything.”

“You’re quite welcome, Mister El,” Alfred replies with a small smile of his own.

Kal nods again and steps inside, climbing the stairs two at a time to get to the landing. There are only three doors there: the bathroom at the end of the corridor—open and lit, as if in waiting—Mrs. Kent’s bedroom door, and, to the left, the smallest room. Kal steps inside to find it crowded with rows and rows of shelves filled with binders and what Kal assumes must be boxes of files. A large black desk and its accompanying wheeled chair have been pushed to the not-so-far left of the room to make way for a brown fold-out armchair currently in bed position. Kal takes in the sun-faded pale yellow paint on the walls, the plaid blanket folded at the foot of the bed. There are pictures and other documents in frames on the walls, trinkets on the shelves...and, comfortingly enough, a potted plant on the windowsill.

“I know, it’s not much,” Mrs. Kent says in a rueful tone, probably mistaking Kal’s silence for disappointment, “but at least it’s comfortable.”

“Oh, no,” Kal protests, surprised himself at his sincerity, “no, it’s perfect. Really,” he insists when Mrs. Kent’s eyebrows rise high on her forehead, “it is. Thank you very much, Mrs. Kent.”

Mrs. Kent bursts out laughing at that, growing three shades pinker in the space of a second.

“Sorry,” she says immediately after, “I’m sorry. You’re quite welcome, but Mrs. Kent was my mother-in-law—you have to call me Martha.”

“Oh,” Kal says, pleasantly confused, “of course. Thank you, Martha. And please, do call me Kal.”

Martha nods again, still smiling—it makes it impossible for Kal to do anything but smile in response, even when Kryo all but buzzes in protest.

“Well, I have to go see Bruce and Alfred off,” Martha says after a puzzled look at the hunit, “but please make yourself at home—I’ve left you a toothbrush and something to sleep in on the toilet seat. Goodnight, Kal.”

“Goodnight, Martha.”

Kal watches her make her way to the stairs with a smile on his face, then turns back to Kryo, unable to restrain himself from frowning.

“Kryo,” he tells the hunit in Ellon, “I understand this is not part of your usual protocol, but you’ll have to get used to people calling me by my first name here.”

“You have lost the diction of a prince,” Kryo starts, but Kal shrugs it off.

“So? In case it escaped your notice, I also lost the status of a prince. Krypton has no relevance here, and even if it did, Earth would be Green Lantern territory. On this planet, I’m just an ordinary man, and people will address me like one. Please don’t protest unless I tell you to.”

“Very well, Kal-El,” Kryo says, and Kal sighs.

Hunits are not, generally speaking, programmed to emulate emotion, but that has never stopped anyone from feeling like they have expressed some, especially Kal. Still, he ignores the perceived disapproval to look inside his bedroom and sigh.

“I don’t believe you’ll fit in there,” he tells Kryo. “Not comfortably, anyway. Would you mind staying above the stairs for the night? You’d be free to wander, but the corridor is too small for you to stay there.”

“Of course,” Kryo says.

It bobs in place and goes to settle itself in the one place where it won’t bother anyone, and Kal nods at it before going to prepare for the night. The bathroom is small—barely the size of his closet back on Krypton. In fact, Kal is quite sure he could fit the entire floor in his old rooms. The equipment is foreign, and the shade of blue on the walls would be considered excessive and gauche on Krypton...yet he looks at it all—runs a hand over the worn-soft fabric of the nightclothes Martha picked out for him—and smiles harder than he remembers smiling in a long time.

Despite both Bruce's and Martha’s promises of sun-kissed summers, the next week is made of rain, rain, more rain, and the occasional light drizzle. It has the potential to become a real problem for the crops, and Kal, still something of a botanist even this far away from home and the reasons he started studying plants in the first place, spends more than a little time staring at the pouring skies by Martha’s side.

She didn’t lie at all, that first night: rain or no, there are things to be done on the farm. They feed the cows in the rain—and discover, to everybody’s surprise, that the animals have an inexplicable fondness for Kal and specifically for trying to lick his face. They repair a damaged section of fencing in the rain, and drive to the vet’s clinic and back in the rain—subsequently spending a good half-hour out of the the rain but in the shower to clean up Martha’s newly neutered dog. They spend so much time outside under the downpour Kal’s skin itches afterward, pinker and tighter than it should be on his cheeks and shoulders. They put it down to the cold, at first; then when the feeling doesn’t fade, Martha clicks her tongue and says something about polluted rain.

Thus limited to the inside of the house—despite Bruce’s insistence, on the phone, that Kal should consider coming back to the cave for a round of testing, even if it means Bruce has to send Alfred and the jet to collect him—Kal shifts his focus to household tasks. He learns, in no particular order: to bake a cake, to make his own bed, to play checkers, to sweep the floor, to play Chutes and Ladders, to do the dishes, and to never question Martha when she affirms Kansas has the only football team worthy of her support.

(Bruce, when Kal shares this discovery in a text, sends another team’s logo back, and Kal decides he doesn’t know enough about Earth sports to get into that debate.)

Kara’s reply arrives sooner than expected: barely a day after Kal’s arrival on Martha’s farm. He leaves the itching out of his response, but goes over everything else in as much detail as he can—it takes him two days before he is satisfied with it—and, when the exercise proves to be more difficult than he would have liked, asks Martha for a notebook and takes to writing down as much of the things he thinks and feels as he can. It might lengthen his letters to Kara, but if it means he can come back to his notes later on and remember what it felt like to watch Jeopardy for the first time, or to discover the taste of dark chocolate chip mint ice cream, Kal is willing to take it.

On Kal’s second Tuesday at Martha's farm, he wakes up much sooner than he thought he would, something different in the air compared to all the other mornings he’s spent there. He opens his eyes with a reluctant sigh, gaze falling immediately to the blinds and the pale gray light filtering through the cracks, and blinks until his brain finally catches up. Scrambling out of bed, he jumps over a stack of cardboard boxes labeled ‘Jonathan’—the clothes now mostly waiting in the hamper for him to wash them and wear them again, while Shadow’s suit sort of...stands there—and rushes to the window. He struggles with it somewhat, making what must be quite the racket, but finally manages to unstick it with a triumphant noise, pushes the blinds open, and doesn’t even try to stop the awed ‘oh’ from leaving his lips.

The world is still shrouded with mist at this hour, lending the air a cool, silvery sheen sharp enough to remind Kal of home when he inhales. To the right, the orchard’s trees stand vigil in the pre-dawn mist, indistinct shapes waiting for the world to wake up like children still caught in dreams. Kal sweeps his gaze over the fields, still all but impossible to tell apart from the sky, and then to the storehouse and the barn, standing still as mountains while the day rises out of yesterday’s rain.

Kal watches, fascinated, as the long streaks of brighter light overhead incline far enough to kiss the top of the barn’s roof and turn it from gray to a vibrant maroon, the trimmings pale gold until sunlight catches the red paint and turns them almost orange with it. Slowly, softly, like a flower blooming, Kansas emerges from the mist, blue at the top and gold at the bottom, Martha’s barn the sort of vibrant vermilion even Krypton with its red sun and red moons and red dust has only ever dreamed of. It draws the eye at first, but the slope of its roof leads back down to the wheat below and then farther, and farther still, trying to catch a horizon so vast it makes Kal sway with the force of a feeling almost like standing on top of the Citadel, back in El, and pretending he could catch sight of its neighbors far in the southern mountains.

“Do you like the view?” Martha asks behind him.

Kal, still quite unable to close his mouth, nods and whispers, “I’ve never seen colors like these.”

“It sure is something,” Martha agrees, making her way over to the window so she can stand by Kal’s side. “I forget, sometimes, how beautiful it looks.”

“Krypton has a red sun,” Kal explains after a short silence. “It doesn’t look anything like this.”

Chances are, too, that the Melokariel Proposition will put enough dust in the atmosphere to turn Krypton's sky darker than it already is. What used to look like fire catching on the mountains will disappear, eventually, lost to time and failing memories. The thought puts an ache in Kal’s chest even as the beauty of what is before his eyes soothes him, and he’s still trapped between the two emotions when Martha asks, “How do you feel about working outside today? I’m sure the cows would enjoy a visit from you.”

Kal joins in Martha’s laughter at the thought, chest possibly warmer than it really ought to be. She did explain that cows sometimes enjoy licking the salt off people’s skin, and it’s possible Kal is different enough that he tastes like a treat to them. Even so, it is hard to ignore how soothing their affection is, how much a part of Kal’s soul will never tire of that sort of unconditional love. It would, perhaps, sound a little sad if he were to mention it to anyone else—he has, at any rate, carefully avoided any word of it in his letters to Kara and his phone calls to Bruce—but it is what it is, and Martha treats him to a fond grin as he makes his way out of the room and down to the kitchen.

Besides, if nothing else, it does have the potential to make both Martha’s and her dog’s jobs easier for a while.

Martha leads the way outside after breakfast, and Kal sinks into her routine with a delight even he couldn’t have anticipated, the repetition soothing enough that he can ignore the growing itch under his skin without much effort. There are, after all, so many things to discover! So many new things, new words, new colors and smells and sounds—an entire world of concepts just waiting for Kal to apply his mind to them, and no one to deny him the right to satisfy his curiosity because he doesn’t have the genetic code for it! Everything he does here he does for his own sake, because it pleases him, and Kal cherishes the novelty of it with enough enthusiasm that the soreness in his left side seems to evaporate within a few hours. By the time Kal follows Martha away from the barn and storehouse, he is no more than an inch away from substantiating into pure, distilled delight.

He’s savoring the bright burn of it in his chest and on his neck when the first explosion comes.

Kal throws himself to the ground with a shout of surprise and fear before he can control himself, and only then does he remember he isn’t alone here.

“Martha!” he shouts, as loud as he can manage, and prays to be heard over the cacophony. “Martha!”

There is another sound, just as close and devastating as the first, and Kal slaps his hands over his ears. Another boom. Another one—louder. Heavier. Kal whines. Boom, boom, boom—something else, fast, getting impossibly closer, shaking through every inch of Kal, and he wants to look for Martha, he does, but he can’t—it hurts! It hurts! Kal can’t hear, can’t breathe, can’t think—where’s Martha? Gods, he has to—what if she—another explosion, and Kal falls to his knees in the late asparagus, screams harder when even the ground provides no relief. There’s too much noise there—scratching and falling and digging and so many other things Kal can’t possibly tell apart and he screams and screams and screams and—

—quiet, just for a moment. A single second of answered prayer. Kal blinks. Blue sky, darker. Martha, her lips moving. Kal loses himself in the infinity of her voice and—

—blinks, eventually, groggy and scared and still lying on the ground in a crushed batch of asparagus. He breathes in, shallow at first. Waits from the implosion he’s sure will come, sooner or later. How he took control of this, Kal doesn’t know. It’s easy to tell, however, that the barest second of inattention now could be fatal. Send him back to the excruciating space where he lost a whole day—more, even, judging by the growling of his stomach.

Kal pushes himself to his knees with infinite care, and pauses there, just in case. If he is going to fall over again, he might as well mitigate the damage, even if the last time didn’t so much as leave him feeling sore. He sighs in relief when nothing terrible happens, and blinks up at the stars. If he knew them better, he could figure out for himself how long he spent...wherever his mind went all that time. He doesn’t, though, and so he makes himself go the rest of the way up and turn toward the house.

The journey there is both too long and too short, and Kal doesn’t notice the sleek black car in the lane until he steps onto Martha’s front porch and Bruce opens the door with an unreadable expression on his face.

“How are you feeling?” Bruce whispers.

Kal takes stock. Nothing feels broken, or bruised, or even sore. He’s exhausted, yes, and hungrier than he remembers being in quite some time, but overall...not bad, considering.

“Not too bad,” he tells Bruce, voice hoarse despite keeping his volume at the same level as the others.

He sends a smile to Martha over his friend’s shoulder.

“Surprisingly well, actually.”

“Good,” Martha whispers, clearly restraining herself from sighing.

“How long was I—out?” Kal asks, fumbling for the right words in English, and jumping when it’s Kryo who answers:

“Almost eighteen hours.”

Which puts the time at—Gods. Almost four in the morning. No wonder Kal is famished, though it is a wonder he isn’t equally as sore.

“We couldn’t move you,” Martha said. “You just seemed worse every time we tried to touch or talk to you.”

“We would have at least monitored your vitals,” Bruce whispers in Ellon, “but you weren’t wearing your suit.”

The words are little more than a breath on the air, and yet Kal hears the flat disapproval in them as easily as if Bruce had shouted it. He blinks.

“Well, I hadn’t exactly anticipated that particular situation,” he admits, and knows it was the wrong thing to say when Bruce’s expression goes from skillfully neutral to outright flat in less than a second.

“Of course you did not,” Bruce says in chillingly controlled Ellon. “Why am I surprised?”

Kal gapes this time, stunned out of his mind just long enough to hear the tail end of Kryo’s translation and Martha’s shocked exclamation. Honestly, he’d be lying if he said he disagreed. As if he could have planned for this!

“I couldn’t possibly have guessed,” he protests, forgetting to keep his voice down in his haste, “how could I—”

“You should have anticipated something like this. You are the very first Kryptonian to ever set foot on Earth—”

“That we know of—”

“You should have known better than this!” Bruce insists, voice raised to ordinary volume in its turn. “Now we have no idea what caused any of it—”

“Fine,” Kal concedes, although if he’s being really honest, it’s more out of a desire to end the conversation before it gets worse than true acceptance of Bruce’s point. “I’m sorry. You’re right, we don’t know what’s out there—I’ll wear the suit again.”

“Oh, don’t you take that flippant tone with me,” Bruce warns, switching back to English in his annoyance. “Do you have any idea of the sort of danger you put yourself in?”

“I said I’d wear the suit!” Kal protests. “What more do you want?”

“I want you to take basic measures of self-preservation and care about your own survival,” Bruce retorts, volume held to a normal conversational level by what Kal assumes is sheer force of will. “Otherwise I don’t see why I should.”

“Bruce!” Martha exclaims while Kal gapes.

He breathes in deep—in and out, in and out, the way he used to try and push Shadow’s nights out of his mind—and counts to ten as slowly as he dares...and, when that isn’t enough to calm him down, he closes his mouth and heads for the stairs.

“Martha was wondering if you’d stay for dinner,” Kal says when he finds Bruce in deep conversation with Kryo an hour later, half-hidden behind Martha’s ancient blue tractor.

Bruce’s head rises so sharply at that, Kal almost fears the man is going to give himself a stiff neck. He narrows his eyes as soon as he realizes who’s talking to him—Kal barely manages to catch the split-second look of surprise on his face—and straightens up to his full height, shoulders squared and jaw set. Kal carefully doesn’t sigh.

“Listen,” he says in English, hoping to keep Bruce more relaxed by sticking to his native language, “I’m sorry. I will wear the suit again. I’m wearing it now.”

Bruce remains silent. Kal counts to five.

“I know I wasn’t careful enough. I’m sorry. Please come to dinner?”

Bruce huffs and starts toward the house, but his shoulders don’t unwind, and it feels to Kal like the man takes special care not to touch him. It’s...not a pleasant thought. That Bruce would be upset is understandable, and Kal is willing to admit—albeit with some effort—that he was too quick to dismiss the man’s concerns, but to flinch away from him? Really? Maybe it shouldn’t sting, but it does. Kal stays quiet, though, determined to keep the peace as long as possible...which is probably why it surprises him so much when Bruce says:

“Previous data was encouraging.”

Kal blinks. What is that even supposed to mean? Data is absolutely not the topic here, especially when Kal already apologized—and even then, if Bruce wanted to harp on this subject, why would he pick Kal’s own argument to...oh.

Kal resists both the urge to roll his eyes and the impulse to speak, opting for a smile instead. No reason to ruin a good thing after all.

Bruce does stay for dinner, but he is a terribly wealthy—and proportionately busy—man who also moonlights as Gotham City’s very own vigilante. Kal hasn’t made the mistake of using Kryo or the suit to look Bruce up again, but he is getting better at English far faster than he’d anticipated despite the violent headaches he gets when the sounds of the world grow too loud again, and it’s easy to get a general picture from news articles. All in all, it’s a surprise Bruce lingered in Smallville as long as he did, so Kal doesn’t allow himself too much disappointment when the man leaves.

There are still chores to be attended to, a language to learn, and far too many hours spent wandering through Wikipedia—not to mention the task of responding to Kara’s newest letter, and the long process of explaining both what happened to Kal’s ears and what Kryo and the suit have found out.

“I think it would be easier to deal with if I knew what to expect,” he confides over breakfast about three days after the hearing incident.

The Ship is still in orbit around Earth—and that’s another thing Kal will need to worry about soon. Even a vessel as ancient as this one should be able to evade most of Earth’s technologies for years to come, but that doesn’t mean Kal feels comfortable leaving out there for anyone to find. None of the simulations it has run for him have hinted at any negative change in Kal so far, but even so it’s difficult to predict how much or how fast he will change as he stays on Earth.

Krypton has been orbiting its sun for far longer than the Earth has existed, and where Rao was once a golden youth, age has long since shrouded him in calmer—and wiser—red. Life on Krypton has had a long time to adapt and make the best use of what little light it can get. In every corner of Krypton, even the deepest recesses of the most forgotten Principalities, people have learned to consume other living things to make up for the lack of nutrients given by the sun, the nourishing power of its light negligible enough that turning the gene for absorbing it dormant has been standard practice ever since it was found the act lowered the risks of dying from k’luris...but, of course, artificially dormant genes mean nothing to someone who was gestated rather than grown.

The Ship’s models have found nothing alarming, that’s true, but what resources does it have? There are almost no records left from the time when Krypton’s inhabitants routinely gestated and gave birth to their offspring, and what remains is all but useless once climatic changes are taken into account. Any simulation anyone could run on that basis is nothing but pure speculation and, quite possibly, wishful thinking.

“That’s understandable,” Martha answers over the rim of her coffee mug, one eye lingering on the sports section of her newspaper before she turns to Kal. “But on the other hand I think you might have been surprised even then. This way, at least, you get to brace for anything.”

“That’s sort of the problem,” Kal mutters. “The last time I got tense for an extended period of time, I ended up here.”

Sure, Kal likes Smallville better than he did the Citadel in many, many respects, but the move still hurt like nothing else, and he’s not done mourning the life he might have built for himself there by any stretch of the imagination. He sighs without meaning to, and flinches when he realizes Martha has fallen into an uncomfortable silence. He’s stammering through an apology, trying to reassure Martha that he does like it here on the farm, but instead of answering she takes his hand in hers and guides him upstairs to the office.

Kal remains silent while Martha goes straight to the corner, where the ‘Jonathan’ boxes have been stored out of reach of Kal’s clumsy feet. They haven’t—Kal has mostly been pretending he didn’t notice them, so far. He knows the top two boxes are where his first sets of clothes came from—and those are the main inspiration for the way he shapes the suit every morning nowadays—but other than that...Martha hasn’t offered any information and Kal, sensing a delicate topic, hasn’t asked. Martha gets the bottom box out now, though, and after some rustling she extracts a small black frame and hands it to Kal.

Kal recognizes Martha in the picture: perhaps thirty years younger, wrapped in a fluid, half-sleeved white dress. Her long dark hair flows from under a veil, and her smile is so wide it stretches Kal’s mouth into a smile of his own before he even realizes what’s going on. In the picture, Martha holds hand with a young, dark blond man whose hair curls around his ears. He looks just as radiant as Martha, his free hand holding a small white cap on the top of his head as he speaks to someone outside of the picture—sharing a joke, maybe. The white shawl on his shoulders is half slipping off, but it must not have been that important if it is left unfixed. Both Martha and the man have one foot raised, ready to step on a white glass laid on some kind of handkerchief.

“That’s my Jon,” Martha says, quiet and tender from her precarious perch on Kal’s folded bed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him talk as much as he did at our wedding.”

Kal isn’t surprised, when he glances up, to find Martha looking wistful, gaze lost in a past she clearly misses. In her hands is a thin blue booklet, white curls and swirls framing words in an alphabet Kal doesn’t recognize.

“It’s a book of songs,” Martha explains when she catches Kal looking, “a book of hymns. They’re meant for the guests, usually, but Jon insisted we keep one for ourselves. He loved singing—was terrible at it, but it never stopped him.”

Kal smiles, but Martha doesn’t see him, too caught up in her memories.

“We were married for eighteen years,” she continues. “Eighteen years of handling everything life had to throw at us—the farm, my father’s death, the stupid fertility treatments that never worked, giving up on that dream...and then one day there was a storm when we were driving home. A tornado. I followed the crowd beneath the underpass. Jon—I swear, he was right behind me, and then…he must have realized we’d forgotten the dog in the car. I turned around and he wasn’t there anymore. I saw him by the car, opening the door—he could have made it, I think. But then he fell down, and—”

Kal doesn’t try to catch Martha’s eyes when she lowers her face, black-and-gray hair obscuring her expression. He does reach out to squeeze her hand though, holding just a little tighter when she sniffs and takes a deep breath. Then she lifts her gaze again, not trying to hide the glistening of her eyes as she says:

“It’s been twelve years, and I still cry over it sometimes. I’ve never been exiled, but I know what loss feels like. So don’t you ever feel like you have to pretend you’re not grieving with me, you understand?”

“I understand,” Kal says, rougher than he expected but unwilling to do anything about it. Then, after a quiet moment: “Will you tell me more about him?”

“Oh, he would have loved you,” Martha says, her smile genuine if far wetter than Kal has ever seen it. “Especially the bit with the cows.”

Kal and Martha laugh together and, for the better part of the morning, Kal listens to her story—how she met Jonathan Kent at their local synagogue, how they fell in love, how they lived together after they were married. He hears happy stories and sad stories and everything in between, including that one time Martha and her husband fought so hard over their inability to conceive a child Jonathan got blackout drunk for the first and only time in his life.

“I imagine that isn’t the sort of thing people fight over, back where you’re from,” Martha says a while later, when she’s done brewing coffee for the both of them.

Kal allows himself a huff of bitter laughter.

“People would have to even consider gestating their children for that to happen,” he says. “I’m—there’s no one else on the planet who did what my parents did.”

Besides, as far as Kal is aware, his parents never did fight about the lack of a second offspring. The Gods granted them only one son, and that must have been that. Kal’s failure to live up to his divine destiny and attain the leader’s position Rao must have intended for him was, he is sure, of far greater importance to them, especially after they’d promised so many people they would regret their harsh words when Kal came into his true potential.

“I’m sorry,” Martha murmurs when Kal is done explaining all of that, eyes red and nose still stuffy with tears. “That sounds like a lot of weight to put on one person’s shoulders.”

Kal shrugs.

“I mostly wish I’d been able to fulfill it—I wish they’d seen me as more than a disappointment.” He scoffs. “The frustrating part is—I still miss them. I don’t think we’ve had a meaningful conversation in over ten years but now I’m here, and they don’t want to talk to me, and—”

He cuts himself off, hunching over on himself, one hand coming up to cover his face even as he bites his lip and tries to stop fresh tears from falling. He breathes in, harsh and strangled, when Martha’s free hand comes to rest on his shoulder, and after a while he clutches at it like it’s the only thing preventing him from falling over.

“Sometimes, we mourn things we never expected to,” Martha says in the quiet of mid-afternoon, the cows mooing quietly outside. “I never used to care about family names, even when my father complained that once I got married and he died there wouldn’t be any Clark left in Smallville. Then Jon and I realized no treatment was going to make us able to have children together, and suddenly I was crying in my mother’s arms and asking her if she thought my father would still love me.”

Martha snorts, just a little, when Kal looks up at her. The expression on her face is more rueful than anything else, now, but Kal still offers the best smile he can muster, both grateful for the offering and sympathizing with Martha’s past pains.

“I’m no expert, and I’m sure Bruce would have something to say about sample sizes, but it seems to me like grief in Kryptonians isn’t any more rational than it is in humans.”

“I think you’re right,” Kal agrees.

Then, after a long pause—and in a rather sheepish tone:

“I’m so sorry, but...what’s a Clark?”

Kal blames the long time it takes for Martha to stop laughing and explain on their nerves.

Kal was expecting his body would keep changing. He was . That doesn’t make the first time he sees the cows’ internal organs any less of a shock.

“Deep breathing,” Bruce tells him through the phone half an hour later, once Kal has managed to make his way back to the house and focus long enough to locate Martha’s landline. “Find something else to focus on.”

“I can see my bones every time I look down,” Kal feels compelled to point out, faintly proud at how steady he manages to keep his voice.

Oh, the edge of panic is easy to hear—more so for someone like Batman—but at least it hasn’t tipped into the realm of hysterical shrieking. And, frankly, that’s about the best Kal can hope for, because he is seeing his skeleton through his hand and he’s fairly convinced even Bruce wouldn’t be able to just take that in stride. He would probably at least blink. Maybe even stare a little bit. Kal...well, Kal is staring a lot.

“Kal,” Bruce says in a tone that suggests it isn’t the first time he’s said it, “this isn’t an apnea contest. Breathe!”

“I am breathing,” Kal protests, “just...more quietly than I thought I would be.”

He couldn’t possibly be feeling as good—relatively speaking—if he weren’t breathing. He might have grown up in the mountains, but still. It’s been minutes, he doesn’t have that kind of training.

“Good,” Bruce says. “I have been looking at the files Kryo sent me. According to this morning’s readings, your eyes are still mutating, though I cannot tell what the trend is toward—”

“Well,” Kal says when he...squints the wrong way, or something, and suddenly he has a more detailed view of his hand—and his cells—than he ever thought he would, “I...might have an idea.”

At least, he thinks as he describes what he’s seeing to Bruce and tries to figure out what all the grunting means, it’ll make studying the structural composition of Terran life much easier for him. And if the thought prevents him from panicking too much when he tries to explain what’s going to Martha, or tries and fails to reach a maximum distance he can see at—lead blocks him, but, as he discovers through trial and error, the planet’s core doesn’t—well, it’s just a really nice bonus.

(He does stop experimenting when it turns out that he can see ridiculously far indeed, but cannot, in fact, see Krypton.)

About one month into his stay on Martha’s farm—fifty days, to the day, since he came to Earth—Kal decides it’s high time he started thinking about what to do with his ship and immediately proceeds to let Bruce know via the brand-new phone Batman insisted he have. It...hasn’t been used much. Kal is still a little—reluctant—to disturb Bruce, and despite the progress they have made towards being friendly again, he has yet to find his footing in this new world of theirs, where Kal is nothing at all like Shadow and Batman is not his mentor anymore. There are—some shades of that remain, of course, what with all the things Kal has to discover, but Martha handles as much of the teaching as Bruce these days. It isn’t as if their connection is even half as vital as it was on Krypton, and considering Batman doesn’t call...Kal shakes his head. No need to dwell on it.

Both Kryo and Shadow’s suit have been made to resist extreme temperatures and depressurization, so it’s easy to wait for the right time—dusk, conveniently enough—to put the suit in stealth mode, and let Kryo carry both of them up. From there, navigating the default security settings is a breeze, and in less than five minutes Kal is inside with Kryo trailing behind him and his helmet off.

The inside of the ship is impressive, if unsurprising. It was Kara who found it, abandoned in a secluded hangar by an El ancestor who clearly disagreed with the Wise Council of their time on the topic of space travel. Kal understands the decision, though he doesn't agree with it: if he’d perceived space travel as the sole reason one of his planet’s moons had been destroyed, he’d have wanted to ban it, too. Given the circumstances, though, it’s hard to feel anything but grateful for that nameless El person and their refusal to let go of their colonial vehicle.

“Perimeter intrusion,” the ship warns about half an hour after Kal boarded it, not a minute after he’s taken full command of it. “Earth vessel, uncategorized. Should I contact?”

“Show it to me,” Kal says, relieved to find out the Ship has kept itself apprised of what is happening on the planet.

It’s a clear residual subroutine derived from its primary function—to assess local life and help devise the best way to colonize and, if necessary, kryptoform the new planet. But if it means the Ship won’t have trouble understanding English, Kal is willing to take it. Meanwhile, in front of him and under his feet, the hull shifts, reshaping and recoloring itself to give the illusion of transparency, like a vast window opening on the universe. Earth is so huge like this, so blue, Kal doesn’t even notice the spacecraft right away. He blinks when he does, but in his defense he really wasn’t expecting to find Batman’s plane—the Batplane?—hovering right there in front of his nose.

“Grant access,” Kal tells his ship. “And please add the pilot to the list of authorized personnel.”

The ship obeys, and not ten minutes later Kal watches Bruce exit his vehicle in a ridiculously bulky variation of the Batman suit. He tries to cover his amusement, but he must fail because Bruce gives him a glare potent enough to be felt through the full-face mask.

“Nice suit,” Kal dares in English, and presses his lips tight when Batman only grunts in response. He gives himself a few seconds to sober up before he says, “I wasn’t expecting you to come along.”

Not that it isn’t appreciated, but, well. Bruce is a busy man. It would have been understandable for him to stay down on Earth.

“If this ship is going to stay in orbit,” Bruce says in Ellon, “I want to know what it can do.”

Kal feels his smile turn rueful. Of course it’s a purely practical visit. There shouldn’t be any surprise there. Still, it’s good not to be alone for this. The first few minutes were—Kal was—it’s easier, not to be alone for this. Counterintuitive though it may be, it seems less crowded here, in these walls so close in color to those of the Citadel, when he has a—an ally beside him. So, with a smile, he gestures for Batman to precede him and, armed with years of clandestine readings on the topic of space ships, proceeds to give Batman the grand tour.

“You have quite the impressive setup,” Bruce comments two hours later when they’re back in the command center, Kal hoping he’s done an adequate job of keeping his explanations as short as possible. “What do you intend to do with it?”

Kal shrugs.

“I haven’t thought about that.”

That’s a lie, of course, and he’s fairly sure Bruce knows it. Kal has...had a lot of time to think, in the past two months. About himself. About his life—what it was, what it is. What it could be. About the way Earth is changing him, and all the things he can do now that wouldn’t even have been dreams back on Krypton. About the television in Martha’s living room, crackling to life with news reports about the Wonder Woman, the Flash, the Aquaman. The Green Lantern, singular, as if there weren’t hundreds of thousands of them throughout the universe.

Kal has thought about all of that and about Kara’s letters, all the things they say about Krypton’s situation—and all the things they don’t say, but Kal can guess anyway. About what the news reports must sound like in their sector of the universe, and the things he will never be able to do for his planet. About the uses someone like Batman could have for a ship like Kal’s.

None of that has solidified into anything concrete though, each element bringing more questions than answers, more doubt than certainty, and Kal sighs when, sure as anything, the set of Bruce’s mouth turns skeptical.

“I’m...not sure yet,” he amends. “I don’t know that I should make that sort of decision before I’ve...stabilized. Somewhat.”

According to his latest readings and the sheer quantity of everything he consumes these days, that isn’t exactly a close benchmark. He still has...time. Time to absorb the world a little better, to inform himself; to understand, maybe, a fraction of what he’ll need to survive on Earth, let alone blend in. More time to...adjust, too, to a life where Krypton is a distant memory, where Kara is nothing but a bi-weekly letter and Kal might be better liked than he’s ever been in his life but is also even more of an anomaly than he was back there.

Bruce makes a noise in the back of his throat, the significance of which escapes Kal entirely, and then, rather than offer advice, asks, “How is your cousin?”

He uses formal grammar to refer to her, a stark contrast to the more casual grammar he uses with Kal nowadays, and Kal can’t help but tense at it, just a little, feeling his face pinch before he can stop it. He makes himself relax—though too late, as always, to hide the emotion before Bruce sees it, and he isn’t surprised when the man’s mouth tightens in turn, just a bit. Kal can’t blame him for it, either: who wouldn’t find it frustrating, to try to be polite and considerate, only to be judged for their grammar? Kal wouldn’t like it either.

“She’s fine,” he says, careful to keep the sudden spike of loneliness out of his tone. “Still in a precarious position—I’m not to expect any news for the next month, at best—but nearly into Tu’an’s arms, as the saying goes.”

Bruce nods. Kal, unsure of the appropriate etiquette in this sort of situation, nods in return, and they both turn to stare down at the Earth below. It’s strange, Kal realizes, to see it like this. He never did get to see Krypton this way, and unless the planet undergoes drastic changes, he never will. His family may have kept his role as Shadow a secret from the rest of the world, but they know about it—and so does the Wise Council, and Kal knows for a fact they don’t always act aboveboard. They might not be in a position to try and condemn him openly, should he return, but Kal has no desire to fall over a balcony’s railing in his sleep.

Gods, he can almost hear the whispers already—nobles sharing his birth story between them, maybe attributing the apparent suicide to that finally catching up. A noble sacrifice for his family’s sake, at best, yet another pathetic move at worst; Kal’s jaw clenches at the thought, fingers tightening into fists before he can remember he’s not alone.

Batman, when Kal looks up, gives his clenched hand a pointed look and Kal takes a breath, musters a strained smile.

“I think I’m ready to go back down,” he tells Bruce in English. “I...I think I’d like to talk to a friend now.”

“You don’t think we’re friends?” Bruce asks, and tenses immediately.

Kal blinks. And blinks again. By the third time, Bruce has retreated into Batman’s stance entirely, mouth pressed into a thin line, a faint pink bleeding out from under his cowl. It’s the sight of him closing his eyes—the sound of his teeth grinding together, loud enough for Kal to hear even without opening his senses to it—that spurs Kal to blurt out, “Are we?” He clears his throat. “Are we really friends?”

Under the cowl, Bruce’s eyes widen.

“We’re not—not,” he says.

Kal doesn’t know what it means, for Bruce’s mouth to fall open when Kal smiles, but right now he feels happy enough that it doesn’t matter.

For the next week or so, it feels like Kal’s body is taking some kind of break, in that no new abilities—powers, as Martha calls them—seem to develop. Oh, sure, the tingling in his skin is still there, but it’s weak enough now that Kal can ignore it most of the time, and the violent, burning headaches of the past few days are almost gone. Which is a good thing, because Kal did not enjoy the feeling of having fireballs behind his eyes, thank you very much.

Kal enjoys the respite, frankly, and continues to learn everything he can, ranging from the history behind Martha’s Shabbat rituals to the proper way to change a car tire, how to milk a cow, and why it’s a bad idea to try to investigate unknown buzzing sounds in the bathroom. He sets up exercises for himself after that, trying to gauge how far his hearing goes—New York, to the east, but somehow it feels like he might be able to hear further—and how precise his sight can be. He trains himself to mix the X-rays and the insane zooms, to combine his abilities in different ways. The sheer range of what he can see or hear is—it’s exhilarating. Terrifying, too. All-around breathtaking, really, and Kal finds himself getting lost in it more than once, much slower to pull himself out of the chaos around him than he should be on the rare occasions when he still zooms in by accident.

It’s not a problem, though. Not really. Sure, it makes him look like an airhead, and it makes Martha laugh when he just freezes in the middle of a task, but really, that’s harmless, and so Kal doesn’t pay too much attention to it. After all, it isn’t like he couldn’t control it. He could. He can, now that he’s really applied himself to it—with a dedication even Bruce seems to approve of, if Kal interprets the tonality of his grunts over the phone correctly. It’s just that there are so many things to see, so many things to understand, and observation has always been the best way to understand something, and—there’s just so much! And it isn’t like Kal can tell himself ‘this is mud, you’ve seen mud before’, because every patch is unique, its own microcosm at any given moment, the changes in scale so dramatic it always takes him a few seconds to adjust anyway so why not let himself take the time to watch? After all, there’s no reason not to.

Or at least, there’s no reason not to stop and watch whatever he accidentally gets caught up in, until he freezes while Martha is maneuvering her tractor back into the shed and Kal doesn’t realize he’s standing in her blind spot until the sound of bending metal tears him back to the world’s regular scale.

“Ah,” Bruce says somewhere to Kal’s left. “I believe Martha might have downplayed the extent of the damage somewhat.”

Kal, who sat down on the floor the instant he and Martha realized what happened to the tractor and hasn’t dared to move since, curls up a little tighter, bringing his arms up to cover the burning back of his neck. There is a pressure building in his eyes, hotter than tears, hotter than anger, and Kal desperately doesn’t want to know what it is, what new levels of freak he will reach with this one.

“Please,” he manages in a croaking voice, “leave me alone.”

“I do not believe that would be a good idea,” Bruce replies, still in Ellon.

Kal can’t help snorting.

“If the tractor couldn’t hurt me—”

“You cannot stay in here forever, Kal,” Bruce cuts in. “You will have to move at some point. That might as well be now.”

Kal takes a deep breath and, when the heat recedes from behind his eyes, he raises his head to glare at Bruce.

“I think you and I can agree I’m not very safe to be around right now.”

“No, indeed,” Bruce replies. “But staying here is not helping matters.”

“Well,” Kal starts, well on his way to peeved now, “I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry,” Bruce cuts in. “Be better.”

Kal gasps, shame flooding his guts and clawing at his throat. He closes his eyes again, unwilling to watch Bruce survey the damage—not just the tractor, but the shed’s outer wall, too, where Kal stumbled away in surprise, and at least one stool, plus another metal beam...and then Kal did go the cowardly, childish route and sat down, refusing to move, refusing to even let Martha touch him until Bruce, having already planned to come and visit, got there.

And it’s...stupid and useless and probably not the sort of thing Batman would have done but what else was Kal supposed to do? Walk to Martha’s house and risk breaking it down? Risk injuring her, or worse? No. No, there’s no way he could have done that, and if it means he was...naive, or stupid, or anything of the sort, well, then Kal is going to have to learn to live with it, because there is no way he’ll risk hurting anyone again, thank you very much.

“But you did not hurt anyone,” Bruce says, sounding uncharacteristically puzzled, once Kal is done explaining that as best as he can.

“I haven’t hurt anyone yet,” Kal retorts. “I destroyed a tractor, Bruce! And I wasn’t even doing anything—can you imagine what would happen if I—”

Kal knows he sounds self-pitying. Gods, does he know that. But what else is he supposed to do? Walk out there and pretend he isn’t inches away from fatally injuring anyone—any living creature within reach? Everything that came before—the hearing, the X-rays, the super vision—that was—that was weird, but it was a useful kind of weird, and Kal—he knows how to be weird. He’s done it before. It isn’t fun, and he thought—he’d hoped to leave that back on Krypton, for the most part. But he knows how to be weird.

But this? Being dangerous? He has no idea how to do that. He doesn’t want to be that. And if that’s what he is now, if that’s the price he has to pay to stay on Earth, then maybe—

“Breathe,” Bruce tells him, and Kal glares again.

“I am breathing,” he says.

Bruce’s mouth tightens for a second, but he doesn’t push the matterwhich is a surprise, but in this case a welcome one. There’s enough on Kal’s mind without adding a Bat-lecture to it all. Still, Bruce does have a point, in that staying where he is and not moving will do nothing to improve Kal’s situation. He should do something, but the thing is—

“I don’t know what to do,” he admits, face growing even warmer than it already was. “I don’t—what if I—I mean, Martha—”

“Martha would be perfectly fine if she did not have to worry about your mental state,” Bruce interrupts. “Do not waste your energy crying over something that has yet to happen—especially when you can prevent it.”

“And how do you propose we do that?” Kal asks, picking overly respectful forms of Ellon on purpose. “Have you trained someone not to crush a skull by accident?”

“Do not use court grammars with me,” Bruce warns with a snarl. “And in case you forgot, I do work with Wonder Woman and the Aquaman on a regular basis. If they can control their strength well enough to live normal lives, so can you. Now stop sulking and come have dinner.”

Kal feels his ears redden again, and his stomach still feels lined with lead, but he does get to his feet after a while, brushing dirt off the seat of his pants. There is no denying, after all, that it is a comfort, knowing Batman is going to help with all of this.

With a deep breath, Kal gets to his feet to follow Bruce, and freezes in shock when he realizes they are not, in fact, going back inside the house.

What they do instead is sit down with Martha on a large, checkered blanket in the middle of the garden, a varied assortment of candles and electric lanterns set around the blanket, ready for use. In the middle, three bowls of soup and a golden loaf of challah bread wait for them, flanked by long thin tubes of plastic. The whole thing looks like it jumped out of one of the movies Kal has taken to watching with Martha every other night, and the sight of it settles over his heart like an affectionate smile. Kal sits down with infinite care, unsure what might happen if he just fell to the ground, and then looks up to find a strange expression on Bruce’s face.

“I haven’t celebrated Shabbat in a while,” he says with a tone of wary apology, “ever since—”

“That’s okay,” Martha says when it becomes clear Bruce won’t finish his sentence. “To be honest, I wasn’t very diligent with it myself before Kal came around...a lot of things seem pointless when you have no one to celebrate them with.”

Kal nods in silence, unwilling to disturb the sudden atmosphere of quiet grief that has settled over the blanket. He didn’t know Bruce and Martha shared a religion, and he knows this particular moment isn’t meant for him, but that doesn’t mean he can’t relate to the sentiment, to some degree.

He blinks when he catches Bruce’s gaze though—lowers his eyes for an instant, glances back up, and when Bruce’s eyebrow rises even further, he sighs.

“Some of our ceremonies in El...they are meant to be celebrated with family, too. Especially for the worship of Rao. He was—he was the helping God, you see, before he was the leading God.”

Long, long before, it’s true; many Ellon people have forgotten it, but it is easy, when one looks, to find the root of some remaining ceremonies in the ideas that honoring Rao is to help, and one’s inner circle is where one can have the most impact...thus, the emphasis on celebrating these moments as a community rather than alone.

“These aren’t—I don’t think many people keep those particular rituals,” Kal says after he explains—or tries to explain—the sort of God Rao used to be. “I...I’d have liked to, I think, but...well, like you said, what’s the point of a collective celebration when you’re alone?”

He thinks he’s done a decent job of keeping his voice stable—hopes so, at least, even though the way Martha smiles and Bruce just looks at him indicates he might not have been as successful as he wanted. Either way, the subject comes to a close, and Kal watches Bruce and Martha go through the various rituals of Shabbat. When they are done, the three of them sip on their broth in silence; Kal declines Martha’s offer to feed him some challah directly. Kal feels himself oscillate between lingering embarrassment at all the damage he has caused—“You’ve read enough press to know I can pay for that,” Bruce says with a dismissive hand gesture. “But you shouldn’t have to—” “Kal. It’s pocket change to me. Let me.”—and the suffusing warmth of knowing both Martha and Bruce care enough about him to endure a frankly unexciting meal for his sake. It’s almost—it’s well worth the embarrassment, actually.

“So,” Bruce says after they’re done with dessert, fireflies dancing around them in the now-complete night, “before I came to get you Martha and I had a talk about how to deal with this newfound strength of yours.”

Kal nods, tensing despite himself. He manages a smile in answer to Martha’s, but doesn’t really relax until she says, “Mostly, we were considering ideas for how you could try and learn to control your strength...and I think we’ve come up with something that could work.”

“You came up with it,” Bruce says, blank-faced.

Martha grows a little pink, but catches herself quickly.

“Anyway,” she says after clearing her throat, “we thought about trying to find something you couldn’t break to start with, but given the state of the tractor and how that happened, we’re not sure how long that would take.”

“Or if it’s possible at all,” Bruce says.

“Or that. So, at the risk of making things more frustrating for you, we thought we’d cut to the chase and start with smaller things right away.”

“These,” Bruce explains in English in the middle of the next afternoon, “are medicine balls.”

He’s helping Alfred and Martha unload a truck full of them as he speaks, sweating through the T-shirt he’s wearing while Kal tries to stay focused on the task and not on...things he shouldn’t be focusing on. He’s not sure how successful he is at that, but at least no one seems to have caught on, and Kryo isn’t here to point it out.

“They’re exercise equipment for humans,” Bruce continues, either unaware of or ignoring the bead of sweat making its way down his neck, “and impossible for us to break with our bare hands. If you can learn to handle them without breaking them, it’ll be a significant step in the right direction.”

“Plus,” Martha adds, rubbing at the small of her back after unloading yet another ball, “they’re only filled with sand, so you won’t have to worry about debris.”

That, Kal has to concede, is good news. It’s...it isn’t the same as a guarantee the exercise will work, but at least it mitigates the risk of injury quite a lot. Kal keeps himself out of the others’ way while they finish the job, exchanging the occasional few words with Bruce, until Bruce asks:

“Where’s Kryo?”

“I sent it up to the ship,” Kal replies with a little smile. “I haven’t needed it to translate anything for a while now, and it’s too big to fit in the house comfortably.”

Not that Kal himself can fit in the house, period, until and unless he manages to curb his own strength, but at least he’s somewhat less austere-looking than the hunit.

“You don’t need translation anymore,” Bruce says, voice flat.

Kal blinks.

“Not really, no. I understand enough to deal with new words on my own.”

“After two months.”

“...Yes?”

Kal blinks again when Bruce all but scowls. From the corner of his eye, he can see the way Alfred’s eyebrows have risen on his forehead—the press of Martha’s lips, trying not to laugh, but he doesn’t dare join her. Surprise, he would have understood. He didn’t expect to learn English that fast either; the memorization has always been the hardest part of language learning for him...but for Bruce to scowl? That he really doesn’t get—not when Bruce hasn’t seemed to be the envious type before.

“Sorry?” Kal tries after a few seconds, but Bruce’s only response is a twitch of his fingers against the medicine ball Alfred just tossed at him—the last one.

“Now that that’s done,” Bruce says after a short pause, giving Alfred and Martha time to retreat toward the house, “let’s begin.”

It makes sense, really, to begin right away. Every ball Kal destroys by accident will be one less his three companions will need to transport to the storehouse...but that doesn’t make the explosion of sand that hits Kal in the face when he tries to catch the ball any more pleasant. It doesn’t make much noise when it pops, which is a relief, but it does leave his ears even more freedom to pick up on Martha’s aborted snort of laughter, for the back of nis neck to flush hot even as he wipes the worst of it off his face.

He looks at Bruce, then, expecting to find him with something like triumph on his face—a revenge taken upon the man who didn’t have to put all that much effort into learning the local language? But instead what he sees is the way Bruce’s shoulders have relaxed just a little, the looser tilt of his mouth, almost like...well. Almost like relief.

Not for the first time today, Kal blinks in question, and then yelps when Bruce tosses the next ball at him with the same results. Oh, boy.

“This is useless,” Kal grunts as he sits down two hours later, Bruce finally too tired to keep going or resist all of their not-so-gentle suggestions that he take a shower.

Kal hasn’t even come close to breaking a sweat.

“It’s only the first day,” Martha tells him as she picks up one of the balls and goes to carry it to the storehouse. “Give yourself some time.”

“I don’t have time!” Kal protests, forcing himself not to flail in case he accidentally hit Martha and maim her—or worse. “I need to be safe to be around now , but I—urgh.”

This—it’s the most petulant Kal has ever been. He knows that. He knows he should stop, too. Preserve what’s left of his dignity and wait until he’s alone to indulge in the pressing urge to sulk—but then, he never did claim to be a perfect man, and in the end what he does is sigh again and say:

“I hate this. All the rest—I can deal with being a freak, but a dangerous one? I can’t—”

“First of all,” Martha says as she turns back toward him, face genuinely stern for the first time since Kal has met her, “I don’t like that word, so I’ll thank you not to use it while you’re on my farm. And secondly, I for one am very glad you've developed this ability, because if you’d been anyone else, you’d never have—”

Kal stares, dumbfounded, while Martha cuts herself short and takes a deep breath, dropping her medicine ball so she can rub at her temples with the tips of her fingers.

“I thought I’d killed you,” she says at last, voice catching in her throat. “For those first few seconds I was so sure you’d died! But then there you were, completely unscathed, and if that isn’t good news, then I don’t—”

This time it’s Martha’s turn to end her sentence with a frustrated grunt, and Kal finds himself blinking at her for a moment, before he hangs his head.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her, “I didn’t—I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Well, of course not,” Martha says, wiping at the corners of her eyes with, perhaps, just a little more force than necessary. “You’re like Bruce that way.”

“I don’t think I’m—” Kal starts, but he cuts himself short—and holds himself very, very still—when Martha rises to the tips of her toes and gives him what should be a crushing hug.

“No one else could have survived this,” she whispers fiercely. “So you might not like what the sun made you, but I’m damn glad for it, and you won’t be able to change my mind on that.”

She pulls out of the embrace and picks up her medicine ball before Kal has any time to respond, and he just...stands there, speechless. Because—Kal isn’t anything like Batman, clearly, but...he really didn’t think about that. About what really happened there, and how his body would have been affected back on Krypton, and what a miracle it is that he survived the accident, let alone unscathed. How many times, as Shadow, has he wished he could push past the aches and pains inherent in the mission? How many times has he wished he were able to do more, bear more, help more? And Earth...Earth is not Krypton, that much is true, but help is help is help, no matter where you go in the galaxy, and Kal...well. If he does get his strength under control, he has the potential to help on a much larger scale than most.

“...Did you even sleep last night?”

Bruce looks wide awake, but very reluctantly so, one hand firmly clutching a mug of coffee while the other readjusts the waistband of his pajama pants. His voice still has some sleep-induced gravel in it, and the whole thing makes him sound so much like a grumpy m’lo, Kal can’t help but smile. Granted, the fact that he did not, in fact, sleep last night may make the expression just a tad more manic than he was aiming for, but the whole thing proves entirely worth it when he can pick one of the last medicine balls off the ground, toss it in the air like it weighs nothing—which it doesn’t, for him—and grin at Bruce.

“Not a wink. What’s phase two?”

Phase two, as it turns out, begins with Bruce breaking his stoic facade in order to grumble a lot of things Kal doesn’t really want to catch—he does overhear the words ‘when’ and ‘timid simpleton’, though, and surprises himself when he...actually doesn’t mind that much. It isn’t—the words are still accurate, in many ways. There’s a reason Kal has yet to meet anyone who isn’t Martha, after all. The farm is spacious, the landscape fascinating, and the streets of Smallville, not thirty minutes away on foot, look awfully tempting...until Kal tries to picture himself having a conversation with any of the inhabitants, and quietly retreats back to Martha’s farm. It doesn’t matter how familiar Kal has gotten with the surrounding fields and the nearby river: people still stump him. Which is kind of ironic, considering his project. But try as he might, no matter how much he changes—and oh, Gods, is the Kal he is now much more confident than the Kal he was then—there is still a part of him that balks at the thought of letting itself be shown, shying away from the light and easy way Martha has of chatting with her friends on the phone, the attempts she’s made at taking him into town.

He doesn’t—there’s no real hope, in his mind, of him ever shedding any of that completely. But, for what might be the first time in his life, Kal is...almost okay with it. Or, at the very least, he feels like he might be able to deal with it, even if it is in a weird way.

So, all in all, it isn’t that hard to spend the day waiting for a couple hundred basketballs to be delivered to Martha’s farm, or the day after that making said basketballs explode between his hands for two hours straight. And then, when Martha—sweaty, short of breath, and most likely sore as anything—asks him if he wants a break, it’s no big deal to say yes.

“I think I’ll go for a quick run while you rest, if that’s all right with you?”

It isn’t like he’s gained enough control over himself to help with the farm yet, unless there’s a need to move heavy machinery. Since that isn't required at the moment and Kal doesn’t really feel tired, he might as well keep pushing his limits.

He isn’t really prepared when he ends up running a thirty-mile circuit in less than five minutes, though.

(“Just you wait until you’ve got fine motor control again,” Martha tells him that night as they sip on their soup in the garden. “I intend to make full use of that super speed of yours.”

Kal laughs and says, “There’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”)

So this is actually mostly accidental. Kal will say ‘mostly’ and not ‘completely’, firstly because it is true—he hadn’t counted on actually being able to run to Gotham, but he did pick Bruce’s voice as a honing beacon on purpose, just to see if he could track it efficiently. And then also because with a little luck, or a lot of it, the honesty might decide Bruce in favor of not murdering him. Maybe.

Kal is, after all, probably not supposed to barge in on four ordinary strangers while they get a tour of the Wayne Manor renovations.

“Oh,” Kal manages intelligently. “Uh...hi.”

He waves a hand in the air, pleasantly surprised when one of the strangers—a lithe young man in a red plaid jacket—returns the gesture, open mouth or no. Behind him stands a tall, dark-haired woman whose pose and surprised expression echo Bruce’s. Then, to Bruce’s right: a tattooed giant in a t-shirt with a rather feral grin on his face, and—oh. Oh. Not so ordinary strangers, then, Kal thinks as he nods at the one the news reports name Cyborg.

“Kal,” Bruce starts, but he’s interrupted by a loud:

“Oh my GOD!”

There’s a crackle of electricity and a loud bang that makes Kal flinch, and then the lithe man—the Flash, then—is at his side, bouncing on his feet and firing questions so fast Kal doesn’t even catch one word out of every ten he speaks. Fortunately for Kal, he’s saved from having to answer any of it by the sight of a man in a Green Lantern uniform landing not six feet away from the group and asking, “What’s going on?”

“Flash has a crush,” Cyborg says, and the aforementioned speedster crackles to his side in an instant.

“Dude! He got there before I could see him! I don’t even—how fast were you even going?”

Kal looks down to check the display of his suit, still switching between numbers at the tail end, and says:

“Around two thousand and two hundred miles per hour?”

The Flash makes a high-pitched noise, and behind him the giant—Aquaman, then, since all the others are accounted for—sneers and warns, “If you even think of having a nerdgasm—”

“Ew! Gross, Arthur!” Flash protests.

Kal ignores the two of them as they descend into bickering, and walks up to Bruce and the others instead, one hand uselessly trying to rub the embarrassment out of his neck.

“I’m sorry for barging in,” he says. “If I’d known you all were here, I’d have—”

“Oh, it’s quite all right,” Wonder Woman tells him with an amused smile and a pointed look at Bruce. “We’ve been wanting to meet you for a while now.”

“Oh,” Kal says, feeling his face grow pink, “well I—it’s an honor to meet you all. And uh—thank you, sir, for helping with the whole...administration. Thing.”

A little to the right, Kal can feel Bruce all but trying to burn a hole in the side of his head, and he clears his throat in response, scratching at his neck again.

“Anyway,” he says, “I’m sure you’re all very busy and I don’t—I just wanted to talk with Bruce but that—I’m sure it can wait until you’re done doing...whatever you’re doing.”

“We’re deciding if we really want to have our headquarters here,” the Flash says, popping up next to him with another blue crack, “seeing as it’s Bruce’s house and all.”

“Barry!” Cyborg snaps, only for Flash—Barry—to turn back to him with an offended expression.

“What? It’s true! He doesn’t even look like he wants us here.”

“Also, he’s a rich asshole,” Arthur-the-Aquaman chimes in.

Kal chances a look toward Bruce, and is absolutely not surprised to find him clenching his jaw, eyes briefly closed against what Kal can only assume is a strong wave of frustration. He’s fairly sure Shadow would have felt...well, roughly the same, really, and it’s only the patience that came with his new environment allowing Kal to deal with all of this any more serenely.

“I think it’s more the part where people aren’t supposed to find out Bruce Wayne is Batman, and that’ll be easier to do if the Justice League doesn’t settle on his private property,” Cyborg says, only for the Green Lantern to add:

“And we’re not entirely sure we’re comfortable with giving the US government grounds to claim us as part of its jurisdiction. We are agreed on that, right? We’re either working with every country or none of them.”

The others nod with various levels of focus—Barry and Cyborg are still bickering to one side while Diana settles a sympathetic hand on Bruce’s shoulder—and then Bruce releases a small sigh. From what Kal has seen of him so far, he’d say this is the Batman equivalent of slapping a hand on the table in frustration. He winces, just a little, in sympathy, and then Bruce says, “Again, if anyone has a more practical alternative—”

“Actually,” Kal blurts out before he can start overthinking it, “I might be able to help with that.”

Bruce gives him a suspicious glance, while the others stare in confusion.

“I mean,” Kal explains, “I do have a giant spaceship I’m not using.”

Bruce seizes him by the collar and drags him away from the other five.

“Meeting adjourned,” he tosses over his shoulder, and Kal barely has time to wave goodbye to the rest of the Justice League before they reach Bruce’s car.

Bruce peels off the gravel road before Kal is done buckling himself in, and before long they pull over in front of a long house made almost entirely of glass...Kal doesn’t even have to use the x-ray vision to see to the other side of it, which in turn allows him to catch the exact moment Alfred notices them.

Kal follows the old man to the kitchen—or rather, the counter that serves as a kitchen, considering there don’t seem to be any actual walls to partition the various rooms here—and helps himself to a cup of coffee accompanied by a helping of cream and another of sugar. Then, when Bruce fixes him with something that would be a full blown glare on anyone else, he clears his throat and says, “So. That was actually part of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Giving your ship away to the League?”

“Well, no,” Kal admits. “That part was a bit more...spur of the moment. But I’m not just—”

He cuts himself off, frustrated and flustered by the way this conversation came about. He didn’t even mean to have it today, exactly. Or rather he wasn’t sure he’d be having it today—he thought maybe if the whole ‘hi, it turns out I can also run ridiculously fast’ conversation went wrong, then he could keep the other two things he needs to share with Bruce for a later time. It would—he’d probably feel a little less panicked that way. Hopefully. But then he actually got there, and the League was there, and they don’t really have a place to go; and so here Kal is, with absolutely no way out except through.

Oh, Gods.

“Kal,” Bruce says after a while.

He’s about to say more, Kal’s sure, but at this point it’s probably best to just get the first part over with, and deal with the consequences later.

“So,” he blurts out before Bruce can get another word in, “obviously the fact that I’m willing to let the League use my ship wasn’t what I was here to talk to you about, but it is related to...uh. Topic number two.”

“I assume,” Bruce says after a beat, “that topic number one was the speed.”

“Yes,” Kal confirms. “The other two are...somewhat related to one another, and to the reason why I offered the use of my ship to the Justice League.”

Bruce’s posture is impeccable under most circumstances, but he does still manage to give the impression of someone straightening up as he says, “I’m listening.”

Kal breathes in. This is, he knows, a key moment for him going forward. It isn’t that he won’t go on with his project if he doesn’t have Batman’s blessing; it is that he wants it—wants to prove, to both of them, that’s he’s evolved and changed enough to do this. That he’s ready for it, and won’t fail this time. With another breath in, Kal lets a little bit of Shadow settle onto his shoulders, slip into his voice. His spine straightens almost on its own, his eyes rising. He feels the change on his face, too: more solemn, more solid than his usual demeanor, but without the harsh tension of Shadow’s expressions.

“I want to help,” he says in a voice deeper than usual, and feels dimly rewarded when Bruce slides into Batman’s body language without missing a beat. “I...won’t be Shadow, here,” he adds, using the Ellon version of the name. “He was made for Krypton, and he should stay there...but I do want to help whoever I can here, and given your position—and everything you’ve done for me in every aspect of my life, I thought it would be only fair to let you know.”

“I didn’t—”

“Yes, you did,” he cuts in, firm but not harsh. “I wouldn’t be here if not for you.”

There is a pause, during which Batman’s features remain as neutral as they ever are—but he thinks he can still see something...touched, perhaps, in the tick of the man’s jaw. Eventually, the silence passes, and Batman says, “You realize you can’t just jump into that?”

“I do have some experience with this sort of business,” he retorts with a chuckle. “Enough to know I can’t possibly prepare for everything on the first try. But I did get started.”

“How?”

“Well, first of all, I wanted to assess the state of my resources,” he explains. “I asked the ship to scan for and network with any Kryptonian tech it could access.”

Batman's tensing is so subtle, he’s tempted to think he’d have missed it if he didn’t have especially keen vision.

“There’s something on Earth you didn’t bring with you,” Batman says.

“Yes,” he replies. “A pre-settlement fortress in the Arctic. Part of the last wave, judging by the technology, but still more than enough for my personal use.”

“So you’d just give the ship up?” Batman asks.

He smiles.

“I was thinking more of a long-term lending plan. The League would have full use of the ship, but I would remain in command of it. The offer stands whether I am allowed to join or not, by the way.”

“How generous of you.”

“Like I said,” he replies with a shrug, “you would have more use for it than I will.”

“If we can get there,” Batman points out. “You should be aware by now that going to space is a little complicated for us humans, and we can’t just yell ‘beam me up, Scotty’.”

“Of course not,” he agrees with a chuckle. “I don’t think Scotty is a very dignified name for a spaceship, anyway. But there are technologies that could allow for teleportation, and I’m sure between your Green Lantern officer and I we could either build or obtain some.”

Batman stays silent for a moment, only moving to bring his hands up and steeple his fingers over the table, assessing him with a piercing gaze. He doesn’t move—doesn’t even really feel the need to squirm here, confident in the merits of his idea, if nothing else.

Then Batman says, “I’ll need more details before I put it up for consideration before the League. As for your membership...we generally wait to see what someone is capable of before we invite them in.”

“That’s not exactly what I understood from the news reports,” he says, without restraining an amused smile, “but that sounds fair enough.”

“Do you plan on...helping...in jeans and a t-shirt?”

His face still feels a little like Shadow's; but the smile that cracks across it is Kal’s, full of pleasant surprise at how fast Batman seems to have come around to the idea.

“Now,” he says, slipping back out of Kal, “that would be a waste of an exceedingly smart suit, wouldn’t it?”

Batman’s face remains entirely blank, and so he rises to his feet.

“Martha and I had a long talk about it the other day...let me know what you think.”

“Aren’t the colors a little...bold?” Martha asked in a careful tone when Kal finished sketching what he had in mind. “Not that the other heroes don’t have colorful costumes, mind, they just aren’t usually that….”

“Saturated?” Kal asked, and smiled when Martha gave him an embarrassed nod. “I guess you’re right, but...I like them. There’s Kansas’s blue sky,” he explained, pointing at the body, “Krypton’s red...and here, gold for the sun, and for Rao.”

If he was going to help, after all, he might as well bring something of his patron God into the uniform.

“And that?” Martha asked, pointing at the diamond shape and flowing crimson line on its golden field. “What does that mean?”

Kal couldn’t help the bittersweetness of his smile as he looked down at his sketch and the El family’s coat of arms over the uniform’s chest. It had, after all, started off as a symbol for Rao, and had only been incorporated into the El crest several centuries after the birth of their lineage. But it would have been a lie to say that Kal hadn’t kept that in mind when he chose the symbol. It was a piece of his world, after all; not only a part of Krypton and El’s history but a part of his childhood, too. Years of distress, of dissatisfaction, of disappointment for every member of his family...and here, finally, he’d found a way to reclaim it all. To make the crest his, rather than cower around it in every part of his existence.

Adding this to his design—even just putting the first curve of it to paper—had felt like figuring out a key piece of a puzzle. If there was only one part of this costume that wouldn’t change, it was that one, no doubt about it.

“That’s my family’s crest,” Kal explained, then. “It used to be an ancient symbol for Rao and the light he brought to Krypton. See how the line comes and goes, but never disappears?”

Martha hummed.

“It is supposed to represent the power to do what is right by those you care about. The power to help where you are needed, and the strength to ask for help when you need it. It’s also—it’s supposed to tell you that powerlessness, helplessness, they’re only temporary states. Sooner or later, you will have the opportunity to help others—or help yourself—again.”

“Oh,” Martha said, her smile brimming with affection, “so it means hope, then.”

“So?” he asks, when Batman remains motionless too long for comfort. “What do you think?”

“You look—”

Bruce—because it was Bruce’s voice there, not Batman’s—cuts himself off with a sharp inhale. Clears his throat, a faint pink dusting his face for some unfathomable reason, and corrects:

“It’ll do.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me I need to wear a mask?” he asks, surprised.

“You’ve seen the people I work with,” Batman says, something almost dejected in his tone. “I try to pick my battles.”

He laughs, but Batman doesn’t join him.

On the second of August 2019, a little over two months after his arrival on Earth and about two days after he told Batman about his intention to join Earth’s growing League—Guild?—of helpers, there is a fire on the outskirts of a city called Metropolis. It isn’t the first one he's heard burning during those two days, of course, but people know how to handle fire, most of the time. And when they can’t, well. Flash does operate mostly around the Midwest, so he can take care of these things, when needed.

On that day, though, Flash is busy dealing with a hostage situation up north in Star City, and the firefighters called to intervene are discussing the difficulty of the operation before they even get there...so, obviously, he changes into his uniform and runs to join the rescue efforts.

It’s a residential building he finds when he arrives. Old; filled with dry wood, old paper, and more than a dozen elderly residents trapped on the last floor, too slow to escape the flames and too frail to get out on their own. He slows to a stop next to the firetruck and filters the screams out as he walks up to the man who seems to be in charge and asks, “How can I help?”

“Stay out of the way,” the man replies with barely a glance at him. “This is a delicate operation, and I don’t have time to shepherd a clown in leggings!”

He follows the man’s gesture to where the truck’s ladder is malfunctioning, and sucks in a breath. No wonder everyone looks panicked—even if someone makes it to the third floor through the inferno, there’s no way they’ll be able to get everyone down that way. Not with human speed or strength, at any rate. Stepping aside from the firefighters, he opens both his hearing and his vision until he figures out where to go first.

Using his speed, he climbs up to the correct window, punching and kicking holding points in the old brick. Once there, he blocks the interstice under the door with his cape, scoops the elderly man and his poodle up in his arms and, taking care not to jostle them too much, climbs back down to the ground in order to leave man and animal to the care of emergency services. Immediately, he can hear the firefighting chief redirect his people’s efforts so they can take the residents in charge sooner and aim their streams of water toward the newly-opened window.

He repeats the rescue process for each of the twelve residents trapped in the house, taking the time to reassess who is most in danger between each round, then goes back for two wheelchairs, a pair of canes, and, despite the firefighters’ inquietude, the ashes of the first resident’s husband. The man takes them from him with a grateful sob, and he smiles in return, wishing him and his neighbors a speedy recovery as they are taken to the nearest hospital.

A small crowd has gathered around the building while he was working, concerned neighbors and gawking bystanders alike, several smartphones raised to capture the scene—which can’t have lasted more than twenty minutes, including the time he took to chat with the resident who broke her arm in her panic, trying to relax her as much as he could. When he turns around, flashes erupt all around him, and a red-haired woman waves her arm high in the air.

(She mutters between her teeth as she does so, something about finally having a ticket out of the doghouse if she can get a statement, and he allows himself a smile as he walks up to her. Help, after all, can take many different forms, and it isn’t like this is going to cost him anything.)

“Good morning,” he says, though at this point they are veering towards lunchtime. “May I help you?”

“Yes,” the woman says in a determined, no-nonsense tone. “Lois Lane, Daily Planet. Could you tell me what you were doing here?”

“I heard people calling for help,” he says truthfully, “and I knew I could help, so I did.”

“Can you tell me your name?”

He was expecting the question—even tried to come up with an answer for it, back when he first discussed it with Martha, but nothing he could think of seemed quite right, either too arrogant or too banal. So, in the end, he does what he’d decided on and evades:

“It seems to me like naming helpers is traditionally the press’s prerogative.”

He smiles a little, but Ms. Lane doesn’t return the expression, tilting her head to the side instead.

“Helpers?”

“People like me, who have certain...unusual abilities, and who use them to help where they can.” He pauses, curious, careful not to frown. “Is that not what you call them?”

“People like the Wonder Woman or the Flash get called heroes,” Ms. Lane says. “Do you think you should be called a hero?”

“I don’t think that’s my decision,” he admits, forcing himself to ignore Kal’s urge to blush, “but I’ll certainly do my best to be worthy of the comparison.”

“One last question,” Ms. Lane starts, but she has a look on her face that makes him fear the sort of question he really won’t know how to answer, and so he tilts his head to the side, pretends to listen for something for a second, and says:

“If you’ll excuse me—I’m afraid I have to go.”

He takes a step back to scan his surroundings—far too many people on the sidewalk for a dignified exit that way, even if he were to speed away immediately after, and there’s nothing behind him besides the burning building where the firefighters are only just getting the flames under control. Without a better option—and, more importantly, without the time to look for one—he sends a quick prayer to Rao to make his legs as strong as his arms, something he has yet to put to the test, and jumps away from the crowd. He lands on a nearby building with a much louder crash than he would have liked, though at least he manages to roll enough to avoid cracking the rooftop; and when he realizes the crowd can still see him, he jumps away again.

His second landing is even less dignified than the first: he lets the suit stretch downward as he falls, redistributing material from his cape to the bottom of his feet, but because he now knows he can manage the jump, he forgets to prepare for the roll on the landing. He hits the roof face-first as a result, startling a cage full of pigeons and getting more or less tangled in his cape, which is embarrassing enough on its own and becomes worse when he hears someone laugh above him.

He gets back up too fast, trips over his own feet, and stumbles off the building all in the same movement, Wonder Woman gasping in surprise and reaching for his hand...until they both realize that he isn’t, actually, falling to—well, not to his death, clearly; but someone like him falling from that kind of distance could easily kill whoever happened to be passing by. So it is still a relief when he manages to right himself up and find his footing on the roof again.

“Good catch,” Wonder Woman tells him with a smile.

“Thank you,” he replies, allowing himself to blush a little. “That has to be the best timing for a moment like this so far.”

She tilts her head to the side. In her uniform, she looks younger than she did in her jeans and leather jacket, but also more dignified somehow. She reminds him of Kara—the way she carries herself is just as confident, if not more so, and it speaks of someone used to commanding people’s attention without effort. No wonder the press seems to hold her in such high regard.

He wonders if they’ve ever seen her look like this, though—just a little puzzled, but smiling in a way that makes it look like she’s anticipating nothing but a good answer.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I couldn’t exactly—do that, on Krypton,” he admits. “Though I guess I’d have had less trouble with vertigo, if I could have.”

Wonder Woman laughs, striking a delicate balance between the dignified laughter of a queen and a delighted giggle, before she says, “Well, I wouldn’t have guessed you’d never done this before if you hadn’t told me.”

He smiles, just a little too nervous for the man he’s supposed to be right now.

“You weren’t half bad down there, either, you know,” she says with a conspiratorial smile.

She turns her head to the left then, eyes unfocused as she listens to something in the distance, back where he came from, before she offers him a hand to clasp.

“It seems they have decided what to call you. Welcome to the helpers, Superman.”

[rankakiu]

Thoughts of the Droid: Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Hello, Tumblr people! How life treats you? As always, I hope very well. Finally, I was presented with the perfect opportunity to see one of the most anticipated superhero films of this year: Avengers: Endgame, is a production that closes with 10 years of stories about heroism and of course, a decade of success for Marvel Studios.

WARNING: NOT SPOILER-FREE. Read at your own risk

Entering already full to the review, what did I think the movie? Short answer: While it is not up to Infinity War, it is a great movie by itself. Now we go with more details. 

Characters: Basically our favorite characters are still faithful to themselves. In Infinity War, we saw our heroes dead of fear and full of uncertainty; in this film is when we can see them completely broken, with their confidence on the floor and generally affected to know that they have not been able to save the world (and the universe). We see them struggling to adapt to a new world with half of their lives destroyed, a hostile environment that constantly reminds them of their failure as heroes and as humans. And even though they find Thanos and have a brief fight where they easily defeat the Crazy Titan, their feeling of emptiness gets worse, knowing that they can do nothing to reverse the situation ... or do they?

At this point, it could be said that the character of Scott Lang, when speaking to them about the quantum realm and his theory of time travel, causes the hopes of the Avengers to be reborn. Hence, our characters face various conflicts, mostly emotional, to know that many of them were not in the best friendly relationships, but even so, leave all that aside to focus on a common goal: to collect the gems of the infinite and thus have a possibility, not only to beat Thanos, but to fix everything.

History: It is at this point where I will be honest with you. The truth expected a different and more epic story. I do not know, a story where the surviving Avengers faced Thanos but seeing the inordinate power of the Crazy Titan, they would flee and from there formulate a time travel plan to collect the gems and that Thanos knowing that, would also travel to time to stop them. I expected a conflict that was even superior to the one shown in Infinity War. Instead, I saw a somewhat simpler story without so much epic tinge, so I was a little disappointed.

But why is history bad? Of course not. In fact, it is interesting to note that the story in Infinity War is about the villain, his background and motivations, why he does what he does. And they formulate it so well, that the spectator can sympathize in Thanos's crusade, leaving a bittersweet feeling: you can understand that his goal is to a certain noble point, but you do not agree with the method with which he wants to carry out his goal. On the other hand, in Endgame, it is a film that deals more with our heroes, to see them at first deal with their failure, and then see how hope is reborn in them and how they finally come together to carry out their plan, where they return to work as a real team, not as superheroes, but as brothers. It is a story where we see how the most powerful heroes of the planet seek on this journey to heal their wounds and in fact, this is what the story of the film is about: a healing process and with which they will seek redemption.

Speaking more about history, time travel seemed very successful, since it is here where we see our heroes more emotional than ever and that we can appreciate their human side much more. They face a mental challenge that supposes a hypothetical trip in the time, but in addition, they face an emotional challenge, that supposes being with a loved one, or facing a difficult decision of life and death. 

In the first case, we have Steve Rogers and Tony Stark, where Rogers looks with yearning and longing for Peggy Carter, the woman he loved the most in the world. We see him contemplate it with nostalgia and with the tension that supposes that Rogers can make the mistake of wanting to go see her. You can see that his conflict is more about deciding between meeting her or faithfully following her mission of collecting the gem of infinity. In the end, he chooses wisely to continue your mission for the greater good.

In Stark's case, we can clearly see all the overwhelming range of emotions he feels when meeting his father. And I found it quite interesting that they had a talk about the family and that in fact, it was the son who advised the father on this subject. Their meeting can be described as extremely moving.

In the second case, it is up to Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff. It is here where you can witness the great friendship that both had. Long before their time travel, the viewer can witness how Black Widow is devastated to learn how his friend lost his entire family at the hands of Thanos and how later Hawkeye became a vigilant too vengeful, as a way to discharge his anger and resentment against the world and destiny. The scene where they finally meet face to face is one of the best in the film, as Natasha offers Clint the opportunity to recover his family and after a few moments of doubt, he agrees to help the Avengers.

Of course, I could not stop mentioning the peak scene of these two companions that occurs in the Planet Vormir, where you can still appreciate the great friendship that both have. And this can be appreciated even more when they discover that a sacrifice is necessary to possess the Gem of the Soul. The brief fight between the two is intense and full of tension, where one as a spectator eats the nails and wishes that neither of them dies. And in the end, Natasha, in an act of true friendship and camaraderie, sacrifices herself so that Clint can not only get the gem but also continue with the mission of defeating Thanos so he can return to see his family. A most moving scene without a doubt.

The third case, we see Thor and Rocket Raccoon travel to the past, specifically to the lands of Asgard when they were in full glory. Thor cannot help but feel a certain nostalgia and above all the need to see, even for the last time, his mother, Frigga. Rocket Raccoon would be the comic relief for the situation, it is also the voice of reason for Thor, for the god of thunder to focus on his mission. Certainly, the conversation that mother and son hold is very endearing, it is in its pure sense, a conversation in which the mother gives valuable lessons and advice to her son, above all, the lesson that the past must let go to face the present , a mother who gives encouragement and emotional support to her son, when he most needed it. A scene very well carried out.

The fourth case, we have Bruce Banner, the Hulk, being face to face with the Ancient One, where we see that she also fought against the first invasion of Thanos, in New York, making sure that the Sanctum Sanctorum she was guarding did not fall into enemy hands. I do not have much to emphasize about this particular scene, except for the fact of its importance in history, since we see how Banner, using his intellect and tenacity, tries, by all means, to convince Ancient One to deliver the Gem of the Time, which she does when he mentions that Stephen Strange gave Thanos that gem in the present timeline. With this, the Ancient One seems to realize the whole plan of her pupil.

The fifth case that concerns us, You can see a great evolution in the character of Nebula, where she has a somewhat unpleasant encounter with her past self and her sister Gamora. Nebula tries to convince her self of the past that Thanos's goal is totally wrong and that she can free herself from her bonds and be someone else by herself. The conflict that arises between the two Nebulas is quite interesting in my opinion. The Nebula of the present is quite clear that she wants to be, while the Nebula of the past seeks to define herself by having her father Thanos as the most fundamental of her life.

She is presented with the perfect opportunity and the Nebula of the past does not hesitate for a second to take it since her obsession was too much to receive recognition from his father. That is why both the Nebula of the present and Gamora knew that it was impossible to save the Nebula from the past, for which they had no choice but to kill her.

We arrive at the scene of the final battle, where Thanos maintains his initial objective but now he wants to carry it out on a much larger scale, to eliminate half of the universe to eliminate ALL the universe and from there create another more prosperous one. The Avengers face the Crazy Titan in an epic fight, where despite the power of Thanos, there is an improvement in the Avengers, where they now perfectly know the kind of enemy they face.

Thanos keeps showing they why he is powerful, but the Avengers fight with more security and determination, which ends up delivering a very memorable battle. The climax of the fight reaches its point when those killed by the power of the gauntlet arrive on the scene of the fight and launch themselves into the charge against Thanos and his army. In the end, the Avengers win the match thanks to Tony Stark, who seizes the Gems of Infinity and with snapping his fingers disintegrates Thanos himself and his army. It is noteworthy here that when Thanos witnesses how his army fades, he goes through the same phases as the Avengers in Infinity War: First he looks in disbelief, then he feels fear and in the end (unlike the Avengers) he understands that he has lost war, he sits down and with it he resigns himself to death. If you ask me this is a worthy ending for a villain of his size.

Finally, the film closes with an emotional funeral in memory of Tony Stark, where we appreciate all the heroes and acquaintances of the deceased saying goodbye to him with melancholy, where they know that the world has lost one of its great and irreplaceable heroes. We also have Steve Rogers returns the gems of the infinite and stayed a lifetime in his timeline, fulfilling his dream of sharing his life with Peggy Carter. We see him return to the present, already aged and gives a last act both a superhero and human: bequeath his shield and with it his name to Sam Wilson, to Falcon, so that this is the new Captain America.

Certainly, it seemed appropriate that they also give this closure with the character of Captain America, we're probably in a future movie they mention that he has died of natural causes.

In general, Avengers: Endgame handles a very good story, solid and that keeps you attentive, making your three hours of duration go completely unnoticed.

Visual and special effects: Being a super production and even more a superhero tape, the visuals must be impeccable and fortunately Avengers: Endgame fulfills very well and thoroughly with this point. We know that many of the scenarios, creatures and the odd character are made by computer, but they make it feel that it feels completely real. In addition, they are also used to make the powers of different characters shine in all their glory. You can be calm, the visuals are perfect.

Action: While there are several action scenes, I feel that they were a little short, since most of this is only seen until the final confrontation with Thanos, that although I will not deny that it is one of the best achieved, I would have liked to see at least half of that action in other scenes. But I'm not complaining anyway. The action is exciting and overwhelming, especially in the epic final duel.

In conclusion, Avengers: Endgame is a great movie of superheroes and that closes with a flourish all the movies of the Avengers. The film gives moments of glory to many of their characters and gives a worthy conclusion to others. A film that, along with its prequel Infinity War, is to be seen again and again and that it will also earn the right to be immovable within a collection of an authentic movie buff, especially if it is a fan of superhero movies. So while I give this movie 4 out of 5 Gems of Infinity. A film that will undoubtedly mark a before and after in superhero movies.

Greetings

Rankakiu

P.S. Motherfu... They killed Black Widow, my favorite character! How dare they!? It is something that I will not overcome in years XD.

[redrobinfection]

Coffee, Coffee Everywhere, Epilogue

<< Part 20

This is the final part to the Coffee, Coffee Everywhere series! Or, at least, this is the last part I will be writing for the main series - I will write brief drabbles in the ‘verse, by request, when requests are open, so if you have any ideas for future parts, hold on to them... I may open ask requests soon ;3. Thank you to user ‘SummoningSecrets’ on Ao3 for leaving the comment that inspired this epilogue, and many, many thanks to everyone who has read, liked, reblogged any part of the series!!!

~*~

"Good Morning, Master Timothy."

Tim turned away from the coffee maker, lowering the mug from his lips, and murmured a quiet good morning to Alfred as he entered the manor's kitchen.

The mug caught his gaze and he paused. The corners of his mouth twitched into what Tim knew to be the Alfred-equivalent of a fond smile. "It's good to see you've moved past your temporary aversion to coffee and have returned to your normal habits," he commented dryly, eyes twinkling.

His tone of chagrined amusement didn't escape Tim, who huffed a quiet laugh. "It's not as bad as you think. This" - he waved the modestly-sized mug - "is my first and last cup this morning, and it's not even full strength."

"Oh?" Alfred raised an inquisitive eyebrow challengingly.

Tim's lips twisted into a uncertain smile. "I'm starting at two cups a day, one decaf and one regular, decaf in the morning and, strange as it is to say it, regular at night, right before patrol." He twisted the mug around in his hands absently, brow furrowing as he searched around for the right way to frame his reasons. "I know how bad that sounds, but that combination has worked out best for my sleep and wake cycle."

Alfred nodded understandingly. "That would make a fair bit of sense considering that six at night probably feels, in all likelihood, more like morning to you than six in the morning does," he commented. Tim blinked as he considered that, then nodded slowly. Put like that, it made a lot of sense why saving most of his caffeine for nights had worked out so well so far.

"Oh, and I also have a cup of green tea at lunch to keep me going until the afternoon nap, and then a bit of chocolate here and there, but that's about it," Tim added, taking a nervous sip of his decaf as he waited for any hint of disapproval, but none came.

Instead Alfred granted Tim one of his rare, overt smiles and nodded in approval. "Very good, Master Tim. It seems you've found a healthy balance for your caffeine intake. Now it will be a matter of maintaining that balance…" he trailed off, giving Tim a mild warning glare.

He laughed. "Yeah, I know. Every now and then the temptation to binge on coffee or chug an energy drink pops up, but to be completely honest, I like how I feel without the excess caffeine in my system that whenever the urges hit, I just laugh at them." He shook his head and smiled down at his coffee. "I've been there, done that and I am done with all of that."

Alfred's quiet smile took on a proud tinge, a look he reserved for occasions such as Jason agreeing to come home for Thanksgiving or Bruce telling one of the Batkids how much he loved them. "I'm glad to hear it, Master Tim. So I suppose that means no more crazy coffee-flavored cooking adventures?"

Tim chuckled and tapped his fingers against the mug nervously. "Well, no new ones at least, and when I make the meringues and coffee pasta now, I use strictly decaf instant coffee," he explained, raising his mug for a sip. Alfred raised an eyebrow skeptically and Tim choked. "R-Real decaf, that is," he clarified quickly, hiding his sheepish grin under the rim of his mug as he took another hasty sip.

Alfred nodded sagely, the amused twinkle in his eye at odds with the firm line of his mouth. "Very good, Master Tim. We'll make a self-responsible young man of you yet." He grinned and Alfred surprised him by ruffling his hair fondly - a very rare gesture of affection from the stately old butler - as he glided past Tim on the way to the refrigerator. He began pulling out materials for breakfast.

"I suppose the only trouble now will be convincing your father and brothers to believe you are capable of such growth," Alfred commented drily as he began cracking eggs into a bowl.

"What?"

"I happened to overhear Masters Jason and Dick discussing with Miss Stephanie the odds of your return to obsession the other night," Alfred explained. He shook his head. "It would seem some of your siblings have taken bets as to when you would decline into a relapse."

"Did they?" Tim asked, forcefully keeping his tone light all the while his expression darkened. Alfred noticed, of course, and nodded in commiseration.

"Indeed. From the little I overheard and from the few things I've noticed here and there, it seems most of the family, including Master Bruce himself, have entered the betting pool. The average duration wagered upon is three weeks from the day you resume consuming caffeinated beverages, and Miss Stephanie seems to think you will last twelve days, two short of Master Jason's guess of a single fortnight," Alfred informed him drily, his exasperation with the lot of them shining through clearly.

Tim felt a flare of annoyance but smiled tightly at the elderly butler. "Thank you for letting me know, Alfred. I'll put this intelligence to good use." The one-time spy uttered a demure "of course" but Tim saw the satisfied cast to his expression. Tim tapped his chin thoughtfully. With Alfred on his side…

"I guess if they're all so sure I'll fall back into bad habits I'll just have to prove them wrong," Tim mused out loud, his eyes taking on a wicked gleam as several ideas occurred to him. "Twelve days, huh…?"

Alfred gave him a piercing look then nodded, a sharp gleam of amusement lighting up his own eyes. "I suppose you will, Master Tim."

---

The next day, four days since he had started drinking coffee again, Tim made a point to drink a second mug of something very dark at breakfast, and if Bruce and Damian thought that it was another mug of coffee, then shame on them for jumping to conclusions.

The day after that he had three mugs of coffee-looking beverages with breakfast, alternating between shooting innocent looks at the family members who were giving him side-eye and sharing conspiratorial grins with Alfred behind their backs.

That night, before patrol, he poured decaf coffee grinds into an empty "Regular" container and intentionally waited until someone came into the kitchen before making his nightly coffee, very deliberately leaving the container out on the counter with the label clearly displayed. He made a full pot, poured the entire thing into the mega mug, and had to stifle a laugh at the wide-eyed look Dick gave him as he walked out. He only drank half and snuck the other half into the back of the fridge for a quick iced-coffee the next morning.

After patrol he made himself another large mug of coffee which he made certain to wave around before heading up to shower. He wished he could have snapped a shot of Bruce and Jason's faces respectively - they were like mirror images of stony shock and disapproval. Like father like son? Jason would love that comparison. Tim didn't drink the ridiculously watered down decaf, but just so he wouldn't waste the water, and in full defiance of that one time Jason told him never to shower in coffee, he used the cooled coffee to rinse the shampoo out of his hair.

As planned, he returned the mug to the kitchen just before Jason was about to head up, letting him know in passing that he hadn't drunk the entire mug, and then asking if his hair smelled like coffee. Tim really wished he'd had his camera then so he could have documented the priceless expressions on Jason's face as he went through the full range of emotions, from laughably relieved to dramatically alarmed to full-force horrified as he surreptitiously leaned in for a sniff.

At lunch the next day, he showed up to his smoothie "date" with Steph already carrying a Venti cup from Starbucks, and he ordered a "Café Loco" with regular coffee without a trace of hesitation. Steph looked as if she'd been force fed a whole lemon. Tim struggled not to laugh throughout the entire lunch as he switched back and forth between the Starbucks and the smoothie and Steph winced every time. Too bad she didn't think to ask what was in that Venti cup - the combination of herbal peppermint tea and the chocolate-coffee smoothie was surprisingly pleasant. She probably would have enjoyed a taste.

By the end of the week Tim was giving off all appearances of having matched his previous consumption of caffeinated beverages - three cups in the morning, four cups of tea at work, four cups before patrol and the mega mug right before bed.

In reality he was still only drinking the equivalent of one cup of decaf in the morning, one cup of green tea in the afternoon and one cup of regular coffee before patrol, employing every trick and fake-out he could think of to convince the family otherwise. That meant a lot of herbal tea, decaf iced tea, and plain water hidden beneath the lids of travel mugs.

Actually, since he'd started drinking all this extra water he'd started performing better on patrol and generally feeling better all around, enough so that he was considering keeping up the extra liquids even after he wrapped up this affair. So, besides getting a kick out of everyone's poorly concealed reactions, this game had already had the added perk of improving his hydration habits. Tim was having a great time, and he was only just getting started.

On Monday he began purposefully eating coffee-flavored foods in front of the family. Six containers of coffee-flavored yogurt over the span of a single day, two with each meal - he probably needed the protein, anyway, and his gut would certainly be happy - espresso cheese over coffee pasta for lunch - decaf pasta, of course - and a mocha chip frozen yogurt bar after patrol. All pretty tame, to be honest, but the family was still aghast and poorly concealing it.

He doubled his efforts the next day, again using every trick up his sleeve to make it seem like he was eating more than he was. He munched on chocolate covered raisins at lunch to fool Steph into thinking he was attempting to eat a half pound of chocolate covered coffee beans in one sitting. He using food coloring to turn his rice brown to the chagrin of Damian and the horror of Bruce at dinner. Eating three mocha chip yogurt bars after patrol while literally hovering behind Dick in the cave just so he could watch Dick struggle with his inbred urge to turn around and shoot concerned looks at Tim over his shoulder.

Actually, Tim was a little surprised no one had said anything to him yet about his changing habits - no expressions of concern or gentle suggestions to take things slowly. He was a little upset about that. Maybe it was because Alfred was present for most of his shenanigans and appeared to approve for lack of any protest, but Tim knew it was probably because they wanted to test him. Part of their silence was for the benefit of the betting pool, but if that were the only motivator, Bruce would have put his foot down days ago. No, they wanted to see how well he could manage on his own without outside interference, to see if he could be trusted on his own.

Part of him could understand why they want to know - so they could know how much energy to invest in keeping an eye on him in the future - and why they worried in the first place - he'd gone pretty far off the deep end before he saw the error of his ways - but the rest of him resented that the family didn't believe he could grow and change and be better than he was before, that they would stoop to treating him like the subject of an experiment and laugh as they made bets on the outcome. To quote a classic, he found their lack of faith "disturbing."

On Wednesday, one day before had Steph predicted he would crack, Tim laid out his coup de grace. The family was planning to meet that night, first for a quick dinner, then briefing down in the cave before joint patrols. Normal Wednesday night stuff.

Tim coordinated with Alfred and lay in wait, so that when the family began filing into the dining room around seven o' clock, there he was, already sitting with his "coffee feast" laid out before him. All in all, he had "coffee" mashed potatoes, "coffee" broccoli, "coffee" carrots, coffee-rubbed steak, a mug of café leche, and the mega mug of "coffee."

"Uh… Tim," Dick began slowly as members of the family formed a loose ring around him, some taking seats around the table, others lounging "casually" against the wall behind him. He has a pretty good idea of what's about to happen next, and it takes everything in his power to keep a straight face.

Dick sat down across from him and continued. "So, we were all talking and, um, we realized that it was about time that we sat down with you and, uh, talked about how you, um, seem like, lately, that you've been maybe a little too, uh, 'enthusiastic' about, well-"

"Coffee. You're drinking too much coffee again, is what Dickie is trying to say," Jason snapped from over Tim's right shoulder. Dick sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. Jason flipped him the bird and Bruce frowned.

"Coffee? Really? I only started drinking it again a few days ago. Have I really been drinking that much?" Tim asked innocently, turning to Jason with a startled expression. Cass stepped up beside Jason and nodded, face twisted in concern and both hands gripping her upper arms in a tense position that screamed worry. He felt the slightest inklings of guilt for worrying sweet Cass, but then he remembered that he had it on good authority that even she had cast a bet into the pool, even if Steph had had to egg her to do it.

"Yeah, Tim, you really have," Steph confirmed grimly from behind him. He twisted around in his seat to look at her and nearly rolled his eyes at the deeply serious expression of disapproval on her face. As if Steph had much room to talk; she was still nearly as bad about coffee as he had been!

"And it's not even just the coffee you're drinking, look at what you're eating!" she exclaimed, pointing to his plate.

"For the love of- are those coffee vegetables, Drake?" Damian asked, looking thoroughly disgusted even as he leaned in ridiculously close to examine the food from Tim's left side. He jumped - for once the little ninja kid had actually managed to sneak up on him - and he dragged his plate away with a scandalized scowl.

"What is it with you and sticking your face into my damned food?!" he demanded.

"Is there coffee in those potatoes?!" Damian shrieked back at him in return.

Bruce cleared his throat from where he sat at the head of the table and silence fell over the group. "This is an intervention," he intoned seriously, the other members of the family nodding along grimly.

Tim was howling with laughter inside, and barely holding onto his composure on the outside. "Intervention? But why?" he asked, letting the pitch of his voice rise high and appalled, and clutching at his chest like some offended Victorian-age maiden. Behind Bruce, Alfred's lips twitched at the corners for his comically over-acted performance.

"Don't play dumb. You know exactly why we're here; why we're doing this. Denying it doesn't make it any less of a problem," Jason scoffed, sounding annoyed. There were several annoyed and impatient expressions around the table, in fact. They were starting to catch on to his act, but clearly not the reasons for it.

Dick nodded, brow pinching as he swept his arms in gesture to Tim's meal. "I mean look at yourself, Tim. Isn't this exactly what you wanted to try to get away from by quitting caffeine and going through weeks of detox?"

"But it's not really that much is it?" Tim asked, pulling out his silliest puppy dog eyes and batting them furiously in one last ditch effort to clue the family in on his joke. Alfred stifled a cough behind his hand that Tim swore was cover for a laugh, but there were still no light bulbs over the heads of the other of the family members.

"'Not that much'? Are you kidding?" Steph exclaimed stepping forward and swiping the fork out of his mashed potatoes. Tim let it happen. "Not that much?! Look at this. Tim, you've put coffee in everything in front of you," she explained, pointing to the fork for emphasis.

"I can't believe Alfred even let you bring this crap to his table. I can't believe you can eat this stuff and not immediately hurl your guts out," Jason added hotly. "I mean, what does all that even taste like?"

"Yeah, that's what I want to know," Steph demanded, stabbing the fork into the potatoes and scooping out a blob. Ignoring mixed sounds of disgust and protest from the others, she made a face and opened her mouth to take a bite. "Probably like burnt tires that have gone through a blen- …"

She cut off abruptly and stared at the fork. Tim allowed himself a tight smile and waited for it. She blinked, then looked down at the plate. "This… doesn't taste like coffee...? It… doesn't taste like anything?"

Damian frowned and swiped a finger through the potatoes and raised it to his mouth. "Huh. It tastes like Pennyworth's mashed potatoes and nothing else," he confirmed, giving Tim a curious look that Tim returned with a "what the hell was that?!" expression, because who just sticks their fingers into someone's food without asking?!?

"What do you mean it doesn't taste like coffee?" Jason asked, leaning forward over Tim's shoulder to get a closer look. "It's brown enough to make me wanna puke, so…"

"It shouldn't," Tim informed them matter-of-factually. "There isn't any coffee in it."

The whole family froze, gears turning as they stared at him, then at his food, and then back to him again.

"Bull," Steph challenged and several others nodded in agreement.

"There's no coffee in any of it except the steak and the café leche, and that is barely half a cup of decaf diluted by a ton of milk," Tim explained patiently.

"But the food-" Bruce began.

"Is colored with food coloring."

Damian cocked his head then swiped a carrot off the plate. Tim sighed.

"Yes, no hint of coffee, simply a carrot," the youngest declared to the room.

Tim pushed the plate toward him. "You going to try a piece of broccoli? Might as well touch all of my food while you're at it."

"-Tt- I believe you, Drake," Damian responded, pushing the plate back. "I knew you wouldn't be so foolish so soon after having vowed never to stoop to such idiotic levels of caffeine consumption ever again."

Tim sighed and shook his head. "Oh. Yes. Of course."

"I'm still not convinced," Jason admitted slowly, rounding the chair so he could look Tim in the eye. "I mean, maybe the food is a fake, but all the coffee you've been drinking lately, decaf or not-"

Tim raised the mega mug and offered it to Jason. The older man took the mug warily and peered suspiciously at the contents.

"That is 90% of all the 'coffee' I've been drinking for the past eleven days," Tim told him.

Jason raised the mug and took a long draw. He froze, then lowered the mug slowly. "That's not coffee."

"Yes."

"That's…mugicha?" Jason asked in a stunned voice. Tim nodded, then grinned as Cass darted forward and slid the mug out of Jason's loose grip and retreated to one side to sip on her newly acquired prize. She shot him a small smile over the rim of the mug and winked.

"What is 'muggy-cha'?" Dick asked with a frown.

"Moo-ghi-chah," Jason sounded out for him slowly. "It's a Japanese tea made from roasted barley. Naturally caffeine free, generally tastes like cereal or unfermented beer, but when roasted well it has hints of coffee or chocolate."

"A tea that tastes like cereal?" Dick asked, eyes widening comically as his eyebrows flew up into his hair.

"Don't tell him that, Jason! Now he's going to steal all of my mugicha!" Tim cried, looking over at the mug in Cass's hands longingly.

"Quit your whining, Timbo, it's not sweet enough for Dickie, in any case." Jason shook his head slowly. "I didn't even think you knew what mugicha was."

"I learned a lot about tea back when I made tea for everyone after patrol that one time, remember?" Tim reminded them. Cass took a sip of the mugicha and nodded approvingly. "It's actually pretty good. The toasty flavor reminds me of a light roast coffee sometimes and chocolate or cereal or beer other times, just like you said."

"Mugicha is actually really good for you. Very hydrating," Jason said slowly, staring Tim down as if waiting for the 'psyche! But actually…'

"Yup. I know," Tim answered simply, waiting for it to finally sink in.

Jason blinked then glanced over Tim's meal. Across the room Bruce let out a long breath and Damian shook his head slowly. Steph stared.

"Wow. You... you weren't kidding, Babybird. You've really been skipping the coffee, just like you said," Jason finally admitted in a awed tone.

"Yep," Tim confirmed. "I haven't had more than the equivalent of two cups of coffee per day since the mac 'n cheese incident," he informed them smugly. "You all lose."

"W-what?" Dick stuttered breathlessly. Around the room several people twitched guiltily. Tim shook his head. So much for inscrutable Bats, huh?

"I know you guys started a betting pool on how long it would take me to crack and fall back into my crazy coffee ways," Tim tells them, pinning each of them with an unrelenting stare one person at a time.

"Tim, we didn't-" Steph begins.

"Alfred told me all about; don't try to deny it," he cut in flatly.

"Alfie! How could you?!" Dick bewailed in an exaggerated tone of betrayal, all the while smiling at the man gratefully and winking.

"I wasn't going to deny it," Steph continues, glaring at Dick. "We totally took bets - don't you even try to tell me you didn't, Dick Grayson because I was there-"

"I was rooting for you, Timmy. I bet it would take you at least six months, if not longer," Dick told him proudly.

"Your faith and confidence in me, is so inspiring," Tim deadpanned drily.

"Stop interrupting me!" Steph snapped, slapping Dick lightly on the arm. She turned to Tim. "Yes, we took bets, but if we're being completely honest with ourselves, we were always hoping we would each lose, that we would be wrong about our fears. This is one of those 'I hate being wrong, but this time I'd hate to be right almost as much' kind of situations'," she explained. Across the room Bruce nodded seriously and Jason shrugged with a chagrined grin. Cass crept up beside him and offered him a new glass of mugicha with an apologetic look - apologetic not just for the mugicha, but for all of it, Tim surmised.

"I still win," Tim repeated, taking a sip of the tea then sweeping a cool glare over all of them. "Because I'm never going back to drinking - or eating - that much coffee ever again."

"Well… good," Steph replied, nodding. "In that case, we're all kind of winners," she concluded, patting him on the back.

"Yes, but I actually won, so does that mean I get the pot?" he asked with a sharp grin.

Bruce cleared his throat and everyone turned to look at him. "Well. Actually, no." Tim frowned. He had been joking but, really, to be fair…

"As you all know, I didn't cast a bet," Bruce began.

Jason rolled his eyes. "Yeah, because you claimed you only wanted to know for 'academic purposes.' Like that's any better," he muttered under his breath. Tim huffed a quiet laugh - he had totally called it - and a muscle jumped in Bruce's jaw, but he otherwise seemed to ignore Jason's interjection.

"But, as an impartial observer, I kept track of the bets-"

Steph snorted. "Yeah, only because Alfred flat out refused."

"And with good reason, Miss Stephanie," Alfred chimed in, sweeping an icy gaze over all of them. "You should all be ashamed of yourselves, testing Master Tim in that way," he informed them bluntly over Bruce's shoulder.

Bruce cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably in his chair, as if he could literally feel the chill of Alfred's disapproving glare on his back. "Yes, well. If 'never' is your final answer, Tim, then you'll have to share the pot with Damian, because he bet his share of Alfred's oatmeal cookies for a year that you would never go back to consuming that much coffee ever again."

They all turned to stare at Damian, who colored but didn't turn away from their stares. Tim blinked in actual shock.

"Wait! You guys were betting in Alfred's cookies? But-"

"Wait, really? I thought you said 'Drake is an overworking fool who will fall back into his stimulant addiction in weeks', or did I hear that wrong?" Jason asked over him.

"-Tt- You heard correctly, if incompletely, Todd. If you had continued listening you would know I said that he would fall back into his stimulant addiction if and only if we stepped back and let him work himself to distraction once more," Damian explained. His cheeks darkened even further, but he finished off his statement by saying,"What I meant was that, should we withdraw our support, surely he would be driven into self-destructive habits once again. And yes, Drake, we dealt in cookie currency."

The kitchen was a mix of reactions, ranging from proud smiles of differing intensities from Dick, Alfred, and Cass, to wonderment from Jason and suspicious skepticism from Steph. Damian's expression darkened under their combined attention and he began closing off and shutting down in the way he always did whenever he inadvertently began to show he was a real boy underneath his sharp-tongued, aloof act.

Tim stared. "Wow. So…" He cleared his throat. Damian curled in on himself defensively and Tim paused to take a slow deliberate breath. "How many cookies do we each get?"

Damian startled slightly then relaxed, huffing a small laugh and grinning sharply. "By my last count, we have at least three months of triple the usual amount of cookies apiece. Better still, Pennyworth has recently added coffee flavor to the recipe, further complimenting the flavors of the walnuts, chocolate and raisins."

Tim's eyes widened and he returned the sharp grin. "Oh? Is that so? Coffee cookies? Three per day. I can live with that."

"Oh, jeez, Tim, noooo…" Dick moaned.

Tim's grin turned wicked. "Tim, yessssss."

"Not another coffee food, we just… you just…"

"Calm yourself, Richard," Damian soothed him, rolling his eyes. "I said coffee-flavored, not caffeinated. There is nothing amiss with enjoying the flavor of coffee."

"Indeed, they are perfectly healthy," Alfred chimed in, his eyes flashing in amusement.

Dick looked around wildly for support, but Jason merely chuckled and Bruce's expression took on a fond cast.

"Yes," Bruce said, "Just this once. Coffee? Yes."

~*~

The End! Thank you for reading, everyone!!

[bigskydreaming]

Doing some writing today off and on between errands and work, and jumping around various Kings of the Sky installments, specifically Dick, Jason and Cass stuff, so probably gonna post snippets from a bunch of them as I go. 

(Kings of the Sky is an AU that goes canon divergent from the point of Jason calling Dick for advice for dealing with Bruce after the Garzonas case and where things end up going dramatically different from that point on. Including Jason not dying, being part of his own lineup of Titans between Dick and Tim’s, Dick being adopted not long after the Church of Blood incident, Cass being the third Wayne kid to be taken in and adopted and with Tim and Duke being next and then Damian coming along later once they find out about him. This is basically my ‘the family’s alright’ AU with largely ‘Good Dad Bruce’ except for Dick and then Jason yelling some sense into him about the other, respectively, in the first two installments, just FYI).

Anyway, this bit is from a story called “In Their Shadows Grow Trees Of Good and Evil,” set about a year after Cass has been adopted, when she and Jason are both sixteen and Dick’s twenty-one. Also just FYI, because canon has never been specific about what ways Cass is neurodivergent due to the comic-book style ‘rewiring’ of her brain so that she could learn to speak later in life, I tend to go with her being dyslexic and having aphasia. She sticks exclusively to sign language and being a silent presence in her costumed personas, so that there’s no chance of people connecting the dots between Black Bat and Cassandra Wayne, as she mostly speaks verbally in her civilian persona and doesn’t hide her aphasia. The reason there’s not likely to be any obvious signs of aphasia in the snippets of her I post is because I wait until I complete something to choose words at random to replace with aphasia-born mixups, so its more realistic and I’m not gearing her dialogue towards deliberately placed moments. Just in case you were wondering.

In Their Shadows Grow Trees of Good and Evil

“Hey Todd,” sneered an exquisitely obnoxious voice. “Why’s your sister so fucking weird?”

Jason sighed the sigh of a soul a mere century into its eternity of damnation as he rose from the lunch table he’d been studying at and crammed the rest of his books into his backpack. Then he pasted a cheerfully bland smile on his face and turned around, geared for academia warfare (teenage prep school edition).

“Hey Craig,” he said brightly. “Why’d you come out of the womb so ugly your parents had to tie a piece of steak around your neck just to get the family dog to go near you? Mysteries abound.”

The advancing junior slowed a step, momentarily rocked by his truly impressive return volley. The grimace Craig’s already gargoyle-esque features twisted into made his face even more unpleasant to look at than usual, which was quite the feat. Jason would have applauded if just looking at it hadn’t already turned him to stone.

But the bargain basement basilisk kept on towards him rather than turn tail and skulk off to pop his emotional blisters, so Jason sighed a sequel to his first one. Looked like it was one of those days where Craig felt up to powering through. Guess someone had eaten their self-esteem Wheaties that morning. Joy.

“You think you’re pretty hot shit, don’t you, Todd?”

Jason shrugged. “I mean, to be honest I kinda have a one track mind, so right now I’m mostly just thinking about punching you in your mistake.”

“My what?”

“Your face,” Jason elaborated with exaggerated patience.

“Huh?”

“Oh my god, I’m saying your face is a mistake. See, its not as fun when I have to stop and explain it to you. Ugh, you ruin everything.”

He neatly sidestepped the older boy as R2-Dumbass stayed frozen, smoke coming off of his internal CPU while trying to catch up. For a second Jason thought he was home free, but then he remembered the universe fucking hated him so haha, sucks to suck. Also, a small crowd had gathered to witness the verbal jousting match, and nothing invigorated an asshole like Craig more than an audience of like-minded peers. So there was that too.

“Whatever. Laugh it up all you want, you little shit,” the junior rallied. “But just remember, mocking your betters will never change the fact that you were born street trash and you’ll be street trash until the day you die.”

Honestly? Not his best effort. Jason almost felt bad using any of his good material. Seemed like overkill at this point. But he did have a strict Scorched Earth policy to maintain, so.....

“Yeah but my dad could buy out and ruin your dad so that means I still win, right?”

He smirked as the barb landed and Craig’s face set into a sunset vista of strangled purple and furious red. Bam. Direct hit.

“Listen, you - “

“Oh for fuck’s sake, it was rhetorical,” Jason interrupted. “I don’t actually care what you think even a little bit. Nobody does. You don’t matter. Please go be irrelevant elsewhere, you’re fucking dismissed, you loser.”

“Speak for yourself, charity case.” Oh goodie, Craig’s backup singers had finally arrived. Now if only he could remember to care enough to learn their names in the first place. Seriously, who told the extras they could have lines? “All the jokes in the world can’t change who and what you are.”

Jason shrugged and continued nonchalantly up the hill to where his sister was standing with arms crossed, staring down at something on the other side.

“True genius is never appreciated in its own time,” he tossed back over his shoulder. “I’m sure I’ll be immortalized in song eventually.”

The mob of morons deigned to let him go without further incident. Though he suspected that had less to do with his scathing wit and more to do with him being headed towards Cass. She was immaculately presented as always, wearing the Gotham Academy uniform like she was born to it despite hating its uncomfortable stiffness every bit as much as he did. But that was just Cass for you. 

For all that she still struggled at times to engage verbally or speak up in social settings, her mastery of body language remained without peer. She could chameleon-camouflage her way into matching poise and posture with anyone - a skill that had allowed her to walk into school on her very first day with her head held high as though she owned everything in her sight. Exuding so much Queen Bee Intimidation Factor even the other hive queens were afraid to approach her  themselves. Sending forth their drones to try and woo her into an alliance, only to see her remain oh-so-casually above it all, a slightly contemptuous smile adorning her lips.

Basically, she scared the shit out of their classmates without them having anywhere close to a true understanding of why, and Jason was outrageously jealous. Rude. Unfair. Why did his siblings always get all the cool toys when all he had was his rakish charm, scintillating intellect and debonair.....nah, who was he kidding. He was fucking awesome. 

“Sup, sis,” he said, cresting the hill to stand beside Cass. “Just FYI, I just took a popularity bullet for you, which means you owe me your dessert tonight. Its a family rule that’s totally a real thing and definitely not something I just made up right now because Alf is making chocolate soufflé.”

She made no acknowledgment and remained stock still, a Colossus at Rhodes peering down into the shifting shadows of the parking lot below.

He peered down as well, though with absolutely no idea what they were looking at. Solidarity, yo.

“So are we staring fixedly at anything in particular, or should I just pick my own spot and commit?”

His humor was totally wasted on her as always. Instead of laughing and telling him what a lovable goof he was, she just inclined her head in the direction of a blonde girl where she was standing next to the driver’s side door of a Mercedes-Benz, dictating final commandments to her peons before departing. Well, probably. Jason was just guessing, based on his own body language reads, and like, general disdain for literally everyone at this school that wasn’t related to him.

He made a face. An extra special one reserved just for this classmate in particular. “Ugh, Madison Dunleavy? She’s the worst.”

Cass raised a cool eyebrow. “I thought Craig Hendricks was the worst.”

“He is. They’re both the worst. Its a hotly contested position here at Gotham Academy.”

She rolled her eyes and nodded back down at the Queen of Air and Darkness. “So. You know her?”

“Nope,” Jason said. “Come to think of it, I’ve actually never seen her in my life. No idea who that is. Can’t help you, sorry. Shall we go home?”

The Eyebrow of Inquisition speared him with clear intent. Who the fuck needed words when you could pack the Encyclopedia Britannica into a single facial expression?

Jason sighed gustily. 

“I had a slight altercation with her freshman year that led to her declaring her undying enmity for me until the end of time. The word nemesis may or may not have been thrown around once or twice. I can’t recall.”

The Eyebrow of Inquisition lowered nary an inch. Ugh, she wanted more? Why did everyone in his family hate privacy, with the obvious exclusion of himself when snooping through Cass and Dick’s rooms for blackmail material, which was actually intel-gathering and thus another matter entirely.

“Okay so basically what happened was my first week here I overheard her talking shit about me and not even twenty minutes later she was pretending to kiss my ass in homeroom, like probably because of Bruce, y’know? So I just busted out laughing and told her to fuck off and die and she has inexplicably loathed me ever since.”

Avoiding further Eyebrow Inquisition-ing, he made a show of peering around aimlessly. When the silence extended and it was clear Cass was absolutely not going to break first, Jason waved a hand in dismissal and took to peering oh so casually at his fingernails. "I suppose I was less tactful back in those days.”

He chanced a look up, finally, and saw his sister’s eyebrow had somehow managed to mighty morphin power ranger its way into a configuration evoking both judgment and disbelief, with the latter perhaps aimed at the idea he was significantly differing in the tact department these days either.

“I don’t love the implications your face is making right now,” he told her.

She ignored him, because of course she did. 

“Does she know Dick?” She asked instead. Jason shrugged.

“I mean, maybe? She’s probably seen him around at one of those stupid galas we have to go to, and actually I think maybe she has an older brother who was either in Dick’s grade or like, one above or below it? I don’t know.”

Now both eyebrows were doing the dance of disbelief. Okay, so maybe that was poor situational awareness on his part, since it wasn’t like Gotham Academy was a big school with a ton of other kids and also he’d only been in the same class as Madison for like over two whole years, but whatever. There were extingent circumstances.

“Look, she’s a total snob who’s always looked down on me and in return I willfully ignore both her existence and that of everyone and everything even tangentially related to her. Its called equality, Cass.”

She pursed her lips and went back to the peering, because of course in the mind of Cass it made total sense that the Grand Inquisition didn’t need to be followed up by any explanation on her part, what the hell. Like was he supposed to have inferred it?

“What’s this all about anyway?”

“I heard her talking about Dick earlier,” she said without peeling her eyes away from her personal recon mission. “I don’t know what she said though, I just heard her say Grayson, and then I was busy looking at what her body was saying. I know it was about Dick because she shut down when she saw me. And I didn’t like the way she....looked....before that happened. The way she was talking. It was.....”

Jason frowned but held back any follow-up questions while he waited - with total patience because he wasn’t an absolute cad, thank you very much - for his sister to find the word she was hunting for. It was a major source of frustration for her, that whatever neural map her brain followed put body language and spoken language in totally different regions of her brain, separated by a fairly great divide. Meaning she usually had to make a conscious choice to focus on body language or conventional languages - whether verbal or sign. But it tended to be one or the other; she’d yet to master taking in and comprehending both forms of ‘language’ at the same time. And none of them had quite figured out how to convince her that she wasn’t actually missing anything when she chose to focus on one specific form of communication - that she was still observing far more than most people ever would.

“Proprietary,” Cass settled on at last. She nodded her satisfaction with her choice of word, and Jason waited a whole two point five seconds before sticking  his whole foot in his mouth.

“Proprietary?” He asked with a scrunched nose as he weighed that for possible context and implications. “You sure?”

She glared. He winced. It was a whole thing.

“Yeah, I know, sorry, sorry, I heard it the second it was out of my mouth. We don’t actually have to experiment with the legitimacy of if looks could kill.”

Cass rolled her eyes, but eh. That could’ve gone worse.

Jason swiftly redirected attention anyway. Discretion is the better part of valor, after all.

“So. The Queen of Air and Darkness was talking about our big bro, and her mood was.....proprietary, huh?” He recapped while digesting the info like a boss. “Well. Definitely not loving that, I gotta say. Hold please.”

Pulling out his phone and pulling up his most recent texts, he began typing furiously.

“What are you doing?” Cass asked.

“Texting Tom,” he replied, because duh. Hah, now it was his chance to have the answers that should be patently obvious and thus make with the ‘are you kidding me’ when she asked obvious questions she should know the answer to! How do you like them apples, sis?

“Why are you texting your boyfriend right now?”

Jason rolled his eyes, because fair is fair, but never ceased texting for a moment. Time was of the essence here, probably. Well, maybe. Okay probably not. But it’d still been like half an hour since he and Tom had last texted and that’s a very fucking long time in teenage years.

“To be our getaway driver tonight, obviously.”

She stared at him. He didn’t look up, but he could feel it anyway. He was very intuitive like that.

“What?”

Jason heaved another sigh, one keyed to tones of ‘oh my god, do I really have to spell this out,” exasperation. He was just racking up the bonus points here. It was really too bad this wasn’t an actual competition he could actually win and this was all just pettiness taking place wholly in his own head. Lame. 

“Well, clearly we now have to go snoop in Madison’s house aka lair to see if its actually a house or a full on lair. Because she’s either a creeper or like, legit evil, and its important to know which one before we proceed, because obviously we can only bust her for being a weird creeper about our brother as Jason and Cass, whereas if she’s legit evil, that’s gotta go down as Robin and Black Bat. I’ll handle the snooping, you’ll take look-out, but we still need a wheelman and that’s why I’m texting Tom. This is all very mission-oriented, okay. I’m a professional.”

“Right,” she affirmed, while sounding anything but convinced. “Why don’t we just tell Bruce?”

Without looking up or breaking stride, he said: “I’m going to give you til I finish typing this sentence to figure out what was wrong with what you just said. Remember that we are talking about hypothetical danger to our brother, and also Bruce’s idea of a proportionate response to any of his children being in even hypothetical danger. And also our brother’s idea of a proportionate response to Bruce’s idea of a proportionate response. Look, you’re still new so I’m gonna need you to just trust me on this one. Its gonna be a no on telling Bruce without further intel.”

Cass said nothing in response to that, which meant that she was conceding the point and recognized the wisdom of his words. Or maybe that she was just gonna go ahead and do what she wanted anyway and just wasn’t bothering to fight about it, but it was probably that first thing.

“Well you better not just make out with your boyfriend all night,” is what she said at last, and that got his attention reeeeeal quick like.

“Umm. Wow. Okay. So, first off, you’re not the boss of me and who I make out with and when, so jot that down. And second, now I’m definitely going to make out with my boyfriend extra hard, with the exception of when we are actually on our recon mission because as previously established, I am a professional. And also, again, you’re not the boss of me.”

Jason ignored her Eye Roll With Extra Emphasis, and instead just held up his phone to Text With Extra Emphasis, as he read along with what he was typing.

“By the way babe, we have to make out extra hard tonight,” he said, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth while he dragged out his dictation with the kind of focus that usually led to Bruce asking why he couldn’t apply as much intensity to training as he did to pettiness. “Cass has suddenly decided she can dictate terms to me and I need to shut that shit down ASAP, so thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter. Smoochies and other gay stuff to the best boyfriend ever.”

Jason frowned as a response pinged back seconds later. 

TheCatsMeow: ....the things I put up with for the sake of your weird family dynamics.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Yeah, yeah. You’re a saint among were-panthers. Must you mock? Why can’t you just tell me I’m pretty instead?

TheCatsMeow: Sorry. Let me try again. OMG you’re so pretty Jase how did I get so lucky xoxo.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: No. Its too late. It feels forced and unbelievable now. You’ve ruined it forever.

TheCatsMeow: Got it. From now on I will only tell you that you’re repulsive and hideous.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: I’m breaking up with you.

TheCatsMeow: But after I help you with your mission tonight.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Obvsly. I’m a professional. Why do people keep forgetting this?

TheCatsMeow: And also the making out to spite your sister.

TheOnlyRobinThatRocks: Yeah we should do that first too. I mean we already penciled it in.

[lucianalight]

Dr. Banner and Mr. Hulk

I've been thinking about writing this post for a while now but because it's maybe not based on strong facts and involves some personal experiences, I decided against it. Then I see this post and it inspired me to say my piece. For the reasons listed above I didn't write it as a reblog. it also involves some mbti analysis.

I have a bone to pick with marvel about Bruce Banner and it's not just about how Bruce was ooc in TR. I think Bruce doesn't get enough appreciation and recognition in mcu and by some fans. It's always about Hulk and how awesome it is that he can beat up everyone. Even in posters it's always Hulk’s face and not Bruce. That is not fair at all for this character.

I've always understood Bruce/Hulk on a personal level(my mom and I are always joking about how I'm similar to him) and it made more sense why I felt this way when I saw him being categorized as an INTP. I'm not a professional in mbti analysis so what I'm about to say is based on my readings on the subject and personal experiences.

INTPs dominate function is Ti, introvert thinking. And if they are going to be recognized by sth, they strongly want it to be sth about their abilities in matters involving their logic, thoughts and analysis. Their inferior function is Fe, extrovert feeling and because it's the last function they use, it's somehow underdeveloped. It doesn't mean they don't have feelings as stereotype suggests. It means they usually don't know how to react properly when faced with emotions. And Hulk is the manifestation of Fe in Bruce. All the anger and feelings that he keeps lock inside, just pouring out without his control and that's terrifying. Now I'm going to delve into self-experience here. I'm an INTP and I'm someone whose exterior is calm and relaxed and my nose is either in a book or in some reading material, or I’m studying and thinking. I can also get irritated or angry easily(“this is my secret. I'm always angry”) but I have a great control over it. Meaning even when I'm angry I don't always act on it and just bottle it up. But there are times that sth makes me beyond furious and then I explode and turn into someone totally different than my usual self(the other guy). Normally I'm not physically strong at all. I'm the kind of person who struggles to open a jar or lifts heavy things but in my hulking-out state I can break a knife in half(literally and let me tell you that was one the weirdest experiences that I ever had). And I hate to be recognized by this part of me. I absolutely hate it if people dismiss all my other abilities, who I am most of the time and only see this part. See just my feelings and not my logic which is sth I value more. Bruce is the same. He is an extraordinary scientist and a genius. He is the one who designed an algorithm to find the Tesseract, helped created Ultron, also recognized the behavior and plans of the mentioned AI, has seven Phds and his vast knowledge can help solve problems. He is as much as a hero as Hulk and deserves the same recognition.

It's true that Bruce calls Hulk, the other guy and tries to separate himself with his alter ego, but deep down he knows that Hulk is a part of him. Most of people usually ignore one of his sides in favor of the other. So he really values people who accepts both of his sides. That's why he and Tony are such good friends.

Now why Bruce was ooc in TR? Besides inconsistency in his personality traits, sth other movies were successful in maintaining, Bruce's reaction upon dehulking(is this even a word?) is so out of character. Again I'm going to tell one of my experiences. About two years ago I was going to a kung fu class. I was good at doing styles but when it came to fights I was usually got beat. Because I was overthinking and overanalyzing instead of instinctive reaction and it made me slow. Also if I was about to land a blow on the wrong spot I would stop mid motion because I was afraid to hurt my opponent. I even didn't hit as hard as I could since I didn’t want to cause them pain. Once when I was in my hulk mode(for 3 days) I had to fight in the class. My regular opponent couldn’t even land a single blow and she was constantly falling by the force of my hits. You know what happened after I calmed down? I felt so guilty that I kept apologizing to her for the rest of our classes. And that was for sth that I actually had to do that way. So Let me tell you how Bruce would have really acted. He would have been distraught to know what he had done. Hell, even Hulk would felt guilty enough if he knew the truth that people he was killing, didn't have a choice in fighting him. It’s one the significant traits of Bruce/Hulk. Guilt over hurting people. And there is no sign of it in TR. Was it because they were faceless aliens so the audience shouldn’t care about them?

Bruce would be disoriented and freaked out after spending two years as the Hulk, but that’s not a reason to downplay his intelligence. Anger doesn’t do that. Logical thinking can even have a calming effect on Bruce so he would start using it(sometimes I read the most scientific articles and solve mathematics problems to calm myself down).

Then there is the matter of him being in space and different planets. INTPs are kind of obsessed with aliens and space. Bruce would have died of excitement and would have tried to know everything about the different planet and aliens. Trust me, I know.

The other thing I didn’t like was how Natasha’s video bring out Bruce. I didn’t like Bruce and Natasha romance in AoU at all and that has nothing to do with clintasha that seems to be the case for lots of fans. I think it was forced and completely unnecessary. I didn’t like how Bruce/Hulk was treated in their relationship. Natasha was somehow using Bruce and his affection for her to control him, bring the side which was the most useful in a situation without considering what Bruce wanted, afraid of Bruce turning to Hulk without control. So, yes, love would calm down Hulk. But Natasha had betrayed Bruce’s trust and contrary to popular belief Hulk is not stupid. He is the side that protects Bruce and that includes emotional problems. One of the reasons that he turned off the communication with Natasha, was that he felt betrayed and used by someone he loved. Sth an INTP can’t forgive. It didn’t work then, why it should have worked again?

I can't write sth and don't mention Loki. There are disagreements regarding Loki's mbti type. Personally I see him as an INFJ and since INFJs have a hard time understanding INTP feelings, Loki’s mistakes and wrong reactions towrd Bruce/Hulk can be explained by this mbti typing.

[gloves94]

La Vie En Rose [Bruce Banner] 10

From the splitting ocean of people strolled in a powerful individual. All mouths went agape at the sight. Some cowered and hunched over as the person approached the center of the room. All eyes following.

Stark looked flabbergasted as he lowered his weapon and released Bruce. Banner’s mouth was ajar in shock. The rest shared the feeling of astonishment.

Their mood: very surprised.

“Brother!” Thor boomed, eyes wide.

Loki stood before them wearing his emerald and charcoal Asgardian royal robes. “It is I-Loki of Asgard, son of Lau-“ He didn’t finish. He was immediately greeted by Thor’s hand reaching in a choking hold. Talk about a brotherly reunion.

He wasted no time in tossing Loki against some of the casino machines nearby. His body flew and came crashing down aggressively. The machine’s broke down and one started loudly, blaring and blinking in tiny golden lights in the top screen that read “JACKPOT!”

“Hello brother,” Loki croaked in a strained voice from under the machines, still on the ground.

Suddenly, he felt an immense weight on his chest. Blinking twice he realized that Thor had placed his Mjölnir on his chest. He was immobilized. All of the Avengers approached him cautiously.

“Stand back!” The Captain said standing one step in front of everyone else. Thor was next to his brother.

“I missed you too!” He said to Thor with a wide smile.

“Do I look to be in a gaming mood?!” the other shot back angrily.

“Barrow to S.H.I.E.L.D. We’ve got Laufeyson in here. He’s been apprehended-“ He was interrupted by Romanoff who raised her hand to silence him. Her eyes remained on Loki suspiciously.

Something wasn’t right…

“Loki, why have you come?” Thor asked as he knelt over his brother.

“Same reason you’re all here,” he grinned. “I came to get my cube.”

“Loki!” Thor accidentally weighted down on the hammer that was already pressing down on him. He grunted in pain. “Give up the Tesseract! Give up this poisonous dream and come home!”

“You need the cube to take me home,” he uttered strained.

“Merrill of St. Paul has the cube,” Thor continued.

“I know,” Loki nodded. “I almost had her,” he struggled with his breath. It looked as if he was trying to reach into his pocket.

Thor finally removed the hammer.

All eyes remained on him cautiously. One wrong move and things would go south really fast…

He slowly sat up, his eyes bounced between each one of the Avengers. They rested on Banner for a moment before smirking at him. The gesture ran chills down his spine.

From his pocket he pulled out a yellow canary ring.

“That’s St. Paul’s ring.” Tony confirmed everyone’s suspicions.

“How?” Steve began questioning.

“I saw her. Running through the casino with my scepter!” He growled angrily at the mention of his scepter. “So I stopped her. I immediately saw through her disguise of an old hushjelp!”

“A what?” cringed Banner.

“A maid.” Thor explained casually with his massive arms crossed over his chest.

“I almost had her! But those cursed eyes- she slipped right past my fingers.” He said as he toyed with the ring in his hand.

“Something is not right,” began Natasha as she approached him.

“You’re right.” Said the Captain self-assuredly. “I think Loki's trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don't stay focused, he'll succeed. We shouldn’t believe him so quickly.” Steve Rogers explained.

“That’s not it.” Natasha wasted no time and smacked Loki across his face. He flinched and stretched his jaw at the stinging pain.

“Merrill. Show yourself.” The Black widow growled as she gazed deep into Loki’s gray eyes.

Loki glared menacingly. His eyes glowering. His scowl deepened before he burst into a fit of cackling laughter.

“I am burdened with glorious purpose! Can we halt this charade and begin looking for the scepter and my cube?”

Natasha wasted no time and angrily smacked the other side of his face. Her eyes cold. Face stern. “Now, that was personal.” Loki noted touching his red face.

“Hey!” Thor warned. Despite being furious at his brother and all of the chaos he has unleashed. At the end of the day Thor always felt that a family is everything that a man or god could have. Loki’s mischievous smirked stretched even wider.

“Why should we trust you?” barked Stark.

“For all that we know you could be Merrill disguised with the scepter.” Added the Captain.

“It’s not.” They all turned to look at Banner surprised. “It takes a great amount of concentration to maintain a disguise with the scepter. If it was really St. Paul, she would’ve given away her disguise with the first hit.” He explained after a moment.

He focused his eyes back to Loki’s which gave him a terrifying chill. An air of familiarity remained between them. The way the god looked at him. It was just peculiar.

“I never said you should trust me,” Loki shrugged with a chuckle. “Keep in mind that we are both after the same objective, and I-“ he suddenly tossed the ring he was holding in the doctor’s direction. “Just happened to come a scratch of an inch closer than all of you.” He said with that mischievous smile he was infamously well-known for.

“I’d feel better if there was an arrow head through this clown’s eye socket.” Barrow stepped forward menacingly.

“Stand back.” Natasha suddenly talked into the radio carried. She made a decision and from her back pocket pulled a pair of high technology handcuffs.

“Loki Laufeyson will work with us in order to capture the fugitive Merrill St. Paul.” She explained.

Something about the way she said it made Bruce’s stomach churn anxiously. He wondered where she could be and how it was that she had successfully escaped the building. That Merrill really was one of a kind.

“Perhaps his assistance will be beneficial. However, it will not ease the severity of his decided sentence.” She said leaning in really close to his face and clasping his hands together in he handcuffs before his body. She was hoping to smell a familiar scent, or see anything that would give St. Paul away. She caught none and Loki remained triumphantly smiling. She wondered if he could possibly smile without it making it seem as if he was mischievously planning something.

“Friends?” Loki offered with a broad grin.

Stark fought the urge to face palm and simply turned away. Hawkeye flashed him a death glare.

Thor seemed conflicted.

The Black Widow remained stoic and the Captain could not believe this was happening.

Loki spent the day with the Avengers. They shared strategies and returned to helicarrier headquarters where Loki was once again kept in a massive crystal jail. This time he would be heavily guarded 24 hours of a day.

Banner found himself in the lab looking over some old notes. He was attempting to figure out a new way to read the Gamma radiation that the Tesseract was leaving behind. He felt a pulsating headache trembling in his temples. He just needed to get his mind off of things. Off of her.

“Long night?” It was then that Natasha Romanoff waltz in to the lab.

He rubbed his tired eyes and looked down back to his notes. “Yeah.”

“I brought you some coffee,” she said placing the dull white mug in the table before him. She sat next to him sipping her own. “Thanks” he replied automatically.

It was then that he got a good look at her. She was wearing a simple silk black robe with nothing underneath. He looked away suddenly feeling wide awake. She noticed this and the smallest of smiles made way to his face.

He attempted to focus back on his research.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” she said in a sultry tone. He remained stiff. The grip on his pen tightened. “I am wearing this for you.” She said as she lowered the opening of her cleavage. She looked at his with lustful eyes. She had ever chosen to wear a nice perfume for this time. Her hair sat in red curls around he heart shaped face. She was gorgeous. One of the most beautiful women that Bruce had ever seen.

He remained speechless. He lowered his gaze when looking at her. Her hand reached for the nape of his neck. He felt a shiver run down his spine. Maintaining that seductive gaze she leant in and kissed him.

“Nat! Nat! No…” He rejected her. “I-I can’t.” he simply stated before returning to his work. He ran a hand through his hair nervously. “I can’t.” he shook his hand in a spoke in a more determined tone.

“Bruce nothing will happen. We’ll be gentle-“ she said caressing his face gently, once again leaning in.

It wasn’t that. It really wasn’t the Hulk that concerned him.

“I said no.” He said harshly, finally turning to face her in the eye.

Defeated she looked at him with antagonism. “I see how it is,” she spat out in a frustrated tone.

She stepped away from him. “I don’t understand how you can still think of her!” She said in an uncharacteristic emotional tone. She noticed this and took a moment to compose herself. This time she wrapped the robe around her body even closer in an attempt to cover her shame.

“Open your eyes Bruce! She’s a criminal. A fraudulent con. She doesn’t care about you! All she cares about is herself.”

He looked away from her. He pretended to be far more interested in the rebuilt wall before him instead of the warning truths she was spitting. “You know it to be true!” Were her last words before leaving the room.

Bruce sighed and knotted tangles in his hair.

Just where the hell could this woman be?

A lump of trash slid down the drain. It landed on St. Paul making her jolt awake. The disgusting trash juices leaked out. The stench and coolness slowly brought her to her senses.

“Ugh…” she groaned. She wasn’t sure how long she had been out. Her entire body felt numb and in pain.

She presently lay in a trash dumpster behind the Pink Panther. She blinked twice looking at the trash chute that hung above her head. The good old trash chute, it never fails.

Presently her body was buried under at least a two feet off trash. She reeked of whatever the kitchen had been disposing off lately. She currently lay with her hands crossed over her chest. The Chitauri scepter being clutched tightly in a deathly grasp between her hands. Her fingers were tightly wrapped around the long golden handle. The fitted blue gem encircled with silver blades remained untouched. She carried a medium sized Hermes Birkin bag where the Tesseract was being safely kept.

“Ugh…” She groaned as she slowly sat up. She removed a banana peel from the top of her head.

That had been a close call. Taking over Loki’s body had been a risky move, but there was no other way around it. He had been walking around the city in an attempt to sniff her out. He was not much different than from the others. She was certain that they knew. They had to. At least Natasha Romanoff could feel it. She knew that Natasha didn’t like her, but she hadn’t realized that it was enough for her to just recognize her presence in a room.

She thought that Thor had her for a moment to, so she had to throw in that bit of Nordic. The only word that she knew how to say besides juvel or jewel. She didn’t know how long she had been out for. It had to have been at least a day. She was starving.

She climbed out of the dumpster with wobbly knees. Leaning her weak weight against the same dumpster she had just crawled out from she wiped away whatever grime and trash she could remove from her filthy body. She looked at the scepter before activating a disguise. This time she would be just an average Joe wondering about the city. Nothing to draw attention. She had to be extra careful now.

She could feel the Tesseract weighing down on her side. She couldn’t believe that there would be such a powerful relic in the world. With the Tesseract and the Chitauri scepter by her side… Merrill realized that she had no reason to be hiding anymore.

A malicious grin made way to her face at the realization.

She was the most powerful individual in the planet.

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