#the idea Cass and Steph cannot escape what their fathers want them to be

[magnusraydar]

Batfam exploring the multiverse with one startling realization.

Tim is either a super villain, criminally insane, dead, or straight up a husk of a person. They wonder if they got lucky that Tim is actually on their side or hasn't completely broke, like gun Batman.

Damian either leads the league, becomes Batman or leaves, and actually lives a peaceful life with no in-between.

Dick is either a Talon or some form of celebrity (Nightwing or other). He's a bit more unhinged, which who thought that's possible.

Jason actually lives and becomes a priest, or he's been doomed to die no matter the circumstances. He either stays dead or comes back crawling.

Cass becomes the weapon her father wanted, or she dies early in training. Never to escape.

Steph becomes just like her father wanted. His sidekick. In some universes, she escapes her father and lives a boring life, filled with unfulfillment.

Bruce either dies in that Alley, or he becomes a more violent version of Batman, a cruel, uncaring Batman. A Batman who acts like the Joker, a Batman who acts like a fascist dictator or a permanent violence that stuck after Jason's death.

Duke never witnesses his parents fall into insanity. He never joins the family. Sometimes, his meta abilities just don't appear, sometimes they're so powerful he gets recruited. But most times, he's a normal boy living a normal life, no Robin gang, no suffering, just a normal boy.

Barbara stays Batgirl, or she becomes a detective, or she's just your average civilian. However, it was common to see her still in that wheelchair. A cruel joke, even the universe, seems to play.

The multiverse is cruel, and it seems the fates they have already are more cruel and twisted in other universes than the one they're in now.

Perhaps... this universe was the one that turned out best.

[stxleslyds]

I have read your thought about the Batfamily, now I really want to know your thought about the one who started it, the Batman himself. We can't ignore the fact that Bruce is abusing his children, but there's also some moments where he's being a good father to them. But some of his act doesn't make sense.

He's beating his children, then calling them his son after. He act like a mad man after Damian's death (yeah, they did Jason dirty in here), feeling sorrow and desperately wanting to ressurect him, but then neglecting him continously in the future. I didn't know much about Cass, Bruce seems to always be a good father to her. But her fans once pointed that Bruce (or DC) is too hard on her to not killing/too soft on the others, because the other batkids has killed some villains while under Batman and still got to continue putting on their costumes.

What is exactly Bruce character? How is his relationship with every one of his children?

I feel like Batman can't be in a good relationship with one of his children without destroying his relationship with the other. I always love parents and children relationship in comics, but with batfamily sometimes it just so 'fanon-y' and some are hurtful.

I stopped reading Batman book for a long time. And come back reading that wedding and city of bane arc, because I want to know how they killed Alfred. And honestly those run are terrible. The issue basically just a batcat fanservice, with the worst Batman and Catwoman characterization ever. The batkids didn't even got many appearance and treated awfully as if they are just extras, even if they all are capable and have connection with Alfred.

Hey there Anon!

My thoughts on Batman and Bruce have changed over the last few years, he wasn’t the character that introduced me to DC comics but what I got to read from him at the time seemed good. As time went by, I started to feel like the whole concept of Batman was overrated and he kinda tired me in entertainment such as movies and all that. He never truly was a character that I actually liked so by the time that I read Under the Red Hood I knew that I liked Dick and Jason better than Bruce.

Batman was interesting but I was completely indifferent about Bruce. That whole thing changed around the time that the New 52 was sort of ending, there I started to heavily dislike Bruce and then that turned into pure hate. Now, I am just tired of the guy and every time that he appears in Dick or Jason content my day is ruined.

I hate that DC has been writing Bruce as an abusive and manipulative person and father to his “kids”, he has done a lot of wrong to them in comic history but all went to shit (in current comics) when Bruce tried to manipulate Jason into reliving the day that he died and his resurrection in Batman and Robin vol2. #20 and when he beat Dick and manipulated him into becoming a spy after telling him that he had told everyone that he was dead in Nightwing vol.3 #30.

Bruce was a horrible human being in the pre-New 52 timeline too sometimes, mostly towards Dick but in a way, it felt like Dick was able time and time again to get away from him a little bit. Now none of his kids are given the opportunity to turn their backs on Bruce, they are kept in his surroundings no matter how abusive he becomes towards them.

My biggest problem with Bruce’s abusiveness is the fact that the writers never treat it like he acts in an abusive way, they never make him apologize or have an internal discussion where he realises that he was in the wrong. “Bruce is a horrible person to his sons but it doesn’t matter because he is right and he is Batman so that’s that”, that’s the message that I feel DC is selling us. Bruce never receives punishment or is called out for his behaviour, Dick was never able to tell Bruce that what he did to him was unforgivable, he never got the chance to explain to anyone that he didn’t play dead, and when he came back from Spyral he took all the shit from his “family” himself.

Sometimes DC does something even worse, they try to hide Bruce’s neglect with things that never happened like they did with the Ric thing in Dick’s case. Dick was passed around from villain to villain when he was most vulnerable and at the end of it all DC had the guts to say that Batman had been watching over Dick all the time. Like, why lie in such a blatant way? Does Bruce enjoy watching his son suffer from a far or was he too much of a coward to tell Dick that he was a shit father, got stuck in a hole and then decided to play “Cat and Bat” with Selina instead of caring for any of his children?

The situation with Damian’s death and resurrection was a whole thing that was meant to prove that Bruce loved Damian and considered him his son. But in their effort to make Bruce look like a good father to Damian they completely destroyed his relationship with his other kids and that was also the start of Bruce referring to Damian as his ONLY son. And like you said after Damian was resurrected Bruce ended up neglecting him afterwards which ultimately led Damian to run away.

His relationship with Cass and Duke is something that I cannot explore because I am not into those characters and they are involved in books that I am not interested in. So I cannot say anything about that.

With Tim it’s complicated because I feel like his relationship with him was never actually father/son it was more like mentor/mentee and that seemed to work better for them, ever since they started the whole family thing Bruce started to act a little bit too rough towards Tim and that ended with Bruce punching Tim during the “City of Bane” arc. Bruce never apologised or was shown realising his mistake, but DC made sure to explain that Bruce was going through a rough time so that’s why he did it. It was pure rubbish and I dislike it a lot.

I answered an ask a while ago about how I thought Dick and Jason could become family the way that DC treats the “Batfamily” within comics and I came up with the idea of the “Dickfamily” because I felt like DC made a big mistake the moment they revolved the Bat family around Bruce and not Dick. Bruce is a character that is known for being lonely and for being surrounded by darkness that he only manages to escape through the light of Robin (Dick Grayson because he was the first), he was always depicted as someone who is hard to work with and considers his teammates only co-workers and not friends. He is a difficult person to connect with, so why on earth did DC come up with a family surrounding that man? (I actually know the answer to that question and it is: money, DC did it to sell more comics under the Batman name but we are going to forget about that here, let me be petty).

Why would DC make it all about a man that doesn’t connect or goes out of his way to say that he “works alone” when Dick Grayson is standing right there? DC hates that they created a character like Dick because he is just better than Bruce at everything, he just is, he is better family to Alfred, Jason, Tim and Damian, he was even written as a better father to Damian than Bruce ever was!

Bruce is just not a people person or a person that forms strong bonds with people. And that makes the whole “Batfamily” concept suffer and come off as something forced that doesn’t actually work.

Tom King was one of the writers that tried to kill the concept of the “Batfamily” with Bruce and Selina becoming a couple and by continuously saying that Selina was who was the most important person in Bruce’s life and the one that made him a better person. All Tom King did with that is make fans and non-fans of the “Batfamily” feel rage. Like, I might not like the “Batfamily” but there is no way that Selina comes first to Alfred, Dick or Damian, there is just no way and if that were actually true then that’s boring.

All the writers that have pushed the “Batfamily” concept (try) do it in a way that makes it look grand and of actual essence but without putting any work on it, if you ask me the “Batfamily” (if there has to be one) should only include Bruce, Alfred (he do be dead though), Dick, Tim, Cass and Damian (I suppose Duke too, I don’t know much about him). The “Batfamily” has to be small because that way you can actually build relationships and make them matter. Having Kate, Steph, Jason and so many others involved in a concept that was made to fit around Bruce looks stupid! Bruce has had almost zero connection to Kate and Steph in the last ten years and Bruce’s “relationship” with Jason is a complete joke!

Bruce is just not the character that is meant to be surrounded by too much people, and he is not a good person towards his family so the whole ass concept should be thrown to the trash and finally let it die. But money is important and if there is something that DC will never stop doing, is milking Batman for content that can be (sometimes) pretty basic.

All in all, I think Bruce sucks and that his “kids” shouldn’t be dragged back to him ever again or at least for a long while. All of them would actually benefit from not being involved with anything relating to Batman. Dick could benefit from Bruce and other Bat-related characters staying away from him and letting him live his life in Bludhaven. And Jason? My sweet Chonky? He would be in such a better place if Bruce disappeared from his life, imagine the actually good books we would have if Jason was free to act the way he was meant to do as the Red Hood…

(We saw a little bit of that in the back up story of Detective Comics by Rosenberg, Batman is still involved but he and Jason are definitely not on the same side of the story! So excited for Task Force Z!)

I don’t know If al that I just said answers your question but I hope you have a fantastic week Anon!

[griffle-musings]

FTMWU: Silent Nights/Warm Lights

Okay, so this is super late. >>

Anyway, here’s a small drabble about Winter Holidays. 

TW/CW: Mentions of abuse, but nothing graphic or explicit. Also, the first half is before Jenna realized she was trans, so while yes, it’s the same person, the pronouns are different. Otherwise, I hope you can enjoy this little drabble. 

Characters: OC (Jenna Janet), mentions of the Wayne Family) Jenna-centric. 

It is part of the many rules; no lights, no food without her when she is gone. No heat for that matter; it is cold in the apartment, and his finger feel funny; he can even see his breath get all foggy, which was fun for a bit but now he kind of wants to be bundled in his sheets again- the Mother had taken away his blanket for "training," but she didn't say he couldn't sneak out and see Father while she was out. 

He pushes open the door, gently, quietly. The room is dark- the windows bringing in light, but it is fading, and the Mother has forbidden them to use lights while she does errands. 

Well. She didn't outright say it, so maybe he won't be bad for doing so. 

Father is sitting on the bed- he's in Punishment now, but a soft one, a lenient one, so he still has on most of his clothes on, and he's on the bed staring at a wall, and not in the corner or in the bathroom. The Mother said she was being lenient because they have a dinner party to get to later today, and also, it's December. 

He's not exactly sure why that's important, but it is. He is four, and carefully realizing how the way works. 

For example, the man that does not move, does not look at him, is his Father, and he is important to him.

He creeps slowly, quietly. Father does not move, does not look, even though he knows that Father knows he is in the room. 

There is something in Father's hands- red beads, with a silver charm that his lessons taught him that it is a cross. The Mother doesn't like crosses, calls them "weak." She had said this as she got herself ready, himself doing his best to keep his breathing slow, and steady from the pain of his own Punishment, not wanting to prolong it. 

He creeps closer, looking at how the red beads twist in his Father's hands, watching as his Father silently mutters something. He cocks his head. "What is that?" 

"Nothing." His Father does not glance down, continues to look forward, fingers touching each and every bead. He still talks without sound. 

"Can I see?" He is curious, because he knows Father is breaking the rules, and he wants to know what would be more important than rules.  

"Absolutely not." And oh, he cannot help but flinch, it sounds too much like the Mother's anger. But unlike the Mother, Father is usually kind, so obviously he did a bad thing by asking Father about the beads. 

"Can I sit by you?" Father usually lets him, if he isn't being Punished by the Mother. It's why Father is so kind- Father lets him sit near him and sometimes he would talk to him, and tell him stories about the Company.

Father doesn't blink. "Not too close- don't touch me." 

He can't help but grin as he scrambles onto the bed, trying his best to get up and not wrinkle the bed spread- the Mother would get so angry if that happened. He scoots as close as he can- not touching, keeping his body away from Father's shirt- enough to feel Father's presence, to feel the tingle of being next to Father. 

Father doesn't say anything back, but that's alright- he's already given kindness by allowing this much. Too much and the Mother would find out and be angry. 

He keeps his breath calm and quiet as he silently watches Father's fingers twist and touch every single bead, over and over again as Father keeps moving his mouth silently, his eyes locked on the wall in front of him. He folds his hands on his lap, and watches the beads, a warmth settling in his chest. 

"It's the 24th," his Father mutters, and then falling silent again. 

He doesn't know what that means, the 24th, why does the 24th of December is important. But Father is letting him sit by him while the Mother is away, so he figures he'll find out eventually. 

He lets himself soak in Father's kindness, as they sit silently, in the room.

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

The fire is warm.

Jenna leans against her Dad, leaning her head against his side as he talks avidly with the rest of the family. Her stomach is warm from the brisket stew, latkes, and the sufganiyot, the rest of her body warm from her new sweater that Auntie Cass had given to both Dad and her- matching ones, his with a silhouette of a duck with a knife in its mouth, and hers with a duckling carrying a fork. Dad had laughed at the image, and Auntie Cass had grinned, warm and real, when they entered the main hall earlier today with their bags.

Nearly everyone was staying at the Manor for Hanukkah- even Kate, and the place was crowded like she had never seen. It was tradition, Dad had explained in the car, talking about new habits and building bridges as they drove through Gotham traffic. He had explained to her what the holiday was about, what it meant, and what it meant for the Drakes and the Waynes. 

"So am I Jewish?" She had asked. 

"Sort of?" He had a pinched off face, like he was trying to think two different things but both were at opposites of each other. He was hesitating on another question as well. But that's alright- she knew the other one, and was glad to be the one to ask it instead of him.

"Can I be Jewish? I want to share that with you." 

Dad had admitted to not really being into religion, a throwback from his teen years, he explained. Not exactly disbelieving in God- he had seen and fought them, he said- but more the bit about the afterlife. 

"Or at least Christianity," he had shrugged his shoulders, a lock of his black hair escaping his half ponytail. 

But with this, this query, he had smiled softly at her and said; "Sure." Then he started explaining what it meant.

She's still a bit fuzzy on the details- but, she thinks she's getting the idea of the holiday. The partaking of celebration and joy, of surviving and enjoying the company of family. 

Because today has been lovely.  The Manor was crowded and noisy, and yet with Gotham blanketed by snow, it hadn't felt stifling- rather she had enjoyed watching the laughter and arguments, the tentative connections being reformed like spiderwebs and the quiet discussions of old cases, won battles. Dad had been whisked off with Babs and Steph about something down in the Cave, and she had been whisked off to say hi to Alfred and "You haven't lived until you had one of Alfred's latkes, Chickadee," Uncle Jason grinned as he scooped her up onto his shoulder. 

And then she was learning how to make all the wonderful food and Alfred had given her the first latkes which was Very Important, and there was soft jazz playing in the background and apparently Bruce was banned from the kitchen because of "Incidents" involving hot oil and the stove. 

She has an idea what happened; there's still scorch marks on the ceiling.

Dinner had been loud, and had devolved into a shameless and complex bartering system for the latkes that she reveled in- she had shared her bounty with Dad, of course, it was only fair- and afterwards, all had crowded around the hanukkiah, watching Kate solemnly lights the shamash, as the voices started to sing the blessings, tenors and altos all blending together, that it felt sacred, untouchable, bright. 

She never thought she would have this.

Dad had placed his hand on her shoulder, and usually she would tense or shrug (a hand is never just a hand, that is a lesson she learned early) but it felt warm and protective and Dad's voice was clear as he sang with the others, their voices almost protecting the flame as it flickers and wavers, but still stays lit, bright against the dark. 

 After, they had gathered to the living room, a crackling fire already in the bank, with everyone going into little groups. 

She leans against her Dad, a hand carding gently through her hair as he continues to loudly discuss his varied and many opinions about the new technology a rival company was bragging about, his other hand waving as Babs listened quietly, a soft smile on her lips. 

She leans against her Dad, soaking in the bright, chaotic, noisy thing that she proudly calls "love." 

[ailelie]

Like a Bad Penny (not!fic, crack treated seriously; Damian is Stephanie’s Dad)

This is over 2.5k of not!fic going more or less scene-by-scene of how I’d write the Stephanie-is-Damian’s-Daughter fic I first mentioned here. This is crack treated seriously. This is not written as fic. This is written as an in-depth, first draft description of a fic, scene-by-scene, with a few rare moments of dialogue. It involve an OC who is the daughter of an old and off retconned out rogue, the Penny Plunderer or Joe Coyne. Of course Coyne named his daughter Penny.

This is Steph/Tim. And would inevitably be followed by a half-dozen ficlets focusing on the weird father-daughter relationship between Steph and Damian.

---

“I’m just saying—knowing Penelope was Joe Coyne’s daughter would have helped us solve this a lot sooner.”

Tim and Bruce are in the Batcave after a case. The giant penny is prominent in the background. The case involved an Arkham breakout of Joe Coyne and Zachary Gate. Gate is still focused on eliminating the founding families of Gotham. The villains always seem one step ahead until the Bats realize that a new engineer at Wayne Enterprises, Penelope Finger, has been feeding the villains information and providing them with weapons. When caught, Penelope talks about how her father had turned his greatest failure into the cornerstone of his success. He taught her to always learn something from failure. She points out a pair of pennies on the table and chides the heroes that they should pay more attention to the things they think are useless. She moves one of the pennies, completing a circuit embedded in the table, and causing an explosion. She escapes in the confusion.

Penelope’s thing is about how people overlook the terrible potential of the mundane and undervalued. Her inventing prowess focuses on using the seemingly useless and unexpected with great creativity.  While Batman and co. focused on Gate, Penelope and her father quietly stole the materials she needed to finish making a time machine.

Gate and the others are recaptured, but Penelope and her father remain at liberty. Penelope finishes her time machine. Joe Coyne, though he helped with the thefts, wants to use the time machine to change the past. His time in Arkham really did rehabilitate him. Penelope, however, for reasons unknown, was aware each time the timeline changed. She remembers the timelines where her father almost ceased to even exist and blames the Justice League, but mostly Batman since he captured her father in the very first place and then had the gall to forget him.

It eventually gets revealed that the Batman Beyond universe exists through her machinations. She either helped the Joker get his three uninterrupted weeks with Tim or provided the microchip, for example.

But all of that is late reveal stuff. At this stage in the game, the Bats think she helped Gate to buy herself time to get her dad somewhere safe and out of the way.

Bruce goes to bed and advises Tim to go rest as well. Tim, instead, sits at the Batcomputer and starts writing a program to identify familial relationships among the DNA samples saved in the computer’s memory, as well as a secondary program to ensure this doesn’t lock the computer up like tea aboard the Heart of Gold in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

A few days later, Tim is using the Batcomputer for one his cases while Bruce runs tests on a new drug growing in popularity in Gotham. By this point Tim has grown slightly annoyed with his own program as it so far has identified relationships such as Bruce and Damian, Ra’s and Damian, etc. When yet another Damian alert pops up, he almost closes it without read it. Except Bruce tells him to wait.

Then Tim pays attention and realizes what it says: a paternal match between Damian Wayne and Stephanie Brown.

“Run that again,” Bruce orders.

Tim minimizes his case files and pulls up Damian and Stephanie’s DNA profiles. Time drags as they wait, but the answer is unchanged. A paternal match.

“Could the DNA files be corrupted?” Tim asks.

“I’ll call them in.”

This leads to Stephanie and Damian in the Cave. Tim and Bruce each conduct their own paternity tests, just to be absolutely certain. Hours pass. Damian and Stephanie’s patience dwindles.

“Father, I demand you explain what is happening right now.”

“Seriously, you’re both acting super weird.”

“Maybe we should just show them,” Tim says, looking at Bruce.

“Show us what, Tim?”

“Show them. I’ll be right back.”

Tim sighs, glaring at Bruce’s back. “This.”

Stephanie and Damian are still ranting in disbelief when Bruce returns with a strange device that he explains he took from the Flash. He asks Stephanie to step aside and he runs the device around her. The readings are faint, but enough to confirm his suspicions

“Stephanie is from the future.”

No one takes this particularly well. Tim chases after Steph when she bolts.

Tim and Steph have a cute conversation about this changing nothing, which ends with Stephanie starting to find the humor in the situation.

“Damian is my dad. Wait, Tim, you realize what this means? You’re dating Damian’s daughter.” She laughs, then her eyes widen. “Your brother Damian’s daughter. I’m dating my uncle! This horror show’s got levels.”

Tim buries his face in his palm. “Please stop.”

On a lighter note, she also gives him an envelope of purple glitter and tells him “happy 18th.” He tries to toss the glitter out, she refuses to let him and tells him it is punishment. “On my birthday? For what?”

“I’ll think of something.”

Meanwhile, Bruce uses the very faint readings from the device to pinpoint from when in the future Stephanie came. Damian is training and occasionally ranting in the background. He alternates between anger and nascent protectiveness.

“Brown can’t be a Wayne. She’s not worthy of our name. There must have been a mistake. She can barely hold her own. Could you imagine what Mother would think of her?” He stops, in sudden alarm. “The League cannot find out about her. They’d destroy her.”

The readings on Stephanie were too faint to pinpoint an exact year. With help from the Justice League, Bruce gets a device to allow time travel. He decides to travel to the last possible year in the range he determined, deciding that it is far better to return after her disappearance than it is before her existence.

Tim, Stephanie, and Damian join him.

Dick, Jason, Duke, and Cass stay to hold down the fort in Gotham.

Here the narrative splits. One of the four in the present time discovers the case Tim pushed aside when the paternity alert popped up. The case is cold and involves a string of strange thefts that took place while they were trying to re-capture Zachary Gate. Investigating these thefts eventually leads the present-time crew to realize that Penelope has built a time travel device of her own and has been using it.

The future time crew finds out that the Batfamily is no more. Batman was last seen five years ago. Terry McGinnis is, at this point, three years old.

“Is this the darkest timeline?” Steph asks quietly reading Tim’s wiki page over his shoulder. Older Tim is in Communications. Damian, Jason, and Cass are all missing. Dick is in Bludhaven, though Nightwing appearances are increasingly rare. Bruce is alone. Leslie Thompkins is still operating her clinic and they decide to start by talking with her.

Leslie fills them in, not just on Stephanie, but Tim’s time as J.J. (which, they realize with horror, is not too far into their future) and Damian’s recent arguments with Bruce. After Damian’s daughter, Isra Wayne, disappeared from the hospital, Damian’s marriage fell apart and he blamed Bruce for not being able to find Isra. Last Leslie heard, Damian was off looking for someone who could help. She also tells them about Bruce’s heart attack and retirement.

Instead of going to old!Bruce next, they track down Dick. Dick, at least, hasn’t completely given up Nightwing yet and may have more connections that can help them. By this point, Damian has decided to call Stephanie “Isra” and nothing else. This is what gets overheard by older!Damian who is also in Bludhaven to visit with Dick.

Older!Damian is investigating a break in at Cadmus (he’s been promised access to various tools to help him find his daughter if he helps them find the thief; Damian hasn’t completely joined up with his grandfather yet, but he is wavering) and wants to consult with Dick. When he hears younger!Damian use the name “Isra” he shadows the group. He is nearly caught by Bruce, but manages to escape.

Once older!Damian confirms that Stephanie is Isra, he calls in a favor from his mother. Talia arranges a diversion and older!Damian abducts Stephanie.

Dick is furious. He points out the ways better infrastructure could have made the attack impossible or, at least, more difficult. “When do we stop cleaning up messes and start preventing them from happening in the first place?” he demands.

They regroup at Dick’s. Dick, Damian, and Bruce bounce ideas off each other and Dick tries to contact older!Damian to no avail. Tim, needing to stay busy, looks through Dick’s open cases. One of them—a break-in at a Cadmus Lab in Bludhaven—piques his interest because it is very similar a string of thefts he’d been investigating in Gotham. He starts searching for similar cases. Damian is the first to realize the shift in Tim’s energy and calls him out on it.

Tim startles and then explains—he thinks whoever broke into the Cadmus Lab is the same person who kidnapped Stephanie (“Isra,” Dick and Damian correct) as a baby.

They re-break into the lab to do their own investigation. During the investigation Bruce notices a dropped penny. Dick doesn’t understand the significance at all. But Tim does. It was the sort of thing one would overlook. Less a clue than a taunt. They don’t say anything to the others yet.

Scene-jump over older!Damian and Stephanie. Damian is in awe of his daughter. He can’t believe how old she is, nor how much she resembles her mother. He tells her about her mom, how they met, how they played chess together, the wedding, Isra’s birth, and the terror of losing her. They talk and he asks her to remain, but she can’t.

She tells him about her life in his past, about her childhood, career as Spoiler, friendships, and relationship with Tim. She asks him to let her go.

He agrees on one condition—he goes with her.

When the others return to Dick’s from the Lab, older!Damian and Stephanie are waiting for them. Quick reunion. Bruce and younger!Damian are surprised by older!Damian. Tim shares the Lab information with Stephanie and she starts helping him crack through it. She asks about the envelope of glitter. She takes a pinch and throws it on older!Damian as punishment for abducting her.

Ultimately Stephanie is the one who finds Penelope’s true target—a microchip that can overwrite a person, creating a clone. Stephanie wonders if the chip was used for Joker Junior. Tim and older!Dick & Damian dismiss that. That was just brainwashing. Bruce, however, gets it—crimes hidden within crimes. Tim looks sick and the two future people questioning, so Bruce explains about Penelope.

Older!Dick and Damian both blanche. Older!Damian shows a picture of his ex-wife, Penelope. (Stephanie’d never met the woman in the past and so did not recognize her). Tim realizes she must have used her father to abduct Isra (he uses Isra for baby!Steph and Stephanie for his!Steph). Then she blames Damian for the abduction, divorces him, and disappears.

And she may be involved with Tim and the Joker.

“If I hadn’t created that program, if we hadn’t figured out that Damian and Stephanie are related—” Tim trails off and gestures around the room. “This would have been our future.”

“It won’t be,” Bruce promises.

“We have to go back,” Stephanie says. “We have to stop her.”

Bruce agrees and he sets up the device to create their portal home.

Older!Damian quietly squeezes Dick’s shoulder and says “good-bye” before rushing through the portal too quickly to be stopped.

“I lost her once,” he says on the other, “I refuse to lose her again.”

When the others say having two Damians is too confusing, older!Damian offers to go as “Ian Head” instead. He has the fake ID and passport to go with the identity.

(Later Ian will adopt Stephanie. Even though, as she’ll point out, she is turning 18 in a month or two and doesn’t need to be adopted. He uses paternity as proof. And the old, long forgotten news articles about the hospital lying about Crystal Brown’s baby being stillborn resurface. Stephanie keeps her first name, but changes her middle name to “Isra” partially for Ian, partially to explain he and Damian call her that. There are long arguments about whether she’ll keep “Brown” or change to “Head.” Connections are made. Media goes wild.

Talia notices the surname and that Ian’s name is just the last three letters of Damian’s. She will be stopping by for answers. But that’s in the future and not yet).

The present!time crew explains about what they’ve been doing. They tracked the thefts, concluded time travel device, and figured out it was Penelope. They have an idea for where she might be as well.

Before anyone can act on that information, though, alarms ring. The Joker is free.

They have to catch him. Someone needs to stay with Tim at all times, too. Of everything that went wrong in the future, Joker Junior was the start. It ends up being Ian who watches out for Tim. Unbeknownst to the others, however, Ian wants Tim captured. He’s hoping if he follows the Joker, he’ll be able to see Penelope. (Has this Penelope met him yet? Is Isra in her past or future?) He needs to confront her, to get answers.

So Tim is captured and Ian follows. Tim is still in his suit and tied up, rather than strapped down. Penelope arrives and Ian breaks in. His break-in diverts attention from Tim, leaving him tied up insteadof strapped down). Ian confronts Penelope, but is caught by the Joker who scolds him for being in the wrong time. Penelope and the Joker realize that the rest of the Bats might know where they are, so they need to move.

Tim finds the envelope of glitter. He has to hope that Penelope will be too wrapped up in the larger scheme to notice. He doesn’t drop a ton; just enough that he hopes Stephanie will notice.

Stephanie does.

It takes a few days, but they do find Tim and Ian. Penelope is not with them. The Joker is. A big battle ensues. Tim and Ian are rescued. And then Tim is there with a gun in his hand. And some things repeat no matter what. He shoots above the Joker instead, freeing something precariously attached. It falls and knocks the Joker out. Batman ties the Joker up and calls the authorities.

In the distance, watching, Penelope pulls out the microchip she never did give the Joker after Ian’s interruption.

And then it all epilogue. A birthday party for Tim. Ian bonding with Jason of all people. The adoption. And Ian breaking into Arkham and very quietly killing the Joker in his cell. Nothing personal, but his little girl cares about Tim and the Joker had hurt him. And, more importantly, it was time to take one of Penelope’s chess pieces from her.

And then the end.

[renaroo]

Promises (9/30)

Disclaimer: Batman and associated characters are the creative property of DC Comics. Warnings: One Year Later/Evil Cass allusions Rating: T Synopsis: For an entire year after the Crisis which threatened to wipe everything they knew and loved off the Earth, after so many hardships and loved ones lost, Cass and Tim find themselves battling on different sides of the globe not only for the fate of what’s left of the world, but for the sake of once again feeling purpose. [A One Year Later fixer upper]

A/N: Once again I’m apologizing for a long wait and thanking you all for the support and patience! We’ve got a Tim chapter but I think everyone’s in for a surprise with the directions it will go ;  ) 

Special thanks to @gordon88, @mitchthebat, @secretlystephaniebrown,  @chimaerakitten, @the-gible-squad and Kiyomisa on tumblr, ffnet, and AO3 for the feedback and support!

The Desert of Fools

At some point in his life, Tim had stopped asking what his destination was when he got on airplanes with certain people. He accepted his ticket, got on the WE private jet, followed Bruce and Dick down the halls of international airports, and took his ticket for the next connecting flight as they got on smaller and smaller passenger planes.

He only read what their next point was when he got the ticket in his hands.

When he was younger and he still lived in a world where Jack and Janet were Dad and Mom still, the idea of how they could go weeks or even months without stopping their travels, even if it was for work, was utterly baffling to Tim. He was young, and he could not imagine wanting so badly to be away from home and from Gotham that he wouldn’t even register how long it had been since he saw his family.

A part of him, leaning against the smallest passenger plane’s window, looking out into the night sky, couldn’t help but wonder whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that he felt closer to his parents in death than he ever had in life.

He wasn’t paying attention when Dick’s elbow nudged his arm, drawing Tim’s attention from the window at last and instead to the magazine that Dick was holding up to Tim’s face. It was such an unexpected interaction that Tim could only blink a few times at his mentor and brother.

“You look like you could use some reading to put you to sleep,” Dick explained, handing the magazine over.

“Reading doesn’t make me sleepy,” Tim informed him, looking to the page Dick had left the magazine turned to all the same. He paused and looked suspiciously at the former Boy Wonder. “Why do you want me to see an advertisement from Lex Corp that they’re artificially giving people super powers?” he asked.

“Is that the page I left it on?” Dick hummed, leaning back and closing his eyes. “Hm, dunno. Quite a mystery to keep us preoccupied with, though, isn’t it?”

“It’ll end in disaster, what’s the mystery about it?” Tim asked, eyebrow raised as he looked the page over. “Everything Lex Luthor touches is warped and doomed.”

That got a laugh out of Dick, though he didn’t open his eyes.

Tim was filled with relief that the other vigilante hadn’t looked at him, else he might have seen the full body flinch Tim said after the words left his mouth. Everything he touches is warped and doomed.

For the first time in his life, Tim felt like he had something in common with the world’s greatest criminal mastermind.

The last place in the world they probably should have been was Morocco. There were tensions heating up around Biyala and Black Adam had taken over Khandaq as well as made a family to match Captain Marvel’s. And that was just what Tim could gleam from his broken broken French and the headlines on a magazine stand.

“Has Bruce said why we’re here yet?” Tim asked Dick without really turning away from the newspapers. “He’s not really the type for spontaneity. Usually.”

Everything about the trip, about the location, about them was obscenely off and Tim didn’t know how he felt about any of it. In truth, he probably should have felt a touch worse about the circumstances.

Should have. Would have.

Cassandra had been left alone with Alfred in Gotham, and really not given a proper reasoning for it. Yet Tim continued to feel the twist and turns of his stomach wishing desperately why couldn’t that have been him.

He heard a noise like something ruffling from a nearby stand and he turned enough to see a floor-to-ceiling high bird cage made of wood, filled to the brim with exotic birds, all clamoring and fighting each other.

There were too many of them.

He focused on the red breasted bird with black wings and knew, somewhere deep down, that the answer as to why it was Cassandra in Gotham and not him was because if he was alone, if they let him be, he could go back.

He was at the point where it was still a possibility. Without Kon without Steph without his father or anyone else in the entire damn world, the question became a matter of when he would quit and not would.

Tim, the boy who asked to be Robin, who begged to be Robin, to bring his hero from the brink of the darkness he had sunk into over the desert fields that were only part of a continent away from them right there and then. And he couldn’t remember why he would put on the cape without Batman’s urgings.

The joy was gone. Tim’s joy was gone.

And he couldn’t understand how anyone else around him could still have their own.

After a few long moments of waiting for an answer that didn’t come, Tim turned around finally and looked for Dick and his signature blue cast and arm sling. Dick was also looking at something — or, rather, someone. That someone being Bruce on the other side of the market. Tim walked up to Dick’s side and looked at him for a moment before tilting his head and squinting. “Did you hear me?”

“Hm?” Dick asked, looking down to Tim. “Sorry, Li’l Bro. I was just… well, looking out for Bruce. He’s off his game.”

Leveling an even glare at Dick, Tim waited for the irony to watch up with him. It never did and he sighed, crossing his arms. “Really? Hadn’t noticed…”

“Really?” Dick asked back. When he finally looked directly at Tim, Dick furrowed his brows and looked rather displeased.

The concentration on him made Tim feel a weird itch through his body and he rubbed at his neck awkwardly. “What?”

“Are you feeling okay?” Dick asked seriously. “You’re not acting yourself either. And… I guess the funeral wasn’t that long ago and…”

Before Tim could filter his own mouth he glanced back to the newspaper stand. “Which funeral?”

There was a heavy silence for a moment then Tim looked back to Dick, regretting his gruff commentary.

“Tim…” Dick said, voice haunted with concern.

“Please. Just… Can we please not do this right here right now?” Tim all but begged.

“Do what?” Dick asked critically. “Tell you I”m worried? Tell you I’m—“

“Yes. This. Whatever this is,” Tim snapped back.

“When then?” Dick asked. “You were a complete shut in back in Gotham, you ignored Bruce and me on the flights.”

“Dick,” Tim began in exasperation, running his hands down the sides of his face. “I cannot begin to express how much this can’t happen right now.”

“That’s the problem, you can’t express. You can’t express anything,” Dick retorted, waggling a finger in his face.

“You’re making a scene,” Tim fought back.

“Someone has to,” Dick snapped.

“Then go try to make Bruce express himself,” Tim growled.

Dick shook his head. “Sorry, but I’m well aware of lost causes, believe it or not. I’ve been working on cracking that nut for the last, what, almost twenty years now? I make progress with Bruce. You? You I’m making preventive measures.”

“Yeah, those would have been helpful before this last year,” Tim responded coldly.

He immediately regretted the words as they escaped his mouth, but at the same time, the flicker of guilt and plain hurt that shone in Dick’s eyes for a moment when he heard that response almost made Tim want to savor it all.

They stood together awkwardly, looking at each other with a loss for how the conversation could possibly continue when they were saved by the most unexpected of things.

Bruce.

“Dick,” Bruce called in his very Broosiest voice, carrying it over the crowds in the bizarre. He even gave a dramatic arm wave as if they weren’t all incredibly aware of each other’s positions at all times. “Come over here and tell me what you think of this rug! I think it’s authentic!”

“What the hell?” Tim asked, squinting his eyes. “That’s… weird.”

“Very,” Dick agreed. “Stand around here a bit, there must be a reason he wants us canvased.”

“Sure,” Tim replied as Dick walked away. There was some disappointment in Tim’s chest, realizing they weren’t going to come anywhere close to finishing that conversation — that whatever genuine emoting Dick was giving him in that moment could drop the second Bruce needed something even it was a nut he’d been trying to crack sine he was eight years old.

Tim also wished his emotions could straighten themselves out enough to at least be consistent.

Instead he pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. He had to center himself. Or something like that. Something basic that would put the whole world back into order.

He just had forgotten whatever that basic thing was.

After he gathered enough of his senses, Tim looked to Bruce and Dick again. They were huddled over the rugs that Bruce had mentioned but Tim knew better than to believe that they were talking about thread count while basically over top one another. There must have been something that got Bruce’s attention.

Maybe it was the reason they were there.

The times were hard, difficult even. And more than a little crazy. And Tim was considering what an awful time it was for the most visible heroes in the world — Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman — to all be unseen after such a Crisis, after so much death and destruction. It was hard to consider who the normal people were supposed to look up to in the times.

Which was why Lex Luthors were making headlines about creating new superheroes and Black Adams were being hailed as saviors instead of tyrants.

When he looked back to the newspapers almost subconsciously, Tim noticed a figure slip behind the cage of exotic birds in a rather quick and intentional fashion. If it was meant to not draw his attention, it desperately failed.

Tim studiously looked at the newspapers in French and Arabic, but his attention was on his peripheral vision and the man standing just on the other side of the birdcage watching him. And he was definitely watching Tim.

Trying his best to look the part of the bored, jaded modern teenager, Tim adjusted his baseball cap and reached into his pocket to pull out his cellphone. He made it seem as though he was scrolling through his options, but in reality he was setting up a secure connection to Bruce and Dick’s similarly supped up cells. He would be quick to tip them off to the fact that someone was scoping them out when he slowly stopped.

Staring at his phone, Tim almost could hear a ringing in his ears as he put the pieces together, painfully slow. Then he looked toward Bruce and Dick and how they were looking his way but not at him as they talked.

They knew. Somehow they — or at least Bruce — had spotted their tagalong before Tim. And beyond that, they had gone away from him to discuss what to do about it. Away from Tim. But why?

He struggled with the full picture until someone bumped against his back and rather than move away immediately stood there. Tim’s skin crawled at his space being so closely invade and he couldn’t help but tense and try to lean forward, away from the person, but a thin hand with ornate, painted nails held onto his shoulder. Unlike most women in the bizarre, however, there were no rings or bangles.

“Easy, little Robin,” a familiar voice said softly.

Talia al Ghul.

“Okay,” Tim said softly in return.

“My beloved and I cannot be seen together in public. Not here where the eyes of the serpents come from any separate heads. Some my father’s. Many not,” she informed him in hushed tones. “So please let him know, I will be where the moon touches the dunes at midnight, in the same tent where we spoke eternal vows.”

Tim absorbed the information. “So you’re still not with your father?” he asked.

“Things have not changed between any of us since last we met,” she answered. “You have protective instincts. That is admirable for a man your age. It will keep you alive.”

“Guess we’ll find out,” Tim replied, glancing over his shoulder the moment Talia released his shoulder. He watched her, in full dress, disappear into the crowds. His eyes only narrowed as he strung things more and more together.

Bruce and Dick moved quickly to rejoin him after that but Tim was beginning to feel himself boil.

“Thank you, Tim,” Bruce said in hushed tones. “Dick and Talia do not have the fondest history with each other.”

“In so many terms,” Dick muttered sourly.

Tim looked at both of them for a long moment then pulled down his cap to hide his eyes from him. He could feel the quiver in his lips about to give too much of what he was feeling. “I want to be notified the next time I’m used as bait,” Tim said darkly. “It’s the least you can do.”

“Tim, if we thought there was danger,” Dick began, but Bruce stopped him.

“It was a split second calculation, Tim. It won’t happen again,” Bruce promised.

Tim nodded, but inside his blood continued to boil.

It was going to happen again. It happened all the time. And he was tired of it. As tired as he was of everything that had to do with his double life anymore.

It shouldn’t have surprised Tim that what they found in the desert was a fight. And yet he was taken aback.

Reaching the exact spot where the moon touches the dunes at midnight was apparently a cryptic way of leading them to the center of a desert with only the supplies that they could carry with them. Which was suspicious itself before Bruce raised one arm and halted Tim and Dick behind him.

Tim struggled a bit with his camel, but with a single pet from Dick, the animal finally obeyed and left them both standing side by side on the edge of a dune as Bruce dismounted and walked to the center of a suspicious looking plain of sand.

Barely containing himself, Tim kept from mentioning that it wasn’t a good idea for Bruce to walk where his feet sunk into the sand halfway up his shins. It was something he shouldn’t have had to tell the Batman — about how sand traps and even quick sand worked. Especially at night where what water was in the desert would collect in its barren lands. He shouldn’t have to. But lately…

Both Tim and Dick jerked back in surprise when Bruce dropped to his knees, digging through the sand, as if he knew exactly what to expect. Then, he let out a grunt of satisfaction, slowly getting back to his feet with a scimitar in hand.

“Oh, of course. Of course there would be a sword hidden in the sand in the middle of the desert. How could we not see that coming,” Dick muttered sarcastically. He took pause and glanced around. “Wait… I remember this place. This is where—“

They emerged so suddenly that Tim had hardly turned from looking in Dick’s direction to see how they came out of the sand. There was half a dozen of them, cloaked from head to toe in rags, their hands extended toward Bruce showing off the eyeballs which stared at him from their finger tips.

“What the hell?” Tim asked out loud.

“For what it’s worth, I didn’t get it when I was Robin either,” Dick offered.

“No, that’s not worth much, because this is weird,” Tim argued just before the men began fighting Bruce. “Talia set us up! We’ve got to help him—“

Before Tim could do anything drastic, Dick grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back. “Talia doesn’t work that way, loathe as I am to say it. And if Bruce came all this way… well, he came for something and we’re not ones to tell him what he does or doesn’t need.”

With only a moment’s hesitation, Tim jerked his shoulders back away from Dick, shaking his head. “You’re wrong. Robin’s whole job is to tell Batman when he’s gone the wrong way. It’s our job to set him right when he’s wrong. The light to Batman’s darkness— that’s what you called Robin, remember?”

Dick seemed unsurprised and rather impressed. “And as a Robin it’s your job, then,” he said, not questioned. “And you have to have faith he won’t let you down either. Sometimes you have to have faith that he’s already doing the right thing.”

“i can’t,” Tim said simply. “I don’t have that faith. I’ve been let down.”

A pained expression crossed Dick’s face as he heard Tim’s response. “Oh, Tim,” he said with such weight and gravity.

It was all for nothing, though, because Tim turned in time to see Bruce’s devastating victory against the strange, ten-eyed men. He was breathing hard, but for the first time in months, Tim could see a smile on Bruce’s face as he dropped down to his knees and leaned his head back to face the cloudless sky. “The darkness is gone,” he said, voice level and normal despite his words being something that Tim would have pegged on hysteria. “I am reborn.”

Tim looked to Dick who was also raising a brow at the statement before snapping his head to look across the dunes. When Tim followed the look, he saw Talia and her guards as well, on horses, watching over Bruce.

“I must know, Beloved,” Talia called down to him as she steadied her steed. “Was the man or the bat reborn? And are either the keeper of my heart?”

Bruce looked in her direction but said nothing.

Dick sighed and rubbed his face with his good hand. “Just say yes, Bruce. Don’t drag us all the way into the middle of a desert for a fight with the League of Assassins.”

Tim tried to have faith that that was not going to happen, but it was as difficult as what Dick had asked of him before.

And if Bruce was reborn as someone even more unfamiliar to Tim than the Bruce of the last year, well, that was a whole new set of issues.