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redjayson · 7 years

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Okay so in Batman Beyond there's an episode where Bruce and Terry go see a 'Batman Musical', just imagine that goes on in Gotham and Jason finds out and asks(forces/tricks) the batfam to go.

i’m finally answering this! i had a really rough week, which is why this took a while, but i kept thinking about this prompt and laughing, so thank you for that.

and on that note: are you serious, that’s amazing. i vaguely remember watching batman beyond but i don’t actually remember all that much about it. i’ll need to look this up.

but yes. yes. i want this to be a Thing.

i want to imagine it as something between holy musical b@man! and the ember island players. like. just picture the kind of crazy misinformed shit that these people are tossing into the mix because what’s the truth and what’s the lie, no one knows, they’re going to make a musical about batman and his however many kids/sidekicks anyway

(they people putting on this play are probably college students)

(stephanie has probably dropped by to help with set designs and laughed herself sick in the process)

getting back on track, how does jason find out about it?

there are two ways i think it could happen. one: jason loves lit. we know this. he collected first editions with alfred and bruce when he was a kid. in my personal experience, if you like lit, you almost definitely like theater in some sense as well. at the very least you’ve read plays.

jason holds his goddamn red hood helmet like he’s hamlet and it’s yorick.

trust me, he likes plays.

so maybe he pays attention to the kinds of plays that are being shown around gotham. he likes going to some of the matinee performances on saturday and sunday afternoons – he can’t go in the evening because he has to patrol. sometimes alfred goes with him. it’s…nice. and yeah, going to performances means that sometimes he goes to the gotham university performances as well. they actually have pretty good ones. a couple years ago they put on the importance of being earnest and then twelfth night the next semester. he was too busy when they were putting on godspell and west side story to be able to go see them, which he’s still disappointed about.

anyway. it’s not like whoever’s putting on this ridiculous play is keeping secret about the fact that they’re making it about batman and co.

(i’ve made up my mind: it’s definitely the university kids that are putting it on. they’re the team starkid of gotham city. i bet a bunch of them said, “hey, we should do this, and also i bet it could count as our senior thesis” and they all went along with it and now they can’t turn back. they don’t want to turn back. this is going to amazing or they’re going to be arrested by batman, but god, what a way to go.)

so jason finds out, and, like steph, he busts a gut laughing about it before deciding that this is awesome and he’s definitely going to bully the rest of the family into seeing it with him. every time he thinks about bruce’s face he just starts laughing all over again. oh man. it’s going to be amazing.

the other way that jason finds out, though:

campus isn’t his usual haunt, but he’s been following some jackass with a connection to one of his open cases. spoiler has too much homework to help him, but she’s already given him the go-ahead to work on campus, which is nominally her space to patrol/operate in.

and this dude – it doesn’t really matter what he did. he’s connected to drugs or he’s friends with the wrong person or he’s done something else. jason’s going to get everything he needs from the guy and then drop him off at the precinct. with a bullet to the leg if he really annoys jason.

the thing is, the dude’s a member of the make-up crew for the batman musical. they’re doing dress rehearsals tonight. jason’s in full armor because he just wants to get this done and get back to his regular patrol routes as soon as possible. (like the rest of gotham, the campus is easy to grapple around. jason doesn’t have to touch the ground and shadows his target from the rooftops.)

the guy goes into the theater building. jason needs to make sure that he’s not meeting with anyone before jason grabs him. that’s why he didn’t take him out during any of the time that it took for the guy to cross campus to the theater building. meeting at the theater would be a good cover; there’s so much happening when rehearsing, so many people coming in and out, in all sorts of costumes and make up – if you needed to meet someone clandestinely, there are worse places that civilians have thought were secret.

jason slides through a window, makes his way up into the balcony seats so he can spy (gotham university has a very nice theater. in the past, the waynes have donated generously to it), and –

“oh my god,” jason says, staring at the stage.

he ducks down so that none of the actors can see him if they look up from their acting and past the lights to the balcony. jason tries to keep his laughter quiet, but it’s so fucking funny.

when he’s finally regained control of himself, he decides to just go for it. he feels a little bad about interrupting their rehearsal, but hey. gotham is all about unexpected surprises, and really, what else were they expecting when they decided to make a play about batman?

“can anyone point me to where brad merritt is?” jason calls as he strolls into the auditorium. his shit-eating grin is hidden beneath the helmet.

the actors all grind to a sudden stop.

“um,” says an actor who’s probably meant to be the replacement. he looks at actor-nightwing. actor-nightwing turns to actor-batman.

“he’s in the back with the rest of the make-up crew,” actor-batman says.

“cool,” jason says, hopping up onto the stage and walking past them. he shoots them friendly finger guns. “you’ll need to replace him. he’s going to be in jail opening week.”

behind the stage, jason catches a glimpse of brad before he takes in red hood stalking towards him and bolts.

“you get the assholes on campus next time, spoiler,” jason grumbles, and then he’s taking off after his target.

so jason knows and he is all about that. he is going to see that shit opening night. he’s so damn ready.

“stephanie,” he complains, sprawled out on her couch and finishing off the leftover lo mein that was in her fridge. “why didn’t you tell me what the university kids were doing?”

“what university kids?” steph asks, head still bent over her chemistry textbook.

“the theater kids,” jason says. “the batman play.”

stephanie looks up, already laughing. “i know, right?” she says. “i’ve been helping out with some of the sets in my spare time and i’ve heard bits of it and it’s going to be a thing of wonder.” she grins. “they’ve even got spoiler in it!”

“hell yeah,” jason says, getting up to throw away the lo mein carton and high-fiving steph as he passes. he sits next to her at the table. “you think we can convince the rest of the family to go?”

“i can get cass and tim,” steph says.

“i can definitely get alfred,” jason says. “probably also dick.”

they look at each other.

“he’s your dad,” steph says.

“he’s not my–” jason starts, then shakes his head. “goddammit. fine. if i get bruce to go, he’ll make damian go, as a…family bonding thing or something. two for one.”

“awesome,” steph says. “i didn’t want to try to convince the little hellion to go, anyway.”

“you’re in charge of babs,” jason says.

“sure,” steph says.

they fall into an easy silence. steph turns back to her chemistry work.

“you did that last problem wrong,” jason says, craning his head to look at her work.

steph throws her pencil at his head.

it takes two bribes, a guilt trip, and five minutes for dick to stop laughing (which jason will tolerate, because he did the exact same thing), but the entire wayne family, stephanie brown, and barbara gordon show up to the gotham university theater the opening night of The Batman Musical.

the actual name of the musical is something else, but to their family, it’s just The Batman Musical.

jason’s still horrendously disappointed he didn’t get to surprise bruce with the news of there being a play about their family. he was treasuring the idea of what bruce’s face was going to do.

“i pay attention to the theater scene, jason,” bruce said when jason brought it up. “as does alfred.”

yes, jason knew.

“and i pay attention to anything to do with batman,” bruce added. in case they get anywhere too close to the truth, he didn’t say out loud, but jason could hear the subtext just fine. paranoia, thy name is bat.

“but you’ll go see it with us, right?” jason asked.

bruce turned back to his computer.

cue the guilt trip and bruce’s eventual acquiescence. if jason didn’t get to see bruce’s face at the whole idea of it, then at the very least he was going to make absolutely sure that bruce would be at the performance.

damian’s look of disgust at the whole idea of it nearly made up for the disappointment with bruce, anyway.

they show their tickets at the door and are shown to their seats. they take up a good portion of an entire row. jason makes sure to place himself between steph and alfred. there’s a brief scuffle when tim almost ends up sitting next to damian, before bruce sighs, pushes them apart, and sits between the two of them. cass leans her head against steph’s shoulder, half-asleep; she’d had a long night, apparently. barbara catches jason’s eye and looks reluctantly amused at this whole thing. dick is flipping through the playbill on damian’s other side and laughing very, very quietly.

the musical starts and it is, indeed, a thing of wonder.

highlights of the play, since i’m not going to actually figure out what the plot of it would be:

batman dealing with villains and every so often just picking up a child and handing them a domino mask. congratulations you are now my vigilante sidekick.

in the audience, in reaction to one scene in the play jason and stephanie say, perfectly in sync: “did robin just die?”

cass, her head still leaning against steph’s shoulder: “you know...it was really unclear.”

jason and stephanie burst into raucous laughter

people don’t know much about about oracle, but she’s been active for a while, and some information must have spread. still. the general public has no idea what oracle looks like or what gender they are, so i present to you that the role of oracle in The Batman Musical is played by someone who wanders around in a bright green morphsuit and occasionally disseminates information when the batfam needs it

so many wonderful songs. jason and stephanie are already making plans to ask if the university is going to put out an album afterwards. if not, they’re pretty sure that they can convince dick and/or bruce to let them help fund one

damian is So Offended at first, but he gradually gets into it, because there’s some poking fun at batman and the idea of vigilantes in general, etc., but at the core of it the love that gotham feels for batman and his family really seeps through.

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