You're Dick Grayson, and you love your family more than anything. You love them so much you bleed for them and you die for them, but people look at you with all those siblings and wonder when you'll have children of your own. You never want children. You never wanted siblings. You never wanted anyone else to walk in the streets wearing the name your mother gave you, but you won't ever make the same mistakes again. You can't ever take back that you were the first. You were the first and every dead kid sidekick is you, is your brother, is your sister, is your friends you were too young and stupid to understand were going to get hurt. You love your siblings, because you don't know how not to. You love and you love and you keep trying because that's love. When you were just a kid you wanted to get married and now people wonder why you're alone. And you can't say it wasn't ever about marriage- marriage is your parents dying broken, still holding hands. You don't want a ring. You don't want a wife. You want hands that will hold you and be yours more than anything else. You hold it all together, but you're getting older. You're always getting older and you don't know who you'll be when you can't fly. Your family just keeps getting bigger and they're the best, brightest thing in your life. A bunch of kids, out in the dark. Your family is a secret, for the night, and you don't know anymore who gets to see you and know you in the daylight but them.

You're Dick Grayson, and in the end, you're always alone.

Ohohohohohohohoho

HOW DARE-

How DARE you @flowerflamestars

The way I SPED through and CRIED. I am unwell. I am UNWELL. Wtf is this!!!! ❤️😭❤️

Ok why don’t we just stop making me re-live my Francesca era please and thank you. Because is he wrong??? NO.

Sexy murder

I cannot express to you how many times I SCREAMED reading this-

But no really Elle is SO valid for that because SAME babe 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

Literal ��whoop”-ing noises made. 👏🏾

The fact that Star kissed her? I’m NOT over iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

Also, not you making Jason Todd into the most green flag or ever green flag amongst all of the green flags??? (Am I ignoring the murder? Yes. I have selective sight, thank you very much 😌). But also, if a man came to find me, offered me a hair tie and then proceeded to pour his heart out to me I would simple cease to exist. So understood 🫡.

I feel like this is the reverse of the “But did you die” joke that Jason constantly spins and @flowerflamestars it was perfect. I’m literally giggling a kicking my feet. I’m sitting here in a puddle of my flimsy little emotions because they’re both MAGIC and magic is blood and love and pain and I’m UNWELL. How could you do this to me @flowerflamestars 🙃🖕🏾.

(Now off I go break my own heart again and read your Padme and Maul fic AGAIN because I have ZERO self preservation skills 💋.)

Happy day Jason got drunk with Alfred and burnt the turkey Migrations readers

Robin fic snippet

“Skin contact,” he said, reaching out. Elle passed him the baby, hands briefly overlapping on her little skull, “No one was holding her.”   The difference came by degrees- tired wail fading into sad grizzling, rubbing her wet little face beneath Jason’s collarbone before rapidly seeming to collapse into exhaustion.   Careful, Jason leaned against the edge of the desk he never actually used. After a beat, Elle followed, moving with assured quiet to pull herself up on top of the wide oak slab, high enough to lean her cheek on his shoulder.   “Started screaming the second she was done eating,” Elle whispered. Sighed, turning her head to press a brief kiss to Jason’s skin. “God.” She reached out, hesitantly touching one little hand, bunched even in rest, “She’s so small.”   For a while, they just watched the baby sleep.   “Does she have name?”   Elle smiled. “Elodie, I think. Feels like an Elodie.”   Another Elle. Ellie. Jason barely wrestled silence into his laugh, rocking the baby as she stirred. “Sounds good.”   He wanted to know what shade her eyes would be when they settled past baby blue. The color of her hair. The sound of her little laugh. A tiny, tiny magical person- Elle was right, of course. They’d never let her get hurt, ever again.   “Philippe’ll be here in the morning,” Elle told him, quietly.   Jason told himself not to be a fucking idiot. Not to be disappointed-   He also knew perfectly well what he sounded like, when he whispered back, “We’re not keeping her?”

My brain pivoting back to Gotham Mode by making a sound like tires screeching

TIM IN A PIT OF SADNESS DAY!

Migration Patterns snippet

Long before Elle was curious enough to go looking, old candle wax the strongest smell in the musty, airless space. Years of it populated the floor, spilled from broken votives, saints peeling faces newer and brighter the further you walked.

Elle breathed it in. Dust and the dead, grave dirt in her mouth just half a dream away.   People left all kinds of things. Notes and lights, messages written on the walls.   Until the very end of the tunnel, bricked over, where someone had painted a boy from Crime Alley, swinging up out of the gloom as though by magic.   “Hey baby Jay,” Elle whispered, palm pressed to edge of a lovingly rendered yellow cape. They’d gotten the shape wrong, but not the size. Too large, bright as traffic light, so heavy, in passing faded memory. “Anyone tell you lately that you grew up right?”   Jason’s kindness that felt so, so safe- nearly impossible to turn down- nearly goddamn impossible to turn away from, even when she knew it was the right thing to do.   For now.   She’d had years and years. To mourn this Jason, Gotham’s own and gone much too soon. Years to know he was alive, he was out there, that soulmates did not meet until it was time- what the fuck was the point of time if you’d already met?   Car keys in her hand. Jason, who’d disappeared without a word and would again, fear like the taste of blood polluting so much sugared heat in her mouth.   Jason, steadfastly trying to find a single offering she’d take- when all Elle had to really go on were the lines he’d drawn, and some strange hope for a someday that was so clearly not today.   “Warden.”   His voice came out of the dark, body to follow. Gotham’s original ghost, haunting his own past, stepping soundless out of the deep shadows to come up on Elle’s right.   She watched as he crouched. Bruce, head ducked, gently rearranging to offerings laid at his dead son’s feet, room left for the half-crushed marigold he pulled from his utility belt. An undented batarang. Three pocket Shakespeares.

Batman was the only one who left books at the wall for Robin, Elle had learned over the years.   It didn’t matter that the street kids stole them. It was, probably, half the reason he always came with more.   He relit every candle that had gone out, before standing.

“I wonder,” Bruce said, slowly, eyes forward, eerie in the flickering light, “If you might reconsider my offer.”

Tagged by the lovely @missanniewhimsy for last lines of a WIP, but this whole conversation only makes sense together. Thank you babe :)

It wasn’t the Brucie Wayne voice- the Bat voice- no, just that soft spoken secret between Jasons innumerable siblings, and apparently, this one woman.   “Eleanor,” Bruce said, gloom abated only by the smallest uptick of a smile at the baseball bat in her hand, corona of broken glass gleaming crunched beneath her steel-toed boots, “Should I open the garage?”   She had to tilt back her head to look at him, and the action made Bruce slump, shoulders low.   Muffled by Dick’s sweater, Tim wrestled free enough to to ask, because he was a little fucking shit, “Did B adopt your soulmate?”   The bat disappeared. Elle crossed her arms and glared up, backburn sear of anger reaching Jason, even here and now, fucking soul mark empathy filling him with something so much warmer than all the whiskey in the world.   “What the fuck were you thinking? Sending Dick to my house. You know- you knew what he’d”-  Terrible, Bruce gently interrupted. “You stopped coming home.”

Last Sentence Tag Game: Post the last sentence you wrote on your wip!

Tagged by the lovely @missanniewhimsy , a perfect kindness while I am in the middle of thinking about lighting drafts on fire.

The dream resolved itself, transmutation calm. An echo, she thought, half memory: Jason, on top of the covers, stretched out alongside her, just like that first night. Hands gently tangled together, pulse at Elle’s wrist pressed to his mouth. A book in his other hand, tattered paperback spine cracked.   In the dream, he kissed her palm.   Settled again, as he had started, tracking the race of her aching heart.

Migration Patterns snippet

Mostly asleep, but too near waking to be insensate, Elle turned her cheek into his touch, soulmark suddenly pressed to Jason’s palm.   Everything stopped. There was only this: warmth. If he let himself think it, Jason had imagined his half a little like the ocean. Too much, no matter how he tried to bottle it. Fresh water and salt water: where currents met, where color muddled, both and neither. Tidal Eleanor, ceaselessly making it make sense.   All that existed in Elle, just awake enough to reach, was no drowning depth. Just a certain light. Glowing and burning. Incandescent. New and old- not love yet, love already- spark bright interest that could not fade to embers, a thousand soft shades of safe.   Jason’s brain and Jason’s body all in one for once: a country with no borders, Elle an endless expanse of sky.   And then she rolled. Curled small enough not to fall, one arm outstretched.   Jason felt reality start to intrude before her eyes even opened. It was the cold, probably- insistent search that grasped only the cool leather of Jason’s jacket instead of a body in bed, and yanked anyway.   It was no distance to travel.   Just Elle’s grip, ferocious- just air, escaping Jason’s lungs in something so much worse than panic- Elle, on the threshold, a honey sweet dream turned caramel burnt before it cooled to snap in two, all at once- Elle woke up.   Adjusted, softened, let go to hook her fingertips in the collar of his t-shirt, expression unspeakably, unmistakably, fond for a minute before she blinked. Ran the back of her hand up his neck for half a second, and then-   Elle really woke up, drawing back.   “Shit. Sorry. Sorry. I thought”- She flung herself upright, steel-toed boots thudding not unpleasantly against Jason’s side. Elle frowned. “Where are we?”

Robin fic snippet

Elle stopped three steps into the open space, racing heart briefly clenched with hope.   There was light she hadn’t left on.   A green glow, from the obscenely expensive coffee apparatus that had turned up on her doorstep courtesy of Bruce.   And then she saw the Gucci sneaker, one long slender leg sticking out from beneath her kitchen counter.   “What step of breaking in,” Elle asked, joining him on the floor, “Is making yourself coffee?”   Tim, mug resting on his sternum, folded against the island in a sprawl, opened bleary eyes. Took in Elle’s sleek jumpsuit, the wine bottle in her hand, flowers clinging crushed to her favorite platform boots. “Why’re you back?”   Elle huffed. “Why are you here?”   His eyes fell shut again. “My ex-girlfriends are unionizing.”   Elle, who’d reached over her head to navigate the nearest drawer, feeling for a corkscrew, stopped. Gave up and rose, fishing it out before bumping the whole mess closed again with her hip. The kitchen only looked organized- she was just barely moved in.   Loud, the noise of the cork seemed to echo, coffee scent immediately overwhelmed by deep, rich pomegranate.   “You want to repeat that?” Elle said, sliding back down.   Tim groaned. “Tam- you met Tam?” Elle nodded- the severe, lovely woman had complimented her lipstick. “Tam and Cassie are engaged.”   Elle took a sip from the bottle, briefly transported to a world of sugar and heat, like she could taste the ocean breeze. She blinked. Coughed. Fought genuine delight to pay attention to conversation. “Soulmates?”   His next groan was one of vague agreement.   By her third drink, then entire world felt gloriously red. Sun-soaked. Light on closed eyelids, gold edges to ruby relaxation. This was how Llewellyn’s bond to Dick manifested- it would have been easy to guess touch, seeing either of them together, but color was wonder. Freefall. It made all the sense in the world.   “Hitting the Themysciran wine a little hard?”   “Tim.”   Her tone made him actually look again, guilt already probably detectible. “Yeah?”   “If I ask you something, can it stay between us?”   Tim’s own smile seemed to surprise him, edged in a wince. “For a favor.” At her face, he added, just a little gleeful. “Let me off easy last time. You’re weirdly good natured, you know, considering who”-   Elle threw the corkscrew at his face.

Robin fic snippet

“Just, whoever’s out tonight, don’t come running in.” Extra noise there shouldn’t be, water, and Jason realized she was probably holding the com instead of wearing it. Because why would she be wearing it? Why would she even have the right frequency, if B hadn’t given her one, just in case.   A panic button thrown in a coffee mug, a secure line, and cave clearance that triggered a lockdown.   Asshole didn’t even have the decency to make the same mistake twice, ever.   “You redecorating, Elle?” Dick joked, wary, worried blue gaze finding Jason.   He was too far into the motion of flipping him off to stop, when Elle said, approximately a thousand miles away. “I have to hold a burial.”

The line went dead.   Tim spit out the scrunchie he’d been holding between his teeth, tied off the end of the French braid he’d woven into Steph’s hair, and sighed. “She found the bodies.”   They’d him taught not to freeze. To barely breathe. To control his entire body and kill anything that could be killed and Jason sounded like it, sounded like that person again, made of Talia’s selfish, endless violence, as he ground out, “What bodies.”   Tim looked at Dick, rescue not coming, Robin original too busy wrestling his phone out a clinging yoga pants pocket.   “Tim,” Jason growled, “What fucking bodies?”   It was Bruce who answered.   “Eleanor has been looking for her predecessors.”   Someone had laid the foundations of that house, a witches hearth waiting for Elle to come back, for Elle to be strong enough to belong to this city.   He’d fucking known she was too cagey about it.   “Witches die when they want to die,” Bruce said, calm and detached. Too sure. He knew or thought she was okay, and when hadn’t Bruce’s variable definition of okay failed everyone in this room? “Or in extreme violence. She had to find them, to know.”   “So we’re going to help, right?” Steph was the only one besides Bruce in full uniform, purple cape flinging out as she jumped upright and propped her elbow on Tim’s shoulder. “And I finally get to meet her? Boyfriend?”   Tim shook his head. “Wardens work alone.”   “Fuck that,” Jason spit, “Fuck”-

preemptively apologizing to all teen titans babes reading along with my weird little fic for a)portraying one generation as Tired Adults (full of love and wine and about to have three day hangovers) and b) the next gen as the weirdest lil polycule known to man

Robin fic snippet

She’d stolen gloves too. Leather soft and and so very sleek, climbing past her elbows to cover all that long boxy shape of the coat didn’t bother with. Jason felt that silk slide- body warm already, Elle- like a sexual punch, unsteadying. Unmooring.   It had been a long time since Jason let a hit land without good reason. To more forward, sure. To get the damn fight started.   Jason couldn’t let this start, but he could look.   A good three inches taller and still rock solid, Elle’s tiny body dwarfed in tweed and leather. She looked like a dream to unwrap- she looked steady in goth nightmare boots, comfortable, tilting back her head to meet his gaze when Jason finally, finally took in her face. The hour didn’t matter- that she’d been in pajama’s didn’t matter- Elle’s mouth still set shining, black cherry color Jason was just near enough to smell had a taste.   He flipped her hand, thumb lingering on Elle’s pulse, just a little too fast, and dropped the keys into her palm.   “Take it,” Jason said, swallowing. Moving away- rolling with the punches. “Don’t have to get in a car with me.”   For a second- heart thudding in his chest, a thrill that Jason could not fucking deny- he thought she was going to take a swing at him. Witches didn’t fight with their hands, but Elle was no normal witch. A baseball bat or brass knuckles- Jason knew perfectly well either would feel much the same, as tugging free each delicate finger of her furious hands with his teeth.   “What the fuck are you talking about,” Elle exhaled, all at once. “That’s not- Jason.”   Jason shrugged. “You should go home, Elle.”   “I was home,” Elle hissed, keys clinking together as she threw up her hands, “And the City threw me here. Now, I follow the magic. That is what I do. Why would- why would I not want to get in a car with my soulmate?”  Time had not, in the slightest, lessened the weight of the word.   The wildly, defiantly, possessive way she said it, just kept saying it, heated enough to light up the entire bond.   “Jason,” she again, softer but no lower, loud in her feeling as she was in the whole gesticulated, enormously conveyed disbelief. “I don’t have a problem with you.”   Lie. Verbena in the sun. A fucking lie- Jason had made sure of it.

Robin fic snippet

“I just,” One hand emerged from the too-big sweater sleeve, palm smooshed over Elle’s right eye. “I got used to him, I guess. Stupid. Three days of him being all warm and close and right there”- “Making bitchy faces.” Eleanor flipped him off, and Dick’s soulmate laughed, the sound rebounding into his own chest, edged around in worry as an achy old scar.   “S’not an insult,” Dick said, sliding out of the kitchen and moving to curl up along Llewellyn's side. A warm hand climbed his neck, urging him closer until they were both comfortable, a tangle of limbs. “Jay is absolutely proud of what a bitch he is.”   Garbled, Eleanor made a horrible noise with her throat, and rolled further beneath the coffee table.   “I don’t think I can explain this to you two.”   Dick opened his mouth, but Wells shook his head, absolutely correct as words started to tumble from Eleanor anyway, uneven and grouchy, heartsickness soaking right through.   “I had all this time to think about it,” Elle said, unkind hand shifted from pressed too hard on her eyes to grounding her own chest, “Years. He’s allowed to think about it. I’m already like, invasively far in his life in a fucked away. He’s not doing anything wrong.”   Considering the current arson rate in Gotham, Dick though Jason was doing at least one thing wrong. Two, if he’d believed for a single second that his brother didn’t want a soulmate, wasn’t still his Little Wing, hoping and waiting for one person who’d chose him above anyone else.   “Magic is bad enough,” Elle continued, voice rising, “Immortality. God, he doesn’t even know about the entropy shit.”   “Maybe you should blow something up,” Wells offered, with a crooked smile, grey eyes flashing to Dick’s face, “Seems like a regular pastime in this fine village of yours. Your zombie is a pyro, love.”   “Your zombie is sitting on your lap, and I hate you.” Dead bird soulmark club, welcome to the family. It said something, that the whole conversation filled Dick with warmth.   “You’re not invasive,” Dick said. “Elle, c’mon. You think I haven’t run a background check on every person Steph has ever dated? That Tim’s never surveilled me? That Cas doesn’t know where we are and what we’re doing and if we’re okay, half the world away?”   “It’s one thing to know B saved my life,” Elle grumbled, “It’s entirely another to have see his semi-estranged parent try to parent me.”

my three babes out there reading Migration Patterns, the chapter is coming 😘