Dick Grayson, AKA Nightwing, was on a solo mission when he disappeared off the face of the earth.

He would be the first to admit; he'd been an idiot.

He'd had a fight with Bruce, and as a result wiped everything he could so that the Big Bat couldn't find him and interfere with his case.

He'd scrubbed everything with Barbara's help, gave Damian and Tim burner phones so that he could reach out to them, and fuckin bounced.

But he shouldn't have done that.

Because he'd lied to Barbara, to make absolutely certain Bruce wouldn't be able to find him before he was ready.

He'd gone somewhere for a mission on the entirely opposite side of the country.

And then he'd gotten shot with...some kind of gun.

He wasn't too sure.

But he didn't die.

After he pulled himself further into the forest, sure that he was going to finally meet his maker, the world...got bigger.

Dick shrunk, and could only watch in horror as his hands got pudgier and pudgier.

He was a baby.

He was a baby that couldn't even lift his head, and he could feel his memories starting to fade, seeming to be grabbed and shoved behind some sort of wall.

This tiny baby gets found by Forest Ranger Samantha Manson, a registered emergency foster parent.

So while the batfamily is salting the earth looking for Dick, he's being absolutely spoiled fucking rotten by the Manson Family; Daniel Manson, Tucker Manson, and Sam Manson.

Dick has...some memories. A few recollections.

But also the white-haired adult is floating again and waving the rattle-noise-maker, so those stupid thoughts can wait.

While we're on the topic of De-aging AU's I wanna talk about Jason and Damian if Jason was 14 again real quick.

Do you guys think that Damian looks at this version of Jason, so different from the version he knows, nothing like the person he was told Jason was, and feels uncomfortably seen?

Damian was always told that Jason died because he was reckless, because he disobeyed orders, he was fired as Robin and he got himself killed. A cautionary tale, not a threat to his position. He dismisses Jason because Bruce does, because Dick does, because sometimes even Babs and Alfred do.

That's not the kid that he's looking at now. This Jason is happy, and smart, and full of love that has not yet soured into grief. He hangs on Bruce's every word, trains until his hands bleed and his body gives out to perfect the moves Bruce teaches him. He looks at Bruce with stars in his eyes and he calls him dad.

And Damian can't help but think, that this is the perfect Robin. The perfect son. And if Jason - sweet, loving, strong, Jason - can be fired, can die and have his room locked away and his pictures torn down, can have his last memory as Robin be as A Good Soldier, how could the rest of them ever compete? What could Damian do to stand a chance?

Jason will never grow out of the shadow of Robin, like the rest of them did. As long as Bruce, and Dick, and Babs, and Alfred look at him and see a dead kid who came back wrong, he will never get to be anything else. He will not get to be looked at through who he is now without the shadow of a dead boy looming over him.

And the worst part? Jason is exactly the same person he was back then. Bitter, sure, angry, justifiably, but he is still the boy with too much love in his heart and righteous fury festering in his gut. He is exactly the same boy who threw himself in front of an explosion to save his mother.

(The lines between the mother that betrayed him and the father that disgraced him are so very blurred. Fire or blade or crowbars or fists it does not matter. It ends the same way it always does because Jason Todd always dies, in every universe, in every timeline, Jason dies and crawls out only to be killed again and again and again.)

new chapter 7 installment dropped how we feelin????

YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND

THAT'S HIS DAD

The parts of you that support me

Prompt 138

Danny squints up at the blurry form cradling him, brain trying to catch up with his situation. He can feel the pulse of his siblings’ cores nearby, gently pulsing contentedly despite the chaos of his last memories. His limbs feel too small and pudgy, too-small fingers gripping onto something as his vision started to clear. 

There was a man, holding him? Cradling his too-small form like he was an infant- was he an infant? He was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be, he had been older but now he wasn’t. He squinted up at the stranger, green eyes meeting green. Huh. They kind of looked like he could be their dad or something. 

jjk 223

How it should have gone

i may be going insane

do x dc prompt #48

When Jason first found himself dead in the Infinite Realms, he was just about lost without a way to contact his family. He fell into a deep depression and only started crawling out of it when Danny took him under his wing. They found they related to each other a lot and could sympathize with being a teen hero, and soon were practically inseparable.

Then he was resurrected.

Jason was so angry and he had no idea why. Every time something reminded him of what came after death, he would fly into a blind rage because he can’t remember anything. He’s missing something essential in his memories, and he can’t admit that to his family, so he doesn’t.

The second time Jason died, it was only for a few minutes. A quick enough end after hitting the surface of the ocean and inhaling what seemed like gallons of seawater. He woke up in the zone, cradled in the grip of the man who took him in the first time, who his memory of had been blocked. They barely had time to catch up before Jason was hauled back to the land of the living. This time he didn’t forget.

The third time Jason died, They thought that was finally it. There’s not a lot of people that can come back from their upper half and lower half being separated for over an hour after all. He settled in. They watched his family, making sure they were coping alright(they weren’t, and it was so painful to watch-).

On the day of his funeral almost two months later(they wanted to wait as long as possible, he came back once after all, they needed to make sure. They wouldn’t leave him to crawl out of his own grave a second time.) The halfa king and the new(?) ghost watched. Jason committed every word of his eulogy to memory, everything his friends and family said. When the alley kids even stepped up to say their goodbyes, Danny pointedly ignored Jason’s open sobs(he never liked people seeing him vulnerable). The burning grief in his core was becoming unbearable(if he was just a little more open would his family have realized that the mission had gone sideways sooner?). Danny flinched next to him and turned toward Jason just as reality snapped and warped, dragging him back. Away from the Infinite realms(his home-) for a third time.

Dick didn’t know what to think when the motion sensors started going off right before they lowered the coffin. To say he was stunned for a moment was an understatement, He didn’t so much as twitch until a fist broke through the lid of the box.

Once is a coincidence. Twice is an anomaly. Three times is a pattern. Nobody ever told Jason how awkward it could be crashing your own funeral. He’d almost prefer digging out his grave.

Danny isn’t just going to sit quietly this time. Jason is back in the living world, completely defenseless. He needs to protect his ward.

(immortal!Danny? yes. today i present to you the first ever time i’ve seen Immortal!Jason ;).)

I find it so SO interesting that as soon as Kazui's breaking their marriage vows and revealing his true feelings (literally tearing apart the dove), the wife is already falling off the balcony

Her hair is fluttering in the wind. The apple fucking splatters on the ground this whole sequence is so visceral I'm spinning it around in my mind. Kazui views his truth telling as a violent act, the killing blow.

Did Brambleclaw actually disown the Three when the secret is revealed? I don't remember this happening (then again, it's been a while) but it does bug me how all three go "Poor brambleclaw :(( He was such a good dad to us and he has to learn we're not even his biokits :(((( poor guy" while simultaneously shitting on Leafpool and Squirrelflight despite them showing them more care and affection before AND after the reveal. If he does disown them, then.... WOW is the double standard real here.

In-canon? It's something you have to approximate. They don't seem to have a concept of ""disowning"" because blood relation is taken as such an insurmountable, FUNDAMENTAL fact of life. He doesn't write them out of his little kitty will and testament, but his actions ARE disowning.

It's as if the fact he is not their biological father is an automatic disowning. From the reveal onwards, he is immediately cold, distant, and the "betrayal" is mentioned often. The Three also explicitly don't blame him for his behavior, like it's just to be expected that he's Not Their Dad anymore.

Lionblaze in particular stares longingly at him several times, really missing him. And like... that's kinda what gets my goat so much

I do believe Brambleclaw is entitled to his feelings of betrayal. I believe Squilf was ultimately in the right to lie, actually, but he's still allowed to be upset and angry that she didn't trust him enough to tell him something so important. THAT SAID, YOU ARE NEVER ENTITLED TO TREAT OTHERS POORLY.

And that's what GETS me. He isn't upset that it was all revealed in such a painful and embarassing way when this could have been avoided, or that his lover struggled with this lie for so long without him, or that he feels he's lost his children. Squilf points it out in The Last Hope-- He's so ANGRY at Squilf that he will THROW HIS FAMILY AWAY

Lionblaze seems desperate to be his son again. Hollyleaf is gone for months, and Brambleclaw is still huffing about the secret when she comes back from the dead. Squilf is fawning in the hopes it makes him talk to her again. Doesn't matter. Brambleclaw Is Upsetti Spaghetti so the narrative will never examine his role in hurting this family he apparently loved so much.

(Narrative seems to understand full well that when Squilf lies for a good reason, that doesn't invalidate the hurt Brambleclaw felt... but when Brambleclaw is upset for a good reason, it actually DOES validate what he put her and his kids through)

In BB it is explicitly a disowning. He cuts them off as his children, and they reciprocate. BB!Lionblaze does so in a ball of fury, vowing that he has ONLY a mother.

"just dont lose yourself, okay?"

"i cant. i've tried to."

"Don't forget to enjoy this, today. Cuz if you lose yourself in trying to hurt the people who took it, you might....just don't forget the good stuff, okay?"

"i cant. i've tried."

godddd cellbits recurring motif of "i cant. ive tried." whenever someone tells him not to lose himself, both the bad and the good is so.. the implication of a perpetual fruitless spiral of turning man to monster and monster to man, and failing at both because loves too deeply and instinct is ingrained into him deeper than the carvings in his knife. he cant fucking stand himself. he can't stand how he can't be normal and has to rely on drinking copius amounts of coffee to stay awake enough to not lose it. he can't stand how even in the depths of his desire for vengeance, he hears the pain in his loved ones' voices and still stops to listen. these two parts of him have to be incongruous, because he knows he was happier when he was one without the other. and yet, time and time again the people who care about him tell him not to lose himself like they view him as whole. and again and again, he tells them that he can't. because he's tried to break himself in half and it doesnt fucking work like that. and he'll continue until he destroys himself because hes fucking Tired of being whole.

I can't wait for everyone to be reunited again

it is friday my dudes (little hearts added by @tazmiilly)

DC x DP Prompt *15*

When Batman is out in his cowl he is able to record anything so that he can few it later. The faces he sees will run through a program for face recognition. This makes it easier to recognize faces of potential villains civilian identities. Because of that, the camera system of Wayne Enterprises is also linked to the program. The problem is, the same things applies to his league colleagues.

Of course he already knows the identity of most of them, but that is because they told him or he found out on pure accident.

But because of this he takes his colleagues faces out of the program. As long as they don't go rouge he sees no reason to infringe on this part of their life.

Well at least that is what he normally does, but he didn't bother with Phantom. Not only are there few cameras that can even catch him. He is also a dead, fourteen years old boy.

So really, it isn't Bruce fault. If he had known that Danny Phantom had a civilian identity, he would have gone through the trouble of blocking his face in the program.

But now a young man in his early twentieth sat before him, with a nervous smile on his face. And he is making puns. Daniel Fenton (and God they needed to talk about a better hero name, now that he knew the boy had a very similar civilian name) was the negative of Phantom. Black hair, blue eyes, older and alive.

But he could scold him later, after the job interview was over and Bruce found a way to explain to Danny that his new boss was also a founder of the Justice League.

That wouldn't be fun...

Look, I love BBC Merlin and how they told the lore, but I’m a sucker for the relationship between Arthur and Mordred in the mythology. Specifically, I love how Mary Stewart (author of The Arthurian Saga**) and Nancy Springer (author of I Am Mordred**) wrote about the father/son relationship between them. So naturally, my brain has been conjuring up how I can include that in my Flipping the Coin au.

Since the main premise is Merlin died/Arthur lives, and now Arthur is the one waiting for Merlin to come back, things would stay consistent with canon up to the last episode (when Merlin flips the coin of their destiny and sacrifices himself so Arthur can live and thus stop Camlann from happening altogether). Which is where this idea will start:

Gwen is barren. She and Arthur never have kids. Eventually, everyone Arthur knows and loves dies. He can’t rule Camelot forever, and after Gwen’s death, he no longer wants to, so he fakes his death and wanders off figure out why he’s still here. He never gets an answer for that. Arthur spends the next millennium waiting. He keeps living. He meets people, experiences things he’d never experienced before, and learns things he’d never dreamed of learning. He can’t stay anywhere long, or else suspicions will rise, but he gets to see the world change, how technology advances, and witness humans continuing to be humans. When war breaks out, he joins the battle. It’s familiar. The rush of adrenaline is the same whether he’s wielding a sword or a gun. Only, he can’t see the enemy’s face anymore.

Peace comes again. At some point, he sleeps with a woman, and she happens to become pregnant. Bisexual disaster that he is, he’s had all sorts of partners from both sexes, but has never had this happen, even before the advent of reliable birth control. Later, he’ll learn her name is Morgause. She doesn’t look like the Morgause he knew before, nor does she act like her, but her name haunts him. After the baby is born, she gives him to Arthur, says she has no intentions of being a mother, and leaves. The last thing she had said to him was the baby’s name.

Mordred.

That night, Arthur holds Mordred and weeps.

There is irony in his son being named Mordred. First, in that the legends surrounding him, Merlin, Camelot, the Knights of the Round Table, and all of it, had long ago decided Mordred was his son. And two, in a retelling of that legend, it had aptly phrased what he sensed was happening now. Granted, he isn’t a sorcerer, he doesn’t have magic, so he can’t support his feeling with anything other than he’d been around a long time and knew to his very core that it was true. Mordred’s birth is a signal of the beginning of the end.

Fatherhood brings him a new sense of purpose. Gone are the days of loneliness and drudgery. Every day with Mordred brings a new light into his life. Each smile is a miracle. Seeing Mordred experience things for the first time brings a new appreciation. Being there to watch him grow makes time fly like it never has before. But Arthur is afraid. He doesn’t want to be his father. He doesn’t know how to be a father, or what the right way to do it is. In all the years he’s been on the Earth, he’s never known a man who could concretely say, “This is the way to raise a son,” and actually reap the fruits of their efforts. Too frequently, he’d seen sons grow outside of the visions their fathers molded for them and receive only disappointment and disdain in return. So he was afraid, because he too had been that son.

*cue a series of fluffy father/son one shots of Arthur raising Mordred until Merlin comes back, takes one look, and is is like WTF????? No, I won’t have Mordred for a step son >:(*

**Mary Stewart and Nancy Springer have several other works, not just the stories I mentioned. The ones mentioned are the ones I’m pulling inspiration from ^^

Additional notes below the break:

Guinevere’s barrenness is not a headcanon I typically subscribe to for BBC Merlin. My headcanon is that after Arthur’s death, Gwen gives birth, and their child eventually succeeds her as ruler.

I’ve always seen Mordred’s appearance as the harbinger of Arthur’s downfall. Thus, the reason for the plot bunnies in my brain going crazy with this idea of how I could bring him in, still remain mostly canon compliant with BBC Merlin, and build off some of my favorite parts of the lore. (Mandatory disclaimer: for BBC Merlin, I don’t headcanon Mordred as Arthur’s son. But for the mythology, I do wholeheartedly support that canon.)

Arthur’s choice to participate and live once Camelot is gone is a decision to contrast my headcanon of how Merlin handled it. I don’t think Merlin thrived. I think he stayed busy, and tried to remain hopeful, but I think he was anxiously consumed with the anticipation of wondering when Arthur would come back. In this au, Arthur may or may not know that Merlin is supposed to come back (I’m still working on that detail), but he’s always been around others. I think he would seek camaraderie, and companionship, and that he would connect with others but only to a superficial level. I don’t think he’d exist in a void of loneliness. Plus, he doesn’t have the guilt of knowing he failed because the pressure from the prophecy is very one sided *coughcough*causemerlinnevertoldhim*coughcough*

Anyways, that’s enough rambling from me about this. I’ll probably share some snippets of writing next because there are some fantastic scenes coming together in the draft so stay tuned! ;D