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#edit: removed the text. still there under cut but yeah looks less annoying like this lol
storfulsten · 2 years
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An aftermath of the ballistic whitty?
I'm guessing going ballistic is probably pretty draining so
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sleepy whitty
edit: now without the cringe text bc reasons. still there under cut but hey at least you don’t have to read it lol
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historyofshipping · 4 years
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My massive Bellarke is epic and here’s proof from s5-7 rant.
Ok guys I cannot stress enough that I am drunk, this is long, it has strong language, and it’s a trip. I am putting it almost all under a cut because it is 20 f*ing pages on word.
For reference: this was on a discord chat and I am removing all names and a few other things but there will be absolutely no editing. Anything in straight text is me, anything in italics is someone else (there’s several different someone elses so people are separated by line breaks). On my page I think it appears as everything grey is someone else, everything black is me. I’m going to put the beginning on here and rest under the cut. If you’re still going through with this, I suggest some popcorn.
Guys... I'm trying to stay optimistic but I'm really worried that jroth is gonna make bellarke canon in a really disappointing way. Like for me infidelity is a huge no in ships and I hate that becho has gone on so long that there doesn't seem to be a lot of room left in the canon timeline for a becho breakup/end that doesn't ruin the start of Bellarke for me
WAIT I GOT YOU I CAN CALM YOU I THINK BUT FIRST I NEED TO EAT MY BREADSTICKS
Every moment Echo is on the screen I want to claw my eyes out because she's so boring please jroth let it fucking end, but the feminist in me doesn't want her to die or be disrespected just because she's a callous asshole who doesn't deserve him yknow
Eat your breadsticks babe I've been living with my dread for 2 seasons I can hang on a little longer I just wish the entire becho relationship had never happened it's a blight and it's gone on so long adenfkidsngksdgnksdgn
Kate will say it better than I will, but don't lose hope! Becho hasn't really been together on screen for very long. It's only been like a few weeks to a month since the beginning of S5. They've stretched it out over two seasons, but in canon not much time has passed. And most of that time had Bellamy either sacrificing almost 300 lives to save Clarke, poisoning his sister to save Clarke, or fucking off into the wilderness with Josephine to save Clarke. They've just straight up not had enough time for Bellamy to be like, "Hey Echo, I know I said things wouldn't change but that was before my wife was actually alive, so bye." Though  to wishing Becho had just never happened. We got one good angst scene with Clarke seeing them kiss. But otherwise, I could have very much done without their whole relationship.
they gave me 2 dozen breadsticks. i ordered 6
You've been blessed by the breadstick goddess.
oh sorry i was misinformed. i only have 22. apparently one bag only had 4 OK SO BELLARKE BITCHES AM I GOING TO ANNOYINGLY DO THIS IN CAPS SO BUCKLE TF UP
I mean, I love the idea that they only got together in the sixth year on the ring when Bellamy totally lost hope but is that canon? I thought we had a 3 year range
ALL RIGHT
We ignore canon in this channel. lol They've been together for 3 months.
SO LET'S START AT THE BEGINNING OF BECHO ok caps off. i even annoyed myself
I'm so here for this.
https://tenor.com/view/murder-she-wrote-angela-lansbury-jessica-eats-popcorn-interested-gif-4594942
Damn, I was ready for caps.
OK WE'RE BACK TO CAPS
https://giphy.com/gifs/popcorn-go-on-keep-going-Zd1BUb0qs6nwjeMUBu
OK SO WE HAVE BECHO'S FIRST SCENE TOGETHER ANYONE REMEMBER WHAT BELLAMY SAID? ANYONE? THIS REQUIRES AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION
"Hey work with me so I can break everyone out of this mountain"? or something?
OH DAMN I MEANT WHEN THEY WERE CANONICALLY TOGETHER XP
"I'm a goddamn delight who's trying to save your life you ungrateful walnut so maybe don't spit in my face" is what I would have written
LMFAO OJN THE RING WHAT'S THE FIRST THING WE HEAR FROM THEM? THE FIRST IMPORTANT THING? ANYONE?
Unfortunately that scene was physically repulsive for me so I don't remember much except for "nothing will change on the ground and my sister totally didn't mean to murder you"
AHA! THERE YA GO NOTHING WILL CHANGE ON TEH GROUND BECAUSE WHAT IS HE EXPECTING ON THE GROUND? NOTHING TO CHANGE BECAUSE THE ONLY THING THAT COULD CHANGE IS -----
>"I'm a goddamn delight who's trying to save your life you ungrateful walnut so maybe don't spit in my face" is what I would have written I SPIT OUT MY DRINK I CANNOT
ANYONE? YUP
I'm behind. lol
CLARKE
AND THEN WE GOT TO THE GROUND, WHAT HAPPENED?
BEING ALIVE
His sister having more taste in his romantic partners than him?
WHAT WAS THE LITERAL ONE THING THAT COULD HAPPEN THAT WOULD CHANGE BELLAMY'S MIND DING DING DING CLARKE IS ALIVE
10 points to 
AND WHAT DOES OUR BABY BOY DO?
SACRIFICE 300 PEEPS FOR HIS WIFE
Clarke with a gun AND a kid AND a rover AND bedtime storytelling practice like what more could he want that's all the things he loves
A LITTLE AHEAD BUT BANG
BABY BOY FOLLOWS CLARKS DAUGHTER FIRST, LEAVING ECHO IN THE LITERAL DUST (that's what he does before sacrificing lives)
WE WENT FROM "I WILL NOT TOUCH THESE PEOPLE BECAUSE WE'RE GOING TO DO BETTER." TO "I WILL SLAUGHTER 283 PEOPLE WITHOUT RAISING AN EYEBROW" BECAUSE RANDOM CHILD SHOWS UP AND SAYS "CLARKE'S IN TROUBLE" RANDOM CHILD WHO HAS JUST KILLED A BUNCH OF HARDENED CRIMINALS
He had the dad mug tho, he had to help her
HE SAW HIMSELF IN HER HE KNEW
OK
HIS SOUL KNEW
SO WE'RE THERE NOW BUT THEN BANG, WE'RE ON THE GROUND AND OH FUCK I FORGOT I HAD A GIRLFRIEND BUT BELLAMY IS LOYAL SO HE SURE AF ISN'T DOING ANYTHING UNTIL HE'S DONE WITH ECHO BUT
He's had 2 seasons!!!!!
CLARKE BASICALLY ACTS LIKE SHE DIDN'T CARE ABOUT THE SEPARATION THOU SHALT NOT POKE HOLES IN MY SHIT UNTIL I AM DONE
>He's had 2 seasons!!!!! But only like a few weeks in time.
BECAUSE THESE TWO FUCK HEADS CANNOT HAVE A CONVERSATION
Forgive me!
SO WE HAVE A GRAND TOTAL OF FEWER THAN 3 WEEKS THAT THEY'RE ON THE GROUND AND THEN IN THAT TIME WE HAD.... one sec pPLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO REVIEW THE TIMELINE https://historyofbellarke.tumblr.com/post/620425806742749184/season-5-7x03-so-far-timeline FOR SEASON 5 ALL RIGHT SO WE HAVE THEM TOGETHER FOR LESS THAN A WEEK BEFORE BELLAMY'S LIKE (FROM CLARKE'S PERSPECTIVE) "I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOUR KID, I HAVE TO SAVE MY FAMILY" SO THEN WE HAVE THEM SPEND THE NEXT 10 DAYS APART BECAUSE SHE LEFT HIM AFTER SLAPPING HIM AND SHE THOUGHT HE DIED BECAUSE THEY ARE FUCKING MORONS WHO CAN'T HAVE A CONVERSATION (YOU WILL NOTICE A RECURRING THEME) AND THEN, ECHO HAS LEARNED THAT NOT ONLY HAS CLARKE CARED ABOUT BELLAMY ALL THIS TIME BUT THAT SHE'S ONCE AGAIN READY TO PUT THE FATE OF HUAMNITIY ON THE LINE TO SAVE HIM "GO SAVE HIM. EVEN TAKE MURDER!DAUGHTER WITH YOU" BUT BELLAMY STILL DOESN'T KNOW THIS SO ANYWAY WE HAVE ANGST!BELLAMY GET PARENT TRAPPED BY MURDER!DAUGHTER are y'all still with me? AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED IMMEDIATELY AFTER MURDER!DAUGHTER'S INTERVENTION?
BELLARKE FORGIVENESS ™
YAS NOT ONLY THAT BUT SOFT!BELLARKE RETURNS WITH A VENGEANCE [side note: you can pry this theory from my cold dead hands but there was 100% a canon bellarke scene between forgiveness and 125 year wake up just in case they ended at season 5.]
[I need them to publish that scene when this is all over]
ALL RIGHT SO FUCKING MARPER - WHO SPENT A TOTAL OF LIKE 4 MONTHS WITH CLARKE BUT 6 YEARS WITH THEIR FAMILY- DECIDED TO WAKE UP BELLARKE TO TALK TO AND GIVE GUARDIANSHIP TO AND WHY DID THEY DO THAT?
THEY BEEN KNEW
I'LL ACCEPT IT
OK SO WE GET THIS PROMISING FUTURE TOGETHER ON THIS NEW PLANET RIGHT?
WRONG MURDER POLLEN
OK BUT TECHNICALLY BECHO IS STILL TOGETHER. NO PROBLEM - WE NEED TO FIGURE OUR SHIT OUT AND THEN WE'LL HAVE PLENTY OF TIME TO HAVE PEACE AND GET TOGETHER OK SO I'M JUST GOING TO START SAYING "CHORUS" WHEN I MEAN "BECAUSE THESE TWO DUMBASSES CAN'T TALK TO EACH OTHER" IS CHORUS THE RIGHT WORD? OR IS IT REFRAIN? WHATEVER ONE REPEATS - THAT ONE ALL RIGHT SO WE HAVE THEM GOING INTO THE VILLAGE AND EVERY TIME THERE IS DANGER, BELLAMY GOES IMMEDIATELY TO CLARKE WHEN IT'S PEACEFUL, OPE IT'S BACK TO ECHO
(like the husband he is)
I HAVE A WHOLE META ABOUT THAT IF YOU WANT IT BUT SO THEN THE FIRST TIME - LITERALLY THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE MARPER VIDEO - THAT THEY'RE ALONE, IT'S BECAUSE BELLAMY HAS SOUGHT HER OUT AND WHY DID BELLAMY SEEK HER OUT? Y'ALL I'M ONLY AT 6X01. I HAVE SO MUCH AMMUNITION BUT SOMEONE IS WELCOME TO SCREEN SHOT THIS SO THAT THE NEXT TIEM WE HAVE DOUBTS, I DON'T HAVE TO TYPE IT ALL OUT SO WHY DID BELLAMY SEEK HER OUT?
>Y'ALL I'M ONLY AT 6X01. I HAVE SO MUCH AMMUNITION @kate (historyofbellarke) "Give a position show me where the ammunition is" from My Shot just popped into my head lololol
WHY DID BELLAMY LEAVE HIS CANONICAL GIRLFRIEND TO GO SEEK OUT CLARKE?
BECAUSE HE LOVES HER AND ALSO BECAUSE THERE WAS DANGER
OK BUT WHY SPECIFICALLY NOOO WHEN CLARKE WAS IN THE SCHOOL
AND THE LAST TIME SHE WASN'T IN HIS SIGHT SHE ALMOST DIED
OK THAT TOO
Okay I'm lost at this point then.
LOL
Phone a friend.
Bc she sucks and Clarke's the best?
I'LL LET ---- CHIME IN LMFAO I LOVE YOU GUYS KNOW IT'S TO TELL HER THAT HE KNOWS ABOUT THE CALLS
OH THAT SCENE
HE KNOWS THAT SHE CALLED HIM EVERY DAY FOR 2,199 DAYS HE SOUGHT HER OUT, BY HERSELF, TO TELL HER THIS
YES YES
BUT BECAUSE CHORUS
WE'RE BACK THESE FUCK HEADS CAN'T HAVE A CONVERSATION
SHE GOT NERVOUS AND DUCKED OUT BECAUSE IT'S BEEN LESS THAN 3 WEEKS SINCE HE CAME BACK AND SHE'S OVERWHELMED BECAUSE HOLY FUCK WHAT A 3 WEEK PERIOD THAT WAS (REFER BACK TO TIMELINE AS NEEDED) ALL RIGHTY SO THEN AFTER THAT THEY FIND OUT ABOUT THE RED SUN WHICH BY THE WAY IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS BECAUSE HE CALLS OVER ECHO JUST TO PROMPTLY IGNORE HER COMPLETELY [AND BECAUSE IT'S ME, I HAVE A GIFSET FOR THAT] SORRY I GOT DISTRACTED
NO WE'RE HERE FOR THE GIFSET
I'M LOOKING OK IT'S PART OF THIS SO YOU GET A 2 FOR 1 https://historyofbellarke.tumblr.com/post/184827185143/bellarke-danger-vs-becho-safety OK NOW I FORGOT WERE I LEFT OFF OH YEAH IGNORING ECHO ALL RIGHT SO THEN WE HAVE EVERYTHING GO TO SHIT AND OF COURSE, BELLARKE LOCK THEMSELVES TOGETHER AND WE HAVE THE ANGST THE ANGST BUT THEY HAVE EACH OTHER'S KEYS
WHICH IS A MARRIED MOVE IF I EVER HEARD ONE
BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE KEY TO MY HEART, WHEREVER YOU ARE, I'LL KEEP YOU
That's a very comprehensive gifset
IF YOU DON'T KNOW THAT SONG THEN I FEEL OLD SO YOU HAVE THEM UNLOCKING EACH OTHER BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY ARE
I might drift in and out of conversation, partner wants attention but I wanna finish reading this asdfgh
AND HE'S LIKE "NAH ECHO, WIFEY AND I GOT THIS. WE GOTTA TAKE CARE OF OUR KIDS." TELL THEM TO WAIT THEIR TURN SO THEY'RE GOING LITERALLY PSYCHOTIC BUT THAT'S COOL. I TRUST THE OTHER ONE ENOUGH TO NOT KILL ME BUT OH WAIT - WHAT IS BELLAMY'S PSYCHOSIS ?
Not needing Clarke anymore...?
YUP WHICH MEAN S
He needed her and knew it at some point
YUP ALSO I FOUND THAT GIFSET THAT I IDD TO THAT SONG https://historyofbellarke.tumblr.com/post/184725894498/this-song-popped-into-my-head-and-i-had-to OK SO SKIPPING AHEAD, HIS BIGGEST SECRET IS THAT HE DOES STILL NEED HER OK EVEN I'M STARTED TO GET BORED SO I'LL GIVE BULLET POINTS FROM HERE ON OUT SO WE HAVE HIM NEEDING HER HIM CALLING HER THE LEADER EVEN THOUGH SHE HASN'T BEEN FOR LIKE 6 YEARS AND WE HAVE HIM PINING OVER HER AT THE DANCE FLOOR AND PICKING A FIGHT WITH ECHO OH YEAH AND WE SEE ALL THE  BECHO CRACKS HERE
This has been a v good rundown, I won't lie.
LOL
ONWARD  I'M BACK ON TRACK
WE HAVE JUXTAPOSED: ECHO NOT KNOWING WHAT TO SAY WITH REGARDS TO OBUT CLARKE KNOWING EXACTLY WHAT TO SAY EVEN AFTER 6 YEARS
BECAUSE WIFEY
https://historyofbellarke.tumblr.com/post/618426948212965376/historyofbellarke-4-times-someone-knew-the-right
Really you'd think the spy would know what someone wants to hear smh
NAH BECAUSE SHE HAS NO EMOTIONAL EMPATHY. WE'LL GET TO THAT EVENTUALLY
She's also kinda a shit spy. Like when has she ever done actual spying.
Y'ALL I HAVE A GIF FOR EVERYTHING. I'M THE LIZ WARREN OF BELLARKE GIFS GIFSETS AT LEAST
You don't need empathy to fake it, Madison's right she's just such a bad spy :joy:
I'VE GOT NOTHING ON ---- FOR JUST GIFS LOLi
I say this as someone who was 10/10 a spy in a past life at least according to my recurring dreams about it1
OK SO THEN WE ALSO HAVE BELLAMY SIDING WITH CLARKE AT EVERY TURN, OVER ECHO'S EXPLICIT OBJECTIONS AND WE HAVE HER NOTICINGGGGGG WE'RE HERE FOR THIS CONTENT
https://historyofbellarke.tumblr.com/post/185265380768/6x04-bec-scene-follow-up-with-6x05 JUST ONE EXAMPLE
HATE TO SEE IT 
SO WE HAVE BELLAMY CLEARLY SHOWING THAT HE'S HER LEADER - WHETHER HE MEANS TO BE OR NOT - WHICH COMES IN IN 7X01
Total aside but now I want a modern au where Bellamy doesn't know how to break up with Echo so he tries to ghost her while everyone around him is pulling their hair out
OH SHIT ONE SECOND I HAVE TO DO DUOLINGO SO I DON'T LOSE MY STREAK BRB
>Total aside but now I want a modern au where Bellamy doesn't know how to break up with Echo so he tries to ghost her while everyone around him is pulling their hair out ---- I love this, actually. WE SHALL HOLD YOUR SPOT
No one in this goddamn canon knows how to have an actual breakup conversation they only know how to die
CORRECT CHORUS
BECAUSE THESE TWO DUMBASSES CAN'T TALK TO EACH OTHER
Ironically Raven and Finn are the only ones who have had a half-normal breakup.
Will be back, partner is dramatically exclaiming that I don't love him anymore bc I won't go give him a goddamn hug bc the meta's too good
BOOM OK I'M BACK
SIDE NOTE BEFORE WE'RE BACK
GO ON
What language are you learning on Duolingo?
relearning spanish and then german german for work, spanish because i used to be fluent and i'm so bad now xp
This entire convo is a chaotic mess
We are a chaotic mess.
WELCOME TO THE HELLMOUTH, ----
Our ship is a chaotic mess.
It all tracks, honestly.
WE WOULD'VE ALL BEEN SO MUCH BETTER OFF IF JASPER HAD DESTROYED THE CHIP OOK SO MOVING ON NOW I FORGOT WHERE I LEFT OFF OH YEAH LEADER PERF SO OH YEAH I FORGOT TO ADD - 6 & 7 ARE ONE SINGULAR SEASON SO
This convo should totally be convered into a Masterclass session at the end. YES
WE'VE GOT A RUNNING THREAD OF ECHO BEING A FOLLOWER OF BELLAMY AND HER KNOWING IT
6/7 ARE ONE SEASON WE'RE HERE WE'RE LIVING
BUT BACK TO S6 SO WE HAVE BELLAMY BEING THE FIRST TO REALIZE THAT CLARKE WANS'T CLARKE AND WE HAVE THIS BEAUTIFUL MOMENT
I’m here and all of this is glorious
OH YEAH THERE'S ALSO THIS BUT I DIGRESS https://historyofbellarke.tumblr.com/post/618548726524510208/historyofbellarke-5x09-6x04-6x05 THE FIRST ONE HERE - https://historyofbellarke.tumblr.com/post/616075629201408000/just-some-clips-ofabout-bellamy-where-either HE'S WILLING TO RISK EVERYTHING EBCAUSE CLARKE MIGHT BE AT RISK  EVEN THOUGH THEY LITERALLY HAVE NO WHERE ELSE TO GO OH YEAH FUCKING MURPHY - I'LL GET BACK TO HIM ALL RIGHT SO THEN WE HAVE BELLAMY FIGURING IT OUT AND THE HORROR BLOOMING IN HIS SOUL AND THEN WE HAVE HIM LITERALLY WITH A ROOM DESTROYED EVERN THOUGH HE IS CHAINED UP LIKE SERIOUSLY HOW DID HE MANAGE THAT AND THEN TRY TO KILL RUSSELL THE SECOND HE COULD BECAUSE HE HURT CLARKE EVEN THOUGH, AGAIN, THAT'S THE ONLY WAY HE AND HIS PEOPLE COULD SURIVVE BUT WITHOUT CLARKE, HE'S NOT ALIVE. HE ONLY SURVIVES AND HOW DO WE KNOW THIS? BECAUSE HE FUCKING SAYS IT (implicitly)
I just came into this. I have nothing to add I just want to say I’m living for it
:heart:
Agreed, this conversation is giving meaning to my insomnia :joy:
https://historyofbellarke.tumblr.com/post/618973621000585216/just-a-reminder-that-bellamy-canonically-only
WHOLE F*ING THING ON SURVIVING VS LIVING AND THEN ONCE HE DECIDES THEY'RE GOING TO LIVE (AND LET RUSSELL LIVE)  BECAUSE IT'S WHAT CLARKE WOULD'VE WANTED, HE SAYS "WE SURVIVE" LOOKING LIKE THE SADDEST FUCKING PUPPY IN EXISTENCE AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE FACT THAT WE HAD A WHOLE DAMN EPISODE OF A 13 EPISODE SEASON DEVOTED TO BELLAMY SUFFERING BECAUSE HIS WIFE DIED AGAIN 3 WEEKS AFTER SHE WAS RESURRECTED SUBTLE, JASON. SUBTLE. OK NOW BACK TO MY BELOVED COCKROACH MURPHY AND BELLAMY ARE ARGUABLY THE TWO CLOSEST NON-ROMANTIC (:upside_down:) PEOPLE ON THE SHIP THE RING RIGHT? OK WE'RE GOING WITH IT ANYWAY
Hmmm yes(I agreee) but also Clarke and Murphy have that understanding that transcends words?
THEY ARE THE CLOSEST ROMANCE WITHSTANDING ON THE SHIP
AND MURPHY, MY BELOVED MURPHY, HAS BEEN THERE FROM "I'LL CHOP HER HAND OFF" TO "OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK CLARKE IS UNCONSCIOUS AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO" TO "YOU'RE NOT THE ONLY ONE HERE SAVING SOMEONE THEY CARE ABOUT"
BECAUSE BELLAMY DOES NOT EVEN KNOW ECHO'S ACTUAL NAME AND THEREFORE THEY ARE NOT CLOSE
LOL SO MURPHY AFTER 6 YEARS IS TRYING TO GET BELLAMY TO DO SOMETHING HE WANTS (WE'RE BACK IN SEASON 5 NOW, SORRY) AND HOW DOES HE DO THAT?
AND INVOLKES MOM'S NAME
BLESSED BE "WELL IF CLARKE WAS HERE" BELLAMY ESPLODES OK SO NOW WE HAVE MURPHY AGAIN WHO KNOWSSSS AND WHAT DOES HE SAY TO JOSIE? ABOUT BELLAMY
If Clarke is dead Bellamy will kill us all HE KNOWS
BAM ALSO, REFER BACK TO PREVIOUS GIFSET, SAME MURPHY "OH YEAH I'LL TRY TO HELP ECHO TOO" BECAUSE MURPHY KNOWSSSS OOK THAT'S ALL FOR MURPHY NOW SO WE HAVE BELLAMY "WE'RE GOING TO SURVIVE BECAUSE I CAN'T LIVE WITHJOUT CLARKE BUT I'M GOING TO ONCE AGAIN HONOR HER FUCKING MEMORY" UNTILLLLLL WHAT HAPPENS
lol @ Murphy having to remind Bell his gf exists hahahah UNTIL HIS SOUL REALIZES CLARKE IS ALIVE
BUT HOW DOES HE REALIZE THAT
BECAUSE YOU CAN'T CONVINCE ME HE KNEW IT WAS MORSE CODE BECAUSE OF EARTH SKILLS NO
HE KNEW IT WAS MORSE CODE BECAUSE HIS SOUL FUCKING KNEW HIS WIFE WAS ALIVE
Yesss
PLATONIC SOULMATE MY ASS JASON
Morse code is life
[okay rant over, continue Kate]
MILLER'S FACE WAS LIKE "YOU FUCKING WHAT MAN?"
(side note- i am getting alive in morse code on my wrist when covid clears) OK SO WE'RE BACK SO WE HAVE JOSIE TAPPING HER FINGERS
Oh I love that I have friend who has that tattoo
YES TAP TAP MILLER GOING WTF BELL GOING ALL GIDDY PUPPY WITH A BONE
WHICH MEANS BELLAMY HAD TO HAVE GONE BACK TO HIS FAMILY AND SAY "OK WE'RE GOING TO RESCUE MY DEAD WIFE. SHE'S ALIVE. IKNOW BECAUSE JOSIE WAS TAPPING HER FINGERS." AND THE FAMILY HAD TO GO "YEAH OK THAT MAKES SENSE."
AND NO ONE QUESTIONED IT BECAUSE THEY BEEN KNEW
Yessss
SO WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO? LIKE IT WAS EVEN A QUESTION. THEY'RE RESCUING CLARKE AND BY THEY'RE I MEAN HE BECAUSE HE DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THEM AT THE MOMENT SO HE'S LIKE "READY OR NOT, I'M RESCUING MY WIFE. BYEEEEE" AND JORDAN'S LIKE "WHAT ABOUT PRIYA?" AND EVERYONE'S LIKE ".... SORRY BRO. CLARKE. YOU WANTED HEART BELLAMY. YOU GOT HIM." SO HE GOES, LEAVING HIS FAMILY BEHIND WITH A BUNCH OF PSYCHOPATHIC MURDERERS WHO KNOW THAT BELLAMY IS GOING TO KILL THEIR DAUGHTER BUT HE'S JUST LIKE... BYE AND HE KNOWS, AND WE KNOW THAT HE KNOWS, BECAUSE JOSIE TAUNTS HIM ABOUT IT THE WHOLE TIME BECAUSE JOSIE IS THE AUDIENCE BASICALLY
JOSIE IS US BUT SLIGHTLY MORE PSYCHOTIC
ALL RIGHT SO SKIPPING AHEAD, SKIPPING AHEAD, YOU HAVE JOSIE'S WHOLE RUN DOWN OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP
TOGETHER
AND HIS VERY LONG PAUSE FOLLOWED BY "I WON'T LET YOU DIE"
EXHAUSTING
INSTEAD OF I FUCKING LOVE YOU BECAUSE CHORUS SO WE GET CLARKE BACK THROUGH SHEER FORCE OF BELLAMY'S WILL
>AND HIS VERY LONG PAUSE FOLLOWED BY "I WON'T LET YOU DIE" @kate (historyofbellarke) "I LOVE YOU, BITCH. I AIN'T EVER GONNA STOP LOVING YOU, BITCH."
"I'LL SHAVE THE BEARD" SO WE HAVE CLARKE WHO GAVE UP LIVING BECAUSE SHE THOUGHT BELLAMY GAVE UP (REMEMBER, JOSIE SHOWING HER THE MEMORY OF BELLAMY SAYING WE'LL TAKE THE DEAL) AND THEN CLARKE COMING BACK TO LIFE BECAUSE BELLAMY WOULDN'T GIVE UP AND THEN WE HAVE OCTAVIA, MY BROTHER POISONED ME FOR HIS WIFE AND I STILL RAISED MY NIECE ON STORIES OF EPIC BELLARKE, BLAKE IN THE BACKGROUND BEING ALL OF US
>SO WE HAVE CLARKE WHO GAVE UP LIVING BECAUSE SHE THOUGHT BELLAMY GAVE UP (REMEMBER, JOSIE SHOWING HER THE MEMORY OF BELLAMY SAYING WE'LL TAKE THE DEAL) @kate (historyofbellarke) OMG I HAVE A SPEC ABOUT THIS I HAVE A SPEC ABOUT THIS BUT IMMA WAIT TIL WE'RE DONE TO POP INTO SPEC TO TALK IT OUT OKAY CONTINUE
i'm going to keep going, but have i done a pretty good job of convincing anyone who was wavering? because remember this is all canon.  i have done absolutely no spec-ing at all.
I'm very hype rn. Ngl.
lol
Could flip a tire for Bellarke rn kind of hype
OK SO NOW CLARKE IS ALIVE BUT OH FUCK, THE REST OF THE FAMILY IS IN TROUBLE WE LITERALLY HAD MURPHY, MY BLESSED MURPHY, SHOW UP TO GO "YO. YOUR GIRLFRIEND." AND BELLAMY GO https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/591463308117278720/716493560610029708/tumblr_pv4mkld49N1xsmktho1_500.gif SO OF COURSE, IT'S NOT TIME TO TALK BECAUSE CHORUS
DUMBASSES NO TALKIE
SO WE GET EVERYONE FIXED. A BUNCH OF UNNECESSARY PLOT SHIT HAPPENS. AND THEN BELLAMY LITERALLY PUSHES HIS GIRLFRIEND OUT OF THE WAY TO GO AND DO A DRAMATIC SUNSET REUNION WITH HIS WIFE AND THEN PLOT SHIT PLOT SHIT PLOT SHIT WE'RE IN S7 AM I MISSING S6 STUFF? PROBABLY BUT Y'ALL IT'S LITERALLY BEEN 4 WEEKS IN CANON AT THIS POINT AND I MISSED A LOT OF SHIT. SO Y'KNOW. OUR BABIES ARE TIRED N AND NOW WE'RE ALL GOOD RIGHT? JUST GONNA GO HAVE A QUICK MEETING WITH GABRIEL AND THEN GO BACK TO MY WIFE SO WE CAN TALK OVER SOME TEA THEN BAM, O GETS STABBED AND THEN WE HAVE . 4 EPISODES THAT HAPPEN OVER 2 DAYS BEFORE CLARKE'S LIKE "WELP. I'M THROWING MYSELF HEAD FIRST INTO A WORM HOLE TO GO GET MY HUSBAND AND HIS STUPID GIRLFRIEND." AND YOU HAVE EVERYONE ELSE GOING "I'M SORRY, DID YOU THINK ANYTHING ELSE WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?" AND FOLLOWING AND THE S6/7 WRITERS MOSTLY JUST CHOSE TO IGNORE THAT S4/5 WRITERS GAVE CLARKE A DAUGHTER BECAUSE, WELL, I DON'T BLAME THEM EVEN THOUGH I LOVE MADI SHE'S AN UNNECESSARY COMPLICATION SO HAND WAVING SHE'S FINE SO NOW WE'RE UP TO PRESENT
Fully convinced Madi was there to ensure Clarke didn't go fully insane on Earth and provide motive for that bitch slap scene from S5.
brb spilled beer
Oh, and to parent trip Bell/Clarke.
>brb spilled beer @kate (historyofbellarke) makes sense after the tea you're spilling on this channel
Someone really oughta document this convo for a later date. lol We will need to reference it before end of the season, bet. lol
blesss i do not deserve my partner he told me to go sit down and is cleaning it also i went to finish the last of the unspilled stuff and promptly spilled it down my chest so ALL RIGHT WHERE WERE WE OH YEAH AND BELLAMY FORGAVE HER BECAUSE MADI WAS LIKE "YO YOU'RE A PARENT TOO AND REMMEBER SHE STOOD BY YOU WHEN YOU PUT OCTAVIA ABOVE LITERALLY EVERYTHING" AND BELLAMY WAS LIKE "OH... SHIT." AND THEN SHE WAS LIKE "SHE CALLE DYOU EVERY DAY YOU DUMBFUCK" AND YOU HAVE THE PATENTED "OMG, DOES CLARKE HAVE FEELINGS FO RME TOO???" JAW DROP BUT NOW BACK TO PRESENT
(Now if someone will just fucking tell her that he did the equivalent grant gestureTM of the radio calls except w/ poison)
i didn't even include the fact that he fucking poisoned O, that diyoza referred to her as his girlfriend, etc etc etc OH AND AS TO WHY HBECHO ISN'T GOING TO BE A HTING ANYMORE BESIDES EVERYTHING I'VE SAID
FINN COLLINS THAT'S WHY
BASUCALLY YES
FINN COLLINS EXCEPT AT LEAST CLARKE KNEW HIS REAL NAME
THEY DID A LITERAL EXACT PARALLEL BETWEEN BELLAMY AND ECHO SPFEIHOi4ur YES LIKE IT'S LIKE THE WRITERS FOUND BESTOFBECHO AND WENT "FUCK, ARE WE NOT BEING OBVIOUS ENOUGH? TIME TO CALL IN ZACH MCGOWAN" ( THEY FUCKING GOT ZACH ON A PLANE FROM LA TO VANCOUVER TO JUST SAY "YOU DON'T LOVE HIM" LIKE I DON'T THINK PEOPLE REALIZE HOW INVOLVED OF A PROCESS IT IS TO GET AN ACTOR THERE - ESPECIALLY IN CANADA WHERE YOU HAVE TO BALANCE NON-CANADIAN WITH CANADIAN ACTORS OR YOU CAN'T SHOOT IN CANADA SO THIS AMERICAN HAD TO BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT FOR THE WHOLE SEASON FOR A 2 MINUTE APPERANCE BUT THE WRITERS WERE LIKE "YO HUGE NEON SIGN RIGHT HERE" AND THEN SHE CONTINUED ALL SEASON IN THAT VEIN UNTIL 7X05 WHEN SHE BROKEEEEE OVER HIS "DEATH"
BECAUSE HER SOUL DIDN'T KNOW HE WAS ALIVE LIKE BELL DID CLARKE
AND DID THE EXACT SAME FUCKING THING BELLAMY DID WHEN HE FOUND OUT CLARKE WAS ALIVE
And also as mentioned, she's a shit spy.
BECAUSE THE WRITERS ARE LIKE "CAN WE MAKE IT MORE OBVIOUS? I'M NOT SURE HOW!" so now we're at present day and here's a bit of crack spec-ing
THANKS FOR THIS LONG ASS META !!
YOU ARE WELCOME once again if i put that amount of effort into my dissertation, i'd be a phd with a published book or 3
This was a joy to read An utter joy This reaffirmed all my beliefs and got rid of all doubts I had
https://tenor.com/view/about-to-ugly-cry-ugly-cry-emotional-sensitive-crying-gif-8033343 i aim to please so now we have that O/B scene so we as the audience know something is off. bellamy was dragged sobbing and unconscious by his captors to suddenly being awake, fine, and killing a bunch of trained soldiers and holding someone hostage with his left hand. so then you have O, noticing something isn't quite right, casually bringing up clarke's name clarke. fucking. griffin. who bellamy had JUST brought back from the dead after learning she was alive and he's just... calm? about O possibly doing something with these psychos that's related to clarke? HE JUST POISONED HIS SISTER LIKE A WEEK AGO TO SAVE CLARKE'S LIFE i cannot stress this enough. bellamy fucking blake would not just go "huh?" when O, his sister that he's barely tolerating, goes "i'll tell you, you psychotic cultists, everything about my sister-in-law" and that's it. that's where i'm at s6 was about bellamy literally pulling clarke back from death s7 will be about clarke literally crossing time and space to get back to bellamy THIS IS AN EPIC FUCKING LOVE STORY AND ANYONE WHO THINKS OTHERWISE IS WRONG AND NOW I'M GOING TO TAKEA . SHOWER BECAUSE I SPILLED BEER ON MYSELF BUT I WILL BE BACK also i didn't think iw as drunk but then i reread that and started crying so it's definitely shower time
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ramking fic: gimme the Tee
 Read on AO3
                     Summary:            
Some dialogues that need to happen. Set after Cool Boy, won't probably make much sense without it. After a leisurely breakfast, probably.
Knock knock who's there?
                 Notes:    
I am a tiny, tiny bit sorry about that terrible title. Not enough to not keep it though.
The knock on the door startles King out of his favorite routine. Three urgent raps of knuckles against wood, and some crumbs of soil spilled onto the floor.
He’s been deep into a contented buzz of mindless concentration, murmuring playful nothings and letting his hands and senses do the work, completing his round of checking up on his plants after breakfast. He tends to get a tiny bit lost in it, maybe. Especially when he feels as light as he does today.
When the knock is repeated, although with some hesitance, King brushes his hands off on his pants, and goes to answer.
Finding himself face to face with Tee's raised eyebrows.
“Hello and good morning, most esteemed project assistant!”
There’s a cupholder with two steaming hot drinks in his hand, and a laptop clutched under his other arm. King’s eyes barely have time to narrow.
“Soooo, about our talking over the school paper’s blog article? On our reforestation charity project? And you helping me choose pictures and edit some paragraphs, would now be a good time? I thought it would be quicker in person.”
King’s eyes definitely do narrow then: “Our what? I didn’t know there was an OUR-anything?”
“Oh, I… texted you? Did you not see? Is now not good? I was on my way to the shops, so I thought I’d take a chance.”
King opens his mouth to say something, but his attention is drawn to  the click of a door, and then Ram appears out of the bedroom, one headphone already in ear:
“I’ll be back with the dogs around three, text me if I should pick up any- P’Tee.” He stops short. King’s heartbeat stumbles and quickens.
Because. Oh.
There is that comical moment of them all blinking at each other. In silence. The one that's more than just the absence of sounds.
Then something well-meaning inside King decides that this is rather ridiculous, and he brushes over it, as light in tone as he dares:
“Okay, Ai’Ning, see you later then.”
Ram turns big eyes on him, wide and a tad anxious: Will you be alright?
And it makes King want to laugh somehow, but also? His throat and chest feel kind of tight.
He manages a smile, possibly even a confident and soothing one.
Ram looks at Tee once again, who wiggles the fingers of the arm holding the laptop in an awkward wave.
Ram nods and slips out of the door next to Tee. Maybe King imagines it but his leaving steps do sound rather hurried.
King heaves a sigh, only partly for show:
“Well, dearest friend Tee, do come on in then.”
---
Tee sets the drinks on the counter and King waits. Ignores the slow waves of panic that want to take hold, berating himself because what is there to fear? This is Tee.
Tee, who sets up the tablet, turning it on and tapping on the display. But he is biting his lips continuously; so King just waits for it.
“So. You two live together? “
There. No denying it now, really. But why does it feel like he’s supposed to guard secrets that are not only his own?
“He needed a place to stay.” No going wrong with a part of the truth though, is there? Still. The knot at the base of his tongue feels thicker, letting through less air.
Because how official are they? And is Ram out? And why the heck didn’t they talk about this?
Tee’s voice cuts in casual but curious: “I thought he had his own room, over with…”
“It’s family stuff. He needed a place to stay.”
“Okay!” Tee raises hands in an apologetic way and King thinks the echo of his own tone in his ear does ring rather uncharacteristically clipped.
The article draft is pulled onto the sceen, and King starts skimming over the lines of text, not really absorbing much.
“So… you guys are okay?”
It takes King aback.
“Why wouldn’t we be?”
“Well, there have been some tensions the last night at camp after our drinking game, and I just wondered…” King feels Tee’s eyes on him from the side. Then Tee coughs.
“Also there have been some ‘incident reports’ about late night yelling from an undiscerned tent…”
Heat shoots up to King’s neck and Tee throws up his hands: “Without too many specifics, of course."
King takes a moment to soak in his shame.
“Yeah, we are okay. Sorry about that.”
“Okay then.”
“Okay.”
Tee’s eyes still stay on the profile of King’s face, so he taps onto the screen, directing Tee’s attention there:
“I wouldn’t use that picture here, have you seen the ones P’Thara sent? There are some among them that fit better, I am sure he’ll let you use them.”
“Oh. I see, I’ll ask him!” For the moment, Tee complies.
King takes a breath and forces his concentration on the text written, clicking the editor to remove some typos.
“So, Ram is bringing his dogs here? I thought you said some time that you didn’t like dogs?”
King deflates. His thoughts feel like they’re in knots: “It’s not like I don’t like them, they just make me feel uneasy.”
“But you let them stay in your apartment?”
“Once you get to know them it’s easier to get used to them…”
“Still…”
“What’s your point?” King’s tone might be a tiny bit overly nonchalant again. And Tee might be throwing up consoling hands once more:
“No point, really, no point at all.”
“Do you wanna do this or not?”
It annoys King that he still sounds so defensive.
“Yes! Okay, okay, no more questions.”
It annoys him even more how Tee’s voice sounds like he is suppressing laughter.
---
When Ram comes back, the dogs are a white grey whirl around his feet, still excited from their walk. They do look at King, tails wagging carefully, but Ram keeps them close to him on their leashes for now. They sniff around and sneeze at some plants, and they sure are the adorable sort, King thinks, all puffy and fluffy and… safely over there.
Ram looks at him. “You okay?”
King decides he might mean the Tee situation earlier, rather than the dogs now. Or maybe both.
He makes a gesture with his hand, from where he is sitting on the couch, tablet on his lap.
“Yes. It went fine, we sent out the finished article, he’ll link us once it’s published.”
Ram’ eyes linger for a moment, then he nods and goes to settle the dogs with food.
Once they are happily crunching and slobbering on dog dinner in their room, Ram washes his hands at the kitchen sink and comes over, and for a moment just stays, stands next to King. King looks up to him and smiles. Ram sits down.
King gets lost in his eyes, drawn in easy and so naturally, until Ram suddenly speaks:
“Duen was there. He asked… He’s planning another short get away trip over the break and he was asking if I… and you would want to join them?”
King can’t help his mind springing up questions in a million different directions at once.  
“Why would he be asking that?” He realizes how it possibly sounds, but he is genuinely curious. “I mean, I get the you, but why the you and me?
Ram shrugs but there is a tiny something in his eyes: “I guess, Bohn… well, we have been spending time together. You and me, I mean ”
“Does Duen know?”  It’s slipped over his lips before he can reign it in. He doesn’t want this to sound like an interrogation.
Ram looks directly at him. Though he might be squinting a bit: “About?”
King feels strangely flustered under that look: “About us, or about you…?“
“Me?”
“That you like…”
“That I am gay?”
Ram sounds settled in that. So much so that the fascination over it pulls King out of his own head for a moment.
Ram shrugs: “He might. I never explicitly told him. But then, I never told him I am not, you know.”
King nods. He’s not sure he does know though. There are already countless more questions on his mind, but he remembers earlier with Tee, and so he decides on this one:
“So, you and me… we just tell our friends?”
More narrowed eyes: “We don’t?”
“Don’t look at me like that, Ning, I am asking because I genuinely want to know! I am asking so that I know. You’re not some secret-“, some secret affair his mind supplies in an echo, and he realizes why it might rub Ram wrong, so he hurries on with all the sincerity he can muster:
“It’s just that I think I am rather private about that stuff?”
“I am, too.”
It feels like a strange impasse, and it’s not like they are arguing, but King is at a loss for words for a moment.
He’s usually really good at this, but here and now he’s finding once more that it is a wholly different thing, trying to embrace and dissolve a tension when you are a party involved and invested.
But Ram stays, in that way that he just does. And it feels like they take in and let out the same breath. King finds he can let himself lean his own shoulder against Ram’s without hesitation or inhibition.
He sighs: “I think most of them are already convinced we are a couple.”
Ram’s voice is softly matter-of-fact. “Well, we are.”
King plays along through a smile: “Well. When you put it like that.”
His fingers pick a piece of dried leaf from the cuff of Ram’s sweater; touching his wrist.
“So, when they ask… I can tell them that you are my boyfriend?”
Ram turns his head to King, and it’s a long, studying look.
“Yes.  Can I?”
There’s a flutter in King’s stomach, and he’s not quite sure if it’s a flare of nerves or metaphorical butterflies; maybe both.
“Yes.”
Ram nods and smiles.
The corners of King’s lips tick up before he can stop it:
“Will I have to go through some trials like Bohn, too? You know, to be allowed to date you?”
Ram’s face is dead-pan. “No.”
Then one eyebrow arches: “That’s it? Were you honestly afraid of that?”
King sinks deeper into the backrest, flustered. “No. It’s not… no. I wasn’t afraid. It’s just new to me, is all.”
Ram scoots a little bit lower on the couch, too, until he’s at eye level with King, leaning his forehead against King’s, so that King can feel him nod.
“New to me, too.”
---
Later in bed, when they are lying face to face, King finds once more that looking at Ram until his lids grow heavy is the most potent source of peace, without the feeling of wonder and awe ever lessening.
“So who else knows? Your family? Ruj?”
Ram half-shrugs, half-yawns: “I think he might.”
He shifts and puts his arm up and King follows the invitation and presses his lips to Ram’s naked shoulder, before resting his head there.
“He asked me once if I liked any girl.”
King grins: “And you just stared at him?”
Ram nods, moves his head against the pillow.
“He then asked if I liked any boy.”
“And again, you just stared?”
Another nod.
“So, he probably knows.”
“Yep. He probably does.”
King smiles and watches his own fingers trace the tattoo on Ram’s chest.
“How long have you known?”
It takes a moment for Ram to think about it, and King waits.
“Early on. Around 10, 11? Took more time to understand it, though.”
“Huh.”
“You?”
King blinks. “I think… I am learning, that I take time with people… have to get to know them, before attraction takes hold? I mean, I’ve always understood as a concept that guys can be fascinating and beautiful to me, too, I just assumed that’s what every open-minded person’s brain operated like?”
He knows Ram has raised his brow before he looks up to confirm. It’s not really judging, but then again, it totally is.
King laughs: “But, that’s not attraction, I guess.” He puts his lips against the skin where Ram’s shoulder meets his chest once more: “So yeah, you… kind of hit me hard.”
It’s the same with Ram’s smile; King just knows it is there, doesn’t even have to look up to check. He feels it.
“God, I am kind of terrified to have Kamfah find out.”
Ram tenses beneath King, and he has to hold back a giggle.
He starts drawing soothing circles into Ram’s skin again, and amends:
“A bit excited though, too. But mostly terrified. We’ll be invited to lunch every weekend.”
The both stare up at the ceiling imagining for a moment.
King breaks first:
“You think we can keep it a secret in front of her for a bit longer?”
There’s a snort that might be a laugh, as Ram pulls King close:
“We can try.”
                             Notes:  
always want to hear what you think! <3
sorry this took forever... I got distracted buying plants and making little plant terrariums, me, who never even really owned plants, now my apartment is a tiny jungle. Oh, who to blame? Does anyone come to mind? PS: I am loving it
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chubsonthemoon · 6 years
Text
to you, one year in the future
summary: Shopping for ugly sweaters, going on dates, remembering the past. Izuku loves him through it all.
pairing: midoriya izuku/todoroki shouto
words: 3783
also on ao3!
My piece for @natbrowniecupcakes for @tddkexchange! I hope you enjoy! <3
(also part of my Happy Holidays, Class 1-A series)
Izuku stares at the Christmas tree, biting his thumb. A nervous habit.
“Is everything alright?” asks a voice. Arms sneak around his waist, and a chin rests itself on the crown of his head. Izuku lowers his hands to place them on top of Todoroki’s, lacing their fingers together.
He sighs. “Yeah, it’s just…” He looks at the evergreen again. It is nothing overly grand or special, just a Christmas tree, sans ornaments or any other form of decoration. “Don’t you think it’s missing something?”
He turns to face his boyfriend, encircling himself in his arms. “I feel like it should be…I dunno. More Christmas-y? Like in the movies.”
Todoroki hums. “Really? I think it looks fine.” He buries his head further in Izuku’s soft curls, puffing a quiet sigh. “Besides, no one here really believes in the whole Jesus thing. It’s just for fun, I think.”
Izuku nods, taking care not to jostle too much, and he rests his head on Todoroki’s chest. This is nice. “Did you know that Christmas trees weren’t originally Christian? They’re actually Pagan. Decorating them originated in Germany.”
Todoroki’s face is still in his hair, so his words are muffled. “Is that so?”
Izuku traces a scarred finger along one of Todoroki’s wrists. “Yep. Learned it from that hero that debuted a few years back. Evergreen Enigma.”
“Nice.”
They stay like this for awhile, quietly listening to each other’s heartbeats.
Then, the silence is broken with a small explosion. “You two are fucking disgusting.”
“Bakugou, don’t be rude!” A light thump can be heard, followed by a lengthy string of expletives.
Todoroki’s head raises to observe the intruders, and Izuku reluctantly removes his head from Todoroki’s chest to peek around his shoulder. “Oh, hi guys! What’s going on?”
“Hey, Deku!” Uraraka says cheerfully. Bakugo shoots them a look that could curdle milk. “We’re decorating the tree for the party tomorrow.”
“Oh, yeah!” Izuku says, remembering the text he had received yesterday. “Ugly sweater themed, right?”
Todoroki lets out an exhale of air that may or may not be a chuckle or an expression of confusion. Probably both. “A what?”
Uraraka nudges Bakugo forward, two boxes of tinsel and various ornaments floating beside her. “You heard me. Ugly sweaters. There’s gonna be a contest, and Aoyama’s judging it, so make sure you wear your worst.”
Izuku returns to his place underneath Todoroki’s chin. “Alright. We should probably go shopping for that today,” he says to Todoroki, sighing.
Bakugou lets another small explosion burst in annoyance. “Oi, you assholes are blocking our way to the tree. Get a room.”
“For once, I agree,” Todoroki deadpans.
Izuku just laughs. “Let’s go get our coats,” he says, unhooking his arms and ignoring Todoroki’s pout. He untangles himself from their embrace and heads for the elevators.
Todoroki sighs and trails behind, their pinkies still hooked together. “Meet me at the entrance?” Izuku asks, while they wait.
Todoroki presses a soft kiss to his temple, and Izuku feels himself smile. “Yes.”
A few minutes later, he rejoins Todoroki on the elevator, All-Might beanie secured firmly over his ears.
As they leave, they pass the common room again, and Izuku hears Uraraka sigh. “Ah, it’s hard to believe they’ve been together for almost a year already. Time sure goes by fast when you’re in love,” she says, voice dreamy.
Izuku blushes, and walks a little faster. Todoroki laughs quietly as he walks ahead to hold the door open for him, and a whoosh of cold air nearly drowns out the next part of the conversation.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” he hears from Kacchan next, sounding like his usual mix of annoyed and pissed off. “At least Half-N-Half found the guts to confess. When are you finally gonna woman up and ask Frog-Girl already? I get pissed off every time I’m in the same room as you two.”
“Bakugo!”
They exit the dorms, Uraraka’s flustered protests cut off as soon as they step into the whirling snow.
“Well, Kacchan certainly seems happy to be part of the organization process,” Izuku remarks. They walk towards the station, boots pressing prints into the snow behind them.
“He’s probably going to blow up the tree before we get back,” Shouto says wryly. Izuku giggles, white flakes tickling the tip of his nose. He sneezes.
Todoroki frowns at him. “Here,” he says, offering his right hand.
Izuku obliges, wrapping a mittened hand around Todoroki’s, sighing when the heat begins to seep into his palm. He shuffles closer, looping an arm around Todoroki’s waist. Together, they walk the rest of the way like this, and Izuku is eternally grateful for a boyfriend who doubles as a portable personal heater.
They board their train with no issues, finding seats together. At one point, Todoroki stands so an old lady can sit in his spot, ignoring Izuku’s protests to let him give up his own seat. When he sits back down, Izuku fills the space between them with chatter, about everything and nothing all at once; he’s excited about going home once break officially starts, he thinks the ugly sweater party will be lots of fun, despite Kacchan’s murderous tendencies towards all things festive (but maybe Kirishima-kun can get him to be excited!), oh, did you see the latest hero debut, Todoroki-kun? It was amazing, he hasn’t seen a water-manipulation Quirk used in such a way before in his life—
Todoroki simply nods every now and then, humming in assent to indicate he’s listening. The click-clack of the tracks reverberates throughout the car, setting a comfortable pulse to the flow of Izuku’s words and the beating of his heart. He pauses for a moment, eyes shifting to the calm expression on Todoroki’s face.
One year already, huh?
He thinks that he would very much like to kiss him.
The automated voice announces that their stop is next. Todoroki, sensing his gaze, looks up at him questioningly when Izuku’s words slow to a stop in time with the train.
Izuku shakes his head slightly, snapping out of it. “Nothing, sorry!”
He’ll find some mistletoe later.
~
“How about this one?” When Todoroki looks up from over his side of the clothing rack, Izuku raises a truly hideous sweater, a stained green color that clashes hilariously with his hair. It has an enormous Christmas tree splayed across the chest. “Ah, but wait,” he says, seeing Todoroki’s amused expression. “It gets better.”
With a quick flick of a small switch, the sweater lights up, the little bulbs on the tree flashing green and blue. “What do ya think?”
“It’s perfect,” Todoroki says approvingly. Izuku grins, then drapes it over his arm for safekeeping.
Overhead, tinny Christmas music plays in the store that sells second-handed clothing and other oddities. It’s a nice little place, with a number of interesting finds—like that vintage Pussycats t-shirt, or that limited edition Best Jeanist figurine— that could keep Izuku here for hours. However, they are here on a mission.
Izuku, having secured his own ugly sweater, begins the search for Todoroki’s.
“I’ve never been to an ugly sweater party before,” he says conversationally. He doesn’t need to look up to know that Todoroki is listening. “Kacchan’s family always had a Christmas get together when we were little, but—well. I stopped going at some point.” He slides the next set of hangers over, ignoring how they screech against the bar. “But the years we did go, it was so much fun. His dad always made the best hot chocolate, and we would watch All Might’s Christmas specials until midnight, waiting for Santa. One year, his dad actually did dress up as Santa to surprise us, but then he tripped over a plate of cookies when Kacchan freaked out and set his beard on fire.” He’s quiet for a moment, just remembering. “Those were fun days.”
Todoroki’s fingers suddenly still over his end of the clothing rack, as if remembering something.
The Christmas music continues overhead, and his next words are almost too soft for Izuku to catch. “That sounds…amazing.”
“What, you mean hanging with Kacchan on Christmas Eve?” Izuku laughs, but he stops the moment he looks up.
Todoroki wears a smile that is very small, like he tried it on and it didn’t fit quite right. It reminds Izuku of the time he saw him unfreeze Sero, in the Sports Festival arena, steam surrounding him, his back turned to the him.
He wants Todoroki to smile again, but he knows that shouting and punching his way there won’t work. Not this time.
He has an idea.
“Hey,” he whispers conspiratorially. When Todoroki looks up, he has composed himself, but Izuku knows the look hidden in his eyes all too well. He crouches low, wedging himself between the funky smelling second-handed sweaters and mothballs. Todoroki does the same, his expression confused, but he lowers himself to his knees meets Izuku halfway anyway.
They probably look like idiots, hiding here under the clothing rack, no doubt blocking the aisleways, but Izuku doesn’t really care at the moment. He gestures frantically for Todoroki to get closer, as if he has a secret to divulge.  
“Yes?” Todoroki asks, his voice also a low whisper.
Izuku reaches out and places his hands, scarred and broken as they are, on both sides of Todoroki’s face. He burrows his fingers in the red and white locks, caresses the angry red scar on his left, gentle and unafraid. When Todoroki shudders slightly, rests his head on Izuku’s shoulder, Izuku says, “This year will be different, Shouto. I promise.”
He pulls away to see the thing in Todoroki’s eyes become less like a burden, and more like lightness, and behind that, gratitude.
Todoroki nods slowly, his mouth curving up just slightly. “Ok.”
Even though it’s dark and smelly here, and he’s pretty sure he felt something just brush past his cheek that is not supposed to be there, Izuku would rather be nowhere else.
Then, quick as lightning, he darts forward to press a feather-light kiss to Todoroki’s lips. Funnily enough, despite his Half-n-Half Quirk, both sides of his mouth are warm, beautifully so.
When Izuku pulls away, he grins shyly. “Just wanted to give that to you.”
Leaving Todoroki amongst the nether regions of the clothing rack, Izuku reemerges on the other side, feeling a little winded.
A second and a half later, Todoroki does the same, his hair mussed and the barest hint of pink dusting his cheeks.
Izuku flashes him another smile, then busies himself with the next set of hangers. “We are going to find you the ugliest sweater in this entire store,” he announces.
He picks the nearest random sweater he can find, and—it’s not bad, actually. He removes it from the rack to get a better look—it’s one of those knitted V-necks, patterned with blue-grey X’s, cuffed at the sleeves, and a collar puffed up at the back of the neck. It also smells suspiciously of smoke, but nothing a good cycle in the washing machine can’t fix.
In short, Izuku concludes, it is a sweater befitting a 50-year-old man.
Todoroki comes around the clothing rack and regards the article very seriously. “May I see it?” he asks. Izuku hands it over and Todoroki pulls his arms through the sleeves. He inspects himself for a moment, then after some deliberation, buttons the middle button. Task completed, he turns to Izuku. “Well?”
Izuku takes one look at him and groans loudly.
“Is it that bad?” Todoroki asks, bemused.
“No, no, it’s not that at all,” Izuku answers, hands buried in his face. He peeks through his fingers to take another glance, and—yep, he’s screwed. “It’s just…that’s like, something my grandpa would wear.”
Todoroki looks at himself again. “Yes, and?”
“You…you look…”
Todoroki raises an eyebrow expectantly.
“Ugh, you look really, really handsome, alright?” Izuku sighs, exasperated. “It’s unfair.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
A pause. Izuku thinks his face is on fire.
“I like it.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“I’ll take it.”
And with that, they leave the store, (not so) ugly sweaters in hand.
~
It’s Todoroki’s idea to take the detour.
“The plaza?” Izuku asks, once they’re waiting at the station. “Yeah, I’ve been there a couple times, but we never really shopped there often. Stuff’s kinda expensive downtown.”
“It won’t take long,” Todoroki promises, looking a little bashful.
Izuku smiles, hopelessly charmed. “No worries. If you want to go, then I do, too.”
They walk to the other side of the platform, waiting for the line that goes in the opposite direction. Once they board, Todoroki tugs Izuku along to a seat and sets their bags down at their feet. The doors close, and they’re on their way.
Izuku leans his head on Todoroki’s shoulder and watches the darkness of the tunnel give way to the lights of the city, blinking on one by one as night falls. The last traces of dusk are fading away in dying purples and inky blues.
A winter sky painted with sunset and a city of flickering lights. Izuku watches it all pass by, his hand in Todoroki’s, and breathes.
They exit at the stop Todoroki had indicated earlier and set off towards the plaza, feet crunching the snow as they draw nearer the glowing storefronts. They reach the center of the main courtyard—all fairy lights and bells that ring softly in wind—and Izuku stops dead in his tracks.
There, in the center of the whirling snow, among the laughter of children running about with their hats falling over their ears, their parents idly chatting near store windows, is an enormous Christmas tree.
His breath clouds in front of him as he takes it all in. The tree is lit aglow, with floating candles that gleam in the twilight, red and white ribbon winding gracefully up its branches—wait, now the ribbon is blue and silver, and now it’s gold?—and at the very top, so high he has to tilt his head, a crown of golden stars, shining so brightly that Izuku has to squint.
It is ethereal, a fairyland, a winter wonderland in the flesh. It’s beautiful.
Todoroki nods, and Izuku realizes that he had spoken aloud. He takes another step forward, eyes shining.
“How?” Izuku asks, awed. “How are the candles floating? How does the tree not burn down from the fire? How can the ribbon change colors like that? And those stars—oh my All-Might, those don’t even look like they’re from this planet! This is amazing!”
He looks at Todoroki for answers, but all he sees are wide eyes, watching him as if he is the one who is shining.
“Um,” Todoroki says, then shakes his head a little. “
It’s a collaborative effort, I think,” he begins again. He clears his throat and shifts his eyes hastily towards the magnificent tree in front of him. “The owners of the surrounding stores all come together to make it work: one person has a watered down version of Uraraka’s Quirk—levitation of small objects only, but for an indefinite time. Another can create some kind of substance that allows the tree to be fireproof, another can change the color of fabrics. As for the stars—"
He glances at Izuku for a moment. “Well. They say that the more you…care about someone, the more brightly they shine.”
He clears his throat again. “That’s what they say, anyway,” he says.
Izuku wants to ask just how, exactly, Todoroki knows about this place, how he seems to know it so well and yet shy away from the light, and, most importantly, why he sounds so sad when he looks around at a place that should bring joy and happiness.
He wants to ask, and he nearly does, but he senses that Todoroki’s not quite finished yet.
“My…my mom used to take me here. During the holidays,” Todoroki finally says, voice quiet. “When I was little, and…before.”
The noise from the square dies away, and all Izuku can hear, see, feel, is Todoroki. Todoroki, Todoroki, Todoroki. “Mmn.”
“I think I’m going to bring her here on Christmas Eve,” Todoroki whispers. “It’s been a long time.”
Izuku reaches for his hand, curls his fingers around Todoroki’s. “I think she would like that very much, Shouto.”
He hears Todoroki swallow, feels his pulse flutter under his fingertips.
“Me, too.”
For a few minutes, hand in hand, they watch the candlelight flicker and the slivers of color change from red and green, to blue and silver, to pure gold.
Somewhere, perhaps behind the plaza where more shops reside, rings a clock tower, every tone deep and resonating and a promise.
Night officially begins, the wind tosses snow drifts, the children play. Izuku turns slightly, and takes Todoroki’s other hand, their faces only inches apart.
“Merry Christmas, Shouto,” he says, then closes the gap between them.
He tastes snow and a hint of a smile.
The children point in wonder as the stars burst into a million sparks of light.
~ Once, a year or so ago, Izuku had woken up to snow on his window.
It had been sometime at night, when everything is still and quiet. He sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes sleepily. He wasn’t sure what had woken him up, but he quickly stopped trying to remember, because he soon saw, outside his window: it was snowing.
“Wow,” he whispered, breath fogging up the glass.
His first thought was beautiful.
His second was Shouto.
He quickly felt his face warm a little. It wasn’t like his heart sped up whenever one of the most beautiful people in Class 1-A walked into the room before class, or he got all jumpy and nervous whenever he asked Izuku about Present Mic’s English homework during training. Todoroki was Todoroki, the strongest in their class, and no less than an amazing friend, whose eyes were really pretty and who had a nice voice and…
No, none of that.
So, he stared out the window and tried not to see snowy white hair and ice atop fingertips, strong and real but also fragile, like it could shatter at any moment.
He watched the snow for one breath more before he bolted, scrambling off the bed and fumbling with the doorknob, down the hallway and skidding to a stop a few meters away.
He raised one hand, and, with the caution of someone who is aware that it was some unknown hour of the night and that the rest of the dorm was probably sleeping, quietly knocked.
There was a little bit of shuffling around from within, a padding of feet towards the door.
The door opened, and Izuku saw a sleepy Todoroki, mid-yawn. When Todoroki saw Izuku, however, he seemed to stand slightly taller, but maybe Izuku was just imagining it.
“Midoriya?” he asked.
Izuku opened his mouth. He had no logical reason for being there, he knew.
“It’s snowing, Todoroki-kun,” he said instead, slightly breathless.
Todoroki blinked, then turned to the closed curtains over his windows. “Really? That’s…wow.”
“Do you want to watch it with me?”
Todoroki turns back, his face half hidden in darkness, covering his scarred side. Izuku wanted to brush away the shadow, like it was something tangible. He wanted to see Todoroki’s eyes, the firm line of his mouth, which, if he was lucky, he sometimes saw curve up, usually when he thought he wasn’t looking—
“Yeah.”
Izuku felt something inside him turn into pure happiness. “Great.” It was only then that he realized that they were both whispering. “My room or yours?”
Todoroki said, “Yours,” and that was that.
Together, they tiptoed back to Izuku’s room, where the familiar silhouettes of All-Might figurines watched over grinned at them, as if he, too, were excited.
Izuku sat on his bed facing the window, legs crossed, and heard the soft sound of Todoroki shutting the door behind him. A second later, Todoroki joined him, the mattress dipping under his weight. After he got situated, facing the window just like Izuku was, it was silent.
Outside, the snow fell steadily, like it had all the time in the world. Since they were on the third floor, they could see the streetlights illuminating little flurries here and there, carrying schools of snow around and about, up and down, dusting the treetops and rooftops and sidewalks with sugar.
Izuku sighed contentedly.
“This is nice,” Todoroki said softly. Izuku turned to look at him.
He was looking out the window, his right side facing Izuku, a small smile on his lips. He blinked every now and then, turned his head, taking it all in. The curve of his back was more relaxed than Izuku had seen in weeks.
With a smile to himself, Izuku had turned back to the window. “Yeah.”
They sat like that for a few minutes, just watching the world build itself up in white.
“Midoriya.” Izuku sensed a question.
“Yes?”
There was a pause, quiet deliberation. Izuku waited patiently.
“Thank you.”
Whatever he had been expecting, it hadn’t been that. He breathed a little huff of nervous laughter. “Of course. Though, uh…for what?”
Todoroki looked away from the window to find green eyes already watching him curiously. “For waking me up.”
Izuku felt the earth tilt a little, and he remembered.
A shout, a fist, a punch. More shouting, a challenge, a promise.
And finally, finally, fire.
He moved his hand a little over to the left, the bedsheets warm and soft under his hand, (then) newly scarred from a battle neither would ever forget.
When his fingers brushed Todoroki’s hand, he stopped. He couldn’t see the way Todoroki’s eyes widened because he was facing the window, but he did hear the quiet intake of breath, felt the slight shiver that was probably because of the cold.
Probably.
When he had felt Todoroki’s fingers inch forward a little, moving to cover his own, he had smiled, and closed his eyes.
They woke up that morning with their legs tangled, their backs against the window, Izuku’s head on Todoroki’s shoulder. When he looked over, he saw Todoroki already awake, but he was not watching dawn break on the winter’s first snowfall.
(They later saw that it was beautiful, though).
His eyes were light, his smile unbelievably fond, and Izuku felt the tips of his ears heat slightly. He had tucked a curl behind his ear shyly, and squeezed Todoroki’s hand, because sometime through the night, they had found each other, and never let go.
~
One year later, somewhere in the city, Todoroki breaks apart slightly, and smiles as brightly as the stars.
“Merry Christmas, Izuku.”
15 notes · View notes
lusilly · 7 years
Text
streets of gotham: secret origins
finally a complete introductory fic for the Streets of Gotham 2 team: Colin Wilkes (Abuse), Ellen Nayar (Ember), Nell Little (Spoiler), Jordan Joyce (Jabberwock), and Niloufar Ghorbani (Seraph). (lucas comes later lmao)
Since Jordan’s got the most complicated backstory, xe has xyr own intro fic you can read here. The SoG2 team is featured heavily in Fiat iusticia and in Wheel in the Sky.
This fic was an exercise in Mark Waid’s advice on how plot is nothing more than setting upon which to hang emotion.........and that was Tough lmao. extremely unsatisfied with the ending. Relies heavily on story from Batman: The Black Mirror. Damian is about 16 here. My fav part of this is damian beating the shit out of a joker stan. Enjoy!
NAME:  Damian Wayne ALIAS:  Robin DATE OF BIRTH:  5 September 1996 (approximate) BLOOD TYPE:  O-  (Full Medical History) EMERGENCY CONTACT:  BW, DG AFFILIATIONS: Teen Titans, Team Ember EVAL: [File Encrypted] NOTES: |Robin| Eval needs to be de-encrypted. Any information contained therein cannot possibly be worse than not knowing |Nightwing| Yeah thats kind of a dick move B. Lol |Batman| Notes are to be relevant to the file in question not a space for airing personal grievances |Red Hood| Im airing my personal grievances here just to spite you. You suck |Batman| If this continues I will remove editing privileges for all of you |Red Hood| You still suck Editing on NOTES is locked
----
           Damian got up early; patrol had ended before two AM last night, the city quiet and still in the early winter lull. A cold snap had settled across Gotham this past week, creeping in from the bay. Though it did not snow, the clear skies brought the temperature to well below freezing, which led to slow nights on patrol. The heat of summer pushed people outside relentlessly. The cold, on the other hand, made criminals lethargic and cautious, preferring to stay inside with their families.
           So Damian rolled out of bed around nine in the morning, the sunlight shining into his window through blinds he had forgotten to draw last night. The first thing he did was take his phone from its perch on his bedside table and scroll through any new notifications. Both Iris and Lian had texted him. He responded to Iris’s but not Lian’s, then went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Not ten minutes later he was in the drawing room downstairs, where Titus slept before the great brick fireplace, which was empty.
           Damian patted his dog on the stomach, whistling through his teeth. “Come on,” he said, getting down on his knees and drumming his hands on Titus’s sturdy body. The dog lit up with energy, reaching up to lick Damian’s face, tail wagging furiously as he got to his feet. Damian scratched him behind his ears. “You ready for a run, boy? Come on, let’s get some exercise.”
           Alfred appeared, hot coffee in hand. “Good morning, Damian,” he said. “Taking the dog for a walk?”
           “Yes,” answered Damian, glancing around. “He’s been indoors too much lately because of the cold, he needs to stretch his legs.”
           “You too?”
           Damian offered Alfred a little grin. “Me too,” he agreed. “It’s slow out there.”
           “And here I thought that was a good thing.”
           “It is.” Titus bounded across the room excitedly, chasing his tail, ready for a walk. He started to paw at Damian’s leg, and Damian only held up one hand to indicate Stop. “Down. One moment, alright?” To Alfred, he asked, “Do you know what time my father got home last night?”
           Alfred gave sort of a shrug. “Not long after you.”
           “Oh,” said Damian. “When he wakes up will you tell him I’m heading to school later today? I’ve got an exam at three.”
           Alfred made a face of enthusiastic pride. “Your first university exam,” he said, sounding impressed. “In which subject, may I ask?”
           “Multivariable calculus,” Damian answered, kneeling down to rub Titus’s big head. “It’s simple stuff. A pre-req for applied math.”
           “Not finance?”
           Damian flashed that grin at Alfred once more. “I’m just testing out my options,” he said. “I have time.”
           “Indeed you do,” agreed Alfred, with an approving nod. “In any case, good luck and I shall inform your father as soon as he wakes. Which,” he glanced at the grandfather clock in the hallway, and took a disapproving sip of coffee, “should be quite soon. He’s quite worse than you, isn’t he?”u
           Damian opened the French doors to the back garden. With a wave to Alfred, he said, “We’ll be back,” and he whistled for Titus to follow him, then took off jogging past the flowerbeds. Coffee in hand, Alfred watched him go.
           The morning was brisk, but Damian felt warm and alive underneath the early wintertime sun. Taking it slow, he scrolled through his phone, searching for an appropriate playlist, then tucked earbuds into his ears and his the phone itself into a holder at his bicep. Whistling once more at Titus, he took a wide berth around his vegetable garden, knowing that Titus was prone to digging around in it sometimes, upsetting his crops. From there he stayed close to the tree line, heading out across the Manor grounds. The route he liked to take eventually led to a field and a set of rolling hills littered with public paths; he preferred, however, to take a less intuitive path, slightly different every time and designed to get the most out of the slope of the hills.
           Damian took great joy in his morning runs with Titus: it was productive and refreshing and outside, instead of careful training in the facilities under the Manor, which, though state-of-the-art, could feel a little claustrophobic. It was good, he thought, to get out of the house for a little while, out from under his father’s watchful eye. This was the same reason why he’d been spending so much time with the Titans lately.
           Cutting through the edge of the woods, where the trees were sparse, Damian suddenly realized that Titus wasn’t following him anymore. When he glanced around, Titus was nowhere to be seen. He came to a stop and turned around, tugging his earbuds out.
           It was mostly quiet, except for the wind shuddering the tree branches. Damian whistled. “Titus!” There was no response. Muttering an oath under his breath, Damian jogged back down the path he’d just cut. “Titus!” he called again, searching between the trees on either side of him. “Titus, come!”
           His heart jumped as he heard suddenly a piteous whining, as if Titus were afraid of something, cowering in fear; with a little more urgency he headed into the woods, following the source of the sound. “Titus!”
           Off the beaten path, obscured by some low underbrush, the scene Damian found jolted his stomach, making him feel immediately sick before his well-practiced professional instinct took over. “Titus,” he hissed, approaching the dog, who laid whining beside the ugly sight. Grabbing Titus’s collar, he tugged the dog away, retreating to a nearby tree. Titus whined as Damian took out his phone, but Damian just said, “Sit. Titus, sit,” and the dog did so, albeit reluctantly.
           In Wayne Manor, Bruce Wayne’s personal cell phone, which sat neatly in a charging device by his bed, started to ring.
           Bruce, raised his head groggily from the mess of sheets and limbs in which he typically slept. Narrowing his eyes at the screen of the phone, which displayed an close-up selfie of Damian’s annoyed face that Dick had assigned to his civilian contact, Bruce started at it for a moment before reaching out and plucking it off the charger.
           “Damian?” he said, masterfully masking his confusion.
           “Father,” replied Damian shortly, heading back to the path by the edge of the woods. “Did I wake you?”
           “I – where are you?”
           “A few miles away from home, almost at Brentwood. I took Titus for a run.”            This was not unusual, but it was unusual for Damian to call home halfway through. Unsure what was happening, Bruce began, “Is…everything all right?”
           “I found a body,” he said bluntly.
           Bruce’s eyebrows shot up. “You what?”
           “Well, Titus found it, really. It was sort of tucked off the main path, we never would’ve seen it had I not decided to loop around past the Kai estate. A boy,” Damian informed his father automatically, pausing to bark, “Titus, come,” before continuing, “maybe my age or slightly older. Wearing a Brentwood uniform.”
           “Signs of assault?”
           “No,” answered Damian. “Dead for a few hours now at the very least, but I can’t determine COD. Suppose we’ll have to wait for the coroner’s report.”
           Sitting up in bed, calm and alert, Bruce began, “All right. Bring anything you’ve gathered back here and we can look into it tonight. Good work so far but for now the best thing to do would be to call the police-”
           Damian interrupted him. “I already did,” he said. “Father, I’m sorry, I think you may be misunderstanding me? I wasn’t actually calling about the body, I’m calling to ask if you can come pick me up.”
           Bruce blinked in surprise. “What?” he asked. “Why?”
           “Because I already called the police and they’ll be here any minute, and I’ll have to act all traumatized because of the dead body, and anyway you know I don’t like civilian encounters with police without you.”
           This more or less made sense, but it wasn’t what Bruce had meant. “What do you mean you aren’t calling about the body?”
           “Oh,” said Damian, as if he hadn’t even thought of this. “Well. It’s by Brentwood.”
           Again, Bruce did not immediately understand. “So?”
           Almost apologetically, Damian said, “A five mile radius beyond campus limits…isn’t your jurisdiction, Father.”
           It hit Bruce then with the force of a freight train: he, like a goddamn amateur idiot, had ceded actual turf to Damian’s pet side team made up of Gotham natives and sometimes headed by Damian’s closest friend in the city, Colin Wilkes, who boarded at Brentwood Academy on a Wayne Enterprises scholarship. The agreement itself had been a bit of a farce meant to keep the team out of trouble, given the specific area the Batman had permitted the team as their responsibility was located in the richest neighborhood in Bristol County, slightly outside Gotham city limits. He had not imagined that any terrible crime might go down five miles away from a wealthy private school, but in retrospect, of course it would.
           “Damian,” said Bruce matter-of-factly. “I appreciate your loyalty to your friends,” he didn’t want to legitimize it by saying your team, and besides the Titans were more Damian’s team in any case, “but even you need to admit, this is out of their league.”
           “This is one dead body,” answered Damian skeptically. “If that’s out of their league, they shouldn’t be doing this at all.”
           “Well, perhaps that’s a fair point-”
           “No,” said Damian shortly. “It’s not. You wouldn’t have given Ember her uniform if you really believed that.”
           This was true enough, but frankly Bruce thought Ember was the only member of that team capable of joining the fight, and ideally he’d absorb her into the Batfamily at large before she got too committed to her own team. But this was not a conversation he wanted to have over the phone, so he shoved the sheets off the bed and said, “Don’t move for now, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
           “Will you hurry, please?” Damian asked, sounding bored and slightly annoyed. “I hate calling the cops.”
           Getting out of bed, Bruce reminded him, “You should be used to it, it’s half of what we do on patrol.”
           “Yes,” muttered Damian, hearing the distant wail of sirens. “But I’m not exactly in uniform at the moment, am I?”
           Feeling a little awkward at the reminder of the constant presence of race in Damian’s life which Bruce could never really fully grasp, Bruce assured his son that he would be there very soon. As soon as he hung up Damian sent him a pin dropped into a map at his location.
           Bruce arrived not long after the police; a detective was talking to Damian, taking down notes. Titus got anxious around people he didn’t know, so Damian had his fingers hooked around his collar, keeping him close. The detective – a rookie who Bruce didn’t recognize on sight – had a few questions for Bruce, then patted Damian’s shoulder reassuringly. Taking Bruce aside, he recommended considering having Damian speak to a professional about the trauma of the sight he’d just witnessed, and Bruce nodded in what he hoped looked like naïve paternal concern.
           Damian coaxed Titus in the backseat of the car, then got in himself. Titus hung his big head in between the two front seats, panting from exertion and excitement.
           On the ride back to the Manor, Damian mercilessly mocked the police. “Now, this is so traumatizing, but you’ve been awfully brave – for Christ’s sake, it’s like none of them have ever seen a dead body before.”
           “Well,” said Bruce fairly, “most sixteen-year-olds haven’t, Damian.”
           “It’s not as if it was violent,” Damian pointed out. “There wasn’t even any blood or anything.”
           “Which is…curious,” said Bruce thoughtfully. “No external evidence of foul play. Suicide?”            Phone in hand, Damian replied, “I already sent photos to Colin, he should be able to identify him and pull his school records. We’ll check for a history of depression or mental illness, but my gut tells me a Brentwood student wouldn’t stagger into the woods to kill himself unless it was going to be uglier than that.”
           Bruce nodded; this made sense. “Could’ve been an accident. Alcohol poisoning, or an overdose.”
           “I’m leaning towards overdose personally,” answered Damian, texting something on his phone. “Colin’s files should have any record of drug activity at the school. I’ll meet up with him and the others tonight and we’ll get started.”
           There was an awkward sort of pause. Bruce began, “You know, if you or the rest of the team ever require any help-”
           As the car came to a stop in the Wayne Manor garage, Damian shook his head, interrupting his father. “You’re micromanaging,” he pointed out. “I told you, they’re never going to get better if you keep stepping in and taking over their investigations.”
           “I understand that,” replied Bruce, turning the car off. “I’m merely remarking upon the fact that they lack experience, and therefore could benefit from guidance.”
           “Namely, me,” said Damian, watching his father. “I’m their guidance.” He waited for a moment, eyes on Bruce, as if expecting confirmation. Little tink-tink-tink sounds came from the car’s engine as it cooled. “Right?”
           Bruce began, “You already have a team-”
           “You have, like, four teams,” Damian countered. “Not to mention whatever secret society you’re funding this week.”
           “A murder is serious business.”
           “You don’t even know if it’s murder yet.”
           “If it were-”
           “-then you still wouldn’t be in any position to take this from them. Just,” Titus stuck his head forward again, whining, and Damian reached out to scratch his face. “Unclench, alright?” Damian asked his father. “I can handle this.”            Bruce didn’t reply to this, so Damian got out of the car and opened the door for Titus, who happily jumped out and followed him back into the house.
           Later that day, Damian drove to Princeton for his first college exam. He finished early, and called Colin on the drive home.
---
NAME:  Colin Wilkes ALIAS:  “Abuse” DATE OF BIRTH:  9 December 1996 BLOOD TYPE: AB+  (Full Medical History) EMERGENCY CONTACT: Jane Brown LSW, Caseworker AFFILIATIONS:  Team Ember EVAL: Behavioral history of paranoia and violence in multiple foster homes, though likely a result of instability in childhood rather than pathological root. Experimentation by SCARECROW led to increased physical abilities through transformation which includes augmented strength (no evidence senses are affected) as well as moderate invulnerability. Venom appears to have had long-lasting effects on body chemistry despite its degradation.
Decent field skills complemented by extreme strength. Only cleared for patrol if transformed. hand-to-hand and weapons training negligible. Defense training and development of damage-resistant uniform necessary to compensate for tendency to take fire. Precision training vital for development of fine offensive skills.
NOTES: |Robin| Consistent attitude improvements since enrollment at Brentwood. Some instability with transformations likely due to a mental block, have seen improvement past 2-3 months
---
           “You’ve got to get a permanent HQ,” said Damian, in full Robin uniform, standing before a laptop computer in an empty Brentwood Academy classroom.
           “This is good though,” Colin insisted. “This way we’re close to the action, right?”
           “Well,” Damian replied, trying not to hurt Colin’s feelings. “Yes, though it really isn’t worth the lack of security or tech resources. Batman operates almost solely out of the Cave, and you know that’s a bit removed from the city.”
           Colin said, “I don’t have a house to stick a secret lair underneath, though.”
           “I mean, yes,” Damian admitted, nodding. “But the point stands. Besides, most of your team has trouble getting all the way out here. Spoiler’s bike can only hold two people.”
           “That works fine anyway, Jordan doesn’t need a ride.”
           With a long-suffering inhalation, Damian gently corrected, “Jabberwock, Abuse. Jabberwock. We use codenames in the field.”
           “Oh, yeah,” said Colin, clicking through some files on the computer. “My bad. Anyway.” He gestured towards the screen. “This is what I got so far.”
           “Aren’t we going to wait for the others?”
           “Oh, should we?”
           “Ideally, yes, we should. But if you’ve any sensitive information to share with me first,” he gestured at the screen, “by all means.”
           Colin hesitated for a moment, watching Damian. Then he began, “Well, you know how I was kind of sort of maybe dating Ethan a while ago? So it turns out-”
           “Abuse,” interrupted Damian loudly, holding up a hand. “I don’t mean – I meant sensitive information related to the case. You can call me and update me on your social life any time, so let’s try to avoid it while in uniform, yes?”
           A little hurt, Colin replied, “This is related to the case. The dead kid is Joey Fremont, OK, and his roommate is on the wrestling team with Ethan, and so a while ago Ethan asked me to go to one of the wrestling team parties after the meet, and I didn’t go ‘cause he was being weird cagey about us and I could tell he wanted to go as ‘friends’ and it was annoying because like I asked him out and everything so it’s not like he didn’t actually have like feelings-”
           Softly, Damian reminded him, “The point, please.”
           “OK, OK, so – Ethan heard from Joey’s roommate that he was dealing in some shady shit.”
           A frown creased Damian’s brow. “Define ‘shady shit.’”
           “Dealing,” Colin emphasized, as if that had made it obvious. “Like, drugs.”            This seemed a little far-fetched. “Joseph Fremont, seventeen-year-old trust fund baby, was a drug-dealer?”
           “Yeah. Some shady stuff.”
           There it was again, shady, Colin’s favorite ambiguous descriptor. Damian felt a migraine coming on. “We’re still waiting on the tox report,” Damian told him. “But it’ll be easier if we know what to look for. Do you know what he was dealing?”
           “Drugs,” said Colin.
           “What kind of drugs? Cocaine? Heroin?”
           “What the fuck, you think I know? I didn’t buy any shit from him.”
           This was going to be harder than Damian thought. “Do you know anyone who did buy it?” he asked. “Maybe Ethan, or someone else on the wrestling team?”            Offended, Colin told him, “Bitch, Ethan isn’t a fucking junkie.”
           “Right, since you have impeccable taste in guys.”
           “Wow,” said Colin, even more insulted. “That’s fucking rude.”
           Damian was saved from trying to apologize for his completely correct and true reading of Colin’s limited dating history by a knock on the window. “Cavalry’s here,” he said, heading to open the window.
           Ember and Spoiler slipped into the room. “We weren’t sure if we were supposed to use the door,” Spoiler explained. “We thought there might be cameras and stuff.”
           “Abuse disabled them,” Damian said. “And we’re far enough from the center of campus that security doesn’t patrol here.”
           “Oh, cool,” said Nell. She waved behind Damian. “Hey Colin.”
           Before Damian could correct her, Colin impressed him by chiming in. “Abuse,” he said, grinning at her. “Only codenames.”
           “Oh, shit, sorry!”
           “It’s OK,” murmured Damian, going back to the laptop. “Is Jabberwock coming?”
           “I haven’t heard from her,” answered Ellen, shrugging. “But I imagine if she was, she’d be picking up, um,” she gave a pointed pause, “you-know-who on her way over.”
           “Who?” asked Damian.
           “Voldemort,” said Nell, giggling.
           He looked around at Colin, expecting an answer. Colin made a beckoning gesture with one finger, and Damian went over to him and leaned in. “Niloufar,” he whispered.
           Damian pulled away, frowning. “Niloufar?” he echoed.
           Colin took great pleasure in going, “Shh! Codenames only!”
           “I don’t know who that is,” said Damian honestly. “Do they have a codename?”
           “Not yet,” answered Nell, taking a seat on one of the desks. “She said she liked Angel or something, I think.”
           “No, it wasn’t Angel,” Ellen said thoughtfully. “It was something Muslim I think. I can’t remember right now.”
    ��      Damian hesitated for a moment, then said to Ellen, “Whether or not Jabberwock brings her, can you send me her information later? We’ll do a background check.”
           Ellen watched him for a moment, but beneath the scarlet mask her expression was indecipherable. “I can relay it to Oracle, if that’s what you mean.”
           It wasn’t exactly, but it would do. He nodded. “Now. Let’s get to business. Abuse, would you brief your teammates on the case?”
           Quickly, Colin got back to business. He did a decent job, though Damian interjected a few times with details that seem to have slipped Colin’s mind. Nell, in her caped eggplant-colored Spoiler costume, sat on one of the desks, whereas Ellen, her crimson-and-black uniform, took a seat, leaning forward over the desk thoughtfully. Her body language was tight and measured, inscrutable. When his mind wandered Damian found his gaze occasionally drawn to her, though it wasn’t really in attraction so much as curiosity. He still wondered exactly what she had done to prove herself to his father, who trusted her far beyond any other member of this burgeoning team.
           The specifics of the case were this: Joseph Fremont, seventeen years old, white male, five-foot-eight inches, approximately a hundred and ninety pounds, had according to his roommate never made it back to his bedroom on the night of November the thirtieth, and had the following morning been discovered dead one-point-eight miles away from campus. They were still waiting on the physical evidence, but Robin had called them all together tonight so they could hit the ground running. Colin’s revelation that Joseph Fremont might have been dealing was kind of disappointing to Damian, as it suggested that the kid might’ve just been sampling the product and accidentally overdosed. Not that he wished a murder had occurred or anything, but a good old-fashioned mystery would’ve been perfect training for the young team.
           When Colin told Ellen and Nell about the drugs, sparing them the details about how he knew, Ellen spoke up. “If he was dealing and there were no external signs of a struggle, don’t you think he probably just OD’d?”            “Perhaps,” said Damian, chiming in from his spot in the shadows behind Colin. “But we have to consider all the possibilities.”
           “What if his tox results come back positive for a shitload of heroin?” asked Nell.
           “Then we’ll rule it an overdose,” Damian told her, feeling like he was talking to a bunch of infants, “unless we find evidence that suggests otherwise.”
           “But what if it’s an actual murder but someone just like coerced him into taking a shitload of heroin so he died?”
           “That’s why we look into anyone who might have motive,” said Damian. “Even if this looks cut-and-dried on the surface, if there’s someone who would benefit from Joseph Fremont’s death, then we tug on that string. Tug hard enough, and something always unravels.”
           “The Fremonts are Wall Street money,” Ellen commented offhandedly. “I’m sure a lot of people would have motivation to target their family.”
           “Right,” said Damian. “Ember, you look into potential suspects. Colin, dig into the drug connection. Maybe something went awry with his supplier.”
           Nell asked, “What can I do?”
           “Stay plugged in to our contact in the coroner’s office,” Damian told her. “We need to know what killed Joseph Fremont. Until we have that, there’s only so much we can do.”
           “So you’re saying all we can do now is wait.”
           “No,” said Damian coolly, turning to Ellen. That blank red mask was starting to bother him, making it impossible to read her. “I’m saying you can look into potential suspects so we can get ahead of the game.”
           She watched him for a moment. “So you do think it’s a murder, though?”
           “I think it’s suspicious that our victim wound up two miles away from campus, in the middle of the woods,” Damian told her. “And I find it unlikely that no one knows any specifics about what occurred. Our job is to apply pressure until the cracks become evident, and then plug the leaks when we find them.”
           Ellen ran her hands down her long braid. “I think that’s a mixed metaphor,” she said.
           It wasn’t, though it admittedly was kind of clumsy. He ignored this comment, turning instead to Abuse. “I’ll find somewhere more secure to use as headquarters. In the meantime, collect your research. Remember to keep it all under secure encryption using the tech I gave you.”
           Nell raised her hand. Damian looked at her, then did a double take, then Ellen reached out and pulled her wrist downwards. “You don’t have to raise your hand,” Ellen told her.
           “Oh,” said Nell. “OK, sorry, but sidenote, are we allowed to use the computers you gave us for like, other things?”
           “They’re yours,” said Damian. “Use them for whatever you need. All of your encrypted files go to a drive that Batman and I can access, but other than that you can do what you want with it.”            “OK, cool,” said Nell. “I was just asking because I use it for homework.”
           Colin threw his arm around Damian’s shoulders, hanging onto his neck. Poking him in the ribs, he told Nell, “Just ask Robin for another separate homework computer, that’s what I did.”
           Though Nell’s eyes lit up, Ellen spoke before she could. Leaning back in her seat, she said smoothly, “I’m sure Robin doesn’t have the time to play sugar daddy to all of us, Abuse.”
           “No,” agreed Damian. “Fortunately Batman plays the part very well for you, doesn’t he, Ember?”            There was a silence so deep they could hear a pin drop. Damian felt belligerent and annoyed, and didn’t immediately regret the comment. He knew the grants and the scholarships and the job offers that had been extended to Ellen Nayar, and he didn’t think she had any right to sound so dismissive of his family’s generosity.
           Though Damian could not Ellen’s gaze behind her mask, she turned her head away from him first, indicative of breaking first.
           When she and Nell left, Ellen did not say a farewell to Robin.
---
NAME: Danielle Little ALIAS: Spoiler DATE OF BIRTH: 29 June 1997 BLOOD TYPE: O+  (Full Medical History) EMERGENCY CONTACT: Rhonda Holmes Little, Mother (Contact) AFFILIATIONS: Batgirl (Formerly), Team Ember EVAL: Promising but untrained. Investigative instincts are excellent, but more practice is necessary. Very young and inexperienced, though a strong devotion to local community and neighborhoods is a good foundation for future efforts. Potentially a place for her in the Batman Inc. hierarchy whether as an official agent or otherwise.
NOTES: |Robin| Not ready for patrol |Batgirl| She’s just as ready for patrol as I was when I first started |Red Robin| Yeah cause that turned out so well |Batman| Notes must be relevant to the file in question or I will suspend editing privileges
---
           As dusk arrived the next night, Bruce sat in front of the computer in the Cave as Damian worked on some complex tech designs at the workstation below the computer hub. There was a comfortable quiet apart from the usual whir of machinery and fluttering wings of the bats in the eaves. All at once, the silence was broken by a gentle beeping notification coming from both the computer and Damian’s phone.
           Not a moment later, Damian was skipping the stairs two at a time, practically sprinting to the locker room area where his uniform was kept. “Oracle,” said Bruce, hitting a button on the panel before him, “get Jim on the line.”            Damian emerged, in full uniform except for his mask though his cap was only half fastened and his boots weren’t laced yet, while Bruce was still on the line with Commissioner Gordon. “I’ll look into it personally,” he was saying. “I’ll be in touch.”
           Bruce closed the line and turned around in his seat to look at Damian, who stood there defiantly. He pointed at Bruce with one accusatory finger, then began, “You promised-”
           Stoically, Bruce replied, “This could be very dangerous, Damian, and it would be irresponsible to let a bunch of inexperienced teenagers deal with something of this magnitude.”
           “You promised,” repeated Damian stubbornly. “You told me this would be our jurisdiction, and that you would allow us freedom to pursue this mission on our own time.”
           “Us?” echoed Bruce mildly. “So as soon as the mission interests you, it becomes us rather than them?”
           Rolling his eyes, Damian headed down to the garage below, where his motorcycle was kept. Raising his voice to be heard, he called, “I’m their leader, so-”
           “Ember’s their leader.”
           Damian stopped on the staircase, then went back up so he could look at his father. “I’m their leader,” he said again, offended.
           Bruce shook his head. “This team is designed to be closer to the ground than we are. You don’t have their experience when it comes to the city itself.”
           “I patrol the city every single night,” Damian protested. “I know it just fine.”
           “That may very well be true, but you still don’t have their urban expertise.”
           “Urb-?” Damian broke off suspiciously, watching his father. Then he leaned against the rail of the stairs slightly and asked, “Is this a race thing?”
           Bruce glanced around at him, an eyebrow raised. “A what thing?”
           “Are you being,” he paused, didn’t know what else to call it, so went with, “…racist?”
           “What are you talking about?”
           “Urban is just one of those dog whistle words that means people of color,” explained Damian; he was taking a sociology class at Princeton, and he’d just read a chapter of a book about this. “And since this team is mostly that, you emphasizing that their street smarts and inner city experience feels almost as if…” he trailed off, feeling suddenly uncertain under his father’s gaze. “I’m just saying,” he said, unwilling to admit his doubt. “You may want to…think about the way you talk about them, is all.”
           Bruce watched his son, surprised. Despite the fact that Damian’s words weren’t exactly flattering, he felt an odd stirring of pride. He nodded. “Alright,” he said. “I will.”
           There was an awkward sort of pause, and then Damian headed once more down the stairs. Though it was just barely dark outside, he took his motorcycle to the hidden entrance to the Bunker, where he did some minor rearrangements and set up what basically amounted to parental controls on the computers. Satisfied, he alerted the entire team that they would be meeting beneath Wayne Tower tonight.
           This time, Jordan and Niloufar were there first. “Ms. Ghorbani,” he said, holding out his hand to the girl in the headscarf, “a pleasure to meet you.”
           Niloufar shook his hand warily. “We’ve met before,” she told him shortly. “One time you and Batman saved a school bus I was in from tipping off a bridge.”
           When in uniform, Damian got comments like that all the time. Though a school bus falling off a bridge was far more memorable than most of the everyday encounters he had with citizens of Gotham, it still didn’t ring a bell. “That sounds like us,” he told her, with a killer smile. She just watched him suspiciously.
           Jordan, who had been using her powers of flight constantly since they manifested, floated near the low ceiling of the Bunker. “I don’t like it in here,” she said. “Feels cramped.”
           “It’s merely temporary, Jabberwock,” Damian informed her, heading to the computer. “It’s not an ideal location for your team, but I needed some place with the technical capabilities to fill you in completely on the status of your mission.”
           “Our mission?” Jordan echoed. “You mean the dead kid from Brentwood?”
           Damian nodded, typing something into the computer. “Joseph Fremont.”
           Niloufar asked, “Is this about the results from the tox report?”
           The file on the computer unopened, Damian stopped and turned around to face her. “What do you know about the tox report?” he asked her.
           “I’ve heard things,” she said shortly.
           He eyed her, then began, “How do you-?” but before he could finish, the doors to the garage opened and Ellen arrived with Nell and Colin.
           “Hey,” said Nell breathlessly, her laptop underneath her arm. “I might have to leave early, I have a lot of homework to do.”
           “That’s fine,” Damian said, looking past Niloufar and Jordan at her. “There’ve been some new developments in the case and I just need to make sure we’re all on the same page about it.”
           “Hey,” said Jordan, floating upside-down, her ponytail hanging down from the back of her head, “I have a question.”
           Suppressing a roll of his eyes, Damian looked at her. “Yes?”
           “This kid OD’d, right?”
           “Yes,” repeated Damian, “and I’m about to get into the specifics of what exactly he-”
           “But like. Why should we care about him?”
           The silence that followed this comment deepened considerably, broken only by the hum and whir of the high tech machinery surrounding them. “Jabberwock,” he said, “if you have to ask that question, then maybe you shouldn’t be here.”
           Before Damian had even finished this sentence, Jordan was shaking her head. “No,” she said. “I mean like, specifically him. There’s a dozen cases of this same thing every day on my block, and no one’s investigating that shit.”
           Damian explained, “This death occurred in your team’s jurisdiction-” but Ellen interrupted him.
           “She has a point,” she said, glancing at Damian. “It does seem a little biased that we suddenly care about an overdose as soon as it happens to a rich white kid. And I have wondered before why Batman decided we don’t get jurisdiction,” she framed it in air quotes, “over our own neighborhoods, especially because Jordan’s right, this kind of thing happens all the time in the city.”
           “OK,” said Damian, trying very hard to exercise patience, “well. When one of your neighbors overdoses on recreationally-developed Joker Venom, then perhaps we can look into that.”
           A frisson of excitement went through the Bunker, eyebrows raising in surprise. “Joker Venom?” echoed Colin, sounding almost delighted. “Joey got offed by the Joker?”
           “No,” said Ellen, a slight frown on her face. When she watched Damian as intently as she was doing now, he could almost tune out the scar, imagine exactly what she might look like without it. “Robin said – recreationally-developed? You think this kid was using Joker Venom to get high?”
           Damian nodded. “It gets worse.”
           Seated at one of the specimen analysis desks, her laptop computer already open, Nell asked, “How could it get worse than the Joker?”
           Damian pulled something up on the computer screen. “A few years ago – back with the previous Batman – there was a case that involved a drug called diaxamene which was reverse-engineered to attack the part of the brain which controls emotion, blunting the ability to feel empathy.”
           “Turn them into sociopaths,” Jordan said, sounding almost impressed.
           “Psychopaths,” Damian corrected. “But, yes. Essentially.”
           “Diaxamene,” echoed Niloufar, her gaze far away behind her thick glasses. “That sounds familiar. Didn’t it have something to do with a baby formula recall?”
           Clearly surprised that Niloufar knew this, Damian stopped short and looked around at her. “Yes,” he said, nodding. “The perp claimed to have dosed baby formula, though no evidence could confirm this. There was a recall just in case, though, which led to a shortage.”
           “Yeah, I remember,” said Niloufar, nodding. At Damian’s curious look, she finally added, “My younger brother was a baby at the time. I remember formula got really expensive.”
           Without replying to this, Damian nodded, then looked at her for a moment longer.
           Then he returned to the computer screen. “It looks like small amounts of Joker Venom were added to the reverse-engineered diaxamene. Because Joker Venom produces effects similar to psychopathy before resulting in death, diluting it with the diaxamene can reproduce the same feeling while decreasing its lethality.”
           “He still died, though,” Nell pointed out.
           Damian nodded. “It’s called an overdose for a reason, Spoiler.”
           “Oh,” she said. “Right.”
           “The modified diaxamene is a pharmaceutical, though,” said Niloufar, considering this. “It’s supposed to function long-term, not for a temporary high.”
           “Exactly,” said Damian. “For a young person like Joseph Fremont, the mild Joker Venom would have a slight narcotic effect while the diaxamene, if he even knew it was part of the drug, would be – nothing more than a placebo. At first.”
           Ellen nodded. “So what his death tells us,” she began, “is that this drug is on the market. That people are using it, and the more they use it, the more psychopathic they become.”
           “Yes,” said Damian, feeling an odd rush of pride at how quickly the team put this together. “That’s the real problem here. Someone’s pulling the same stunt as the baby formula plan, but aging up their demographic.”
           “Why not cut it with coke?” asked Jordan, seriously. “Or dope or something?”
           “’Cause it’s Joker Venom,” Ellen said, looking over at her as if this were obvious. “It has sex appeal.”
           Nell giggled, and Colin asked, “What about the Joker says sex appeal to you?”
           “Ember’s right,” said Damian, shutting the others up. “How many of you have seen firsthand some result of the Joker’s crimes?”
           Everyone except for Niloufar raised their hand without hesitation, but Niloufar eventually followed suit, making a noncommittal kinda sorta gesture with her hand.
           “Joseph Fremont never lived in the city,” Damian continued. “If you live in the wealthy suburbs your whole life, the Joker is something of a myth, and as a result anything with some proximity to him has a certain thrill to it – like forbidden fruit. It’s the perfect new drug to introduce to a privileged private school like Brentwood.”
           “Plus rich white boys are already a little psychopathic,” Jordan added.
           Damian decided to give her that one. “And that.”
           Despite this, Ellen didn’t seem fully satisfied. “But no one bothers to do a full tox report on a bum who OD’d in an alley in Midtown,” she pointed out. “This drug could be way more rampant than we thought.”
           Considering this, Damian answered, “True, but we haven’t seen the resultant wave of crime or violence you’d expect from that.”            “That’s assuming the drug has been out there for long enough. And Gotham streets are always full of crime and violence. How would you be able to tell the difference?”            He shook his head. “There’s no difference on patrol.”
           “You haven’t been on patrol all that often lately, though,” Colin said fairly, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “You’ve been with your other team a lot.”
           Inwardly, Damian cursed Colin’s lack of filter. Ellen’s eyebrow cocked, but it was Nell who asked, “What other team?”
           Jordan grinned at him. “Are you cheating on us, Robin?”
           “It’s the Teen Titans,” he said stoically. “Yes, I am frequently away with them. But Batman and Oracle keep a careful record of nightly criminal activity, which has not shown any major spikes lately.”
           “What’s Superboy like?” asked Jordan, legs crossed, sitting in air. “Just like a mini Superman?”
           Chris was in fact very dissimilar to his adoptive father, so Damian replied, with a hint of annoyance, “No, actually. Now if we can get back to business-”
           “What about Arsenal?” asked Nell, from her computer. “She seems cool.”
           With a knowing grin, Colin added, “Not as cool as Impulse, huh, Robin?”            Damian shot him a dirty look. “Let’s try to focus, shall we?”
           “Ohh,” said Nell, laughing. “Wait, Robin, is she your girlfriend?”
           For fuck’s sake. As he opened his mouth to shut this down for good, Ellen mercifully came to his rescue. “Come on,” she said, sounding sympathetic. “Don’t tease him, Spoiler, that’s mean.”
           Which, naturally, set his blood boiling again. “Ember, please,” he told her. “It’s fine. Now. Back to the case?”
           She gave him a wry, enigmatic smile, but nodded all the same, gesturing for him to continue.
           His face felt warm, and he felt stupid for allowing himself to feel even the slightest bit self-conscious. “Some excellent thinking happened tonight, team, so thank you for that. Now that we all know where we stand, it’s time to get serious about this case.”
           Doubtfully, Colin asked, “We weren’t serious until just now?”
           “I mean we have a lead,” said Damian quickly. “That’s all. Niloufar, Jabberwock, I want you two looking into other recent overdose cases throughout the city, see if we’re missing something.”
           “Seraph,” said Niloufar.
           Damian blinked. “I’m sorry?”
           “Seraph,” repeated Niloufar. “That’s my codename. I mean, it was Hafaza, but then we figured that was a little harder for people to remember and the key to a good codename is its memorability, right? Like, branding.” She paused, a little awkward. “So. Seraph.”
           He watched her for a moment, then nodded. “Alright. Seraph, then. Usually the codename is accompanied by a uniform, though.”
           Apologetically, she admitted, “I’m probably not…super useful in the field.” At Damian’s expressions, she explained, “I failed P.E. last year.”
           Damian only had the vaguest notion what P.E. was, but he waved it aside. “Fine,” he said. “If you do need a uniform, Batman and I can help. Abuse,” he said, turning to Colin. “Have you dug up anything else at Brentwood?”
           Colin shook his head. “Not really? I think Joey’s roommate was clean, actually. He wasn’t dealing anything hard, just weed. I lit up with him the other day and he told me everything. He’s kind of fucked up over it actually, it’s kind of sad.”
           “Great,” said Damian. “Generally I would request that you try to avoid partaking in illicit substances, but otherwise, sure.”
           “Robin,” said Jordan, with a grin. “C’mon. It’s just weed.”
           “OK,” said Damian, ignoring this. “Keep pushing, Abuse. If you need backup, call me.”
           “Or me,” offered Niloufar. When Damian glanced at her, she added, “I go to Brentwood too. So I can help with that.”
           This was a relief; Colin was competent enough in the field, but his investigative work was still spotty. Damian had been considering an undercover mission in Brentwood himself to get the intel they needed, but if Niloufar also attended the school then she might be able to bolster Colin’s mission. “Perfect,” he said. “Seraph, you get double duty – work with both Jabberwock and Abuse.”
           Niloufar practically glowed at the extra responsibility.
           “Ember, Spoiler, you’re going to be investigating the Joker connection,” he continued. “Ember, I understand you have some familiarity with Arkham? This is your chance to demonstrate that. Meanwhile, I’ll-”
           Just then, he realized Nell’s hand was up in the air again.
           “Spoiler,” he said tiredly. “I’ve told you this a dozen times, you don’t need to raise your hand to ask permission to speak.”            “Oh,” she said, lowering her arm. “Sorry! I didn’t want to interrupt.”
           “It’s fine,” Damian told her, waving this away. “What is it?”
           “Would it be possible for me to sit this one out? I’m failing geometry.”
           Damian blinked at her. “You’re failing what?” he asked.
           “Geometry,” she repeated. “Tenth grade math.”
           Damian, who had mastered geometry when he was seven, felt suddenly and abruptly out of his depth. “Oh,” he said. “Yes, of course. That’s fine. All of you, never hesitate to tell me if you feel like you’re taking on too much. It’s fine. Civilian responsibilities come first.”
           There was an awkward sort of pause.
           Then he restarted, “Ember, I suppose that means I’ll be with you. We’ll also look at the previous case regarding diaxamene, but I’ll need a few days to round up my resources on that. I’ll contact you when I’m ready.”
           “Fine,” said Ellen. “Anything else you need to update us on?”
           Thoughtfully, Damian looked back at the screen. “No, I don’t think so. We’re dealing with a high tech trafficking ring by the docks again so if any of you find any unfamiliar weaponry or anything let me or Oracle know. Oh,” he said, turning around to face them again. “And I suppose I should warn you about something.”
           They all leaned in a little, as if intrigued by the hint of danger.
           Almost regretfully, Damian informed them all, “Batman is likely going to try and edge in on this case. He takes everything involving the Joker very personally, so I can almost guarantee he’ll try to take over. At the very least he’ll try to insert himself in an observational role.”
           “That’s not so bad,” countered Jordan. “Batman’s welcome to observationally roll me whenever he likes.” Colin laughed, obviously in agreement.
           Damian tried to keep his expression level. “My point is,” he restarted, “this is your mission and you all can take care of it perfectly well without his help. Don’t let him take this one from you.” He paused, looking around at them. “So. We’re all clear?”
           “Super clear,” agreed Colin. “I’m gonna head back to school and get a jump on this.”
           “Hold on,” said Niloufar, her gaze swiveling around towards him. “That’s not fair, I don’t board at school so I won’t be able to help out until tomorrow.”
           “Um, I just said get a jump on it,” Colin pointed out. “I didn’t say I’d solve absolutely everything so you don’t have anything to do.”
           “Abuse is right,” added Damian. “He can probably get a lot more done after hours than you can during classroom time. I’m sure he’ll fill you in on any developments in the morning.”
           Niloufar shot a glare towards Colin, but he shrugged and relented. “Yeah, for sure.”
           “We’ll get started, then,” said Jordan. “If we find anything out we’ll ping you or share it on the vigilante cloud or whatever.”
           “Thank you,” said Damian, as Jordan and Niloufar began to leave. “Good luck.”
           After them Colin headed out to return to Brentwood and Ellen, the only one of the team cleared for patrol on her own, also took off. Damian went over to where Nell still worked on her laptop. “If you need a tutor,” he said, peering over her shoulder, “I’m happy to help.”
           “You kind of already are,” she told him distractedly, focused on her work.
           He raised an eyebrow. “How so?”
           Glancing at him, she explained, “I’m going to the Neon Knights center in my neighborhood for tutoring, so it’s cool. I guess I meant your family’s already helping out.”
           Damian stared at her for a moment. Though he knew rationally that the entire team had enough information at this point to deduce Batman’s identity and therefore his own, it was still a new and unfamiliar feeling, like danger. It set him on edge, despite the fact that they never would have let Nell or the others into the game in the first place if they didn’t trust them enough to be discreet.
           “Sure,” he said, straightening up. “Though I shouldn’t have to remind you not to talk like that when we’re in uniform.”
           This seemed to confuse her, as she finally took pause to glance up at him. “But…nobody’s here.”            “I know, but it’s a matter of developing a habit. If the mask is on,” he pointed to his face, “then I’m Robin. Only Robin. Do you understand me?”
           She nodded. “I got you.”
           “Good.” He hesitated, then added, “If you’d like you can stay here to do your work. I can program everything to shut down and lock up after you leave.”            This too drew her gaze away from the computer. She looked at Damian with big eyes, surprised and a little touched. “Wow,” she said. “For real? That would be super great.”
           “OK.” He shrugged, feeling a slight twinge of self-consciousness he normally only felt around Iris. He tried to push that out of his mind. “It’s no problem. And again, let me know if you need help.”
           “Yeah,” she said, beaming at him. “I will.”
---
NAME: Jordan Aguilar Joyce ALIAS: Wonder Girl / Jabberwock DATE OF BIRTH: 17 March 1995 BLOOD TYPE: B+ (Full Medical History) EMERGENCY CONTACT: Maya Aguilar, Sister (Contact) AFFILIATIONS: Wonder Woman, Team Ember EVAL: Flight, augmented senses and strength from Themysciran heritage. Will follow-up with Diana. Deeply resistant to authority, but loyal to team. Need to develop discipline before regular patrol is instated.
NOTES: |Robin| Wonder Girl should not be listed as an alias nor WW under affiliation. Jordan has made it clear where she stands where it comes to the Amazons |Black Bat| Shes nice |Red Hood| How come cass doesnt get the Relevent to File in question spiel |Red Robin| Cause shes the favorite |Black Bat| :)
---
           “So Abuse and Seraph managed to get a lead on the Brentwood supplier – turns out a few of the older boys had been recruited by someone called the Dealer.”
           “Not very creative,” replied Ellen through her commlink, peering down at the city from the corner of a tall roof.
           “Yes,” answered Damian, “particularly because we dealt with someone using that name a few years ago, around the same time as the diaxamene case. In fact, the man who reverse-engineered the diaxamene actually bought outdated Joker Venom from the Dealer.”
           “Oh,” said Ellen, a little taken aback. “Then – that should sort of blow the case open, right? It’s the same guy.”
           “Impossible,” said Damian grimly. “The man in question has been locked up in a mental facility for years.”
           “In Arkham?”
           “No. I believe it’s somewhere in Chicago, far away from here. Besides, the version of the Joker Venom found in this new drug isn’t old or decayed at all, it’s very new, something we haven’t quite seen before, impossible to build up a resistance to. Enough of it would probably poison even the Joker himself.”
           “If our guy can reverse-engineer a prescription drug, I’m sure he could figure out how to update Joker Venom. And if he’s not at Arkham why are we even going there in the first place?”
           “Because,” Damian answered shortly, “sometimes you have to play with vermin to sniff out a rat.”            This was cryptic and annoying, and beneath her mask Ellen rolled her eyes. “OK. I can meet you there in an hour if-”
           “No need,” he said, just as the sleek and quiet hum of an energy-efficient stealth motorcycle came buzzing down the alley beneath the building on which Ellen stood. Robin stopped the bike, got off, and waved at her.
           She let out a sigh, then made her way down on the fire escape, jumping the last few feet. “How did you know where I was?” she asked, as he got back onto the motorcycle.
           “The tracer Batman put in your suit,” he answered; when she gave him a look, refusing to get on the bike with him, he grinned a little and added, “I’m kidding. But only a little. When you’re on a direct line, Oracle can pinpoint your location. If you toggled a private line or turned off your commlink, we’d lose you.”
           “Wouldn’t want that,” muttered Ellen, finally relenting and climbing onto the back of the motorcycle, behind him. She sat further back than was entirely necessary.
           They went most of the way in relative silence. They’d worked enough together – Damian had spent enough time training with her – that it wasn’t particularly awkward, but there was an odd degree of discomfort that neither of them were used to. When they made it to Arkham, stowing the bike in the woods behind it, Damian asked, “That reminds me, when are you going to get a motorbike of your own? You can’t rely on rides from Spoiler and Abuse and me forever.”
           “I don’t have my license,” she explained. She wanted to add, And I can’t afford one, but she knew that he would offer and insist and that would be unfortunate.
           “Oh,” said Damian, as if this hadn’t occurred to him. “Well. You don’t really need one, in our line of work.”            “Thanks,” she said, though her smile was not visible beneath her mask. “But I’m already toeing the line as is. I’d prefer to break as few laws as possible.”
           “She says,” he added, grinning slightly as they headed towards Gotham, “as we break into a private mental facility in order to interrogate a patient.”
           “He’s a criminal,” she replied smoothly. “Not a patient.”
           Damian shrugged. “They all are.”
           This wasn’t true, and Ellen wanted to fight him on it, but this wasn’t the time or the place. With the help of Robin’s gadgets and expertise, making it into Arkham was easier than it had ever been for Ellen – he did it with such nonchalance and finesse that it seemed positively casual for him. That sort of annoyed her.
           They made it to the Wayne Ward, which is where the most dangerous criminals were held, cut off from the rest of the world by thick steel doors. Somewhere in one of the cages, someone sang a children’s song. “Little Bunny Foo-Foo, hopping through the forest…”
           Another inmate moaned, “Shut the fuck up.”
           Damian brought her to an unmarked cell that looked no different from any of the others, and put his hand on the door, behind which the Joker still sang. “Scooping up the field mice and boppin’ them on the head…”
           Quietly, he asked, “You ready?”            She nodded, but didn’t speak. Looking away from her, he punched a series of numbers into the keypad by the door, and it slid open.
           He gestured for her to enter, and she did. He followed behind her, and the steel door clanged behind them.
           A pale man in an Arkham uniform sat cross-legged facing the wall across from them. “Down came the good fairy, and she said…”
           “Joker,” said Damian.
           The Joker’s head lolled back on his shoulders, his dirty green hair hanging down from his scalp. He did not look around.
           “Ah,” he began, his voice sickly sweet. “It’s my second-favorite little birdie. You’d be third favorite,” he said, almost reasonably, “but the dead one came back, and that’s no fun.”
           “Joker,” repeated Damian. “What do you know about a new version of your Venom?”
           Though he still did not turn around, the Joker made an unpleasant sound in the back of his throat, as if displeased. “None of that faker stuff. I’m no street corner dealer, little Robbie! I only have big plans, big shows, big-” he threw out both arms theatrically; in his left, he held a crowbar stained with blood, “-drama.”
           Without hesitating, Damian moved forward and grabbed hold of the crowbar, kicking in the Joker’s elbow as he did so. As Damian inspected it, the Joker started to laugh, then collapsed and rolled around on the floor so he was facing the door.
           “Where’d you get this?” asked Damian stoically, raising the crowbar.
           “Beirut,” answered the Joker.
           Damian shook the crowbar. “Whose blood is this?”
           “Yours,” answered the Joker. “Robin’s. Doesn’t matter which one, best not to get attached,” he looked past Damian, as if addressed Ellen directly, “they’re just gonna break your heart and move on. They always do.”
           Uncertainly, Ellen glanced at Damian, who only stared at the Joker.
           He raised the crowbar, and hit the Joker across the face with it. Again, the Joker laughed. “What do you mean that fake stuff?” asked Damian. “So you know someone’s dealing.”
           “Everyone’s always dealing,” Joker answered, with a shrug. “You know, dealing, coping, the human condition.”            “How do you know about the drugs?”
           The Joker lunged suddenly, throwing himself at Damian, grabbing hold of the crowbar tightly. Ellen instinctively moved to help, but Damian dodged, gripping the crowbar tightly and wrenching him away so that the Joker lost his balance and fell, half laying on the ground, still clutching the crowbar. He laughed and laughed.
           “The drugs?” he screeched, ecstatic. “You mean the Xanax? Oh, no, you mean the painkillers? Or are you talking about the meth, because that was what really made her spiral, huh? Just took a little while to get there, step by prescription step, and then all of the sudden bam!” His laughter turned higher, more frantic. He held up one hand in the gesture of a gun and pointed it right at Ellen’s face. “Right in the kisser!”
           Horrified, Ellen stared at him, frozen. It took Damian a moment to realize what was going on, and then he kicked the Joker square in the chest, sending him reeling back to the floor. “I miss Divya!” he called, as Damian, turned around returned to the door, taking Ellen’s wrist in his hand as he did so. “She was so much fun! Good stories! She missed you bad you know, she missed her beautiful son, her beautiful little-”
           A name came out of Joker’s mouth that Damian didn’t know, but he could guess what it was. “Come on,” he murmured to Ellen, who said nothing, her face obscured and made unreadable by her mask. As the Joker laughed and laughed and laughed, Damian led Ellen out of the Joker’s cell, ensured the door was closed tight, and they retreated out of Arkham. After a while Ellen pulled her hand away from Damian’s. He said nothing until they were outside.
           In the darkness, he turned to her heavily.
           “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have brought you in there.”
           “No,” said Ellen, shaking her head. “It’s fine. I had to meet him eventually.”
           “I don’t know how he knew that about you.”
           “It’s fine,” repeated Ellen, with a little more urgency. She tried to smile at him from underneath the mask, but obviously he couldn’t see it.
           Damian watched her cautiously for a moment longer, then suddenly jerked his head around, obviously hearing something at his commlink. Then his gaze lengthened past Ellen, behind her, and under his breath he muttered, “For fuck’s sake-”
           Despite the fact that Batman, from behind Ellen, should not have been able to hear this, he growled, “Language, Robin,” and Damian resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
           Ellen turned around uncertainly; she had only very infrequently been in the presence of both Batman and Robin, and didn’t really have the hang of their dynamic yet.
           Batman stood impassively before them both, watching them. “Are you here to talk to the Joker?” he asked, as if reserving judgment.
           “We already did,” Damian told him. “He didn’t have anything useful to say.”
           Thinking this was underselling the encounter a little, Ellen added, “He seemed to know a version of his Venom was being used on the streets,” Damian gave her an urgent look, like betrayal, so she continued, “but Robin’s right. He didn’t sound like he was involved in or even really approved of its production.”
           Batman gestured at the crowbar in Damian’s hand. “What’s that?”
           “A crowbar,” answered Damian.
           Batman only watched him.
           Damian held it up. “A man known as the Dealer tried to auction off an item just like this a few years ago,” he said, almost defiantly. “Nightwing brought it home, but he never entered it into evidence. He just got rid of it.”
           “Why?” asked Batman.
           “So you wouldn’t find out,” said Damian, “for obvious reasons.”
           Ellen wasn’t sure what that obvious reason was, but she just glanced in between Robin and Batman, sensing the tension there.
           Stubbornly, Damian continued, “The Joker was a red herring last time and I believe it’s the same thing this time around. We should be focusing our efforts elsewhere.”
           “Hn.” Batman headed past them, towards Arkham. “I’ll talk to the Joker.”
           As Batman passed, Robin reached out and physically took hold of his arm. “No,” he said. “You won’t.”
           Batman twisted around to look back at Damian, and there was a moment of deadly, pin-drop silence.
           “It’s my case,” insisted Damian.
           Batman glanced up at Ellen. “It’s her case.”
           Beneath her mask, Ellen’s eyebrows shot up. Reluctantly, Damian let go of Batman and turned to her. “Fine,” he said. “Ember. What do you think? Do you want a second opinion on the Joker, or do you think we should be able to proceed on our own from here?”
           There was no expression on Batman’s face, but then again Ellen didn’t think there was ever really any discernible expression on Batman’s face. Once more she glanced in between Batman and Robin, before finally admitting, “I…think we should be OK.” To Batman, she said, “I’ve studied your case files and I don’t really think this fits the Joker’s M.O. Right now selling drugs to rich kids sounds a lot more like this Dealer character, or maybe, um, what’s his face, that guy who poisoned the diaxamene.”
           Damian winced slightly when she said this and she suddenly feared she’d said too much; maybe there was something he’d been trying to keep from Batman. Though she didn’t really think that was all that smart – Robin’s pride be damned, this was about solving the case, not who got the glory of figuring it out.
           Batman watched her for a moment, then nodded. “I expect a mission report,” he said.
           “Of course,” responded Damian sourly.
           Without looking around, Batman added, “I meant from Ember.”
           Damian looked almost ready to blow a gasket, but he kept his mouth shut and nodded. Batman lingered for a moment longer, then swept away.
           There was an awkward sort of pause. Damian turned and headed back to where the motorcycle was stowed in the woods. “C’mon,” he said.
           She followed him, secretly a little pleased at this indication of Batman’s trust but also not wanting to push Damian at all. It was a weird place to be, staying quiet for fear of hurting Robin’s feelings – but then again, he was only a kid, at least a couple years younger than her. There was no need to be cruel.
           A minute or so after he revved the bike and they started heading back towards the city, he asked, “Are you hungry?”            His words came through clearly on her commlink, and yet she was still certain she had misheard. “Um. Sure?”
           “I know a place,” he continued, taking a sharp left. “Up by Amusement Mile.”
           Amusement Mile meant carnival food of some sort probably, which was fine by Ellen. Late at night as it was, the boardwalk was still all lit up neon, but Damian avoided that, heading instead for the less touristy area. There was a little shop – not much more than a booth – where he ordered falafel. Ellen got a kabob. The woman working there spoke warmly with Damian in a language Ellen didn’t know, but eventually she picked up that the woman was refusing to accept payment when Damian tried to pass it over the counter to her. He just grinned and stuffed a twenty dollar bill into the tip jar, and the woman laughed.
           They sat together on the rail of the pier, which was already closed for the night. She lifted her mask to eat, then took it off completely, leaving only a domino mask around her eyes.
           “Hey,” she said, nudging him a little. “Are you OK?”
           He looked around at her, confused. “What? Why?”
           “Your dad was kind of harsh on you. He didn’t really need to be, I know you have more experience at this than I do.”            For a moment he said nothing, just watching her. Then he looked back down at his falafel wrap. “You shouldn’t refer to him as my father when we’re in the field,” he said. “Things like that are supposed to stay in a civilian context only.”
           “Mmm, be careful about that. Everybody knows Robin is either Batman’s son or something a whole lot less wholesome, so I really think you should take what you can get.”
           She smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back, only looked at his wrap unhappily.
           When he didn’t reply, she too looked down at her food, picking at it. She hadn’t been that hungry, but would’ve felt stupid turning down free food.
           Softly, she asked, “How do you think he knew all that about me?”
           Damian glanced at her. “Who?” he asked. “The Joker?” She nodded, and he considered this for a moment. “He knows everything about everyone. Don’t take it personally. He knows how to get under everyone’s skin, we’ve all been there.”
           “He knew my…” she trailed off. “He knew my mother’s name.”            He gave a shrug. “She was in Arkham, right?”
           “Yeah, but – not in the Wayne Ward. Not with him.”
           “No?” asked Damian, with mild interest. “What was she in for, then?”
           Glowering, Ellen muttered, “As if Batman doesn’t have a file with all the sordid details.”
           “He doesn’t,” answered Damian. “Or at least not one I have access to.”
           For a while, so long that Damian didn’t think she was going to answer, Ellen said nothing. Then, her eyes fixed out across the black water of the ocean, waves lit by moonlight, she said, “She…was transferred. For the Wayne Enterprises drug rehabilitation program.”
           “Ah,” said Damian, nodding. “Yes. I understand that whole project was – a massive PR disaster.”
           “You could call it that,” Ellen agreed. “It’s what happens when rich people throw money at problems and expect results. At any cost.”
           “We didn’t know it was going to go as badly as it did.”
           “I know.”
           “Arkham’s always been a mess. We really did want to reform it into something good. Something productive.”
           “I mean, it was productive,” said Ellen, her voice sharp. “Lobotomizing addicts did help them kick the habit, it just also had the unfortunate side effect of, well, I mean, lobotomizing them.”
           There was a short silence. Damian asked, “Is she alright?”
           “Kind of,” answered Ellen shortly. “She’ll be in assisted living for the rest of her life.”
           “I’m sorry.”
           “It’s fine. Probably not even your fault. She OD’d a couple times before, so she wasn’t in great shape to begin with.”
           “This can’t be an easy case for you.”
           “Why?” she asked, looking at him. “Because it has to do with drugs?”            He returned her gaze, then gave a little shrug.
           “If I couldn’t handle an overdose now and then, Batman wouldn’t have given me the mask.”
           “Why did he?”
           Ellen leaned forward slightly, setting aside her food and holding the blank scarlet mask in her hands. She shook her head. “When you figure that out,” she said wryly, glancing at him, “let me know?”
           When they finished their food and headed back to Damian’s motorcycle, Ellen nudged him again. “Hey,” she said. “Thanks for not asking.”
           He didn’t know what she meant. “Not asking what?”
           She gestured across her face, at the diagonal scar there. “If this was what she was in for.”
           Damian had of course assumed this, but he had been pointedly trying to ignore the scar at all costs since he met Ellen, so he’d avoided saying it outright. For some reason the scar across her face reminded him of his own hidden scar down the length of his back. How he got that was a sensitive story, and he didn’t imagine Ellen’s was any less sensitive.
           He took her back into the city, and they parted ways for patrol.
---
NAME: Ellen Nayar ALIAS: Ember DATE OF BIRTH: 26 August 1993 BLOOD TYPE: A+  (Relevant Medical History) EMERGENCY CONTACT: Kiran Kaur Nayar, Grandmother AFFILIATIONS:  Green Arrow II (Former), Team Ember EVAL: Mastery of basic defensive techniques at a young age provides a solid foundation for future training. Has a tendency to fall back on defense when cornered, relying on tools to compensate. Capable of much more but struggling to balance training as well as other civilian commitments; requires more investment both in and out of uniform. Significant pain tolerance. Easily identifiable due to the scar and also hair/body type, any uniform designs must compensate.
Strong field skills, hand-to-hand improving and introduction of nonlethal weapons going well. An apparent preference for the staff though she lacks martial arts training in that area. Sharp mind and eye for puzzles. Potential for leadership role assuming increased confidence in her abilities. Imperative to firm up her loyalties or risk alienation. Family history of addiction.
NOTES: |Robin| Hand to hand is fine but she needs to work on weapons and tech. Uniform needs an upgrade, face mask restricts breathing |Red Hood| She smokes
---
           “I have good news,” said Oracle, on the screen, “and bad news.”
           “Good news first,” said Nell, at the same time Damian said, “What’s the bad news?”
           They looked at each other, and then Damian gestured for Nell to continue. She beamed at him and asked, “Good news?”
           “We got a lead on our guy,” said Oracle, a big globular green head taking up the screen in lieu of her real face. “The one who reverse-engineered the diaxamene.”
           Ellen sat up a little straighter, alert. “I thought he was in some mental facility somewhere.”
           “Yeah,” continued Oracle. “That’s the bad news. I, uh – had a friend in Chicago drop by to see him.”
           “Oh?” interrupted Damian, with a tone that sounded unlike him. It was half intrigued, half snide. “Interesting. What kind of friend?”
           “Just a friend,” she said snippily.
           Damian just made a face, but didn’t protest. Ellen glanced at him, wondering what that was about. “What’d he have to say?”
           “That’s just it,” Oracle told them. “It wasn’t our guy, just some decoy checked in under his name.”
           “A decoy?” asked Niloufar, a frown on her face. “For how long?”
           “Presumably since he checked in,” said Oracle darkly. “Which means James has been out this entire time, no doubt plotting his next step for years.”
           At the name, Damian lifted his head slightly, as if surprised she would use it. He leaned against the wall of the Bunker, a little away from the others, his arms crossed over his chest. “James?” asked Colin. “Is that his name?”
           “Yeah,” sighed Oracle. “OK, confession time, you guys.”            The green icon which represented Oracle disappeared from the screen, replaced with blackness and then suddenly a crystal clear image, as if a window to another room. An older woman with ginger hair and glasses on sat before them, computer glare lighting her up.
           She waved at them. “Some of you have met me,” she said, “but I guess it’s time to make this official. My name’s Barbara, but I’m still O in the field, OK?”
           Nell and Niloufar looked a little starstruck; even Colin seemed impressed. “OK,” said Jordan, glancing with what may have been a tinge of jealousy over at Niloufar. “What does that have to do with our case?”
           With a look that was tight and worried, almost apologetic, Babs continued, “The guy we’re looking for – his name is James Gordon, Jr. His dad is Commissioner Jim Gordon of the GCPD.”
           Everyone’s eyebrows raised in surprise, except for Damian. He watched as Jordan asked, “Gordon? The cop?”
           “Commissioner,” Damian corrected, echoing Babs.
           “Didn’t he retire?” asked Ellen, glancing around at Damian, who shook his head.
           “He was on leave a few years ago, that’s all.”
           “Yeah,” continued Barbara, nodding. “He took some time off after what happened with James the first time. I mean,” she paused, adding, “first is relative, but – anyway. Here’s where it gets personal. Jim Gordon is my dad.”
           In a little bit of awe, Nell asked, “So this guy is your brother?”
           Making a face, Babs said, “Kind of.”
           “Kind of?” echoed Jordan derisively. “How can it be kind of-?”
           Abruptly, Damian noticed Niloufar; she kept glancing in between him and the screen suspiciously, as if she was just putting something together. “What?” he barked at her.
           Again, her gaze flickered in between him and Barbara. “You’re Robin,” she said, then pointed at the screen, “she’s Oracle. Aren’t you two…?” she trailed off. “Does that mean Commission Gordon is your…dad…too?”
           Damian just stared at her for a moment, arms still crossed over his chest. Then he pointed at the screen, and asked doubtfully, “Do I look like I’m related to her?”
           “You could have different moms,” offered Nell helpfully.
           Rolling her eyes, Jordan said, “Come on, Nilou, everybody knows Robin’s dad is-”
           Both Damian and Babs said, “Jabberwock,” and even Ellen added a scolding, “Jordan.”
           At these reprimands, she threw her hands up in surrender. “Nevermind.”
           “OK, so,” said Nell, turning back to the computer screen. “If we’re pretty sure it’s this James guy, then we at least know where to start, right? When was the last time time he was in Gotham, and did he have any favorite haunts? We can start there.”
           A little taken aback by Nell’s sudden professionalism, Damian snapped his gaze away from her and back to Babs. “Spoiler is right,” he said. “We’ll dig into all the leads we have on James Gordon Jr.”
           “This is the guy who poisoned the baby formula, right?” asked Ellen doubtfully, glancing around at the group of them. Returning her gaze to Babs on the screen, she added, “Of course you know more about him than I do, Oracle, but somehow that kind of crazy complicated scheme just doesn’t seem to fit the M.O. here. Why would he downgrade to selling to rich kids?”
           “Actually,” piped up Niloufar, “we went through a couple overdose cases in the city over the past few months and came up with three positive reports for the same Joker Venom-diaxamene hybrid that was found in Joseph Fremont’s body.”
           “We?” echoed Damian sharply, watching her.
           Instead of shrinking under his gaze, as Damian had expected, Niloufar turned to look directly at him, straightening up slightly. “Me and Jor- Jabberwock.”
           Damian watched her for a moment, then his eyes flickered over to Jordan, who nodded.
           “So it’s not just Brentwood,” said Ellen.
           “But it’s still a valid point,” said Babs, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “James is more psychological than that. I don’t really see him getting off on handing out drugs like some kind of common pusher.”
           “You think he’s working with someone,” said Damian.
           It was Colin who spoke up then, from where he was leaning against one of the specimen analysis tables. “The Dealer,” he said earnestly. They all paused and looked around at him, and he returned their gazes, nodding slightly. “It’s gotta be this Dealer guy,” he continued, “the one who’s been selling to the older kids at Brentwood? That’s his partner.”
           Babs considered this, twisting her lips thoughtfully. “That would make sense,” she admitted. “James can’t exactly hang around the schoolyard, but he could manipulate someone younger into working for him. He manufactures, the Dealer distributes.”
           “Then that makes things a lot easier,” said Nell. “If this Dealer guy’s younger, then he’s more inexperienced, which means he’s more likely to slip up.”
           “Exactly,” said Babs, nodding. “I think the important part now is to split up-”
           Behind everyone, Damian cleared his throat loudly.
           When the others looked around, he seemed a little apologetic. But on the screen, Babs hesitated for a moment before letting out a short sigh. “It’s your team’s case,” she admitted. “This is really important, you guys. Batman’s really taking a leap of faith by trusting you with this one.”
           “They’ve earned it,” said Damian, in protest.
           “Yeah, but.” Babs shrugged, her empty hands turned upwards. “This is Batman we’re talking about. It took him about ten years to even start trusting me.”
           “Well,” said Jordan shortly, shooting a slightly too-friendly grin up at Babs, “all that means is that Batman’s one stupid motherfucker.”            “OK,” said Damian loudly, moving forwardly to the computer. “Thank you, Oracle. Send anything you’ve got our way, we’ll get ahead on this.”
           Before she said anything else, something else seemed to occur to Oracle, and she said, “Oh, one more thing. Which one of you keeps saving your math homework to the encrypted file database?”
           There was a beat of pause as Damian turned to glance around at his team. Nell was staring up at the screen with her mouth in a little ‘o’ shape; Ellen nudged her. “That – might be me,” she squeaked, obviously humiliated. “I’m sorry! Robin said we could use the computers he gave us for homework!”
           Damian tried not to roll his eyes as Babs explained, “You absolutely can, but you don’t need to put it in the encrypted file drive. Just leave it on your desktop or something so it doesn’t get uploaded to our databases.”
           Mortified, Nell nodded. “Sorry,” she said, again.
           “It’s fine,” Babs told her. “Anyway, I’m here if you guys need anything. Keep me updated.”
           “We will,” promised Damian, and then the screen before them went blank. In the white glow of the Bunker, he turned around to face them all. “Jabberwock, Abuse, Spoiler,” he began, with no hesitation, “you three need to fan out, comb the city for James Gordon Jr. He’s got to be hiding somewhere. Take a look at the information Oracle sent, and then head out. This is our top priority for the time being. Ember,” he added, turning to her, “you’re with me.”
           Snidely, Jordan muttered, “Wow, what a surprise.”
           Glancing at her then back at Ember, he explained, “We need to figure out who this Dealer person is. If he’s dealing in Gotham, then it can’t hurt to check in with Red Hood.”
           Already, Ellen was shaking her head. “Hood doesn’t let his people deal to kids,” she told Damian. “If the Dealer’s been selling to Brentwood students-”
           “Based on Seraph’s intel, he’s been dealing on the streets as well. Anyway, I’m not saying Red Hood will know who the Dealer is, just that he may be able to point us in the direction of any suspicious activity lately.”
           Ellen considered this, then nodded. “Is he in town?”
           Damian nodded. Earlier that week the entire family had gathered to celebrate the final night of Hanukkah; Bruce wasn’t particularly religious, but as he grew older he started to take every opportunity he could to gather everyone under one roof. This had been the first Hanukkah celebration at the Manor Jason had attended since before his death. He had spent most of the night messing around with Damian and Cass, more or less refusing to talk to Bruce directly. All things considered, it went well.
           Anyway, Damian knew that Jason was still in Gotham because he’d been in a group chat with him, Cass, and Stephanie since. Steph, offended that she hadn’t been invited, had been alternatively demanding all the details and simultaneously assuring them she wouldn’t even have gone anyway.
           Instructing the others to review Oracle’s information then spread out across the city, he made contact with Jason before riding out into the dark streets with Ellen on his motorcycle behind him. “Hey,” she said, her commlink transmitting her voice clearly into Damian’s ear despite the rushing wind, “what’s your deal with Red Hood?”            He didn’t answer right away. “What do you mean?”
           “He’s, like. One of you guys, right?”
           “Oh,” said Damian, taking a sharp right turn that nearly scraped the side of their legs against the street. He had thought she was speaking emotionally, as if she could detect faint strains of annoyance he thought he’d gotten past. But Ellen knew his identity and that of his father, so he wasn’t shy about admitting relation. “He’s my brother,” he told her, his voice a whisper in her ear. They entered the old block of Midtown, edging into Red Hood territory. “Adopted brother, actually, not that it really matters.”
           Ellen knew vaguely of Damian Wayne’s adopted brother, but she hadn’t realized he and Red Hood were one and the same. “Damn,” she said. “The papers would have a field day if they realized the founder of Neon Knights was a drug lord on the side.”
           This took Damian by surprise; he glanced back at her, confused, and then realization dawned on his face. With a laugh, he slowed the motorcycle, drawing close to their destination. “No, not that brother. Red Hood is older than him.”
           After a beat of hesitation, Ellen asked, “I thought the other guy was Nightwing?”
           “He is,” sighed Damian, pulling the motorcycle to a stop in a tight alleyway. Getting off, he explained, “Not very many people know this, but I actually have four siblings. Three brothers and a sister.”
           “Oh, shit,” said Ellen, impressed. She too got up, slipping off the bike. “And I thought you were an only child.”
           “In fairness,” he said, shooting a grin her way, “I do act like one sometimes.”
           There was a loud thump before them, and a red helmet shone in the darkness as Jason Todd descended from the fire escape above. “Sometimes?” he echoed, teasing. “More like all the damn time.” He jerked his thumb at Damian and to Ellen, he said, “Kid’s insufferable.”
           While Ellen gave Jason an uncertain smile, Damian got straight to business. “You heard about our case?” he asked, his voice low.
           Jay gave a shrug, shaking his head slightly. “Rumors, mostly. I heard some evil assclown is selling Joker Venom pills to kids.”
           Damian nodded. “We’ve pursuing all the leads we’ve got, but we’re trying to pinpoint a distributor. What do you know?”
           “Nothing, really,” admitted Jay. “Nobody on my payroll goes anywhere near kids, definitely not all the way out to the suburbs. Besides, I have kind of a,” he paused, and though Ellen could not see his face behind the helmet, she imagined she could hear him smiling, “thing when it comes to the Joker, so most of my people know not to touch that shit with a ten-foot pole. Sorry,” he said, and he sounded genuinely apologetic. “Wish I could help more.”
           “It’s fine,” murmured Damian thoughtfully, taking this in. “Have you caught anyone selling to kids lately? Maybe this is someone you dismissed?”
           But Jason was already shaking his head. “Nope,” he said. “My reputation is pretty well-known by now, Robin. People don’t usually try and test me.”
           Glancing in between the two heroes, Ellen moved slightly forward. “Is there anyone who left your operation lately, maybe for unrelated reasons? I don’t think a street pusher goes straight to working for a supervillain, if you know what I mean – it’d make sense if our guy had some exposure to you and yours before he ever made it to where he is now.”
           Jason considered this for a moment.
           And then he let out a very small groan. Though the helmet obscured his expression, Damian’s pulse quickened, sensing and impending revelation. “Yeah,” said Jay, nodding ruefully. “Now that you mention it, yeah. There was this one kid – I didn’t exactly, like, kick him out, ‘cause he never really did anything wrong, but he was just…” he paused for a moment, as if searching for the word, “…creepy. Not like, in a big-bad-supervillain anyway, but he was just kind of a creep. A lot of the women who worked around him had…complaints. He never did anything,” he added mildly, “but they just got weird vibes from him. Women’s intuition, huh?” Ellen heard the grin in his voice, and imagined he may even have winked her direction.
           “Anything else?” she asked.
           “Yeah,” answered Jay, his voice turning serious once more. “This guy – his name’s Scott Morrison, he’s maybe your age, Ember. But I caught him following me around on patrol a few times. Not following,” he continued, qualifying himself, “but – showing up in suspicious places. Like he memorized my route, which is weird enough, but then he’d start asking if I ran into any of the Big Bads. He asked me about Joker maybe once before I put my fist through his front teeth.”
           Disappointed, there was a reprimand in his voice when Damian began, “Hood-”
           But Jay just laughed and held up his hands. “Wasn’t that bad, li’l wing, just scared him a little. Anyway, haven’t seen him since then.” Damian nodded, but before he could say anything Jay added, “OH! I almost forgot – there was this one time, super fuckin’ weird, I kind of tuned it out.”
           At this, Damian and Ellen exchanged looks. “What happened?” she asked.
           “OK,” he began, leaning in slightly and lowering his voice. “Now this is super weird, and don’t tell your old man, Robin, ‘cause it’s the kind of thing he’d whoop any of our asses for – but one time, I got, you know,” he mimed gunshots with both hands, “beat up, a little, and I was bleeding all over the place try’na find somewhere to hang out and lick my wounds, and I swear to you this guy – I caught him, like, on his hands and knees on the ground following me with a fucking sponge in his hands.”
           Both Damian and Ellen stared at him. “A sponge?” Ellen echoed, with a hint of disbelief.
           “Yeah,” said Jay, nodding his head. “A fucking sponge. Blood is literally dripping off of my body, and he’s on the ground sponging it up. It was like, the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”
           More heatedly than Ellen really thought was necessary, Damian demanded, “And you just let him take it? Why didn’t you tell Batman about this?”
           “Because,” answered Jay, rolling his head in a way that suggested he was also rolling his eyes, “no motherfucker’s dumb enough to try and clone me. You and your dad-” he broke off, glancing at Ellen, then corrected, “-I mean, the Big Man, sure, but me? Nobody gives a shit.”
           “It’s protocol,” said Damian stubbornly, but Jason shook his head.
           “Believe me, this guy wasn’t smart enough for anything like that. He was just fucking creepy.”
           There was a suspicious pause, and then Damian asked, “When did this happen?”
           “Like, maybe a month ago? But he quit working for me before that, maybe half a year or so.”
           Ellen glanced at Damian. “That fits,” she murmured. “Our first recorded overdose was almost four months ago. That leaves time for recruiting and initial distribution.”
           “Right,” said Damian, with a nod. The expression on his face was still severe. “Hood, we’ll need all the info you can get us on this Scott Morrison character.”
           “He used to have a place over in Midtown,” Jay said. “I think it was a motel or something, nothing permanent. Riverview, or something?”
           “Riverview,” repeated Ellen, with an urgent look towards Damian. “That was on Oracle’s list.”
           With a nod, Damian touched the commlink at his ear. “Thanks,” he said to Red Hood, and then into his comm he said, “Spoiler, come in.”
           Returning to Damian’s bike, they headed back through the city. By the time they reached Riverview Boarding House, Spoiler was waiting for them in Room 7. “I talked to the owner,” she said, as Ellen and Damian entered the room. “Somebody’s kept up-to-date on payments, but he hasn’t seen anybody come in or out for a couple weeks now.”
           “Probably since we started investigating,” said Ellen, as Damian moved forward to search the room. “He knew we were on to him and wasn’t about to get caught with his pants down.”
           “Robin,” said Nell, watching him search the walls for hidden compartments. He glanced around at her, and she jerked her head towards a door in the wall. “The closet.”
           For a moment he did not move, only stared at her. And then he turned to the rickety wooden door, and he opened it.
           Peering in behind him, Ellen made a face. “Gross,” she said.
           Damian said nothing, taking in the sight before them: a veritable shrine to the Joker, littered with newspaper clippings and amateur art and low-res photos printed from the internet. In the center, there was a small Robin action figure, the kind of thing sold at tourist traps in Gotham. The plastic Robin’s limbs and his head were all removed from his body.
           Gravely, Damian said, “He’s a Joker fan.”
           “That explains why he’s working with JGJ,” offered Nell, from behind them. When both Ellen and Damian glanced back at her, she clarified, “Uh, James-Gordon-Junior. He needed a snappier name.”
           Looking back at Damian, Ellen said thoughtfully, “It does explain the connection. Gordon used the lure of Joker Venom to recruit Morrison as his Dealer.”
           Still staring at the shrine, Damian’s brown skin had gone wan with disgust, and his lips were pressed tightly together. “I don’t understand these people,” he said lowly, then he stood up, getting to his feet. “The Joker is responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of people. He’s a criminal. He’s not funny, he’s not interesting, and I don’t understand people who find him compelling.”
           “Yeah,” agreed Nell sympathetically. “I mean, the guy’s basically a terrorist.”
           Ellen caught the brief flicker of emotion across Damian’s face, a momentary tell that betrayed how much Damian disliked that word. Still; Ellen didn’t think Nell was wrong. “This is good, though,” said Ellen, to Damian. “It means we can bait him.”
           Damian paused, then, very slowly, he turned around to look at Ellen.
----
           “No,” said Bruce, shaking his head.
           “It’s an hour, tops,” Damian insisted, leaning against the computer’s control panel in the Cave. “The entire team will be on top of him the whole time. It’ll be fine.”
           “No,” repeated Bruce, shaking his head. “You are not removing the Joker from Arkham custody for any amount of time. He is in solitary confinement for a reason, he’s too dangerous-”
           “A hour,” Damian repeated, practically begging his father. “Tightly contained and surveilled. It’s the easiest way to smoke out the Dealer.”
           “The easiest is not always the wisest,” said Bruce shortly, “and I will not permit you to play games with a dangerous criminal. He always has a plan, and he’s bested you before.”
           “But the entire team-”
           “My answer is final,” Bruce told his son. “Harleen is out on parole, perhaps she may be of some help.”
           As if disgusted by this suggestion, Damian began, “I’m not retraumatizing Doctor Quinzel on the off chance that she completes Scott Morrison’s Joker fantasy. Most Joker-philes like him think she’s a meaningless distraction anyway.”
           “I’m afraid I cannot allow the alternative, Damian. It’s too dangerous.”
           “We’re so close.”
           “Then find another way.” Bruce’s voice was not unkind as he said, “I believe in you, and I believe in your team. But this mission has already exposed you and Ember to that monster enough. It isn’t going to happen again.”
           For a moment, there was silence in the cave except for the constant whirr of machinery and the far-off drip of slowly-forming stalactites. There was a profound tension between father and son, thick enough to slice; Damian was once more angry that his father was blocking the team’s ventures, and yet Bruce would not budge. There was no compromise here.
           On the specimen analysis table, unceremoniously contained in a plastic box, the crowbar remained. Bruce had not been sure what to do it, and so as he ran his tests he had kept it there in full view for all to see. Mercifully, Jason had not ventured into the Cave the last time he was here.
           A part of Damian wanted to tell Bruce about Scott Morrison, known Joker fanboy, on his hands and knees, sponging up blood. He wanted to tell him that he’d dug up records that someone fitting Scott Morrison had made a clandestine visit to the Joker’s cell in Arkham, presumably leaving him with a gift. He wanted his father to know that the crowbar was a complete plant, and if the crust of bloodstains on its curved end matched Jason Todd’s, it wasn’t because this was the weapon that had been used to kill him.
           But Damian was still a sixteen year old, and he was still petty. Perhaps Bruce was being especially strict because of this painful reminder of his own failure at the Joker’s hands, but Damian was just spiteful enough to keep this small knowledge from his father anyway, let him simmer in his own guilt and shame.
           “Fine,” Damian said curtly. “Then any further deaths due to this Dealer character are on your conscience, Father.”
           Later, he updated Ellen on the situation via commlink while on patrol. She sounded somber. “So that’s it, then?” she sighed. “That plan is out.”
           “Hm? Oh, no,” said Damian, leaping from one rooftop to another, his boots absorbing most of the shock of impact. “We’re still going to do it. We just need to keep it a secret from Batman.”
           “What?”
           He fiddled at his commlink. “Ember, can you hear me? I said we need to keep it as secret from Batman.”
           “No, I heard you, I just – that’s impossible.”
           “Not impossible,” he corrected, “merely difficult for the inexperienced. Luckily you have me, and I happen to be extremely adept at keeping secrets from Batman. You have to learn that kind of thing,” he told her, offhandedly, “when you live in a house with him.”
           “Breaking the Joker out of Arkham is a little different than sneaking out to meet your girlfriend, Robin.”
           Without hesitation, Damian said coolly, “That’s not what I meant.” It had been, actually, almost exactly what he meant. “All I’m saying is that I know him well enough to anticipate where he’ll be watching. We do this quickly and effectively, and it’ll be over before he knows it.”
           “That’s…optimistic.”
           “I have been told I have a very glass-half-full demeanor, yes.”
           Ellen laughed, and despite himself Damian caught himself grinning. “If you say so. When’s it going down?”
           Good question. Damian considered this, standing above a stone gargoyle, scanning the cold city streets below him. “The longer we wait, the more drugs the Dealer gets out on the streets.”
           “Fair enough. What’s the plan?”
           “Meet the others at the Bunker. I’ll explain everything there.”
           When all was said and done, it did take a little more time than Damian had anticipated. The first phase was dependent on the speed and inertia of rumor, which was spread both throughout Brentwood via Colin and Niloufar and throughout the rest of drug-dealing Gotham by Jason and a select few on his payroll. The rumor spoke of an anniversary: the birth of the Joker, or the rebirth, rather, when a man was swallowed by acid and spat back out as something else. It was a trap, designed to target the biggest Joker fanboy who frequented those circles, who, of course, naturally knew the apocryphal location of that fateful warehouse.
           All they needed was one night. It had to work perfectly, smooth as silk, precise as clockwork; but Damian had faith in his team. Well. Ember’s team.
           Ellen herself was stationed at the warehouse, staking it out. Colin and Nell were off on the other side of the city, waiting for their cue; Niloufar was spearheading operations out of the Bunker, and Jordan was with Damian, her speed, strength, and flight, a necessary part of his plan.
           Hidden inside the bowels of Arkham Asylum, Jordan hovering slightly above him, Damian watched the seconds tick by on his mask’s lens display. For a minute or so, there was nothing but tense silence.
           And then Damian touched the commlink at his ear. “Abuse, Spoiler,” he said, “you’re good to go. Seraph, how are we on security?”            “All disabled and looped,” came Niloufar’s voice, without hesitation.
    ��      “Perfect,” he replied. “Ember, Jabberwock’s on her way.” He nodded towards Jordan, then took the lead, expertly navigating through the high-ceilinged halls of Arkham, avoiding guards.
           In his cell, the Joker was still singing. “Little Bunny Foo-Foo, hoppin’ through the forest…”
           Disabling the door’s security, Damian gestured for Jordan to take over. “Go.”
           She did so, wrapping her arms roughly underneath the Joker’s shoulders and heaving him up and out, shooting back the way she and Damian came, disappearing into the night. The Joker’s fading laughter echoed in Damian’s ears as he locked and secured the door once more, then slipped away, hoping no one would notice Joker’s sudden silence.
           As Damian headed back out to where his motorbike was stowed, he checked the open channel; the shit had, to put it delicately, apparently hit the fan, and Batman was barking orders at other Gotham heroes following an incident on the other side of the city, which meant he was far away from Arkham and from the docks where their plan was about to go down.
           It took him almost twenty minutes to make it to the warehouse. Leaving his bike some ways away, as he approached the empty, abandoned building he was certain he could hear that faint, familiar laughter. Their trap was lain.
           He found Ellen and Jordan in the rafters, high above the walkways which crisscrossed above vats which were now mostly empty. Jordan had dropped the Joker in one which had a foot or two of (probably?) nontoxic sludge at the bottom, and his laughter was so manic and so loud that its reverberations started to hurt Damian’s ears. He activated the dampeners in his commlink, relying on his teammates’ comms to hear them.
           “Nice work,” he told them both. “Abuse and Spoiler gave us an hour, tops. After that Batman resumes his normal patrol around the city, but we caught him as far away as we could, so it should be at least another hour after that before he realizes there’s anything amiss.”
           Though Ellen’s face was obscured, the sound of her voice betrayed her concern. “So Morrison better show up in the next two hours.”
           “He will,” said Damian, watching the dark and empty walkways below them. “He won’t be able to resist the lure of legend, and there’s no way he’ll stay away once he hears that.”
           “No kidding,” muttered Jordan, following his gaze.
           “That’s still leaving an awful lot to chance,” Ellen added, sounding uncertain. “The timeline seems kind of arbitrary, and I’m still not completely sure why we needed the Joker himself for this anyway? Seems to me we could’ve just used, I don’t know, a recording of his voice or something-”
           “Ember, please,” said Damian shortly, waving away her concerns. “I know what I’m doing.”
           “Yeah, OK,” she replied, maybe a little insulted. “I don’t doubt that, Robin, but I’m pretty sure Batman said that this isn’t your team, it’s mine, and part of me is starting to think the only reason you wanted to go get Joker in the first place was because your dad told you not to-”
           But before Ellen could continue or Damian, suddenly livid, could open his mouth to defend himself, Niloufar’s voice echoed in all of their ears. “Someone’s approaching the warehouse,” she told them, via commlink. “Good luck, you guys.”
           They didn’t reply, because at that moment they heard the big sheet metal door to the warehouse creak open. All at once, the Joker’s laughter suddenly stopped.
           Scott Morrison was not at all what Damian had been expecting. He was somewhere in his twenties, tall, slim, good-looking. His blond hair was gathered into a topknot, and he wore wide-brimmed glasses which appeared to have no magnifying effect on his eyes, and so therefore were probably only worn for the aesthetic appeal. Both he and Ellen shifted uncomfortably at the same time, perhaps coming to the simultaneous conclusion of, Oh no, he’s hot.
           “Hello?” he called into the vast warehouse, which Damian thought was a pretty stupid move. He went to the stairs which led to the walkways above the giant but now-empty vats, climbing them slowly, cautiously, peering around. “Joker? Mister J?” he called, which caused Damian to cringe slightly and Jordan to whisper, “Yikes.”
           Morrison continued, making his way across steel catwalk, his hands on the railing on either side. “I heard you laughing,” he called. “Are you here? Joker?”
           A low, sickly chuckle emanated from one of the vats. Morrison’s eyes went wide behind his fake glasses, and he darted across the walkway, leaning over the railing.
           The Joker leered up at him. His voice was low and frightening, like a purr in the back of his throat. “Who’s asking?”
           “Oh, shit,” said Morrison, in obvious excitement. “Holy fuck, OK, oh my God, Mister Joker, woah. Hold on,” he said.
           Morrison dug into his pocket, and Jordan muttered, “Oh, Christ,” as he took out a phone and literally posed for a selfie.
           “Oh my God, Mister Joker, big fan,” said Morrison, once he’d taken the picture. “Like, holy shit, I can’t believe this is actually happening-”
           Ellen gently nudged Jordan. “Go,” she whispered, but then Damian held out his arm.
           “Wait,” he said.
           In disbelief, Ellen blinked at him. “We have him,” she whispered angrily at him, “he’s right there, if we don’t move now then the Joker could tip him off to this whole operation-”
           But Damian was already shaking his head. “Wait,” he said again.
           This infuriated Ellen. Jordan just gave her an apologetic look and a shrug. Knowing Robin was the most experienced vigilante between the three of them, she forced herself into silence.
           In the vat, up to mid-calf in a thick yellowy-gray sludge, the Joker just stared up at Morrison, unimpressed. “Big fan, huh?” he echoed. “What era?”
           Morrison stared down at him. “Uh, what was that?”
           “What era?” repeated the Joker, sounding as petulant as a child. “Nicholson, Ledger, Leto? Who was your favorite?”
           “Um,” said Morrison uncertainly, “uh, no, sir, I think you misunderstand me, I’m just saying that like, you know, out of Batman’s whole rogues gallery, out of, you know, out of everything in Gotham that makes up the soul of this place – I mean, you’re it, man! Your presence is stamped into the very fabric of Gotham City! You’re everything!”
           There was a silence. The Joker stared up at him. “Not very funny, are you?” he asked, his lip jutting out in a pout.
           “What – I mean, no one’s as funny as the Clown Prince of Crime! But, like, I do have some stand-up material, if you like, want to hear?” He paused anxiously, then began, “OK, so, like, here’s one – why does Batman’s sidekick keep getting younger and younger?”
           Sounding bored, the Joker drawled, “’Cause the older ones keep dying.”
           “No,” said Morrison, “but – that’s funny too. No, it’s ‘cause – ‘cause he’s Robin the cradle. Get it? Like robbing?”
           There was a long, tense silence. And then the Joker let out a chuckle. “Hey, kid,” he called up, “that is pretty funny.”
           Beside her, Ellen could feel Damian tense, his entire body coiled tightly. He was aching to jump into action, she could tell. She didn’t entirely understand why he hadn’t already.
           “Hey, kid!” Joker called once more. “Why don’t you come on down here, and tell me a couple more of those funny jokes you got there?”
           A flash of uncertainty crossed Morrison’s face. “Oh, I – I don’t know-”
           “Aw, come on,” said the Joker, kicking around at the sludge under his feet. “Hey, wanna hear another one? What did Batman say to Robin before they got in the Batmobile?”
           Jordan leaned over and whispered, “I know this one!”
           “Get in the car, Robin,” said Joker, and then he wheezed with laughter, breathless in his own hilarity. A grin spread across Morrison’s face. Once more he dug into his pocket for something, then pulled out a plastic baggie full of pills. He snagged three or four out of the bag, and stuffed them into his mouth, swallowing them down.
           Then he climbed up on the railing, and he jumped down into the vat below.
           He hit the bottom with a sickening crunch, and let out a yelp of pain. “Got him,” muttered Damian, but once more he stopped Jordan from moving. “Wait.”
           The Joker stalked towards Morrison, who misinterpreted this as intent to help him up. “No!” he barked. “No, no, no! This is good! Pain is good, it’s freeing, like chaos of the mind!” He let out a loud, manicured laugh, as if it were something he practiced in the mirror. “See, Joker, man, I get it! I get you, the big joke behind everything, the ultimate gag! Laugh in the face of an indifferent universe! It doesn’t matter anyway, so why not try to burn as many bridges as you can on your way out, right? We all die in the end!”
           “That’s not very funny,” said the Joker.
           “It’s all funny!” insisted Morrison, as the Joker slowly neared him, like a shark stalking his prey. “That’s the point! It isn’t real! It doesn’t matter! That’s what makes the joke so damn funny-”
           The Joker grabbed Morrison’s topknot; his wide grin, usually so gleeful, was downturned into a comical frown. Though the slimy sludge at the bottom of the vat was only about a foot high, he shoved his face into it, sticking a knee on Morrison’s back to keep him down. Morrison started to struggle wildly, his shouts unintelligible as the ugly goo slipped into his mouth and nose.
           “It’s like babies in bathwater,” the Joker said, cocking his head, watching Morrison struggle. “Never understood it! You leave the kiddies alone for two minutes and suddenly they’re floatin’ on their bellies like a bunch of goldfish. How do they drown in that!” He let out a guffawing, belly-deep laugh, which sent a chill down Ellen’s spine. Pushing Morrison’s face deeper into the sludge beneath him, he roared, “It’s not that deep!”
           At that, Ellen disregarded her orders and moved. She leapt onto the steel walkway, sprinted down towards the vat, and jumped in, her feet landing squarely on Joker’s shoulders, knocking him off his feet. As Morrison lifted his face and gasped for breath, the Joker turned around to see her, and his face lit up. He laughed maniacally, gleeful.
           “Look who’s back!” he screeched. “How nice! How soon! Tell me, how’s Mama?”
           Ellen drew her fist back to throw a punch, but in a split second, the Joker had disappeared; she glanced up to see Jordan spiriting him away, presumably back to his cold cell in Arkham. There was a squelching thump behind her, and she turned around to see Robin glaring at her. As Morrison coughed, Damian said, “I had it under control.”
           Pointing towards the pathetic figure on his hands and knees, Ellen said, “Joker was going to kill him.”
           “He was going to scare him,” replied Damian pointedly. “Nothing like a healthy dose of trauma to cure you off your obsession with a criminal like the Joker.”
           Still wracked with coughs, Morrison’s head swiveled towards Damian, sludge dripping down his face. “S’not a – criminal – he’s an – artist-”
           Damian turned around, looking only mildly interested. He kicked at Morrison’s torso with his boot, and the man toppled over. “The eight-year-olds finger-painting at Neon Knight Centers are artists,” he told him. “The Joker’s just a two-bit con man who somehow stumbled into mythologization.”
           Gasping for breath, Morrison refused this. “He’s the – beating heart – of Gotham City! He’s Batman’s binary star! He defines the Batman!”
           Damian grabbed the man’s collar and swung a leg over his head so his feet stood on either side of him. His gloved fist connected solidly with the front of Morrison’s face. “He’s not that interesting,” Damian said shortly.
           “Where would Batman be without the Clown Prince of Crime?”
           Again, Damian punched him. “In better mental health than he is right now, that’s for sure.”
           “Who would he be? He’s the Batman’s greatest match! His greatest foil! The only other man he’ll ever truly understand!”
           His fist connected for a third time with Morrison’s face, and Damian looked over his shoulder to address Ellen. “People use that one a lot,” he said, sounding genuinely perplexed. “It really says something concerning about how people interpret empathy and intimacy in male relationships.”
           Once more Morrison attempted that terrible, overly-practiced laugh, and Damian turned around again to hit him in the face again. It was then that Ellen moved forward, placing a hand on Damian’s shoulder. “As satisfying as this may be,” she told him, sympathetically, “we’re here to get information out of him, remember? We need to know about Gordon.”
           “Gordon?” echoed Morrison; there was incredulity in his voice, even through the blood running out of his mouth. “J-James Gordon?”
           “That’s the one,” said Ellen, turning to him. “Junior, that is. Is he the one who’s been supplying you with the modified diaxamene?”
           “Diaxamene?” he repeated, but Ellen was already digging through his pockets for that plastic baggie full of pills, which she quickly found and removed. “I don’t know what the fuck diaxa-what is, that shit’s diluted Joker Venom!”
           “Yes, we know,” said Damian shortly, clearly still irritated. “You’re the one they call the Dealer, aren’t you?”
           “I – I don’t know, man, James just said to tell people that!”
           “James,” said Ellen, seizing hold of this. “He’s your supplier, isn’t he?”            His whole body trembling, he tried to nod, but it came out looking more like a seizure. Spittle gathered at the corner of his mouth, and his skin was quickly draining its color, turning pale. Quickly Damian pulled open one eyelid, inspecting his pupils. Tightening his grip on Morrison’s collar, Damian asked, “How many pills have you taken tonight?” Morrison started to shake violently, his eyes rolling back into his head, and through his teeth, Damian snarled, “No!” Removing one hand from Morrison’s collar, Damian flipped open a compartment on his utility belt, popped the cap off a tiny syringe, and plunged it into Morrison’s neck.
           “Anti-Venom?” asked Ellen. Damian nodded as Morrison’s shaking subsided, and he grew limp in Damian’s grip. “Robin,” she said, lowering her voice. “You can OD on diaxamene too if you take enough of it. The Anti-Venom may not work.”
           “Maybe not,” grunted Damian, “but it’ll give us more time.” He shook Morrison bodily by the collar, and the man’s head lolled on his neck, his eyes blinking out of sync. “Scott Morrison,” he barked, “we know you’re the Dealer, and we know you’re working with James Gordon, Junior. Listen to me. Tell me where he is, and I’ll do my best to save your sorry life. If you have nothing to give me, then I will leave you here, and you will die alone in a warehouse where no one will find your body for weeks, if not months, and you’ll go to your grave knowing that Joker himself thinks you’re not fucking funny. Now,” he said, his voice calm and collected. “Where is James Gordon Junior?”
           Something was catching in Morrison’s throat, making it impossible to reply; Ellen had a suspicion that it was vomit, his stomach protesting against all the poison he’d swallowed. Incapable or unwilling to form words, he merely lifted his hands, and he pointed out of the windows which lined the walls, just below the ceiling.
           Damian paused, then he twisted around, following the direction of Morrison’s finger. Ellen did as well, but she didn’t understand: all that was visible out of the window was the night sky, stars faded above the lights of the city, and the shooting spire of the tallest building in Gotham City – Wayne Tower.
           Grabbing Morrison’s hair, Ellen hissed, “Is this a game to you?” but Damian had already let him go, shooting his grappling hook out onto the walkway above.
           He touched the commlink at his ear. “Seraph!” he called wildly. “Seraph, come in!”
           Something dropped into Ellen’s stomach as she understood. Following Damian, she sent out a 911 call with Morrison’s location and status, then quickly followed Damian onto his bike. Niloufar had never responded to Damian’s call, and when he tried Jordan, he heard nothing from her either.
           As they raced through Gotham, Ellen asked, “You think Gordon knows about the Bunker?”
           “Maybe,” murmured Damian. “I know he knows about my family, and he knew about Batman back when we were based out of the Bunker. It’s a tease, Ember, don’t you get it? The diaxamene, the Joker Venom, the dead child so close to the Manor? He’s been playing us this whole time.”
           “How?” asked Ellen, confused. “What do you mean?”
           The bike shot into the secret entrance to the Bunker, and Damian was off of it immediately, sprinting into the main computer hub. “Seraph!” he called, looking around wildly, but there was no one there. “Seraph!”
           Before them, the computer screen glowed a blank white. Something blared on both Damian and Ellen’s comms, Batman sending out an emergency signal for something going down at Arkham. “Jabberwock,” said Ellen to Damian, fear tight in her voice. “Something’s gone wrong-”
           For a moment, Damian did nothing. On either side of him, he squeezed his fists tightly, gloves still stained red with Scott Morrison’s blood.
           Then he turned to Ellen and said, “We can’t leave. Gordon’s here.”
           “Where?”
           Damian gestured for her to follow him, then took her through a set of doors she’d never seen open; he peeled his mask off his face, then lowered his eye down to a retina display. It blinked green, and an elevator opened. He held out one hand as if to say to her, After you.
           “Where are we going?” she asked, unmoving.
           He shrugged, then stepped into the elevator first. “The Penthouse,” he said shortly. “It’s where Nightwing and I lived back when he was Batman. If I’m right, it’s where Gordon’s set up camp.”
           In disbelief, she finally boarded the elevator with him. “And how is it possible that none of your fancy security features ever picked up on anything up there?”
           “I don’t know,” said Damian shortly, pressing his mask back onto his face. The elevator moved so rapidly with such sudden force that Ellen almost stumbled. “But it’s stupidly obvious – where’s the one place we would never look? Right under our noses, of course.”
           Ellen glanced up at the ceiling of the elevator. “Or – above our noses, I guess,” she mumbled.
           They emerged in a hallway; Damian jogged to the door and took off his glove, pressing his thumb against a scanner, and then he said aloud, “Voice recognition, Damian Wayne,” and the lock of the door let out a little click.
           Lowly, Ellen asked, “If your security’s so tight, how’d he get through?” but Damian ignored her, pressing his gloved hand against the door and pushing.
           The Penthouse was dark, but a light was on down the hallway, coming from the kitchen. When Ellen and Damian entered, a voice called, “In here!”
           With a wary glance at each other, they followed the source of the voice. Turning the corner into the big modern kitchen, they found James Gordon Jr. sitting at the counter, glasses on his face, a spoon tucked into a pot of yogurt.
           “Hi,” he said, waving at them. “Hey, it’s nice to finally meet you, Damian.” To Ellen he said, “I don’t know who you are,” then continued, “Nice digs, huh? Dick could’ve decorated more probably, but personally I like it.”
           “Where is Seraph?” asked Damian, his voice flat.
           “If you mean the girl downstairs,” James answered, scooping up a spoonful of yogurt, “she left a while ago. Probably to help her friend with the Joker.” Blandly, he looked at Damian. “Really nice of you to break him out and everything for me, Damian. I didn’t even have to lift a finger.”
           “You’re done, Gordon,” Damian told him. “Your operation is shut down.”
           “What operation?” asked James, looking mildly interested.
           “The drugs.”
           “I don’t have any drugs,” said James, innocently.
           Damian stared at him, his expression stony and unreadable.
           “Go ahead, search the place,” James continued. “Not a lot around here except some personal mementos. Sorry for squatting, but, hey, life’s tough when everyone thinks you’re a psychopathic murderer, right, Damian?”
           Color dropped out of Damian’s cheeks, then suddenly rushed back in, flushing his brown skin. Sensing they had to take control of this situation, Ellen stepped up. “We’ve got you, Gordon,” she said simply. “We got the Dealer, too. We know what you’ve been putting out on the streets.”
           “I haven’t been putting anything on the streets,” James said smoothly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
           Feeling a surge of anger, she suddenly sympathized with Damian’s fury. “Scott Morrison-”
           “-OD’d,” said James flatly. “Right?”
           Damian and Ellen exchanged a look. For all they knew, Morrison had died before the paramedics reached him.
           “Scott Morrison was a crazy man with a Joker fetish,” James said, with a shrug. He ate a spoonful of yogurt. “Nothing to do with me.”
           “The diaxamene-”
           For the first time, a hunt of frustration entered his voice. “Any idiot could’ve gotten ahold of that. Haven’t you heard, Miss Nayar? Prescription pills are all the rage nowadays. Oh,” he added, picking up a remote from behind him, pointing it at the television on the wall. “Would you look at that.” A Breaking News broadcast played, informing viewers that a potential catastrophe at Arkham Asylum had narrowly been avoided, and the Joker, who had mysteriously vanished from his cell, was back in custody.
           James smiled at Damian and Ellen.
           “All according to plan,” he said.
           Damian’s eyes were glued to the screen, slightly in shock as the news showed shaky video footage of a slim figure shooting into the sky, holding someone else in their arms. It was obviously Jordan, and it looked like she was carrying Niloufar, who had covered her face with her headscarf against the cameras. Despite himself and the absurdity of the situation, he somehow found himself taken by surprise that they had managed to solve the situation on their own, without his help.
           James Gordon Jr. did not fight back. He did not protest; when the police came, they arrested him, but found no evidence of wrongdoings in the Penthouse except, obviously, trespassing. Later, into his commlink, Oracle informed Damian that they were holding her brother temporarily, but they may not have enough solid evidence to put him away.
           Meanwhile, Ellen got a quick status report from the other members of the team, then checked on Scott Morrison. He was alive, but comatose.
           As the late nighttime hours began to bleed into the impossibly early morning, Damian and Ellen sat on the rooftop of a building, their legs hanging down over the side.
           “I know – technically – we won,” said Ellen, peering down at the city streets below them. “So why does it still feel like we got played?”
           “It usually feels like that,” Damian told her dully, without looking around at her. “Especially with filth like the Joker and Gordon, Junior. It always feels like there’s something we missed.”
           “We didn’t need to take the Joker out of custody.”
           “No,” agreed Damian. “I…suppose I just hate it when people think the Joker is bigger than he is. He’s a lowlife criminal. I wanted Morrison to understand that.”
           “I think that’s the problem,” said Ellen, glancing around at him. “It…strikes me that you really can’t take these things personally in this business.”
           Damian didn’t answer for a moment. Then, slowly, he got to his feet. “I understand that,” he announced, with some finality. “But…I don’t think it’s right to remove your own feelings out of these kinds of situations. I think that’s how you end up like Batman.”
           “And that’s a bad thing?”
           “It’s the worst thing,” he told her, his gaze flickering over to her. “A terrible option. The bad ending.”
           “I don’t know,” she challenged, with a shrug. “He took care of this city for a long time before you came along. Maybe he knows something you don’t.”
           This obviously troubled Damian. He bade her farewell, and then he made his way back to Wayne Manor, arriving in the Cave just as the very first edges of dawn began to break. His father was already there, seated in his throne before the computer, as always. Damian noticed the crowbar was gone from its place on the specimen table.
           He removed his mask on his way up from the garage, passing his father at the computer and heading in the direction of the stairs that led up to the house above. Before he reached them, though, he paused, and he turned around.
           “Father,” he said.
           Bruce moved only slightly, glancing over his shoulder.
           “I’m sorry,” he admitted, like pulling teeth.
           For a moment, nothing happened. And then Bruce turned back to the computer, his fingers clacking away on the keyboard. “What are you apologizing for?” he asked. “You won.”
           “The Joker-”
           “Is back in Arkham.”
           “But I-”
           “Maybe you made mistakes, Robin,” said Bruce, still facing the screen, “but your team was there for you, and they took care of it. I was impressed with Jabberwock and Seraph in particular tonight. Jabberwock should do very well on patrol, though I believe Seraph would benefit from a more permanent headquarters.” On the screen, Bruce flipped through a series of safehouses he’d long kept on reserve. “The Haven, perhaps?”
           Damian gaped at his father. “Headquarters?” he asked. “Patrol? You mean to say – this is it? You really trust them?”
           “I trust you,” said Bruce, “and I trust Ember. That’s got to be enough for now.”
           Still, Damian felt discontent. “Father,” he began, “I still think – if we had just-”
           “Ifs and should haves are poison, Damian,” said Bruce, without looking around. “You won. Red Hood and some of his contents are working on getting Gordon’s drug off the streets, but without a supplier, it should dry up on its own.”
           “And Gordon?”
           “From what I hear of him, he’s no criminal mastermind. He just likes toying with people. If he can, his father will put him away.”
           “His father,” echoed Damian, trying to ignore the obvious parallels suddenly rearing his mind. “I imagine you might be feeling some…empathy, for his situation.”
           “None at all, Damian. None at all.”
           Damian rolled his eyes, then turned to head up into the Manor, taking the stairs two at a time.
----
NAME: Niloufar Ghorbani ALIAS: N/A / Seraph DATE OF BIRTH: 16 October 1996 BLOOD TYPE: O+ (Full Medical History) EMERGENCY CONTACT: Nazanin & Mahmoud Ghorbani, Parents (Contact) AFFILIATIONS: Team Ember EVAL: Observe for further development of metahuman abilities
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