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internalsealpanic · 4 years

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Monster Monster

I wholeheartedly blame this pic for the existence of this fic. I just wanna hug him and ruffle his hair.

Summary: Parent Teacher Conferences are very scandalous.

a/n: This is actually one of my few fics where reading some of my previous fics will help. I highly recommend reading Of Midnight Smoothies and Murder Mysteries to get a better feel on Dick and Reader’s relationship but anything on the Dick Grayson masterlist works too. Special thanks to @littleredwing89 and @americasmarauders for proofreading. Thanks to @littleredwing89 and @batarella for help with the ending.

warnings: A slur is mentioned but it gets shut down. Also, swearing.

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“Tt, stop staring at me.”

You bite back a smile and what was probably a laugh rising in your throat. “Hmmm, no.” You hum, carding your fingers through Damian’s curls. The corners of your mouth twitch into a frown when you feel an angry bump against your fingers. It’s dry and there seems to be no break in the skin as far as you could tell. You let a little sigh of relief escape you which has the unintended consequence of upsetting the gremlin in front of you.

Damian attempts to swat your hand away, snarling as he did. You grin at him, all sharp teeth and pettiness. You, being childish, do not take your hand away and instead ruffle his hair more. An adorably petulant pout settles on Damian’s mouth making the kid look ten-years-old for once. It takes everything in you not to squeal in delight.

“Unhand me. I do not require your mothering and you would do very well to leave the scolding to Richard or Pennyworth.” You can easily picture Alfred scolding Damian but Dick? You try to picture Dick, hand on his hip, trying his damndest to be mean to the kid but you just couldn’t. Sure, Nightwing can be terrifying, even Batman but Dick? Especially with a kid? Not even feasible. You snort openly, the noise echoing in the deadly silent room. The woman on the other side of the room sitting next to a boy with a faceful of bruises and probably a couple of chipped teeth glares at you. Specifically, the woman scowls at your arm, skin festooned with bangles of coiled serpent tails and glittering blades. You fight the urge to stick your tongue out at her. Instead, you tug a bit at your sleeves, baring the golden lines streaked with old gashes. A low humorless laugh escapes you causing her scowl to deepen.

Damian follows your line of sight. His face folds in utter contempt. The boy next to her flinches. Their size difference made this all the funnier. “[What did he do?]” you ask in what you hope are the correct words in Arabic. Damian crosses his arms not meeting your gaze. His leg kicks out, the restlessness thrumming in his bones. “[Your accent is atrocious.]”

Your mouth twitches uncontrollably, edging into a fond smile. You tamp it down with a click of your tongue lest the little demon tear your head off. “[I’m out of practice, child,]” Damian grabs at a space beside him only for his hand to close on nothing. Something inside you dies when you stop yourself from cackling. Thank goodness, Bruce has--had--the good sense to take the kid’s katana away.

“[Anyway, what did he do?]”

“[How are you so sure he did something?]”

“[Because you’re a brat but not stupid. You are by far the most annoyingly reasonable child I have had the displeasure of conversing with.]” Damian’s eyes widened in surprise. It seems the assumed hatred was mutual. You watch as he folds his face back into a glower, not quite fast enough to evade your attention but certainly fast enough to fool the untrained eye. Unfortunately for him, you’re used to the acrobatics of faces, the chaotic cacophony of microexpression. Most people in your life are, after all, awful at broadcasting their feelings even when it was sorely needed. This is probably why you gravitated to Dick so easily. The man believed in openness, in communication.

Distantly, you can hear the woman across from you tap her foot impatiently against the carpet. A flick of your eye tells you she was sneering at both of you likely eavesdropping (and failing) on your conversation. Why she needs to know what you and a ten-year-old with a stick up his ass were talking about you weren’t sure. Damian turns his head slightly towards you, angling his chin upward to mask the uncertainty in his posture. “[If you must know, he-]”

“Gypsies”

The syllables ring like a loud staccato of gunshots despite how quietly she’d hissed it. You freeze. You can feel Damian stiffen right beside you. Understanding flowed into you molten and bubbling. You feel your throat itch, unkind words coalescing into a lump in your throat. You turn your body to Damian who was now still but you can feel the anger wicking off him. You sling your arm over the head of the chair behind him drawing his attention back to you.

He arches a brow at you, challenging. The expression falters when the next few words leave your mouth.

“[You’re off the hook.]”

Principal Jameson is a nasally man. It isn’t his anything to do with his voice. Though, you would be remiss to say that his voice was pleasant. You’re actually half tempted to turn your bad ear on him, block out the words coming from him but that would negate the point of you coming here. His voice isn’t that unpleasant but his entire demeanor rubbed you the wrong way. You’ve seen jellyfish with more backbone than this man. Then again, this might just be a by-product of your presence. Dick, and several other batbrats, have helpfully informed you that you were in fact pants pissing scary to civilians. You would like to say you couldn’t see it but standing in front of this man it was clear as day.

“Y/n L/n,” you offer congenially. His shoulders ease a fraction but did not offer you a hand. You smother a sigh before offering an additional “I believe Mr.Grayson-Wayne had informed you that I would be coming in his stead to discuss this-” Shit show, your mind supplies but thankfully, your mouth was quick enough to bite it back. “- incident.” Beside you Damian scoffed. You stop yourself from kicking the kid because that really would not do.

“Yes, well, Ma’am your-” Jameson halts frankly unsure of your relationship to Damian because of course, Dick would leave the leg work to your socially allergic ass. You make a mental note to kick him later. “- charge.” you supply, feeling a modicum of sympathy for the drowning man.Your eyes flick to Damian. His face is impassive, ire still directed at the thirteen-year-old sniveling behind his mother. The term is too cold for your taste but as of right now that’s all you were. Maybe you’ve finally found a Robin you wouldn't get attached to.

“Well, ma’am, you see your charge, Damian, he’s punched another student and has yet to even apologize. He even started a full on brawl.”

“Mhmm, I see,” you drawl tilting your head. You feel Damian stiffen at the ease of your response. You don’t have to look at his face to know that he was glaring at you with something in his eyes withering from the betrayal. The woman across from nods agreeably as if you had said something sensible. Jameson for his part nearly sighs with relief. You click your teeth a little irritable from their responses but more fascinated than anything. ‘I see’ is barely an answer but they each filled in the gaps with their own assumptions. “And has that young man over there apologized for what he said to Damian? Or for the lump on Damian’s head? Surely, you sent Damian to the clinic as well.” you voice out looking as scandalized as possible.

The room froze.

Your eyes will probably roll into the back of your head before your meeting is done. Judging from Jameson’s posture, they didn’t. They should have at least checked if the kid had a concussion. A familiar sort of ire rose in you. Oh boy, you’re going to have a field day with these people. You sigh in exasperation before continuing. “Not only did you neglect to send him to the clinic to check on the lump on his head, but you were also planning to let the other boy off the hook?” you accuse, voice rising with some effort. Your voice has a tendency to draw low when your temper is flaring. It’s an intimidation tactic you'd learned from a while ago. It would probably be ill advised to use it on a man who looked like he was a second away from a heart attack.

Jameson leans forward, reaching out appeasingly.“Ma’am, we-”

“From what I recall, Gotham Academy has a strict zero tolerance policy on derogatory language, does it not?” You cut him off, voice suddenly vicious. You shift your body in front of Damian putting yourself between him and everyone else in the room. He bristles at the gesture but you and your habits aren’t exactly concerned with his pride.

“Ma’am I-“

“I rest my case. Please, feel free to contact Mr.Grayson-Wayne if you have more to say.” You settle a hand on Damian’s shoulder. You’re surprised he didn’t fight you or swat your hand away. Taking it as permission, you pull him closer to you as you leave the red faced woman and the paling man gob smacked and silent. Damian himself doesn’t make the sound as you made your way down the hall. You squeeze his shoulder gently hoping it comes across as a reassuring gesture. His posture does not loosen but you do not let him stray from you. You close your eyes as the elevator doors shut.

“I did not require your assistance.”

“I know.” Of course, he doesn’t. He is a Robin and an Al Ghul but that doesn’t mean he isn’t gonna get it. You drum your fingers against the steering wheel, the dull beat only serving to irritate your nerves. You swear the traffic in Gotham was somehow infinitely worse than everywhere else in the world even with working traffic lights. Maybe that’s why there were so many crazy people here. Maybe Bruce should have invested his money on better roads. Maybe-

Your eyes slide towards Damian who is somehow shrinking and pressing into the side door. Still, his face is twisted skeptically and braced for a continuation to your statement. You looked heavenward not even hiding the weariness in your smile. The brat is truly a bat-- suspicion and all. You turn your body towards him, opening up your posture. You fold your leg and rest your chin on your arm. Damian meets your gaze head on, looking imperious as he crosses his arms over his chest. His posture is artificial, probably uncomfortable from the weight of your attention.

You roll your shoulders and reshape your features, reconfiguring yourself from understanding to teasing. “I know. I know but you see, they needed telling off and your tiny gremlin ass isn’t scary enough. And, I promise I won’t tell Dickolas that you defended him so vehemently.” you wink, a conspiratorial grin spreading across your face. Damian straightens, his body is bowed like he was about to spring for your throat but the shape his limbs took on was more natural and seemingly relaxed. The knot in your shoulder loosens. You reach over and ruffle his hair again. He really is still a kid. You stare each other down. Your smile is as unwavering as his glower.

Both of your stomachs grumble. The sound was loud and abrasive in the closed space of the car. You check your watch and hum, shifting back into your seat. Wordlessly, you switch on your signal light.

You leaf through the pages of the thoroughly used book in your hands, eyes skimming through the blocks of texts not really absorbing any of it. You never really found the appeal in fiction. The stories are too neat compared to what you experienced daily. You suppose there is simplicity in them but you find that in nonfiction, the kind of books that explained the mechanics of things. They made sense of the world and were much more useful in your opinion. You’re much more interested in the messy scribbles on the margins, the etchings of a loud mind on yellowing pages. Jason’s notes were written in the same tone of voice he used when he spoke, deceptively layman but upon further inspection was frighteningly insightful. You smile at the little comments and complaints, the snarky little remarks. Remnants of the little boy he had been before. You frowned. You should probably give this back to him once you have the chance and maybe come up with some excuse of why you still have it. Or you can just keep it.

You look up at Damian who is drumming his fingers impatiently against the lacquered table. His posture is artificially relaxed, likely something he learned from the league or maybe all nervous gremlins do it. You look down at the book again. The sight reminds you of Jay. You tip your head, the loud thunk of your skull is felt more than heard since it was your bad ear that is pressed against the glass. The sound startles Damian who was deep in thought. You hold out the book to him. He must be bored waiting for your order. He pointedly ignores you.

"I don't need that childish drivel." He snipes. You click your teeth feeling a little defensive of the book.

You sound exactly like your grandfather, you think but have enough sense to keep it to yourself. No child needs to be compared to Ra's Al Ghul even if he is a brat.

"Not a fan of-" You look at the book's spine and frown. "-Robert Stevenson?" What kind of dork reads Robert Stevenson for fun? Oh wait, it's the same dork that quotes Shakespeare while bashing heads.

"I have no need for such things."

Of course, he didn’t.

"No, I suppose you don't need anything with the actual text but the margins are quite fascinating." You hold out the book to him again. His eyebrows shoot up looking at you skeptically as he reaches for it. There is no actual written indication that it was Jay's and the kid likely hasn't spent enough time with Jay to actually tell from the way it's written. You look out the window to turn your good ear to him, listening for any reactions he might have. Every now and then you hear a huff of amusement. You smother the smile threatening to form on your lips with your hand.

"Well, the person who owned this certainly had a lot to say." Damian says carefully, handing the book back.

"Jay really was a mouthy kid."

Damian looks at you, little face scrunching up in confusion. You suddenly notice just how easily the booth swallows him up. Why is he so tiny? "If this is Todd's, why do you have it?"

You clasp the book in your hands, your thumb tracing over the creases. "He leant me this book shortly before he died. He-- Well, I told him that I wasn't fond of adventure stories. I prefer books about science and culture. They're much more useful, yanno?" Damian gives a slight nod. You relax into your seat with his understanding. "Well, he thought it was just that I've never read a good one so he gave me this one. Never quite finished it though." you admit a little sheepish after realizing just how sentimental you felt. Your eyes trace over Damian's expression. It's clear that the sentimentality bled through your words and some childish part of you winces at the vulnerability of it. Damian says nothing and doesn't even sneer in derision.

You hum, the tune musical but offkey. “Jason, actually did what you did today awhile ago.” Just like that you begin down a rabbit hole telling the little gremlin about all the stupid shit the older bats have gotten into. And oh boy, there’s a lot.

“So do either of you want to explain what happened and why GAs headmaster called me sounding like he was gonna piss himself?”

“Hmmm, probably not ” you say around your spoonful of mahalabia, not even looking up from your book. Hilariously enough, Damian had also elected to leave Dick’s presence unacknowledged and busy with his own mahalabia. Dick scoot into your side of the booth, purposefully squishing you against the wall with a shiteating grin. He loops his arm around you and pulls you closer, planting a sloppy kiss on your cheek. You blanch and push half heartedly at his chest as he laughs. That laugh makes your heart warm and a relenting smile spreads across your features softening them. Your body twitches forward to kiss but you still when Dick freezes instead you plant a kiss on his cheek as well. Dick relaxes at the familiarity of it and you two settle down.

Damian stares at both of you befuddled. A heat creeps up your cheeks realizing that Dick is practically sitting on you. Dick, on the other hand, seems perfectly content with your current lack of personal space, so you leave it alone despite the incredulous look Damian is giving both of you. Dick snatches up your spoon taking a heap from your dessert. You make an offended noise in the back of your throat which he simply answers with another broad smile. Your lip twitches uncontrollably and your shoulders go slack.

“So what happened?”

You and Damian exchange a look. Damian rolls his eyes at you and you shrug at him performatively. “Nothing.” you two say in a chorus of nonchalance. It only succeeds in annoying Dick, so it was partially successful.

Dick pouts taking another bite of your desert. You stare in disbelief as the grownass man sitting next to you attempts to give you the puppy dog eyes as he eats your desert. You sign on exasperation because it's working and the bastard knows it. Richard John Grayson-Wayne is a manipulative asshole and you are a certified sucker.

You turn to Damian pleadingly begging him to please either help you or end you. Instead, he simply looks the two as if searching for an answer to a question forming in his mind. You run your hand over your face ready to concede when something clicks.

"Man-Bat got into GA and Damian fought him off." you say, praying Dick would catch on to the game. For a terrifying moment, he doesn’t. He blinks at you in confusion and your stomach sinks then a smile slowly spreads across his face lighting up every feature. Your heart swells at the sight.

"Bullshit. What was Man-Bat doing in GA?"

"Dunno,maybe bullying students. I don't know what bat creatures get up to." you say grinning. The picture becomes clear from every outlandish story. To your surprise, Damian joins in with a few vague details of his own giving even more details than you'd initially gathered.

Lunch passes pleasantly with outlandish stories and good food.

“NEWS: Dick Grayson-Wayne, New Face of Wayne Enterprises, Caught in a Torrid Love Affair with a Mystery Woman. Who Could this Exotic Beauty Be?”

“NEWS: Young Wayne Heir Being Extorted by Mystery Woman?”

“NEWS: Wayne Heir with Secret Family?”

Dick wants to evaporate somehow. He stares at the headlines mortified beyond what he ever thought possible. Maybe the floor will be merciful and it’ll finally swallow him as Jason reads another headline in a ridiculous newsreel voice.

“No, no wait. This one is fucking priceless!”

“Jason, please, I am begging you. STOP.” Dick whines, his face flattening against his work table. Tim shrugs, an amused smile adorns his face. Dick is going to scream. “Tim, please please please, make him stooop.” Tim ignores Dick in favor of scrolling through his own tablet looking, frankly unsympathetic.

“Oh a tryst!”

“Jason, you are making it sound so much worse.”

“Dunno, big bird, some of these make it sound like you fucked her over a table in the restaurant.” Jason watches in absolute delight as his older brother attempts to merge with the work bench, the tanned skin of his neck and ears burning a bright shade of crimson. Tim snickers, unhelpfully. Dick loved that his younger brothers were getting along for once. He just hated that for some reason they just had to be united against him. “All I did was kiss her on the cheek and eat her food.”

Jason gasps theatrically, feigning fainting. “Premarital kissing?! Dick, how could you? What’s next? Premarital hand holding? Think of the children.” Jason exclaims, dramatically pointing to Damian who at this point had been ignoring the ruckus Jason was causing.

“Jason, you’re awful and you’re being extremely dramatic.”

“Dick, you don’t exactly have any room to talk in that department.”

“Yeah, Mr. Pretty Man Down, Baby Bird has a point.” Jason says smugly as he offers Tim a fist bump which Tim reciprocates by shaking Jason's fist, a joking smile on his face. Jason snorts as if getting the joke or whatever movie reference this was from.

Tim's face folds into a barely held back smile. The laughter bubbling in the back of his throat straining his features. “I will say it is really funny that they didn’t recognize Damian.”

“You know how they are. They probably came up with something like the whole Damian being Bruce’s kid was actually just a cover up for Dick.” Somewhere in the background Damian makes a very displeased noise but Dick can't be bothered to lift his head to check.

“Please no. That doesn’t even-”

“Here’s one, NEWS: Dick Grayson-Wayne’s Baby Mama? Who is this mysterious woman?” Tim reads out flatly.

“The PR team is going to kill me. No, wait. Y/n is going to kill me first.”

“She won’t. She probably finds this hilarious.”

“How would she even find this funny?”

“Well, she does enjoy your suffering- Oh shit. This one might piss her off.” Jason clears his throat, sliding back into the newsreel voice. “DICK GRAYSON, HANDSOME PLAYBOY - WITH YET ANOTHER GIRLFRIEND - WILL HE EVER SETTLE DOWN?”

Dick is half tempted to throw his own tablet at the wall. What did he do to deserve this? You certainly don’t.

“Hey, at least, they called you handsome.” Tim laughs placatingly. It doesn’t work, of course.

Dick looks up at his little brother ruefully. “Oh yeah because the stuff about my looks was definitely the issue.”

“Well considering your morning routine...”

“I haven’t even been on a date so who are these other girlfriends?!”

“Well, me and Jason thought the same thing.” Tim shoots down sneering. When did his sweet baby brother turn to the dark side? Likely, Jason’s influence but deep down he knows Tim has always been capable of evil. Jason is cackling proudly.

“I don't see why you're concerning yourself with this drivel.” Damian says, swiping the tablet right in front of Dick forcing him to look up. Dick smiles at him wearily. “Dami, it’s a little hard when a photo of me kissing y/n on the cheek is plastered everywhere with weird headlines.” Damian tilts his head considering it but he shakes his head muttering something about pointlessness.

“Goddammit, Disco Stick!” The sound of your voice ringing out into the bunker sends their banter crashing to a halt. Dick feels his heart jump to his throat. He-- This was how he was going to die and for once he wasn’t sure he deserved it or not. You stand at the doorway haloed in bright light. At least, his angel of death would be the prettiest one, he thinks-- all the oxygen leaving his lungs.

Crumpled in your fist was a newspaper. Dick can feel his brothers take a step back as you draw near. Your footfalls were as steady as a pulse which made Dick’s own heart rate ratchet up. Your face is carefully impassive the way it always is when your anger was dosed with something else. Dick is sincerely hoping Jason is right about you being amused by the headlines.

You stop in front of him, eyes narrowed and jaw tight. You glower down at him frankly looking murderous before you snort and your face breaks into a smile. The thick tension in the air dissipates and the room releases its collective breath. The smile on your face grows even brighter. Nope, this is how Dick dies, his breath catching in his lungs as his mind fizzes out from the sight of your smile.

“I’m sorry?” Dick lifts himself off the table just barely, still bracing for any sudden wave of anger that will, justifiably, roll over you at some point.

You lean your body on to the spot next to him, letting the table support your weight. Straightening the newspaper in your hands, you frown. “I look terrible in this.”

“You look beautiful.” Dick blurts out. You raise your brow at him incredulously. Jason folds over trying to hold back laughter, his shoulders trembling. Tim just shrinks from second hand embarrassment.

“No, she is correct. She looks repulsive.” Damian says flatly as he snatches the paper from you.

You let out a breathy laugh. “To be fair, anyone would look repulsive next to professional pretty boy Dickie Wayne.” There was no sharpness in your teasing. You look at the photo over Damian’s shoulder. It was a cute photo actually. Dick’s arm loops around your shoulder as he gives you a kiss on your cheek as Damian blanches at Dick’s very public display of affection. It was hilariously easy to see where they got the idea that you two were a couple. You weren’t. You haven’t been for awhile. The thought wrenches something a dull ache inside you. You flatten your lips preventing the edges from dipping into a frown.

A look crosses between Jason and Tim. Tim leans over, asking in a hushed whisper, “I thought they were back together.”

“Dunno they act like it.” Jason shrugs watching your movement. As if to prove his point, you and Dick lean into each other’s space as you bicker about the merits of Gothamite photographers. Jason is half tempted to shove you two together.

“What are you two talking about?” You ask, finally leaning away from Dick.

“Nothing-”

“They were pondering the state of your relationship. I myself have been pondering it.”

For a moment, your eyes meet. For a moment, you are back in a drab hotel in Moscow. For a moment, you are crying your heart out in his arms trying to push him away.

You click your teeth and stare Damian in the eyes not entirely sure what kind of emotions they were betraying. “We were a thing.” Damian’s brow shoots up. You hear someone’s hand slap against their forehead.

You flush wanting to disappear but hold your stance. You hear Dick chuckle beside you as he stands shoulder to shoulder with you. Something in you eases with the closeness, like a gap being filled. “We used to be a couple.” Dick supplies, saving you from your flailing. You tap your finger against the back of his hand as a silent thank you. He taps yours twice in reciprocation. You look down trying to hide a smile.

Jason and Tim look at each other again and nod.

“We should probably go.” Jason says carrying Damian under his arm.

“Todd, unhand me! We are not done here!”

“We’ll see you two later.” Tim waves giving Dick a knowing smile. Dick’s heart jumps up to his throat while his stomach drops to the floor. Is this really the time for his brother’s to play cupid?

You lean in, letting your body press into Dick’s side as you listen to their footsteps fade away. Your head settling on his shoulder hand bracing you against the workbench. You let the stillness settle and make everything around you more solid.

Dick shifts a bit, his fingers lacing in with yours. The gesture makes your heart twinge, the chasm in your chest yawning with longing. You swallow. The air is thick with unspoken words like smoke clogging up your lungs. You think that if you could just pluck the right one out of thin air, you could clear the air.

‘I love you’ itches in the back of your throat but what right did you have to say that to him even after all this time.

Beside you, Dick is smiling and relishing your presence. The silver glint of your earring winking at him from beneath your hair. He had gotten you that on your first date, a little souvenir you got to commemorate the occasion.

Dick pivots in front of you making your breath catch. His free hand brushing your hair behind your ear revealing the silver robin on your ear. Silver robins. You had at the time laughed at the absurdity of it but here they were years later. Dick’s hands settle on either side of you boxing you in against the table. Even when he’s got you trapped like this, you feel at ease knowing Dick would never hurt you. Dick leans his forehead against yours, his fingers still intertwined with yours. Your pulse is loud in your ears. You lean your forehead against his, eyes sliding close soaking up the contact.

“It’s always been you.” Dick says breathlessly. The words do not register, too dreamlike in their conception. You always hoped and wished that you could take it back, that you had never left, that he would love you the same way he did before but you were never foolish enough to hold on to things like that with both hands. Yet here Dick was whispering things that you only let yourself dream of.

“It’s always been you.” He repeats as if the repetition could make it more real. You swallow the lump in your throat trying to find your voice but you’re afraid that once you speak, the room would catch fire and the dream would dissolve into harsh reality.

Dick gently cups your face and for a moment you let yourself be lost in the sea of blue. The stinging in your eyes makes you blink even if you don’t want to. You lick your lips as if somewhere on them were the right words.

You can’t even fathom the combination of words that could encapsulate the cocktail of longing and love you felt for him.

Your tongue darts out, wetting your bottom lip as your eyes focus on his lips. You swallow again your throat feeling thick even as you lean into his space, pushing off the work bench. Your nose rubbing against his, his long lashes fluttering against your cheek and tickling your skin. Dick leans in, his lips on yours, the pressure barely enough to make contact. You twitch forward, lips melting against his. The world around you stills and disintegrates leaving only him in its wake.

The kiss is all tender softness, a promise of love and loyalty quietly exchanged between you. A delicate push and pull. Undemanding yet uncompromising in its gentle intensity.

You both pull back, only barely. Your skins still thrum with hunger for contact. Dick leans in again, his lips brushing against yours making them tingle at the sensation. Murmured breaths exchanged between you. This time you both find the right words.

Dick turning to reader seeing the familiar glint of her earing

“I still love you.”

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I was thinking it was just them in the cave standing next to each others fingers twining with each other leaning into each other's space

he brushes the strands of her hair away

After brushing her hair away he presses his forehead against hers and he just kind of comes out with it

like he'd been holding back on saying it but couldn't anymore

Why not have the reader do something like this?

What if she nudges her nose against his? Or rubs her nose against his, like an Eskimo kiss? And it’s silent, her eyelashes flutter against his cheek. They say in Inuit, when you feel eyelashes stroke on your skin like that, it’s a way of saying “I love you” without actually saying it.

And maybe Dick knows that? Without her actually saying the words and he just smiled and captures her lips in a delicate kiss. And when they pull back, they both say it at the same time against each other’s lip, all hushed and murmured?

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Thanks for reading!

Taglist: @batarella , @anothertimdrakestan , @lucy-roo , @multifandomgirl-us , @idkmanicantenglish ,@birdy-bat-writes , @boosyboo9206 , @americasmarauders , @l-inkage , @arestorationofbalance , @cloudie-skay , @wunderstell @hyp-oh-critical

#dick grayson x reader #dick grayson #dick grayson x you #dick grayson imagine #Damian Wayne #batboys x reader #batfamily x reader #damian wayne x sister!reader #dc x reader #dc reader insert #merc!reader

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maxdark158 · 3 years

Text

Wooo! Writing shoes are back on and i’m actually really happy that i’m finally able to write again. This chapter is a bit shorter than normal but the next two are heavy hitters so it’s alright

Angel in Gotham: Part 1 ~ Part 2 ~ Part 3 ~ Part 4 ~ Part 5 ~ Part 6 ~ Ao3

Demon in Gotham: Part 1 ~ Part 2 ~ Part 3 ~ Part 4 ~ Ao3

Fanart for AiG: Riddler ~ Joker thank you @thegreysman

Please tag me in any fanart you draw for this guys ^^

oooOOOooo

Damian typically liked patrol.

Jumping from rooftop to rooftop under the cover of the night was always exhilarating. Parkour just wasn’t the same without a belt of weapons and a costume, it was always a good way to burn of excess energy and get his mind focused.

Sure, it was his job to protect Gotham so he couldn’t be joking around, but he had to admit he liked the physical activity. He took his job seriously but taking it seriously didn’t mean it had to be unenjoyable.

Patrols were a time when he didn’t feel constrained, didn’t have to play a part or meet expectations. Nothing could ruin the cool gotham city nights on the rooftops.

Well, almost nothing.

After all, Damian’s father had the insane habit of adopting shitty ass kids for his crime fighting ring. Which meant Damian had this awful sickness called siblings. And the only thing that could ruin his nice patrols were the chortling of the other costumed idiots.

The worst nights were when all his brothers went.

Every. Single. Brother.

And what made it worse on top of that?

When they had something they felt they could tease him about. And when they were all teasing him about the same thing at the same time.

He was going to snap and stab one of them. His father might be anti murder but he didn’t have to know…

Damian shook his head. Bad thoughts.

“Thinking of your Angel?” Drake seemed to have a death wish and Damian was all about granting fucking wishes right now.

“Why do you all insist on being here?” he grumbled to himself. Because really they didn’t have to be. No bat signal, probably a few minor purse snatching crimes that one or two could handle easily. Why were they all in costume? Take the night off, stop fucking bothering him.

Annoying Fuck #1 snorted next to him when he said that, clearly not planning to be reasonable. “What, don’t like us teasing you about your Angel, demon spawn?” Todd snorted.

Damian ignored him. “Batman, shouldn’t he not be allowed to patrol with us?” His father could at least tell Todd to go home. Then when his back was turned he wouldn’t witness what happened to Dra-

“C’mon, I haven’t killed anyone and I want to hang out with my little bro! It’s not every day that Robin gets his first crush!”

Annoying Fuck #2, Drake, nearly slipped and fell from laughter.

Damian’s face warmed under his mask. “I do not have a crush you-“

“Focus on the job,” As always, father was on his side. “You can make fun of Robin later when we aren’t patrolling,” the traitorous bastard added.

Damian didn’t want to be the fucking blood son anymore.

He glared at Batman, scoffing to himself. “Then if you’ll excuse me, I’ll take my own route.”

“I’ll go with you little bird!”

Fucking fuck fuck.

Because of fucking course Grayson suggested that. And of fucking course Damian momentarily forgot that Grayson was back and patrolling too, leaving him unprepared for the suggestion. Grayson’s uncharacteristic quietness was the worst thing at times.

Fucking hell why’d they all have to be here tonight?

Proving himself to truly be a traitor, his father nodded to Grayson’s suggestion. So Damian, previously wanting to get away with his brothers and dream of murdering them alone, now had a tagalong stopping such a fun activity.

At this rate he’d have frown lines at 23.

Damian went off, not waiting for Grayson. He knew he’d easily keep pace though, so the halfhearted dream of being fully alone wouldn’t happen.

“Robin, wait here a second.” Oh fuck no. That’s Grayson’s I want to talk voice. Too bad for him because Damian did not want to talk. At all. Especially about anything Grayson might want to talk about. Because Grayson wanted to talk about French Angels and Riddlers and Spars and-

“Robin, are you listening?”

“No, Nightwing, I’m not.” Damian stared at him and raised a brow. “What is there to talk about?”

Grayson huffed, annoyed. Good. Fucker deserves it after what he and the others put him through these last few days. “I was asking if you actually had a crush or not. They’re teasing you but I’ve been,” at WE all day, Damian knew, “busy all day. I can’t tell if they’re making something out of nothing and I’d rather hear it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.”

There was a time when Damian would have said he wasn’t a horse. When he was younger, he didn’t know idioms and expressions that well. He considered saying it now, to try and change the subject, but he also knew Grayson didn’t let things go easily. Which wasn’t very good.

Because Damian wasn’t sure how to answer.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to answer it, even to himself. His weedkiller wouldn’t arrive for a few more fucking days, he wasn’t prepared for this.

Though maybe that in of itself showed the answer to Grayson’s question…

Fucking fuck fuck.

He shook himself from those thoughts. Grayson was waiting on an answer and he didn’t have time to get lost in thought about his Ang- Marinette. Marinette.

Damian settled for glaring at Grayson. “My private life is not any business of yours.”

Grayson snorted. “Suure little bird. She’s one of the French students, right?”

“Don’t say that right now,” he snapped. Not while they were in costume, not while they could be listened to. “Focus on the job, Nightwing.”

Grayson put his hands up in surrender. “Race you to Wayne Enterprises?”

Damian didn’t wait for an answer, jumping to the next roof and making his way as fast as he could. He was determined to beat his adopted brother’s sorry ass, not that he cared about winning. It wasn’t that he was competitive, he simply didn’t want to continue this discussion. That was all. That’s fucking it.

Grayson laughed behind him, and the race began.

-----

They were taking a break near the Batcave. No activity yet, but they stayed suited up incase that changed. The night was still young, after all.

Batman instructed them to meet there through the comms. Damian and Grayson, further from the cave, made it there last. Grayson luckily hadn’t brought up and other conversation during patrol, and Damian hoped that would hold ou-

The other two idiots were waiting like the fucking lunatics they are.

Fucking fuck fuck.

“Did the demon spawn tell you about his precious Angel?” Todd clearly decided that he would die in seven days by saying that, big dumb fucking grin on his face and hair messy from removing his dumbass helmet.

“What was her name again? Mary?” Drake knew her name and was just being a little bitch. Damian decided not to give him the fucking bait, going over to a place to sit-

“Marie something, French and I think with brown eyes?”

“They’re blue,” Damian bit out. Fuck, their stupidity had infected him, he spoke before thinking. Was there a cure? He doubted it as they were all still stupid and have been for years. Fucking fuck the last thing he needs is to be on their level of idiocy.

“Right, right,” Jason’s wolfish smug grin was showing exactly how much of a fucking bitch he planned to be. Damian wanted to kick his face in.

“Little bird was pretty tight lipped on patrol,” Grayson said lightly as if he didn’t just stab him in the back.

“It’d be rude to kiss and tell,” Damian was going to strangle Drake with his own two hands.

“I haven’t kissed her!” He snapped again. His face was very warm, did he get sunburned somehow?? “We’re friends you imbeciles!”

“Friends that hold hands,” Drake pointed out.

“And tour Gotham together, alone.” Todd shortened his life span even more.

“And invite each other over to their house, where they never invited anyone before, to eat lunch.”

“Look how red his face is!”

“Little bird probably even planned to buy her ice cream! That’s why they were there when the Riddler showed up!”

“I’ll bed demon spawn-“

Damian stormed out of the room. Blood was roaring in his ears and he needed to- he just. He fucking needed fucking out of here. Away from those fuckers. Or he’d actually follow through with his thinly veiled threats and he’d rather not get blood on his costume.

He hated siblings with a passion. If his father ever considered adopting again Damian would fill all of his shoes with centipedes and rip the third seam out of every pair of pants he owned.

I don’t have a crush on her. I don’t. She’s wonderful and amazing, an angel, but I don’t like Ang- Marinette like that. She’s a friend I made and that is all.

Damian grabbed some throwing knives for target practice. Not on his brothers this time. He wanted to clear his head without those fucks nearby.

He threw one. The aim was a bit off, and he frowned. His aim was impeccable, why was he off right now? Why is having a crush on Marinette a bad thing?

No. He shook his head. He didn’t want to think those fucking thoughts right now. He threw another, harder. It went deep into the target, still off by more than he was happy with. He growled lowly.

Ange- Marinette is pure and good and wonderful. I was raised by assassins and I can’t completely shake their ideals.

Another knife. Damian’s grip on them tightened. Why was he missing?

I’m a vigilante and Damian Wayne. I have blood on my hands and money to my name and she wants to make her fashion empire herself.

Damian got more knives. His frustration was growing with each thought. They kept coming back as he tried to dismiss them, kept distracting him from the target.

She’s a talented designer. She’s incredibly smart, knows how to fight. Beautiful, dark hair and freckles and blue eyes.

Another knife sailed through the air.

I’m not anything of note without my last name or costume. She’s amazing without needing either.

Damian walked over and began taking the knives off the targets. Maybe they were fucking with his aim. He should get rid of them. Focus on removing them. Stop thinking about her.

But no matter how many fucking times he tried to redirect his thoughts, they came back.

She doesn’t have to tolerate me.

She’s wonderful and innocent.

She doesn’t deserve to be dragged down.

I don’t want to hurt her.

Damian’s hands were on his face, pushing at his eyes and trying to stop the thoughts. His Ange- Marinette was wonderful he knew that, but he didn’t think the other things. Not constantly anyway, he helped people as Robin. He was his father’s blood son. He wasn’t unhappy with himself.

But that doesn’t mean I’m good enough for Marinette.

He grabbed a knife from the table he set them on and threw it blindly, as if throwing the thought itself out and away.

It hit the center perfectly.

Damian took a deep breath. Everything was fucking overwhelming right now, and he didn’t want to think about it anymore.

But it seemed he’d have to.

Fucking fuck fuck.

Okay, okay. He… He might have a crush on Marinette.

Admitting it, oddly, seemed to lift a weight off his shoulders. Damian took another deep breath.

He has a crush on Marinette. But he values her a friend very much. He isn’t going to do anything about his crush, because she deserves someone as amazing and angelic as her, and Damian isn’t that.

But that’s okay. Because he already loves being her friend. And his weedkiller isn’t too far away.

Damian calmed down. He threw some more knives. They were all on target.

She’ll always be my friend and Angel, if I have any say in it. I’ll make sure whoever she choses is worthy of her.

Damian had just thrown his third when his father spoke through their comms. “Poison Ivy sighting at Gotham Hotel.”

The six words turned Damian’s recently found peaceful mood onto its head. Ice water poured into his and filled his limbs with dread. His chest was tight, as if someone was grabbing at his lungs and they were closing. The weeds of worry were strangling him.

That’s my Angel’s hotel.

He had dropped her off there with Alfred just earlier that day. She was staying there with her class. They were supposed to be safe and protected, she was supposed to be safe and protected.

Damian’s knives hit the ground but his feet hit it faster as he ran through the cave to the exit. Ivy best not lay a finger on her or she would lose her entire arm.

His Angel wouldn’t get hurt, not if he could help it.

#daminette #maribat #Marinette #Damian Wayne #maridami #damimari #marinettexdamian #damian x marinette #miraculous ladybug #batman #batboys #batbrothers

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why-this-kolaveri-machi · 3 years

Text

just because you’re afraid it doesn’t mean you’re broken.

Titans 3.05

once more into the cold dark void of the internet with my stream-of-consciousness take on a superhero tv show...

spoilers ahead.

1. i cannot believe that among the first things i get to hear in this episode with my own two ears is the line 'eluded our overdudes'. why must you give me such pain along with so much joy, show?

1.5. scarecrow stringing jason along on this path to red-hood-dom is not something i would’ve ever expected, but does kind of make sense.

1.55. i don’t know all the details of the original resurrection arc in the comics but i like that jason, weirdly, has a greater role to play in his own demise and rebirth? i think it makes it easier to draw a line between his past trauma, the demonstrably shitty and terrifying responsibility of being robin, the ways bruce and the titans wronged him, his responses to that, the reasons he turns to scarecrow, and his final evolution to red hood. it makes for a smoother character arc rather than a one that was interrupted for two decades before somebody went oh hey let’s resurrect that kid that the audience once voted to kill and make him an anti-hero!

1.75. what’s crane giving him? anti fear toxin? anyway, crane is a fucking creep and i’m not sure i want to see a whole lot of him on my screen.

2. oh, um, heads up: there’s a long sequence of unsteady cam + flickering lights right after the title card upto the 3:16 mark. it’s a bit headache-inducing so if you want to skip, you can go ahead and do that.

2.45. that’s... weird... why would he dream about... donna...

ok, who am i kidding. i’m going to jump right into my theory about Why Titans Makes Sense Actually because the show itself is apparently not interested in explaining itself:

a) it makes no sense for jason to be conjuring up donna--who famously did not care much for him!--in his dreams. (he wasn’t even there when she died.) or for her to be telling him don’t go or there’s still time.

b) this leads me to think that that’s actually donna, in some sort of limbo between life and death, the kind of place where jericho used to be

c) rachel has demonstrated that she has the power to link the minds of the titans across great distances--she called jason and hank/dawn for help in 2.01, she linked up everybody later in the season, projected dick’s hallucination of his father into their brains without even realising she was doing it, and in the finale, she managed to get dick into conner’s brain. she’s in themyscira now. is this how she gets donna back to life? but reaching out to her in that non-space between life and death?

d) the next obvious question is: why isn’t donna appearing in the dreams of the other titans? she probably is, but they have better reason to be dreaming about her since they were actually close to her, unlike jason.

e) but why would she warn jason in particular? does she foresee jason entering the afterlife--however briefly? does she have an idea of what jason plans to do and what he will become?

f) anyway, more trippy mindscapes and weird psychic powers, yay!

2.5. my heart clenched when bruce comforted jason post-nightmare: clearly i’ve been reading way too much batfam fic. this is a side of bruce we haven’t really been told to expect by all the characters on the show calling him a ‘psychopath’ (*cough*unreliablenarrators*cough*) and him getting jason to speak to a professional speaks volumes about the kind of self-reflection he’s done post dick’s departure, and maybe some of the regrets he has with regards to how he dealt with dick’s traumas.

i mean, just look at him when jason dismisses his concerns! BRUCE IS TRYING JASON

anyway, i have a whole lot more i want to say about this, but i’ll save it for later.

also: LESLIE THOMPKINS!!!!

3. i really like molly--and i love that she’s a friend from before jason got taken in by bruce, the implication that they meet up regularly and that she’s a grounding influence on him (tho clearly not grounding enough to not go along with his dumbass idea about confronting a child trafficker alone).

3.5. aw, jason. robin was his armour against everything in the world that would throw him down and chew him to bits, but san francisco proved that even robin wasn’t enough to protect him. it’s really interesting how ‘disillusionment with the idea of robin’ is so integral to the traumas of both dick and jason but in such different ways.

4. LESLIE!!!!!!! i even forgive her office being so goddamn blue because leslie!

4.5. it makes so much sense for titans!verse leslie to be a therapist, because this show is so inward looking anyway, and therapist sessions are a useful tool to showcase this character work in a story. besides, at least in fanfic, leslie often seems to double up as a counsellor anyway.

4.6. oh man. i’m not terribly convinced by walters’ red hood (tho i think that may be the point--argh. i’ll come back to this thought later. have to stop getting distracted!) but he plays the asshole kid that’s trying not to let any real emotion seep through really well.

“you’d like me to punch you, wouldn’t you”

5. not sure what to think of batman’s little trophy case other than the show winking unsubtly at us and going look look - catwoman! the riddler! two face! you excited yet?! it’s like the scene from the end of amazing spiderman 2 when they were trying to drum up excitement for a sinister six spinoff by having harry osborne walk by a bunch of display cases with stuff from iconic villains in them.

... but then again, bruce does like to display a lot of shit in his batcave, including his dead robin’s bloodstained costume, so.

5.5. bruce is so soft with jason it’s killing me. beyond just trying to learn from his mistakes with dick, it speaks to his own genuine desire to balance his dedication to gotham with doing the best by his sons, although he’s often not successful with that.

i love that titans is really playing the long game with bruce wayne, with each season and character-perspective sliding in fresh pieces of a bigger puzzle. titans’ bruce has always been a phantom of other peoples’ making, but now we’re getting the idea that he’s a whole lot more complicated than other people make it seem.

5.75. it really recontextualises some of his actions from previous seasons: the fact that he locked dick out of his security systems in 1.06 is likely his way of respecting dick’s independence and his desire not to be associated with batman/gotham anymore. jason knowing about bruce’s tracker while dick doesn’t is probably bruce trying to be more honest and upfront with his charges. bruce sending jason packing off to sanfran to spend time with the titans is probably not him passing on a big responsibility to dick (as i first uncharitably thought) but him trying to get jason out of the toxic influence of gotham for a while and a sign of his trust in dick as a leader and a mentor,

5.8. i mean, bruce is a prick, but he’s also human.

6. i think leslie is doing some good work with jason here, though she may have overstepped the line with her line about robin as a construct being projected by a man with BPD. her speculations about bruce’s diagnosis have no place in her session with jason, and if bruce confides in her, an egregious violation of patient-therapist confidentiality.

(about the diagnosis itself... i don’t know. i can’t really confirm or refute this without a whole lot more information, and i’m not sure if the writer of this episode means BPD in the same way an actual professional might.)

6.5. i think a huge thing that gets missed out in a lot of recent comics as well as movies/shows is that bruce didn’t create the robin persona out of whole cloth. dick did. he’s the starting point of that legacy and to call it entirely bruce’s creation is blatant erasure of that. in fact, i’m surprised that dick doesn’t feature more in the conversations they’re having about the pressures of being robin. after all, the guy had been robin--bruce’s partner--for such a long time before jason.

6.8. (and here’s the primal part of me that resonates the deepest with dick grayson--the Eldest Daughter part--that’s sort of resentful: that jason gets the therapy and softness and the learning from mistakes when it took years and years for bruce to reach out in any meaningful way to dick.)

7. oooh that was a great scene!

it’s fun to do these stream-of-consciousness live reactions, because the moment you step down from your soapbox, the episode goes right into tackling what you were just complaining about. bruce means well, he’s learning, but he goes about exactly the wrong way to help jason: taking away robin now can’t be read by jason as anything but a devastating judgment call from bruce. and iain glen really sells the moment that bruce realises this--too late--and his helplessness in trying to get jason to see that it isn’t jason’s fault that he’s trying to do this. he loves jason enough that jason is enough.

7.5. aaaah so jason brings up the elephant in the room at last. dick got everything makes sense from his perspective, where getting to put on a costume and fight crime means approval, means being something stronger and better than you are. dick got to be robin, then nightwing, and a leader of a whole team of other costume-clad heroes.

8. ... how did jason just walk into arkham????? this is ridiculous.

8.3. i mean, clearly jason’s not thinking straight, but betraying batman like this puts his possibilities of being robin again even further away.

8.5. watching that chemistry experiment montage was strangely funny. this guy is looking for an antidote to fear? well, constantly mixing up and inhaling gases concocted by a mad-scientist supervillain is something only the very fearless--reckless to the point of foolishness!--would do. what’s to say crane’s not given you a formula for a drug that will keep you tethered to his every will and whim? hmmmm?

8.7. so he sought out the joker to... test the formula???

9. wow the “loud and clear... boss” hits different after a whole episode of them referring to each other as father and son.

9.3. waitwaitwait HOLD UP. wait a DANG MINUTE. you’re telling me that scarecrow had enough resources that he could not only have folks on the outside steal jason away and dunk him in a lazarus pit (i TOLD you that this show would bring up and dismiss ra’s al ghul in a ten second aside! I TOLD YOU) but also have his own little chemistry lab in the basement, AND have enough resources for jason to build his red hood persona???????? all of this in barely twenty four hours?

well there goes my ‘jason orchestrated his death’ theory. it was nice while it lasted. *cups hands to the sky* fly away, my baby.

9.6. a part of me is gleeful at the rushed nature of such an iconic transformation though, especially when compared to all the character work that went before it. we’re so used to getting the opposite that it’s fucking delightful to have a show that’s more interested in exploring its characters’ minds rather than battle scenes or recreating transformations from the comics. that’s taken such bold and exciting steps to fully convey all the nuances of its most recognisable character, bruce wayne, from casting an older actor to play him to unflinchingly showing just how damaging the vigilante lifestyle has been to him and the people he loves. BRILLIANT

*sporfle*

10. again, heads up: a whole lot of flashing lights between 40:28 and 42:00.

10.3. i guess it’s the super-compressed timeline that’s really throwing me off. where did he have the time to get/develop the mind control thing from? or is it something that he got from the cabal of villains that he intimidated at the beginning of 3.02? very messy.

10.5. i love molly, i hope she shows up again this season.

11. aaaand that’s it! that was a solid episode as flashback episodes go, but now i can’t wait to return to the present.

#titans #titans spoilers #meta #jason todd #bruce wayne #leslie thompkins #a tragic jalebi #robin #red hood

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Okay, long time followers will probably remember having read this, but I can’t find the original post and I’m trying to like.....force-reboot/jumpstart me working on my ‘Kings of the Sky’ AU again because I haven’t touched it in awhile and I have like literally eight different installments in various stages of completion and that’s ridiculous even for me. So here’s a repost of the first part of “Teachable Moments” the canon-divergence point of that AU series, where Jason calls Dick for advice after the Garzonas case and everything changes from there.

******

The way Jason Todd warily eyed the device in his hand, one might think it was an instrument of great and terrible destructive power, rather than just…his own personal cell-phone.

To be fair, he was Robin, and pretty used to the idea that even the most unlikely of things could be used for evil in Gotham. It could’ve been stolen and replaced at some point by a henchperson of Mr. Freeze, and using it could unleash some kind of cryogenic freeze ray that would turn him into a Robinsicle. Mad Hatter could be up to shit again, and dialing the phone at this very minute might mean syncing it up with a remote radio signal that would override his natural brainwaves and turn him into Tetch’s mindless minion of like…doom and stuff. Or…or…

Or sometimes, even in Gotham a phone is just a phone, and Freud is still a dumbass. And neither of the above possibilities had anything to do with why Jason was being a giant freaking pansy about entering the last digit of the phone number he would never ever admit to having had memorized for months now.

Nightwing had said to call if he ever needed to talk. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t actually want Jason to call, right? Like, its not as if Jason had remotely been expecting him to do that, so its not the sort of thing someone did just because it was ‘expected’ or shit. He was pretty sure. Rich people manners were weird though. Had to factor that in.

But Nightwing had also even made a point to say not talking to people about stuff was Bruce’s problem and that Jason shouldn’t let it be his problem too, and even though months ago Jason had been a starry-eyed dumbass who was totally drunk on the Bruce is the Bestest Kool-Aid or whatever, ‘Wing had definitely known what he was talking about there. So maybe he’d get it, and having this conversation with him wouldn’t be. Like. The actual worst idea in the history of ever.

Deductive logic said that Jason was getting worked up over nothing and there was no rational reason for him to be this nervous about dialing a fucking phone number. And he’d gotten pretty good at the whole deduction shit, given all the work he and Bruce had put into training his mind to view the world through entirely new paradigms, so Jason was pretty sure his math on that checked out. But on the other hand, Bruce was a hypocritical asshat that Jason was currently not speaking to, so what the fuck did he know about anything?

Aaaaand he was back to square one. Well damn. This was excellent. Very productive. Good hustle out there, Jay.

Sighing gustily, Jason flopped back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying to pretend he hadn’t gotten used to how luxurious and cushion-y his ridiculously expensive mattress was. He’d gotten soft, he told himself. Then he scoffed at the idea that the past year and a half of rigorous Robin training and patrols had made him less tough than the pipsqueak he’d been back when living on the street, getting his ass kicked by bigger and badder on the regular. That hadn’t been hardness, that had been bravado.

But it had gotten him this far in life, so maybe there was something to be said for it after all?

Ugh. Decisions were hard. He objected on principle. He also really wanted to understand why he was this nervous…if he could literally fill the guy’s shoes and kick supervillain ass as Robin, what freaking sense did it make that he couldn’t even call him up on the phone?

Maybe you just know better than to ask him questions you don’t really want to hear his answer to, a smug voice said in the back of his mind. It sounded suspiciously like Willis Todd, which was all kinds of weird and fucked up, cuz Jason was damn sure his abusive a-hole of a deadbeat dad had never said anything that insightful in his life.

Which meant it was his own screwed up subconscious - presenting in the voice of his not so dearly departed douchebag dad, no less - that had Jason reacting out of spite, entering the last number and hitting Talk, all while totally on autopilot. Because apparently we’re all making healthy life choices in this Chili’s tonight, Jason snickered somewhat hysterically while his phone rang once, twice, three times.

Ugh. Was he always this fucked up in the head and he just never noticed, or was it a side effect of running around rooftops in a cape. Inquiring minds wanted to know.

“Hello?” Someone said then, answering on the fourth ring. Jason sat bolt upright, his nervous humor vanishing as quickly and unexpectedly as it’d hijacked him in the first place. For all that he’d only actually interacted with the older man a few times, his voice was instantly recognizable. As was his slight confusion.

Right. Because why would Nightwing have the untraceable number of the latest burner phone Bruce had given Jason, when the ever paranoid Bat had him swapping out phones every freaking week? Duh, Jay.

“Uh, its me,” Jason said hastily, as if he could somehow catch up to and overtake the epically long ten second silence he let lapse before his mouth started making words again. “Jason?”

“Jaybird! Hey! What’s going on?” The older vigilante’s tone instantly morphed into one of surprised delight, so apparent even across the phone that Jason actually pulled it away from his ear and stared at it, as if that could explain Nightwing’s inexplicable giddiness. He’d literally only met the dude three times. Give or take a concussion he was forgetting about maybe? Weird.

Then again, the older man was a circus performer from birth. Might just be good at faking being super excited to hear from people? Whatever. Still weird.

“Uh, you said to call if I was ever having, I dunno, issues with Bruce I guess? So I kinda had a question? I mean, if you’re not busy or anything.”

Just one question? Willis’ voice asked snidely, echoing in time with the rapid tripartite beat of Jason’s heart. Since apparently everything Jason said was trying to come out with a question mark attached to the end of it at the moment. Ugh, fuck you, subconscious, Jason thought forcefully, even as he ransacked the recesses of his mind for that bravado he was thinking about earlier. It had to be in here somewhere…

“No worries dude, I’ve got time. Hit me!” Nightwing said cheerfully. His lighthearted cadences were so at odds with the sweat suddenly breaking out on Jason’s forehead, the younger teen couldn’t help but wince in anticipation of its inevitable change once he got his actual question out. This was a bad idea, he decided, way too fucking late for it to make a difference. He had a hunch Nightwing wouldn’t be content to ‘just forget it’ or whatever even if Jason chickened out now.

So he took a deep breath, shrugged and did what Jason Todd did best. Said fuck it, put pedal to the metal, and drove at full speed for the metaphorical police barricade that was his way of picturing all the things telling him He Should Definitely Just Not.

“Do you think I’m someone who could kill somebody in like, cold blood?”

Aaaaand there went the lightheartedness. Well, he’d definitely stone cold killed that, Jason thought grimly into the silence that followed.

“Huh,” Nightwing said at last. “You’re gonna have to give me a second to switch gears here, Jay. I was kinda expecting something along the lines of ‘how do I avoid Bruce giving me the safe sex talk.’”

Jason flushed and nodded jerkily, not that the older man could see it. Still, it’d been enough of a workout just getting to this point. He didn’t trust what might come out of his mouth next if he kept trying to force it. Thankfully Nightwing didn’t make him wait too long before continuing.

“I think anyone’s capable of killing somebody in the right circumstances,” Jason’s predecessor began carefully. Except that was not remotely what he wanted to hear. Or helpful.

“I’m not looking for platitudes,” Jason grit out, not angry at the other vigilante so much as the whole fucked up mess and his inability to think about anything else at this point. “It’s just a simple fucking question. You’ve met me, do you think like, I’d be capable of just killing somebody or not.”

“I’m not offering platitudes,” Nightwing continued calmly, as if he wasn’t phased by the younger boy’s interruption or sudden aggression at all. “And its not a simple question at all. Speaking from experience, most people wouldn’t think of an eight year old as a cold-blooded killer, but that’s what I could have been if Bruce hadn’t stopped me from killing my parents’ murderer when I first tracked him down. And yet that’s still totally different from when I held a gun on Two-Face barely a couple years later, about to shoot him because somebody else told me to, and because I wanted to hurt him like he’d hurt me. Wouldn’t you agree those are two different situations and two different ‘kinds’ of cold-blooded killer? Context is kinda a big deal here.”

Huh. First off…what the fuck? Jason stared blankly up at the ceiling, trying to hurry up the processing functions of his brain because, again, what the fuck? He was like ninety nine percent positive none of that had been in the Dick Grayson Is The Greatest and Here Are All The Reasons Why brochure he’d had read to him every time someone new found out he was Wayne’s newest stray, and like. Uh. Yeah, that part would have definitely stood out. Because once more, with feeling:

“What the fuck?”

Oops. That hadn’t been supposed to be out loud. Bad mouth. Bad.

Nightwing just did a weird kinda half laugh half sigh combo. Rueful, Jason would describe it, if he were describing it to someone else, which it kind of felt like he was, relaying the conversation to himself now that it’d taken a hard right turn into the surreal.

“Blindsided you with that, huh? Sorry, should’ve figured neither of those are the kinda stories Bruce would want to share with you. Then again, I don’t really have any idea what Bruce has told you about me.”

“Not much,” Jason admitted. Which was a major source of irritation, if he was being honest. The much sung praises of Dick Grayson came from literally everyone he met except for Bruce. Who usually just got a pinched expression whenever Jason brought him up, and a rapid subject change that was not nearly as subtle as Bruce seemed to think it was.

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Nightwing sighed. “I hope you haven’t put too much stock in anything else you’ve heard about me then. I’ll admit to a bad habit of enjoying my mystique, so secondhand hearsay tends to lose my best nuances.”

Despite himself, Jason’s lips curved up and he let out a rueful huff of his own. “I mean, this definitely isn’t where I saw this conversation going.”

The older man chuckled. “Thought I was going to just assume the worst and chuck the book at you?”

“Well. Yeah.” Jason shrugged, even though he knew it wouldn’t come across. “Bruce did.”

Nightwing heaved an exasperated breath. “Yeah, that’s kinda the thing about B. Sometimes, he’s great. Other times, he’s an ass. Its kinda an either or thing. He’s never really mastered the art of finding a midpoint between two extremes. Mostly because he’s never seen the point of aiming for middle ground.”

“Well its not like he’s ever really had to,” Jason griped. It just slipped out before he could stop it, leaving him feeling guilty for bad-mouthing B when he wasn’t around to defend himself. Especially since he knew Nightwing wasn’t the guy’s biggest fan these days. But he couldn’t deny it also felt good, in a way.

To his surprise, Nightwing just laughed. And not even in a malicious, spiteful kind of way, but almost relieved.

“God, thank you. You’d think that ‘hey, so my billionaire guardian kinda has entitlement issues’ would be a water is wet kind of revelation, but try saying something like that to pretty much anyone else…”

“And they look at you like you’re an ungrateful asshole?” Jason finished for him. Not that he’d ever actually tried saying that to anyone before, though he’d definitely thought it a time or two. But he could all too easily imagine the reactions he’d get, which was pretty much why he’d never gone so far as to speak the words.

“Yup,” Nightwing drawled, dragging out the p and popping it with emphasis. “And its not about being grateful or not, its just…there are some parts of everyone that just aren’t up for grabs, for other people to weigh in on or take charge of, you know? And a lot of people just don’t get that…because nobody’s ever tried it with them, or had to deal with expectations that…overstep, let’s call it?”

“Is that why you left?”

Jason winced the second it left his mouth. Too far. Definitely way too far, but he’d just gotten unexpectedly comfortable with the back and forth, and now he’d done the overstepping thing himself and was left with just dead air.

But ten seconds of heavy silence stretched into twenty, and went no further, as Nightwing sighed into his side of the phone again.

“The spiteful part of me wants to say it was more of a push than me just up and leaving,” he laughed again, but this time with unmistakable bitterness. “But even while that’s true, its not really the right answer to your question, because no matter how much of a clusterfuck that was at the time, its not…I mean, I knew at the time how to fix it. Where and how I needed to cave in order to make up with him and let things get back not quite to normal, but at least close enough.”

The pause wasn’t as heavy or tense this time, as Jason could almost sense the older man gathering his thoughts, trying to put them into words. He bit his lip rather than risk any more unexpected utterances escaping. This might not have been where he’d thought his phone call would lead, but now that he was here, hearing the answers to questions he’d wanted to ask for over a year and finding them almost comfortably familiar, he wasn’t going to risk distracting Nightwing or shutting him up for well. Anything.

“But it would have meant me caving. Settling in ways that I just…couldn’t. So in a way, yeah, I did leave, it was still my choice. And all of that was definitely a big part of it. I love Bruce, I do. I just couldn’t live with him anymore. Not without feeling like I had to give up my own autonomy and just be what he wanted. Or what he’d expected me to grow up to be, back when he first took me in. And as grateful as I am to him for that, I can’t honestly say I would have stuck around back then if I knew that was the price tag attached. I’m not…I don’t do well with people trying to force me to stick to one place, one thing. I was born on the road, you know? When I was a kid, I expected to spend the rest of my life living like that. Home was people. Not places. And so Gotham…its never fit me quite right, the way it does him, or even Barbara. Its not like I was miserable there, its just.”

“It wouldn’t have been your first choice,” Jason finished again, quietly. There was silence again for awhile.

“No. No, it wouldn’t have been. Not then.”

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wordsablaze · 3 years

Text

Trust Fall

day four, where damian’s improvised escape route is creative but also a literal nightmare for dick...

A/N: some day i’ll write about my faves without hurting them. but not today. whumptober prompts: “do you trust me?” / pushed

It’s not that Dick is scared of falling.

Of course he’s not, he grew up in a circus and spent his days soaring through the air as he flung himself from one pair of hands to another so he’s more than accustomed to dropping and catching himself.

But it’s different when they’re on patrol.

He hates watching his siblings throw themselves across buildings just as much as doing so fills him with pride. They’re good at it, they’ve all been trained well and it’s satisfying watching them land their jumps perfectly, but there’s still a part of Dick’s heart that will never get over the fear watching his family fall, the fear of watching someone else he loves plummet to their death.

He’d just never expected to experience the reverse.

And it’s almost poetic how it’s Damian sharing that experience with him, the one person he’s scared for the most. Because Damian is small and he is far from fragile but he is a child and Dick is constantly terrified that his line will snap or his foot will slip or his hands will fumble and he’ll end up falling.

But no.

It’s Dick who ends up falling.

The case they were solving had led them to a series of weapon shipments and opened up a trail of weakly hidden smugglers. It hadn’t initially taken long to figure out who was organising everything but the masterminds were a lot smarter than the men they’d hired to carry out their dirty work and it’s several weeks before Nightwing and Robin manage to intercept an incriminating meeting.

Of course, the meeting is on a rooftop.

And a particularly tall rooftop at that. From a business viewpoint, it’s ideal: it’s away from prying eyes and means that whatever they discuss is less likely to be accidentally discovered by a guard or a resident or a rival spy. But from a vigilante viewpoint, it’s a pain: it’s difficult to access, staying out of sight is far harder than usual, and there’s almost nowhere to go if things turn sour.

Almost nowhere to go, because vigilantes are nothing if not creative. So when their hiding spot is unfortunately discovered - not because they’d been unprofessional but because a stray cat decides to have some sort of crisis right next to them - there’s no choice but to be creative about their escape.

“Do you trust me?” Damian quietly asks as they back away from the men glaring at them, so quietly that it takes Dick a moment to realise the question had been asked at all.

“With my life,” Dick replies honestly.

He thinks he sees Damian smile one of his extremely rare and shockingly genuine smiles but he doesn’t get any time to appreciate how precious it is because his feet are suddenly separated from the ground and his field of vision shifts from the city skyline to the faint line of stars in the sky.

“No!” he shouts, but it’s too late.

Before he can even think of grabbing onto the edge of the roof or anything in the vicinity, gravity has done its job and yanked his head backwards, downwards. He can feel his body flipping over itself, catching sight of the cars parked below him before he rights himself in the air and scrambles to find his grapple gun.

The wind screams past his ears as he falls but he can’t hear it over the taste of his heartbeat anyway. He should be compartmentalising because come on, he’s a professional and he’s trained for this his whole life, but he can’t think and he can’t find his grapple and he’s falling and falling and falling and he wonders if this what his parents had felt like, if they too had wished they could just stretch a little further, if they’d watched the boy they love stand tall above them as they fell and fell and fell and-

There.

He almost sobs as his fingers latch onto the right part of his belt and aims almost blindly at where he thinks is up. The grappling hook latches onto something but his appreciation is once again cut short as he finds himself being pulled sideways and slammed into a building, the unrelenting brick knocking all the air from his lungs in a way that will surely leave an impressive set of bruises later.

It takes him far longer than it should to realise that he can’t stay dangling on a building all night. Eventually, when he can hear car horns and distant shouting instead of just his own frantic heartbeat and muddled echoes of memories, he lets his head fall against the brick and lifts a hand to activate his comms. “Robin?”

Mercifully, Damian replies almost immediately. “I’m waiting at the back entrance.”

There are a hundred things Dick could say to that but in the end, he just sighs. “On my way.”

He scales down the building on autopilot, nothing mattering until he sees Damian leaning against a door, looking almost bored with the whole situation. If it weren’t for the way he all but launches himself at Dick as soon as he’s in sight, it might have seemed like pushing his brother off a roof hadn’t affected him at all.

“Are you okay?” Dick asks, looking over Damian for any injuries even as he nods. “Are you sure? How did you get down? Did any of them hurt you?”

Damian pulls back only enough to meet Dick’s worried gaze, his arms still firmly looped around Dick’s stomach. “There was a small vent in the east corner, I escaped through it easily but you would have been too tall.”

Oh.

Dick smiles, ruffling Damian’s hair. “You did the right thing, Robin. That was smart, and impressively quick thinking.” He waits until Damian’s shoulders relax and the guilty frown fades from his face before adding: “I totally understand why you did what you did today but please, please never do that again.”

He doesn’t think Damian knows how his parents died and it’s unlikely that he’s aware how the fear of falling still haunts his nightmares so many years later but there must be something telling in his expression because Damian nods quickly.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers solemnly.

Again, Dick smiles as warmly as he can. “It’s okay, Robin, I love you.”

They use the fact that the men who’d spotted them on the roof are probably on their way down after them as an excuse to move on and head back to the cave for their reports, but Dick would be lying if he said he doesn’t pointedly avoid taller buildings for the next couple of weeks.

dick please admit that you have trauma so your siblings don't accidentally make it worse--

thanks for reading !! masterlist | dc sideblog: @batfamvibes

#whumptober2021 #no.4 #do you trust me?#pushed #dc #batman #fanfiction #dick grayson #damian wayne #hurt dick grayson #batfamily #hurt comfort #angst #nightwhump #mine #no beta we die like the flying graysons

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superhero--imagines · 4 years

Text

A/N: Happy Halloween kids! (Because I feel very old lol). So this imagine was requested by the lovely @atbucud who is probably the best beta reader/editor/fan/person I’ve ever known.

This imagine is going to be like the premise, and at the end you’ll have a {Love choice} and get to pick an ending. Endings will be linked and posted next week on Halloween! Hope you like it! Also let me know if this format is annoying/troublesome. I like to think it’s more interactive, but if most of y’all find it a hassle then it’s not worth it.

Oh, and Damian Wayne is 18 in this.

* First off, you’re rollin’ with some pretty rich kids, so you while it’s possible you go to some Jank Halloween party at someone’s house

* You’re probably going to a bougie charity gala that “the Wayne” foundation puts on every year

* “Let’s draw” Stephanie states triumphantly, placing a large glass bowl full of torn pieces of paper in the table in the middle of the living room at Wayne manor.

* Jason only raises an eyebrow, turning his attention back to his phone

* “Draw for what?” You ask, notching everyone’s disinterest

* “Costumes for the gala of course” Stephanie says it’s like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

* Damian sputters

* “Why would anyone do that?”

* “Because it would be funny” she grins, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes

* Tim flashes her a look

* “There’s no way any of us are going along with whatever crazy costumes you’ve put in there”

* Besides it’s already bad enough that they even have to go at all

* Jason would rather watch Dick clip his toenails

* Damian just wants to spend the night with Titus and watch movies with you

* Tim was hoping to go to his favorite local coffee shop’s Halloween party

* Dick would rather go to the block party his friend invited him to

* Cass just wants to stay home and pass out candy

* Barbara’s smart enough to be “out of town”

* And you’re just happy to be here tbh

* Stephanie’s not deterred by their lack of enthusiasm though, a mischievous smile curling onto her face.

* Her hand are suddenly resting on your shoulders, her face pressed against your hair

* “Aw, that’s too bad. I was really excited to see what costume our lovely (y/n) would pull out.”

* She’s feigning despair, but as soon as the words tumble out it’s like all five of their ears perk up.

* “Out of curiosity,” Tim starts, setting down his laptop. “What are some costumes in there?”

* You aren’t facing her but you can picture the mischievous glint in her eyes.

* She’s got them now.

* “Oh you know, the usual: Wonder Woman, cat woman, Zatanna’s costume-“

* You shrug, so far those seem pretty tame. The bat family seems to reflect your opinion, visibly deflating.

* Jason will be honest, you in a Wonder Woman costume does sound pretty sexy

* But it’s not exactly taboo, if he hung around you long enough he’d get to see you in it eventually.

* Dick and Cassie think you would look pretty cute in Zatanna’s costume, something about that magicians outfit hugging your form just seems right.

* But like Jason, they think they’ll see you in something similar eventually. No point in going along with Stephanie’s antics.

* Damian thinks it might be kind of nice if you were Wonder Woman, and he was Superman, that way you could both match

* But the chances of you both drawing those exact options are low. He would rather just take his chances and ask you if you would want to match.

* Tim’s bright red at the thought of you on a car woman outfit, the tight suit leaves little to the imagination

* But he’s oddly possessive and he doesn’t want anyone else to see you like that.

* So basically it looks like a bust so far

* “- and robin, nightwing, red hood, red robin, and batgirl of course.”

* All five of their heads pop back up, Stephanie grins

* Got ‘em

* The thought of you in their costume is bewitching

* “I mean it only makes sense, they’re the costumes we have in house after all”

* You know it makes sense, and it’s practical, but their collective gaze makes you blush and look away.

* But if you’re being honest there’s a certain someone you want to see in a certain costume too.

* “I guess it takes the pressure off of choosing” Jason grumbles

* “It might be funny.” Cass shrugs, but you catch the slight blush on her face

* So you all sit in a circle the bowl at the center.

* Alfred enters with a tray full of drinks and snacks, takes one look at the seven of you, and promptly walks back out.

* He’ll just..... come back later

* “Shortest stick draws last” Stephanie says.

* Which is coincidently you.

* Jason gets to go first

* “I got-Clark Kent?” He frowns, it’s not the worst, but he’s confused. Does this mean he’s supposed to be Superman?

* “Oh, I put that in for fun, easy costume, just need glasses and a white shirt”

* Jason sighs, well it could be worse

* “Batman in a recession?” Dicks eyebrows are threaded together

* Jason holds back a laugh, he could be Dick.

* “What the hell does that mean Steph?”

* Stephanie shrugs

* “Like you know, instead of a bat mobile you have a Prius, and instead of those bat-erangs you have like, knives idk get creative”

* Duck huffs, you better get robin after this

* “Raven” Cass says. Praying no one will notice that her piece of paper says “the penguin”

* To her relief everyone passes right over her, she crsuhes the slip of my paper in her hand, and breathes a sigh of relief

* Tim spends several minutes shuffling his hand around in the bowl

* “Tim just pick one!”

* “I’ll pick one when I’m damn ready, I’m not getting Wonder Woman dammit!”

* The moods pretty tense, so you say-

* “Idk I think you would make a cute Wonder Woman Tim!”

* Cue Tim.exe failing to work, his hand shooting out of the bowl

* “Catwoman, well, I guess cat boy in your case” Stephanie reads off the paper from his hand and Tim only blushes darker

* Damian’s hand shoot into the bowl, pulling out a scrap

* “A tennis player” he reads in a deadpan voice before scowling. “Brown that isn’t even a superhero”

* “You watch Serena Williams win another championship and then tell me what she does isn’t a superpower.”

* Stephanie’s hand dips into the bowl

* “Dolly Parton.” Stephanie shrugs, she pit it in because she thought it would be funny if one of the boys got it, but she actually pretty pleased

* Stephanie’s sure she can make a pretty hot Dolly Parton

* All at once their eyes turn to you.

* There’s still a handful of scraps in the bowl, but you feel a bit of pressure under their gazes.

* You look down at your hand.

* “A cheerleader for your favorite superhero?”

* Stephanie had put that one in as a joke too, imagining Damian with clip on ponytails and Pom poms.

* “Yeah, just like it sounds. You get to pick which superhero you’re rooting for” she grins, this should be pretty interesting

* “So who will you go as?”

* You gulp, to be honest there’s only one person you’re really rooting for

{Love Choice}

Who’s the number one hero in your heart?

Dick

Jason

Tim

Cassie

Damian

Surprise 1!

Surprise 2!

I like marvel better

A/N: on Halloween next week you’ll be able to pick which ending/character you want! I’ll add the links in to each choice for the imagine. This is not a voting situation. They’ll all be written (probably)

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blitzturtles · 3 years

Text

Title: Freezing

Rating: Teen and Up

Fandom: DCU / DC Comics

Pairing(s): JayTim w/ Batfam

Summary: “He’s in DKA.”

“He’s what?”

“Diabetic ketoacidosis. It’s-”

“I know what it is,” Jason says a little too quickly, but he doesn’t understand. Can’t wrap his head around what it means in this particular situation. “He has a pump. You got him a pump.”

Notes: For my 100th fic on Ao3, I thought I'd go back to the beginning. What got me back into writing: DC Comics and the Batfam.

Also, full credit to my wife (@sexyvanillatiger) for not only beta reading this thing, but also helping me with the information on DKA and rewriting several bits of the story to make it work.

For the record, this is an extremely unlikely scenario that most people with an insulin pump won't have to worry about. It has more to do with Tim's particular style of pump originally being one with an external catheter, as well as his being a) underdressed for the weather and b) out for far too long in said weather.

I will say that, though it is unlikely, pump failure due to freezing temperatures has happened, so please be mindful when you're out and about!

It’s three in the morning and freezing, and the last thing Jason expects is to hear Dick’s voice ring through the comm in his ear while he’s midair, between the end of one building and the beginning of the next. He’s busy, very nearly disconnects on the spot given the mood he’s in, but Dick seems to sense the impending end of the conversation.

“Wait!”

“What do you want, Nightwing?” He grinds the name out with far too much disdain. It’s not Dick’s fault that he’s in a bad mood.

“It’s Tim. He’s-”

Truth be told, Jason hears nothing after that. After ‘Tim’. Not Red Robin, not Red, not even Babybird. No, just Tim.

“Shit!” He very nearly goes careening off the side of the next building with the abrupt shift in his momentum and the loss of focus. There’s ice clinging to every other surface, which wouldn’t be a problem if he weren’t distracted. He can hear Dick’s frantic voice on the other end of the comm, but he can’t bring himself to care enough to explain.

“Where is he?” Jason demands once he’s regained his footing and has a moment to school his tone into something near neutral.

“That’s the thing. We don’t know. He-”

“What do you mean, ‘We don’t know’? What the fuc-”

“He missed his last check-in,” Dick finishes, unphased by the interruption.

“How long?” Jason asks, barely noticing how his voice shakes.

“Only twenty minutes, but-”

“But he’s working on a goddamn human trafficking ring, and it’s fucking freezing,” Jason finishes. He doesn’t need Dick to explain to him why twenty minutes is suddenly a big deal and not Tim losing track of time. “What about his tracker?”

“He turned it off after his last contact. We’re not sure why, but Oracle is working on pinning down possible locations based on his last. Look, B’s- Anyway, he doesn’t know I’m getting you involved, but you know that side of Gotham better than any of us,” at least on practical experience. Jason has spent months blending into the crowds in the past, as much as he hated every second of it.

“That’s just great, Dickie,” to hell with codenames. And to hell with his helmet. He tugs it off his head and tosses it at the nearest surface. The damn thing doesn’t so much as crack from the impact, but he can breathe again.

For a moment, he forgets that he has a secondary comm in his ear, which is why he flinches when Dick speaks again, “You also know Babybird better than any of us. I was just- hoping, I guess, that you would have a better idea once Oracle came up with her list.”

“Yeah, yeah, send it my way, will you? And his last location. Whatever files the computer has. I want all of it.”

“Done.”

Jason scoops his helmet off the ground and secures it in place again. No time to waste now. He starts shifting through the information the moment Dick sends it over. There are names that he recognizes. Places that he’s been too. Clubs that he’s spent the wee hours of the morning pretending to get plastered in, while flirting with the sort of men he’d happily put a bullet in any other time (for several of them, he had). But none of it tells him where Tim might be now, or why he thought going AWOL was some brilliant idea.

And here’s the thing, Jason’s in the mood he’s in because of this whole human trafficking bullshit. He knows Tim’s been working on it for the last few weeks, though Jason only found out about it in the last couple of days. Probably because Tim’s smart enough to know that Jason doesn’t want any of them so directly involved in that shit, least of all Tim. But there’s no stopping his-- he still doesn’t know when Tim went from ‘the’ to ‘his’-- Replacement when he gets an idea in his head.

It brings Jason no comfort to know that the temperature outside is frigid. He can feel it sink into his bones, despite the warmth of his suit. Technology can only get them so far without impacting agility, and Tim is a lot like Dick in that he likes to fly through the air, unhindered.

Dick passes Oracle’s findings over a few minutes later, when Jason’s already halfway to Tim’s last location. He’s on his bike. Going on foot would take too long, and they’ve already lost-- fuck-shit, thirty-two minutes now.

He tears through all the clubs in the area. Takes out more kneecaps than he has in months, but it doesn’t get him anywhere. The rooftops don’t help either. The advantage is lost when tracking a fellow Bat. Tim moves with purpose, and he does it without leaving a trace.

At least until Jason stumbles into an alley by sheer luck. One that could be in disarray for any reason, but he catches sight of a Batarang. It’s surface glints off the streetlight behind him. There’s no blood. No fibers stuck to it. It looks like it’s been dropped more than thrown, and he doesn’t know what to make of that, but his stomach is turning painfully.

Something is definitely wrong; he just doesn’t know what.

Dick chirps updates in his ear. Brief lines of information; none of it useful. The rest of them are having as much (or less) luck as he is, though he doesn’t immediately report his findings. It could be something; then again, it could be nothing, and they don’t need to all bunge together just to step on each others’ toes with no chance of finding Tim before someone or something gets to him.

The next three alleys look similar to the first in that they could all but in the state that they are because they’re part of the seedier night scene of Gotham, but something about them rings wrong in Jason’s head. There’s a garbage bag that’s strewn across the asphalt, like someone knocked it over rather than it having been pushed or thrown, and eerie signs of a scuffle that don’t look right either. There’s no blood and no sign of reciprocation. Only the snowy remains of a chaotic waltz littered throughout.

And that’s when he all but stumbles into a body. Curled and small with lips that are too close to blue and a face that’s ashen white.

Jason’s on his knees in an instant, calling Tim’s name-- Red? Robin? Drake, he hisses the last one in barely a whisper, but none of them yield results. Tim stays there, unmoving. His chest barely moves, but the bizarre part is how there doesn’t seem to be any injuries besides a trickle of blood that might be coming from Tim’s temple. His suit is otherwise intact, and who would leave a Bat incapacitated without finishing the job? Around here, not a single bastard.

He’s lifting Tim up before he can think to call for help. He carries him back to his bike and manages to maneuver them both onto the seat. He keeps Tim in front of him, awkward as it is, with one arm hooked around the limp body. The only saving grace in the moment is how goddamn small Tim is.

“Nightwing,” he calls as he starts the bike. “Cave, now.” He severs the connection before Dick has a chance to respond.

By the time he gets to the Cave, his heart is pounding away in his chest. Tim still hasn’t woken up. Still hasn’t so much as shifted in his unconscious state, and Jason is getting frantic. More and more terrified with each passing second, and it’s all he can do to keep one foot in front of the other when he pulls to a stop and gets Tim in his arms once again.

The face that greets him isn’t Dick’s, but Bruce’s, and Jason’s too afraid to give a shit. Too out of his depth. He can stitch wounds and even remove bullets, but he doesn’t know what’s wrong with Tim or how to fix it. He’s completely at Bruce’s mercy, and that would ordinarily piss him off, but, right now? He can feel wetness build in his eyes and his voice shakes as he looks at Bruce with desperation.

“Please,” he begs, knowing that he doesn’t have to, but unable to stop himself anyways.

Bruce doesn’t miss a beat. He’s already reaching for Tim, and it feels like someone pulling the rug from underneath Jason’s feet the moment his arms are empty again. There’s nothing keeping him steady, keeping him moving forward. At least not until Bruce glances back over his shoulder and calls,

“Jason.”

Jason scrambles forward, falling in after Bruce, and he feels all of about twelve years old again, following behind the Bat’s massive silhouette without question.

Alfred meets him in the infirmary, and the two make quick work of stripping Tim out of his suit. It would be impressive, considering the security measures, if Jason were able to take the time to appreciate anything, but he’s too wrapped up in his ever growing anxiety. The more skin that becomes visible, the more alarmed they all become. There’s no bruising, no blood. No explanation.

They start him on fluids for lack of anything else to do, and there is a minor contusion on the side of Tim’s head that indicates that he must have hit it at some point, but it's apparent to Jason-- the way it is to Bruce and Alfred-- that the trauma happened as Tim hit the ground and not as the result of someone getting the better of him.

“Oh,” Alfred breathes, and two pairs of blue eyes snap in his direction. He’s holding a strip of paper-- the results of his blood test-- with a frown etched into his features.

Bruce reaches out, and Alfred passes them over wordlessly. He moves around the infirmary in a flurry, gathering supplies with renewed purpose. For some reason, it only makes Jason’s heart beat that much harder in his chest.

“What is it?”

“He’s in DKA.”

“He’s what?”

“Diabetic ketoacidosis. It’s-”

“He does, and I did,” Bruce agrees with a grunt. It’s clear that he’s just as lost as Jason, but he doesn’t have the chance to say anything else before Alfred is calling him over, leaving Jason to stew on the information and watch from the sidelines because diabetic complications are definitely outside of his scope of practice.

He feels useless. Beyond, even, and he can’t stop looping back to the pump. That’s the whole reason Tim has it. So he can patrol without complications. He remembers the excitement when Tim first got it. All the information he had to absorb as part of being approved in the first place. He’s been stable on the damn thing for months. So why is his blood sugar through the roof?

It feels like hours until Alfred lets them know that Tim’s responding to treatment-- which includes a complicated setup of three different bags of fluids that Jason couldn’t identify for the life of him-- and beginning to improve. Jason doesn’t know how much time has actually passed, but he’s been in his head the whole of it, replaying the same questions and spiralling down the same, horrific scenarios. His cheeks itch with the feeling of dried tears, though he doesn’t know when he started crying (or when he stopped, for that matter).

He sits beside Tim diligently, despite his exhaustion, and holds his smaller hand in both of his own. It’s the only thing keeping him grounded, especially as everyone else comes and goes. Alfred never goes far, though Bruce disappears entirely to do god knows what. Dick hugs him, but he’s smart enough to keep his thoughts to himself. Damian’s about as comforting as he never is, but the worry is apparent in his eyes, even as he insists that Tim’s situation is more of a nuisance than anything else.

Cass stops by before Stephanie. A quiet presence that actually soothes Jason’s nerves, only to be followed by a quiet that sets them alight. Stephanie is rarely so subdued, but she disappears quickly, evidently unable to handle just standing there. She mutters something about finishing the job. It would concern Jason more if he weren’t already certain that none of them were going to be able to fly under Bruce’s radar for a bit.

Speaking of, Bruce announces his return by not-so-gently placing something on the little metal cart by Tim’s bed. It takes Jason a moment to recognize it as Tim’s pump, though it’s been pulled apart and now sits in multiple pieces.

“What-”

“It froze,” Bruce says before Jason can continue.

“What?” Jason repeats.

They can freeze? Is that something they knew? Why the hell hadn’t Tim taken precautions going out into sub-zero temperatures?

“Not the whole pump. This,” Bruce traces the remains of the clear tubing that typically goes from the pump to the injection point that sits under Tim’s skin. The line, itself, usually sits on Tim’s hip. “The catheter. The vial has enough insulin in it that it would have been fine, if not for this and the weather.”

“Why-?” Jason can’t finish the question. Doesn’t know what he means to ask in the first place, but Bruce doesn’t hesitate to answer,

“He didn’t know. Neither did I, for that matter. It never occurred to any of us.”

Oh.

Jesus.

Tim could have died, and not one of them would have realized why until it was too late.

“From what I can find, it’s not typically a concern,” Bruce goes on, though Jason’s only half listening. He supposes that makes sense, though, considering most people aren’t spending hours in the cold. He wonders how long Tim had been struggling. Alone and dazed and stumbling over his feet. That explains the condition of the alley. There really hadn’t been any fights. Just Tim, grabbing at anything and everything.

“If I had to guess,” and Bruce doesn’t look happy with the idea of not knowing, “He turned his tracker off in confusion.” Possibly while trying to call for help, he doesn’t say, and it makes Jason sick to think about.

“That shouldn’t fucking happen,” Jason snaps, less at Bruce and more at the universe.

“I know,” Bruce answers when the universe remains as silent as ever, “Lucius is working on it now. We’ve already discussed the possibility of adding a second, remotely activated tracker.” All of their trackers can be remotely activated, unless they’re turned off. Having a second just means that they would have a backup should anything happen to the original.

“Good,” Jason says, for lack of anything else to say. He finds some comfort in the idea, but it doesn’t exactly make him feel better now. Particularly not when Tim is without a pump entirely, which means they’re back to constant checks and needle drawn injections, both of which he knows Tim hates. Both of which interfere with Tim’s ability to patrol for any extended period of time.

“Tim will be alright,” Bruce tells him in a tone that’s entirely too gentle to be coming out of his mouth, “Alfred says his numbers are looking better.”

“Yeah,” Jason’s mouth feels dry, and he feels his eyes burning. He works his jaw a few times to try to regain control. He doesn’t need to cry a second time, not when everything’s fine now. Tim will wake up in a bit, probably feeling like shit, but he’ll be alive.

“He’s alright,” Bruce reiterates as he crouches in front of Jason and tugs him forward. Jason doesn’t resist, allows himself to be maneuvered until his head is pressed into Bruce’s shoulder.

Neither move for what seems like an eternity, but Jason finally breaks the contact and wipes as subtly as he can at his eyes while looking Tim over. “He’s going to hate using needles again.”

“He should have a new pump before the end of the day tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Jason breathes, “He’ll- thanks.”

It doesn’t fix the current problem with the cold, but there are measures they can take against that. Measures that Tim won’t like, but it will be better for him to have his pump so that he doesn’t have to draw up his insulin, which, from what Jason understands, is less accurate than the pump anyways.

Bruce hums his response before opening his mouth to add, “You should go get washed up. Or changed, at least.”

Says the man still wearing his giant Bat suit, but Jason doesn’t feel like starting an argument for no reason when he’s still on edge. “You gonna stay here?”

“Of course. I’ll be here until you get back.”

“Okay,” thank you.

“Take your time,” you’re welcome.

______

By the time Jason showers, changes into some of the clothes kept in the dresser of his old room, and makes it back down to the Cave, Tim is still out, though there’s finally some color in his cheeks. A nice little dusting of pink that makes him look alive, and his lips are slowly beginning to regain some color, too.

“Alfred just came by,” Bruce says when he sees Jason, “He says that Tim should wake up soon.”

“Good,” Jason says, voicing the most subdued version of what’s going on in his head.

After too long, or maybe too short of a pause, Bruce says, “I need to get to work on a few things. Will you be alright?”

Jason has to brush away his immediate irritation (of course Bruce needs to do shit while another one of his kids is recovering from a near death experience; what else would he be doing?) and remind himself that Bruce has spent the better part of the last forty minutes sitting with Tim. That might as well be a lifetime in Bat years. Jason rarely sees Bruce sit still that long without a computer screen reflecting in his eyes.

“Yeah, fine.”

“Call me if you need me.”

“Will do, B,” he probably wouldn’t, but word would get to Bruce eventually.

______

The first time Tim opens his eyes, Jason’s excitement and relief are crushed almost immediately. Tim’s far from his usual self. He’s more out of it than Jason’s ever seen him, with his head lolling back and eyes flickering. What comes out of his mouth is mostly babbled nonsense in between groans.

Jason calls for Alfred immediately, and he’s just this side of his anxiety getting the better of him when Alfred reassures him that the state that Tim is in is to be expected after what his body went through. Besides, his carbon dioxide levels are still low and his blood sugar hasn’t come down very far yet. It’s going to take time for Tim to fully recover, but it’s a lot for Jason to take in all at once.

“Turn ‘ff the lights,” Tim grumbles, startling Jason from his thoughts.

“What?”

“Fuckin’ lights, turn ‘em off.”

Under any other circumstances, the uncharacteristically grumpy demand would have Jason laughing. Right now, it just makes his chest ache.

Alfred dims the lights before speaking, “He may be a bit grouchy.”

Jason lets out a small snort, “Thanks, Alf.”

Alfred offers him a small smile. Evidently pleased that he’s managed to lighten Jason’s mood, even if only a little bit.

“Stop,” Tim groans, causing the two to turn back toward him.

“Sorry,” Jason mutters at the same time that Alfred says, “Apologies, Master Tim.”

Tim huffs at both of them before seemingly drifting off once more.

______

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll call you next time,” Jason grumbles at Bruce’s retreating back. The man is being even more stoic over not being told about Tim’s wake-up, which, to be fair, hadn’t been that remarkable, beyond the amount of stress that it had caused Jason. Besides, if Bruce weren’t so damned busy with whatever it is he’s doing, he might have known that Tim had woken up briefly.

Bruce says nothing as the door closes behind him, apparently aware that Jason is more irritable than usual and unwilling to get into a fight over it.

Jason huffs and sits back in his seat. Part of him wishes Bruce would start something. He’s getting antsy sitting in the Cave this long. Hell, he’s just tired of sitting, but there’s only so much pacing he can do.

“You should be nice,” Tim croaks from his spot in bed, effectively startling the shit out of Jason in the process.

“That was nice, and fuck you,” Jason answers easily, but his heart is bounding away in his chest.

“For which part?”

“All of it, Replacement,” the part where Tim scared the shit out of him and the part where he has the audacity to comment on Jason’s shitty people skills first upon waking up after nearly dying.

“Ouch, I’m back to the Replacement, huh?”

Jason snorts, “You’re damn right. Only a Replacement would pull something like that.”

Tim winces, “Sorry.”

Oh. That’s not fair. The sad look in Tim’s eyes and the pained expression. That’s just plain cheating. “It’s okay,” Jason sighs, “I’m just glad we found you in time.” He doesn’t mention the part where he had been the one to find Tim. Unresponsive and blue in the face. Looking more dead than alive.

“Who?”

“Dickiebird, obviously.” Blue enough.

Tim huffs a small, would-be laugh. It quickly turns into a cough and a groan. “Feels like I got hit by a train.”

“You kinda look like it, too, but I hear that’s just your face.”

Tim blinks at him, slow and owlish, but the joke seems to register after a moment and he shoots Jason a nasty look. “You can leave whenever you want.”

“You’d like that.”

“I really would.”

“Too bad.”

“What did I ever do to deserve you?”

“Something fucking stellar: me.”

Tim snorts, but his expression sobers after a moment, “I’m sorry. Really. I- I didn’t know what was happening. I still- did my blood sugar drop?”

“No, the opposite actually.”

“Wait, what?” Tim’s frown deepens and his brows come together, “But-”

“The insulin in the outside part of your pump froze.”

Tim’s hand suddenly reaches for where the pump typically sits. A frantic effort in a tangle of IV tubing that comes up empty. “Where-?”

“Bruce took it. He says you’ll have another one by tomorrow, but I think that one’s pretty shot. He took it apart.”

“Oh,” Tim deflates slightly.

“It almost killed you, Tim.”

“I know,” Tim breathes out. “I know, it’s stupid. Just… Sucks, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Jason answers, for lack of anything else to say. He reaches for one of Tim’s hands and squeezes scarred fingers with his own, calloused pads. “No more patrolling when it’s this cold, I guess.”

“I guess,” Tim echoes, a sign that he doesn’t actually want to agree, but knows that Jason’s right.

Jason squeezes his hand again. This time he gets a gentle squeeze back, which is something of a reassurance. “At least not alone,” he offers after a moment of hesitation. He’s not sure he should give Tim that hope, but he wouldn’t mind company every so often, and the human trafficking shit is something Jason works with on the regular. He can always put aside his more… lethal habits for a bit. There’s nothing stopping him from hunting down names in the future and taking care of business when Tim’s not looking. It’s not as if Tim doesn’t already know what Jason gets up to in his spare time.

“You- really?”

“Really. I’ve worked with a team before.”

“Doesn’t mean that you’d want to now,” Tim points out with a frown.

“It’s you,” it’s different. Maybe Jason will learn how to say half the things he means aloud, but he finds he doesn’t usually have to. Not with Tim, the little deductive prodigy that he is.

“Okay,” Tim smiles at him. A weak, shaky thing, but it’s there, and Jason smiles back.

______

Bruce steps into the infirmary with that usual, severe expression on his face that doesn’t give much away. He’s holding a small box with absolutely no markings on it, and he passes it to Tim wordlessly.

“What’s this?” Tim asks with his brows knitted together, but he doesn’t actually expect an answer. Instead, he opens the box up carefully and finds a new pump sitting inside.

“Freezing won’t be an issue,” Bruce explains before Tim can ask about the lack of a visible catheter. “It’s a single unit. No external catheter, and there’s a warming component that automatically runs under certain conditions to keep the insulin at the ideal temperature.”

“Oh,” Tim breathes, eyes widening as he processes the words. “You-”

“Lucius helped,” Bruce answers with a half shrug and eyes that stay focused on the thing in Tim’s hands rather than the wonder in his son’s eyes.

“Thank you.”

The corners of Bruce’s mouth tug upward before he can stop them, “We just want you safe.”

“Still, thank you.”

Bruce is quiet for a moment, before he says, “Anytime, Tim.”

#dc comics #jaytim #jason todd #tim drake #dick grayson #batfam #bruce wayne #alfred pennyworth #batfamily #dcu #blitzwrites #blitz

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anothertimdrakestan · 4 years

Text

Dying In The Batboys Arms

reqs: "do you write dark stuff like the boys reaction to the reader dying??? i love your blog btw!" & "Hi could I get some a n g s t"

sooo i'm terrible at angst or anything involving sadness because i ~fall apart~ and give up but for you two i tried my best haha and went for a HC cuz it's easier right? anyways hope you enjoy i cried like twice while writing this but i'm a weak bitch so i had to end them all decently to sleep alright tonight oops

Damian Wayne:

- damian would never let you die, so this would have to be you fulfilling some kind of deal or something unavoidable like yeeting into the speed force or something

- rushing to his embrace one last time and throwing your arms around him

- feeling him shake in your embrace as he whispers "please don't go beloved" and "ill never forget you" reducing you to tears as well

- your last kiss is salty and desprate, like he's trying to remember every moment, every feeling of you

- telling him it's not his fault and that he'll need to move on, but he's too busy promising to find you and save you even if there truly is no hope

- when you leave his eyes are the last thing you see, they were always your favorite and after years of looking at them it felt fitting they'd be the last earthly thing you saw

- as soon as you're gone damian isn't leaving the spot for weeks

- he's basically camped out, hair grown out, cheeks permanently stained as everytime he thinks of you he's crying again- making up for all the tears he held in his whole life

- jon is the only person he'll speak to, and even in that his words are softer than they'd ever been, damian would be to broken to hold his regular facade

- eventually jon coaxes him to return, seeing your belongings unmoved for months

- he'd almost undeniably quit robin, taking up a nickname you called him or wearing a suit in your favorite color, his only driving force after losing you will be the hope you had in him, he tells himself that even in death you're still watching over him forever... it may bit be true but it's the only thing that gives him a reason to keep living and not try to join you

Tim Drake:

- coughing up blood you'd search frantically for tim until he was at your side, crying uncontrollably as he tried to push away your hair matted with blood

- "hey timbers i don't think i'm gonna make it outta this one" you whispered, your hand reaching up to caress tim's cheek, wiping away the tears

- "no, stay with me help is coming i'm right here!" he'd scream spamming the 911 button on his suit as you shook your head "i might be dying but i'm not stupid" his eyes softened at the light smile that traced the lips he loved to kiss

- pulling him down to whisper everything you needed to say all he'd be able to get out it "i can't keep going if you leave me"

- squeezing his hand with every last ounce of strength you reminded him "it's not goodbye timmy it's a see you later, right?" with a soft nod he looked at you, eyes still brimming with tears

- "i've always been so proud of you timbers, don't stop now. see you later okay? i love you" the last words were strangled, but you had to give him something to hang on to as you let go, fading into the pain

- "see you soon y/n l/n ill love you always" were the last words to grace your ears, fading into a dull white noise as you slipped into peaceful bliss, tim's fsvorite soft smile permanent on your lips

- his family found him clutching your limp body, rocking back and forth promising to make you proud, repeated pushing your hair behind your ears because he knows you hate having hair fall in your face

- the strangled noises leaving his families throats as they realized what happened didn't help, neither did dick falling to the ground next to him, and steph bawling into jason's chest. duke had softly grabbed damians hand, both staring at the sky praying to whom ever was listening while bruce pulled tim up and into an embrace

- carefully the family left, one member- and a huge piece of their heart missing. broken at the scene.

- tim threw himself into work, determined to make you proud- but his family would catch him sitting in front of the small, supposedly secret, shrine he'd made in his closet for you, if damian presses his ear to his closet wall he could hear tim softly telling you about his day and what he did that would make you laugh

- months later he seemed calmer, no one could figure it out until dick took the time to ask. tim didn't say much but he held up his left hand ring finger and in a writing dick hadn't seen in months, the perfectly messy scribbles tattooed on his hand said "see you later timmy"

Jason Todd:

- seeing you minutes from death would send jason into shock, unable to move other than sinking to his knees next to you as you groaned with pain

- "at least hold me while a go jaybird" you mumbled through the blood trying to fill your throat. quickly he'd wrap his arms around you

- jason's embrace was comforting as always, you tried to memorize the way the scars landed on your abdomen and his calloused hands tentatively held you like you could break at any wrong move- i guess he was right this time

- "just hold on babe" jason was never good with words was he? with the last ounces of strength you cupped his cheek, bringing his head down to yours "stop talking and kiss me one last time" you whispered

- jason's hands fell to their usual position, one keeping you upright by holding your lower back, his rough hands creating perfect friction with your smooth skin, his other secured to the back of your head, lightly tugging on loose strands of your hair, it was like a puzzle piece fitting together, you melded perfectly to his lips

- the kiss was slow and loving, taking a moment you deepened it just to burn the memory of his passion into your brain before returning back to his loving and slow kisses

- you realized you were crying into the kiss when his rough finger swiped away tears, his lips never leaving yours

- pulling apart to breath and cough jason clung to you "please hold on please" you gave him a sad smile "it's okay jaybird i'm last where the pain hurts that means it's coming soon" you whispered, your hand still on his cheek, feeling the light stubble you always thought was so sexy

- "i love you jason todd, but i've never lied to you and i'm not starting now, this is goodbye babe" you told him bluntly, his face contorting as he pulled you back into his chest "no no no no" were the only words he could think of "i love you jay, it's okay baby" you pulled his lips back to yours until you felt the pain incoming

- "i don't think i've got much longer. hold me?" you looked up to jason who was pushing away tears

- "always" he replied, clutching you to his heaving chest as you snuggled into his embrace, you were sad this would be the last time you got to feel his heartbeat and chest rise and fall, you loved the feeling and knew you'd never forget it, even in death

- "y/n? babe? no" jason realized you were gone, and he lost it, screaming at the universe for taking the one good thing, crying like he promised he'd never, and punching almost everything within a 5 foot range

- his family found him bloody and broken, clutching your lifeless body as he tried to wrap him mind around what happened, he might never get better, the memory of your loss burned too deep and scarred too hard, but if he truly understood your love for him he'd use that love he had for you to drive it towards good, fighting for whatever you believed in most as an homage to you, hoping that when he next saw you he'd get to remember the feeling of you throwing your arms around him like you always did when he did something you were proud of, that desire was the only thing keeping him going

Dick Grayson:

- imagine an impending death with dick grayson, maybe it's a medical diagnosis and hope has run out, or a known death date, whatever it maybe- i think only dick would be a character strong enough to stay by your side through it all

- when it just became too hard to go on you and dock both knew what was coming

- he took weeks off nightwing duties, traveling the world and falling deeper in love, eloping somewhere deep in europe to solidify your love eternally no matter where either of you were

- the day it was finally time you were wrapped up in his clothes, your favorite hoodie and sweatpants that smelled of the warm vanilla toasted marshmallow smell you fell in love with

- you'd catch dick swiping away rogue tears all day, trying to make the most of your time together

- as the final hour ticked down you both let everything off your chests, not that there was really anything left

- nestling himself one the crook of your shoulder you inhaled the warm comfortable scent, willing yourself to never forget it when he whispered "i'm not ready to let you go yet" and it broke the both of you, sobbing into each other's shoulders as time stopped

- feeling death begin creeping in you were curled up in dick's embracing, having said your goodbyes to loved ones, damian especially heart broken he was clutching one of your sweatshirts, one day he'd grow out of it but you assumed by then he'd be over the loss

- "does- do you hurt?" dick asked softly as you soaked in his embrace, feeling his tears roll down your touching cheeks

- "it's not scary when you're here dickie" you whispered, pulling his lips in for one last kiss, as you began drifting away you shifted to rest on his collar bone, inhaling the vanilla scent that had been your rock for years, you were glad it would be the last thing you remembered, the best sendoff you could ask for

- dick watched you exhale your last breath peacefully, part of him was glad your pain was over, but that didn't stop the sobs from escaping

- damian crept in, still clinging to your sweatshirt, hopping up into dick's lap, nestled between you and dick, he'd only done it a couple times but he needed it almost as much as dick this time

- and the two held you together, more family members came and went but damian and dick held your vigil, together they helped each other get up and live, falling into a routine of sitting in the same position, your sweatshirt held in their lap, occasionally they'd raise it and take a trip down memory lane with your familiar smell still lingering on the sweatshirt, and that was all they had of you, but now they had each other. and that would have to do until they saw you again

#tim drake #damian wayne #jason todd #dick grayson #batboys #batfam #batfam headcanons #tim drake x reader #damian wayne x reader #jason todd x reader #dick grayson x reader #dc angst #tim drake angst #damian wayne angst #jason todd angst #dick grayson angst #dc fluff #batfamily

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bluegarners · 3 years

Note

For the bingo card, I'd like to request the "tortured for information" square with Dick being the one who's tortured (sorry Dick alskjda). You can include any other batfam member(s) that you want, I'm not picky 😁.

Oooo, that’s a good one! I was super excited to see your request, I hope this does the prompt right~ @hood-ex

Tortured for Information

The room they’re being contained in is small, perhaps eight foot by eight, and the ceiling barely crests at seven. It’s cramped and hot, the stone bricks that surround them leaving no room for air ventilation or any sort of moisture except their own sweat. They know there’s a door somewhere off to the right, but the enclosing darkness leaves most of it to the imagination. Pitch black inks the area, not a single source of light filtering through its void. They only know there’s a door in the darkness because there used to be four of them where three now sit in anticipation. A few inches rest between each of the three remaining figures, all trying their best to breathe through the heat and not inhale the stench of their own gross fluids.

Time is hard to tell in the dark, minds so used to constant movement that stillness is unexpected and dangerous. What they do know is that, before there were just three, they awoke one by one, feeling out for one another in the darkness, checking supplies (they had none), and trying their best to figure out how to escape. The door was the obvious solution at first, the largest of them using his shoulder as a battering ram against the heavy wood. There’s no give, no weakness, and the eldest stops the biggest before there’s unnecessary hurt inflicted. There are no hinges or door knobs or anything obvious through the touch of careful fingers, so other than hopelessly banging against the door, there’s no way to open it.

All of them were still on the cusp of disoriented when they realized there’s no air flow and that, if they’re as trapped as they believe themselves to be, conserving oxygen was the next priority after a failed escape. Suggestions of being underground were thrown around, all failing to recall how they ended up in the small room in the first place or who took them. The underground theory is plausible, being that there’s no light, but the sweltering heat doesn’t match the coolness of deep earth. Being in a basement was also likely, but seeing as their prison isn’t much of a room for a house or other building also leaves the hypothesis flimsy. They compared notes from what they could remember.

“Patrol,” Tim started, a small voice in the black, “in the West portion of Gotham. I was alone though.”

“Spoiler accompanied me in the South,” Damian said.

“Last I remembered, I was in the Cave with B,” Dick chimed in. “We were going over logs. Hood?”

“Drunk,” was the muttered reply. “Still nursing a headache actually so if you guys could shut up and think, that’d be great.”

They’re still on rickety terms with the estranged brother. Things have gotten better over the years, but the progress only graduated from ‘shoot on sight’ to ‘stay the hell away’. Progress is progress though. They’re getting there, slowly, and one day Alfred will coax him into a Manor dinner.

Silence fell on them, more out of nothing else to say rather than to comply with the command, and the only sound was their breaths filtering through the stagnant air. The heat isn’t unbearable. No, far from it, they’ve all endured worse, but the closeness of their bodies provided little relief. There’s hardly enough room to stand and take a few steps before accidentally smashing someone’s hand and soon enough, agitation was brewing. Britsling words, huffs, tuts, an occasional snap; none of them did well in dark, small, and claustrophobic situations.

The hard part about residing in shadow is that one cannot tell when eyes are open or closed, seeing darkness or dreaming in black. When Jason awakes for the second time, a fierce pounding building behind his ears, he realizes that someone is missing. Someone is gone from their eight by eight confinement. A stutter of breath is absent among the shallow patterns. His fingers fumble loosely against the hard flooring, rough in texture and covered in cracks and pebbles, until he finds a body.

He shakes them. “Wake up. Wake up now.”

It’s Damian. He’s up and alert in an instant, grasping at Jason’s wrist in a move meant to harm the older man. It merely pinches him. “What’s going on?” the boy hisses, grip frightfully tight.

Jason ignores him. Feels around for another body. His hand barely moves a foot before he feels something loose and soft. He tugs at it and a startled yell answers. “What the hell?” Tim growls, low enough to be a whisper but quick enough to be panicked.

A snake of oil and water falls into his stomach as Jason confirms it. It twists around in his gut even as he crawls over to where he thinks the door is, slamming a fist into it over and over again as he feels his own panic settle coolly into his feet. They took him. Dick is gone.

That was, in their best estimate, an hour ago. Now they all sit within reaching distance, careful to watch for the signs of induced slumber, periodically calling out to reassure one another. Tim thinks it was gas. Damian thinks drugs. Jason doesn’t know what to think, just that it happened and now Nightwing is gone. He does not voice his more sinister thoughts aloud on what happened to the man in blue, what might be happening right now, but he does not console the younger vigilantes. Order would dictate that it was now his job to look after them, as the second eldest, but he’s been on his own for years and doesn’t know how to.

Dick is gone and they can only sit and wait.

~oOo~

The vapor takes him last. He’s wedged himself into a corner, straining his eyes to make out even an outline of his brothers, when he hears a body slump to the floor, followed by two after. The noise is alarming because, well, those were bodies hitting the stone floor, his brothers, and Dick prepares himself for something as he holds his breath, clasping a hand over his nose.

The door suddenly opens and white light pours into the small room like an ocean hell bent on taking everything with it. It washes over everything, and for a moment, Dick is completely blinded and overwhelmed with the sudden contrast. Just as quickly as the light burst in, there are hands scraping and clawing against his shoulders and Dick is tempted to shout, but the vapors have finally reached his lungs and he feels the lull of sleep drag at his insides until his eyes weigh a thousand pounds and he is forced to close them.

When he blinks them open, he has to bite back a scream because there’s a masked face in front of him, a ghastly brown mask with gaping holes that peer into the depths. Dick is more than a little startled but finds it within himself to evaluate. His mask is still firmly in place, he can feel the spirit gum sucking at his skin, and he is still fully garbed in his Nightwing suit. A quick glance is easy enough to prove he is no longer in that dark prison he and his brothers had been held in, and another glance confirms that he is the only one out.

His brothers are still trapped.

He, too, is trapped, secured against what feels like a metal cot with leather and metal chains and straps tying his feet and arms to the corners of the cot. The masked face moves away from him, decidedly once it's confirmed he is in fact awake, and retreats back. Dick strains to see where they go but they disappear out his peripherals and is instead replaced with the sight of an old woman, gray, almost silver, hair falling in front of her eyes. There’s bright pink lipstick on her mouth, a dull blue shimmer shade smearing her eyelids, and a coral pink blush struggling to lift up the saggy flesh in what might be an attempt at youth. She smiles down at him. Her teeth are plastic.

“Good evening, Nightwing,” she simpers, reaching out a gnarled hand to stroke at his face. “Did you sleep well?”

Dick says nothing, trying to piece together the woman’s motives. He doesn’t recognize her. She’s new. But old. Perhaps an underground leader then. The masked person from earlier would indicate some sort of dramatic cult. Dick doesn’t know if the concealment of their identity means they intend to release him later, or if the showing of the old woman’s face is a move of power, as if to say that they have the means to keep him stationary and have little fear in doing so. The woman could be anyone from a simple grandmother to an “immortal” mortal, striving for some elixir of youth like the League of Assassins. Really, this could be anything. They, whoever it was that took Dick and his brothers, were clearly very capable.

Just as Dick begins to consider the idea of magic being involved, the old woman snaps her fingers and the wooden face from earlier reappears. The blow is quick, a metal stick coming down to strike at his abdomen, and Dick has little time to brace as metal meets his thin flesh and pain lights a fire inside his stomach. He bites back a scream.

“Now, you listen here young man,” the woman berates, a shaking finger pointing accusingly at him. “When you are asked a question, you answer. Where are your manners?”

Dick is too busy catching his breath to form a coherent response, and the woman snaps her fingers again, another blow striking at his stomach again. Dick relaxes as fully as he can despite the panic that’s quickly taking hold of his limbs, and the metal collides with his side this time with bruising force against one of his kidneys. A huff of hurt escapes his mouth and Dick instinctually begins to curl up into himself, only stopped by the straps that hold him down.

“Do you understand?” the old woman asks, raising her hand threateningly as if to snap again.

“Yes,” Dick wheezes out, breathing through the pain. “Yes, I get it.”

She drops her hand, a pleased and rather pleasant smile marring her face once more. “Good. Lovely. I’m sure you have many questions, Nightwing, but I am not obliged to answer any. However, I want you to answer some questions for me. How does that sound?”

Dick isn’t sure if a head nod is enough to placate her inquiry, so he manages another verbal affirmation.

“Excellent,” the old woman crows. “I’ll begin then. Oh drat, I almost forgot. You arrived with your brothers, yes?”

Dick feels the blood in his face drain. She notices.

“Oh, not to worry!” she reassures, a wrinkled hand coming up to pat his cheek. “No harm will come to them. I would never hurt a child, Nightwing, no sir. Family is very important after all. That’s why you’re here! So, to make sure that you answer truthfully, I would like to propose a bargain.”

“Bargain?” Dick questions. His side winces, still struggling to adapt to the injuries. He’ll have to deal with it later. Later.

“Quite so,” the woman agrees. “If you answer my questions with complete honesty, and I mean that young man, I will grant a few privileges to your brothers. I don’t like shutting them away in their room, but I know otherwise they wouldn’t behave. You can help them though. Here, I’ll show you.”

A screen flickers to life above his head, a monitor illuminating the ceiling.

“If you answer my question, I will turn on one light for them,” the woman says, shakily motioning to the pitch black screen. “That is how this will work. I will tell you what privileges can be earned for your brothers, and then ask you a question. Answering truthfully is the only way to give them those rewards though. Do you understand?”

“And if I don’t?” Dick questions back, the situation finally settling into his head. Rule number something that Bruce had always instilled in him was to never bargain with your captor, especially when others were involved. Innocents.

“Then I snap my fingers,” the woman responds coldly, “and Burtrum will do his best to force the truth out of you.”

Burtrum. The hulking figure in the wooden mask. Burtrum. Okay. Okay. Not the weirdest but- okay, fine. Burtrum.

“We’ll start easy, just so you understand that I am truthful in my promises. Are you ready, Nightwing?”

He can say no. He can say no and get beaten for it, but if he says no, then there’s the chance that his brothers will suffer for it. The old woman promised not to hurt them, she said she wouldn’t hurt children, but he can’t take anything she says as absolute fact. If he says yes, that he’s willing to answer her, there’s no telling what kind of questions she might want to pry an answer for out of him. She could ask about anything: identities, the Justice League, the Titans, Batman, codes, locations, anything. And if he doesn’t answer the way she wants, he’ll get beaten for it. Tortured, more like it, and he really doesn’t want to put himself through that if he doesn’t have to.

“I don’t know how you were raised, but I don’t accept silence as an answer. You will use your words.”

Tell that to Bruce, Dick thinks ruefully, mulling over his options once again. “Fine,” he settles on, “I’m ready.”

“Splendid. Burtrum, do please fetch me a chair. My knees are brittle and it’s cold in here.”

The massive figure of Burtrum, dear lord that sounds like a name Alfred would know somehow, lumbers away and Dick, admittedly, feels a little tension ease out of him now that the immediate threat is gone. Well, the immediate physical threat.

“Now, I promised you that I would turn a light on for your brothers. I understand that children can be afraid of the dark, and it is not my intention to frighten them like this. So, tell me, Nightwing, what is your favorite color?”

“My favorite color?” he repeats back dumbly.

“Yes, indeed. Answer that and I will lighten the room. It’s not a trick question. Everyone’s got a favorite color.”

Dick can’t think of how his favorite color might be used against someone, and he certainly doesn’t use it as his own password or anything, so he says, “I like blue.”

The old woman laughs, a vibrant blue fingernail tapping against the emblem spread across his chest. “I do as well,” she titters excitedly. “Lapis is such a beautiful color, wouldn’t you agree? Such a darling, delicate shade.”

Dick doesn’t know if it’s a question he actually has to answer, it seems rhetorical, but he doesn’t want to take any chances. The fewer bruises, the better as always. “Yeah, it’s-”

“As promised,” the old woman interrupts, talking over him, “I will turn on the light. I am an honest person, Nightwing, so I hope this show of good faith will inspire you.”

Immediately, Dick’s eyes snap to the screen above him, holding his breath in anticipation as he stares into the darkness. A few seconds later and a calm yellow washes over the dark screen, the slumped figures of his brothers finally in view. It appears to be a live feed, something Dick had originally been worried about, but as he sees Jason stand up at the new lightness and Tim’s head whipping around in astonishment, Dick feels his heart sigh.

Burtrum re-enters the room, rumbling with a newer heaviness in his arms as he carries a padded wooden chair. He gently places it onto the ground and the old woman sinks into it with a gratefulness that reminds Dick that this is literally an old woman he’s dealing with. Not some crime lord, not some super villain, not some drugged out meta human. She is, quite literally, just an eighty something year old lady with a singular, large butler like henchman at her service. It all feels quite ridiculous now that he thinks about it, and for a moment, Dick wonders if he’s hallucinating or dreaming.

The smarting ache in his stomach reminds him that, no, neither of those things are true and this is truly a dangerous situation with so many unknown variables. He needs to be careful. Needs to be smart about things.

“Now that we have established my honesty, it is time to establish yours. Let’s begin, shall we?”

~oOo~

The darkness retreats suddenly and unexpectedly. Damian does not jolt, any Robin to a respectable Batman never jolts, but he will admit the sudden brightness leaves him feeling antsy. The lights meant a few things. One, someone was watching them. Two, the room was far more complex than a few bricks and an immovable door. Three, something was going to happen soon with this new development or something already did.

Todd is swearing left and right, making for the door again. Drake is peering around the room skeptically, angling his head this way and that in an attempt to understand the new light sources. And he? Damian is staring a hole into the rough ground, thinking hard. About what, he can’t quite put to words, but somehow, the light does not comfort him. It only reassures him that there was something, rather someone, crucial missing from this entire situation, the darkness having hidden that blatant fact beforehand.

The illumination does not heat the room any further than it already feels, but Damian supposes time will change that. By itself, even before the brightness, the small prison was near sweltering and Damian could feel the back of his suit becoming soaked in his own sweat. Perhaps three hours, maybe a bit more, has passed since the first time they awoke to be trapped in this confinement. Dehydration was inevitable. Escape, by all means, was still a quandary that would not be answered for the foreseeable future. There was no telling if anyone was looking for them currently, no way to communicate a location with all of their materials stripped from their persons, and being trapped inside such a tiny space with two of his least favorite people in the world only worsened that fact.

To top it all off, Richard was still gone. Still missing. Captured. Elsewhere.

The heat must be making him light headed because suddenly his neck feels too weak to support his thoughts. He rests his face in between his knees and continues to think. There is little else to do.

~oOo~

“I have a list of necessities here. Every question you answer is one of them given to your brothers. When I have run through the entire list, of which there are only three elements, I will have Burtrum deliver the items you answered to. Is that clear, Nightwing?”

It’s insane is what it is, is all Dick can think, but his voice says otherwise. “Crystal.”

“We’ll start with hygiene. How often do you patrol in Bludhaven?”

“Whenever I have time to.”

The old woman frowns and taps two fingers against the metal cot. Burtrum and his dark brown mask loom forward and Dick can feel hands rest against his ankles. Dick has the sudden realization that his boots are gone. He has nothing but thick socks and a few band-aids on his feet.

“Do not be coy, young man,” the woman carps. “Answer properly. A schedule will do.”

Will giving away specific days be too much? Yes, likely so. Though it’s true he patrols whenever he has time to, those are for extra patrols when he has the opportunity to do so with a friend or fellow vigilante. Every second month on the third Tuesday, he patrols in Gotham with Batman and Robin. On a ‘regular’ schedule, he takes every chance he can get to go out on the streets of Bludhaven. Even then, if someone watches closely enough, he does have a pattern in the how/when/where he patrols. It’s a bit too far reaching to truly connect dots, but he can’t be sure. He also had to consider that there was hygiene on the line, whatever that meant. It could be a bathroom, a shower, medical supplies, medication. It could be many things, so was he willing to pass over that for his brothers? No, not truly, but he doesn’t really know how far he can push vagueness in order to appease the lady.

He’s taking too long. The grip around his ankles is tightening and though he’s almost sure Burtrum isn’t a meta-human, he certainly looks strong enough to do some serious damage.

“I don’t have a schedule but-”

The twists are sudden, efficient and ruthless, and the sickening snap that echoes in Dick’s ears takes a moment to register. Adrenaline keeps his brain from processing the sight of both of his feet and the tops of his toes pointing straight at him, but the bulge that shines through his socks is enough to jerk his thoughts to a screeching halt. Then the pain comes. It’s blinding. Bones grinding against each other, snapped unnaturally and grating against his muscles, creating a euphoria of fire and cold, cold ice that spreads to the very tips of his toenails. On instinct, he flails and immediately, immensely, regrets it as tears spring into his eyes and his lips contort in a half snarl, half gag of anguish.

“Your brothers have lost toilet privileges,” the old woman mutters unkindly, dull eyes unfeeling for his pain, “and Burtrum has done exactly as I warned. You are a selfish man, Nightwing. Selfish and unwise. I pray this has been a lesson for you on the consequences of being dishonest.”

Dick can hardly hear her over the roar of blood in his ears, heart beating faster and faster as the pain only continues to torment him. It’s crazy, he knows he can’t actually feel the bones touching one another, it’s not something he’s aware of on a daily basis, but right now it feels like his bones are singing and his nerves are their opera house. A raging cacophony of violence and crackling misery. He sucks in a breath. Slowly pushes it out. Repeats. In. Out. In. Out.

“Let’s try again. Water, three twelve ounce bottles. Do you work with the BPD often?”

Even in his agony induced haze, Dick understands that this is something he must answer. Water is important, essential, and he doesn’t know how much longer they’ll be captured here. The offer of water is much too tempting to pass up and he knows that the room the others are cornered in is already hot. Dehydration would take hold of them soon and he only has the flimsy word of his captor that his brothers will not be harmed. He has to have some trust that the bottles of water will remain un-tampered with.

“No,” he manages, words thick like sludge on his tongue, “not officially. Sometimes, I’ll help them with drug factions or serial killers.” Dick closes his eyes and breathes deeply again. Speaking is difficult when he wants to bite through his lip to distract himself from his broken bones. “I don’t have a working relationship like Batman does with the GCPD.”

The old woman hums, clapping her hands together. “I am happy you’ve come to your senses. Your honesty has earned your brothers some water.”

She reaches out to brush some of the sweat slicked strands of hair from his face, cooing in an odd motherly way. He hates the tenderness in her touch, as if she hadn’t just ordered someone to break his ankles. This woman wasn’t just dangerous, she was psychotic. Unpredictable. To further worsen a bad situation, he still can’t figure out what the purpose in all of this was. What the ultimate goal is. She seems interested in him, Nightwing, rather than his secret identity. She’s neglected to pry about Batman, of which all villains do when they’ve got a bird in their grasps, and the soothing motions of her hands juxtapose her violence.

Dick’s head is spinning from it all, the fire licking at his feet worsening the vertigo. He doesn’t understand anything at all and the circulation in his legs is thrumming in the worst way. His feet will turn blue soon, but before that, the flesh will balloon into something almost unrecognizable with the swelling that is sure to come. How long does it take for ankles to heal? Two months? Three? That’s ignoring physical therapy and if all goes according to plan. The breaks look bad, not exactly clean, and Dick is scaring himself with the possibility of never walking properly again.

“Let’s proceed with the final item on the necessities list. Three granola bars, all high in calorie. A real treat with chocolate chips, ho ho. I know children just love sweet things.”

He’s tempted to drown her out, just focus solely on the monitor still hanging over his head and watch his brothers, but once again he evaluates that food is indeed essential too and that he still doesn’t know when rescue or escape will be. His best estimate on timing is that they’ve been captured for the better part of four, maybe five hours. Possibly more. They’re nearing the timing in which someone will notice all four of them gone. Help will come soon, but he’s got to compensate for that large if in all of this. If help arrives. If they escape. Those snacks could end up being a saving grace depending on all of those ifs.

“What do you know about the Anaconda Killer?”

The moniker is familiar. An early 2000s serial killer in Bludhaven that strangled his victims after kidnapping and holding them for a week. Most of his victims were young girls, high-schoolers and undergraduates in college, and all were blonde with blue eyes. The killer was never caught and it haunts the BPD as their first major cold case, a total of seven known victims staining the profiles.

He tells her as much, paraphrasing, and she frowns. For a moment, Dick fears that he wasn’t specific enough despite his little knowledge on the subject. His eyes dart to Burtrum, still stationary at his feet and mask staring at nothing and everything, and Dick waits for confirmation as the old woman closes her eyes.

“You worked on the case?” she asks slowly, hands crawling up to rest lightly against the metal cot. “You know of the victims?”

“Yes,” he answers, careful to keep his tone steady. A jolt of doubt strikes through him though as the old woman’s eyes snap open, a feverish excitement taking hold of her.

“Oh that’s good,” she whispers. “Very, very good.”

~oOo~

They pass out for the third time.

Knocked out is probably the more correct term, but Tim can’t find it within himself to actually care because that was the third fucking time. He can’t figure out how they do it. He’s almost completely sure it’s some sort of gas agent that leaks in through the bricks, but he can’t find any gaps or seams where the gas would invade from. He’s looked, double checked, and he can’t find any discrepancies between the bricks and stones. It’s driving him crazy because if it’s that easy to take them out, why hasn’t anything been done to them yet?

And furthermore, why leave water and food in its place?

He’s holding one of the bottled waters in his hands, inspecting the seal to make absolutely certain it hasn’t been opened. Tim knows there are other ways to tamper with water other than actually unscrewing the cap, but honestly he feels a little desperate for a bit of relief for his thirst. He’s sweat through his uniform, having unclasped his cape about an hour into their confinement. He’s sure his face is a little clammy looking and breathing through his nose feels like he’s sucking in sand, so the water was like some sort of hallucination when he first saw it. The others weren’t sure what to make of it at first either, Damian suspicious that it was poisoned and Jason not really giving a fuck.

Tim’s thirst is winning over his skepticism though, the more he turns the bottle around in his hands, the more appealing the slosh of water looks. “They wouldn’t give this to us just to poison us,” he suggests, trying to reason his way into feeling less guilty about drinking. “It just wouldn’t make sense. Why give us drugged food and water when they’ve already shown they can do that with the air? It would be-”

“Holy shit, just shut up and drink it,” Jason mutters, uncapping his own bottle and taking a large swig. Both of the younger boys turn to him with large eyes, clearly watching to see if there are any immediate, negative side effects. Jason will admit he’s a little nervous to find out as well but his defiance on the subject merely just makes him take another sip.

Ten minutes go by and Tim’s tongue is feeling tacky and borderline dry. He gives in and drinks half of the bottle, swishing the lukewarm water around in his mouth. It’s a huge relief.

“Imbeciles,” Damian says, watching with ill-concealed fascination and disgust. “You are both foolish to accept that from the enemy.”

“Maybe,” Jason tosses back, lying down. His feet almost touch the other side. “Or maybe not. It could be from Nightwing.”

Damian's head snaps up. “What do you mean by that?”

Jason hums. “Well he was taken, what, a few hours ago?”

“Four.”

“Yeah? Huh, no shit. Either way, that leaves time for negotiations. A deal. Goldie just loves making deals.”

“You’re implying that Nightwing is speaking with the enemy about our treatment?” Damian says slowly.

“Speaking, screaming, dying, who knows. But sure. He’s talking to them about our treatment.”

Tim throws a small glare to Jason’s slouched form, irritated that he’s being so casual in such a potentially dangerous situation. A small part is also starting to get more worried though because the older man does make a point. Dick is probably speaking with their captors but it’s a far reach to say it’s voluntary. There’s about a seventy-three percent chance Dick is being tortured at the moment, tortured for information or otherwise. In terms of stubbornness and resistance to torture, Dick was only second to Bruce when it came to that sort of thing, be it threat of pain or mental anguish. His eldest brother has a hard head and an even tougher mindset, but his weak spot is his heart.

If Tim and the others were being used as bargaining chips, well, there wasn’t much Dick wouldn’t agree to. Suddenly, the bottle of water doesn’t feel so much like relief as it does guilt.

~oOo~

“We’re moving on from necessities,” the old woman proclaims, anticipation now tainting her voice. “I have no intention of keeping you and your brothers here forever; children should be allowed to frolic and such. So, Nightwing, this is your chance to earn them their freedom.”

He’s never been offered something like this before. Typically, the go-to style of his torturers always involved a threat of ‘You tell me what I wanna know and I won’t kill you and your loved ones,’ or ‘You’ll eventually talk if I keep you here long enough,’. Dick can’t remember a time where he’s been offered his freedom in exchange for information. It’s just not how these things work.

“I am willing to give your brothers their supplies back as a first exchange, excluding their weapons of course. Such a prize, however, can only be earned through truth and if you lie, I will know and your punishment for lying will be severe. I do not like hurting you, you know,” the woman simpers, “but I will order Burtrum to do so. This is very important to me. Do you understand?”

The stakes are climbing higher and higher with each minute that ticks by. Dick can’t really feel his feet much, only if he chooses to think about it or if he attempts to move anything below the knee, and the pulsating in his stomach isn’t a fantastic sign. He hadn’t originally thought the blows were enough to cause actual harm, maybe a few dark, dark bruises to show for them, but the sharp pin pricks in his side where he had been struck in the kidney doesn’t feel right. Internal bleeding is something that crosses his mind, the symptoms of numbness and a faint migraine building, but Dick forces himself to categorize and shelve the pain. Now isn’t the time. It’s really not the time.

“Yes,” he says stiffly, feeling his tongue scrape against the roof of his mouth. “I understand.”

“Splendid. Who is the Anaconda Killer?”

And wow, that’s a loaded question to start off the promise of liberty with. “The BPD never caught-”

“I don’t care,” the woman snaps, leaning forward. Her breath smells like old soup. “Tell me who the killer is.”

Dick swallows. Takes a breath and releases it. Eyes Burtrum, who is still hovering by his feet. Trails his eyes back to bright lipstick and shimmer eye shadow.

“Kennedy Giavich,” Dick says, unsure if he really should be giving out the name of a civilian that has never been charged. “My investigations pointed to him being the killer but there wasn’t any conclusive evidence.”

The old woman taps a fingernail against the cot and Burtrum moves forward, placing a single meaty hand on top of Dick’s mangled feet. Slowly, languidly, the man pushes against the soles of his feet and Dick sucks in a quick breath, screwing his eyes shut. The pain, like the first time, is laced with fire and ice and Dick is starting to come to terms with the fact that he’s going to have nerve damage if this keeps up. Never mind having to stay off his feet for a couple months, he’s never going to have proper feeling in his toes again.

“Who is Kennedy Giavich?” the old woman presses, leering further into Dick’s face.

In. Out. In. Out.

The woman taps her finger again and the pressure releases, the small scream Dick had been holding back dissipating as well. “Who is Kennedy?” she repeats.

“H-He’s a security guard,” Dick manages to wheeze out, still trying to catch his breath. “Works at a communal library. It’s where he sought out his victims. He, mgh, quit last year though. Brown hair, brown eyes, large build.”

“What else?”

“I tailed him for a couple months but he didn’t have any new victims. He lives near the library he worked at and hasn’t gotten another job since. That’s all I know.”

The old woman eyes him, pressing her lips together in what might be a scowl. She regards Dick with an air of suspicion, as if she could somehow read his mind to discern if he was telling the truth or not. He is, seeing as he really hasn’t done much follow up on Giavich in the past few months. A mistake, possibly, on his part but a cold case is cold, and Dick leaves it at that. Especially when there are more active and pressing things to attend to with the little time he has.

Reaching a decision, she raises a wrinkled hand and waves it behind her, signaling Burtrum to leave the room. Dick’s eyes travel upwards to the screen again, watching with a sick feeling in his stomach as one by one his brothers succumb to whatever invisible agent leaks into their small room. A minute later, the thick wooden door creaks open slightly, Burtrum out of sight of the ceiling camera, and a few utility belts are thrown in. The door shuts quickly, presumably some sort of locking mechanism closing it completely, and Dick abruptly doesn’t feel as bad giving away a supposedly innocent civilian’s name. Hopefully, with their tech back, his brothers will find away to escape and get out of whatever hole they’ve been trapped in.

“You said that he hasn’t taken any victims in recent times,” the old woman says quietly, hands folded into her lap. “That he’s been inactive?”

Dick nods. The sick in his stomach is starting to roll around a bit more violently, nausea taking hold. Burtrum re-enters the room holding something in his left hand, but Dick can’t tell what it is, the large figure just out of his peripheral vision. He swallows at the silence that follows his entrance, the air thick with tension. Dick holds his breath.

The old woman snaps her fingers and Burtrum descends upon him.

The blows are rapid and without prejudice, slamming into every available surface that isn’t obstructed by the straps that hold him down. It’s so fast, so savage, that Dick can’t follow the movements and prepare accordingly, the flash of a weapon and it’s strike zone too much for his pain muddled mind to physically follow. One barely glances against his feet but even that is enough to send his brain into a shock, white fire lacing up his legs and to the tip of his nose. It’s bruising, crushing force, each impact enough to completely paralyze him for a few precious milliseconds. His arms are jerking in their restraints, knees bumping against each other on reflex, and there might be a sound escaping his jaw each time a blow connects, but he can’t be sure because everything is happening much too fast and his lungs are gasping for air that escapes him.

All the while, as Burtrum continues to pummel him and break his bones and bleed him dry, the old woman is muttering, gazing at the beat-down with angered, uninterested eyes and a frown cold enough to freeze the sun.

It’s all Dick can do but try and relax, there’s no point in defending himself like this, but his instincts are going hay-wire. He wants to clench and retaliate, snatch the weapon out of those ruthless hands, but Dick’s own hands are secured tightly. He can feel the marks pulling at the skin of his wrists, indenting and leaving bright red and raw flesh behind in his frenzy. Desperately, his eyes once again travel to the screen above him, his brothers’ forms still and un-moving. The sight brings little comfort, a small and irrational portion of his head screaming that they’re dead, that the old woman killed them, that Dick killed them, that he’s going to die to-

The beating stops. The old woman has a frail hand resting against Burtrum’s huge arm. She’s staring right at him.

“That was unfair of me,” she says. “I should have warned you again.”

Blood dribbles past his lips, saliva and bile sliding out as well and leaking onto the cool metal.

“I told you at the start that I wouldn’t tolerate lies.”

Something shifts inside Dick’s chest. He thinks a rib might’ve been broken. Or maybe that’s his clavicle. Sternum. Something. It hurts. It hurts.

“That Burtrum would extract the truth if necessary. Really this shouldn’t have come as a surprise, Nightwing.”

Breathing is difficult. His stomach spasms with each inhale and exhale. It’s slow and pained. Thoughts are difficult too. His eyes remain fixed on the dull monitor. Jason is moving. Reaching for his empty holsters. Tim is shifting. Damian remains still.

A gentle hand guides his chin away from the screen.

“Don’t lie to me,” the old woman whispers. There are tears in her eyes. “I told you that this was very important to me. Would you like to know why? Why I do this?”

Dick doesn’t have the strength to say yes or no. Doesn’t have the will to nod his head or turn it away. He can only stare through the lens of his mask.

“He has my grand-daughter,” she admits, voice trembling. Her fingers tap a frantic rhythm against his chin and blood flicks in their dance across his face. “I just know it. And I know you must know it too. You live in Bludhaven, don’t you? You work with the police there. Surely you must know? You’ve told me as much, so surely… Surely you know where she is?”

No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t.

The tapping stops and fingernails dig into the sides of his jaw, shaking him. It jars something in his mouth and he coughs, spittle flying out and something hard dislodging. He’s lost a tooth then it would seem.

“Her name is Maria Dunken,” the old woman tells him, looking, searching, for anything like recognition in Dick’s bloody face. “She has blonde hair and blue eyes. She’s only sixteen. Please, you must know what he did to her. Where she is. Answer me! Tell me!”

Dick feels himself drifting, mind floating somewhere between coherence and dizziness. He can’t feel his feet anymore, his heart is beating beating beating, and there’s a dark fuzz building at the edges of his vision.

The old woman releases his face, pulling instead at the heavy arm of Burtrum. “This,” she says almost breathless, the panic building in her voice, “This is her uncle. Don’t you see? You must, you must know where she is. We are her family. Family is important, I know you understand this. See, look at your brothers! You do this for them, don’t you?”

Yes, Dick thinks, a mist falling over his sight. Always.

“I, we both, would do anything for our families. This was my last hope, Nightwing. My last resort. I tried so hard to get the police involved but no one would answer. Do you know how long I searched for you though? How long would you have ignored my grand-daughter if I had not brought you here? How long?”

Dick doesn’t know. The room is getting darker. He can feel his shoulders sagging against the cold table, muscles trembling and collapsing.

“Sorry,” he rasps, because that sounds like the right thing to say. He is sorry about Maria Dunken and her poor grandma. He is sorry he didn’t stick with Kennedy Giavich longer. He is sorry he ever got into this situation. He’s paying the price for it now.

The old woman laughs wetly, Burtrum jerking in her grasp. “All will be forgiven if you tell me where Maria is. Everything will be okay. Just tell me. Please.”

Dick’s eyes are drifting back to the monitor, it’s dull glow all he can focus on. Its bright edges are just enough to chase away the luring darkness that’s clouding his eyesight. Jason is up, pacing, pounding against the door. Tim is picking through his belt, nimble fingers taking stock. Damian is staring right at him. Straight at the camera. Dick feels a smile tugging at his sore features. He doesn’t remember the last time Damian ever looked so small. He’s grown up, hasn’t he?

“Nightwing?” a voice calls to him, distracting him. “Where is she?”

Slowly, Dick glances back over to the petite and frail woman and her hulking figure of a son. They make a funny picture, contrasting spectacularly against each other, but their faces, even if one is covered, are filled with a dangerous kind of hope. Thrill. Expectance.

Suddenly, a headline crosses to the forefront of Dick’s mind. Two weeks ago, a body was found in an alleyway, stuffed underneath piles of garbage. It was a young girl, a Jane Doe, and she had blonde hair and blue eyes. She was strangled to death. Even now, the details are barely there, the news a similar story to all the other tragedies that happen and continue to happen. But still. Grandmother and son look at him, his bruised and broken body, and think he has the answers they seek.

He doesn’t. He doesn’t.

“She’s dead.”

Dick blinks and finds he doesn’t have the strength to open his eyes again.

~oOo~

Jason is about to punch the door for the fifth time when he hears something click on the other side.

Tim is trying to figure out how to get his communicator to work with little reception when he sees Jason take a step back from the door.

Damian is still staring at the weird indent in the ceiling when he realizes neither of the other occupants are moving.

They all stare at the heavy door as Jason carefully edges towards it, pressing a hand against the far side. There is little resistance and the obstruction that had trapped them for so long swings open. White light pours in and they have to squint against its brilliance. An empty hall reveals itself past the frame, and through the hall is another open door, the sounds of the city filtering beyond it.

Jason is the first to move, taking a step out of the small room that smelled of sweat and old heat. Tim follows, gathering his emptied belt and peering into the white expanse. Damian trails after, suspicion the only thing keeping him from fleeing out into the streets. No one stops them as they walk down the long, clean hallway. There are no doors, no windows, no other exits other than straight ahead and when they step out into the damp and smog filled air of Gotham, life dances before them.

They are free.

They are free and are forced to wonder: At what cost?

#bad things happen bingo #tw:blood #tw:torture #Dick Grayson #Jason Todd #Damian Wayne #Tim Drake #fanfic #prompt #tbh i wrote another version of this with about 10 pages before i decided i did not like it #maybe one day i'll try re-writing it but for now it's just going to be some random draft #uh i don't think dick died in this story? it's an open ending i suppose #so you can make up whatever ending you want #dick grayson whump #angst #in the good ending the boys find dick and take him home and he makes a full recovery with a thousand hugs and some nice hot chocolate #in the bad ending the boys dont find dick and he just kinda lays there and succumbs to his injuries #yikes that'd be real sad wouldn't it?#dick staring down at his broken body: haha don't die you're so sexy #dick looking at his feet: haha don't become lame and lose all feeling haha you're too sexy for that

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afewnovelideas · 3 years

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story, DCU (Comics), Batman (Comics), Young Justice (Comics), Robin (Comics), Red Robin (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Kyubey (PMMM), Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Selina Kyle Additional Tags: Tim Drake-centric, Tim Drake is Robin, Tim Drake is Not Okay, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Tim Drake Gets a Hug, Alternate Universe - Madoka Magica Fusion, Soul Gems (Madoka Magica), Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Magical Boys, Origin Story, No Beta We Die Like Mami, Don't Have to Know Madoka Magica Canon, Bruce Wayne Tries to Be a Good Parent Series: Part 1 of Eques Magi: Originem - Magicka Knights: Origin Summary:

"The Labyrinths of Gotham City are so tightly concentrated, no human born here can escape the influence of at least one or two Witches, if not more. Despite the aura of despair and the constant work of the Witches' various Familiars, there are still those souls who persist in clinging to hope and will do whatever they can to try and make this city a better place, even though all their efforts will ultimately fail in the end.

"It's the perfect environment to find a new Magicka Knight."

---

"Have you ever seen an albino cat?"

Catwoman, aka Selina Kyle, glanced over at Batman's newest Robin curiously. She hadn't been expecting to cross paths with him, but since it was obvious the Big Bad Bat was out of town and Nightwing hadn't shown up at all in the past week, she decided to keep an eye on the new kid for at least the evening. He certainly wasn't like the previous Robin. This thirteen-year-old boy was quiet and thoughtful, which had been quite a change from the previous brash impulsive kid Batman had been mentoring a little over a year ago before they were murdered by the Joker.

She also noticed that this Robin was glancing over his shoulder at something on the rooftop on the other side of the street. "An albino, huh?" she said as she tried to follow his gaze. However, despite using her binoculars to zoom in on the far rooftop, she couldn't see any sign of any animal, feline, albino, or otherwise. "I've heard of them, but never seen one in person," Selina admitted casually as she put away her binoculars. "They are extremely rare." She smiled at Robin. "Have you seen one around town?"

Robin leaned against his bo staff thoughtfully. "I think so, but I'm not really sure."

"Not sure?"

The boy looked up at Selina earnestly. "Y'know how a cat has two pointed ears about here?" Amusingly to the professional cat burglar, Robin made a vague pair of cat-ear shapes with his hand at the top of his head. She smiled affectionately.

"Yeah. It's kind of a defining cat trait, having pointy ears."

Robin pouted slightly at the teasing tone he caught in Catwoman's voice. Then he continued. "Well... This cat I've been seeing... It looks like they have a second set of ears too."

"A second set?"

He nodded. He made a motion with his hands that seemed to make another vague shape that started at the base of where the cat's ears ought to be and downward along either side of its head. "Yeah. They kinda start out here and go all the way down there."

"Are you sure what you're looking at is an albino 'cat'? That kinda sounds more like a white rabbit to me."

"But it has pointy ears like a cat," Robin argued. "And its got a long fluffy tail, and its legs are like a cat's." The young teenager frowned slightly. "It's really weird looking."

"Well it does sound like a unique creature, whatever it is," Selina said thoughtfully. "Maybe it's some sort of cryptid or mutant? This is Gotham after all." She smiled at Robin. "Tell ya what. If you can catch a photo of the critter, I promise I'll take a good hard look and let you know if it's a cat, a rabbit, or something completely different." Then she gave him an almost stern maternal look. "But be careful. Don't get too close. If it does turn out to be something 'not normal', it could be dangerous."

"Okay."

---

It was two nights later and Tim Drake, fully decked out as Robin for another solo patrol, had just finished trussing up a pair of would-be carjackers. As soon as he placed the anon call to the Gotham PD for pickup, he glanced up to fire his grapple gun and froze.

There, on the rooftop above him, was a familiar white shape with two sets of ears and red eyes. The "cat" was peering down. He could see the animal's long fluffy tail swishing this way and that. Tim's breath caught in his throat. This was the closest he'd ever seen the animal come to him before. Rather than risk his grapple gun startling the animal and scaring it away, the young vigilante quickly indulged in some impromptu parkour up a garbage bin and a chain link fence to reach the metal fire escape attached to the side of the building.

When he pulled himself on the rooftop, Tim was disappointed to find that it appeared to be empty. Not a trace of red eyes or white fur anywhere. He walked across the roof slowly, scanning the area for any sign of the small creature as he pulled out a small portable camera from his utility belt. "Hey there," he whispered softly. "Here kitty, kitty, kitty. I'm not going to hurt you. C'mon out please. I just wanna take a picture."

When no one came out of hiding, Tim tried a different tactic. He reached into another pouch on his belt and pulled out a small package of beef jerky. He shook the bag temptingly before opening it and setting it on the ground before stepping away from it. "Got some food here if you want. All for you."

"Thank you, but no. I'm not hungry."

Tim froze. Then he glanced around himself as quickly as he could before zeroing in on the form of the albino "cat" sitting on top of a large A/C unit just a few yards away from him, its white body practically glowing against the cloudy night sky of Gotham City. This close, Tim could see this was not a normal "cat". It did appear to have two sets of ears, but the two longer rabbit-like ones had golden rings attached to them and were tipped in pink with red spots. Its tail also appeared to be unnaturally long as it swished back and forth casually.

"Did you... just... talk?"

The cat-like creature flicked its smaller pointy ears. "Of course I did!" it said in a childlike voice without moving its mouth at all. Its long white tail finally stopped swishing and settled into a question mark shape behind it. "How else am I supposed to introduce myself?"

---

Tim Drake gave up caffeine for the rest of the week. When the boy returned to the Cave from patrol and declared that he was quitting cold turkey, Alfred asked about it curiously. All the old butler got from the thirteen year old was a confusingly vague answer about talking albino cats with pink ears and clearly not enough sleep with too much stress before marching himself into the showers before he would make his eventual way back to his bedroom.

---

Unfortunately for Tim, giving up his favorite sodas, teas, and coffee did not stop the appearances of the strange cat-like hallucination that had introduced itself as "Kyubey" and seemed hell bent on following him and talking to him both day and night, in and out of uniform.

"You think I'm a figment of your imagination?"

Tim sighed as he reached over the creature sitting in his high school locker in order to grab his workbooks for math and english. "I'm not talking to you here," he whispered as he slammed the locker door in hopes of locking the hallucination behind it.

"It's probably better that you don't, at least not out loud," Kyubey agreed, after reappearing on the top of the locker to look down on Tim. "If people catch you talking to something they can't see, they might think you're losing your mind."

Somehow, Tim managed to choke down the near hysterical giggle that wanted to bubble up at that matter-of-fact remark. Kyubey had made it quite clear that night on the rooftop that no one else could see them except Tim.

"Besides, why waste your breath?" Kyubey said as they trotted along the top of the lockers, keeping pace with Tim as he walked to his next class. "We can speak telepathically just fine."

Tim paused at the end of the lockers and glanced at Kyubey. "Telepathically?" he asked experimentally without voicing the word.

"See! Easy!"

"Oh my god, I AM losing my mind," he thought with a grimace before sighing and stepping into the classroom and tried to ignore Kyubey as best he could for the rest of his school day.

---

"So why are you here?" Tim finally asked Kyubey after tossing down his pencil and finally giving up on trying to concentrate on his homework. "What is my subconscious trying to tell me?"

"I'm not your subconscious, and I'm not a hallucination. I'm a messenger of magic."

Tim raised his eyebrows at Kyubey as he echoed incredulously, "A messenger of magic?"

The cat-like creature made themself comfortable on Tim's bed. "That's right."

The teen noted with a slight measure of concern that he could see the disturbance Kyubey's form made on his pillow and blanket, proving that, at least right now, they had a solid physical state. Still, he was not about to reach out and try to touch the creature. "I'm probably going to regret asking this, but why is a 'messenger of magic' in Gotham City, and why am I the only one who can see and speak with you?"

"I'm on a mission to find people with the potential to become Magicka Knights to fight Witches and save the Universe, and you have that potential."

"Seriously? Magical knights? Actual witches?" Tim shook his head as he scoffed lightly. "This sounds like the plot of some generic magical girl anime."

Kyubey titled their head to one side. "And you and your mentor go out at night in masks to fight criminals who can control plants, have freeze guns, are living clay, and are occasionally half reptiles. How is that more believable than Magicka Knights and Witches?"

Tim snickered awkwardly. "I guess I'm in no position to throw stones in glass houses."

"You really aren't."

---

Finally! Bruce was back from his Justice League mission and he was going to go out on patrol with Tim. Batman and Robin flying through Gotham City for the first time in over two weeks.

At least that was the plan until a call came through from Oracle barely an hour into their patrol.

"A report of potential Joker gas exposure has been put out by the GCPD in Chinatown near the Dragon's Den."

Batman and Robin paused on the roof of St. Peter's Cathedral. Tim felt a weight settle in the pit of his stomach as he took in the tightness of his mentor's jawline. He knew what was coming next.

"Go home, Robin."

"But B--"

"It's the Joker. I need to handle this alone."

"You don't have to. I can stay out of the way and watch your back. Make sure no one gets the drop on you."

Batman shook his head. "Head back to the Cave, Robin."

The leather of Robin's gloves creaked a little as he clenched his hand into a fist and turned away from his mentor. "Fine."

Without even looking, Tim could tell when he was left alone on the cathedral's roof with just the gargoyles for company.

Then, he wasn't alone.

"He doesn't trust you?"

Tim looked up to see Kyubey sitting on the head of a nearby gargoyle. He sighed. "It's not like that," he said telepathically. No need to risk Oracle or Agent A overhearing him talking to Kyubey. Not like the mic would pick up the magical creature's voice anyways. Still, better safe than sorry. "The Joker is really dangerous. He killed the Robin who came before me. B just doesn't want to risk me being anywhere near him."

Suddenly, Tim heard a pinging from his comm link, a sign that Oracle was attempting to signal him. "Yes O?"

"I know B ordered you home, but do you think you could swing by Amusement Mile along the way? I got a report on a Mad Hatter sighting there."

Tim brightened visibly at the prospect. "Sure!" He reached for his grapple gun and loaded a cartridge. "Any idea what he's up to?"

"There have been earlier reports over the last few months of missing girls fitting the Hatter's preferred victim profile. Children with long blond hair under the age of twelve. But since the children are usually street kids or runaways, most attempts to investigate by the police have been half-hearted at best. Those that have tried haven't found anything but dead ends."

"Well, that's going to come to a stop tonight." Tim declared confidently.

"Be careful Robin," Oracle warned. "Focus on recon tonight. Don't engage Hatter unless absolutely necessary."

"Understood!"

---

"What's this?"

At Amusement Mile, Tim was just in time to stop a kidnapping in progress. While the sudden appearance of Robin was enough to send the Mad Hatter scurrying away into the shadows, the young vigilante reluctantly let him go in favor of caring for the victim, a child of eight or nine who appeared to be in a catatonic state.

However, nothing Tim did seemed to be able to wake her up. He was about to notify O to call an ambulance when he noticed a small red mark, like a tattoo, on the girl's neck, right above her pulse point. It was about the size of a quarter and looked like the symbol used in chess to designate the Queen piece.

"Hey O. I found a weird tattoo on the girl. Sending you a pic now." Tim quickly snapped a photo and sent it electronically to Oracle. A moment later, he got a response.

"Are you sure you sent me the right photo?"

"What do you mean?"

"There's no tattoo in the pic. All I see is a bare neck."

Tim opened the monitor of his camera and his eyes went wide. Even on the camera, the girl's neck had no tattoo. He took several more pics to be sure, but despite being able to see the crown icon with his own eyes, they defied being photographed.

"Not sure what's going on, but I can't take a pic of it," he told Oracle. "Maybe it's some sort of weird ink that comes up invisible on cameras?"

"That's not it."

Tim glanced at Kyubey, who was sitting beside the girl. The white creature sniffed at the tattoo. "That's a Witch's Kiss."

He felt his chest tighten a bit at Kyubey's words. Tim carefully masked the sudden nervousness he felt in his voice. "Can you call an ambulance to pick up the girl? I'm going to investigate the area and try to find out where Hatter ran off to."

"Will do. Be careful."

Once the comm was silenced again and after the EMTs came to pick up the rescued child, Robin backed into a secluded alleyway and hid within the shadows before addressing Kyubey telepathically.

"What's a Witch's Kiss?"

"It's a mark used by Witches and familiars to control the minds of their prey."

Tim felt a shiver run down his spine. Still he continued. "Is... the Mad Hatter a Witch?"

Kyubey tilted their head thoughtfully before shaking in the negative. "No. I think he's just a familiar being used to bring humans to a Witch's Labyrinth."

"Why? Why would a Witch want a human child?"

Kyubey sighed. "A Witch is a creature that feeds on misery and sadness," they said very matter-of-factly. "What could be more delicious to a Witch than the grief and fear of a kidnapped child? At least this one seems to prefer the despair of children in particular."

A sudden sensation of dread settled over Tim. "That's.... That's horrible! We can't let this continue!"

"But you can't stop them."

"Why not?" Tim's righteous indignation flared up. "Batman's stopped the Mad Hatter dozens of times. Why can't I?"

"Most likely it's because your mentor has never captured him near his Witch, and never within an actual Labyrinth." Kyubey stared at Tim with their round red eyes, their stoic tone never wavering. "You're just a human being, and so is he under all that armor. Even with all your training, there's no way your frail human bodies can endure the strain of fighting a Witch and their familiars in their own Labyrinth. If you get trapped in a Labyrinth, there's no way out until either the Witch is dead or you are."

Tim watched the retreating lights of the ambulance carrying the nearly kidnapped child away. Then he took a deep breath and released it slowly.

"Can you help me find the Witch's Labyrinth?"

"I can."

---

He was going to die.

Tim leaned against the wall and watched helplessly as his blood flowed freely from beneath and between his fingers to pool on the floor under him despite the pressure he tried to keep on the wound in his stomach. The Witch's familiars, not just the Mad Hatter, but a March Hare and other fictional characters pulled straight from the story Alice in Wonderland, had been too numerous and too merciless for him to fight off alone.

The Witch herself, in the guise of a twisted Queen of Hearts, shrieked for his head through the twists and turns of her Labyrinth.

͙̹̫ͪ̆̏͝ "̶͚̜̪̣̬͇ͭ͑ͅOͩͫ̄͏̬͖̳ Ḟ̖̝̟̜͖̭͑͢ F̡̜̼̰͓͍̟͎͇̆̾̐ ̨͚̫̗ͮ̚ͅ W̐ͧ̑͏͍͎͍̖̤̥ͅI͓͙̤͔̺̦͌̓̌̍͠T̖͍͒͛͢H̡̳̪̭̹̺̒̓̿ ̹̥͉̟͙̝͓̅ͫ͝H̸̝̬̘͕̩͙̤͇̾ͥ͂Į̯͔̦͖̳̣ͥ̌͆̂S͆̑ͪ͏̦̥̭̺̞̳̪͔ ͙̪̯͗̑͞Hͧ͏̤̯̪̩ E̶̯̣̰͌̆ͨͯ A̬̦̻͍͒͝ͅD̖̹͂͒͟ !ͫͯ́͆҉̺̦̩̹̺

̠͓͈͎ͧͨ͡Ō̵̪̻̭̩̯F̣͙̲̖̈́̋͝ F̌̅̾̓͏̭̺̰͉̹̖̯ ̡̮͔͇͚̬͎̝͊̆ͪͅŴ͙̠̽ I̘̬͇̖͑͂̏̂͞ T̨̗̫̜͙̩̖̮͒ H̴̙̝̀ͥͣ̚ ̘̯̮̺̥ͣ̑̄H̻̭͇̮̮͕͗͗ͬ̊͠ͅ Iͮͪ͋͏̬̺̖̝̥̭̘ͅ S̵̝̖̙̿ ̛̬̳̠̪̰̑͗̽ H̸͙̟̱̝̳̰̄͑̃̊ Ě̳͓̝̗͎͟ A̴̤͖̬̖͓͇̖͗̆ͫ́Ḋ̜͚̬̐̋͟!̨͇͚̞̩͚̗̣̿

Ơ͚̹̜̥ͮͥ͑̏F̴̯̤̮͉̰ͫF͈̱͍̌ͩͥ̍̕ͅ ̧͎͕̱͚͍̥͔̐W̩̦̯̹̏͊̏̌̕I͐҉͕̪͔̥̞̭͈̲T̖̝̖̪̑̿̓͢H̤̠͍̣̻̠͚ͧ̍̐̿͢ ̴̲̖̫̫̺ͭH̗̤̒̆͆͡Î̤͓̭̻̝Ș̵͉͔͙̗̝̌̍̍ͬͅ ͎̫͉̞̲͆͡Ḫ̨̪̅ͧ̏E̵̮̲̩̤͓̱̙ͦÁ̻̦̘̜̂ͩ͝D̸̯͖̦͔̲͕̠̜̓̓̆̚!̨͖̓̐̈́ͪ̏ͅ҉̬͉̰̫"̙̺̬̯̹̦͖͛͗͘

Her magic.. too powerful.

His… everything... too weak.

Trapped in this magical Labyrinth that resembled a scene from Wonderland, he couldn't even get a signal out to call for a rescue. He'd tried early on to call Oracle... Nightwing... Agent A... Batman... But the only thing he got for his troubles was static.

Tim felt tears flow down his cheeks as his vision became dark and hazy around the edges and his limbs began to grow numb. He could hear the sounds of his pursuers coming closer, searching for him, and he just didn't have the strength anymore to run. All he could do was hide and wait for the inevitable.

Batman was going to lose another Robin.

Dick was going to lose another little brother.

Jack Drake was going to lose his only son.

He was going to die.

"Oh dear. I was almost too late."

A set of dainty white paws walked into his sight line, contrasting starkly against the pool of crimson blood on the floor. Weakly, Tim lifted his gaze.

"Kyubey?"

The magical creature stepped closer to the fallen teenager and took a seat in front of him. They tilted their head slightly. "I tried to warn you. A normal human isn't able to fight a Witch. Only a Magicka Knight has the power to defend against a Witch's curses and attack them in kind."

"I know," Tim whispered. "I should've listened to you."

Kyubey titled their head to the other side. "It's not too late. You can still listen to me."

Despite the cold feeling in his limbs and the shadows in his vision, Tim did his level best to keep his gaze locked on Kyubey, on the one bright spot in his dying world.

"If you enter a contract with me, you can become a Magicka Knight." Kyubey explained. "You'd be duty bound to fight Witches, but in return I can grant you one wish. Anything in the world your heart desires."

"If I become a Magicka Knight, I'll have to fight this Witch right away, right?"

"I'm afraid so. It's the only way to escape her Labyrinth."

"And there's no guarantee I'll win?"

"I won't lie to you. Turning you into a Magicka Knight is not a promise of victory. But at least you'll have a fighting chance."

Tim closed his eyes and smiled sadly. "Then I want to make a wish that can outlive me, in case I die." When he opened his eyes, tears slipped down his cheeks again. "I wish Bruce Wayne's son, Jason Todd, was alive."

Kyubey's round red eyes seemed to shimmer in the darkness, and the twin gold rings that encircled their longer set of ears started to glow brightly even as Tim's vision finally faded into blackness. As his consciousness slipped away, he heard Kyubey's voice, as if it was very far away.

"As you wish."

---

"Dinner was great, Alfred. Thank you." Tim set down his fork and watched as the kind old butler retrieved his dirty dishes.

"Will you be heading out with Master Bruce this evening?"

Tim got to his feet and placed the cloth napkin that had been on his lap onto the table, though he fidgeted with it a little before finally letting it go. "'Fraid not. B wants me to stay in and 'do my homework'."

Alfred gave him a knowing compassionate look. "I see. Well, if you want to take your dessert upstairs to have while you work on your homework, I'll allow it for tonight. If you need anything else, I'll be in the Cave on comms tonight..

"Thanks Alfred," Tim said with a smile and a quick side-hug. "You're the best!"

Tim made his way upstairs with a small plate of cheesecake topped with strawberries. Once in his bedroom, he closed the door behind him with a sigh.

"Bruce isn't letting you patrol again tonight?"

The teenager glanced over and watched as Kyubey unwound itself from the fluffy white ball it normally curled into while it napped on Tim's pillow. Tim couldn't help the fond smile as his little friend stretched leisurely and indulged in a wide mouthed yawn.

"Nope. He's still got his cape in a twist over Jason's whole empty grave thing." Tim shook his head before making his way to the window seat and making himself comfortable. "I think he just wants to make sure I don't wander off either, but it's still annoying! It's been nearly a month and B still won't let me go on any solo patrols."

"Well, look at the bright side. Now you can get a full night of sleep and wake up early to go Witch hunting before school."

"I suppose."

Tim and his sullen mood weren't alone for long at the window before Kyubey leapt gracefully from the bed to his shoulder. The startled expression on Tim's face lasted only a second before it melted into one of amusement as Kyubey headbutted him affectionately against the cheek. Once they'd managed to wring a chuckle out of the boy, Kyubey hopped down to the window seat where Tim had placed the cheesecake and began sniffing at the selection. Tim watched as his friend picked up the reddest strawberry it could find and popped that into its mouth first, eating it with obvious relish. Then he looked out the window and thought back about the night he became a Magicka Knight, about the moment he set foot back in the cave after defeating his first Witch and claiming his first Grief Seed.

---

"Where have you been?!"

Batman had stormed up to him the moment Robin pulled up on his motorcycle into the Cave. Tim froze the moment he saw his mentor barrelling toward him. "You're back already?"

"The Joker gas was a false alarm," Bruce said as he pushed back his cowl and grabbed Tim by his upper arms, Tim was startled by the frantic way Bruce's eyes were darting over him. "Where were you?! Barbara sent you to investigate a Hatter sighting, then you didn't check in for hours! It's nearly sunrise. Where have you been?!"

Tim swallowed hard. "I... I got lured into a maze trap by Hatter," he admitted quietly. "The place had some weird interference so my comms were scrambled. Hatter got away and it took me forever to find my way out. I'm sorry."

"Are you hurt?"

Tim shook his head. "I'm fine B. Just... tired. It... was a really long night."

After another long moment of Bruce looking over him, the older man finally seemed to relax. He released his hold on Tim's arms and raked his fingers through his cowl-mussed hair. "Please don't go running off like that ever again, Tim. If anything had happened to you--"

"I know," Tim murmured, his eyes focused on the floor even as he wrapped his arms about himself tightly. "I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

"Master Bruce?"

Both Bruce and TIm turned to see a shaken Alfred coming toward them with a phone in hand.

"What's wrong?"

"Commissioner Gordon is on the line."

Bruce and Tim shared a confused look. "Why is he calling at this hour?"

Alfred swallowed hard. "He needs 'Bruce Wayne' to come to the precinct as soon as possible. There's been a robbery."

"I don't under--"

"Someone broke into Gotham Cemetery tonight. They stole Master Jason's body."

As Bruce immediately went after Alfred as the old man gave him the phone, Tim stood in the Cave in shock before daring to glance at Kyubey, who had materialized at his heels.

"My wish... It really came true?"

Kyubey curled their tail around Tim's legs in a comforting gesture. "Of course it did. We made a contract."

---

"I wonder where Jason is," Tim mused aloud as he continued to stare out the window. "I thought he would've come straight home. Bruce has looked everywhere. I've looked everywhere..." He looked at Kyubey who had taken a delicate bite of the cheesecake itself. "Do you have any idea where he went after I made my wish?"

Kyubey looked up at Tim, a curious tilt to their head as they stared back at him with their round red eyes. "I was with you in the Labyrinth when the wish was made," they said matter-of-factly.

Tim shrugged. "Yeah. I know... I guess I was just hoping... Well, I hope he's alright, wherever he is."

Quietly, Tim studied the new silver ring encircling the ring finger of his right hand as well as the green alchemical symbol of Mercury that was now on his fingernail. The small emerald gem inlaid within the ring itself shimmered with magic. With a smooth motion, Tim turned his palm up and the ring morphed before his eyes into a brilliant green gem encased in an intricate cage of gold, just like a faberge egg.

His Soul Gem. The source of his power as a Magicka Knight.

For several minutes there was nothing but a comfortable silence as Tim watched the swirling glow of his Soul Gem and Kyubey ate their fill. Once the plate was empty and their paws and muzzle were thoroughly cleaned, Kyubey trotted onto Tim's lap and laid down comfortably. Unconsciously, Tim began to stroke Kyubey's soft whilte fur with his free hand.

"I just hope Jason comes home soon," Tim said as he finally put his Soul Gem away, turning it back into his ring. "That way, he and Bruce can reunite, they can be a family again, and I can step away from being Robin so I can devote myself to being a Magicka Knight instead."

"In the meantime, it's not so bad for you to be both Robin and a Magicka Knight," Kyubey mused. When Tim glanced down at them, they continued. "You have to admit that nearly every night you go out on patrol as Robin, you stumble upon one or two Labyrinths. Even if we can't get to them immediately to flush out the Witch, at least we know where they are for later!"

Tim grinned. "Yeah. I guess there is a silver lining there." Impulsively, he picked up Kyubey and gathered them into a gentle hug. "Thanks for staying with me."

Kyubey nuzzled the underside of Tim's jawline. "Of course I'm staying with you. You're my Magicka Knight. We're in this together." Kyubey flicked their short pointy ears cutely. "Besides, it's not like Bruce or anyone else can separate us. You're the only one here that can see and hear me."

"I'm glad," Tim said. "It's nice to not be alone all the time." He smiled gratefully at Kyubey. "And it makes being grounded by Bruce easier to swallow when I've got you for company."

Then he glanced back out the window at the dark outlines of Gotham City's skyline when the appearance of the Bat-signal lit up the night sky above it. "Still--" he mused. "I really hope Jason shows up soon. I can't wait to meet him."

#au: kcmk #kyubey cursed magicka knights AU #fanfiction #crossover/fusion #pmmm au #dcu au #tim drake #kyubey #batfamily #batfam #batfam fanfic

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huilian · 3 years

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A gift for @dottie-wan-kenobi for being an awesome mod 🥰

Dick doesn’t want to get out of bed, ever again. A full day of chasing Mar’i around the house, added with a night of patrolling as Nightwing, took a toll on a man. Even him.

Especially him.

It’s not all bad, though. Kori is lying next to him, patting his hair. He snuggles closer onto her, revelling in the warmth of her embrace.

“Tired?” she asks.

He groans as an answer. She knows he’s tired. If him coming into their room with his eyes half-closed doesn’t tell her, then him flopping onto the bed without even taking off his costume would. She’s just asking to tease him.

And lo and behold, she’s laughing in the face of her husband’s plight. But her hand is still patting his hair, and her heartbeat is steady in his ear, so Dick thinks he can forgive her for laughing.

Just this once.

“Mar’i asked for stories of you after you left,” Kori says. “She wanted to know all about your adventure.”

“And yours too, I hope?” Dick asks into the pillow in his face. He could turn around and have this conversation with his wife instead of with a pillow, but he doesn’t have the energy to lift his head, let alone turn around.

Kori laughs again. Dick could fill whole days just listening to her laugh.

“No,” she says. “I was there with her, so my stories weren’t interesting enough. You, on the other hand, were not, and so your stories were the height of entertainment.”

“And which stories did you tell her, love?”

“Oh, nothing much. Just all the times I had to swoop in and save you.”

“I recall doing my fair share of swooping in,” Dick retorts, knowing full well all of the times she had saved him.

Kori laughs again. She might be laughing because she could guess what he is thinking about, or she might be laughing because his face is still buried in the pillow. It’s hard to sound intimidating when everything you said is muffled because you are too tired to even lift your head from the pillow.

Either way, she switches to stroking his hair, and says, “Of course you do. Go to sleep, Dick.”

He hums, not wanting to lose the very precious time of just being, here, with only the two of them, but eventually, Dick falls into a doze. He really is too tired to protest.

He got in one hour of sleep, maybe two, before a bundle of dark hair and energy bursts in and jumps onto the bed, lodging herself underneath his arm.

“Dad!” she shouts. “You’re back!”

Dick bites back a groan. He loves her, he does, but he is so tired. He feigns sleep, because maybe Kori will take pity on him and distract their daughter.

“Dad!” Mar’i says again, shaking his arm. Behind him, Dick could hear a giggle that must have come from Kori, before that and the shaking stop at the same time. Dick braces himself.

He was right. Two pairs of hands, one big and one small, grab onto any part of his body that they can find, and start tickling. He turns around, managing to evade the tiny pair of hands that belonged to his daughter, but he can’t get away fast enough from Kori’s hands.

“I yield, I yield!” he cries out.

Slumping back to the bed, he finds himself with a handful of his daughter as she launches herself back towards him. Kori switches her hold, moving to cradle the two of them in her arms.

“Mmm,” Dick mumbles, letting himself drift closer and closer back to sleep, bracketed by the two most important people in his life. They are here, they are safe, and the bed is so comfortable and warm. He closes his eyes, tightening his hold on his daughter while simultaneously melting back into Kori’s arms.

“Dad!” Mar’i wiggles inside his hold. “Wake up!”

“Hmm,” Dick mumbles again. “It’s sleep time, starshine.”

“No!” his daughter protests. “I just wake up, so it’s up time!”

Dick resists the urge to sigh. Now he knows how Bruce felt, way back when he used to jump onto his-then guardian’s bed. He sends an apology to the Bruce of many years ago, and opens his eyes, for the third time in probably as many hours. God, he wants to sleep. Everyone who told him that parenting would mean losing sleep has clearly never attempted to do so while also being a vigilante.

Thankfully, unlike Bruce, he has Kori. “Shh, darling,” she says, reaching over Dick’s shoulders to pat on Mar’i’s hair. “Let your father sleep. He was awake all night.”

“But I miss him,” Mar’i complains.

“He’ll be up later,” Kori explains. “And you can ask him to tell you stories of tonight’s adventure.” Dick feels rather than sees Kori’s smile, and that brings a smile to his own face. “You’d want him to be awake to be able to tell you stories, right?”

Silence, which Dick knows from experience is Mar’i weighing the options in her head. The two of them had taught her critical thinking from a young age, and so far, they have only regretted it a handful of times.

“Fine,” she finally says. “But I want two, no, three stories when he wakes.”

A small laugh escapes Kori. “You’ll have to take it up with him later, darling.”

And that is Dick’s cue. “Two stories,” he mumbles, “and maybe a third if you’re good for your mother.”

Another silence, before Mar’i rolls him over to look him in the eye. “Two stories,” she says, with the gravitas of someone negotiating a truce between two warring countries, “a cookie, and a third if I’m good.”

“A cookie with your breakfast, and a third story if you’re good,” Dick counters back.

Mar’i tilts her head, considering. “Deal,” she says, extending her hand the best that she can while still being squashed up together in their bed.

Dick shakes her hand, also with the gravitas that is absolutely necessary for this negotiation, then he switches his grip onto her torso and pulls her closer to himself, smushing her face onto his chest.

“Dad!” she shrieks, trying in vain to let herself go.

“Oh, no!” Dick mock yells. “The princess of Tamaran has been kidnapped by a horrible villain! Who will rescue her?”

As Mar’i still tries to let herself go, Kori shifts behind him, whispering into his ear. “I thought you wanted to sleep?”

He winks at her, only to be met with her shaking head. But she stills plays along, so he thinks he’s been forgiven.

“I will save you, your highness!” Kori calls out, freeing herself from underneath Dick’s body. She places her arms around Mar’i, whom Dick lets go of willingly enough, and lifts her up.

And up and up, until the two of them are flying in the room that Dick made absolutely sure has a high ceiling for this express purpose. “We shall go on an adventure now, princess!” Kori says, maneuvering around the room with ease. After a few laps around the room, she lands just on the threshold of the door, Mar’i still in her arms. “Do you want breakfast, your highness?” she asks, smiling.

“Yes!” Mar’i says excitedly.

“Go give your father a kiss, then I’ll make you some breakfast.”

Mar’i practically runs towards the bed. She gives him a sloppy kiss, and says, “Good night, Dad!”

“It’s morning, starshine,” Dick answers.

“You’re going to sleep, so it’s good night!” she answers, before jumping up and running back to the door.

Dick laughs, while Kori ushers Mar’i out of their bedroom and towards the kitchen. He resettles the pillow that had been scattered from their tickle fight and ensuing ‘kidnapping’, and closes his eyes. The last thing he hears before he goes back to sleep is Mar’i laughter, and Kori’s soft, “Sleep well, love.

#dc #dick grayson #koriand'r #mar'i grayson #lian writes #fic

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writingblock101 · 4 years

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Jealousy (Jason Todd x Reader)

Wrote this on a whim at work. It was originally going to be Dick... And then it became Jason instead. One day, I’ll give my boy Nightwing some love. Enjoy!

Word count: 2,000

Warnings: Cursing?

Tags: @idkmanicantenglish

At this point, you can’t remember how you and Red Hood met. The crazy series of events that led to you moving to Gotham, becoming the vigilante Riot, and working out a deal with Batman that allowed you to stay a vigilante in Gotham has become such a blur that you stopped trying to straighten the story out. Instead, you just know that Red Hood has your back, just as you have his, so it’s no surprise that when you’re fuming on a roof, you hear a familiar voice behind you.

“Who pissed in your Cheerios this morning?”

You whip around to see Red Hood standing there.

“Not in the mood, Red,” You growl.

He frowns and sits next to you on the ledge, taking his helmet off to reveal his domino mask.

“What happened?”

“My fucking boyfriend!” You rant.

“Your… You have a boyfriend?” Red Hood asks quietly with a frown.

“Yes, and he’s being a total dick right now!” You exclaim. “I was hanging out with one of my best friends from college-- who’s a guy that I’ve literally never had feelings for-- and I got home late but then Logan is there and jumps down my throat about where I’ve been and starts accusing me of cheating on him! He knew I was going to be hanging out with Caleb! I fucking told him I was going to be! And he just kept going on about how he can’t trust me and all this shit so I finally got fed up and left.”

“That’s fucking bullshit,” Red grumbles. “This dude sounds like a dick.”

“I know, right! I’m not cheating on him and I’m pissed he keeps accusing me of doing so!”

“Wait, this has happened before?”

“Oh yeah,” You remark bitterly. “All the time. He gets jealous so quickly. Like, I’d get it if guys were flirting with me, but he takes it too far and freaks out if I even speak to another dude.”

“What the hell?” Red asks. “Why does he freak out?”

“He’s been cheated on before, but I’ve never given him any reason to think that I’d be cheating on him. I’m always very upfront about where I’m going and who I’ll be hanging out with. I’m not the type of person that likes to make my significant others purposefully jealous, you know? I don’t flirt with random people just to get a rise out of people, that’s stupid. I don’t put myself in situations where I would be tempted to cheat, so I don’t understand why he doesn’t trust me!”

“He sounds needy,” Red scowls. “And way too insecure. Why are you still dating him?”

You sigh, looking down at the city.

“Because... he’s sweet,” You begin, thinking about your boyfriend. “And he’s caring. He makes me laugh, he supports me and encourages me…”

“And accuses you of cheating on him regularly?” Red raises his eyebrows.

“We’ve...We’ve been through a lot together,” You say lamely, feeling your shoulders slump.

“And he still doesn’t trust you.”

You huff, Logan’s accusations ringing in your ears.

“No, I guess not. He’s so damn paranoid and for no fucking reason. We’ve been dating for two and a half years and I’ve never done anything even close to cheating. Hell, I’ve had to worry about him cheating!” You exclaim.

“Wait, hold on,” Red Hood cuts you off. “You’ve had to worry about him cheating on you?” He growls.

You groan, remembering the frustrating situation.

“Yes,” You mumble. “We’d been dating for a few months, then his ex started working with him. Not a huge deal, I trust him, you know? It’s work, he’ll be professional with his ex. But then his ex started trying to get him alone and asking him to lunch, just the two of them, and Logan fucking agreed to it! Like dude! You’re currently dating someone and you’re going to go to lunch with your ex?! And he tried to hide it from me! I wasn’t happy that he was going to lunch alone with his ex, but I was even more pissed when he tried to hide it from me!”

“And he’s worried about you cheating on him?” Red Hood questions with narrowed eyes.

“Oh, it gets better,” You bitterly exclaim. “One night, we were watching a movie together and his phone buzzed on the coffee table. He asked me to tell him who texted him, so I looked at his phone--his ex sent had sent him a nude.”

“And you’re still dating this guy?”

“Surprisingly yes, but we almost broke up that night,” You rub your face. “We’ll talk in the morning when we’ve both calmed down and it’ll be fine, but I’m just tired of this.”

“So, why bother?” Red Hood asks. “Why put up with this guy? Because trust me, Riot--”

“Y/N,” You interrupt him.

“What?”

“My name is Y/N. It feels weird for you to call me Riot in this conversation. Besides, I’m already telling you about my personal life, so I might as well tell you my name.”

Red Hood blinks for a moment then slowly nods.

“Okay, Y/N. Um… What was I saying?”

“Something about trusting you?”

“Right! Yeah, trust me, Y/N, you can do so much better than this guy.”

You shrug.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“No! Not maybe! Look at you! You’re a total badass that beats up criminals, you’re hilarious and easy to talk to and you’ve stitched me up more times than I can count.”

“Well, that’s not a very high number,” You quip.

“You know what?” Red asks with raised eyebrows and a grin. “I take it back. You suck.”

You laugh, leaning against Red who grins down at you. You sigh, leaning against Red who takes the opportunity to lay his head on yours.

“Seriously, Y/N. You deserve better,” He mutters to you.

“Thanks,” You say quietly then you straighten up and stand. “I’m going to go find someone to beat up and get my anger out,” You lay a hand on Red’s shoulder. “Thanks for letting me rant.”

He smiles half-heartedly.

“Yeah, of course,” He mutters then you turn, about to go over to a different roof when Red calls over his shoulder to you: “Jason!”

“What?” You turn to face him.

“My name is Jason,” He shrugs, then looks down sheepishly. “I mean, you told me your name so it only felt fair to tell you mine.”

A smile spreads across your face.

“Nice to meet you, Jason,” Then you grapple off the roof and disappear into the night.

The smile falls off Jason's face as he watches you disappear and is replaced by a grimace. Of course, you have a boyfriend. Someone like you doesn’t stay single.

He curses himself for not saying something sooner and can’t help but to longingly hope you’ll break up with Logan. You deserve better than a prick who doesn’t trust you. Jason can give you better.

. . .

A week later, you were sitting on the same roof, equally as pissed when Red Hood --Jason-- sits down next to you.

“Hey,” He greets.

“Hey,” You greet shortly.

“Trouble in paradise?” Red asks, taking off his helmet.

“Always,” You roll your eyes then Jason holds a cup out to you.

“What’s this?” You ask, looking down at the cup. It smells like alcohol.

“Coke and Rum,” Jason says, pouring his own cup.

“Do you always bring liquor on patrol?” You ask with a raised eyebrow.

“No, not usually.”

“So, why do you have it now?”

Jason shrugs with a small smirk that he hides behind his cup.

“I had a hunch you and your boyfriend had another fight.”

You sigh then mutter.

“I’ll drink to that,” Then take a long drink.

“So, what happened this time?” Jason asks, taking a sip of his own drink.

You groan and roll your eyes.

“He tried to tell me who I could and couldn’t hang out with.”

Jason raised his eyebrows, tightening his grip on his cup.

“Yeah?” He asks tightly.

“Mmhm,” You hum in response, your jaw clenching. “This Friday is my friend Isaiah’s birthday so his fiance messaged me on Facebook for a surprise birthday dinner for Isaiah and Logan lost his shit.”

Jason paused.

“But Isaiah is engaged…?” He asks.

“Yep.”

“And he still freaked out?”

“Yep.”

“So, you’re clearly trying to cheat on him,” Jason mutters sarcastically.

“Exactly,” You roll your eyes. “Then he started listing off which of my friends I’m not allowed to hang out with and claimed I did the same thing when I said he couldn’t hang out alone with his ex.”

“The ex that sent him nudes and he went to lunch while you two were dating?”

“Yep,” You take another long sip.

Jason clenches his jaw and takes a breath, reigning in his anger against your boyfriend.

“That’s bullshit.”

“It’s fucking ridiculous!” You explode. “I’m so tired of him being so damn insecure and taking it out on me! I cannot believe he doesn’t trust me enough to spend time with my friends. And that he has the audacity to try to control who I talk to?! Then he tried to accuse me of doing the same?!”

“Honestly, your boyfriend sounds like a dick,” Jason says bluntly. “Personally, I think you should break up with him, but of course, I’m biased.”

You frown.

“How are you biased?” You ask.

“You’re gorgeous and you can easily kick my ass,” Jason jokes, making you laugh. “Of course I want you to break up with your boyfriend.”

You look down with a small smile, flattered by Jason’s compliment. He’s right, your boyfriend is a dick and your friends have been pestering you to break up with him for months but something always brings you back to him. Maybe it’s time to stop giving him second chances…

“It’s kind of messed up to be flirting with someone with a boyfriend…” He trails off.

“Yeah, well my boyfriend is kind of messed up, so I don’t mind,” You nudge his shoulder.

Jason smiles at you, finishing his drink. You finish yours and hand him the cup.

“Thanks for letting me rant,” You smile, then lean up and kiss his cheek.

Jason blushes then you disappear into the night.

If only he thinks to himself longingly.

. . .

Two weeks later, you sit on the roof, this time, swinging your feet freely.

“You seem like you’re in a better mood,” Jason comments as he walks toward you.

You turn, grinning at him.

“Yeah, I am. I’ve got a date tomorrow, hopefully.”

His eyebrows shoot up.

“Oh?” He asks, forcing the anger to stay out of his voice. “With Logan?”

“Nope,” You grin. “I took your advice, we broke up.”

Jason wants to be happy that you broke up with your boyfriend. He is happy you broke up with Logan-- you deserve someone better-- but he’s disappointed to hear that you have a date lined up. Like I said before. Someone like you doesn’t stay single long.

“So, who is this lucky date?” Jason finally asks, trying not to sound too dejected.

“Hopefully you,” You look over at him with a shy smile. “You free tomorrow for dinner?”

Jason’s eyes widen as his brain momentarily short circuits.

“Me?” He asks.

“Yeah, dummy,” You nudge his shoulder. “Are you free?”

“Y-yeah,” He nods vigorously. “Yeah, I’m free.”

“Great!” You grin. “Then it’s a date.”

“It’s a date,” Jason agrees.

This is proof that I am capable of writing a one-part fic, but man my ideas for Jason end up going on for so long. Hope y’all enjoyed it!

#Jason Todd x reader #Red Hood x reader #Jason Todd #Red Hood #Jealous!Jason Todd #Jealous!Red Hood #vigilante!reader #Jason Todd headcannon #red hood headcannon #jason todd fanfiction #red hood fanfiction #dc #dc fanfiction

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damianwaynerocks · 4 years

Text

Zuko & the Waynes - Chapter 3

Batfam/ATLA au

Description: Prince Zuko, pre-finding Aang, falls into Gotham City. After being adopted by Bruce Wayne, Zuko finds himself enjoying life in this strange world. Zuko Wayne has a family who loves him unconditionally. Zuko Wayne is a hero, saving the innocents of Gotham City every night. But Zuko soon finds himself at the center of a plot that threatens to destroy not only this new world he's come to love, but also the world he's trying to leave behind.

A/N: okay, so the members of the titans and young justice team are different in this au.

Young Justice: Tim Drake (Red Robin); Cassie Sandsmark (Wondergirl); Kon/Conner Kent (Superboy); Bart Allen (Impulse)

Titans: Dick Grayson (Nightwing); Koriand'r (Starfire); Garfield Logan (Beast Boy); Rachel Roth (Raven); Jaime Reyes (Blue Beetle); M'Gann M'orris (Miss Martian)

Chapter 2 | Masterlist

Chapter 3:

"So, you remember the plan?"

"Yeah, we got it," said Cassie into her earpiece, having to raise her voice to be heard over the pouring rain outside. "Don't worry about us, we're fine."

"Good to know," Tim responded into the comlink.

It was the night of the auction. Zuko was wearing a black suit while Cassie was wearing a red dress. Both had their masks on. Kon, also known as Superboy, was sitting in the driver's seat. He was acting as their chauffeur, and was there as backup in case anything went wrong. Zuko rolled his eyes as he heard a slurping sound in his com link, presumably from Tim taking a sip of coffee.

"That was gross," Kon sighed. "Don't do that."

Tim ignored him. "Proud of you both. Remember, if the wrong person gets their hands on the magyntite, not even Superman will be able to stop them." He paused. "No pressure, though.”

"Wow, you're great at pep talks." Zuko adjusted the mask on his face, making sure it hid his scar. "You ready, Cassie?"

"I was born ready," Cassie responded with a grin. "Now, let's go, Henry."

"After you, Larissa." Zuko grabbed an umbrella and stepped out of the self-driving black limousine they'd borrowed from Bruce. He went around to her side of the vehicle and opened her door for her. Cassie looped her arm through his, muttering a thank you as Zuko raised the umbrella above both of them. They walked into the casino.

Just inside, a bouncer stepped in front of them. "How tall is the eagle's wingspan?"

"That means do magic," Tim said through the coms.

"Uh," Zuko's mind raced as he tried to think of a spell on the spot. "Fire Dragon Iron Fist!" he finally said, and a ball of fire appeared over his closed fist. The bouncer nodded, and unhooked the red rope, allowing them to step inside.It was bright and loud and flashy, and Zuko had to stop for a moment to get his bearings.

"You good?" Cassie whispered, placing a hand on his chest to steady him. "It's okay. Let's just go downstairs, follow me." She gently led him towards the back of this casino. Tim had told them that there was a staircase behind the bathrooms, and the basement was where the auction was taking place.They walked past the doors that said 'men' and 'woman' and opened the third door, revealing stairs going down to a concrete basement. "You okay now?" Cassie asked as they began to descend.

"Yeah," Zuko grunted. "I'm fine." They walked down a dark and damp hallway, a stark contrast to the bright lights and clean floors of the upper floor. The reached a huge room with a wrap around balcony overlooking the bottom floor. Many people, all wearing masks, were crowded together.

"It's about to start, Mr. Henry," Cassie said. "Let's go sign in." The pair walked through the people until they reached the stairs leading to the bottom floor. Arms still linked, they walked down the stairs.

"There's a ton of people here," Zuko mused. "I wonder what they all want to buy."

Cassie shrugged. "Drugs. Artifacts. Who knows."

They made their way to the middle of the throng of people and sat down in two of the chairs. The auction started soon after, and the words the auctioneer was saying sounded like white noise to Zuko. Finally, twenty minutes in, Tim's voice in his ear made Zuko flinch. "Magyntite is next," he said. "Be ready."

Sure enough, the man held up a silver briefcase. "Magyntite!" he yelled. "This drug is like Kobra Venom! Bulk up your muscles, lady and gentlemen. Do I hear... two million?" Zuko raised his hand and the same time another man did. The man glared at Zuko, who did the same.Back and forth this happened, Zuko and this man trying to get the magyntite. In the end, though, Zuko and Cassie got it for $45,000,000.

"Holy crap," Cassie breathed as they walked back up the stairs. "That man wanted to kill you."

Zuko hummed. "He isn't the only one."

Cassie gave him an amused look."Is that so, Sir Henry?"

"Indeed it is, Lady Larissa."

Golden eyes gazed into blue for a second, both having small smiles on their faces.

"Yo, you guys get it?"

"Uh, yeah," Cassie replied, breaking eye contact. "Yeah, we're heading back now."

Zuko's face reddened. He hadn't felt any feeling similar to that since Mai, when he was thirteen. He shook his head to clear it. Don't be stupid, he told himself. Don't even go there. No chance of that happening.

"You good?" Cassie asked, raising an eyebrow under her mask. Zuko cleared his throat and nodded a little too quickly.

"Me? I'm great. Splendid. Never been better!" he babbled. "Oh Agni, I bet Kon is going crazy! Uh, let's go see him!" He linked his arm with Cassie's and half-led half-drug her through the club and out the door.

"And the lovely couple returns!" Kon cheered as Zuko opened the door for Cassie. "I missed you! Tim told me I couldn't listen to my podcast because I had to stay alert so I've been bored out of my mind."

"Oh, poor baby!" Cassie mocked. "Do you need a massage and a nice cup of tea?"

"I do, actually."

"Too bad, Superbrat."

Zuko looked out the window. He missed his uncle's tea.

Only 11 more months.

___

The next morning, Zuko, Duke and Damian were at the table eating breakfast. Zuko was about to put a piece of bacon in his mouth when he felt eyes on him. Looking up, he frowned as he met Duke's eyes. "What?

Duke's eyebrows were furrowed in disbelief. "Dude, it's 7:00 in the morning. Why are you already dressed?"

Zuko blinked. While the others were in their pajamas- Duke in an old t-shirt and shorts and Damian in his silk robe -Zuko was in jeans and a Ralph Lauren button-up, his hair in a topknot. He would've put shoes on, if it weren't for Alfred's no-shoes-in-the-house rule. "I'm used to getting up at dawn and getting ready. It's what I've done for three years."

Duke shook his head. "You're making me feel like a slob, Zu."

"You will not feel that way for long," Damian spoke up. "For I hear Drake coming down the stairs."

Sure enough, Tim walked around the corner, staggering to the table. He was in an over sized black Superman shirt and his boxers with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His long hair was a mess, and the circles under his eyes made it look as though he had been punched in the face. Alfred pulled out a chair beside Zuko, a cup of coffee already in his hand. Tim stumbled towards the chair, looking as though he was about to pass out. He sat down in the chair slowly, and Alfred immediately put the cup of coffee in front of him. Tim blinked slowly, before picking up the coffee and bringing it to his lips.

"Well," Duke chuckled. "I no longer feel like a slob."

Damian wrinkled his nose, scoffing at Tim. "You are a disgrace, Drake. Have some self respect." Tim stared at him owl-eyed in response.

"Just give him like ten minutes," Duke said. "Anyways! So I heard you went on a mission last ni-"

"Master Duke!" Alfred interrupted him sharply. "Might I remind you the rules of breakfast?"

Duke seemed to shrink into himself as he answered in a small voice, "No vigilante talk at the breakfast table." Alfred nodded in approval before going back into the kitchen. Duke turned back to Zuko. "Later."

Zuko hummed in response.

As soon as breakfast was over, Duke ran to Zuko excitedly. "So!? How'd it go?"

"It went fine," Zuko replied. "I mean, we went in, got the stuff and got back in the car."

"That's it? No fights?"

"No fights."

"What about Cassie? Any emotions?"

Zuko coughed, his eyes widening. "What!? No! Don't be stupid!"

Duke laughed. "Dude, you're gonna have to get better at lying if you want to join the business."

"Which could start right now, if you want." Zuko and Duke whirled around to see Bruce holding a cup of coffee. "You've been here for a month. You can fight and you're smart. You're welcome to start training today, if you want."

Zuko's jaw dropped. "Uh, yeah! That'd be great!"

Bruce smiled."Fantastic. Go get changed into something comfortable and we'll start."

Zuko practically sprinted to his room, but before he could change, his phone chimed.

Cassie Sandsmark: good morning doofus

.Zuko grinned in spite of himself.

Zuko Wayne: good morning!

Cassie Sandsmark: how'd you sleep?

Zuko Wayne: great but i don't know if tim slept at all he's barely alive right now

Cassie Sandsmark: sounds like tim

Cassie Sandsmark: so when u joining the hero business

Zuko Wayne: right now,, I'm about to start training

Cassie Sandsmark: YAY TELL ME HOW IT GOES

Zuko Wayne: of course

Training, Zuko decided, was difficult. It'd been a month since he'd started, and while he was improving, he was sore and sick of computers.

"If I have to break another one of Tim's codes, I'll kill myself," he groaned, flopping on to the couch beside Damian, who nodded.

"Every time Drake speaks, I want to kill myself." Zuko eyed him wearily.

"That's harsh."

"Such is reality." Damian flipped to the next page of the book he was reading. "So, your first patrol is tomorrow?"

Zuko grinned."Yeah. I'm so excited." He sat up, cracking his knuckles. "Gonna be a blast."

"Are you finally adequate at lying?"

Zuko winced. "It took me a while but yeah, I got it."

"Good. We cannot have you exposing our secret." He looked up from his book. "Christmas is next month. Pennyworth instructed me to inform you that he needs a list of what you wish."

Zuko groaned. "I have no idea what I want."

"Well, figure it out," Damian replied. "Because if you do not, I'll have to listen to the complaining."

It was the night of his first patrol. Zuko turned to the mirror. His suit was a black kevlar lined jumpsuit with an obsidian utility belt and combat boots of the same color. There was a blue bat symbol across the chest, and a demon-type stage mask of the same color on his face. He looked at the blue gauntlet on his wrist and flexed his arm.

Dick whistled lowly. "Lookin' sharp, Zu."

Zuko grunted in response, but he couldn't stop the corners of his lips from twitching upwards.

"Good to see you suited up," Bruce said as he saw his son. He turned to the Bat Computer and typed something in. "Alright. Nightwing and Robin, you take the east side. Red Hood and Black Bat, you take the west. Red Robin, you take south. Blue Spirit and I will take north."

"You got it, boss man," said Jason with a mock salute. At that, the vigilantes headed out.

"Remember," Bruce began as he and Zuko got into the Batmobile. "Code names in the field." Zuko nodded.

"I won't forget, Batman."

"Good to hear, Blue Spirit."

After a few minutes if driving, Oracle spoke. "Croc is robbing a store on the corner of North and Order," she said. "Blue Spirit and Batman are closest."

"We're on it," Bruce said, and sped up.

They reached the corner in five minutes, and jumped out of the car. "Croc!" Bruce yelled.

A huge reptilian humanoid turned toward the voice, and smiled. "Batman!" he chirped. "And who's this?"

"Blue Spirit," Zuko said stiffly.

Killer Croc chuckled."New kid to destroy? I love that."

Croc rushed him, snapping his jaws viciously. Zuko jumped into the air, doing a flip over the creature. Fire blasted out of his elbow and he punched Croc in the snout as he turned.

Croc stumbled back. "Igniting your elbow to increase the force of your punch? Smart. Not smart enough." He ran towards Zuko again, claws outstretched, moving at inhuman speeds. Zuko ducked under his claws and gave an uppercut with the same advantage into his stomach. Croc was thrown into the air by the force. Before he could land, Zuko sent a blast of fire at him, engulfing him in flames. Croc screamed and fell to the ground, charred and smoking.

"He's still alive," Bruce said gruffly. "Not bad. I'll call Gordon." Zuko's chest swelled with pride, but he simply nodded.

"There's a robbery at the R&D center of Enterprises," Oracle said suddenly.

"Blue Spirit and I are going to check it out," Bruce answered.

"10-4," Dick replied. "Call if you need backup." Bruce grunted in response and, gesturing for Zuko to follow, jumped back into the Batmobile before speeding off.

"R&D?" Zuko echoed what Oracle had said earlier. "What's that?"

"It's the Research and Development Center," Bruce replied. "It's where we store Batman Inc. tech that's still in production."

"Oh."

“That's right. If anyone succeeds in getting their hands on what's in there-"

"-They'll get their hands on everything." Zuko bit the inside of his cheek. "It's fine. We can do this."

A hint of a smile ghosted across Bruce's lips, so small that Zuko wasn't sure if it'd even been there in the first place.

The Research and Development Center of Wayne Enterprises was primarily used to develop advancements in technology. These advancements ranged from more effective cancer treatments to new engines for vehicles.The blueprints listed the building as being eight stories. Unbeknownst to the majority of WE's employees, there was a basement. A basement hidden far below the actual building, so far below than an express elevator was needed. This basement was where the technology for Batman Inc. was developed.

Unlike the secret basement of Falcone's club, this basement was in pristine condition. It had a hospital feel to it, with white flooring, walls, and ceiling.

Bruce and Zuko had just grappled down the elevator shaft was landed at the end of one of the basement's hallways."The only alarm that's been triggered was the entry alarm," said Bruce. "The rooms where the... merchandise are kept have separate alarm systems. Can you tell me what this means, Blue Spirit?"

"The intruder either doesn't know what exactly is down here, or they just haven't managed to get into the rooms yet." Zuko frowned. "Wait, if they figured out this place was here then that means they definitely know what's down here. So then they haven't found the location of the 'merchandise.'"

"And you believe that to be the most probable scenario?"

"Well... yeah. I mean, unless they managed to bypass the alarm system. But that's impossible, this place is un-hackable ever since that incident with Ra's al Ghul. The security system is invincible. Right?"

"Rule of thumb, Blue Spirit," Bruce grunted, raising his arm closer to his face to he could activate his gauntlet. "Nothing is invincible. Everything has a weakness. Some are harder to find than others, but the only thing that is truly invincible is God Himself. And I don't think He would have any reason to break into Wayne Enterprises."

"Okay, but they tripped the alarm when they came in," Zuko pointed out. "So they must not have been able to hack the system."

"Unless they want us here."

Zuko sucked in his teeth. "So that's what you think? This is a trap?"

"It isn't a trap if we know about it," Bruce countered. "Here, I'm pulling up the motion sensors." Sure enough, the holographic screen coming from the gauntlet showed motion in room 121.

"Is that one of the rooms?" Zuko asked.

Bruce nodded."Yes." He and Zuko started to run in the direction of the before mentioned room. "There's very dangerous technology in there. We need to stop this intruder now." The two were sprinting, taking twists and turns through the winding hallways until Bruce stuck his arm out, signaling for Zuko to stop. In front of them was room 121, the door ajar.

"Holy crap," Zuko whispered. "They hacked us."

"They hacked us," Bruce echoed. "And now they're going to pay. Manuever 13. Be cautious." Bruce rolled a metal ball into the room, and it exploded into smoke Using the smoke as cover, Zuko and Bruce dashed into the room.

Using the heat signatures to see through the smoke, Zuko jumped forward, swinging down his broadswords in arc. His eyes widened as they hit air; the person had disappeared."What-" he broke off as someone landed a hit to his spine. Zuko whirled around, kicking out at his attacker, yet his foot hit air as the assailant dodged again.

"A teleporter?" he muttered. A laugh hit his ears, and the assailant landed another hit to the back of his head. Zuko tried to return the hit with one of his own but, of course, he missed.So far, Zuko noticed, they were teleporting closely around him. They were staying in close proximity with him. It would be hard to deduce where exactly they would strike, unless he limited their options.

Zuko stomped on the ground, and a ring of fire flared up around him. The attacker led out a gut wrenching scream as they were caught in the flames.He caught a glimpse of a person in a black suit clutching their arm before they teleported above his head, aiming a dropkick above him.

But Zuko had anticipated this. He grabbed their leg from above and slammed them on the ground. They landed with a crack and coughed.

"You just broke my spine, you asshole," the person wheezed. They were still now, and Zuko could see she was a girl with long brown hair in a wine-colored robe.

Zuko gulped, forcing down the rising panic at the girl's words. "Maybe you shouldn't have tried to break my skull."

The girl shrugged. "Just following orders."

"Who are you!?" Zuko snarled. "Tell me! Who are you and what do you want with this technology!?"

"Well, if you must know," the girl said, pain evident in her voice despite her calm tone. "I am but a servant of The Lady of the Dual Skies."

"The Lady of the Dual Skies?" Zuko echoed. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing's taken," Bruce said as he crossed his arms from where he stood behind Zuko. "Nothing has even been tampered with. You clearly weren't looking for anything here. So what did you want?"

"The Lady does not permit me speaking with anybody but you." The girl was speaking directly to Zuko, not sparing Bruce a glance. "She has something she wishes you to know."

Zuko narrowed his eyes behind his mask. "And what would that be?"

The girl grinned wickedly. "She says she'll see you soon."

With that, a portal opened up under the girl and she disappeared in a flash of purple light.

101 notes · View notes

miracle-sham · 4 years

Text

Seduce a Bat With a Thieving Cat.

| {Maribat2k20 Dickinette – Day 1: First Encounters} |

| [Ao3 Link] | | [Masterlist Link] |

|Triggers/Warnings: Explicit language/some swearing. |

| It's just another typical night on patrol when the Gotham History Museum is broken into, luckily Nightwing's on the scene, that is until everything goes off the rails. |

| Or alternatively, |

| Marinette's not your typical barista, so when she serves Dick Grayson coffee, everything goes sideways. |

| Word Count: 4751 |

»‹•›«

| A/N: I'd just like to preface this fic by mentioning I had already written 2k of this fic by the time Miraculous786 posted their First Encounters fic and after reading it considering the similarities (Dick's PoV during the museum bit, Marinette wielding the Cat Miraculous and hunting down a Miraculous from a Gotham Museum) I was kinda disheartened because y'know I was worried I might get accusations of copying but as I had already written 2k I decided to keep going because I had a different enough plot and I didn't want to waste what I had written so far. |

| If you want to be tagged in future oneshots/fics, or a specific Au, then comment or senf me a DM/ask! |

| Also side note, Don't Like? Don't Read. Also also, please do not criticise any of my writing. This was written for fun and receiving criticism, even in a compliment/criticism sandwich, is the exact opposite of fun. |

»‹•›«

The night started out like any other Monday patrol. Except it's Monday, so of course it all goes off the rails not even halfway through the patrol. Because that's just Dick's luck.

His comm buzzes, as Red Hood of all vigilantes, pipes up. “Just caught sight'a the tiny Catwoman copycat. Looks like she's got her eye on the Gotham History Museum again. O, you got anything on show in there that might pique the kitty's interest?”

Oracle responds a second later, robotic voice overlay sounding charming as ever. “A bejewelled Armlet, which is the newest piece from the ancient Tibetan Jewellery collection is probably what our copycat burglar's after. She's targeted that specific collection before. Nightwing you're closest to the museum, try to cut her off before she can steal the piece.”

“Got it!” Nightwing salutes, knowing Oracle is probably watching through a nearby security camera, as you do. He flips off the roof he's on and shoots the grapple mid flip—because he's physically incapable of not being showy, you can take him out the circus but you can't take the circus out of him—to change his route for the Museum in question.

“Wait isn't that the collection where a bunch of perfectly preserved jewellery pieces were found in a two-hundred-year-old monastery and the pieces themselves are estimated to be thousands of years old?” Robin cuts in, followed by an “Eep!” and a series of crashes and clatters.

“That's the one,” Oracle responds, sounding faintly amused, most likely watching whatever Robin's doing—which is probably nothing to worry about otherwise Oracle would have alerted them.

Not that that'll stop me from worrying, Nightwing thinks ruefully.

Red Hood scoffs. “Pretender, did you fucking seriously memorise facts about some fancy old jewellery?”

Nightwing can practically hear Robin's frown through the comms, and boy does that make his heart clench.

He, Robin, hesitates before answering. “I— one of my parent's last few archaeology gigs before they died was in Tibet where they were a part of the team that found a weird frog statue that's now on display at the Louvre. The statue has the same insignia as the box that the jewellery was discovered in.”

The comms fall silent because well, they've all got their own parental issues so when it's an unspoken rule to not use that as ammo when it comes to bio parents. But the fact that Robin memorises facts relating to digs his parents went on, when they couldn't even remember half his birthdays. It's a painful reminder that the kid still loves his bio parents despite the abuse he suffered from them.

The comms stay relatively silent (as silent as you can get, with six people's Comms hooked to the same frequency, all echoing in various white noise background sounds from their environments) until Nightwing reaches the Gotham History Museum. When the casual patrol chatter, as opposed to the white noise, starts back up, He filters out the sound out and circles the museum, keeping an eye out for their copycat burglar.

Twenty minutes pass and there's still no sign of her nearby. Nightwing double taps his comm. “Looks like our kitty cat's a no show. Are there any other places she might tar—” A loud wailing alarm cuts him off. “Shit.”

He whirls around, searching for the origin of the alarm. There, third skylight over, leading into the ancient Tibetan section added specifically for the bejewelled armlet's appearance at the museum—the section, not the skylight. If the skylight had been added then that would just be bad security choices on the Museum's part.

“Nightwing. Report.” Batman growls in demands over the comms because Batman's incapable of speaking in something other than growls and guttural grunts.

“Turns out, Oracle was probably right. I got eyes on the cat.” Nightwing responds, finally catching a glimpse of the copycat burglar, grappling her way out the skylight that the blaring alarm is coming from. Making a split-second decision, he sprint-swings after her. The chase is on kitty.

“Whatever you do, don't engage,” Batman orders, voice sounding like someone dragged a beat-up thug across a gravel driveway.

So Nightwing does what any self-respecting rebellious bat does, and ignores the order. “Engaging now.”

“Nightwing.”

Of course B tries to use the Robin Listen™ Voice. He pouts, turns off his earpiece midswing and continues to chase after the copycat burglar. He's a good few places behind, but his long legs and familiarity with the museum roof, is slowly but surely helping him catch up to her.

She glances back at him and puts on a burst of speed, and upon reaching the edge of the museum's roof, pole vaults herself over the edge, just missing the next roof, and hurtling towards the street below—not a dangerous move at all.

Nightwing has a split second of panic as he watches her as she's seemingly plummeting to her imminent demise, then decides to do the Vigilante Thing™ and dives after her.

He reaches an arm out and is so close to catching her when the pole she used to vault extends out and wedges itself between the two buildings either side of the street. The copycat burglar then uses the momentum from the fall to perform three pullover flips on the pole-bar—like she wasn't just nearly falling to her death.

Because of her move, Nightwing's forced to regrapple and swing by her in order to not crash into her. He spots a rooftop with two taller buildings either side and thinks to himself, a good point to ambush her at—provided she heads that way, if not, I can always grapple over to the other side of the street.

There are gargoyles on both the taller buildings, so it doesn't take much to grapple up to one and hide behind them (like the bat he is)—to keep her from realising he's still here.

Nightwing watches as the copycat burglar finishes her pullover flips and stabilises on the pole-bar, then walks across it like a tight rope—fortunately heading towards the building that he's planning to ambush her on. Finally, today's luck is looking up!

Once she reaches the building, she steps onto a window sill and grabs the pole-bar. Nightwing studies her and the pole-bar as it contracts and compacts to a baton size. The copycat burglar attaches it to her belt then scales the side of the building seemingly effortlessly.

She takes the path of least resistance as she reaches the top. Which is surprising to Nightwing considering she only just "lost" him. She then starts crossing the middle roof with the two taller buildings on either side.

It's at that moment, he decides to drop in on their copycat burglar. And by drop in on, he means flip over the gargoyles he was hiding behind, and then triple backflips off the roof he's on, so that at the end of his fall he collides with her, pinning her to the ground. Unnecessarily showy, but who's he to not put on a show.

Nightwing pulls out a pair of manacles and handcuffs her wrists. She turns her head enough to get a good look at him and gives him the most unimpressed glare he's ever seen. And I've lived with Batman, he thinks to himself, surprised at how good her unimpressed glare is.

He leans down, trying to intimidate her. “Where'd you put the armlet you stole.”

She hisses—like actually hisses, like a cat or a snake.

However, having been used to villains making weird noises upon being captured—Manbat anyone?—the sound doesn't startle Nightwing as much as it probably should. That is until he catches sight of her slit pupils, and cat ears and tail twitching. Of course, his immediate thought is and they call Batman a furry.

Unfortunately, in the split second where his thoughts are distracted, she mutters “Cataclysm,” beneath her breath. There's a horrible creak of metal rusting and warping followed by a clatter, as she yanks her hands away—causing the manacles to shatter in two.

“Hey, wait a second!” Nightwing protests, he's about to ask what she just did, when she twists underneath his pin and flips the both of them over.

Having not expected the flip, he's caught off guard once more but his reflexes are too well trained to be completely overwhelmed by the move, so he cartwheels out of the flip and out of her range. “That was my favourite pair of handcuffs you broke!”

She raises an eyebrow at him and slips into a defensive stance. “You have a favourite pair of handcuffs?”

Mimicking the action by getting into his own fighting stance, he starts to edge towards her, causing her to edge away from him—forcing them both to circle each other.

“They were a good pair of handcuffs okay!” Nightwing defends, as he scrutinises her form—Clearly self-trained, considering this stance and her earlier moves. It's similar to Jason and Steph's styles, in the 'learnt to fight to avoid getting hurt worse' kinda way.

“Emphasis on the were.” Is her dry response.

He dive forward rolls towards her and jumps up, and using the momentum gained from the roll, throws an uppercut at her. “How about you give me the jewellery as compensation?”

The copycat burglar narrows her eyes at him and blocks the uppercut with her elbow. “The jewellery is worth way more than your flimsy handcuffs.” She retaliates with a roundhouse kick to Nightwing's chest.

Dodging with a back handspring, he pulls out his escrima sticks. “No?” He shrugs, “well it was worth a try.”

She eyes his escrima sticks and gives him a tight-lipped smile. “It really wasn't but go off I guess.”

That was definitely a twinkle of amusement in her eyes there! Nightwing grins then falters. “Y'know, if you're in trouble, you don't have to do this. I can help you.”

The copycat burglar scoffs and throws a punch, which he easily blocks with one of his escrima sticks.

“You don't understand.” She scowls, retracts her punch and spins before trying to jab him in the ribs with her baton.

He blocks with one escrima stick and strikes back at her with the other. “I don't, but if you explain then I could.”

Hissing through her teeth in pain, she glares at him, tail whipping viciously back and forth and cat ears laying flat against her head. She counters his block and strike, by swiping at his escrima sticks with her baton, knocking them from his grip.

“Shit!” Nightwing back handsprings again, to get enough distance between them as to give him enough time to retrieve the sticks.

She thwacks him in the neck with her expanding baton, throwing him off balance and leaving him breathless.

With his moment of weakness, the copycat burglar grabs him and throws him at the nearest rooftop wall.

“Fuck! Me!” He yelps between breaths, temporarily stunned, body aching from the impact.

“No thanks, I'd prefer to take you out to dinner first.” She mutters, probably not intending for him to hear, as she pins him against the wall before he can recover.

Blinking and wide-eyed, Nightwing stares at her for a solid three seconds then waggles his eyebrows. “I'd be up for dinner with you, just gotta let me help you with whatever's forcing you to steal the jewellery.”

She sighs and glances away for a split second, then leans in really close and whispers in his ear. “There's nothing you can do to help me.”

Leaning back, the copycat burglar places a finger over his lips—silencing him before he can speak.

Nightwing flushes bright red and his heartbeat spikes.

“My name is Minou Purrdu, and I'm sorry.” She purrs, pulling something odd out of her baton, a black and yellow spinning top.

With her finger still over his lips, he's unable to ask what she's apologising for.

She whispers under her breath, “Venom,” and stabs the spinning top into the side of his neck.

Gasping, Nightwing is left completely paralysed by whatever the spinning top actually is because it's clearly not your standard spinning top. Unable to move—he can only watch as Minou Purrdu cups his cheek, frowns, pulls away, and begins pole-vaulting her way across the roof and out of sight.

»‹•›«

Nightwing's not sure how long the paralysis lasted but as soon as it ends, he slumps back against the wall and melts, tipping his head back against the brick. His mind stuck on repeating the encounter as he processes what happened. Shit, he thinks while grinning dopily—face flushing bright red again (not that it faded much whilst he was paralysed), I thought I had a thing for redheads but obviously, I've got a thing for badass ladies instead.

He's about to get up when Catwoman, original cat burglar extraordinaire, jumps down onto the roof he's on and gives him a very judgemental look. “I'm guessing the kitten got away with the jewellery, hmm? A shame, I quite fancied the look of it.” She stops, tipping her head to the side and raising a hand to one ear. She shakes her head but continues. “Oracle has some things she wants to say to you, I'd recommend turning on your comm unless you want her send Batman, Robin, or Red Hood here to see you like this.”

Huffing, he rolls his eyes, “thanks,” then taps his comms back on. “Hey.”

Catwoman nods to him and then takes her leave across the rooftops—Probably to go tease Batman or something.

The comm buzzes and an unimpressed sounding Oracle greets him. “Clearly the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.” She pauses then adds, “I recorded your entire "fight".”

Nightwing splutters in response. “What.”

“Awww, did you get your feathers ruffled by the kitty cat, Big Wing?” Red Hood cuts in with a teasing sing-song tone of voice.

“I hate you both,” Nightwing grumbles, pushing himself up off the ground and wall.

“Sorry to interrupt, but I was looking through the museum's private notes on the jewellery collection, apparently some of the pieces are thought to be magical artefacts,” Robin interjects, sounding somewhat strained.

Red Hood scoffs, “so you're saying our copycat burglar's—”

“Minou Purrdu she called herself.” Nightwing chimes in.

Red Hood clears his throat. “—Got her hands on multiple magical artefacts and we got no idea why she's doing it or if she's working with anyone.”

“We might get another chance to catch her, the museum has a few other jewellery pieces from the collection, in the back,” Robin informs them, a familiar thwip of a grapple line in the background.

“So we'll monitor the museum for any suspicious activity.” Oracle sighs. “Also Nightwing, Agent A's currently dealing with B but he wants to know the extent of your injuries from the fight.”

“Gotcha.” He swipes on his gauntlet computer and sends a quick analysis of his injuries—mostly minor bruising—and sends it to the Batcomputer for Agent A to see. “Done.”

“B's being grumpy over the stunt you pulled, so I suggest doing a final loop once you finish patrol before heading back.” There's a clacking of keys as Oracle types away at something, most likely checking the security cams nearby.

Nightwing readies his grapple. “You're a lifesaver O.” Then swings himself off the building to double back to his patrol route.

The clacking pauses and she laughs. “I know.”

»‹•›«

The next morning, as she's sprinting down the pavement, Marinette's phone starts ringing. She stumbles to a stop, barely managing to dodge the other civilians walking down the path and fumbles to get her phone out her pocket. She curses and glances around her then steps off to the side to take the call. She catches a glimpse of the caller's ID before she answers, “Adrien? What is it?”

“Ah, you're awake already, mornin' Mari!” He greets cheerfully, sounding far too awake for eight am on a Tuesday morning. Although then again, he wasn't the one who spent last night (morning?) hopping across rooftops at godforsaken hours and getting chased by the local spandex-wearing vigilantes.

There's a clatter behind Adrien followed by the whir of an appliance, he pauses, probably distracted by whatever made the noise. There's a faint rustle-woosh as he shakes his head. “I'm just calling to check up on you after your late night last night, after all, today's your first shift at the coffee shop.”

Marinette huffs good-naturedly, “I woke up extra early so I wouldn't be late,” Translation: I did not get a wink of sleep last night. “I'm less than a minutes walk away right now.”

Adrien sighs. “Mari, you really need to get better sleeping habits.”

“Mhmm. Alright, I'm nearly there” She responds, busy checking her surroundings once more.

“M'kay, chat to you inside?” And she can just hear the feral grin in his voice as he makes the pun.

Marinette groans at the awful pun. “Really? Whatever, see ya!” And quickly ends the call, before setting off at a brisk pace to get to the coffee shop.

»‹•›«

Once she reaches the coffee shop, Marinette's just barely on time for her shift. She darts into the back room and throws on the nearest apron of her size and slaps her name tag onto the apron.

With the apron and name tag on, she stumbles out the back room and scurries behind the counter to join Adrien, who's chatting to a customer; a superhero fan, if I were to guess, from all the superhero badges and patches on their jacket. As she passes by him to get to her station, he raises a hand without glancing back at her. On instinct, she high fives his raised hand.

Marinette reaches the empty till and waves over the next customer. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots Adrien starting on his customer's order. She smiles as the customer she waved over, approaches.

The customer that approaches, is a pale thin-faced man, with balding grey hair and wearing a shirt and jacket from the latest Gabriel Agreste fashion line. “I need a triple shot, venti, half sweet, caramel macchiato, with three pumps of vanilla and extra whip. And I need it pronto, girly.”

“Of course.” Marinette's smile turns paper-thin as a wave of fury washed over her. This is not my morning, she internally laments. But at least Adrien doesn't have to deal with this bastard. He doesn't need a reminder of the fact that his sperm donor managed to escape his crimes thanks to being an old, white, corrupt businessman.

He glares at her, then sniffs pointedly and pulls out his phone.

Marinette scurries away from the till to go and get started on the order. It's not enough to stop her from wanting to break the customer's nose but it keeps her occupied for the moment being.

As she passes Adrien, he gives her a concerned glance. She responds with a shrug and the shake of her head, she flicks her gaze back to her customer and then to Adrien; silently conveying it's fine, don't worry. I can deal with it.

He frowns but doesn't press, instead continuing as he was doing, in taking his customer's order to said customer.

Sighing, Marinette then gets started on her customer's hell order, carefully making the coffee step by step, to ensure its right. Because as much as I'd love to tamper with his drink, I'd rather not lose my job not even five minutes into my first shift.

Thankfully it doesn't take too long to make the order but as the equipment isn't that far from the counter, she could hear all the impatient huffs and scoffs from the customer throughout the duration of making the coffee. After she adds the final touches, Marinette carefully carries the order over to the customer and goes through the payment process with him.

The customer leaves with a scowl. Good riddance, she scoffs internally. She surveys the coffee shop and surprisingly there's no one else in the queue. She shuffles towards Adrien, looking quite pale, as he hands over the change to a customer who then puts the change in the tip jar and leaves.

Eyeing him carefully, Marinette gently nudges him in the side and softly questions. “Hey, you feeling okay? You're looking kinda pale.”

Adrien glances back to her and nods. “Yeah, I just…” He takes a second to breathe, “that customer you were serving, he was wearing his brand.”

She makes a pained face. Shit, I was hoping he wouldn't notice.

He huffs and grins fragilely. “You're doing your 'Heck I had hoped you hadn't realised that' face.”

Marinette rolls her eyes. “Close, it was a 'Shit, I was hoping you hadn't realised' face but technicalities, technicalities.”

Just as he's about to respond, three giggling people stumble into the coffee shop, a man and a boy with black hair and blue eyes, and a girl with blonde hair and blue eyes.

Adrien stiffens as they approach, so Marinette does what any good friend would do and grabs him by the arm to tug him a step behind her.

“Nuh-uh!” She wags a finger at him, “I'll deal with the next customers, you go take a five-minute breather in the backroom.”

He wavers and glances between her and the approaching group. He shakes his head and grimaces. “Alright,” then scampers off to the backroom in a very cat-like way.

Some things just don't change, she muses to herself, and tenses, throwing on a quick but genuine-looking smile to greet the new customers.

As the three reach the counter, the tallest of the three (the black-haired blue-eyed man), leans on the counter and smirks in a way that can only be described as flirtatiously. The other man groans and the woman bursts into giggles.

Marinette refrains from mentally calling the flirtatiously smirking one 'The Chat Noir of the three'. “Hi, how may I help you?”

The blonde girl shoves the men and boy out of the way and flashes Marinette a dazzling grin. “Hey, can I get a grande Spoiler Surprise hot chocolate and a warmed coffee waffle please!”

Marinette nods, quickly racking her brain for the recipe to the Gotham Special, and adds it to the till. “Anything else?”

The black-haired blue-eyed boy—Who I really need a better internal nickname for him because he's starting to sound like the blue-eyes white dragon with how much I'm repeating that, Marinette thinks absently—half-heartedly glares at the blonde girl before turning his gaze to Marinette and asks, “could I have a quadruple shot Venti espresso with sixteen addition shots of espresso and one of the add energy packets.”

“Timmy, no!” Gasps the man.

“Tim, yes.” 'Tim' responds, grinning mischievously.

The blonde girl barely holds back her laughter, doubling over from the effort.

Marinette stares at him in concern but as soon as she spots the very prominent bags beneath his eyes, she nods—in solidarity and adds the coffee order to the till. “Okay, anything else?”

The blonde girl and Tim share a look before darting off to grab a free table booth, leaving the man at the counter with her.

The man stares after the two before turning his attention to Marinette. “Can I get a grande White Chocolate Mocha, please.” He pauses, “And I'll pay you triple the price of the entire order in tips if you make Tim's drink entirely decaf. Please, he's had three black coffees already today.”

Marinette nods her head slowly. “I–uh, sure, okay. And is that all?”

He nods, “Yep, that's all.”

She adds the final drink to the order and puts it through the till. “That'll be twenty dollars…”

The man hums thoughtfully and hands over a twenty-dollar bill, “Cool, so I'll pay you sixty bucks in tips if you make my little brother's drink decaf.” He then adds, “I'm Dick by the way.”

“Marinette,” she points to the little name tag attached to her apron before getting started on the worst of the drinks, the (now decaf) twenty shot venti espresso. “And that's way too much for a tip, I can't accept that much.”

“Hey, no, you deserve it for making that abomination of a drink that my little brother ordered and anyway it's not like I can't afford to tip you that much.” Dick divulges.

“Oh.” She responds noncommittally, unsure how to respond and so continues to pour the shots of decaf espresso into the venti cup.

Just as she finishes pouring the final shots into the cup, a customer switches the café TV to a news channel. “Late last night, there was a break-in at the Gotham History Museum. The only item stolen was an artefact from the new Ancient Tibetan display. Fortunately, the thief was caught on the security camera. From what can be seen in the footage, the thief appears to be a Catwoman copycat.” A news anchor reports before cutting to the footage of the break-in.

Marinette puts the twenty shot venti espresso on a tray and places the tray and drink on the counter between her and Dick.

“What's your opinion on Minou Purrdu?” He inquires, with a curious look on his face, head cocked to one side.

Thanks to anxiety, Marinette's immediate response is to laugh awkwardly as she internally panics—Oh fuck, he must be Nightwing. Don't be here to arrest me, don't be here to arrest, please—turning away from the counter, she gets started on the white chocolate mocha. “Uh, who?”

Dick rubs at the back of neck somewhat sheepishly, “it's that new copycat thief's name apparently.”

“Huh. I guess the thief must be a fan of puns then.” She comments, avoiding answering his question as she mixes the relevant ingredients into the cup to produce the drink.

“Oh? What makes you say that?” He asks, body language showing him to be genuinely curious—probably not here to arrest me then, hopefully.

Marinette finishes making the white chocolate mocha and carries the cup over to the tray, explaining her reasoning as she did so. “Well, Minou Purrdu is a pun. Minou perdu is french for lost kitty, and so by adding a purr to perdu, the thief made it a pun.”

Dick makes a noise of contemplation, he then spies his drink and grins in a way that's flirtatiously feral enough to rival Chat Noir (she was definitely spot on when she nearly mentally referred to him as the Chat Noir of the three), then points to the mocha, “hey, you mocha me crazy.”

Marinette sighs in poorly concealed amusement and it's at that moment, Adrien walks out the employee room and joins her behind the counter.

He glances around and spots no queue, “need any help with the order?”

She nods and turns to him. “If you could grab one of the coffee waffles and warm it please.”

“No problem!” Adrien nods and heads over to the glass food display to get a coffee waffle.

Dick pokes at up his mocha cup and whistles through at the heat. “This coffee's really hot but not as hot as you.”

Marinette, midway through turning away from the counter to go grab the ingredients needed for the Spoiler Surprise hot chocolate, chokes and flushes bright red. Nope-nope-nope-nope-no! I am not doing this! Absolutely no way am I getting a crush on Nightwing who's currently a civilian and probably is maybe hunting down my secret identity to arrest me!

Adrien, the traitor, puts the now warmed up coffee waffle on the tray and grabs a napkin. He quickly scrawls down a string of numbers that look suspiciously like her personal phone number. He waggles his eyebrows at her, winks, then hands the napkin to Dick. “She's too shy to do it herself, so here's her number!”

She squeaks in surprise—ironic considering the drink she's currently making—and covers her face with her hands, thankfully having not been holding the cup of half-made Spoiler Surprise hot chocolate. Otherwise, she definitely would've spilt it.

Quickly, she finishes the hot chocolate and puts it on the tray. “Here you go.”

“Thanks! and here's your tip.” He places down three twenty-dollar bills on the counter and winks, before picking the tray up and bringing it over to Tim and the blonde girl.

Marinette spins around to face Adrien. “Oh my god, why would you do that?”

He smirks, “because we're in a new city, why not have some fun and follow through with your new crush?”

She groans. “We need to talk in private as soon as our shifts end.”

Adrien's smile falters. “Alright.”

»‹•›«

| Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this little oneshot! Comments, likes, and reblogs are much appreciated! |

@maribat-2k20

#Miraculous Ladybug #Maribat #ML x DC #DC x MLB #Dickinette #Marinette x Dick #Dick x Marinette #Maribat2k20 #Maribat2k20 Dickinette #Maribat2k20 Day 1 #Maribat2k20 First Encounters #Seduce a Bat With a Thieving Cat #SaBWaTC #Sham's Posts #Sham's Writing #Shams's Fics

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jinmukangwrites · 4 years

Text

Whumptober Day 11

Defiance | Struggling | Crying

Ao3

For @sassydefendorflower. I hope you like it!!!

Warnings: prolonged captivity, kidnapping, non consensual toughing / groping / drugging, gaslighting, Stockholm Syndrome, restraints, isolation, threats, panic attacks. Please keep warnings in mind, this is a VERY dark fic.

-o-o-o-o-

If there's one thing Dick can confidently say that he absolutely hates, it's being restrained. He's learnt to repress his hatred for the total and complete lack of movement and control of his own body over the years—because the last thing you should do while locked up or tied down is show the captor that you're uncomfortable. And yes, it did get easier over the years. Waking up with his wrists above his head, locked in chains, or his back pressed to a metal chair with coarse rope hardly bothered him anymore. He's even experimented with bondage during sex, and while it wasn't the biggest kink of his, it was somewhat enjoyable with the right partners.

But deep down, when it came down to it, losing control of his movements and senses rubbed him in all the wrong ways.

Which is why when he wakes up on his sides his arms wrapped around his chest and hugged around towards his back by stiff sleeves he's instantly on edge. He shifts, and swallows down a grown when his legs keep connected together at the ankles by what feels like thick, padded shackles. Again, Feels like, because when he opens his eyes, he finds them bound by something soft and cloth-like. The cloth wraps around the entirety of his head and over his ears. And speaking of his ears, it almost feels like someone pushed extra cotton into the canals, making it exceptionally difficult to hear.

He tries to shift, frustration crawling into his gut when the straps of what’s definitely a straight jacket presses harshly into multiple places of his body. There's no give. He can immediately tell that this is an honest to God straight jacket. Not a fake one with makeshift straps sewn on to simply look real or do the job. This is the kind of straight jacket the Joker would be put in. And Dick—while he's flexible and trained to escape binds like this—knows that something like this might be out of his league.

Now that he knows he's not getting out of this, at least not while laying on the ground, he takes stock of his memories. He doesn't feel groggy or drugged. Honestly, it feels like he's just woken up from a nap. Which is strange because he could have sworn the last thing he remembers is driving home from work, mentally planning out his night routine for patrol.

Which brings up the question if he's Dick Grayson… or Nightwing.

He shifts again and tries to pay attention to the fabric against his body—under the straight jacket and around his limbs.

He quickly becomes aware that the parts of skin all under his knees are bare, and when he tugs his arms and twists his fingers he can feel the straight jacket directly on his fingertips. The collar of the straight jacket lays loosely around the base of his neck, but the clothes he's wearing sits skin-tight just below his jaw.

Okay, Nightwing then. Nightwing, but without his gloves and boots. Which is good and bad in a multitude of different ways.

The on edge feeling inside his chest grows as he slowly begins to work himself up so he's sitting. The straps of the jacket rub raw against him, especially on his biceps and groin. His back hits a hard wall, and he leans against it while bringing his legs up so his knees are kissing his chest. He can't hear or see anything—which leaves him severely vulnerable, especially when you consider that he is restrained rather professionally. He tests the give between the shackles on his ankles, and he finds there's hardly any. Maybe just an inch of cord. Not enough to walk, hop, or shuffle. He needs his hands, or at least his eyes, to know more about the likelihood of him picking them. Right now though, the likelihood sits stubbornly at zero.

Okay. So not all of his senses are taken from him. His mouth isn't gagged, so he can speak and taste. He might be restrained, but leaning against the wall and placing his bare feet on the ground gives him a chance of at least feeling someone coming before they interact with him.

Besides that… there's not much going for him. He doesn't know where he is, or even if there's someone in the room with him that would get upset if he begins to more seriously tug at the jacket. Abductions like this are always stressful in completely unique ways because of that.

Okay. Okay, Nightwing. You got this.

He rolls his shoulders, grunting at the pressure that immediately intensifies on his arms and sides. He tugs his arms and tugs again, shifting to try and alleviate the yanking straps on his nether regions, but it all is too well put together. Too tightly buckled. There's absolutely no give on any strap, and continuing to tug and struggle like this will just make him look like a pathetic, flopping fish trapped outside of the water. He's a good escapist. You don't go into his line of nightlife and not know how to slip your share of binds. But he's no Houdini. He's not getting out of this jacket any time soon.

Suddenly, there's a heavy vibration under his feet, and he's just able to tense before a hand wraps itself around his chin, softer than what Dick was expecting, and forces his face to look slightly upwards.

He just manages to repress a jump when the sound of static erupts in his ear. Unexpected. Interesting. The static shifts into words. Was… a small communication device stuffed into his bound ears?

"Hello, Nightwing," says the voice. Male. Young, maybe Bruce's age. Calm. Gentle. Like he's making a genuine greeting. "Nod if you can hear me."

Dick doesn't nod. Maybe, if he pretends this rather clever idea for communication while he's deafened doesn't actually work, his captor will take the tape off from his face and Dick would be able to actually see where he is.

His captor waits a second, then sighs. "I want to help you, and I can't if you don't cooperate."

Dick has to resist frowning or scowling. What is this guy playing at? Normally, by now, bad guys are beating him up and torturing him.

The man hums and Dick jerks his chin away, curling up defensively when the man simply lets go.

The static chirps in his ear. "I see you want to be stubborn. But that's okay. I'll be back later, with food too. Try to think about working with me next time."

Then the static leaves, as does the presence of the man. Dick doesn't hear any closing doors, or see anyone walking away, but he's pretty sure he's alone now.

He swallows. That was weird.

He takes a second to calm his heart and quiet his head. He can't think about what his captor wants and what ploy they're playing at. He has to escape before something more happens. He tugs on the straight jacket sleeves, choking off his growls of frustration when he goes nowhere quickly.

-o-o-o-o-

Hours pass. Enough hours to where his lips feel chapped and his stomach growls. His tailbone aches, sitting against the wall like this, but he doesn't want to purposely place himself in a more vulnerable position. He can only be grateful that he doesn't need to use the restroom- and nevermind. Now that he's thinking about it he does kinda need to go.

Great. This is just great. Now that strap growing right between his legs is going to be so much more fun to deal with.

Just great.

Loud static erupts in his ears suddenly, and he could hardly repress the flinch at the sudden noise within the hours of silence he's been stewing in for the past several hours. He grinds his jaw as the same voice as before speaks up, the tone way to smug and happy for Dick's tastes.

"Ah, so you do hear me!"

Dick wants to ignore him. But clearly this man is confident that Dick can hear him and Dick really needs to find out what's going on.

"Who are you?" Dick growls, bunching his hands into fists within the sleeves of the straight jacket. "What do you want?"

"Oh, Nightwing," the man sighs, and Dick has to physically restrain himself from kicking out when a hand places itself on his knees. He tugs backwards though, not wanting to be touched. The man removes his hand and doesn't return it. "I don't want anything, I just need you to eat."

Dick's stomach growls at the mention of food and he hopes it wasn't loud enough to be heard. He's hungry. Thirsty. But Dick knows giving him food isn't the only reason he was captured. "No, there's more than that. Why am I here?"

The man hums. "How about, we make a deal. You eat some of this hot, homemade potato soup I've made and then I can answer some of your questions. How does that sound? Will you let me help you?"

What is up with this guy. He sounds... Genuine. And Dick hates that. He sounds like he really does just want to get Dick something to eat, and that he'll honestly answer some questions after hand. But… Dick can't play along. The soup could be drugged. Or these questions of his might not even be answered anyway. And what is this guy going to do? Take off the jacket to give him potato soup? No, he'll most likely attempt to spoon feed Dick and Dick's not a fan of that.

So, even though he's hungry, he sets his jaw. "I'm not hungry."

"Yes you are, sweetheart," the man coos, setting something twisting in Dick's gut. "I know you're hungry. Thirsty. And I want to help you." Dick flinches when a hand cups his left jaw, but this time the hand doesn't leave. "Please let me help you."

Dick presses his lips shut.

The man sighs.

"Okay, you're okay. I'll let you be for a little longer. The food can just be reheated later, alright?"

Dick doesn't answer. The static shuts off, and Dick's pretty sure the man leaves.

He's left alone to lick his lips; to ignore his grumbling stomach and the pooling weight in his bladder. He tugs on the jacket, and becomes even more irritated when it doesn't give like he didn't expect it to.

-o-o-o-o-

It's… several more hours by the time the man returns again, and within that time Dick has found himself barely keeping awake. If it wasn't for his hunger and thirst… if not for the added intense need to relieve himself… he would have fallen asleep out of pure boredom. This entire situation is tearing at his nerves. Fraying him at the core of his tolerance. He hates being rendered completely helpless like this. Starved and deprived. It chills him to the bone even though it's a comfortable temperature in the room. He wants to know what his captors game is—he hates not knowing.

But, even though he cannot help but desperately hate this entire everything, it felt almost like a relief when the static once again began in his ear, and the presence of the man returned. Dick stirred slightly, recognizing and almost feeling the man kneeling down to his side. He could easily smell the thick and hot potato soup that he was talking about earlier. He must have brought it down in a closed container or something last time, but left it open this time.

It made him want to curl up just to lessen the stabbing pain in his empty gut. It's strange how he can be so hungry when he's sure not even 24 hours have passed yet. He's gone days without food before. Weeks with little nibbles here and there during his most intense depressive episodes. But there's something about being forcefully deprived of food that makes it so much more awful than if it was under his own will.

He wants to eat. He should eat. He should keep up his strength. The soup smells so good. Like... Alfred level good. And he's not sure of that's because it might actually be as good as Alfred's famous steak and potato soup he liked to make around Christmas time while they were on a rare vacation at the ski house... or if he’s just so starved that anything would smell heavenly.

He swallows. The man finally speaks.

"Are you ready to eat?" The man asks.

And why shouldn't he eat? If this guy wanted Dick poisoned or drugged, he could have done it easily hours ago. His stomach gurgles, which in turn puts pressure on his ballooned bladder, which makes him painfully aware of the strap still pressing between his legs.

He has so many discomforts right now. If he could just ease one...

"If I eat..." Dick begins, and his voice sounds as tired and haggard as he feels. He licks his dry lips. "If I eat, you'll answer my questions?"

There's a moment of silence, then a small chuckle. "That was the deal last time, silly," the man replies, sounding like a parent gently scolding a rambunctious child. Dick didn't like that. "Right now, you just need to eat. If you eat, then we can maybe talk about the future. How does that sound, sweetheart?"

It doesn't sound good. But Dick is so… hungry. He can either just let himself eat and maybe learn something or just let himself starve and sit alone for more hours until his captor decides to visit him again.

Dick bites his lip. Weighs his options. His rumbling stomach reminds him that he doesn't really have any.

"Okay," he breathes. "Okay."

"I'm happy that you're letting me help you, sweetheart," the man says, then settles down somewhere in front of Dick. "Open up!"

And as embarrassing as it was, he opened his mouth and allowed the first spoonful of warm soup to enter.

Now that he's tasted the heavenly smelling soup, he's not really sure if he can confidently say if it was the hunger that made it smell so good. It didn't taste awful… but it definitely tastes… alright?

He eats the soup in generously small bites, and the man allows time between each bite to let the warmth settle in his gut before offering another spoonful. Soon enough, the soup is gone and the man is gently putting a bottle of water to Dick's chapped mouth with encouraging words that Dick tries not to listen too intently to.

In a short matter of time, his stomach feels contently full. Thirst a far-off memory. Now… the only problem is his bladder, no doubt about to feel even more full considering he's just drunk down a sizable amount of distilled water.

"Do you need to use the restroom, honey?" The man asks, and Dick almost flushes. He really, really needs to pee.

"I need answers," he says instead, because he's complied with eating. Drinking too. He didn't fight or lash out during any of it.

"Yes," the man says, which shocks Dick. "Yes I suppose you've earned it. One question, sweety. Then we can move on."

Dick took a deep breath. Okay. One question. He can work with this.

"What do you want from me?"

The man hummed. "I've already answered that, sweetheart, remember? I don't want anything from you. I just want to take care of you. You need to be taken care of."

Dick shook his head. "No, I don't need taken care of. I can take care of myself. What's your plan? What's your endgame?"

"I believe I told you just one question, yes?" The man scolds, then exhales. "I know you're scared, sweetheart. But believe me, I have your best interests at heart-"

"Then untie me!" Dick snaps, tugging on the sleeves of the straight jacket. "Let me see you! If all you wanted to do was give me a meal, then you could have just invited me in."

"No," the man says, and for the first time he sounds… angry. Irritated. It almost gives Dick whiplash. "No. You're safer like this. The outside world… it just uses you. No one appreciates you out there. You're all on your own... getting hurt… and I can't watch it any longer. I'm going to take care of you. I'll untie you once you understand that."

Dick clenches his fists within the restraining sleeves. Of course. A complete psycho has taken him. This makes things difficult.

"You're delusional."

A moment of silence. Then; the constant static in his ear suddenly cut out. Immediately, his anxiety level sparks. He's forgotten how quiet this was. How lonely. He's sat here for hours, and he's already latched onto the only person around to have company with.

He represses gasp when a hand curls around the side of his head, the palm resting just besides his ear, fingers curling in his hair.

Then, the hand leaves, and Dick is left sitting in the dark, his bladder swelling to the point of pain.

"W-" he begins, about to demand a way to relieve his bladder, but he stops himself and let's the presence go. Asking for things will encourage this man's delusions. Which can be just as dangerous as defying.

He takes a deep breath and forces himself to think of the meditation practices Bruce put him through as a kid. He'll find a way out of this. He always finds a way.

-o-o-o-o-

Just before Dick's bladder is about to explode, a hand falls on his shoulder. He jumps at the contact, almost letting go of his nether problem, but he manages to keep his dignity as the hand squeezes slightly. It must have been an hour, but somehow, he found himself looking forward to that little buzz of static that announced that he'll be able to hear for a little bit.

It comes, and for the first time in a while, he feels like he can breathe.

"How about we get you to the bathroom, sweety?"

And Dick knows he shouldn't comply. He should ignore it. He shouldn't play into the man's fantasies. But it's either use the restroom or… or wet himself probably in the next five minutes.

"Fine."

"Now that's not very polite," the man says, back in that scolding voice. "If you want to go, you have to say yes please!"

Dick grinds his teeth. His bladder hurts. "Yes please."

"Well, we can work on your tone later…"

Then, unexpectedly, fingers fall to the padded shackles on his ankles. He fights the urge to lash out, but he naturally relaxes when he feels the shackles begin to loosen.

This… this is good. This is really good. He's letting Dick's legs free so he can walk to wherever he needs to go.

Dick's known how to fight blinded and deafened since he was a kid.

Dick's always known how to use his legs.

Escape is a hair's breadth away. He can practically taste it.

The man brings his hands up to Dick's chest, and Dick allows him to get that close. The man grunts as he helps Dick to his feet. It takes a moment for Dick to find his balance, especially with the straight jacket still tightly wrapped around his upper body, but eventually he manages to steady himself on his feet.

Now or never.

The strap between his legs pulls awfully as he brings his leg up to kick the man. His foot meets a gut, and he hears an oof before the sound in his ears cut out and silence replaces his world. But this is fine. He can work with this. It's a good thing his feet are bare, because it makes it easier to keep track of the man as he stumbles back a few steps.

Dick doesn't allow him to recover. He darts forward and brings his leg up, aiming for the man's head.

He misses. Which is fine. This is all fine. He just needs to get in one good hit. One good hit and he get get out of this pl-

Suddenly, his entire world erupts in pain. A gurgled scream forces its way out of his throat as the familiar feeling of pure electricity sparks from his thigh up to the rest of his body. Everything becomes that. The agonizing sensation of bolts slicing their way through every nerve and cell he has.

It lasts years. Or maybe moments. When the electricity stops and he's left breathless, choking on his strained breaths, crumpled on the floor. There's stabbing pain in his thigh, and he realizes he's just been tased with some sort of gun that can pierce through the kevlar of his suit.

How the fuck did this guy manage to get something this high tech?!

However, he doesn't wonder that long, because he's suddenly hit with the mortifying feeling of wetness between his legs, dripping down the inside of his thighs.

Shit.

And he can't do anything about it besides groan and try to get his limbs to stop twitching with lingering effects of a taser.

He doesn't get anywhere far, because hands fall onto his ankles and he's too weak to fight as the shackles are slipped back on with fast and practiced movements. In a matter of seconds, Dick's left on his stomach, his arms awkwardly curled around his chest and his legs now held back together.

The static in his ear turns on. The man sounds breathless. "That was uncalled for. Apologise, and I'll help you clean up."

Dick feels a spike of anger crawl up his esophagus. Fuck. You."

There's a sigh. "I do not know why you insist on struggling. I'm trying to help you. If you don't apologise, then I'm going to be forced to leave you here to think about the kind of behavior expected from you."

Dick snarls. Doesn't say anything. Just snarls. He's so angry. And tired. And humiliated.

The man huffs. "Alright then. It seems you need time to cool down. I'll be back, sweetheart. If you apologise when I return, then I'll have another warm meal for you. And I'll help you get clean."

"Fuck off," Dick snarls. "I don't know what you want-" the static shuts off and irrational panic swirls in his stomach. "Let me go! Fuck- let me go-"

Pain stabs into his soaking thighs, but it's not electricity. He feels the stabbing pins of the taser gun leave the meat of his thigh. He swears and kicks, but he hits nothing.

"Get back! Untie me! Shit-"

There's no answer. Only silence. Dick's pretty sure the man exited the room in the middle of Dick's irrational yelling. He takes a deep breath, swears, and curls up slightly, wrinkling his nose at the smell of his own urine that covers his aching thighs.

The silence in his ears is deafening. The sudden loneliness crushing.

He needs to figure out a way out of this. Before he goes completely insane.

-o-o-o-o-

Dick's unsure of how much time has passed.

Enough for him to feel hungry and thirsty again though. Long enough for the dampness of his lower body to turn dry and irritating. The inside of his legs have been rubbed raw against the fabric of his suit. He hates to think of the kind of rash he probably has.

But the hunger? The thirst? The discomfort? He can deal with that. That's all okay. It's nothing new, even if wetting himself is embarrassing beyond most comparisons.

What's getting to him is that he's... completely alone. Rendered helpless to the point where he can barely wiggle around on the ground like a worm. He's tired. Exhausted. But terrified to sleep. He hates this… loneliness. The hours spent in isolation with no one to talk to. No one to hold him.

He could really go for a hug right now.

He almost wishes the man would come back soon so Dick can have someone around.

The hours tick on. And no one comes. Dick curls up tighter, because that's the only thing he can do. He curls up tighter and finds himself pretending the straight jacket was an actual person, holding him as he desperately fought to keep awake.

-o-o-o-o-

"Oh dear, you poor thing."

Dick wakes to the half pitying, half cooed sentence. He hasn't… realized he's fallen asleep. He's still not sure if he's even awake. Everything… is so woozy. Groggy. A hand goes into his hair and he finds himself leaning into the soft touch. Bruce does this. Bruce does this whenever Dick got himself in trouble, and therefore into a medical cot. This is safe. Dick sighs.

"Are you ready to apologise?" The voice asks, and Dick frowns.

Apologise? What has he…

Oh. Oh yeah. Dick flinches and tries to scramble back. His captor's hand leaves his hair and Dick tries not to hyperventilate.

How… how could he seek comfort like that? How could he have let his guard get so low? So quickly? With a panicked, thumping heart he mentally lists everything he knew about Stockholm Syndrome. Could… could it be happening? Could his constant need for a physical comfort be causing this? Could the hours spent on end completely alone and helpless have triggered-

No. No Stockholm Syndrome doesn't work that quickly. He's just tired. And probably having some PTSD from his time spent captive with Deathstroke back when the mercenary was more determined to have him as an apprentice.

Dick's definitely not about to gain any kind of false feelings for his captor any time soon.

He needs to escape though, and quickly, before they can begin.

Because, no matter how strong you are, if you're forced into any kind of long term captivity like this, it's only a matter of time.

Dick still can't bring himself to truly fight Slade Wilson, and it's been over a decade.

"Sweetheart?" His captor asks, sounding concerned, and Dick forces himself to keep his breaths even.

Even though it felt like he couldn't breathe at all.

"W-what do you want?" Dick wheezes.

The man sighs into his ear. "I have more soup. And some towels to clean you up. Remember the deal I told you?"

Oh. That's right.

He wants Dick to apologise.

And Dick wants to. Just to get the burning soreness between his legs gone.

But... He doesn't… want this man anywhere near him right now. Not when he's just come down from an internalized panic attack about the fucking Stockholm Syndrome.

But he also doesn't want to be alone again. He's hungry and thirsty and tired despite his apparent nap he's still tired to his bones.

And he doesn't want to be alone.

And suddenly, the choice is so much harder to make. And maybe it really is just his PTSD with Slade acting up. He doesn't want the company of this man specifically. He just wants... Someone. Bruce. Barbara. Jason. Tim. Cass. Steph. Damian. And Dick might now know him very well, but Duke would be appreciated too. All of them would be great. Fantastic actually. God, he really wants a hug from every single one of them.

But he doesn't have them. It's definitely been more than a day now. Maybe close to two. If they were searching for him… they would have found him by now.

So he needs to save up his strength. He needs to eat. He can't fight to the fullest of his abilities to escape with an irritated rash between his legs.

He takes a deep breath, tells himself he's okay, and nods. "I'm... sorry."

"For what?" The man asks and Dick wants to crawl into a hole and die.

"For… trying to escape."

A sigh. A hand in his hair. Dick forces himself to believe that he didn't immediately flinch away because he's an expert actor.

"For trying to run away," the man corrects. And man, that's manipulative. Gaslighting. "Say you're sorry for trying to run away."

Dick nods anyways. "I'm sorry for trying… to run away."

"There we go," the hand in his hair gently combs through the strands. "Was that so hard?"

Yes.

He doesn't answer. The man sounds too happy to care as the smell of potato soup erupts into the air with the pop of a lid.

Dick allows himself to be fed without complaint. It takes less time than before. He's given more water this time too.

The food is warm and the water soothing, that by the time they're done he's almost forgotten about the second half of the agreement and fallen into a state of almost unwitting sleep.

He remembers the moment hands land on his knees, going to spread his legs. Immediately, lightning fast thoughts of fight or flight invade his mind.

Fuck. God. Shit. The rash.

He didn't… he didn't even think of what it would mean to be cleaned up. His suit stretched enough to roll up his legs all the way to his crotch, but the thought of hands touching him in those places sent his heart haywire.

"Wait-" he wheezes, scooting back and forcing his legs closed. Because know what? He can deal. He'll live. He doesn't need anyone fondling any sensitive parts of his lower body, even if it's to clean off any uncomfortable, dried, stench ridden messes. "Stop!"

"I know, it’s okay" the man tuts. "It's only going to hurt more, sweetheart. It has to get clean."

"Don't touch me!" Dick kicks out, panic flaring in a whole new way. A whole new way that he hasn't felt in a fucking long ass time. A whole new way that makes his skin feel wet with rain water. Warm with blood. Too cold with the wind. On fire with the trailing hands and body straddling him around his hips.

He tries to keep his legs closed, but the man digs his fingers into Dick's sore thigh where the puncture wounds of the taser gun were and soon Dick finds himself pinned on his back, foot on the tether between his ankle cuffs, a body between his knees, and hands tugging at the hemlines of his suit around his legs.

Dick chokes on his panic now, almost flashing back to the rain dripping on the roof of Blockbuster's building, the harsh yellow light of the roof entrance reflecting like melting stars.

He takes a gasping breath, digging the nails of his fingers into his palms, focusing on the body between his spread legs and how easy it should be to bring his legs up and choke the life out of his captor. This guy wants to touch his thighs so much, he can touch them with his concave windpipe.

He almost does so, but then the man tuts and presses something against his leg. "Please calm down, sweetie. I don't want to punish you again."

The taser. Of course he has the taser.

A hiccup escapes his throat without his permission as he slowly forces himself to lay back. He could fight. He could move anyways and at least go down fighting. But, if he's tasered this whole experience will be so much worse and he… he just wants to go to sleep. He just wants to go home.

He doesn't know how to get out of this one. He doesn't know what he should do with this one. Nothing, no precautionary plan, no in-case-of's, no lesson that he's had stuffed in his brain since his suit was red, green, and yellow instead of black and blue has taught him how to deal with these kinds of villains. The kinds that did things not for any material gain, but because they genuinely felt like they needed to.

Dick knew, as the material of his pants were finally bunched up to his groin, that if his knuckles were free he'd be biting teeth marks into them just to keep from screaming, especially as a warm, wet cloth begins to rub his now exposed skin.

He hated this. He hated this. He hated this hated this hated this so fucking much. It was all he could focus on. How much he hated this. How much he hated the rough fibers of the cloth scraping against his sensitive thighs. How much he hated the water dripping down towards his crotch. How much he hated the bare hand on his other leg, keeping his legs spread. How much he hated being so helpless to a taser pressed into his side.

He didn't want this. He thought he could get over it. The feeling of someone between his legs, him pressed on his back, hands where they shouldn't be. He thought that if he pretended it didn't bother him, that it didn't send him back, he could still have fun in bed. He could still enjoy the things he did with the people he came to love enough to intrust that side of himself to.

Now, he's reminded of how much he never wants to be touched again.

Which is entirely not a typical Dick Grayson thought.

He's so focused on how much he absolutely loathes and hates everyone and everything and himself included that he hardly even notices that it’s done until he’s curled up on his side, the water on his thighs beginning to cool, tightened up in the smallest ball he could get into with the restraints.

He gasps. It's stuttered. Wet.

Wet. Why...?

"It's okay sweetheart," the man says, bringing his hand into Dick's hair and Dick wants to unravel. "I know it was scary. Don't cry. Let's calm down-"

Crying. Dick's crying.

How…

How pathetic.

Has he already broken? Brought down to tears because of a little loneliness, homesickness, and unwelcome touches? And the thing is, he doesn't even think more than a day or two has passed.

And he tries to tell himself everyone has an achilles heel. With Bruce, it's when his family is threatened. With Jason, it's crowbars. With Tim, it's being left behind. With Cass it's a morally compromising decision. With Duke it's the crazy unknown. With Damian, it's his past.

Dick's always told himself his achilles heel was always baseball bats. Or a threatened circus. Or maybe even just tiny, white, powdery pills designed to paralyze the heart.

But it's really always been being rendered helpless.

Helpless to move. Helpless to see. Helpless to hear. Helpless to fight.

Helpless to push the body on top of him off before they violate him.

And he's crying. He's sobbing. He's curled up and pathetically weeping as the man coos and hushes and whispers comforts as he brushes his hair like Bruce had always used to.

He didn't even do anything bad to Dick. He didn't touch any private parts, he didn't linger in his touches. He had worked with a singular goal just to clean up the horrible, degrading mess between his legs and left it at that.

And he knows triggers can be a finicky thing. The smallest, barely related item can set off the trauma that's been hiding deep under his skin for so long.

But he still feels stupid. Childish. Impulsive and like he's overreacted.

He feels like he'd rather sink into the ground and just… not exist. Not die. Never die. Just… stop.

He doesn't know how long he lays there, a hand in his hair and whispered comforts in his ear, tears streaming down his face. All he knows is that eventually his exhaustion wins over him. Sinks it's claws in. Grabs his lashes like they're curtains and drags them down.

He doesn't notice when he eventually falls asleep. Only that everything blessedly… stops.

-o-o-o-o-

Dick doesn't know how much more time passes. Only that it does. It does and a whole lot of it ticks away. The man works Dick into a reluctant routine. Leaving him in deafness and darkness until it's time to eat—mostly that shockingly good but getting boring potato soup, replaced here and there with random other meals that the man must have had left overs of—or use the restroom. Using the restroom for the first time in this current captive episode was almost as traumatic as getting… cleaned. There’s apparently a bucket not too far from where Dick is normally laying, which digs at Dick's brain with the question of how big is the room anyway? The only issue is that, restrained as he was, he couldn't pull down his pants and… aim.

But as the days definitely began to number, he didn't necessarily get used to it, but numb was a good synonym.

He feels dirty. Abused. Used to the point of uselessness.

And so very alone. So alone that every time the man leaves, Dick's more and more tempted to beg him to stay a little longer.

And he can definitely tell that the beginnings of Stockholm Syndrome are showing in his psyche. Which is strange. To know you're being brainwashed. Fully aware of it.

Yet being helpless to your own thoughts and feelings. Helpless to make it not matter. Trapped in your own body, watching helplessly as everything in your brain slowly begins to betray you.

And Dick knows he doesn't care for his current captor. Not in the way Dick cared about Slade. Dick doesn't seek out his touch or his comforts like he used to with Slade; desperately do all that he could to get Slade to tell him he did a good job. He didn't realize how deep in that hole he was until it was made possible for Dick to finally escape and he was finally faced with the option that was fighting for his freedom.

It took every cell in his body to fight Slade down towards the point Slade had to retreat.

It still takes every cell in his body to treat the man like an actual villain, and not some could-have-been father.

But his current captor? This unknown man who visits him after hours of isolation, insists he's "taking care" of him? Dick couldn't care less about him.

He's touched starved. That's all.

That's all.

The time slips away like fine silk on dry skin. Dick doesn't cry again, not even when the man apologises before drugging him to the point he's barely conscious so he could safely strip him out of his suit and jacket to wash him in a tub of lukewarm water. He could barely hold onto his thoughts, let alone remember the entire experience. But he knows he didn't cry.

Because he cries in his nightmares now. Cries in the quiet hours he's alone.

Because, at least, when he's being bathed and touched in ways that send every fiber of his being reeling with the need to get away, he’s not alone.

He hates being alone.

And yet, time ticks by. He's given food. Taken to the restroom. Bathed every so often. Filled with mind numbing hours and hours and hours of nothing in-between.

This lasts forever.

Though, he finds out, once the pounding of multiple pairs of feet erupts around him and hands grab at the tape around his eyes to return his vision and hearing, he finds it's been about two weeks.

The first face he sees is Tim.

Then, he passes out from relief. He passes out from fear too, fear that it’s all a dream.

But, the next time he wakes, he wakes in a bed at the hospital, in a medical gown and the lights dimmed low to not agitate his sensitive eyes. There's a hand in his hair, and for a moment he's terrified it's the man. But then he blinks his eyes and sees for the first time in forever, and what he sees is a snoring Bruce Wayne, leaning over the edge of the medical cot with his limp hand in his hair like he's always done.

Dick doesn't close his eyes. He focuses on Bruce's breathing and the small beeps of his heart on the monitor besides him. He slides his gaze to his fingers. His thin fingers and bony wrists which are laying against his blanket covered legs, of which look thinner than what he remembered.

He doesn't feel starved. But he's sure he looks it.

He doesn't close his eyes. Because if he does, the hand in his hair will no longer be comforting. It will be vile.

The stay at the hospital isn't as long as it could have been.

Physically, he's better than what he could have been.

Mentally though? Dick feels like he's taken one hit too many to his stability. Damian tries to hug him, and Dick almost falls over panicking because Damian's short and his arms wrap around his waist, his chest bumping into his hips, unknowingly pressing into places he doesn't want touched.

He bought a nightlight. And a fan. Just to keep his room bright enough to see and loud enough to hear. Enough visual and noise to convince him he's alive.

Sleep comes like the rabbit on Alice In Wonderland.

Nightmares come fashionably on time.

And he doesn't feel himself getting better. Even when he's back to a healthy weight and has been out of captivity longer than he's been there. The man who tortured him is in jail, to be tried privately with judges the Justice League trusted. Dick's identity won't be exposed to the public, but it was only a matter of time before it got out that Nightwing was tortured, humiliated, and held captive.

Only a matter of time…

But that… Dick can live with this. Because he's alive. And alive meant he can get better. And… and his family saved him. He’s not alone anymore.

He will get better.

No matter how long it takes. This will all just become a story to be filed in the same folders as all the other times he's been tortured or kidnapped.

He'll get over this.

Dick always gets over these things.

He just wishes it didn't sound so sad, no matter how true that statement is.

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