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after-witch · 2 years

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since the smiling man really loves food, could we please get him with a baker reader? possibly one with a magical bakery of sorts

Title: Even Doubt Can Be Delicious [Smiling Man x Reader]

Synopsis: You run the most popular bakery in town. It’s not unusual for you to get regulars. Seth, your newest regular, quickly becomes your favorite... but is there more to him and his smiles than meets the eye?

Word count: 5297

notes: yandere-ish themes, mentions of fertility

“I’m telling you, the stuff here is like, magical.”

The tail-end of the conversation you hear as a pair of friends enters your bakery is not all that surprising, though the compliment still gives you a rush.

Now, you wouldn’t call your baked goods magical. But you would call them delicious. Delicious enough that you have the most successful bakery in town, that you never have to worry about paying your bills, and that you have a host of regulars who stop in every day to buy the goodies you carefully craft every morning.

The next customer who comes in after the pair of friends is not one of those regulars. He’s someone you’ve never seen before, in fact.

A young man, maybe about your age, with fair hair and striking light eyes that demand notice even from across the room. He’s... cute.

You don’t really care about that, though, and your gaze snatches away from him as quickly as it landed. You have customers to attend to, after all.

When it’s finally his turn at the register, you can see he’s having difficulty deciding. He’s scanning your menus, scanning the cases, even glancing around to see what everyone else has ordered. You’re about to offer him a suggestion, when he takes a step back and gestures to the woman behind him , who is carrying a heavy looking backpack slung over one shoulder.

“Why don’t you go ahead,” he says. “I still haven’t decided.”

You decide in that moment that you think you’ll like this new customer.

When he finally comes up to the register, a smile on his face, you can’t help but smile back at him.

“What can I get for you?”

His eyes are piercing. You think, briefly, that he must never want for romantic partners. And he’d be great at sealing business deals.

“I think I’ll try a piece of your pistachio cake, please. And one of your cherry chocolate cupcakes. Everyone seems to be ordering those.”

You beam. “They’re a specialty! I get the cherries from a local farm, and the pistachio cake is an old family recipe.”

You hustle and bustle and pack up his order to go, just like he requested. You’re a bit disappointed that you won’t get to see him take that first bite--it’s a bit of an indulgence for you to watch new customers and see how they react. So far, no one has ever had anything bad to say… except, sometimes, to complain about how much your treats have added to their waistline.

The young man comes back the next day. It doesn’t surprise you. Maybe it wasn’t humble to think things like that, but your bakery had no shortage of people who came back day after day to indulge themselves in your cakes and cookies and other baked goods. It was simply that popular. It was simply that good.

This time, however, he sits down on the table and you watch him out of the corner of your eye to see how he likes it. He ordered a fudge brownie, a black coffee (to which he added several little containers of creamer and a rather hefty lump of sugar) and a slice of honey crepe cake. You’re ringing up a customer when he takes a bite of the crepe cake, and you lip quirks up at the side when you see his reaction. He closes his eyes. He chews slowly. He savors.

It makes you feel good, to see people enjoy your food. Why shouldn’t it?

He comes back again and again, and before you know it, you consider him one of your regulars. Eventually, you ask his name, a habit you stick to for anyone that comes in every day or just about. His name is Seth, and he’s staying in town for a while on a work project. He has a sweet tooth, he tells you once, and you can believe it by the way he savors each bite of your food every time he stops in.

And then comes a day when you're--oddly, but not impossibly--alone in the bakery together for the first time.

“It’s quiet in here,” he remarks from his place at one of the tables, a half-finished piece of cake on his plate. He seems surprised. He came in later this morning, so the morning rush was now over, and it was one of those strange lulls in the day when you rarely got any customers.

You smile from behind the counter, where you’re simultaneously rearranging a case, planning on what items you should make more of tomorrow based on today’s sales, wiping off from stray crumbs that found their way onto the glass, and debating what to pick up for dinner on the way home.

“Right?” You shut the case and wipe your fingers on your apron. “Definitely a lot quieter than it is in the morning.” You shrug easily. “But I can’t exactly complain about that, can I?”

You see him smile from behind his coffee cup as he takes a sip. You wonder how much sugar he put in this time, and then shake the thought away. You found yourself wondering a little too much about what he ate, and why he chose the treats he did, and sometimes you even felt a little twinge of disappointment when he simply took his order to go instead of sitting in. You shouldn’t wonder those things, or feel those things, and so you try to shake them off.

He’s just another customer. That’s all.

So you give him a little smile and head over to the nearby tables where people have left their plates and napkins and--you cringe--a child’s bandaid.

“Why did you open this bakery?”

It’s a sudden question. It doesn’t feel intrusive, the way it might have with a different customer. Somehow, Seth knows just the right way to ask things so that they don’t seem rude or imposing. It feels like you’ve known him for years, even though it’s only been a few weeks at most.

“Well,” you say, dropping some collected trash in the bin. “I love baking. Obviously.” He makes a low noise at that, somewhere between a chuckle and a scoff. “But…” You stick your hands in the pocket of your apron. “More than that, I love sharing with others. Sharing what I bake, what I create... it’s like sharing a piece of myself every time.” You shrug. “Sorry, that sounds kind of weird, I guess.”

“Not at all.”

You look at him, then, and you’re overwhelmed with the sensation that you really do like being in his company. His smile is warm. His gaze is understanding. Above all, his presence feels familiar. Like you’re old friends.

Yet there’s something else too, something on the edge of your inner knowledge that you can’t quite pinpoint. It makes you feel like you’ll get goosebumps.

Isn’t that strange?

Unusually enough, you find yourself alone with him in the bakery more and more often. He used to come in in the morning, with the hustle and bustle of the morning commute, but lately he comes in just before your lunchtime. Which is, of course, after the actual lunch rush of office workers ordering in trays of sweets for their post-lunch meetings.

Of course, being alone would be awkward if you were totally silent, so you talk. And he talks. You talk about books and movies--he’s woefully behind on seeing many of the classics, you tell him--and other little things. What cakes you’ll be making next week. What part of town he enjoys taking walks in. What your plans are for the future.

You don’t mind it. It’s nice to talk to someone now and then, you don’t really get much time for conversation when you’re running a busy bakery. One day, you’re about to close for lunch, gesturing for him to walk ahead of you so that you can lock the door… when it starts to rain. Suddenly. A huge squall, seemingly out of nowhere. You jerk back from the door and then laugh at yourself. Who would get so startled by a little rain?

You look back at Seth, and realize that neither of you have any umbrellas.

“Guess we’re stuck inside,” you say.

“I suppose,” he answers, peering around you. You think he might just go outside anyway, but then he sits back down at his table, which he’d just cleared off for you. Another reason why he’s slowly becoming your favorite customer.

“Do you mind if I eat lunch here?” You ask. You normally went to the local park and ate your packed lunch on the benches. But you’d rather not eat a sandwich soaked and soggy with rainwater.

“Not at all,” he replies, in his charming way. If there was one word you could use to describe Seth, it was that: charming. You’re about to take a seat at another table, but he smiles at you and you sit down across from him. It would be rather strange to sit at a completely new table while he sat there watching you eat in silence .

The conversation is banal enough at first. You talk about the sudden rain squall. And how surprising it was, especially for the season. You ask him how his day has been.

“Unorthodox,” he says, and you’re about to ask him to elaborate when he suddenly leans down a little on his elbow, cupping his chin in his hand.

“I have been wondering something.”

You chew a bite of your sandwich. “Oh?” You ask, covering your mouth with one hand. “What?”

“What is your secret?”

You make a little noise around your bite, then finish chewing so that you’re not showing off masticated ham, cheese and bread.

“Secret?”

He chuckles, and you feel a little flutter in your stomach that you push down. It’s not right to feel things like that about Seth. That doesn’t mean you don’t feel them, though. Something about him is so inviting and calming, especially right now, in the quiet bakery with nothing but a soft drizzle for background noise.

“The secret to your success. The success of the bakery, of course.”

“Ohhh,” you say, and you get another nibble of your sandwich before you decide to answer.

“If you believe the locals,” you begin, voice laced with just a dash of bitterness. “I’m a witch.”

You expect him to laugh, but he doesn’t. Instead he merely raises his eyebrows a little.

“Are you?” His lips are pressed together, and his expression is unusually somber. You realize, suddenly, that his question is entirely serious.

And then you laugh, grinning, baring your teeth in all their I-hope-there’s-no-sandwich-bits-in-them glory.

“No! Of course not.” You fiddle with the wrapper of your sandwich, tucking it back into your lunchbag to take care of later. If anything, Seth’s expression looks disappointed. Like he was expecting you to confess to being some sort of bakery witch, and you threw him for a loop with your easy denial. Maybe he’d heard the local gossip and found the reality wanting.

“But,” you add, after a few moments of pause, and you can’t help grinning and shooting him a mischievous look. “I do have a secret ingredient.”

Seth smiles, just a little, just a crack.

“I take it that the secret ingredient isn’t a magic potion that makes customers fall in love with your cupcakes.”

You scoff, laughing, and shake your head.

“It’s love.”

He regards you thoughtfully. It’s a cliché, but he doesn’t seem to mind. If anything, you feel like he’s taking your answer just as seriously as his question about your alleged dabbling in witchcraft.

“I opened the bakery because of my boyfriend,” you continue, clarifying the details. You see his expression fall, just a little, before it smooths itself out. “I would sell cupcakes online or take orders from mom’s looking for kid’s birthday cakes, things like that. And one day, I realized that he was the love of my life, and I wanted to really settle down in this town with him and… well.” You gesture to the bakery. “He supported me the whole way. He even helped me get the loan for this place, and I’ve been baking here ever since.”

You smile, fondly. “I guess you could say he made my dreams come true.”

The rain seems to let up as your conversation wanes. He’s gone quieter than he was before. There’s something a bit disappointed in him, a little sour. Maybe he was hoping for a more exciting answer.

Maybe he was hoping you were single, a voice inside you says, and you mentally hush it. But, as you give Seth a wave that he returns rather somberly, you wonder if that voice wasn’t on the right track.

You don’t see Seth the next day. Or the next. It’s strange, at firs. Until it isn’t. Regulars come and go, after all. Maybe he moved. Maybe his doctor told him to take it easy on the sweets. Maybe that last conversation proved your little voice right, and he was simply trying to ask you out on a date, and left, dejected, when he realized you were seeing someone.

It doesn’t matter. Life changes.

Though not always for the better.

The day your boyfriend breaks up with you, you feel like the ground might cave in underneath you. No, you feel like it should cave in, like you want it to cave in. You want to be swallowed whole until you’re eating dirt, drowning in it, buried in the ground where you can’t feel anything but suffocation.

That tense feeling doesn’t last. But the pain continues. The sorrow continues. Especially when he seems someone else. Especially when she…you don’t want to think about that, though. Never again.

And little by little, other things change, too. You begin to lose some regulars. You start getting complaints about the food. Cakes that are stale, cupcakes that are underdone, and even a brownie with a piece of foil stuck in the middle. You can’t blame people for complaining. Your heart just isn’t in it anymore.

Maybe love was a magical ingredient after all, and now that yours was gone, you had nothing to put into your treats but sorrow and self pity.

Sorrow and self pity don’t pay the bills. And neither does a bakery that’s losing customers by the day. Eventually, it’s too much, and you’re forced to make the toughest decision of your life. You have to close. Some customers return for that last week, bittersweet smiles and cooing sounds coming out of their mouth. You don’t really care. You know the cakes they buy out of pity will probably get tossed out or fed to their toddlers who don’t care about anything but a sweet, sugary taste.

It’s the last day that your bakery will be open, and you’re glad that you decided to only stay open through the morning, closing before what used to be the lunch rush. It gives you time to enjoy the place in solitude. The decorations have already been packed up. All of the cases but one have been emptied and cleaned and locked up. You only kept two tables out front, not that you needed them--no one wanted to sit there this morning, with the gloomy atmosphere and the awkward tension in the air.

Now that you’re alone, you finally let yourself cry. Hot, humiliated, horrible tears that aren’t just for your bakery but for the life you had with your boyfriend that was cut down and ended . You thought you were going to get married. You thought you would have children with him. You thought you would grow old and sit together on the porch and rocking chairs , watching the sunset and all that crap. But no. None of that will happen, your bakery is closing, and you’re all alone.

You’re about to lock up for good and eat something for lunch that you probably won’t even taste through your sorrow, when you hear the door open and the bell above the door clatter and ring.

It startles you, because you thought you took that out this morning. Didn't you? You spin around, and there he is.

Seth.

It feels like a cruel joke. Familiar feelings rush back in, memories blinking in and out. The conversations you shared, sometimes surprisingly deep, often light, kind, funny. The way his eyes sometimes made you feel giddy, and then guilty, because you shouldn’t have been thinking about him like that. Not that it mattered now. Now, you were alone.

“Oh, Seth,” you say, voice thick with your tears, which you start rapidly wiping away with the back of your hands. “I wasn’t expecting anyone else, since… we’re closing.” Your voice is so tight the last words barely come out.

There’s a pinched sort of sympathy on his face. It looks unnatural there.

“Yes, I saw the sign.” He gazes around at the empty shell that was once a bustling bakery. “I thought business had been going well?”

“It was,” you say. “Great big emphasis on was.”

Your smile is bitter and tight and upset.

Seth clucks, a soft sound against the roof of his mouth. “Care to tell me what happened?’

And although it’s been more than a year since you’ve seen him, it’s like your mind and body slide into the old routine that the two of you shared before. Easy conversations, words that seem to spill out of your mouth even though you had only just met him. You’re tired, you’re sad, you feel numb and you want someone to share your pain with.

You search for the words. What did happen? What made you go from the top of the world to here, wiping away tears and mascara on your hands in front of a lonely cake display stand?

And then it comes to you. The perfect words. You don’t sigh them out, romantic and wistful. Instead they come short, clipped, bitter. And painfully true.

“I lost my secret ingredient.”

His eyes widen and you almost feel bad for being so short, so open, so honest.

But then he regards you with those eyes, eyes that you remember thinking about now and then while you were on the bakery floor. They were so deep, so thoughtful. You could get lost in them. Fall into them. Like leaning over a pond.

And then you remember where you are, and where he is, and you want to leave. You want to lock this place up and never think about it again. Dashed dreams and ruined futures--you want to be rid of it.

“I was just locking up,” you tell him, gathering your purse and your courage all in one go.

He nods, understanding, walking behind you as you step up to the door for the last time. You glance up and there are no bells--but then how--but you don’t have time to think anymore because there is a sudden, pouring rain outside that obscures everything in front of you. A cold rain. A misty rain. A terrible squall.

“You’re kidding,” you mutter. You don’t have your umbrella. You glance behind and of course, neither does Seth.

What he does have is a bag in his hand from a local takeout place.

“Lunch? For old time’s sake?”

You don’t answer and he gestures with his chin towards the rain.

“Unless you want to brave it.”

You glance outside. It looks freezing unpleasant and foggy. You may be feeling sorry for yourself, but you’d feel even worse if you were soaked to the bone. And there’s something else about it that makes you second guess stepping outside. The mist, it’s… you shake your head. It doesn’t matter.

“Sure,” you say, turning around to face him, forcing a smile, because you do suddenly feel like an asshole for being so short and cold with him. It’s not his fault your business failed. It’s not his fault your life is a mess.

This time it doesn’t feel charming to be stuck inside during the rain, eating lunch with a regular customer. You feel like you’re trapped in a tomb. You feel like you’re a ghost, pretending to live some place that had long since gone to rot.

This time, there is no jovial conversation between you. Only silence and the sound of wrappers, of chewing.

And then--

“What if I could help you get your business back on track?”

It’s not something you expected him to say, and you’re surprised by how much it hurt your heart to hear it. You didn’t think you could say such mundanely cruel things with ease.

“Please don’t start that.” You chew your food with renewed bitterness, barely tasting it. “I’ve already been down that road with finance managers and all sorts of people promising they knew how to fix things. None of it worked.” You lick your lips. You scoff, sighing, almost laughing a little. “Unless you have a magic wand…”

He smiles when you say this. But it’s not a mocking smile. It’s like he knows something. Like you told a joke, but didn’t even realize it.

“No need for a magic wand.”

You resist the urge to roll your eyes, you fight down the urge to snark. You shouldn’t. This is Seth. You weren’t friends, exactly, but as close as it could have been, considering that he was a customer of your shop for so long. He doesn’t mean any harm, you repeat to yourself. He’s just trying to help.

“So, what? Business plan?” You raise your voice, teasing darkly. “Money laundering?”

His smile seems more serious. And there’s something in his eyes that gives you pause. Even before he talks and takes your breath away with his words.

“Did you ever tell Mrs. Wolcott that you were the one who picked her husband’s last flowers from her garden? Or did you keep that secret to her grave?”

You’ve never felt such a sudden, horrible lack of air before. It’s like you’ve been punched in the stomach and can no longer breathe. You barely heard the sound of the rain pounding outside. You heard only silence, and your heartbeat, pounding so loud it made you feel sick.

Mrs. Wolcott was your neighbor when your family lived in a different town, in a different state. Back when you were a child. She had known you since birth, and doted on you in the way that neighborhood women sometimes did. Her husband was an avid gardener and when he died, she kept up his garden as a way to remember him.

You don’t know why you did it. It wasn’t out of malice or revenge or anything like that. But one day, you waltzed into her garden when you knew she wasn’t home, and picked every single flower. You didn’t even take them home. You just left them on the ground, scattered memories, plucked like they were nothing. Later, when you saw how upset she was, you cried yourself to sleep for two weeks straight. You even gave her flowers from your garden, a pitiful offering. She smiled and blubbered and held you close before offering you old candy from a dish.

But you would never admit to what you’d done. And you never did. She died, not knowing who had done such a terrible thing to her husband’s memory period to her precious garden.

“No,” you answer, voice hoarse, as if you’ve been talking for hours. It feels like you have, suddenly--like you’ve been here with Seth for an eternity.

“How… how did you know that?” Clarity returns slow and sluggish. He heard it from someone in town. Or he’s some kind of stalker. Or he found your childhood diary at a landfill and tracked you down just to mess with you. Yes. Maybe. Sure. There had to be some explanation. Right?

“I know lots of things.” He pauses. “About everyone. Everything. Not just you.” He doesn’t smile, exactly, but his expression contains a casual lightness that hurts as his next words leave his lips. “It was cruel of your boyfriend to leave you for the reason he did, you know.”

Don’t say it, you think. Don’t you dare say it out loud.

If he says it, you know, you just know that you’ll shatter into a million pieces. Christ, you don’t care if he knows--but how does he know? No one else knew, not even your mom, not even your friends--so long as he doesn’t say it out loud. So long as he doesn’t bring it to life syllable by syllable.

“How did he put it…” Seth’s head tilts a little to the side, as if he’s remembering a conversation he wasn’t there for, a conversation he shouldn’t be able to reference at all. Yet he does. With his next words… he does. “Ah, yes. ‘I want to be with someone that can give the family I want. Give me children.’”

His words bring you back to that evening, when you came home from work to find his bags packed, to find him waiting in the kitchen with a serious expression. It had only been two weeks since you’d gotten the confirmation of your infertility. Two weeks. He couldn’t wait any longer than that?

And Seth knew. Seth knew every word, down to the syllable, down to the way your boyfriend--ex-boyfriend, you remind yourself--said it.

You want to throw up. You want to leave. Neither happens.

“You’re just… you’re just a stalker,” you say, sputtering and desperate. Because it’s the only thing that makes sense. Even if it doesn’t. A stalker wouldn’t know that childhood secret. A stalker couldn’t know why your boyfriend left, or what he said to you. Or what happened next, the very thing that turned your heart to ash.

His expression turns softer, pitying. As if he might actually hate to say what comes out of his mouth next. “And that other woman becoming pregnant so soon after they started dating. Terrible, really.”

The sound of the rain outside stops so abruptly that you jump in your chair and turn your head to look. Outside, the rain is gone, but a thick fog is in its place. So thick you can’t really see beyond the glass storefront of your bakery. What was happening? What in the world was happening to you?

Slowly, you turn your head back to face Seth. And in that moment, you see his eyes now clearer than you ever have before--see them for what they are. Limitless and knowing and old, so very old.

“Who are you?” It comes out in a hoarse whisper. Some primal fear keeps your throat thick and your breath short.

“What’s a name?” His fingers fiddle with the edge of his coffee cup, and it’s now that you notice, abruptly, that his first two fingers are the exact same length. Maybe you saw it before and brushed it off as a trick of the light, but now it seems strange and terrible.

“You call me Seth, anyway,” he continues. “You can continue to do that. But that’s not what’s important, is it?” He meets your gaze, and you can’t look away. “I told you, I can get your bakery back into top shape.”

You shake your head without thinking. You don’t want his help. You want him to leave. You want the rain to let up and to leave this bakery and this town forever.

“I didn’t take you for being so hasty,” he chides. “I thought you would know a good deal when you saw one.”

“A deal?”

The question seems to engage him, because he leans forward now, chin in hand.

“Yes, a deal. That’s why I came back. To offer my assistance.” He gestures around him, at the empty hull that was once your biggest dream. “It’s a shame to waste your talent. To waste your generosity.” He smiles, a little, and it’s such an empathetic smile that you almost feel like crying. When was the last time someone showed you empathy, not just cloying pity?

“You put your heart and soul into this bakery, didn’t you? Your love.” The last word is said in nostalgia, as if he’s reliving a memory. “You gave it to others so freely. Yet as soon as you were struggling, the customers you’d been so generous with… well.” He doesn’t need to say the rest.

There’s a few moments of pause. And you realize he wants you to speak.

“You…” Your words come out slow, measured. You feel like you’re floating, and you’re desperately trying to gain some purchase on the ground. Seth… what was he? He knew things he couldn’t. And in his eyes, there was something--something you couldn’t exactly explain. But his eyes told you everything (and yet nothing) about him. He wasn’t human. He was… something else.

Something that was offering you an impossible dream. A deal?

“You could make my bakery popular again,” you say finally, voice slow and disbelieving.

“Yes,” he replies, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. “I could make it so no one remembers your recent failures, and it’s as busy as it ever was. Busier, if you want. Or,” and there’s something kind in his voice now. “If the memories would be too much for you, you can start a bakery somewhere else. Or any type of business, really. All that matters is that it’s a success, right? All that matters is that you’re happy.”

You snort through your nose.

“Why do you care if I’m happy or not?”

An odd expression crosses his face. Then it’s gone, replaced with a placid smile. Yet underneath it, there’s still something, a hint, a inch of… what, exactly? You feel like you’ve seen that expression on him before. On that last day before he left.

But he smooths it out entirely until you’re left with nothing but his calm expression and his words.

“You could say I’m in the business of granting people their deepest wish. And that’s yours, isn’t it? To be happy again?”

And it is. Oh God, it is. You want so badly to feel happy like you used to--to wake up in the morning, giddy and bright, dreaming of the future and kneading it with your own flour-dusted hands. You want to feel anything but the empty, aching loneliness and sorrow that you’ve felt over these past months. You want to feel whole… so whole that you can once again start giving away pieces of yourself, your heart, to others.

Seth could make that happen.

But at what price?

“What…” you begin, feeling very small and very young in the face of all this. “What would you want in return?”

“Not much.” His voice is level and calm and reasonable. Like you’re doing business in a regular bakery, and not making some sort of otherworldly deal involving magic for what you thought were impossible things. “Only one thing, really.”

Your fingers grip the edge of the table until your knuckles hurt.

“What thing?”

He reaches towards you, and his hand is warm as it covers your own, tight-knuckled, trembling. You don’t want him to touch you--what will he feel like?--but when he does, there’s only warmth, ordinary and mundane.

A million possibilities run through your mind. His fingers tighten on yours, which slacken. He takes up your hand, lifting it from its death-grip on the table, and your heart hammers.

Does he want your soul? Your life? A sacrifice? Something worse, something you can’t even comprehend?

Your gaze goes from his hand on yours to his face, and you recognize the serious expression on it as one he wore on the last day you saw him before your life turned sideways.

Seth smiles. His eyes light up, all blue and green and you think again of the sensation of falling into them, of being lost in them, drowned in them, unable to pull away from them forever.

“In return, what I want is…” he says, pausing, letting his words sink in before he delivers the finishing blow. “Your secret ingredient.”

The mist outside is unrelenting.

#smiling man #small spaces #afterwitch writes #katherine arden #'non you activated my I Ship It with the smiling man here #really hard

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swinging-stars-from-satellites · 1 year

Text

Bring Light To The Darkness

《for @magpie-trove. I don't know if fanfics are allowed as part of the @inklings-challenge, but if they are, this can probably count for my Christmas challenge offering.》

“In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

John 1:4‭-‬9 (ESV)

The first time she walked in the creaky, rusted door of Opened Door ministries, with their name printed on a colorful, vinyl-laminated sign on the window of the storefront they were in, she was seven years old. She'd just asked her mom to cut her hair and her mom had said no, that she needs it long for the winter to keep her warm, because they don't have the money for new scarves. Walking around the corner from their apartment, which at least still has heat even if the oven is broken, makes Stephanie think that maybe her mom was right.

Mom is on the phone with the landlord. Christmas is tomorrow and they had gotten a big turkey, but now, they can't cook it. Steph, who reads all the signs on the street as the schoolbus takes her past, had slipped into her big thrift-store boots and purple coat that was a birthday present this past year and snuck out the door while Mom argued with their landlord.

"Free Christmas meal," the sign offered, in large red text. There's smaller lettering underneath it that Steph hadn't been able to make out through the frosty windows of the bus, but the boy seated next to her who she thinks is a couple grades above her and always has his nose stuck in a book had reading glasses on and told her it said "all you can eat, noon to 6pm Christmas Eve and Christmas Day". Steph sits next to that boy because he's always warm, like as in friendly but also body heat. The bus doesn't have heat. At least Steph and her mom's apartment still has that, though, and so does the building that the Christmas dinner place is in.

Steph steps, or kind of shuffles because of all her winter clothes, into the storefront (which isn't a store) at 5:58pm on Christmas Eve. There's a lot of people starting to clean up, but she got in two minutes before the doors would have been locked, so she's lucky or blessed or something. A lady takes one look at the purple and blonde poof that is Stephanie Brown and grins, a really warm kind of grin, and asks her what they can do for her.

"My mom got a turkey for Christmas," Stephanie explains, because she doesn't want these people pitying her and thinking they can't afford their own food, "But our oven broke and they can't fix it yet. So I wanted to get us a Christmas dinner and I saw your sign from the schoolbus. So. Um." She shrugs, a swishy sound because her coat rustles against itself. The lady nods understandingly.

"Does your mom know you're here, though?" Asks a younger woman from over by a table that Steph stares at for a minute, eyes wide, because it's covered in sweets.

"I left a note."

There's a murmur, maybe a bit of a laugh. "Okay then," says the first lady, the one with the warm smile. "Let's get you and your mom some Christmas dinner."

And she's led over into the room with all the food, tables piled high with turkey (light meat for Steph, dark for Mom, and lots of gravy) and potatoes (Steph likes the cheesy ones best) and vegetables (that she accepts without complaint even though she doesn't like green beans). The lady helps her fill two big grocery bags with take-boxes of food and then lets her pick out whatever desserts she wants from the table she'd seen before. Steph leaves the store that isn't a store with enough food for a week and a chorus of "God bless you, Merry Christmas" that she echoes back even though she doesn't really know what the "God bless you" part means, because she didn't sneeze or anything.

The teenager who had been there had put a little piece of paper in the bag that Steph reads once she's home and in bed, happily drowsy from turkey and a huge piece of chocolate cake.

"Opened Door chapel services:," it reads. "Saturday, 6:30pm; Sunday, 11am. Youth service Wednesday nights, 6pm. Opened Door after school program daily 3pm-5pm."

Stephanie isn't totally sure what any of that means. She's never been to church before (She's at least mostly sure that "chapel" means "church," pretty much). She doesn't think about the little church that set up in a storefront for another few years, until she's nearly eleven and her dad is out on bail (which means that the apartment's heat hasn't been paid for because her mom decided to pay to get Dad back. Even at ten and a half, Steph doesn't understand that very well) and she's sick of hearing them argue.

She climbs down the fire escape and walks around the block to where she remembers getting Christmas dinner and a smile three years ago. It's Wednesday night and she doesn't know if she's old enough to be part of the youth stuff; youth usually means kids older than her, like Jason from the bus who she hasn't seen in school for the better part of a year. She doesn't just walk in like before, she knocks, since she isn't sure she's allowed at this stuff.

"Hi," she says, when someone comes to the door. It isn't anyone she recognizes. "You have... youth stuff tonight, right?" She shoves her hands in her hoodie pockets and decides she's not going home if she's turned away here.

But the kid who opened the door (hah!) just smiles and invites her inside. "What grade are you in?" He asks. "We have different small groups for different grades."

"Sixth," she lies, because 6th grade means middle school and none of the kids in the room look younger than that.

The guy nods. "Cool," he says. "You'll be with Lynn's group, then."

Lynn is, apparently, the younger lady who'd helped Steph on Christmas Eve nearly three years ago, and she recognizes the combination of long blonde hair and purple clothes immediately. Steph sits in the circle of kids just a bit older than her and smiles as they go around the circle and introduce themselves. This is, she decides, way better than staying at home in her room while her dad tries to convince Mom that he's helping them when he really isn't. At least these people actually do help other people. At least they invited her in.

They play a game a little bit like charades, but not quite, and then Lynn hands out soft-paged Bibles with plasticky feeling blue covers and the words Holy Bible, English Standard Version printed on the front. Lynn says a lot of words that Steph doesn't understand and several kids start flipping through the thin pages. Steph tries to read over the shoulder of the person next to her, who notices and stops what she's doing. Steph pulls back, hesitating.

"Hang on, Miss Lynn," the girl says in a lightly accented voice. "I think Stephanie needs help finding the right page."

Steph wills herself not to flush or curl into herself and hide, just lets the girl — Nadia — show her how the books and chapters and verse numbers work (she doesn't understand it still, but it will start to make sense in a couple weeks). When Nadia stops thumbing through the book, it says John 1 at the top of the page in bold letters. Everything else is in tiny print that Steph has to hold close to her face to read.

"The light," Lynn says in a slightly different voice than her usual one, "Shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

Steph likes the sound of that. She stares at the words on the page in a way that only someone still young and curious and new to all this can. When the conversation, drawn out by Lynn's leading questions, draws to a close and people start to funnel out of the store (which is definitely not a store, even if Steph got food there once), she holds the floppy, thick book with the bold word Holy and wonders if anyone would notice if she took it.

She isn't like her father, though. She isn't a criminal even if she did lie about being in middle school, and stealing doesn't sit right with her. So she walks over to Lynn, in a corner talking to one of the older kids, and waits for a break in the conversation so she can butt in.

"Uh," she says eloquently, "Can I... take this home?" She waves the Bible in question.

Lynn smiles at her, a little naturally lopsided. "Oh yeah, that's what they're here for!" she says. "You can totally take one home! I hope we'll see you here next week...?" She offers, and Steph nods. Even without the offer of free food, she thinks she likes it here.

She goes to that youth group every week from then on. It isn't like, a huge revelation, but it's fun and it gets her out of the house and they always say "come on in!" all bright and happy when she walks up, like somehow the leaders and other kids all know that Steph needs an invitation (like some kind of purple-clad vampire, or just a girl who isn't used to being welcomed). Nadia helps her find Bible verses sometimes but mostly she does it herself, but she likes sitting by a girl whose name means hope.

She learns that, about Nadia's name, a few weeks before Christmas when she's fourteen and everyone thinks she's in tenth grade instead of ninth and she still hasn't corrected them on that, even though she feels crappy for lying. "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing," reads the feather-light page that Steph maybe will always be afraid of tearing. Nadia lights up even more than she's normally bright and warm, and she tells the group of a Russian family name passed down, almost like the handing of hope from generation to generation. Steph thinks the name fits her.

The light shines in the darkness, reads the verse they'd talked about the first time Steph went to the youth meeting. That's what she wants Spoiler to be; that's what she tries to make herself. She knows the Bible verse is about the Iight of God, but she can apply it here, too, can't she? She's all eggplant-purple and golden hair and her dad is full of darkness, Batman is full of darkness, too, even though she thinks he honestly tries not to be. And if God's light can't be overcome or understood by the darkness, then it makes sense that Stephanie — Spoiler — can't be, either. She won't be.

Saturday night in late autumn, and she's sixteen and not out as Spoiler because for once, her dad is at home. Of course it's the one time the power is out, too, and Steph runs smack into her father on her way to the bathroom in the dark. He grumbles at her, something low and frustrated about how she's always in the way and she was an accident, anyway, and Steph ignores it and leans back against the closed bathroom door and tries not to cry. Mom is asleep or high, she isn't sure which, and she's too old to run to her mommy like a baby because her feelings got hurt; but she suddenly feels unwelcome even in her own house, her own life.

Her father never wanted her, her mom barely does, and Batman sure doesn't want Spoiler around. She has a wristwatch with numbers that glow in the dark and when she checks it, it's 6:30, already dark outside as it is inside and as is creeping into her heart, and. And, and, and. She's never gone to an actual chapel service at Opened Door. At least she's pretty sure she's welcome there.

She shrugs a cardigan over her plain T-shirt and leggings, feeling strangely like she needs to make herself presentable, check that her face isn't blotchy from holding back emotions. She would put on makeup, if she had enough light to do it by. Instead, she pads quietly down the hall in a worn pair of hightops and steps in exactly the right places on all the building's stairs so that they don't creak. Batman may not want her, but she hasn't learned nothing from him.

There's music coming from inside the storefront when Steph opens the door of Opened Doors, slipping inside to warm yellow light and friendly smiles of greeting even though she's ten minutes late and has been lying about her age since before she was eleven. She's heard a little of this kind of music, sometime playing in the background on a radio when she first arrives at youth group. But this is different, with a guy playing guitar on a small stage set up in the main room and a woman next to him singing and swaying. Steph stands in the doorway, transfixed.

When the song ends, another man steps onto the stage with a cordless microphone, says something about offerings, but Steph has nothing to offer. She slips into a seat in the back row and scans the room for anyone she knows, but when the people onstage start playing another song, she watches them. This is different than anything she's used to from Wednesday nights, but it's just as warm. You give life, the woman starts to sing, You are love, and Steph pays attention because talking about God is different when it's singing instead of talking. You bring light to the darkness. You give hope, restore every heart that is broken.

For the second time tonight, but for a totally different reason, Steph blinks back tears.

By Christmas, she's Robin. Basically the epitome of a light shining in darkness, in her opinion. B is definitely dark enough, and so is the Batcave. Steph, then, blonde hair and colors that are definitely not hers and maybe shouldn't be, is the counterpoint to all that. She's not here because B wanted her. She's here because she wanted to be here. Wants to. And if B's approval lights her up a little bit, then that has nothing to do with anything.

Alfred has strung some lights in a corner of the Cave. Robin colors, Steph thinks. She kind of wants to ask if there's any extras she could borrow, just for the season, since the lights on her and Mom's old plastic tree stopped working a couple years ago. Steph stares at the lights and shifts her weight from foot to foot on the training mats.

"Christmas Eve and Day are high crime days," B is saying, focused on the Batcomputer instead of her. "Police often take leave for the holiday and most people are at home; there are a lot of break-ins and robberies." He glances over his shoulder at her. "We'll need to redouble our efforts on patrol this weekend."

Steph sniffs awkwardly, gaze firmly fixed on Alfred's Christmas lights. "Actually, uh..." she squirms a little bit. "I can't patrol on Christmas Eve. I... have stuff I need to do. Commitments, ya know?" She flashes what she hopes is a bright grin to counter Batman's sudden glower.

"Family?" He asks carefully, watching her for some reaction she doesn't give. As if she wants to spend the holiday with her arch-criminal father and a drug addicted mom. As if she wants to face that.

She shakes her head. "It's a volunteering thing. Like, community service? It goes on my high school transcript. I promised I'd be there Christmas Eve, so..." she shrugs. "If that's, like... okay."

Batman stares at her a few moments longer. "I not your parent, Stephanie," he says, softer than she expected. Somehow, the words sting even though they're probably meant to be reassuring, or at least just a reminder. It isn't a rejection. "Where are you volunteering?"

Steph shrugs again. "Just a place near where I grew up. They do a Christmas dinner thing every year." She leaves out the fact that she's gone to it, and not to volunteer. B is stupid rich, she doesn't need the reminder.

He nods. "Christmas night, then?" And she nods. Light in the darkness, invitation as a counterpoint to rejection.

This year, Steph is the one doing the inviting. She grins widely at everyone who walks over Opened Doors' threshold, refills trays of food donated by church members and volunteers. It's strange, being on the other side of all this, but she's been attending Saturday night services as well as youth group every week, and they'd asked for helping hands, so. That's what she is. Seeing the light from their front window shining out into the dark of a street with broken streetlamps almost feels like coming full circle.

Steph doesn't know that in a few months she won't be Robin anymore; in a few months she'll be dead and then alive and still feeling like she's dead. Like the light in her heart has flickered out. All she knows is that it's Christmas, and she's standing in the church's kitchen (which is really just a camp stove someone brought in and a microwave they keep in the back room for popcorn at youth events; all the turkeys were cooked at people's homes and brought in this afternoon) with Lynn, who has a gold ring on the hand she keeps resting on her heavily pregnant belly, and Steph thinks things are starting over new.

"I was scared for you, at first, you know," Lynn says conversationally, nibbling at a leftover cookie. Steph is unscrewing the propane tank from the camp stove so its owner can take it home, and pauses to look over her shoulder.

"Huh?"

Lynn chuffs a soft laugh, hem of her maternity dress bouncing. "You came in here all alone that first Christmas, no parents or siblings, and I was worried for you. And then you came to youth group and I thought, she's only here because it's warm. Maybe I thought you were homeless, or didn't have good heating, since you showed up when it was cold out."

Steph checks the outlet on the propane tank, then turns around and sits cross-legged with her back to it on the kitchen floor. "I mean, you're kind of right," she admits. "I did come for the warm. But not because of why you thought. I just... I mean, you know my home life isn't the best. You guys gave me a place to come, you know?" She looks at the floor, like she'd looked at Christmas lights in a cave a couple days ago.

Lynn hums. "I never thought you'd become such a staple, though. Never thought we'd end up here." She smiles, that same smile she'd given Steph the first time they met on a Christmas Eve like this one, when Steph was tiny and Lynn had been a high schooler. "I'm glad," she adds.

Steph grins, then, too, thinking of handing lonely people a bit of warmth and welcome. "The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it," she recites, because it feels fitting. "I don't think I ever stopped thinking about that after the first time. You guys are a light in the darkness." She turns back to the stove, carefully folding it up and leaning it against the wall.

Lynn hums again, then the pitch of her voice changes in a way that activates every single one of Steph's Spoiler-and-Robin instincts. The sound of hope becomes the sound of pain, and Steph swirls into action because she's wearing red and green and even though this time it means Christmas and not necessarily Robin, B's training is admittedly really good and she's grateful for it. Please, please, please, she prays in her head, absolutely incoherent because she's never delivered a baby before, and she still hasn't by the end of the night because two other women who had been volunteering usher her out of the way (she wasn't in the way) as the sound of pain becomes the sound of hope again. Joy and peace, too.

In spring, Steph dies. She isn't really Robin even though she's wearing those colors, and she spends the whole time her life is being taken from her praying, please, God, please, just as incoherent as ever. She's never been good at the praying part, always leaves the end-of-group prayers to Nadia or whoever else wants to say it. She wonders if Nadia will miss her. If Lynn will. She doesn't think B will, even though she misses him somehow even though he's with her at the end. Please, her mind screams, because it feels like the darkness is overcoming the light even though she knows in the end of all things that can't happen.

And then she's not dead again and she doesn't know what to feel. Grateful? Yeah, she is. But she doesn't feel like the hands and feet of light in the darkness anymore. She feels a little bit like a part of the darkness, and she spends a lot of time beating it back.

The floppy, blue-covered Bible she hadn't stolen still says Holy on the front even though it's beaten up and worn and she has, in fact, accidentally torn some of the delicate pages. The slip of paper listing the service times at Opened Doors is still in it as a bookmark, the words behind it highlighted in magenta Crayola marker, the closest color to purple she could find at the time. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. But the preceding verse stands out to Stephanie now, "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." She stares at that for a long time and can't figure out how she feels about it.

Life and light, shared from Someone other than herself. That's where the light, the one that shines in the darkness and can't be overcome, the one that she's built her entire existence up around, comes from. She can't embody it by herself; Steph knows that now. Maybe she needs to be done trying.

The first time she walks in the creaky, rusted door of Opened Door ministries after she dies and is allowed to keep living (just like Jason Todd, the Red Hood, who she knows know is the same Jason she used to sit next to on the schoolbus in winter because he was warm and didn't mind her being there. She wonders if he's still warm like that.), she's seventeen years old and still hasn't cut her hair, because now that she's older she likes it long. She's still got a big purple coat (eggplant). It's Saturday night, her father is in prison and Mom is in rehab, and she hasn't been here since spring. The light still shines out the window of the storefront and the streetlight is still broken.

"It's Your breath in our lungs," sings the lady onstage when Steph walks into the sanctuary, a few minutes late as usual, and slips into the back row like she always does. "So we pour out our praise." Steph knows this song. It means more to her now, though. "Our hearts will cry, these bones will sing," says the bridge, and maybe that's why it's okay that Steph doesn't have the words to pray. "Great are You, Lord."

She goes to Opened Doors on Wednesday night that week, knocks on the doorframe. Someone opens it and tells her it isn't locked, and she says, "I know," and smiles. Lynn walks into the room with her baby on her hip and stops short when she sees Steph, bright golden hair and purple hoodie against the world, hands in her sweatshirt pocket almost sheepish in a way she never let herself be before.

"Stephanie!" She exclaims, breaking into the light smile Steph has come to know over the course of a decade. "I thought- we haven't seen you in months!" Lynn offers a one-armed hug that Steph gladly steps into, almost trembling with the force of being welcomed back so powerfully.

"I know," she mumbles, "Some... stuff happened." Death and new life counts as stuff, she thinks. "But I'm back now, so." She shrugs, and then blurts before she can stop to think about it: "I lied."

Lynn looks her up and down and pulls her back into the room they use as a kitchen, the microwave room. "When?" She asks gently, not judging or scolding, just curious.

Steph takes a deep breath, sighs it out. "When I first came here," she replies. "I was only in fifth grade at the time, but I didn't want you guys to like, turn me away because I was too young, you know? I really wanted..." she trails off.

"Wanted what?"

"The... light, I guess. To be invited in." Steph is holding back tears, now, and she isn't totally sure why. "I didn't think you would." Nobody else did. "I'm sorry I never told the truth."

Lynn shakes her head. "It's alright, Stephie," she says gently, which makes Steph cry more because her mom usually calls her that and she hasn't heard from her mom since she started rehab. Mom and Lynn are the only two people who have ever really called her Stephie. She'd forgotten what that felt like. "Honestly, I'm glad you did." She holds out a hand, and hesitantly, Steph takes it. "Plus," Lynn adds, "That means you have another year before you age out of youth group."

Steph hadn't thought of that. She'd almost thought they wouldn't want her around when they found out she lied. "Oh."

Steph isn't Spoiler anymore. She isn't Robin, either. She's Batgirl, now, taking up another legacy of light in the darkness. At first, she doesn't think it suits her. She confesses as much to Alfred, or maybe she's more complaining than anything else, unsure about living up to what B and Babs need her to be. Thanksgiving has just passed, and Steph is helping with Christmas decorations. She never did ask about borrowing some before, but maybe since she has her own place now, she'll ask this year.

"If Master Bruce and Miss Barbara think you are not exactly what you need to be," Alfred says simply, "Then that is on them, not you. You, Miss Stephanie, have something that unfortunately, they often don't." He fixes her in a long look, and bends to plug in a string of Christmas lights. "Light."

That's the moment Steph knows that Batgirl is going to be begging off patrol again this year, that as important as what she does at night is, there are things more important, and one of them is the light in the darkness. Alfred gives her a box of twinkling lights and decorations and won't hear of it when she promises to bring them back, tells her that every young person making their way in the world, in life, needs a good set of decor, so she ducks her head and grins about it and sets the box by the door before she runs downstairs. Like, downstairs, downstairs.

Tim is seated at the computer with Bruce hovering over his shoulder, both of them casting occasional glances over at Jason, still half in his Red Hood gear but leaning casually against the wall as they discuss some case Steph isn't involved in. They've been keeping her out of gang cases, she thinks, and anything to do with Sionis. Part of her bristles at the protectiveness while the rest of her is touched by it. She nods a greeting to Jason and walks up behind B and starts poking him, which gets a smirk out of Tim and a sigh from the man himself that she knows, these days, isn't actually annoyed.

"Yes, Stephanie?" He asks, tilting his head to look down at her. To think, she'd once been intimidated by that, thought he was like, actually looking down on her (and maybe he had been back then, at first). Not anymore, though.

"I'm dipping for Christmas again this year. Volunteer stuff, all that. I was wondering," she says slyly and a little shyly, like a little girl asking if she's allowed to take home a book called Holy, "If any of you wanted to join me." They should see that light, too. She wants to show it to them.

Tim looks up from the computer. "I didn't know you do volunteer work," he says. "Where?"

"Once a year," Steph replies, then falters. "It's uh... like a community Christmas meal type thing. There's a ministry that runs it in my old neighborhood, ever since I was a kid." She leaves the rest of that unspoken, knows that they know what's implied in that and isn't actually ashamed of it anymore.

"Wait," Jason pipes up, "Opened Doors?" He's staring at her, almost squinting with thought, and Steph nods.

"The one and only." She grins.

"Huh." Jason blinks. "I didn't realize you actually went."

"I didn't realize you could grow out of needing reading glasses," Steph retorts, and he grumbles. "But yeah. I uh... never stopped going, after that. And they never stopped inviting me in, so." She shrugs. "I helped out last year, too, and it was really nice." She turns back to Tim and Bruce. "I figured I'd ask, at least."

Tim frowns. "Well, I think we're skimming over the fact that you and Jason knew each other as kids," he says slowly, looking mildly perplexed.

"Same schoolbus," they both reply in unison.

Bruce clears his throat, then, which is a very quick way to get the attention of all of his kids including Steph, who isn't exactly his but isn't not, either. "If you don't think my presence would cause too much commotion," he says, "I would love to join you."

Steph tries to pretend like she isn't dying (coming alive) inside from happiness and acceptance. "Everyone's pretty chill." She breaks into a grin. "They'll love you."

"Hn." Bruce looks like he's suppressing a smile, and looks over at Tim, who shrugs.

"I'm in," he answers.

"Am I invited, too?" Jason asks. "Or would a vigilante crime lord be too out of place in a church?" He says it sarcastically, shooting a halfhearted glare at Bruce as he does so. But Steph thinks maybe he's actually asking.

"You don't have to talk about it," Tim sighs, exasperated. "Why are you like this."

But Steph just smiles wider and thinks of warmth from a storefront window. "You're invited."

Dick tags along, too, when he gets in from Bludhaven on Christmas Eve. Steph doesn't ask who's handling patrol, because she doesn't want to ruin this by reminding anyone of their other responsibilities, and she just assumes that Bruce has that all figured out. She can trust that, now. She carries a box of Alfred's pastries over the threshold of Opened Doors, letting out warmth into the cold and light into the darkness (the nearest streetlamp is still broken. She doesn't think it's ever going to be fixed.) as the boys and Bruce trail after her.

She's still got a big purple coat, this one not from a thrift store (it was an early Christmas present from B) and her hair is frizzed out over the fur-lined hood and she's absolutely certain she still looks like a poof. She's golden and purple and she grins madly back at Lynn and Nadia, who greet her with warmth as soon as they see her.

"I brought helping hands!" she exclaims brightly, nodding over her shoulder at the family who isn't quite her family, but who keep welcoming her into theirs anyway.

She finally, finally gets how to be a light in the darkness. Because the light doesn't come from just her, or just the church lights or the brightness of a welcoming smile. It comes from Something more, Something bigger. She just has to accept the invitation to it. And then she can turn around and open the door for others, the way it was opened to her. And the darkness, whatever it may contain, can't overcome that light.

She's going to call her mom tonight, wish her a merry Christmas. Figure out what she wants to do about college. Write a Christmas card to her father, send it to the prison even though she doesn't really want to, would rather let him rot. But right now, she's offering light the way it was once and is still offered to her, and it's warming her inside and out. It's Christmas Eve, and there's life here.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

Romans 15:13

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1:4-5

#the song is Great Are You Lord by All Sons & Daughters btw #it's like... a staple in every random nondenom church I've been to in recent years #like!!! it is SO versatile?? even from a logistical perspective you can do it with one(1) instrument and one(1) voice #and it's so simple and easy to sing along to and so POWERFUL???#I've heard it so much recently that I'm almost used to it but writing this actually made me listen to it a lot and it's hitting me #really hard #along with that john 1 passage #anyways Lynn is my new favorite OC maybe. she's like everybody's big sister #and what i aspire to as a youth leader #also: this is what i was vagueing about when i made that post about ''timeline what timeline'' bc i have NO idea what's going on here #like.. jason is semi-chill with the family and yet damian and cass aren't here. sorry i just... did not want to try and fit #any more characters into this skskksskfndnwk #Lu writes #I'm gonna go a final proof on this later so if you see any typos. I'm so sorry #and on the off chance this is allowed for inklings-#inklingschristmaschallenge #theme: light #batfam #steph brown

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